I Miss Actually Owning Stuff
"You'll own nothing and you'll hate it"
Less than two months into writing this weekly newsletter, and a recurring theme has already emerged. Control.
Big tech has an ugly, totalitarian side — and it's unique to this industry. Tech companies are desperate to control what their users see, what they do, and the terms under which they use their products.
Like any totalitarian regime, big tech seldom justifies its seemingly-unquenchable thirst for control — and when it does, the explanation is framed in paternalistic terms. "We made this decision for you, because we don't trust you to make it yourself. It's all for your own good, you see."
I'm not saying that Tim Cook is Kim Jong-Un — if not for the reason that Tim Cook knows what a salad is. I am, however, saying that they both share an undisguised contempt for the opinions and wishes of their subjects (for lack of a better term).
One of the ugliest ways that this thirst for control reveals itself is in the gradual erosion of the concept of ownership. The idea that when you buy something, and thus it belongs to you to do with as you see fit, doesn't exist in tech. It hasn't for a long time.
What we're left with is a form of digital serfdom, with tech companies acting like feudal lords, and their customers as their peasant tenants, never actually owning the land upon which they toil.
Probably the most pernicious element of this erosion is how it's happened — fragmented, slowly, and gradually, thus making it hard for individuals to make the connection between singular decisions made by tech vendors, and the wider curtailment of their rights.
It's a bit like climate change. Skeptics (or, more accurately, deniers) might acknowledge unseasonal weather, or an unexpectedly-catastrophic flood or hurricane, but will dismiss them as isolated incidents that "just happen." To persuade them, you have to thread the needle behind that "isolated incident," and the thousand of other isolated, unprecedented incidents that happened that year.
That's what this post will, I hope, accomplish. Over the next god-knows-how-many words, I'm going to give you examples — both contemporaneous and historical — of how tech companies have acted contrary to what we normally understand to be the concept of ownership. From that, you'll draw your own (likely grim) conclusions.
Ownership (Some Conditions Apply)
On July 10, Ubisoft — one of the world's largest games conglomerates — held its annual shareholder meeting. These events are the annual equivalent of a townhall for investors, giving shareholders the opportunity to directly pose questions to company leadership.
One shareholder took to the mic to ask whether Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot had any response to the Stop Killing Games petition, which calls for developers to ensure games remain playable after the end of official support, and has since amassed more than 1.4 million signatures.
Sidenote: Said shareholder also asked Guillemot whether Assassin's Creed was too "woke." Heartbreakingly, idiots can occasionally make good points.
The question went a little bit further than the petition. The shareholder asked, point blank, if: "when players buy an Ubisoft game, do they own it?".
"So, do you support that petition? At the end of the day, when players buy an Ubisoft game, do they own it? Or is there a chance that they might no longer be able to play the game years later?"
Below is what Guillemot said (emphasis mine), copied verbatim from GamesIndustry.biz's coverage. And shoutout to Lewis Packwood for his excellent reporting here.
"You provide a service, but nothing is written in stone and at some point the service may be discontinued. Nothing is eternal. And we are doing our best to make sure that things go well for all players and buyers, because obviously support for all games cannot last forever."
First, note how Yves dodged the fundamental issue at the heart of the shareholder's question: When someone buys a Ubisoft game, do they actually own it?
If someone doesn’t answer a question as simple as “do people own the stuff they buy,” the answer is, unfortunately, almost certain to be “no.”
Second, I'm calling bullshit on the whole notion that "nothing is eternal." Do you know how I know that's a lie? Because in my office, I have several boxed PC games dating from the early 1990s, and they all work fine. The eldest is only four years younger than myself — namely Star Trek: A Final Unity, released in 1995 for Windows and DOS.
Games — especially single player games — are eternal by default. The only reason they wouldn't be eternal is because the developer made a choice, either by using a form of DRM that's no longer supported, or by making said game reliant on servers that, eventually, will be switched off, even if said servers aren't core to any of the game's actual functionality.
