Fans pick 50 books like Where Wizards Stay Up Late

Kidder’s book follows the lives of a group of brilliant, funny, and maniacally driven entrepreneurs as they race to get their new minicomputer, the “Data General Eclipse MV/8000,” to market.

The technology is totally obsolete – who under the age of 40 has heard of a minicomputer? – but the story is somehow timeless. The book won the Pulitzer and is still a fun and riveting tale of what it takes to get a product to market on an ever-changing technological frontier.

Most of my work experiences have been with startups, but that statement is a bit misleading. To be more accurate, I worked at early-stage companies, since the smallest company I worked for was already 35 people. Chaos Monkeys conveys both the excitement and drudgery of founding a real start-up (Antonio starts with two other co-founders).

Antonio’s book takes us from his cushy job on Wall Street to making the leap to running his own venture. Antonio’s flavorful style is the perfect voice as he takes you into those meetings at which money is exchanged, contracts are signed, and options are handed out. His company’s exit and his summation of what was gained and lost are the bread and butter conversations of anyone who’s ever worked in a high-tech startup. This is an illuminating and insightful book.

Dan Lyons’ book is the “fish out of water” trope applied to high-tech. Working in high-tech usually means buying into the grandiose vision of transformation that the company’s technology will produce. In industry parlance: you will be drinking a certain amount of Kool-Aid. Dan doesn’t do this. Instead, he applies a certain skepticism to the work his bosses have asked him to do.

It takes a bit of time to develop cynicism and skepticism in high-tech. By its nature, tech companies are optimistic. When you’re fresh out of school, a high-tech company’s vision and working style seem completely natural. But this isn’t Dan’s first job, and he maintains a near-constant level of incredulity at all the high-tech traditions that he sees around him. This is an intense delight to read.

Changing careers from publishing to tech is a path not often traveled. Wiener made this jump from a world legendary for its light pay compensated by romanticism, to an industry best known for generous “perks that landed somewhere between the collegiate and the feudal.” Wiener’s experience makes for one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in years—she is a gifted writer and unafraid to call out the over-seriousness of the tech bro mentality as an ultimately “dreary” worldview. 

This is a classic. The book provides an early assessment of the impact of new communications tools on freedom of expression. Pool observed how electronic networks were emerging and transforming the nature of print, arguing that we need to learn how to live with technology and make the most of it. Electronic technologies, Pool envisaged, will become the dominant mode of communication. Pool further envisaged that electronic technology would allow a great degree of diversity, more knowledge, easier access, and freer speech. He provided a lucid and perceptive analysis of the relation of American law to technology and its regulation. Pool was concerned with the negative consequences of new technology and feared its excessive regulation. It is not computers but policy that threatens freedom, he warned. This seminal work encapsulates many of the questions we face today. The challenges Pool described came to life as the pressures on government to… show more.

This book analyzes the impact of new technology on society. Castells shows that the internet has become the backbone of modern economy and business, creating a global network society. Imagination is instigating and enabling tremendous changes in every aspect of life. But many of us do not fully grasp the potential of new technology. To make the most of this modern galaxy, we need to understand how it operates, its logic, its benefits, and constraints, and how to manage it effectively. Castells argues that modern communication enables control but it also enables freedom. It is the role of government and organisations to see that the internet is developed and used in ways that are consistent with a social order in which people are enabled to become responsible human beings. In this edifying and quite accessible book, Castells explains the galaxy of networks, how it began, how it shapes new and… show more.

Due to its global nature and reach, some people think that because the internet knows no borders, it also does not have limits. This concept is wrong. Goldsmith and Wu tell the fascinating story of the internet's challenges to governmental rule. They ask: who is really in control of the internet? And does the internet liberate us from government, borders, and even our physical selves? In a lively prose, the authors peppered their arguments with real-life examples concerning disagreements between giants of the internet and democratic and authoritarian governments. They show that governments have been asserting their power to direct the future of the internet.

Internet intermediaries have to filter content geographically to comply with local law for a small fraction of their communications. This imposes costs on them, and forces them to adjust to this cost of business. But in light of the internet’s many advantages, the authors argue… show more.

For me, every book by Clifford (Cliff) Christians is always a celebration. I met Cliff in 1996 and we kept in touch ever since then. Christians has contributed to the field of media ethics more than any other scholar I know. In this book, Christians explores the fundamentals of ethics and justice in moral theory. In addition to “the usual suspects,” i.e., Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, and Max Weber, Christians explores modern liberal philosophy, feminist philosophy, African philosophy, Latin American liberation theology, Confucianism, and Islam. He does this in his usual dazzling and most comprehensive style, exhibiting wide knowledge of the literature and brilliant analysis that adds layers upon layers of sharp insights. As in his previous books, Christians invokes an ethics of care and humanity in order to alleviate poverty, homelessness, and unemployment, issues that trouble Western and non-Western societies, albeit in different… show more.

Somewhere between wide-eyed optimism about the potential of human ingenuity and skepticism about technology’s ability to save us from ourselves lies Annie Jacobsen’s book. It covers DARPA’s founding and the first fifty years before reporting on projects active at the time of the book’s writing (it came out in 2015).

The result is a balanced mix of history, analysis, and you-are-there reporting in a highly readable narrative. The book contains the best explanation I’ve seen of DARPA’s controversial, post-911 Total Information Awareness program and raises important questions about when, how, and why governments should conduct research and development in secret.

For a deeper dive into how DARPA came to be in 1958 and its history into the early 1970s, read the first book-length treatment of the subject. This book was commissioned by the agency itself and draws from extensive interviews with directors and program managers. Every other book about DARPA lists this one in its bibliography.

Learn why DARPA almost didn’t survive its first couple of years, likened to a “dead cat hanging in the fruit closet,” and how a “white elephant” became its salvation. Someone needs to publish this treatise properly in book form. For now, it exists as a free download from a military website as a PDF of a faded photocopy stamped “approved for public release,” adding to its intrigue.