We're pulling a Job with Cory Doctorow and The Internet Con

Peculiar Book Club Podcast

Remember when wasting time on Twitter and Facebook was… fun? When we thought a future of connection awaited us, with endless promise? Those hopes have not aged well, have they? Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms made things easier… and then, when we weren’t looking, those easy-buttons became bricks in a prison wall. Just try leaving, they seem to say (I have left FB and then had to come back again for work, so I know this first hand). As Cory Doctorow puts it in The Internet Con, “They hold hostage the people we love, the communities that matter to us, the audiences and customers we rely on. The impossibility of staying connected to these people after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it’s a business strategy in service to commodifying your personal life and relationships.” He says we need to take control of this mess. But how? The solution, it would seem, is “interoperability.” A really simple example is demanding that Apple make their power ports compatible with the ports that work on everything else. “Use any ink in your printer with any paper, use any socks with your shoes, anyone’s gasoline in your car, put any lightbulb in your light socket,” he tells us. The platform prison is built of deep separation, and it builds divisive-ness right into the design. Join us January 11th and talk live to Cory Doctorow about this award winning, eye-brow raising, con-busting book! But that’s not all!! We will also talk about his new SciFi novel about fear and hope for the future: The Lost Cause. Maybe we can start 2024 by taking the internet by storm.