The aforementioned Stop Killing Games petition was, funnily enough, inspired by Ubisoft's decision last year to kill its 2014 racing game The Crew. Although The Crew had a single-player mode, it required a persistent online connection to actually play. After a decade, Ubisoft decided it would no longer pay to provide the servers necessary for the game to work, even though it still had a significant player base.
To add insult to injury, it revoked the user licenses for those who had actually bought the game, thereby removing it from their digital libraries.
On November 4, shortly after Ubisoft pulled the plug, two California residents who had purchased physical copies of the game filed a class action suit against the company seeking both monetary compensation and other non-specified redress.
Ownership is core to the heart of this lawsuit, with Ubisoft accused of misleading consumers "by telling them they were buying a game, when in fact, all they were renting was a limited license to access a game that Defendants choose to maintain at their own noblesse oblige."
In February of this year, Ubisoft filed a motion to dismiss, seeking to dismiss the case on both technical grounds, as well as the fact that Ubisoft's terms (and language on the game's commercial packaging, albeit written in tiny language) stated that buyers of The Crew were purchasing a limited license.
This case had the potential to resolve this fundamental conflict at the heart of modern gaming, but alas, the plaintiffs chose to voluntarily dismiss the case on June 12 of this year. If we ever get an answer, it won't be from this.
It's telling that Ubisoft's only real public statements about whether their customers actually own the physical products they purchase came in the form of a legal filing and a brief statement at an event that wasn't for the benefit for gamers, but rather the company's shareholders.
The reason why should be obvious. The idea that you don't buy, but license something is universally unpopular, and it's something you only really see in tech (and, I suppose, entertainment).
If I buy a potato peeler, or a can of Coke, or a dishwasher, the expectation is that I own that thing. I'm not engaging in a contract with the Coca-Cola Company about what circumstances I'm allowed to drink said can of Coke, or what temperature I must refrigerate it.
And if the Coca-Cola Company actually did try to impose those restrictions, nobody would ever buy coke, simply out of principle.
Tech is an aberration, and this heavy-handed authoritarianism has only gotten worse over time. Over the past couple of decades — and really, since the advent of digital delivery and always-on services — we've seen an aggressive redefinition of the word "purchase," with that redefinition favoring the tech companies themselves. It's an abuse of language — a bastardation of language — that is, itself, profoundly totalitarian, with tech companies deliberately trying to shape our understanding of one of the most fundamental concepts of life.
And Ubisoft isn't alone in this. Here's just a few other examples:
Although the books were uploaded illegally by a third-party that didn't possess the rights to the books, the idea that Amazon could remotely delete items purchased by customers from devices that were owned by said customers, and were stored locally on said devices, was deeply unsettling.
The closest parallel is buying a dodgy pirate copy of a DVD in a flat-roofed pub (is that just a British thing?), and then Universal Pictures sending a SWAT team to break into your house to retrieve it.
Let's stick with Amazon. In 2023, Puffin Books — which owns the rights to Roald Dahl's work — released updated versions of several of his books to change language that, by today's standards, might be considered problematic. Amazon pushed said update to those who already owned the books on their Kindle devices, with no warning (or opportunity to opt-out).
You can read the list of changes on the Consumer Rights wiki. They include replacing the word "fat" with "enormous" in describing Augustus Gloop, and changing Miss Trunchbull's "great horsey face" description to just "face."
I'm not making a judgement call about the language Dahl used, or the new language. I am, however, deeply perturbed by the idea that a tech company can retrospectively edit a book you bought.
The only way this is possible is if you, in fact, don't actually own said book.
On December 1, 2023, Sony announced it would remove access to over 1,200 items produced by Discovery from the Playstation Store. If you had purchased one of these items, tough luck. And no, you wouldn't get a refund because you hadn't actually bought them, but rather purchased a time-limited license.
A few weeks later, Sony would announce that it had worked out a licensing deal with Discovery, and thus its planned purge of user-purchased content wasn't going ahead.
This, no doubt, came as a huge relief to all three Playstation owners that were fans of "Cake Boss."
Oh, and how could we forget HP putting DRM in printer ink, and Dymo printers putting DRM in paper.
