Enshittification by Cory Doctorow

I got Enshittification as a Christmas present.  When I saw that Cory wrote a new book that sounded interesting, I had to read it.

What I was hoping to see was some insights into why good things turn bad over time.

What I got was diversion, cover up and just plan Marxist propaganda. But I should have expected that from Cory who's a major leftist.

The first few chapters are case studies in how Facebook, Amazon and Twitter became enshittified. This was nice because it gives us some reference as to how and why this is happening.  But I felt something was missing.  I didn't realize what it was until I got to the Twitter chapter.

He left out one important reason: The Woke culture.

The Twitter chapter is larger than the others. Twitter enshittification was also because the Woke "content moderators" squelching the speech of what they didn't like, which makes many others simply leave the platform and intensifies the enshittification.

He also does not credit Musk's takeover of Twitter for the start of the de-enshittification of the platform.

I tried to get through the rest of the book, but it was just the usual "Companies are bad because they don't help the idiots and useless people" tripe that I get from all Leftists.

Now that doesn't mean that Cory isn't right sometimes.  He certainly hits the nail on the head many times through the book - but nothing that he writes was a surprise and was already pretty well known.

But he (purposely?) ignores the (negative) impact of the Wokies have and even credits the Elitists for helping to "fix" things (by making them worse) and, to no surprise, criticizes Trump for "making things worse" by fixing the problems caused by the Left.

This book is just typical leftist propaganda.

Orbital Space, Book 1 - Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen

Wow.  It's been a bit.  I really should blog more, but I have little to say.

Anyway...

At the recommendation of Eric S. Raymond, I picked up a copy of "Orbital Space, Book 1 - Theft of Fire" by Devon Eriksen and got it into the eBook queue.

tl;dr;

It isn't working for me.  I'm about 1/3 into the book and my "1/3 rule" has kicked in.  I need to care about the characters and the story by this time or I end up slogging through, just flipping pages.  And with a backlog of 700+ eBooks to read, it's not worth my time.

Longer explanation:

I really don't have any other complaints.  Writing is good.  Characters are OK.  An AI, a "princess" and a "working class" man all cooped up in a spaceship.  Lots of potential here, but it's just not happening for me.

The "working class" man is portrayed as stupid and moral - which is good.  The "princess" is spoiled and not very worldly.  The AI is bland (but I consider that normal at this stage).  Not much chemistry except for some unnecessary sexual stuff that just happened in the story.

They've been cooped up in the spaceship, which the "princess" has taken control of and everyone's trying to do their thing.  Ya, I get it.  Character Development - and, really, I appreciate that.  I've had my share of shallow characters in stories.

But it's gone on for so long now that the story has stalled.  I no longer care about the story.  And while there was Character Development, I really don't care about any of the characters.  If the story ended on the next page with "and the fusion engine exploded vaporizing everyone", I wouldn't feel cheated.

So, sorry Devon.  I tried.  I can't say you are a bad writer, but this story just doesn't work for me.