The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation

Tech giants started out with high-minded ideals about "connection," but Doctorow shows us how "connection" was a sticky trap that locked up everyone you love and everything you care about, turning "users" into "hostages." So far, all the proposed solutions amount to self-policing: telling platforms "you're so big you cause problems, so you have to get bigger so you can solve them."

The Internet Con presents a solution that actually works. It reveals the thing that platforms fear the most: interoperability. Interoperability is the technical, policy and social tool that will decompose tech platforms into services that anyone can mix, match, plug into--or render obsolete.

Interoperability is how we "seize the means of computation," putting control over tech into tech users' hands. Enshrining new protections for reverse-engineers, tinkerers, co-ops, nonprofits and startups will fundamentally alter the politics and economics of tech monopolies, weakening them and hastening the day that regulators break them up so they no longer present a threat to society.

The Internet Con charts where Big Tech monopolies came from--and makes play how we'll abolish them for good.