Cory Doctorow |
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1533 - Walkaway, a novel, by Cory Doctorow (and Reason Interview)
Also, catching up with a post planned for two years ago.
I have been thinking of re-reading Walkaway, especially after seeing Cory Doctorow speak in Vancouver last month. But first, I have to read his new books: Radicalized and Information Doesn't Want to Be Free.
TALKING WALKAWAY WITH REASON MAGAZINE
Of all the press-stops I did on my tour for my novel Walkaway, I was most excited about my discussion with Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, where I knew I would have a challenging and meaty conversation with someone who was fully conversant with the political, technological and social questions the book raised.
I was not disappointed.
The interview, which was published online today, is a substantial and challenging one that gets at the core of what I’d hoped to do with the book. I hope you’ll give it a read.
But I think Uber is normal and dystopian for a lot of people, too. All the dysfunctions of Uber’s reputation economics, where it’s one-sided—I can tank your business by giving you an unfair review. You have this weird, mannered kabuki in some Ubers where people are super obsequious to try and get you to five-star them. And all of that other stuff that’s actually characteristic of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. I probably did predict Uber pretty well with what would happen if there are these reputation economies, which is that you would quickly have a have and a have-not. And the haves would be able to, in a very one-sided way, allocate reputation to have-nots or take it away from them, without redress, without rule of law, without the ability to do any of the things we want currency to do. So it’s not a store of value, it’s not a unit of exchange, it’s not a measure of account. Instead this is just a pure system for allowing the powerful to exercise power over the powerless.Isn’t the positive spin on that: Well, yeah, but the way we used to do that allocation was by punching each other in the face?
Well, that’s one of the ways we used to. I was really informed by a book by David Graeber called Debt: The First 5,000 Years, where he points out that the anthropological story that we all just used to punch each other in the face all the time doesn’t really match the evidence. That there’s certainly some places where they punched each other in the face and there’s other places where they just kind of got along. Including lots of places where they got along through having long arguments or guilting each other.I don’t know. Kabuki for stars on the Uber app still seems better than the long arguments or the guilt.That’s because you don’t drive Uber for a living and you’ve never had to worry that tomorrow you won’t be able to.
FULL INTERVIEW HERE
Cory Doctorow’s ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communist Civilization’[Katherine Mangu-Ward/Reason]
Cory Doctorow’s ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communist Civilization’[Katherine Mangu-Ward/Reason]
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1905.02 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1398 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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