Cory Doctorow: Picks and Shovels

Cory Doctorow is a multiple awards winning author, blogger, critic and activist. He has co-founded an open software company, been the European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and he helped establish their Open Rights Group.
When he left the blog site, Boing Boing after 19 years of co-ownership, MetaFilter called it “the equivalent of the Beatles breaking up for the blog world.” He metablogs currently at pluralistic.net.
Cory Doctorow popularized the term “metacrap” and created the neologism, “enshitification,” which the FCC does not allow us to use on the air, which we replaced with “enpoopification,” defined as “the process of degradation of an online environment caused by greed.”
He is a prolific author in many genres, fiction and nonfiction.
His nonfiction books include: THE INTERNET CON: HOW TO SEIZE THE MEANS OF COMPUTATON; CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM: HOW BIG TECH AND BIG CONTENT CAPTURED CREATIVE LABOR MARKETS AND HOW WE’LL WIN THEM BACK (written with Rebecca Giblin); and HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM.

His most recent fiction books include THE LOST CAUSE, A NOVEL OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION IN OUR POLARIZED FUTURE, which has been described as “A solarpunk, hopepunk novel of the climate emergency, endorsed by Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Rebecca Solnit and Kim Stanley Robinson.” The first of his Martin Hench books, RED TEAM BLUES, which actually features Mendocino County in a small but crucial role, was published in 2023. This was followed by Bezzle, and the third book, which will be published on February 18, 2025, PICKS AND SHOVELS. We spoke with him about it via Skype on February 11, 2025.

Wired Portrait of Cody Doctorow above by Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud (JUCO) 5

Articles, etc. pertinent to this interview:

Picks and Shovels with Yanis Varoufakis (Jacobin/virtual), Feb 15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkIDep7Z4LM

With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It (Indiana University/virtual), Mar 7 https://events.iu.edu/mediaiub/event/1783095-with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshitti

Capitulating to Trump: why people are warning about ‘Vichy’ America https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/31/vichy-france-trump-democrats

Who is helping Elon Musk gut the US government? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/08/elon-musk-doge-team-staff

Russell Vought: Trump appointee who wants federal workers to be ‘in trauma’ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/10/who-is-russell-vought-trump-office-of-management-and-budget

Trump orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/31/trump-order-usda-websites-climate-crisis

To Obey or Not to Obey (Masha Gessen) https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/opinion/trump-power-surrender.html

I met the ‘godfathers of AI’ in Paris – here’s what they told me to really worry about https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/14/ai-godfathers-paris-industry-dangers-future

How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk-peter-thiel-apartheid-south-africa

Jesse Welles Black Hawks and DEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xAswA556a8