"New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow returns to the world of Red Team Blues to bring us the origin story of Martin Hench and the most powerful new tool for crime ever invented: the personal computer.

The year is 1986. The city is San Francisco. Here, Martin Hench will invent the forensic accountant — what a bounty hunter is to people, he is to money — but for now he’s an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way around a city still reeling from the invention of a revolutionary new technology that will change everything about crime forever, one we now take completely for granted.

'Picks And Shovels' is a high-tech crime thriller about the “weird era of PCs” in the early 1980s, when Reaganomics, the tech industry, multilevel marketing, and the AIDS crisis all converged in San Francisco. "—Jacobin

"Picks And Shovels" by Cory Doctorow @pluralistic, with Yanis Varoufakis @VaroufakisDE & David Moscrop @davidmoscrop.com >

https://www.youtube.com/live/xkIDep7Z4LM?feature=shared

#podcast #interviews #personal_computer #history #technology #forensic #ethos #silicon_valley #homogenisation #MIT #high_tech #thriller #PCs #Bill_Gates #San_Francisco #kits #Apple #IBM #software #transformation #tech_industry #enshitification #anti_trust #writers #authors

Opening the Edge browser after Windows Update, presented once again with this dialog box. This is a straight-up, 100% pure monopoly power violation. The EU (and to a lesser degree, UK) anti-trust folks are at least slowly standing up to this. The U.S., not so much.

#monopoly #anti_trust #microsoft