Nothing says "you don't own this thing" when the manufacturer of a printer says what brand of ink you can use, or what brand of paper you can insert.
As an aside, Louis Rossmann has done some of the most comprehensive coverage of this topic, and he's worth a subscribe.
The response to these complaints is that media — whether that's music, or movies, or games — have always been sold as a license. And that's why you can't, for example, duplicate the contents and sell them.
While that's true, the key difference is that when you bought a DVD, or a record, or a CD, or a game, your access to said content wasn't time-limited, or subject to the whims of a third-party. Nor, for that matter, could that third-party retrospectively edit that content.
It was yours. You, for all intents and purposes, owned it.
Cook Tim Apple
The Right to Repair battle is inextricably linked to the fundamental concept of ownership. And to illustrate this point, I'd like to tell you a story.
Last August, I flew to America to visit my in-laws. My wife is from New Jersey and we try to get back home a couple of times each year.
My ordeal started — as ordeals often do — at the least opportune time. It was 2AM and I had just finished packing my suitcase. Like a lot of people with ADHD, I'm a last-minute kind of guy. I find it hard to do stuff unless I have a deadline staring me right in the eye.
I grabbed my iPhone to check something — I can't remember what — and noticed that the screen had transformed into a bright, hallucinogenic green. Some text was visible, but only barely, and only for a small portion of the display, and only some of the time.
My phone was (and this is the scientific term) fucked. And so, my plan to steal four hours of sleep before I had to wake up and catch a train to the airport became a three-hour nap. My £10 train had become a £60 Uber, as I was forced to buy a new phone as soon as the stores opened in the morning, leaving little time to clear the unmitigated nightmare that is Manchester Airport.
From what I gleaned from Reddit and other places, the issue I experienced is fairly rife among the iPhone 12 and later — as well as other iPhones that use OLED panels. I’m 90-percent sure that the issue came down to a faulty display, but, from my research, there’s also a chance it could be down to the logic board or the connector linking the two components.
Whatever. Tech breaks. It happens.
I’m not upset about my phone dying. But I am upset with the fact that Apple’s egregious hostility to the right to repair essentially forced me into buying a brand new device when, although somewhat old, and with a battery that had seen better days, was still perfectly fine.
I bet you're wondering why I was "basically forced" into buying a new phone. Why couldn't I just get it fixed? Wouldn't that be more economical?
Here’s where things get a bit technical. Starting with the iPhone X, Apple began serialising the various components on the iPhone.
What does that mean? Essentially, the various parts of the phone — and often the parts most frequently requiring repair, like the screen, battery, and camera — are linked to the logic board through software. To replace those parts, you can't just switch them out. You need to also use an application to create a new software link — which, naturally, Apple only shares with its approved technicians.
Cracked screen? If you replace it yourself (or get a non-approved repair shop) to handle the repair, it won't work properly. Sure, you’ll get a picture, but TrueTone (the thing that makes colours look good) won’t work.
Dropped your phone and shattered the camera? If you try to replace it without Apple’s own approved parts, and using Apple's own approved engineers, it won’t work properly.
Apple also, for a time, tried to restrict battery replacements to its own engineers and third-party engineers. Given that every lithium-ion battery degrades over time and requires replacing, this is a tactic that only serves to restrict consumer choice and increase the cost of repairs.
Although Apple has gradually abandoned that practice with the release of the iPhone 16 and later, and following the release of iOS 18, this turnaround came after years of pushback from regulators (mostly in Europe), as well as a broader, gruelling public battle over the right to repair.
And said turnaround didn't happen in time for me to actually benefit from it when my iPhone screen bit the dust.
At the time, a replacement iPhone 12 screen cost £280. That’s not far from the price of a brand new iPhone SE. It’s more than the cost of a refurbished iPhone 12 on BackMarket. I could buy a really good mid-range Android phone for that.
I want to stress this point: Apple, until it was met with regulatory pressure, felt comfortable with telling consumers how they could fix their phones, and who could fix their phones. Phones which, I hasten to add, they owned and Apple did not.
