Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe


Roger McNamee - 2019
    He had mentored many tech leaders in his illustrious career as an investor, but few things had made him prouder, or been better for his fund's bottom line, than his early service to Mark Zuckerberg. Still a large shareholder in Facebook, he had every good reason to stay on the bright side. Until he simply couldn't. ZUCKED is McNamee's intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world's most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing. It's a story that begins with a series of rude awakenings. First there is the author's dawning realization that the platform is being manipulated by some very bad actors. Then there is the even more unsettling realization that Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are unable or unwilling to share his concerns, polite as they may be to his face."

Courting Justice: From NY Yankees v. Major League Baseball to Bush v. Gore, 1997-2000


David Boies - 2004
    16 pages of photos.

Over The Top: How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry


Alan Wolk - 2015
    Given the intricacies of the industry, it's also going to be the most resistant to change. Alan Wolk, an industry veteran and longtime analyst and observer, lays out how the television industry is adapting to the digital era, explaining what's really happening in a tone that will appeal to laypeople and insiders alike. In the first section, Wolk takes us through how the industry works today, focusing on how the various players actually make money and who pays who for what. The next section deals with the changes that are taking place in the industry today–everything from time shifting to binge viewing to cord cutting–and how those changes are starting to create some seismic shifts. In the final section, Wolk reveals his predictions for the future and what the industry will look like in ten years time. Andrew Wallenstein, co-editor-in-chief of Variety says "Alan Wolk is one of the most insightful observers writing about the media business today. There's no better expert to help you navigate the confusing, complicated nexus of TV and the Internet." David Zaslav, President and CEO of Discovery Communications says "Alan Wolk has a deep understanding of the complex nature of television today… this is a fantastic primer of the business and one of the most educated perspectives on the future of our rapidly evolving industry."

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy


George Gilder - 2018
    Gilder says or writes is ever delivered at anything less than the fullest philosophical decibel... Mr. Gilder sounds less like a tech guru than a poet, and his words tumble out in a romantic cascade." “Google’s algorithms assume the world’s future is nothing more than the next moment in a random process. George Gilder shows how deep this assumption goes, what motivates people to make it, and why it’s wrong: the future depends on human action.” — Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies and author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future The Age of Google, built on big data and machine intelligence, has been an awesome era. But it’s coming to an end. In Life after Google, George Gilder—the peerless visionary of technology and culture—explains why Silicon Valley is suffering a nervous breakdown and what to expect as the post-Google age dawns. Google’s astonishing ability to “search and sort” attracts the entire world to its search engine and countless other goodies—videos, maps, email, calendars….And everything it offers is free, or so it seems. Instead of paying directly, users submit to advertising. The system of “aggregate and advertise” works—for a while—if you control an empire of data centers, but a market without prices strangles entrepreneurship and turns the Internet into a wasteland of ads. The crisis is not just economic. Even as advances in artificial intelligence induce delusions of omnipotence and transcendence, Silicon Valley has pretty much given up on security. The Internet firewalls supposedly protecting all those passwords and personal information have proved hopelessly permeable. The crisis cannot be solved within the current computer and network architecture. The future lies with the “cryptocosm”—the new architecture of the blockchain and its derivatives. Enabling cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether, NEO and Hashgraph, it will provide the Internet a secure global payments system, ending the aggregate-and-advertise Age of Google. Silicon Valley, long dominated by a few giants, faces a “great unbundling,” which will disperse computer power and commerce and transform the economy and the Internet. Life after Google is almost here.   For fans of "Wealth and Poverty," "Knowledge and Power," and "The Scandal of Money."

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex


Yasha Levine - 2018
    This idea--using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad--drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology.But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden.With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news--and the device on which you read it.

The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace


Alexander Klimburg - 2017
    Alexander Klimburg was a member of the generation for whom it was a utopian ideal turned reality: a place where ideas, information, and knowledge could be shared and new freedoms found and enjoyed. Two decades later, the future isn't so bright any more: increasingly, the Internet is used as a weapon and a means of domination by states eager to exploit or curtail global connectivity in order to further their national interests. Klimburg is a leading voice in the conversation on the implications of this dangerous shift, and in The Darkening Web, he explains why we underestimate the consequences of states' ambitions to project power in cyberspace at our peril: Not only have hacking and cyber operations fundamentally changed the nature of political conflict--ensnaring states in a struggle to maintain a precarious peace that could rapidly collapse into all-out war--but the rise of covert influencing and information warfare has enabled these same global powers to create and disseminate their own distorted versions of reality in which anything is possible. At stake are not only our personal data or the electrical grid, but the Internet as we know it today--and with it the very existence of open and democratic societies. Blending anecdote with argument, Klimburg brings us face-to-face with the range of threats the struggle for cyberspace presents, from an apocalyptic scenario of debilitated civilian infrastructure to a 1984-like erosion of privacy and freedom of expression. Focusing on different approaches to cyber-conflict in the US, Russia and China, he reveals the extent to which the battle for control of the Internet is as complex and perilous as the one surrounding nuclear weapons during the Cold War--and quite possibly as dangerous for humanity as a whole. Authoritative, thought-provoking, and compellingly argued, The Darkening Web makes clear that the debate about the different aspirations for cyberspace is nothing short of a war over our global values.

