Cory Doctorow Explains Why Big Tech Is Making the Internet Terrible
The internet is increasingly a miserable place to be. As Cory Doctorow explains, Silicon Valley CEOs and grifters are working hard to keep it that way.
Google has never, since the development of its search engine, innovated. (Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
In his new book Red Team Blues, Cory Doctorow explores the world, and grift, of cryptocurrency by way of a techno-thriller. He recently spoke to Jacobin’s David Moscrop about his latest book, the state and future of artificial intelligence, and why Twitter and Google suck so much.
David Moscrop
I want to start with your new book, Red Team Blues. First of all, fantastic title. The catalog copy describes it as “a grabby next-Tuesday thriller about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works.” You’ve written fiction about proprietary technology, 3D printing, uploading consciousness, surveillance, and lots more. Why cryptocurrency this time?
Cory Doctorow
Well, I think that there’s a mode of what you might call service journalism that can carry over into fiction — and science fiction is really good at it — which takes ideas that are complicated and extremely salient, and that are treated as a black box by readers, and unpacks them, sometimes around a narrative. I think of Margot Robbie doing this in The Big Short when she’s in a bathtub full of bubble bath, explaining how credit default swaps work and collateralized debt obligations.
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