Apple is a good example of how one company can control what its users do with their own property. To give a few examples:
Until recently, Apple did not permit third-party app stores, or for developers to link to external links where consumers could pay for in-app content without the developer being forced to share 30% of their revenue with Apple. Nor, for that matter, did it allow users to sideload apps to their devices.
When regulators forced Apple to open up the iPhone and iPad ecosystem, it did so in a way that prevented the operators from actually making any money.
Apple restricts what browser rendering engines are available on the iPhone, meaning that every browser — whether Firefox, or Chrome, or Brave — is essentially a re-skinned version of Safari.
Again, Apple was forced to change its rules to allow for other browser engines — although, it did so in a way that effectively made it impossible to launch any real alternative to Safari.
Want to install an alternative operating system on your iPhone? Ahahahaha, no.
This begs the question: If Apple can exert that kind of control, do you actually own your own device? I'd argue that you don't. It's something fundamentally at odds with the whole notion of ownership.
Apple, for what it's worth, has always tried to justify this control insofar as it being a necessary measure to protect its customers from shoddy workmanship and malware. It's a paternalistic view that treats its customers as children to be protected from a dangerous world, rather than grown-ups who just splashed the best part of a grand on a phone — or perhaps even more.
This paternalism isn't new, by the way. It predates Tim Cook's reign as CEO of Apple. Right after the launch of the App Store, Ryan Tate — who was, at the time, editor of the Gawker-owned Valleywag, and now edits The Markup — emailed Steve Jobs to ask whether Jobs' idol, Bob Dylan, would approve of the company's heavy-handed approach to the App Store.
Jobs — who occasionally corresponded with the public — shot back with this response:
"Yep. Freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin', and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is."
If you're curious, you can read the rest of the exchange here. The problem with this argument is as follows:
First, paternalism is entirely at odds with freedom. By protecting someone from something ("freedom from"), you inevitably strip away their agency to make their own decisions.
It's a one-size-fits-all approach that, by definition, doesn't fit all sizes. While some people undoubtedly benefit from Apple's heavy-handed protection, it frustrates those that do want to run their own web browsers, or run non-approved apps, or do weird shit like overclock their phones.
That paternalism directly undermines any sense of ownership, which entails the freedom to make your own risky — and potentially dumb — decisions.
It's also hard to believe that Apple is acting exclusively from a place of altruism when said paternalistic behavior has materially benefited the company to the tune of billions.
Apple made a reported $10bn in App Store commissions last year, according to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures.
I have no idea how much Apple has made by restricting the right to repair, but I guarantee it's a lot — not just from the revenue generated by repairs conducted by Apple's own technicians, and those from its approved network of independent repair shops, but also from people who figured it would just be more economical to simply replace their broken devices with new ones.
We'll never know how big that figure is, but I'd be stunned if it isn't in the billions.
As a general rule, being genuinely altruistic doesn't bring in billions of dollars of revenue.
I want to make it clear that what I've described isn't just one bad apple (aha), but rather a systematic issue across the tech industry.
Even if you buy a physical product — something that you've gone to a store, exchanged physical cash for, and driven home in your car with — tech companies feel entitled to dictate the terms upon which you use that product. It's a universal trait, at this point.
Again, here's some examples:
When Sony launched the PlayStation 3, it also allowed users to install third-party operating systems, like Linux and FreeBSD.
This feature wasn't as insane as it sounds. The PlayStation 3 debuted when Cuda was still in its infancy, and most PC CPUs had one or two cores. The PlayStation 3's, by contrast, had a dual-core CPU that was accompanied by several co-processors (called Synergistic Processing Elements).
This, in turn, made the PS3 really good at parallel processing — and, by extension, scientific and high-performance computing tasks. I'm shitting you not, the US Air Force built a supercomputer out of PS3s, and at a fraction of the cost of conventional computing hardware.
This begs the question of what the Air Force did with all the left-over controllers. I digress.
In 2010, Sony unilaterally removed the OtherOS feature from PS3 consoles via a firmware update, with the company citing "security concerns."
If users didn't install that update, they wouldn't be able to access the various PlayStation Network online services which are essential for things like buying content and playing multiplayer games.
Sony was later sued as part of a class action lawsuit, which it settled with the plaintiffs receiving a cool $10.07 in compensation.
Despite that settlement, Sony has not restored that functionality to those who bought the PS3 for the purpose of running alternative operating systems.
Earlier this year, Nintendo launched the Switch 2. It's actually quite good! I have one.
Less than 48 hours after its release, hackers found a partial exploit that would, eventually, allow for the execution of third-party code and a full device jailbreak.
Because the Switch 2 has backwards compatibility with the Nintendo Switch, it's vulnerable to the same exploits that allowed owners to install content from non-Nintendo sources.
For the sake of transparency, the majority of the people using this exploit are doing so to play pirated games. But this exploit also theoretically allows for people to play games they own, but have chosen to back up for whatever reason, or to play third-party games that aren't available from the Nintendo Store.
What I'm trying to say is that although this behavior is against Nintendo's terms of service, it also inhabits an ethical (and, depending on where you live, legal) gray area.
Before the launch of the console, Nintendo updated its terms of service to allow the company to remotely "brick" consoles where it detects a violation of its terms of service.
Nintendo has, apparently, already bricked hundreds — and potentially thousands — of consoles for alleged transgressions to the point where it's actually causing a problem on the used market.
As John Walker pointed out on Kotaku, this policy raises a fundamental question of ownership. Although you may own the physical object, that ownership isn't absolute, as Nintendo is exerting the right to permanently destroy said object for alleged wrongdoing.
"When I buy my PC, I have ever right to amend or change its hardware in any way I wish. I may well void a warranty in doing so, but that’s ethereal. The actual physical object is mine. If I then use my PC to perform illegal acts, that’s another matter, but it doesn’t change that the device itself belongs to me, and no one else can legally externally affect its hardware or software such that it doesn’t function. This is what Nintendo is proposing it has the right to do to your Switch, and inevitably your Switch 2."
Crucially, there is no due process. If you commit a computer crime in the UK, for example, the court may order you to forfeit your phone, or your computer, or whatever device you used to commit the offence. That order, however, only comes after a trial and a conviction, and those convicted have the ability to appeal any ruling.
Nintendo, meanwhile, only needs to make an allegation. And any decision to brick a console, theoretically, doesn't need the involvement of a human being. It's something that conceivably can be automated.
How very authoritarian.
I Want My Stuff Back
By now, I should have painted a pretty comprehensive picture of how bad things are, and how big tech has eroded the fundamental notion of ownership. The depressing thing is that there are countless other examples I could cite, but for reasons of brevity, I'll only mention them in summary terms.
When Roku changed its terms of service to remove the ability of those who purchased its TVs to sue the company, instead forcing them into arbitration. If owners didn't agree to these terms, the TV would be rendered permanently inoperable.
Every single time a company withdrew support for a smart device without giving owners the ability to install alternative firmware, or providing documentation that would allow the provision of third-party servers.
When Tesla removes the ability to charge your car because it didn't agree with your decision to repair it, rather than scrap it.
I'm sure that, once I've published this article, I'll get a flood of DMs and comments and emails listing other examples I missed.
The depressing thing is that this attempt to exert control over users is so common that we've become accustomed to it. After nearly two decades of the iPhone, we've begrudgingly accepted that it won't run whatever software we want. We knew that Nintendo had the right (per its terms of service) to remotely brick its consoles, and the Switch 2 still ended up being the fastest-selling console in US history.
When Roku essentially held people's TVs hostage, unless they agreed to abandon their right to sue the company (something that is fundamentally in Roku's benefit, not the consumer's), it didn't raise any eyebrows, save for a few tech blogs and a video on Louis Rossmann's channel.
We've become so accustomed to being screwed over by tech companies, we no longer challenge it. When Nintendo, or Apple, or Sony does something shitty, it's not a big deal — it's Tuesday. It feels normal.
