Cory Doctorow: Disenshittifying Big Tech

Join for this hybrid conversation with Cory Doctorow interviewed by Alan Meban, broadcast live in front of an audience in Accidental Theatre, Belfast.

The New York Times best-selling author, journalist and activist will talk about his new crime thriller Picks and Shovels and his work on ‘disenshittifying’ Big Tech to create “a new, good internet where search engines find the things you’re looking for, social media delivers the messages you send, ecommerce platforms don’t rip off their sellers and nobody spies on you through your phone, your browser, your car or your smart-speaker.”

In Cory’s most recently published book, Picks and Shovels, he returns to the world of his previous novel, Red Team Blues to bring us the origin story of Martin Hench and the most powerful new tool for crime ever invented: the personal computer.

He is the author of many other books, such as The Bezzle and The Lost Cause, a solarpunk science fiction novel of hope amidst the climate emergency. His most recent non-fiction book is The Internet Con: How To Seize The Means Of Computation, a Big Tech disassembly manual. Other recent books include Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy The Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

He maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net. He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, and serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, the Open Technology Fund and the Metabrainz Foundation. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group.

Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 2022, he earned the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Awardee for lifetime achievement. In 2024, the Media Ecology Association awarded him the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. York University (Canada) made him an Honorary Doctor of Laws; and the Open University (UK) made him an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science.

Alan Meban is a freelance journalist and producer who records, live-streams and writes about civic, academic and political events; chairs discussions; writes as a theatre critic, reviews films, and blogs about politics. He makes podcasts for NGO clients, and as a freelance radio producer, Alan sporadically works on consumer, cultural, religious and ethics programmes. He’s also a director of Northern Ireland’s independent fact checking organisation FactCheckNI, and a member of the Corrymeela Community.

No Alibis Bookshop will be selling books at the physical event.

Part of Imagine! Belfast Festival of Ideas & Politics>>