Cory Doctorow - Böcker

*** Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025 ***Misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, fraud, and AI slop are drowning the internet. For the monopolists who dominate online - X, TikTok, Amazon, Meta, Apple - this is all part of the playbook. The process is what leading tech critic Cory Doctorow has dubbed 'enshittification'. First, the platform attracts users with some bait, such as free access; then the activity is monetized, bringing in the business customers and degrading the user experience; then, once everyone is trapped and competitors eradicated, the platform wrings out all the value and transfers it to their executives and shareholders.As a result, online public squares have become places of torment, and online retailers are hellish dumpster fires. The virtual gathering places where we once imagined the world's problems might be resolved are now a sewer of hatred and abuse - thoroughly enshittified.Doctorow enumerates the symptoms, lays out the diagnosis, and identifies the best responses to these diseased platforms: the monopolies online must be shattered. Companies too big to fail or to jail - and much too big to care - must be cut down to size. Only an attack on corporate power will permit effective regulation and real privacy. Tech unions must protect the workers who should, in turn, defend us against their bosses' sadism and greed.Praise for The Internet Con:"One of the Internet's most interesting writers." -- Edward Snowden"This book fills me with hope that a radical yet plausible alternative to computational tyranny can be developed and deployed." -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Fittest"This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn't want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better." -- Astra Taylor"A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise." -- Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI

In a world wrecked by climate change, in a society owned by the ultra-rich, in a city hollowed out by industrial flight, Hubert, Etc, Seth and Natalie have nowhere else to be and nothing better to do. But there is another way. After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter – from a computer, there is little reason to toil within the system. So, like thousands of others in the mid-21st century, the three of them turn their back on the world of rules, jobs, the morning commute and... walkaway. It's a dangerous world out there, the empty lands are lawless, hiding predators – animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, the thousands become hundreds of thousands, building what threatens to become a post-scarcity utopia. But then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. And now it's war – a war that will turn the world upside down.

When the tech platforms promised a future of "connection," they were lying. They said their "walled gardens" would keep us safe, but those were prison walls.The platforms locked us into their systems and made us easy pickings, ripe for extraction. Twitter, Facebook and other Big Tech platforms are hard to leave by design. 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.We can - we must - dismantle the tech platforms. In The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users to leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.

Money-laundering, cyber-knavery and shell-company chicanery: Marty Hench is an expert in them all. He's Silicon Valley's most accomplished forensic accountant and well versed in the devious ways of Fortune 500s, divorcing oligarchs, and international drug cartels alike (and there’s more crossover than you might imagine). Cory Doctorow's hard-charging, read-in-one-sitting, techno take on the classic PI pulp novel.**It's 2006, and Marty Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerrilla war between the people who want to hide money and the people who want to find it. He spends his downtime holidaying on Catalina Island, where scenic, imported bison wander the bluffs and frozen, reheated fast food burgers cost $25. (Wait, what?) When, during one vacation, Marty disrupts a seemingly innocuous scheme, he has no idea he’s kicked off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life. Because he's made his most dangerous mistake yet. He's trespassed into the playgrounds of the ultra-wealthy and identified their latest target: California’s Department of Corrections, who manage the state's prison system. Secure in the knowledge that they’re living behind far too many firewalls to be identified, the tycoons have hundreds of thousands of prisoners at their mercy, and the potential of millions of pounds to make off them.But now, Marty is about to ruin their fun... A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash, The Bezzle is a red-hot follow up to Red Team Blues.

The ultimate tale of teen rebellion – one seventeen-year-old against the surveillance state.Big Brother is watching you. Who’s watching back?Marcus is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works – and how to work the system. Smart, fast and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison, where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state, where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.

A provocative and exhilarating tale of teen rebellion against global corporations from the New York Times bestselling author of Little Brother.Not far in the future…In the twenty-first century, it's not just capital that's globalized: labour is too. Workers in special economic zones are trapped in lives of poverty with no trade unions to represent their rights. But a group of teenagers from across the world are set to fight this injustice using the most surprising of tools – their online video games.In Industrial South China Matthew and his friends labour day and night as gold-farmers, amassing virtual wealth that's sold on to rich Western players, while in the slums of Mumbai 'General Robotwallah' Mala marshalls her team of online thugs on behalf of the local gang-boss, who in turn works for the game-owners. They're all being exploited, as their friend Wei-Dong, all the way over in LA, knows, but can do little about.Until they begin to realize that their similarities outweigh their differences, and agree to work together to claim their rights to fair working conditions. Under the noses of the ruling elites in China and the rest of Asia, they fight their bosses, the owners of the games and rich speculators, outsmarting them all with their gaming skills. But soon the battle will spill over from the virtual world to the real one, leaving Mala, Matthew and even Wei-Dong fighting not just for their rights, but for their lives…

