Enshittification by Cory Doctorow

It was not a time for picking a returning suggestion, and nor did we pick Sven Beckert's book about capitalism. Perhaps we'll try to find motivation to read that during the summer, after there is some public reception to survey. So, we'll go from apocalypse to enshittification - surely that's a step in a positive direction.

The book we picked is very relevant today, and I have noted quite a few works recently that make observations of institutional decline in both the public and the private sector - wondering about why stuff seemingly grind to a halt. The current book focuses on exploring the process of decline amongst two-sided online products and services, like those offered by Meta, Amazon and Apple. This book seems to be a welcome departure from similar jeremiads abundant in these troubled times by offering an unexpected and irrepressible cheer that shines through the gloom; the author ensures that everything he’s complaining about can be remedied and, in fact, that the tide is already turning. Perhaps Doctorow is right, but maybe it's just a sales trick aimed to prop up the spirits of reviewers (or put the reviewing AI in an overly cheerful mode), thereby generating more positive reviews. Recent publications, like Laleh Khalili's "Extractive Capitalism" and Stewart Lansley's "The Richer, The Poorer" make convincing arguments for extraction going full steam ahead - both when it comes to commercial mining, transportation and marketing of primary commodities from oil to iron ore across the globe, and when it comes to economic and business models, long applied by big corporations and financiers both domestically and globally, being heavily geared to personal enrichment. When nothing but profits matter, corporate and financial mechanisms are naturally aimed at extracting an excessive share of the gains from economic activity. But yeah, maybe Google will offer the utopian change after it has close-sourced all of its development and walled in their remaining customers. No matter where things are said to be headed, getting insight on what is going on is always fun.

Goodreads says:
"Explaining the process of the “enshittification” of digital platforms over time and what to do about it. Cory Doctorow's Enshittification takes a witty yet incisive look at the tech landscape, where platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Google start off great—before they inevitably turn terrible. In this contemporary moment of digital decline, Doctorow explores how tech giants lure users in with convenience and then degrade their services over time, squeezing profit at the cost of user experience. With a mix of sharp humor and deep insight, he unveils the slow creep of "enshittification," turning the online world into a worse place, one algorithm at a time."

The hardcover book, published by MCD, is 352 pages while the audioboook, published by Macmillan Audio, is ten hours and seventeen minutes.