Computer-based technology has become essential: We need it to apply for jobs, pay bills securely and maintain regular contact with friends and family. It provides greater accessibility to everything from local governments to educational tools to entertainment.
Antitrust policy is one of the book’s central themes. “It’s nice to have one e-commerce site that you go and search and everything you want is just there and it’s at a low price and they’ll deliver it the next day,” says Doctorow. “That’s great until they turn the screws and then everything on it sucks and there’s so much fraud and all the prices go up and they’re destroying whole industries.”Another major theme is interoperability.
Part of what makes “The Internet Con” shine is that Doctorow doesn’t subscribe to the idea that tech is full of “evil genius” types. “That’s the kind of microeconomics in the boardroom that is producing this string of ever-worsening technologies,” says Doctorow. “It’s because there are no constraints, neither competitive nor regulatory, on the worst impulses of the worst people in the organization, so they win the argument every time.”