With a career spanning nearly four decades, Cory Doctorow has an impressive bibliography, including 15 novels, four graphic novels, dozens of short stories, six nonfiction books, and literally tens of thousands of blog posts and essays.
Despite this colossal output, the acclaimed science fiction author and long-time internet activist is now primarily recognized for one powerful word: Enshittification.
Doctorow, 54, brought this term into public consciousness through his essays in 2022 and 2023. It describes the consistent decline in quality of online platforms as their corporate owners increasingly prioritize profit. While the word itself is playful, Doctorow details it as a precise, almost scientific progression, akin to a staged illness.
Since its introduction, the concept has broadened to capture a widespread sentiment — a profound dissatisfaction exceeding typical annoyance with platforms like Facebook (which long stopped being a truly effective way to connect with friends) or Google (whose search results are now often cluttered with SEO junk). Recently, the idea has been applied to everything from video games and television to even the state of American democracy itself.
“It’s frustrating. It’s demoralizing. It’s even terrifying,” Doctorow stated in a 2024 address, capturing the pervasive anxiety many feel.
This Tuesday marks the release of ‘Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It’ by Farrar Straus & Giroux. This book-length expansion of Doctorow’s earlier essays delves deeper into the concept, offering detailed case studies (such as Uber, Twitter, and Photoshop) and outlining his proposed solutions. These primarily involve dismantling powerful tech monopolies and implementing stronger regulatory measures.
Given Doctorow’s characteristic prolificacy on this very topic, one might wonder: why dedicate an entire book to it?
During a conversation over an avocado malted and poached eggs at a Lower Manhattan diner, Doctorow drew a fitting analogy from Nintendo’s popular “Legend of Zelda” game series to elaborate.
“Think of the books as the ‘save game’ points in a long ‘Zelda’ adventure,” Doctorow explained. “The articles are the individual missions, but the books are where I consolidate all the insights and arguments gathered so far.”
If a vast, productive writing career could be distilled into a single term, ‘enshittification’ is certainly a strong contender.
“He might appear to be spread thin due to his many ventures, but all of them are woven into a single, cohesive vision,” noted Kim Stanley Robinson, the renowned science fiction author and a close friend of Doctorow’s. “It’s his unwavering commitment to fostering a more humane, democratic, user-centric, and non-exploitative internet.”
Doctorow arrived at the diner equipped with custom-printed poop emoji stickers, echoing the cover art of his new book. He’d previously charmed the owners by demonstrating how their seltzer machine could be adapted to use a larger, generic carbon dioxide tank instead of costly, proprietary refills.
Running through all of Doctorow’s work, both fiction and nonfiction, is a core belief: technology holds the potential for human empowerment and creativity, but it can just as easily become a tool of repression and control by governments or large corporations. In his philosophy, experimentation, personalization, and individual expression are virtues. Conversely, conformity, corporate consolidation, and passive consumption are detrimental — a principle he applies even to something as minor as choosing seltzer tanks.
“I am simultaneously extremely excited, hopeful, and energized by the possibilities technology offers for human flourishing,” Doctorow confessed, “and equally terrified of the destructive path it could take if we fail to guide it properly.”
If our current digital landscape feels oppressive — aggravated by constant Netflix price hikes and algorithmically-generated, low-quality AI videos on platforms like Instagram — it’s because the balance has tipped too heavily towards corporate control. As an activist, Doctorow’s mission is to persuade the public that this trajectory is not inevitable. Unlike many who now passively endure these deteriorating platforms, he vividly recalls a time when the internet fostered different possibilities.
‘Paradise Lost’
Raised in Toronto by two Marxist schoolteachers, Doctorow’s childhood home was a hub of technological exploration. In the 1970s, his father, a University of Toronto graduate student, brought home a Teletype terminal. His mother, an innovative kindergarten teacher, would repurpose paper towels from her classroom to feed the machine, later returning the code-covered sheets for her students to clean their hands.
At his alternative elementary school, children from kindergarten to 8th grade shared a single classroom, fostering an environment where individual interests thrived. For Doctorow, these passions ranged from communism and nuclear disarmament to Dungeons & Dragons and Mad Magazine. Most significantly, he dedicated countless hours to an Apple II computer, learning to code alongside his friend Tim Wu, who would later become a prominent legal scholar and antitrust advocate, serving in the Biden Administration.
“To us, these were machines of liberation and personal growth,” Wu recalled in an interview. “We viewed them with the utmost optimism.”
Wu remembers Doctorow as a natural leader in school, albeit one with a fiery streak and little patience for foolishness, which sometimes led to clashes with older classmates. Yet, these formative years of home computing — long before today’s polished, profit-driven digital interfaces — offered both Doctorow and Wu a sanctuary, a kind of pristine, pre-fall ideal.
“The ‘Paradise Lost’ narrative resonates deeply with both Cory and myself,” Wu added, highlighting their shared nostalgia for early internet ideals.
During his adolescence, Doctorow actively organized protests against the Persian Gulf War. He later spent a year in Mexico, where he honed his storytelling craft on a Sears word processor. Unsurprisingly, his collegiate attempts were short-lived, as he found traditional computer programming curricula uninspiring and dull.
