9 books like We Are Anonymous

The Journal of IHTFP (look up that acronym!) is a delightful introduction to the original hacking scene at MIT, where hacks were elaborate, extremely clever student pranks—handing out colored cards at a Harvard-Yale football game to spell MIT rather than BEAT YALE when raised by eleven hundred Harvard fans, for example, or sneaking a power supply, multi-piece wooden frame, and the outer metal parts of a Chevrolet Cavalier atop the school’s Great Dome, so it appeared that the building was mounted by a real police cruiser, complete with flashing lights and boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts. The oversized book includes numerous photographs. Now out of print, it has been replaced by Nightwork by T. F. Peterson, which includes more recent hacks.

Hackers is a classic account of the computer revolution, centered on the pioneering tinkerers, gamers, social theorists, entrepreneurs, and other explorers who made military and corporate technology personal. These are not hackers in the criminal sense most people understand the term today, but men (and a few women) like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others far less famous. Their interwoven biographies are brilliantly researched and reported, underpinned by what Levy calls a common “hacker ethic” whose tenets dominate our economy, politics, and culture today.

The New Hacker’s Dictionary is the foremost compilation of the first fifty years of hacker lore, combining hilarious anecdotes and definitions to illuminate a hugely-influential but wildly-misunderstood culture more similar to beer-brewing monks than black-clad criminals. Though last updated in 1996, the technology, terms, and theories explained within still underlie the modern Internet, making this dictionary a dual cultural and architectural blueprint for anyone interested in how computing got to the present moment—and how to build a better future.

A famous hacker’s real-life story, told from his own perspective, Ghost in the Wires explains how criminal hackers think and act and the diverse techniques they use, no keyboard necessary—all, in this case, with little motive beyond a compulsion to explore and exploit. The hacking community has no bigger characters than Kevin Mitnick and no better first-person accounts of the art of “social engineering,” or human hacking—manipulating people (including, in Mitnick’s case, the FBI and other would-be pursuers) to your own advantage.

The Luddites supposedly got their name from their shadowy founder, a certain Ned Ludd, who was apparently the first to take a hammer to the instruments of industrial progress. As such, his name became a sort of protective disguise for the purposes of anonymous protest: Who smashed the loom? “Ned Ludd did it!” In a similar way, computer hackers such as Anonymous have adopted the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem of disruption, pranking, and activism. In this fascinating study, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman investigates Anonymous, tracing its origins from the message boards of 4chan, through the Occupy movement and the Wikileaks controversy, revealing firsthand through her interaction with the community the diversity and complexity of the hacking world, and the varying motives of its actors.

Hito Steyerl is one of the most prominent artists and media theorists in the world. Her essays draw unexpected and always stimulating connections between media technologies, surveillance, war, and political power. They are short, concise, and a pleasure to read, but they always engage with big ideas around the ethical and social challenges of a world made global through the framework of the Internet and digital communication more broadly.

There is no way around not adding this book to the list.

You cannot overestimate how much this single crime novel has done for the Nordic Noir genre. If you haven't read it, you probably wonder if it is as good as everyone says. The answer is 'yes'.

The subject is deadly serious: 'Men who hate women,' which is also the original Swedish title. At the same time, you can sense that Larsson had a lot of fun writing the book.

So much fun, in fact, that he penned down ideas that no established writer would consider good writing at that time, such as creating Lisbeth Salander, a character inspired by Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking.

One of the big publishing houses even turned him down twice. No other Swedish novel has instated a before and an after like this one did.

Fraud is now 40% of all crime. It is the crime we are most likely to come across. Yet the authorities seem powerless to stop it. This book explains how frauds work and, armed with that knowledge, how to prevent them happening to you. Doug has years of experience and understands the world of fraud as well as any fraudster. Read it and keep safe. 

People either love or hate Elon Musk. I fall into the camp of deeply admiring all he has accomplished and the brillance of the way his mind works. Before reading this book, I knew he was driven and has accomplished things others have spent years struggling with. As I read, I learned just how smart and determined he is. Failure isn’t an option for him, nor is focusing on one project enough to keep him content. His life has been messy in several respects, and much of that is captured in this book. To be sure, his lack of a filter when dealing with people as well as his overly optimistic timelines on just about every project have rubbed people the wrong way, but this insight into the way his mind works and the out-of-the-box way he’s gone about building his companies just might change the opinions of some haters.… show more.