8 books like Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy

But can you fight the future? Isn’t it inevitable? This is often how tech companies try to make us think, and that anyone who opposes “progress” is a Luddite. But, as Patrick Sale makes clear in this excellent and heartbreaking historical study, the original Luddites—a protest movement that swept the industrial heartland of 19th Century England—were not anti-technology; they merely thought technology should serve people, not profit. Faced with the destruction of their livelihoods and their traditional way of life, they destroyed machines and burnt factories because that was the only outlet they had for their rage and desperation. And when the “inevitable march of progress” comes to trample you too, you may see that they had a point.

Technology is always moving on. And so it should be forgiven the author that many of the concrete examples in this book are now somewhat dated. They provide some interesting insight into the history of computing and media technology, but the real value of Roszak’s argument lies in his analysis of how—thanks to computer technology—society has become obsessed with “information”. It’s almost a cult. But information is not knowledge, data does not in itself provide understanding. In fact, in a peculiarly paradoxical way, the more information we have, the less we actually know. Thirty years later, as we swim daily in the disinformation of the murky waters of social media and disappear down Youtube rabbit holes, Roszak’s point seems more pertinent than ever.

Do you still have a Facebook account? I do—though I feel increasingly torn about it. I still use it for professional purposes, but part of me would gladly delete it (not, you know, that anything would actually get deleted, I suspect…). Christopher Wylie agrees. This wonderful account traces his role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where a mysterious “political consulting firm” used Facebook data to help swing the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s successful presidential run. It’s a very personal story, which I love, and we get an insider’s view not only on the shocking and frankly terrifying practices Wylie became embroiled in, but also his own moral struggle to get out of them. A wonderful book.

This book is simultaneously so exhilarating and creepy that it had me yelling at my car’s sound system as I listened to it! O’Gieblyn uses biography, history, and current events to ask why humans are pursuing artificial intelligence and what it means for the value of being human.

She weaves her life story, including losing her fundamentalist faith and spiraling into addiction, into a riveting analysis of artificial intelligence with all its promise and peril. I loved that she gave historical background about our search for artificial intelligence while also explaining what is at stake as AI infiltrates our very understanding of what it is to be human.

I finished the book feeling better informed about AI and better grounded in why being human is valuable, no matter what technology does next.

I loved this one because there are so many really influential people in the world today who started out as hackers. Former Texas Legislator and presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was a member of one of the first hacker groups, The Cult of the Dead Cow.

What really makes this one stand out for me was how Menn was able to illustrate how our culture of cybersecurity today, things like responsible disclosure of security vulnerabilities, was shaped by the hacker ethos as a response to mega corporations actively trying to ignore the problem or even suing researchers to prevent them from talking rather than to fix the issues.

We Are Anonymous, along with Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman, explores the politics and personalities of the best-known real-world hacktivist group, Anonymous, how it rose to prominence and power, its impact and influence, and the government machinations that ultimately turned members against each other. Its pages reveal hackers at their most human—brilliant, idealistic, vulnerable, and conflicted.

In this book, Alt sets out a convincing argument as to how much of the modern world, the culture and products consumed, as well as niche but dangerously influential areas of the internet and modern politics such as ‘4chan,’ trace their birth and or roots back to Japan. It is full of facts that are commonly overlooked or ignored but are true nonetheless. I could not stop reading this, and I suspect that if you are reading this list, you won’t be able to either.

I found this book a most accessible, comprehensive and incisive look at QAnon, one of the most baffling mass movements to have blasted into American political culture.

For those of us who live outside the reach of these cult-like believers in a raft of fantastical conspiracy theories, what baffles us is that unlike cults, which are typically withdrawn from mainstream society, QAnon reaches into our most intimate friend and family circles.

For me, where the book shines is in tracing the early appeal, its spiraling growth via the internet, and the links to radical right populists. This book is our best guide into the heart of darkness of Trumpian America.