This Machine Kills - 48. Who Uses the Users? (ft. Cory Doctorow)
Cold open: excerpt from UBIK by Philip K. Dick
Outro: amazing new track by Jereme, "End of Time"
We’re joined by Cory Doctorow — prolific author, longtime activist, friend of the show — to learn about a critical issue that much of his advocacy work centers on: adversarial interoperability, a.k.a competitive compatibility. Cory explains why this approach to designing and governing technological systems is crucial for knocking down the walled gardens that keep us captive and for breaking up the highly concentrated corporate oligopoly. For ensuring the business of innovation serves people’s needs and for empowering us all with greater self-determination and agency over the things that mediate our lives. To put it simply: for being users, not just used.
Cory also joined us for a blockbuster doubleheader — so stick around for the premium episode where we discuss surveillance capitalism, science fiction, and much more.
Links to Cory’s work:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctorow
• Books: https://craphound.com/
• Blog: https://pluralistic.net/
• Adversarial interoperability: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability
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Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl).