What Cory Doctorow thinks about creativity

@cory-doctorow · 24 positions · On ppll ↗

Science fiction novelist, journalist and activist, a special adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the author of the daily link blog Pluralistic. He coined the word "enshittification" in 2022 to name the way platforms decay, and it was the American Dialect Society's word of the year for 2023.

Cory Doctorow did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

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Only Cory Doctorow on creativity. See everyone on creativity

1 dated position, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Cory Doctorow has said — not written or endorsed by them.

1 position so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

1. 18 Sept 2026

   Our readingA system trained only on what is already known cannot produce genuine surprises, because a known thing stops being a surprise.

   Their wordsBut - by definition - it can't contain any of our future surprises, because it's just trained on the things we already know, and if we knew about something, it wouldn't be a surprise anymore.

   ↗Pluralistic: Textured (18 Sep 2026)pluralistic.net 3rd of 3 in this piece