EVENT DESCRIPTION At last, a word has been coined that encapsulates our modern era, that eloquently sums up the pressing issues of our times: Enshittification. The term—which creator Cory Doctorow describes as a diagnosis about the state of exploitative online services, and the disheartening digital world as a whole—resonated so strongly that the American Dialect Society named it the 2023 Word of the Year, and it was cited as an inspiration for the 2025 season of Black Mirror. With incisive urgency as well as humour, Doctorow will speak with author and political commentator David Moscrop about how we reached this point, and what we can collectively do to move beyond hopelessness about our enshittified fate, and back toward the optimism promised by the earliest days of the internet.  Presented in partnership with Raincoast Books.  ACCESSIBILITY INFO We do our best to make our events low-barrier, accessible experiences for our community. If you have accessibility needs or questions, please reach out to our Festival Box Office by emailing boxoffice@writersfest.bc.ca or phoning 778-658-0462, Mon - Thurs 11am - 3pm.  We have not arranged for this event to include ASL interpretation. However, we invite you to request it with at least two weeks notice by contacting our box office. For more information about accessibility at the Vancouver Writers Fest, including specific information about this venue, please click here to be redirected to our website. BOX OFFICE INFO This event is in-person. Details are subject to change. Check out our Box Office Info for more information. For phone sales and technical assistance, please call Showpass support at 1 (844) 307-7469. Mon - Fri: 8am - 6pmSat and Sun: 9am - 6pm We offer no exchanges or refunds except if an event is cancelled. Check your order carefully before you click Pay. View all upcoming events  

Join Cory Doctorow (Enshittification), Ed Zitron (Better Offline), and moderator Whitney Beltrán for a discussion of how reckless tech policy created an enshittogenic environment that allowed the…

The Legendary Independent Bookstore

The Booksmith is so excited to be welcoming Cory Doctorow back to San Francisco for the release of Enshittification at Public Works. He will be joined by How To Do Nothing and Saving TIme author Jenny Odell. Grab a ticket and join us!About the bookEnshittification: it’s not just you—the internet sucks now. Here’s why, and here’s how we can disenshittify it.We’re living through the Enshittocene, the Great Enshittening, a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. Demoralizing. Even terrifying.Enshittification identifies the problem and proposes a solution.When Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification, he was not just finding a funner way to say “things are getting worse.” He was making a specific diagnosis about the state of the digital world and how it is affecting all of our lives (and not for the better).The once-glorious internet was colonized by platforms that made all-but-magical promises to their users—and, at least initially, seemed to deliver on them. But once users were locked in, the platforms turned on them to make their business customers happy. Then the platforms turned to abusing their business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. In the end, the platforms die.Doctorow’s argument clearly resonated. Once named, it became obvious that enshittification is everywhere, so much so that the American Dialect Society named it its 2023 Word of the Year, and was cited as an inspiration for the 2025 season of Black Mirror.Here, now, in Enshittification the book, Doctorow moves the conversation beyond the overwhelming sense of our inevitably enshittified fate. He shows us the specific decisions that led us here, who made them, and—most important—how they can be undone.About the authorCory Doctorow is a Canadian, British, American blogger, journalist, and activist. For more than twenty-three years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on campaigns to further and safeguard our human rights online. He was coeditor of the weblog Boing Boing for nineteen years and now maintains a daily(ish) newsletter at Pluralistic.net. He has written more than thirty books, including nonfiction books, many science fiction novels, collections of short stories and essays, young adult novels, graphic novels, and even a picture book. Born in Toronto, he now lives in Burbank, California. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws by York University and an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science from the Open University. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame and was awarded the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. He holds visiting professorship and research appointments at MIT, the University of North Carolina, Cornell University, and the Open University.Jenny Odell is an artist, writer, and educator whose work focuses on close observation of the everyday world. She is the author of the New York Times bestsellers How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Paris Review. Odell has been an artist in residence at the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and Recology SF (otherwise known as the dump), and her work has been exhibited internationally. From 2013 to 2021, she taught digital art at Stanford University. She is currently at work on a book about repair.About the bookstoreThe Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.Please note:This event will be taking place at PUBLIC WORKS at 161 Erie Street in San Francisco. Please note the venue is 21+.Check-in for the event will begin at 6:30pm.Ticket holders will have seats held until 7pm. Arrivals after 7pm will be allowed admission, but seats are not guaranteed.There will be a post-show signing for those who have purchased a ticket with a book. Additional copies and assorted backlist will be for sale at the venue on the night of the event.Venue includes a full-service bar that will be available throughout the event.Questions? tickets@booksmith.com

Rick Perlstein sits down with Cory Doctorow to explore the state of our digital world and reclaiming our digital future.

Starring Cory Doctorow. Hosted by Zain Velji

Starring Emily Austin, Gabrielle Drolet, Jon Hickey & Wesley King, with Cory Doctorow, Emma Donoghue, and Andrew Phung. Hosted by Adrian Todd Zuniga

presenting Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It in conversation with Randall Munroe