← JOMO June
The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI
Cory Doctorow✦Eric’s guide
A clear-eyed, funny field guide to keeping your humanity—and your leverage—as AI floods every tool you use.
Read it to cut through both AI hype and AI doom: Doctorow argues the real question is not whether machines think, but who the machine is built to serve — and how to stay the centaur, not the reverse-centaur.
BBefore
- Notice the difference between AI that amplifies you and AI that paces and polices you.
- Track who profits in each example — the user, the worker, or the platform owner.
- Treat “enshittification” as a lens, not a slur: watch how value flows away from users over time.
WWatch for
- The two faces of automation: augmentation versus subordination.
- Moments where a “productivity” gain is really a transfer of power upward.
- Doctorow’s activist habit of asking what we can organize or regulate, not just buy.
AAfter
- Where in your own work are you a centaur, and where a reverse-centaur?
- Which platform you rely on feels like it is mid-enshittification right now?
- What is one piece of leverage — a skill, a right, a refusal — worth protecting after AI?
Warming up The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI…