Tech Books We Love
If there’s one thing to know about me, it’s that I’m a huge book worm. I’ve put together a list of some tech books that have crept onto my favorites list lately.
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
When Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification, he was not just finding a funner way to say “things are getting worse.” He was making a specific diagnosis about the state of the digital world and how it is affecting all of our lives (and not for the better).
Enshittification identifies the problem and proposes a solution.
Extra Life: Coming Of Age In Cyberspace
Today’s digital culture traces its roots to the 1980s, when the first computer generation came of age. These original techno-kids grew up with home-brew programs, secret computer access codes, and arcades where dedicated video gamers fought to extend their play by earning extra life.” In that era of gleeful discovery, driven by a sense of adventure and a surge of power, kids found a world they could master, one few grownups could understand.
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race
“Written in the hot, propulsive prose of a spy thriller” (The New York Times), the untold story of the cyberweapons market-the most secretive, government-backed market on earth-and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage
In this white-knuckled true story that is “as exciting as any action novel” (The New York Times Book Review), an astronomer-turned-cyber-detective begins a personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatens national security and leads all the way to the KGB.
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing
It’s a signal paradox of our times that we live in an information society but do not know how it works. And without understanding how our information is stored, used, and protected, we are vulnerable to having it exploited.
Careless People
Shocking and darkly funny, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to the decisions that are shaping our world and the people who make them.
Welcome to Facebook.
Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever
The inside story of the largest law-enforcement sting operation ever, in which the FBI made its own tech start-up to wiretap the world, shows how cunning both the authorities and drug traffickers have become, with privacy implications for everyone.
A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend them Back
In A Hacker’s Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.
Chokepoint Capitalism
In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others.
The Internet Con
A Big Tech disassembly manual, presenting a theory of internet enshittification and a way to throw it into reverse, creating a new, good internet that is a worthy successor to the old, good internet – so that the enshitternet of today is thrown on the scrapheap of history as an unfortunate transitional stage between the two.
Cult of the Dead Cow
How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
Sandworm
A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers.
Crash Override
How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate
Ghost in the Wires
My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker
The Art of Intrusion
The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers
he Art of Deception
Controlling the Human Element of Security
Permanent Record
Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.
Where Wizards Stay Up Late
The Origins of the Internet
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
A fascinating exploration of how computer algorithms can be applied to our everyday lives, helping to solve common decision-making problems and illuminate the workings of the human mind
Tracers in the Dark
The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency