Review: The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of ComputationReview:

The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a good book that I want everyone to read so they understand why the tech is so broken right now. At the same time I think it’s hampered by the very forces it talks about. That is to say, unlike a protagonist from a Doctorow fiction novel, there isn’t any form of civil disobedience offered within the book. Instead, it depends on a bunch of things that will never happen:

- get government procurement to enforce com-com - how to overcome the bribery (literal and implied) that keeps this from happening?
- get 3rd world nations to enforce com-com - but he admits if they do this, they cannot trade with the US
- Europe? - but the DMA didn’t get it right

I don’t know. I felt vaguely hopeless at the end rather than empowered. If I actually COULD get everyone to read this book (and have them agree) and to all go into the streets for this (why would they really?) then I’d have hope. But I can’t think of anything that had the USA unified in anger like the 2008 protests and those went nowhere.

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