#Tag
AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage, by @pluralistic
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur
AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage, by @pluralistic
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur
"We wouldn't tolerate secrecy in the calculations used to keep our buildings upright, and we shouldn't tolerate opacity in the software that keeps our tractors, hearing aids, ventilators, pacemakers, trains, games consoles, phones, CCTVs, door locks, and government ministries working."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
(4/4)
Coda:
"... we don't need Europe to lead the charge on a post-American internet by repealing anticircumvention. Any country could do it!"
Aotearoa?
"And the country that gets there first gets to reap the profits from supplying jailbreaking tools to the rest of the world, it gets to be the Disenshittification Nation, and everyone else in the world gets to buy those tools and defend themselves from US tech companies' monetary and privacy plunder."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
"It's a commons, more like a science than a technology, in that it is universal and international and collaborative. We don't have dueling western and Chinese principles of structural engineering. Rather, we have universal principles for making sure buildings don't fall down, adapted to local circumstances."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
(3/4)
"We wouldn't tolerate secrecy in the calculations used to keep our buildings upright, and we shouldn't tolerate opacity in the software that keeps our tractors, hearing aids, ventilators, pacemakers, trains, games consoles, phones, CCTVs, door locks, and government ministries working."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
(4/4)
"This project is the only one that benefits from economies of scale, rather than being paralyzed by exponential crises of scale. That's because any open, free tool adopted by any public institution – like the Eurostack services – can be audited, localized, pen-tested, debugged and improved by institutions in every other country."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
(2/4)
"It's a commons, more like a science than a technology, in that it is universal and international and collaborative. We don't have dueling western and Chinese principles of structural engineering. Rather, we have universal principles for making sure buildings don't fall down, adapted to local circumstances."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
(3/4)
"But there's one post-American system that's easy to imagine. The project to rip out all the cloud connected, backdoored, untrustworthy black boxes that power our institutions, our medical implants, our vehicles and our tractors; and replace it with collectively maintained, open, free, trustworthy, auditable code."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
(1/4)
"This project is the only one that benefits from economies of scale, rather than being paralyzed by exponential crises of scale. That's because any open, free tool adopted by any public institution – like the Eurostack services – can be audited, localized, pen-tested, debugged and improved by institutions in every other country."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
(2/4)
"But there's one post-American system that's easy to imagine. The project to rip out all the cloud connected, backdoored, untrustworthy black boxes that power our institutions, our medical implants, our vehicles and our tractors; and replace it with collectively maintained, open, free, trustworthy, auditable code."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
(1/4)
"In automation theory, a 'centaur' is a person who is assisted by a machine. Driving a car makes you a centaur, and so does using autocomplete.
A reverse centaur is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine."
#CoryDoctorow, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur
This is a useful distinction, but not a new one. The Luddites were resisting being made into reverse centaurs who lived to serve the needs of automated looms (and their owners).
@pluralistic endorses #AviLewis for #NDP leader. I hope #Canadians in the Fediverse will too.
@pluralistic endorses #AviLewis for #NDP leader. I hope #Canadians in the Fediverse will too.
Qui a brisé l'internet? Les grosses compagnies peuvent faire ce qu'elle veulent pour nous garder prisonnières de leurs plateformes parce que les lois leur permettre. C'est ça l'enshittification (merdification).
Mais qui a écrit ces lois? Et pourquoi les compagnies canadiennes doivent se plier à des lois américaines?
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/who-broke-the-internet-understood-transcripts-listen-1.7611600
Je viens de finir de l'écouter et c'est excellent. Je l'ai particulièrement aimé parce que c'est en langage accessible et facile à comprendre. Et avec un peu d'humour pour démêler des concepts qui sont parfois plutôt abstraits.
#enshittification #merdification #coryDoctorow @pluralistic #internet #GAFAM
Qui a brisé l'internet? Les grosses compagnies peuvent faire ce qu'elle veulent pour nous garder prisonnières de leurs plateformes parce que les lois leur permettre. C'est ça l'enshittification (merdification).
Mais qui a écrit ces lois? Et pourquoi les compagnies canadiennes doivent se plier à des lois américaines?
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/who-broke-the-internet-understood-transcripts-listen-1.7611600
Je viens de finir de l'écouter et c'est excellent. Je l'ai particulièrement aimé parce que c'est en langage accessible et facile à comprendre. Et avec un peu d'humour pour démêler des concepts qui sont parfois plutôt abstraits.
#enshittification #merdification #coryDoctorow @pluralistic #internet #GAFAM
Trump may be beginning of end for ‘ #enshittification’ – this is our chance to make #tech good again by #CoryDoctorow
There is only one reason world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disenshittify #US’s defective products: “anti-circumvention” law bans #reverseengineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump #tariffs change that.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/10/trump-beginning-of-end-enshittification-make-tech-good-again
Trump may be beginning of end for ‘ #enshittification’ – this is our chance to make #tech good again by #CoryDoctorow
There is only one reason world isn’t bursting with wildly profitable products and projects that disenshittify #US’s defective products: “anti-circumvention” law bans #reverseengineering that is the necessary prelude to modifying an existing product to make it work better for its users (at the expense of its manufacturer). But the Trump #tariffs change that.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/10/trump-beginning-of-end-enshittification-make-tech-good-again
" #CoryDoctorow : It’s been 25 years since I started working for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an American nonprofit dedicated to preserving and promoting human rights on the internet. I’ve found myself in dozens of countries working with activists, politicians and civil servants to untangle the complex technical questions raised by the internet, and every one of our discussions ended in the same place. “OK,” they’d say, “you’ve definitely laid out the best way to regulate tech, but we can’t do it.”
Why not? Because – inevitably – the US trade rep had beaten me to every one of those countries and made it eye-wateringly clear that if they regulated tech in a way that favoured their own people, industries and national interests, the US would bury them in tariffs."
Let's hope you are right @pluralistic and we now get to do better!
