Cory Doctorow delivered the Marshall McLuhan lecture in Berlin on January 30th, 2024. It was recorded and posted on YouTube. There are also contributions from Frederike Kaltheuner and Helen Starr.
transmediale McLuhan Lecture 2024 with Cory Doctorow and Frederike Kaltheuner.
I love this video of Cory Doctorow explaining how the dreams of tech workers have changed over the past 15 years.
This topic also appeared in his speech that he gave to Defcon earlier this year.
Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?
Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.
Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.
And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.
We deserve better than this. We can get it.
An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse
If tech workers needed an example of the power they possess at this point in time, they need look no further than what happened at OpenAI when Sam Altman was fired by the board. He would not be the CEO today if the workers had not threatened to leave.
It's a small example and it will be interesting to see how Altman and OpenAI will react to try and break that solidarity in the future.