iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Replies

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/06/2026

That means that systems that are robust and secure at the time of deployment can become brittle and dangerous, even though the software doesn't change *at all*: pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/a... 11/

pluralistic.net

Automation is Magic – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/06/2026

There's another analogy here, to utopianism. A "utopia" can't just be a place where everything works perfectly. Even the most well-functioning, orderly and prosperous system is beset on all sides by exogenous shocks: belligerent neighbors, tsunamis, zoonotic plagues, even asteroid strikes. 12/

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 04/06/2026

You don't perfect your society just by making it *work* well. You have to make it *fail* well. A utopia isn't a society where nothing goes wrong - it's a society where things go wrong all the time, but we're able to fix them: www.wired.com/2017/04/cory... 13/

wired.com

Disasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias

The difference between utopia and dystopia isn't how well everything runs. It's about what happens when everything fails.

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