Following various roles, including working in a science fiction bookstore, coding for the innovative CD-ROM company Voyager, and co-founding a media start-up, Doctorow joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 2002. At EFF, a leading digital rights organization, he passionately championed the battle against digital rights management (DRM) — a concept, prominent during the Napster era, aimed at restricting consumers from copying and sharing digital content.
Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the EFF, describes Doctorow as “an idea machine,” emphasizing, “He’s the source of more groundbreaking concepts about the synergy between technology and humanity than anyone else.”
For internet activists of Doctorow’s generation, the idea that corporations could retain control over digital information post-purchase was utterly unacceptable.
Doctorow was instrumental in orchestrating memorable stunts, including a parody of the “Mickey Mouse Club” theme song, which humorously critiqued Disney’s aggressive intellectual property practices. (A memorable lyric: “They sell us stuff/ It’s overpriced/ Then lock it up / And that’s not nice!”) He also engaged in intricate good-governance initiatives, such as generating near real-time transcripts of World Intellectual Property Organization meetings.
While fighting copyright battles, Doctorow’s writing career simultaneously flourished. In 2001, he joined Boing Boing as an editor. The blog, known for its unique blend of eclectic content, tech news, retrofuturist art, and left-leaning commentary, quickly became a global sensation.
In 2008, Doctorow released “Little Brother,” a novel depicting four Bay Area teenagers utilizing technology to resist an oppressive Department of Homeland Security. The book became a New York Times best seller and a Hugo Award finalist. Notably, like all his books until 2017 when his publisher intervened, “Little Brother” was made freely available under a Creative Commons license, reflecting his commitment to open access.
A self-proclaimed didacticist, Doctorow views his fiction and his activism as complementary avenues for exploring his core concerns about technology. He speaks with rapid confidence and a subtle Canadian lilt, conveying the image of someone who has meticulously refined his arguments over years of writing and debates.
“When you speak with him, you can almost visualize his thought process,” observed Rob Beschizza, managing editor of Boing Boing. “His mind fluidly transitions from agreement to skepticism, making for a truly stimulating exchange for anyone who appreciates intellectual sparring.”
In 2010, Doctorow secured the 10th spot on Forbes’ list of the top 25 “web celebs.” (Interestingly, gossip blogger Perez Hilton claimed first place.)
From this influential position, Doctorow observed a significant shift: the public’s engagement with computing became increasingly mediated and passive. That very year, he vehemently criticized Apple’s new iPad, deeming it wasteful, infantilizing, and unintelligent. He also left Facebook, citing deep privacy concerns.
For years, he has foretold Facebook’s decline, pointing to events like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, widespread reports of ad fraud, erratic shifts in its video and news strategies, and the growing preference of younger audiences for platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
‘Trapped in their carcasses’
Then, in the autumn of 2023, Doctorow formally introduced his now-famous theory.
Here’s a simplified breakdown of the process:
Initially, a platform delivers exceptional value to its users. Consider Facebook’s early success in connecting friends, or Amazon’s rise as a vast and dependable online marketplace.
Once a platform achieves critical mass and user dependency, effectively eliminating viable alternatives, it begins to exploit its user base to attract and satisfy businesses. This could manifest as Facebook sharing personal user data with advertisers, or Google overtly favoring paid advertisements over organic search results.
Finally, once these business clients become equally reliant on the dominant platform, the platform then tightens its grip on them. Examples include Facebook’s skyrocketing ad rates amidst fraud allegations, or Amazon requiring sellers to pay for Prime visibility merely to rank higher in search results.
Ultimately, Doctorow contends, this cycle leaves only the shareholders of these colossal platforms content.
“All our tech businesses are deteriorating rapidly,” Doctorow asserts in his book. “But they’re not collapsing. Instead, we find ourselves confined within their decaying structures, seemingly with no means of escape.”
Doctorow admits to managing his anxieties about the present technological climate through his prolific writing — an unsurprising revelation — and by indulging in “too much brown liquor,” enjoyed at his custom-built “pirate” bar in the backyard of his Burbank, California home, which he shares with his wife. (Their daughter is currently in college.)
This coping mechanism has proven necessary to decompress from what he describes as a period of “extreme fecundity,” even by his own high standards. This heightened activity is partly fueled by the growing intellectual movement of “neo-Brandeisians,” influential thinkers who echo his desire to dismantle dominant tech monopolies.
A prominent figure among these “neo-Brandeisians” — a coalition of politicians, lawyers, and activists drawing inspiration from early 20th-century Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis — is Lina Khan, the current chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under the Biden Administration.
Notably, she is an admirer of Doctorow’s work.
“He offers genuine intellectual contributions by providing a coherent framework for understanding our experiences as consumers,” Khan remarked in an interview. “I’ve consistently found him remarkably lucid and astute, capable of synthesizing a wide range of human experiences into an easily digestible format.”
Under Khan’s leadership, the FTC has launched high-profile lawsuits against numerous tech giants. Even the second Trump Administration has occasionally adopted an aggressive stance towards Big Tech. However, a recent settlement with Amazon suggests that the effort to curb the industry’s power may face significant constraints.
Ultimately, Doctorow states he isn’t overly fixated on precise semantics. He acknowledges that his infamous word has transcended its original definition, entering broader cultural discourse to signify something more expansive. True to his long-standing opposition to overly strict copyright enforcement, Doctorow fully embraces the concept of intellectual remixing.
As he playfully writes in his new book, “I am giving you explicit permission to use this word in a loose sense.”