One thing he didn’t mention is Superannuation plans. If your plan is investing in AI ask them for an alternative or change providers if you can A lot of this shitshow is backed by retirement investments.
He really should have called it a “Minotaur” instead of a “reverse-centaur”.
I couldn’t get through Enshittification. It was like reading a reference book after the first half. That said, I look forward to this one.
I like how Doctorow is taking guardianship for his language through no bullshit tolerance.
I’m a simple man. I see Cory, I upvote. Then I read the text.
Reverse centaur? Lol? I need to come back to this later
centaur = brain of a man, speed of a horse.
reverse centaur = brain of a horse, speed of a man.substitute horse with ai.
Over a long enough distance, men can outrun a horse. Especially in heat.
Who’s in heat, the horse or the man?
I don’t like where this is going, but I approve it.
I put on my harness and horse-ears hat…
Are you the mightiest horserer of the lands
Wherever it’s going, we can measure it in Hands.
Whoever is chasing.
🤔 😱
Yes
Have you ever tried running with a boner? You wear out quickly.
What is that black ball that falls on the right side?
That’s weird, I have no idea. I didn’t see it on my phone screen, but yeah I see it now on my laptop.
I think the bigger question is why the man is running after a horse in heat. That is not how you make a centaur.
not with that attitude
Ooooh! I’ve got a thing for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
My friend runs it each year. His pictures are nuts
But with a horse brain?
Practically, better described as endurance, although technically correct.
Good practical examples are the car driver vs the Amazon driver. When you drive a car, you go where you want, but at the superhuman speed of a car. The Amazon driver has a computer telling them where to go, how to drive there, and even cameras to watch if you drive according to Amazon’s rules. The driver has become the extension of the computer, instead of the other way around. That’s a reverse centaur.
Thank you kindly friend
A centaur is a human that can do more than an ordinary person… A person plus a horse is able to do more. Making our tools work for us allows us to do more.
A reverse centaur is when our tools are using us instead. Rather than a driver using a computer to navigate more efficiently, Amazon drivers are more like computers that use humans as a component to drive more efficiently than the computer itself could. Not great for the human.
He published a transcript of a speech where he goes over a summary of the book that’s worth a read https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/#u-washington
If you’ve read this post or kept up with his blog occasionally the book treads familiar grounds. I sill think it’s worth the read to have a condensed version.
Doctorow guides you through understanding the AI bubble by proving you don’t need to know the technical jargon or latest developments. All you need to have as a guiding framework is “what technology (actually) does and who it does it to.”
You can also buy and download books / audiobooks from his website https://craphound.com/ some of them are pay as you want.
For those wondering, the ebooks for Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, With a Little Help from My Friends, and Context are pay what you’d like.
He talked about the book in his interview on Democracy Now! this morning too.
absolutely stunning to hear him talk, he is an exceptional man
My friend was blathering on about Cory Doctorow two decades ago and I knew the name, had maybe read a little bit. I was kind of annoyed how ofter he brought him up. Man did he come out ahead of me on that. This guy articulates the ills of society so well.
Just start buying AI from Chinese companies. Cancel your anthropic and chatgpt - they will suffocate quickly.
Or buy Chinese AI hosted on non us non chinese hardware.
Top tip: Getting computer-generated wrong answers in Chinese is just as useful as getting computer-generated wrong answers in English.
You don’t even have to read Chinese!
Well gemini once put some helpful comments in a code sample it produced for me. The comments were in Korean for some reason.
Mr Doctorov has a nice life where he needs to make no tough decisions. I envy a life without least-worse voting and other harm-reduction efforts, where one can write what he dreams and people will happily consume it.
Really? Dude has cancer and a kid in college, and yet chooses to write this. I’m pretty sure he has tough decisions. He also is very much not an uncompromising idealist, pointing to very specific solutions and dismissing others.
Why is there always some person hating on Cory when he’s talked about? Astroturfing? He’s the person we desperately need right now and everyone needs to listen to him. And Ed.
They’re two of the most visible faces with valid, well thought out critiques of the AI bubble. It’s only natural that true believers (or people with a vested interest in AI) come out of the woodwork to trash them, they’re scared.
Zitron?
Indeed
