I am a scientist and technologist, trained in theoretical quantum physics, who became an Emeritus Professor of Network Technology from Oslo’s metropolitan university. I’ve strenuously tried to communicate the wonder of science to students and industry throughout my career. I’m also a long-standing fan of science fiction who grew up with heroes in both fact and fiction. The idea of future society has haunted me my whole life. I’m an optimist, who looks to the darker tales as warnings of futures we hope to avoid. Read these tales with a determination for us all to do better.
This book is not fiction, but rather a popular book about the direction of technology.
It was part of the original source inspiration for my own book. Written in 2003, it looked into the research about how mobile devices were beginning to change society, and redraw the lines to lead to modern tribalism. The book is now dated, as we have lived through twenty years of experience and much has changed.
Nevertheless, as a portrait of a moment in history, eminently readable, this book is an eye-opener.
How the convergence of mobile communications and computing is driving the next social revolution-transforming the ways in which people meet, mate, work, buy, sell, govern, and create. When Howard Rheingold sneaks off down an untrodden trail, everyone else follows. He is always onto something marvelous no one has seen before. An ever-considerate guide, he navigates this new world with ease, compassion, and grace, and gives you the inside story, with no punches pulled. Tech talk? Howard could get your mother to understand. }From Tokyo to Helsinki, Manhattan to Manila, Howard Rheingold takes us on a journey around the world for…
Ever since touching my first computer (the Apple IIC) in 1985, broadcasting a radio show in 1988, logging onto the world wide web in 1991, launching my first podcast in 2004 or producing the highly viewed YouTube show The Download in 2020 I've been interested in what Marshall McLuhan has dubbed, "The Medium is the Message." Not only how media and technology are used but how it intersects with humanity, education, entertainment, marketing and popular culture to drive word of mouth. To me, marketing isn't just about the technology or the quantified metrics but about how it shapes long lasting impressions on people and leads to sustained behavioral change.
Shirky explained the fascination with how everyone becomes media long before TikTok was even a gleam in the eye of its founder Zhang Yiming. In this world that becomes louder, faster, and where attention is harder to come by we might think that it becomes every person for themselves. Not so. Communities become stronger and we enter the age of "We" rather than the age of "Me." A fascinating read on the power of organizations that don't rely on traditional organization hierarchies. If you want to know how good ideas spread in the 21st Century, this is a good book to read.
“A fascinating survey of the digital age . . . An eye-opening paean to possibility.” —The Boston Globe
“Mr. Shirky writes cleanly and convincingly about the intersection of technological innovation and social change.” —New York Observer
An extraordinary exploration of how technology can empower social and political organizers
For the first time in history, the tools for cooperating on a global scale are not solely in the hands of governments or institutions. The spread of the internet and mobile phones are changing how people come together and get things done—and sparking a revolution that, as Clay Shirky shows, is changing…
As a kid, I used to do all the math problems in my textbooks just for fun, even if they weren’t part of a homework assignment. My grandchildren cringe when I tell them this. I am a researcher and educator in secure software engineering and have enjoyed a productive career in software development and management, software engineering and software security research, and software and secure software engineering education.
This book is a “how-to” guide for teams developing secure software. Written by a team of experts, it covers the important issues in developing software that is better able to prevent successful attacks. The book contains many references, a strategy, and an implementation guide with cross-references. For each topic, the maturity of practice at the time of writing is provided, as well as an indication of the audience.
"This book's broad overview can help an organization choose a set of processes, policies, and techniques that are appropriate for its security maturity, risk tolerance, and development style. This book will help you understand how to incorporate practical security techniques into all phases of the development lifecycle."
-Steve Riley, senior security strategist, Microsoft Corporation
"There are books written on some of the topics addressed in this book, and there are other books on secure systems engineering. Few address the entire life cycle with a comprehensive overview and discussion of emerging trends and topics as well as this one."
I have been an information technology and cybersecurity professional for over two decades. I’ve learned over and over again that “people are the weakest link.” You can build the most secure system in the world, with stringent password requirements. But if the user writes their password down and leaves it where someone else can see it, system security is irrelevant! The easiest way to gain access to a system is via “social engineering” – to trick a human being into giving you the access you need, rather than trying to hack the systemitself. The books on this list will help the reader lower their chances of being exploited like this.
Security expert Bruce Schneier wrote this excellent book, talking about the “Goliaths” who are looking to exploit individuals’ data. Focusing more on politics (specifically US politics) than the other books on this list, Schneier talks about the Edward Snowden classified information reveal. He talks about mass surveillance conducted by the US and other governments around the world, and lays out in detail why this should concern us all.
Data is everywhere. We create it every time we go online, turn our phone on (or off) or pay with a credit card. This data is stored, studied, bought and sold by companies and governments for surveillance and for control. "Foremost security expert" (Wired) Bruce Schneier shows how this data has led to a double-edged Internet-a Web that gives power to the people but is abused by the institutions on which those people depend.
In Data and Goliath, Schneier reveals the full extent of surveillance, censorship and propaganda in society today, examining the risks of cybercrime, cyberterrorism and cyberwar. He…
Joanne McNeil has written about internet culture for over fifteen years. Her book considers the development of the internet from a user's perspective since the launch of the World Wide Web. Her interest in digital technology spans from the culture that enabled the founding of major companies in Silicon Valley to their reception in broader culture.
Beginning with Stewart Brand’s influence through his projects like The Whole Earth Catalog, the WELL, and Wired magazine, this book examines the unique culture of Silicon Valley. An essential history and one that clarifies the tech industry’s seemingly contradictory values of revolution and corporate power.
In "From Counterculture to Cyberculture", Fred Turner details the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award - winning "Whole Earth Catalog", the computer-conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools…
I have worked in IT for over 25 years, creating and securing software. I am completely obsessed with ensuring that our software is more reliable, that its integrity can be trusted, and that it keeps our secrets safe. I am not only a computer scientist but an ethical hacker who works hard to create a dialogue between software developers and all of the people who work in our security industry. I am a teacher, a community leader, and a computer nerd who shares messages and lessons wherever she goes.
This book is set in the same universe as The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, but it's at a new company named investments unlimited.
It's also a fictitious story, but with all brand new characters, and brand new problems! In this book they cover security much more deeply than any of the other previous books, talking about how compliance and audit can work together with the information security and DevOps teams.
They talk about common problems that I have faced in many organizations, and a lot of the stories feel so familiar I wonder if the authors have followed me around throughout my career.
Although of course they save the day in the end, there are many parts of the book where we're not quite sure if they're going to make it or not with various characters learning to see things in new ways, so that they can make…
In the vein of the bestselling The Phoenix Project and The Unicorn Project, Investments Unlimited radically rethinks how organizations can handle the audit, compliance, and security of their software systems-even in highly regulated industries. By introducing concepts, tools, and ideas to reimagine governance, Investments Unlimited catalyzes a more humane way to enable high-velocity software delivery that is inherently more secure.
Investments Unlimited, Inc. has accomplished what many other firms in their industry have failed to do: they have successfully navigated the transition from legacy ways of working to the digital frontier. With the help of DevOps practices, Investments Unlimited delivers…
Being able to understand and change reality through our knowledge and skill is literal magic. We’re building systems with so many exciting and unexpected properties that can be exploited and repurposed for both good and evil. I want to keep some of that magic and help people engineer – build great systems that make people’s lives better. I’ve been securing (and breaking) systems, from operating rooms to spaceships, from banks to self-driving cars for over 25 years. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that if security is not infused from the start, we’re forced to rely on what ought to be our last lines of defense. This list helps you infuse security into your systems.
When I worked in application security at Microsoft, we still had products that shipped every few years. I learned to scale application security in that world, but many people live in a different world now. AAS helped me understand which of our approaches translated well, which had to be transformed, and which needed to be discarded or replaced. I regularly refer back to it, even a few years later.
Agile continues to be the most adopted software development methodology among organizations worldwide, but it generally hasn't integrated well with traditional security management techniques. And most security professionals aren't up to speed in their understanding and experience of agile development. To help bridge the divide between these two worlds, this practical guide introduces several security tools and techniques adapted specifically to integrate with agile development.
Written by security experts and agile veterans, this book begins by introducing security principles to agile practitioners, and agile principles to security practitioners. The authors also reveal problems they encountered in their own experiences with…
Joanne McNeil has written about internet culture for over fifteen years. Her book considers the development of the internet from a user's perspective since the launch of the World Wide Web. Her interest in digital technology spans from the culture that enabled the founding of major companies in Silicon Valley to their reception in broader culture.
A thorough look at the origins of personal computing and connections between computer users beginning in the 1960s that highlights the BASIC programming language and The Oregon Trail game. Shines a light on the role that universities and the education system played in fostering networks between users.
Silicon Valley gets all the credit for digital creativity, but this account of the pre-PC world, when computing meant more than using mature consumer technology, challenges that triumphalism.
The invention of the personal computer liberated users from corporate mainframes and brought computing into homes. But throughout the 1960s and 1970s a diverse group of teachers and students working together on academic computing systems conducted many of the activities we now recognize as personal and social computing. Their networks were centered in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Illinois, but they connected far-flung users. Joy Rankin draws on detailed records to explore how…
I am an information architect, writer, and community organizer on a mission to make information architecture education accessible to everybody. I started practicing IA in pure pursuit of stronger visual design, but in the two decades since have developed an insatiable appetite for understanding and teaching the practical skills that make people better sensemakers, regardless of their role or medium. The books I chose for this list are all foundational to me becoming the sensemaker that I am today. I offer them as suggestions because they are not the books you will find should you search for “Information Architecture” yet they have all become my go-to recommendations for helping others to strengthen their own sensemaking.
You might not think of excitement when you hear the words “Digital Governance” but I can assure you that this book is a real page-turner…especially if your job involves managing large-scale information messes. There is a special kind of chaos that only information and knowledge workers can understand and this book paints a picture so many of us have seen in practice but in a way that leaves the reader inspired to fight another day, instead of wallowing in a sea of information-induced self-pity.
I recommend this book because I have seen too many information architecture efforts die on the vine due to a lack of good governance. The frameworks and recommendations in this book mean I always have a playbook to hand to teams in need.
Few organizations realize a return on their digital investment. They’re distracted by political infighting and technology-first solutions. To reach the next level, organizations must realign their assets—people, content, and technology—by practicing the discipline of digital governance. Managing Chaos inspires new and necessary conversations about digital governance and its transformative power to support creativity, real collaboration, digital quality, and online growth.
