Book recommendations

[mushroomchild]

I've really been getting into tech-related stuff recently (partly because of the Reject Convenience channel itself), and was wondering if there are any good books about tech in general. I'll read pretty much anything, so please feel free to mention books about slightly more niche topics. Sorry if this is a vague request, I'm just finding it difficult to explore such a vast topic by myself.

[rejectconvenience]

I highly recommend the book "Ghost in the wires" by Kevin Mitnick. It's about Kevin's life as the first FBI's most wanted hacker, and it's a wild ride. It talks a lot about one of the most common forms of hacking, social engineering, which I think is super important to understand when getting into tech.

[JINSBEK]

If you’re interested in the world of modern tech companies and particularly successful start-ups, I highly recommend The Lean Startup, whose author Eric Ries goes over the downs, downs, downs, and more downs and hard-learned ups of co-founding IMVU, and Lost and Founder, wherein Moz founder Rand Fishkin vividly illustrates that the people who run tech companies are human (and thus have human weaknesses, such as embarrassment, overoptimism, and not knowing what they’re doing).

[RockStarProgramer]

I read (well actually listened to) the Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.

set in two different time periods. One group of characters are World War II–era Allied codebreakers and tactical-deception operatives affiliated with the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park (UK), and disillusioned Axis military and intelligence figures. The second narrative is set in the late 1990s, with characters that are (in part) descendants of those of the earlier time period, who employ cryptologic, telecom, and computer technology to build an underground data haven in the fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. Their goal is to facilitate anonymous Internet banking using electronic money and (later) digital gold currency

- the wise man Wikipedia

great book, talks about encryption, game theory, and future of tech.
(practically predicted crypto currency).

[bubbafinches]

If you're looking for tech criticism books, I've been loving "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now" by Jaron Lanier, and "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff. Both books honestly go hand-in-hand, and pair well together for some tandem-reading (i like to have choices lol!). If you're looking for something shorter and wittier from the POV of someone from Silicon Valley, the first book may be for you. If you want something MUCH more in-depth with a lot of research behind it, then the second one may be for you! The second book is a doozy (for me at least!). Kinda a tomb but packed with a lot of facts and critiques about data and social media in our modern world, and explanations for how it's used against us. The first part is really cool- it outlines how we got here in the first place, and how the dot-com bust is what brought us here. Shoshana makes a cool argument that we weren't necessarily MEANT to be here, i.e. the internet wasn't predestined to be the way it is now. Rather, it's developed into what it is because of specific people at a specific point in time needing to come up with specific solutions (i.e. google running out of money at the turn of y2k and discovering that it could monetize data for ranked ad slots). On that note, a third book on my list is "the tangled web we weave" by James Ball- and it seems like he may disagree that the internet wasn't predestined to be this way, but we'll see! Haven't read it yet! (or at least I just read the intro!)

Either way, the two I've read more of are lovely and have really opened my eyes and provided me with a lot of the information I needed. For awhile it's felt like the internet (broadly using the term "internet"- basically anything from apps like TikTok to websites like Youtube, to the NYT) hasn't passed the smell-test, and these two books have validated that feeling with either years of insider knowledge or years of research from the outside-in, respectively. Heavily respect both authors for putting these books out there.