Cory Doctorow is the author, most recently, of The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI (2026) and Enshittification (2025). He is a blogger, journalist, science fiction writer, and activist. For more than twenty years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to safeguard and further our human rights online. He was the 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, fiction, graphic novels, and even a picture book.
Cory Doctorow is the author, most recently, of The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI (2026) and Enshittification (2025). He is a blogger, journalist, science fiction writer, and activist. For more than twenty years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to safeguard and further our human rights online. He was the 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, fiction, graphic novels, and even a picture book.
In Episode 492 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with science fiction author, journalist, and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow—who coined the term “enshittification”—about why he believes the AI bubble will prove more damaging than the 2008 financial crisis and rival the equity sell-off of the 2020 Covid pandemic, the theory he has developed to explain why everything keeps getting worse, why the companies leading the AI boom are structurally unprofitable and existentially dependent on a runaway growth narrative, and where the value in AI may actually accrue once the bubble deflates or bursts entirely.
The first hour covers the central argument of Doctorow’s book on enshittification, which goes beyond simply describing how things are getting worse—from the extractive nature of online relationships to the soul-sucking experience of dealing with burned-out call-center operators and mindless chatbots—to put forward a theory for why, based on what has happened to competition, regulation, interoperability, and the bargaining power of workers. From there, they compare the prevailing business models and unit economics of the early web companies and large platforms to those leading the charge in AI, and why Doctorow believes the latter are not only structurally unprofitable but existentially dependent on a growth narrative of runaway AI that will run out of capital before it ever delivers the promise and profits its investors are banking on.
The second hour continues the conversation about the AI boom—how retirement accounts and index-fund concentration have raised the stakes of an eventual bust, and how new forms of regulatory forbearance, including the mechanics of the recent SpaceX public listing, along with other more explicit government bailouts, will be needed to prop up otherwise unsustainable valuations. They close with the narrative gap between AI-driven job displacement and what the data actually tells us, and where the value in AI may accrue once the bubble deflates—from open-source models and cheap hardware to the skilled workers and infrastructure needed to capitalize on them.
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Cory Doctorow is the author, most recently, of The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI (2026) and Enshittification (2025). He is a blogger, journalist, science fiction writer, and activist. For more than twenty years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to safeguard and further our human rights online. He was the 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, fiction, graphic novels, and even a picture book.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
