The urinary tract infection business-model

Welcome to the self-destructing space-ship future.

12 min readDec 3, 2022

A wood-paneled living room with a large flat screen TV on a stand. Before the TV sit two small boys with their arms around each others’ shoulders, sitting crosslegged on the carpet in front of the set. The screen of the set displays a giant arcade machine ‘25¢ Push to Reject’ coin-slot. Above the set, the glaring red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey oversees the scene, ringed with a burned circle. Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg CC BY 3.

There were two competing visions at the dawn of the modern digital era: in one camp, you had people who saw computers as a way to empower people to push back against corporate and state control; in the other camp, there were the people who wanted to use computers to transfer power from the public to…

The urinary tract infection business-model

Welcome to the self-destructing space-ship future.

Written by Cory Doctorow