Not preordained

Ursula Franklin told us that the outcomes of technology, they're not preordained, they're the result of choices we make about how we will use technology in society.

And I really like this. This is a very science fiction way of thinking about technology. I think the message of good science fiction is that it doesn't matter so much what the gadget does as who it does it for and who it does it to. Those social factors, they're far more important than the specifications of the gadget. It's the difference between a system that warns you when your car is about to drift outta your lane, and a system that tells your insurer that you nearly drifted outta your lane so they can add $10 to your insurance bill this month. I's the difference between a spell checker that lets you know you made a typo and a spell checker that runs under the “bossware” that lets your manager know that you're like the third most typo prone employee in your department so that they can cut your bonus. It's the difference between the app that remembers where you parked your car for you and the app that uses the location of your car as a criterion for including you in a, in a reverse warrant for the identities of everyone who is in the vicinity of an anti-government protest.

I think that enshittification is not caused by changes in our technology, but by changes to the policy environment, changes to the rules of the game undertaken in living memory by named parties who were warned at the time about the likely outcomes of their actions, who are today very rich and respected, who face no consequences and no accountability for their role in ushering in this and should have seen that we live in, who venture out into polite society every day without ever once wondering whether someone is sizing them up for a pitchfork.

2025 Ursula Franklin Lecture: Cory Doctorow, at 34:34.