But it didn't always.
I'm old enough to remember buying software — from a shop! With actual paper money — and then owning it, and being able to put it on my shelf and re-install it whenever I needed to.
I'm old enough to remember buying movies on DVDs, and once I bought it, nobody could ever take it away from me because of some license spat that I had no control over, and that didn't involve me.
I'm old enough to remember upgrading the RAM and storage on my MacBook Pro.
The first smartphone I ever owned — the Ubiquio 501, running Windows Mobile 5.0 — didn't try to restrict my ability to download software, forcing me to use a marketplace where Microsoft took a 30% cut of every transaction.
I felt like I actually owned these things. I owned my DVD library, and my upgradable MacBook Pro, and my clunky (but, in retrospect, the best I ever owned) Windows smartphone. Even though I technically licensed it, I still felt as though I owned the software I bought, because that license didn't impede me from doing the things I wanted to do.
The problem is that stripping consumers of their rights is a profitable game, and Apple — and others — have benefited too much for them to experience a sudden Damascene conversion and change their ways.
That's the thing about authoritarians. They're also often kleptocrats, too, and to ensure they can continue robbing the people they ostensibly service, they become more authoritarian with time. It's a self-perpetuating cycle.
If we wait for these companies to change, we'll be waiting for a long time. Possibly forever. If we want to restore the concept of ownership to its original meaning, it's up to us.
Like I said in the introductory post to this newsletter, little changes — when done at scale — can have a huge impact. The choices we make about what we buy, and the services we use, aren't just expressions of our preferences, but also of our values.
My laptop — a first-generation M1 MacBook Pro — has started to show its age, and I'm likely going to replace it in the coming year or so. For the first time in a decade, my next laptop won't be a Mac, but something from a company that actually respects my rights.
I'm tempted by Framework's laptops, where pretty much every component can be repaired, replaced, or upgraded. They're expensive, sure, but they also strike me as something that'll work out cheaper in the long run. I could also see myself going for something from System76 or UK-based linux laptop manufacturer Entroware.
Whatever I get, it'll truly feel like it's mine.
Afterword
I've decided to dedicate a few hundred words at the end of each article to highlight some stuff I've read that I think you might also enjoy reading.
Before I get to that, my friend (and old colleague at MakeUseOf and HowToGeek) Chris Hoffman got laid off today. Sad! But he’s throwing himself into freelance writing and focusing on his own newsletter. Fun!
His newsletter, Exposure, is about how independent creators are building their careers — and their names — in an increasingly-crowded online space. Check it out. Chris is a good guy.
Blogs I Liked
I'm Tired of Talking About AI by Paddy Carver
This popped up on Reddit earlier this week, and it captures the fatigue I think most of us feel towards generative AI. We're tired of hearing about it. We're tired of being told how it's going to change our lives — or make us all unemployed and unemployable — when it won't.
We're just so fucking tired. Press the button, Vlad.
The Digital Enclosures by Bernard McCarty
McCarty makes a familiar case — that the people behind the rise of generative AI aren't doing it for the technology, but for the opportunity to become rent-seeking vultures on the jugular of the economy. What makes this worth reading is that, as McCarty notes, these tech CEOs are trying to monopolize a human attribute, namely that of creativity.
The AI locusts and the inevitable outcome for publishers — David Coveney
Full disclosure, David is an old friend of mine. When I worked at ScraperWiki, his company — InterconnectIT — had the office just down the hallway. He also, funnily enough, resurrected the publication Design Week last year. He's not just a techie, but also the publisher of an actual media company, which is a rare (and incredibly cool) combo.
Anyway, David wrote about the financial cost of content-hungry generative AI scrapers to small media businesses like his own. He writes:
"For every webpage we serve to a human, we serve 4 or 5 to a bot. Some of those are indexing the site and looking for changes, like Google or Bing, and others are bots slurping up everything on the site, requesting over the course of a day all 58000+ articles on the website. Which often means they’re requesting from the origin server.
