Great read: Love his use of a new (to me) word: the Gretacene: the wholesale shift away from fossil fuels to renewables and the devices they power.

Guelph Lecture—On Being

Presented by ArtsEverywhere Festival The 2026 Guelph Lecture—On Being will be presented by Cory Doctorow on the “enshittification” of the internet.

River Run Centre (riverrun.ca)

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) (@doctorow.pluralistic.net)

No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose *Hope in the Dark* got me through the first Trump administration and whose *A Paradise Built In Hell* inspired my novel *Walkaway*: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/ 1/

Bluesky Social (bsky.app)

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Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/04/hope-in-the-dark/

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* Artificial Intelligence: The Ultimate Disruptor, with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (CBC Ideas)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-23-ideas/clip/16210039-artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disruptor

* When Do Platforms Stop Innovating and Start Extracting? (InnovEU)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cccDR0YaMt8

* Pete "Mayor" Buttigieg (No Gods No Mayors)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pete-mayor-with-155614612

* The internet is getting worse (CBC The National)
https://youtu.be/dCVUCdg3Uqc?si=FMcA0EI_Mi13Lw-P

* Do you feel screwed over by big tech? (Ontario Today)
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-45-ontario-today/clip/16203024-do-feel-screwed-big-tech

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* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

* SXSW #London, Jun 2
https://www.sxswlondon.com/session/how-big-tech-broke-the-internet-b3c4a901

* #NYC: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Jonathan Coulton (The Strand), Jun 24
https://www.strandbooks.com/cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaur-s-guide-to-life-after-ai.html

* #Edinburgh International Book Festival with Jimmy Wales, Aug 17
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/the-front-list-cory-doctorow-and-jimmy-wales

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* #Guelph: Musagetes Lecture, May 8
https://riverrun.ca/whats-on/guelph-lecture-on-being-2026/

* #Barcelona: Internet no tiene que ser un vertedero (Global Digital Rights Forum), May 13
https://encuentroderechosdigitales.com/en/speakers/

* Virtual: How to Disenshittify the Internet with Wendy Liu (EFF), May 14
https://www.eff.org/event/effecting-change-enshittification

* #Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

* #Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

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https://craphound.com/shop/

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Just a moment...

(us.macmillan.com)

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My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:

Just a moment...

(us.macmillan.com)

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Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr)

Attached: 1 image Today's threads (a thread) Inside: The prehistory of the Democratic Nuremberg Caucus; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/02/denazification/denazification.jpg #Pluralistic 1/

Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net (mamot.fr)

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#5yrsago Political economy vs inflation https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/01/mayday/#inflationary-political-economy

#1yrago Apple faces criminal sanctions for defying App Store antitrust order https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/01/its-not-the-crime/#its-the-coverup

#1yrago AI and the fatfinger economy https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/02/kpis-off/#principal-agentic-ai-problem

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#15yrsago Will technology make us freer, and if so, how? https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-techno-optimism/

#15yrsago Wikileaks: America will foot the bill for record company enforcement in NZ if NZ will let America write its laws

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#15yrsago Piracy and poor countries: Big Content wants to have its cake and eat it too https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/may/03/why-poor-countries-lead-world-piracy

#15yrsago Brust’s Tiassa: versatile fantasy in three modes https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/02/brusts-tiassa-versatile-fantasy-in-three-modes/

#15yrsago Why New Zealand was dumb to let the USA write its copyright laws https://web.archive.org/web/20110601173727/http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/7615

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#20yrsago UN plans a treaty to kill podcasts https://web.archive.org/web/20060512141428/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004619.php

#20yrsago Sen Stevens tries to sneak the Broadcast Flag into law https://web.archive.org/web/20060505054724/http://ipaction.org/blog/2006/05/breaking-news-broadcast-flag-is-back.html

#20yrago How the US Navy queered San Francisco https://web.archive.org/web/20060504024636/http://ask.yahoo.com/20060502.html

#20yrago Help wanted: new DRM czar for Sony-BMG https://web.archive.org/web/20060512063724/http://www.paidcontent.org/sonybmg-director-new-technology-content-protection-nyc

#20yrsago Rich Americans as sick as poor Brits https://web.archive.org/web/20060516225807/http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9098&feedId=online-news_rss20

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#25yrsago Fuck San Francisco https://craphound.com/fucksf.html

#25yrsago Desktop Linux rant https://web.archive.org/web/20021204051712/http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/opinions/3297/1/

#25yrsago History of ASCAP and BMI https://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/royalty-politics.html

#25yrsago AUSA: If we let you decrypt DVDs, airplanes will start falling out of the sky https://web.archive.org/web/20010504221956/https://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,43485,00.html

#25yrsago Microsoft shits on open source https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/business/technology-microsoft-is-set-to-be-top-foe-of-free-code.html

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* A Long and Probably Boring Process Post https://dreamcafe.com/2026/05/01/a-long-and-probably-boring-process-post/

* The Supreme Court is Corrupt. This is What We Can Do About It. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRzS61buXkQ

* NHS Goes To War Against Open Source https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/

* An open letter asking NHS England to keep its code open https://keepthingsopen.com/

* Top 20 Fiction to Inspire Climate Action https://thebookslist.com/20-fiction-books-to-inspire-climate-action/

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Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr)

Attached: 1 image No one is better at keeping hope alive than Rebecca Solnit, the historian and essayist whose *Hope in the Dark* got me through the first Trump administration and whose *A Paradise Built In Hell* inspired my novel *Walkaway*: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-built-in-hell-by-rebecca-solnit/ -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/04/hope-in-the-dark/#hormuzed-into-the-gretacene 1/

Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net (mamot.fr)

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Guelph Lecture—On Being

Presented by ArtsEverywhere Festival The 2026 Guelph Lecture—On Being will be presented by Cory Doctorow on the “enshittification” of the internet.

River Run Centre (riverrun.ca)

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