Enshittification

Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

Hardcover, 352 pages

English language

Published by MCD.

ISBN:
978-0-374-61932-9
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Enshittification: it’s not just you―the internet sucks now. Here’s why, and here’s how we can disenshittify.

We’re living through the Enshittocene, the Great Enshittening, a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. Demoralizing. Even terrifying.

Enshittification identifies the problem and proposes a solution.

When Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification, he was not just finding a funner way to say “things are getting worse.” He was making a specific diagnosis about the state of the digital world and how it is affecting all of our lives (and not for the better).

The once-glorious internet was colonized by platforms that made all-but-magical promises to their users―and, at least initially, seemed to deliver on them. But once users were locked in, the platforms turned on them to make their business customers happy. Then …

2 editions

The Definitive Look at Rotten Tech

Enshittification has become an easy way to describe how tech goes bad, but Doctorow has done the work of backing up that wonderful new word he added to our lexicon with a framework and survey of tech's history to flesh it out. He provides a path forward to reverse Enshittification and his focus on coalition building is a key part of that. This book is for both veterans in the fight against Enshittification and those just now recognizing how bad things have gotten.

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Subjects

  • Social Media
  • Computer History
  • Computer Culture
  • Social Sciences
  • Internet
  • Big Tech