And this feels a little… unfair. And damaging. Bigger servers cost us more money. We spend hundreds each month on serving Design Week, plus all the monitoring, backups, etc. It’s a substantial site with substantial traffic."
David also points out that, while asset-stripping media companies like Design Week so that talentless dipshits can create their own worthless and soulless derivatives, these generative AI companies endangers the source of that training data (you and I know it as "journalism") it relies upon.
"AI is eating its own children. It relies on authentic, human written and unique content. And search engines are also no longer sending people to websites, but providing a summary of the content on the sites they’ve indexed. It reaches a point where it’s almost tempting to cut off every bot and put all content behind a paywall and just step away from the freeloaders."
Click here to read David's post in full. And while you're at it, check out Design Week.
YouTube and the end of "internet culture" — Justin Pot
I’ve written a lot about algorithms and ecosystems over the past few weeks, and how tweaks and “optimizations” intended ostensibly to boost engagement can ultimately destroy a platform.
Justin — who I previously worked with at MakeUseOf — recently wrote about a similar change at YouTube.
Books I'm Excited About
Here are a few books — either recently-released, or upcoming — that I'm excited to read, and you should check out too.
Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn't and Why it Matters — Mic Wright
I've been a fan of Mic Wright's work for a long, long time. We have plenty of mutual friends, and we both once worked at The Next Web, but we've never met in person. And that's a shame, because he's a very fucking smart guy.
His newsletter, Conquest of the Useless, provides some of the most incisive analysis of the UK media you'll find anywhere. He's smart. He's funny. And he now has a book.
The Confessions — Paul Bradley Carr
Paul Carr started life as a founder, then a freelance tech journalist, then became a founder again, launching print magazine NSFW Corp in 2011, which was acquired by Pando Daily in 2013, where he assumed the role of Editor-in-Chief.
Somewhere in the midst of all that, he wrote two of my favorite books: Bringing Nothing to the Party, which describes life as the founder of a struggling media business, and The Upgrade, a raucously funny travelogue about the time when Carr abandoned the bleakness of London for a life living in hotels. Which, incidentally, worked out to be cheaper than renting an apartment in London.
The Confessions is Carr's second novel (his first being 1414°, which, I confess, I haven't read either, though I intend to), and describes a future where "AI runs the world, but has just stopped working – after telling everyone the worst things their loved ones have done."
It's all very Black Mirror. I'm here for it.
It's Okay If You're Not Ready — A.J. Daulerio
It feels a bit premature to add this book to the list, especially when the author is still writing it. That said, it is a book I'm excited about — even if I’ll have to wait a couple of years to actually read it.
Where do I begin? A.J. Daulerio was once the editor of Gawker. You probably know him from the time he got sued by Hulk Hogan. And that's a shame because that one event — consequential and, frankly, weird though it was — overshadows someone who is, unequivocally, one of the most beautiful writers I've ever had the fortune to read.
Daulerio runs The Small Bow — a newsletter about mental health and recovery, the latter being a term that means different things to different people. As someone with his own experiences of mental ill-health, the essays on The Small Bow provide a flicker of hope that things can — and, perhaps, will — eventually get better.
It's Okay If You're Not Ready tells the story of how Daulerio picked up the pieces of his life in the wake of the Hogan lawsuit. If you can't wait until 2027 for it to come out, check out The Small Bow in the meantime. You won't regret it.
Fin
Right, that's all for this week.
If you want to drop me an email, the address is me@matthewhughes.co.uk. Next week's newsletter will be about what it means for the Web to die. Cheery stuff!
If you haven't already, subscribe. And if you want to support this publication, feel free to buy a paid subscription. You won't get anything for it, save for my undying appreciation and admiration.
Oh, and if you want to keep in touch, follow me on Bluesky.
Until then, I'll miss you like the deserts miss the rain. Take care.
Good piece but I´m surprised you didn´t even mention the fact that we don´t own our softwares anymore either, with all these monthly subscriptions to online cloud services that threaten to lock your data if you don´t pay (I´m looking at you, Adobe, Microsoft, Autodesk and similar! 🤬)...