The prophetic debut novel from the visionary author fo LITTLE BROTHER, now published for the first time in the UK.Jules is a young man barely a century old. He’s lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies … and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now overseen by a network of ‘ad hocs’ who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.But the ad hocs are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself.Worse: it appears that this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It’s only his fourth death and revival after all.) Now it’s war.

Now published for the first time in the UK, the second visionary novel from the acclaimed author of LITTLE BROTHER.Art is an up-and-coming interface designer, working on the management of data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. He’s doing the best work of his career and can guarantee that the system will be, without question, the most counterintuitive, user-hostile piece of software ever pushed forth into the world.Why? Because Art is an industrial saboteur. He may live in London and work for an EU telecommunications mega-corp, but Art’s real home is the Eastern Standard Tribe.Instant wireless communication puts everyone in touch with everyone else, twenty-four hours a day. But one thing hasn’t changed: the need for sleep. The world is slowly splintering into tribes held together by a common time zone, less than family and more than nations. Art is working to humiliate the Greenwich Mean Tribe to the benefit of his own people. But in a world without boundaries, nothing can be taken for granted – not happiness, not money, certainly not love.Which might explain why Art finds himself stranded on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, debating whether to push a pencil into his brain…

A brilliantly funny and bizarre novel from the visionary author of LITTLE BROTHER, now published for the first time in the UK.Alan is a middle-aged entrepreneur who has devoted himself to fixing up a house in a bohemian neighbourhood of Toronto. This naturally brings him into contact with the house full of students and layabouts next door, including a young woman who, in a moment of stress, reveals to him that she has wings – wings, moreover, which grow back after each attempt to cut them off.Alan understands. He himself has a secret or two. His father is a mountain, his mother a washing machine, and among his brothers are a set of Russian nesting dolls.Now two of the three nesting dolls, Edward and Frederick are on his doorstep – well on their way to starvation because their innermost member, George, has vanished. It appears that yet another brother, Davey, whom Alan and his other siblings killed years ago, may have returned … bent on revenge.Under such circumstances it seems only reasonable for Alan to involve himself with a visionary scheme to blanket Toronto with free wireless Internet connectivity, a conspiracy spearheaded by a brilliant technopunk who builds miracles of hardware from parts scavenged from the city’s dumpsters.But Alan’s past won’t leave him alone – and Davey is only one of the powers gunning for him and his friends.

Anyone can run a blog (an online journal). From personal diaries to political commentary and technology observations, bloggers are making their voices heard around the world. Essential Blogging helps you select the right blogging software for your needs and show how to get your blog up and running. You'll learn the ingredients of a successful blog, and then get detailed installation, configuration and operation instructions for the leading blogging software: Blogger, Radio Userland, Movable Type, and Blosxom. After showing you how to acquire, set-up, and run these leading software packages, Essential Blogging takes you through the more advanced features, so that by the time you finish, you'll be up and blogging with the best of them.Essential Blogging covers: * the important components of a blog and a blog post * installing and configuring the tools * a survey of desktop blogging clients * advice and experience from real-world bloggers * hosted blogging with Blogger and Blogger Pro * desktop blogging with Radio Userland * server blogging with Movable Type * posting, editing, and deleting blog entries * adding pictures to blog entries * syndicating your stories with RSS * consuming RSS feeds with Radio Userland * customizing the appearance of your blog with templates * managing and customizing archives of blog entries * adding comments to your blog * self-hosting your blog vs using a blog-hosting service * going under the hood with the Blosxom blogging system Written by prominent bloggers and authors of blogging tools, Essential Blogging is a no-nonsense guide to the technology of blogging.

Thirty years from now and the effects of climate change are overwhelming the planet – but so are the global efforts to combat it.For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn’t controversial, it’s a fact of life.But there are still those Americans who cling to their red trucker caps, their anger, their nostalgia for the golden age of assault rifles. Their ‘alternative’ news sources reassure them their resentment is right and pure and ‘climate change’ is a con.They’re your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. They’re not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth.