What’s on your reading list this summer? We have compiled our top 25 reads this summer for all our fellow techies ou there, each published or soon to be published in 2011. We have broken the list down into three categories: Internet, Computers and Tech, Business and Leadership, as well as a little Economics, Politics and Science. Effects of the internet, famous hackers, Google’s dominance, startups, emotional intelligence and the brain — you’ll find it all in these twenty-five reads on BostInno’s list. (Sidenote: If you’ve read any of these already, we’d love to hear your thoughts!)
Internet, Computers, Tech
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker
Author: Kevin Mitnick
Published: August 2011
Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world’s biggest companies–and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable. But for Kevin, hacking wasn’t just about technological feats-it was an old fashioned confidence game that required guile and deception to trick the unwitting out of valuable information. … Ghost in the Wires is a thrilling true story of intrigue, suspense, and unbelievable escape, and a portrait of a visionary whose creativity, skills, and persistence forced the authorities to rethink the way they pursued him, inspiring ripples that brought permanent changes in the way people and companies protect their most sensitive information.
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Author: Nicholas Carr
Published: June 2011
The bestselling author of “The Big Switch” returns with an explosive look at technology’s effect on the mind. “Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways.
The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You
Author: Eli Pariser
Published: May 2011
An eye-opening account of how the hidden rise of personalization on the Internet is controlling-and limiting-the information we consume. In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google’s change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years-the rise of personalization. In this groundbreaking investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it. … While we all worry that the Internet is eroding privacy or shrinking our attention spans, Pariser uncovers a more pernicious and far- reaching trend on the Internet and shows how we can- and must-change course. With vivid detail and remarkable scope, The Filter Bubblereveals how personalization undermines the Internet’s original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.
Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution
Author: Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson
Published: April 2011
Infinite Reality explores what emerging computer technologies and their radical applications will mean for the future of human life and society. Along the way, Bailenson and Blascovich examine the timeless philosophical questions of the self and “reality” that arise through the digital experience; explain how virtual reality’s latest and future forms—including immersive video games and social-networking sites—will soon be seamlessly integrated into our lives; show the many surprising practical applications of virtual reality, from education and medicine to sex and warfare; and probe further-off possibilities like “total personality downloads” that would allow your great-great-grandchildren to have a conversation with “you” a century or more after your death. Equally fascinating, farsighted, and profound, Infinite Reality is an essential guide to our virtual future, where the experience of being human will be deeply transformed.
The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)
Author: Siva Vaidhyanathan
Published: March 2011
In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission–“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible”–and its much-quoted motto, “Don’t be Evil.” In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google–and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google’s global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the “evil” it pledged to avoid.
The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
Author: James Gleick
Published: March 2011
In a sense, The Information is a book about everything, from words themselves to talking drums, writing and lexicography, early attempts at an analytical engine, the telegraph and telephone, ENIAC, and the ubiquitous computers that followed. But that’s just the “History.” The “Theory” focuses on such 20th-century notables as Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, and others who worked on coding, decoding, and re-coding both the meaning and the myriad messages transmitted via the media of their times. In the “Flood,” Gleick explains genetics as biology’s mechanism for informational exchange–Is a chicken just an egg’s way of making another egg?–and discusses self-replicating memes (ideas as different as earworms and racism) as information’s own evolving meta-life forms. Along the way, readers learn about music and quantum mechanics, why forgetting takes work, the meaning of an “interesting number,” and why “[t]he bit is the ultimate unsplittable particle.” What results is a visceral sense of information’s contemporary precedence as a way of understanding the world, a physical/symbolic palimpsest of self-propelled exchange, the universe itself as the ultimate analytical engine. If Borges’s “Library of Babel” is literature’s iconic cautionary tale about the extreme of informational overload, Gleick sees the opposite, the world as an endlessly unfolding opportunity in which “creatures of the information” may just recognize themselves.
The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive
Author: Brian Christian
Published: March 2011
Each year humans and computers square off for the Turing test, which Christian describes as a kind of speed dating via instant messaging, with five minutes to prove which is human. In 2009, Christian traveled to Brighton, England, to compete in a contest matching four humans and four computers. Christian chronicles his preparation and time spent devising strategies to trump the chatbot computers that can imitate humans. Along the way, he draws on philosophy, neurology, linguistics, and computer science, recalling chess master Garry Kasparov losing a match to IBM’s Deep Blue computer and more recent developments in artificial intelligence. He explores how computers have challenged our bias toward the left hemisphere of the brain (logic) versus the right hemisphere (emotions) and how he and others have come to a deeper appreciation of emotional intelligence. He laments how so many jobs have trained employees with limited scripts that render them human chatbots. Christian intersperses interviews and musings on poetry and literature, observations on computer science, and excerpts from post-Turing test conversations for a fascinating exploration of what it means to be human. This book will surely change the way readers think about their conversations.
Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground
Author: Kevin Poulsen
Published: February 2011
Investigative journalist Poulsen takes readers on an unprecedented journey into the modern hacking underworld through the story of Max Butler, a troubled young hacker-turned-real-life-supervillian, who seized control of a multi-billion dollar criminal network.Former hacker Kevin Poulsen has, over the past decade, built a reputation as one of the top investigative reporters on the cybercrime beat. In Kingpin, he pours his unmatched access and expertise into book form for the first time, delivering a gripping cat-and-mouse narrative—and an unprecedented view into the twenty-first century’s signature form of organized crime.
The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation
Author: Martha C. Nussbaum and Saul Levmore
Published: January 2011
The Internet has been romanticized as a zone of freedom. The alluring combination of sophisticated technology with low barriers to entry and instantaneous outreach to millions of users has mesmerized libertarians and communitarians alike. Lawmakers have joined the celebration, passing the Communications Decency Act, which enables Internet Service Providers to allow unregulated discourse without danger of liability, all in the name of enhancing freedom of speech. But an unregulated Internet is a breeding ground for offensive conduct. At last we have a book that begins to focus on abuses made possible by anonymity, freedom from liability, and lack of oversight. The distinguished scholars assembled in this volume, drawn from law and philosophy, connect the absence of legal oversight with harassment and discrimination. Questioning the simplistic notion that abusive speech and mobocracy are the inevitable outcomes of new technology, they argue that current misuse is the outgrowth of social, technological, and legal choices. Seeing this clearly will help us to be better informed about our options.
The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
Author: Evgeny Morozov
Published: January 2011
“The revolution will be Twittered!” declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for all the talk about the democratizing power of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify their populations with digital entertainment. Could the recent Western obsession with promoting democracy by digital means backfire? Marshaling compelling evidence, Morozov shows why we must stop thinking of the Internet and social media as inherently liberating and why ambitious and seemingly noble initiatives like the promotion of “Internet freedom” might have disastrous implications for the future of democracy as a whole.
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Author: Sherry Turkle
Published: January 2011
With the recent explosion of increasingly sophisticated cell-phone technology and social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook, a casual observer might understandably conclude that human relationships are blossoming like never before. But according to MIT science professor Turkle, that assumption would be sadly wrong. In the third and final volume of a trilogy dissecting the interface between humans and technology, Turkle suggests that we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things. In her university-sponsored studies surveying everything from text-message usage among teens to the use of robotic baby seals in nursing homes for companionship, Turkle paints a sobering and paradoxical portrait of human disconnectedness in the face of expanding virtual connections in cell-phone, intelligent machine, and Internet usage. Despite her reliance on research observations, Turkle emphasizes personal stories from computer gadgetry’s front lines, which keeps her prose engaging and her message to the human species—to restrain ourselves from becoming technology’s willing slaves instead of its guiding masters—loud and clear.
Business / Leadership
I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59
Author: Douglas Edwards
Published: July 2011
Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to an Edsel. No academic analysis or bystander’s account can capture it. Now Doug Edwards, Employee Number 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers a chance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie and competition at this phenomenal company. Edwards, Google’s first director of marketing and brand management, describes it as it happened. We see the first, pioneering steps of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company’s young, idiosyncratic partners; the evolution of the company’s famously nonhierarchical structure (where every employee finds a problem to tackle or a feature to create and works independently); the development of brand identity; the races to develop and implement each new feature; and the many ideas that never came to pass. Above all, Edwards—a former journalist who knows how to write—captures the “Google Experience,” the rollercoaster ride of being part of a company creating itself in a whole new universe.
Small Message, Big Impact: How to Put the Power of the Elevator Speech Effect to Work for You
Author: Terri Sjodin
Published: June 2011
Don’t just think of an elevator speech as a generic tool you use in chance moments–consider the concept as a strategy to manage multiple talking points and to communicate more complex ideas as well. Terri L. Sjodin’s new work, Small Message, Big Impact, provides an entertaining, straightforward, and practical how-to guide on effectively communicating an important message in a short period of time. She gives readers an inspiring new perspective on the power of what she calls the Elevator Speech Effect and shows them how to employ this amazing little tool to create influence in today’s market.
TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments
Author: Douglas R. Conant and Mette Norgaard
Published: May 2011
A fresh, effective, and enduring way to lead—starting with your next interaction. Most leaders feel the inevitable interruptions in their jam-packed days are troublesome. But in TouchPoints, Conant and Norgaard argue that these—and every point of contact with other people—are overlooked opportunities for leaders to increase their impact and promote their organization’s strategy and values. Through previously untold stories from Conant’s tenure as CEO of Campbell Soup Company and Norgaard’s vast consulting experience, the authors show that a leader’s impact and legacy are built through hundreds, even thousands, of interactive moments in time. The good news is that anyone can develop “TouchPoint” mastery by focusing on three essential components: head, heart, and hands. TouchPoints speaks to the theory and craft of leadership, promoting a balanced presence of rational, authentic, active, and wise leadership practices. Leadership mastery in the smallest and otherwise ordinary moments can transform aimless activity in individuals and entropy in organizations into focused energy—one magical moment at a time.
Author: Jared Tame
Published: May 2011
Get inside the minds of today’s leading startup founders with the most honest and candid collection of startup founder interviews. Contains interviews with 33 startups discussing the most difficult topics entrepreneurs face: creating and validating ideas, finding cofounders, obtaining users, growing revenue, staying motivated, acquisition process, and more. Companies interviewed: Grooveshark, reddit, GitHub, foursquare, Airbnb, Weebly, Greplin, AppSumo, Wufoo, Little App Factory, MixPanel, LikeALittle, Djangy, Divvyshot, Justin.TV, Blippy, Bump, WePay, DailyBooth, Gobble, KISSMetrics, Omnisio, Cloudkick, Noteleaf, One Llama, Octopart, Crowdbooster, Listia, Hipmunk, Indinero, OrangeQC, Camino Real, One.
The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
Author: Howard Marks
Published: May 2011
Chairman and cofounder of Oaktree Capital Management, Howard Marks has been linked to Warren Buffett for his lucid assessments of market opportunities and risks. His memos to clients have long been consulted by the world’s leading value investors. Now he brings his insightful commentary and investment philosophy to everyone. … Marks expounds on such concepts as “second-level thinking,” the price/value relationship, patient opportunism, and defensive investing. His frank and honest assessment of his own decisions—and occasional missteps—provides valuable lessons on critical thinking, risk assessment, and investment strategy. Marks encourages investors to be “contrarian,” to judge market cycles wisely, and to achieve returns through aggressive yet measured action. Which is the most essential element? Successful investing requires thoughtful attention to many separate aspects. Each of the subjects Marks covers is the most important thing.
Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Media Games
Author: Jon Radoff
Published: April 2011
As one of the few entrepreneurs in the world with expertise building both social media and games, author Jon Radoff brings a one-of-a-kind perspective to this unique book. He shows that games are more than a profitable form of entertainment; the techniques of social games can be used to enhance the quality of online applications, social media and a wide range of other consumer and business experiences. With this book, you’ll explore how social games can be put to work for any business and examine why they work at all. The first part of explains what makes games fun, while the second part reviews the process and details of game design. Game On is not playing around. Discover how social media games make money, and how you can enhance your business using games.
Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft
Author: Paul Allen
Published: April 2011
In this long-awaited memoir, Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, explains how he has solved problems, what he’s learned from his many endeavors–both the triumphs and the failures–and his compelling vision for the future. “The entire conversation took five minutes. When it was over, Bill and I looked at each other. It was one thing to talk about writing a language for a microprocessor and another to get the job done . . . If we’d been older or known better, Bill and I might have been put off by the task in front of us. But we were young and green enough to believe that we just might pull it off.” Paul Allen, best known as the cofounder of Microsoft, has left his mark on numerous fields, from aviation and science to rock ‘n’ roll, professional sports, and philanthropy. His passions and curiosity have transformed the way we live. In 2007 and again in 2008, Time named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world.
In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Author: Steven Levy
Published: April 2011
Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes listeners inside Google headquarters – the Googleplex – to explain how Google works. … But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China. And now, with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be “evil” still compete? No other book has turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.
Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries
Author: Peter Sims
Published: April 2011
An empowering roadmap to the twelve crucial methods for unleashing our creativity and achieving breakthrough innovate results in work.What do Apple CEO Steve Jobs, comedian Chris Rock, prize-winning architect Frank Gehry, the story developers at Pixar films, and the Army Chief of Strategic Plans all have in common? Bestselling author Peter Sims found that all of them have achieved breakthrough results by methodically taking small, experimental steps in order to discover and develop new ideas. Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan a whole project out in advance, trying to foresee the final outcome, they make a series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning from lots of little failures and from small but highly significant wins that allow them to happen upon unexpected avenues and arrive at extraordinary outcomes.
Economics / Politics / Science
2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America
Author: Albert Brooks
Published: May 2011
Comedian and filmmaker Brooks welcomes the reader to the year 2030 in his smart and surprisingly serious debut. Cancer has been cured, global warming is an acknowledged reality, people have robot companions, and the president is a Jew–and oy vey does he have his hands full with an earthquake-leveled Los Angeles and a growing movement by the young to exterminate the elderly. And when the Chinese offer to rebuild L.A. in exchange for a half-ownership stake in Southern California, President Bernstein is faced with a decision that will alter the future of America. Brooks’s sweeping narrative encompasses a diverse cast of characters, including an 80-year-old Angelino left homeless by the earthquake, a trust fund brat with a grudge against the elderly, and a teenage girl saddled with debt after her father’s death, all of whom get brought together just in time for a climactic hostage crisis. Brooks’s mordant vision encompasses the future of politics, medicine, entertainment, and daily living, resulting in a novel as entertaining as it is thought provoking, like something from the imagination of a borscht belt H.G. Wells.
Author: Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt
Published: May 2011
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first. Four years in the making, SuperFreakonomics asks not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What’s more dangerous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so often if it’s so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary? SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we think all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as:
- How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?
- Why are doctors so bad at washing their hands?
- How much good do car seats do?
- What’s the best way to catch a terrorist?
- Did TV cause a rise in crime?
- What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?
- Are people hard-wired for altruism or selfishness?
- Can eating kangaroo save the planet?
- Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor?
The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights
Author: Daniel Goleman
Published: April 2011
Over the last decade and a half there has been a steady stream of new insights that further illuminate the dynamics of emotional intelligence. In this eBook, Daniel Goleman explains what we now know about the brain basis of emotional intelligence, in clear and simple terms. This eBook will deepen your understanding of emotional intelligence and enhance your ability for its application. You will learn the most recent brain findings that explain: The Big Question being asked, particularly in academic circles: “Is there such an entity as ‘emotional intelligence’ that differs from IQ?”; The brain’s ethical radar; The neural dynamics of creativity; The brain circuitry for drive, persistence, and motivation; The brain states underlying optimal performance, and how to enhance them; The social brain: rapport, resonance, and interpersonal chemistry; Brain 2.0: our brain on the web; The varieties of empathy and key gender differences; The dark side: sociopathy at work; And neural lessons for coaching and enhancing emotional intelligence abilities.
Everything is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer
Author: Duncan J. Watts
Published: March 2011
Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO’s impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard? If you think the answers to these questions are a matter of common sense, think again. As sociologist and network science pioneer Duncan Watts explains in this provocative book, the explanations that we give for the outcomes that we observe in life—explanation that seem obvious once we know the answer—are less useful than they seem. Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry. … Only by understanding how and when common sense fails, Watts argues, can we improve how we plan for the future, as well as understand the present—an argument that has important implications in politics, business, and marketing, as well as in science and everyday life.
Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us
Author: Flora Lichtman and Joe Palca
Published: March 2011
It happens everywhere: offices, schools, even your own backyard. Plus, seemingly anything can trigger it?cell phones, sirens, bad music, constant distractions, your boss, or even your spouse. We all know certain things get under our skin. Can science explain why? Palca and Lichtman take you on a scientific quest through psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and other disciplines to uncover the truth about being annoyed. What is the recipe for annoyance? For starters, it should be temporary, unpleasant, and unpredictable, like a boring meeting or mosquito bites. How often can you say you’re happily reading a really Annoying book? The insights are fascinating, the exploration is fun, and the knowledge you gain, if you act like you know everything, can be really annoying.
