"A short, provocative guide to what's good, bad, and stupid about AI and the discourse around AI, by the author of Enshittification"--

"This is a call to arms about how to bring the big online platforms to their knees. It concerns the question of interoperability: the way that Facebook, Twitter etc make it very difficult for you to move and own your data. Doctorow shows that this is not a problem of technology but of law, business and apathy in face of growing monopolies. He covers ground such as anti-trust, and how the platforms deal with take down orders. Through this he shows how the FANGS became too powerful - and show us what we can do about it!"--

OneZero, Medium's official technology publication, is thrilled to announce a print-on-demand edition of How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism by Cory Doctorow, with an exclusive new chapter. How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism was first published online in August, where it was an instant hit with readers, scholars, and critics alike. For years now, we've been hearing about the ills of surveillance capitalism - the business of extracting, collecting, and selling vast reams of user data that has exploded with the rise of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But what if everything we've been hearing is wrong? What if surveillance capitalism is not some rogue capitalism or a wrong turn taken by some misguided corporations? What if the system is working exactly as intended - and the only hope of restoring an open web is to take the fight directly to the system itself? In Doctorow's timely and crucial new nonfiction work, the internationally bestselling author of Walkaway, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and Little Brother, argues that if we're to have any hope of destroying surveillance capitalism, we're going to have to destroy the monopolies that currently comprise the commercial web as we know it. Only by breaking apart the tech giants that totally control our online experiences can we hope to return to a more open and free web - one where predatory data-harvesting is not a founding principle. Doctorow shows how, despite popular misconception, Facebook and Google do not possess any "mind-control rays" capable of brainwashing users into, say, voting for a presidential candidate or joining an extremist group--they have simply used their monopoly power to profit mightily off of people interested in doing those things and made it easy for them to find each other. Doctorow takes us on a whirlwind tour of the last 30 years of digital rights battles and the history of American monopoly - and where the two intersect. Through a deeply compelling and highly readable narrative, he makes the case for breaking up Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple as a means of ending surveillance capitalism.

THE YEAR IS 1986. THE CITY IS SAN FRANCISCO. Here, Martin Hench will reinvent the forensic accountant for the digital age - what a bounty hunter is to people, he will be to tech money - but for now he's an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way around a city still reeling from the invention of a revolutionary new technology that will change everything about crime forever. When Martin is hired by a Silicon Valley startup, Fidelity Computing, to investigate a group of disgruntled ex-employees who've founded a competitor, he quickly realises he's on the wrong side. Martin ditches the greasy old guys running Fidelity Computing without a second thought, utterly infatuated with the electric atmosphere of Computing Freedom. Located in the heart of the Mission, this group of brilliant young women have set out to beat Fidelity Computing at their own game. But they have no idea of the depth of evil they're seeking to uproot. Or the risks they run. In this company-eat-company city, Martin and his friends will be lucky to escape with their lives.

What happens to America when two geeks working from a garage invent easy 3D printing, a cure for obesity, and crowd-sourced theme parks? Lawsuits against Disney are only the beginning in this major novel of the booms, busts, and further booms in store for America in the age of open source and its hero/hacker culture.