Hoaxed: The Deadly Consequences of Fake News


Mike Cernovich - 2018
    Filmmaker and author Mike Cernovich is also confronted by people who claim he has shared fake news. Find out how he answers these allegations in Hoaxed.

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War


Fred Kaplan - 2016
    The general said it was. This set in motion the first presidential directive on computer security.The first use of cyber techniques in battle occurred in George H.W. Bush's Kuwait invasion in 1991 to disable Saddam's military communications. One year later, the NSA Director watched Sneakers, in which one of the characters says wars will soon be decided not by bullets or bombs but by information. The NSA and the Pentagon have been rowing over control of cyber weapons ever since.From the 1994 (aborted) US invasion of Haiti, when the plan was to neutralize Haitian air-defenses by making all the telephones in Haiti busy at the same time, to Obama's Defense Department 2015 report on cyber policy that spells out the lead role played by our offensive operation, Fred Kaplan tells the story of the NSA and the Pentagon as they explore, exploit, fight, and defend the US. Dark Territory reveals all the details, including the 1998 incident when someone hacked into major US military commands and it wasn't Iraq, but two teenagers from California; how Israeli jets bomb a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 by hacking into Syrian air-defense radar system; the time in 2014 when North Korea hacks Sony's networks to pressure the studio to cancel a major Hollywood blockbuster; and many more. Dark Territory is the most urgent and controversial topic in national defense policy.

Access 2007: The Missing Manual


Matthew MacDonald - 2006
    It runs on PCs rather than servers and is ideal for small- to mid-sized businesses and households. But Access is still intimidating to learn. It doesn't help that each new version crammed in yet another set of features; so many, in fact, that even the pros don't know where to find them all. Access 2007 breaks this pattern with some of the most dramatic changes users have seen since Office 95. Most obvious is the thoroughly redesigned user interface, with its tabbed toolbar (or "Ribbon") that makes features easy to locate and use. The features list also includes several long-awaited changes. One thing that hasn't improved is Microsoft's documentation. To learn the ins and outs of all the features in Access 2007, Microsoft merely offers online help.Access 2007: The Missing Manual was written from the ground up for this redesigned application. You will learn how to design complete databases, maintain them, search for valuable nuggets of information, and build attractive forms for quick-and-easy data entry. You'll even delve into the black art of Access programming (including macros and Visual Basic), and pick up valuable tricks and techniques to automate common tasks -- even if you've never touched a line of code before. You will also learn all about the new prebuilt databases you can customize to fit your needs, and how the new complex data feature will simplify your life. With plenty of downloadable examples, this objective and witty book will turn an Access neophyte into a true master.

The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business


Eric Schmidt - 2013
    And, the Director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, formerly an advisor to both Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.Never before has the future been so vividly and transparently imagined. From technologies that will change lives (information systems that greatly increase productivity, safety and our quality of life, thought controlled motion technology that can revolutionize medical procedures, and near-perfect translation technology that allows us to have more diversified interactions) to our most important future considerations (curating our online identity and fighting those who would do harm with it) to the widespread political change that will transform the globe (through transformations in conflict, increasingly active and global citizenries, a new wave of cyber-terrorism and states operating simultaneously in the physical and virtual realms) to the ever present threats to our privacy and security, Schmidt and Cohen outline in great detail and scope all the promise and peril awaiting us in the coming decades.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution


Steven Levy - 1984
    That was before one pioneering work documented the underground computer revolution that was about to change our world forever. With groundbreaking profiles of Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club, and more, Steven Levy's Hackers brilliantly captured a seminal moment when the risk-takers and explorers were poised to conquer twentieth-century America's last great frontier. And in the Internet age, the hacker ethic-first espoused here-is alive and well.

The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey


Emmanuel Goldstein - 2008
    Find the best of the magazine's writing in Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, a collection of the strongest, most interesting, and often most controversial articles covering 24 years of changes in technology, all from a hacker's perspective. Included are stories about the creation of the infamous tone dialer "red box" that allowed hackers to make free phone calls from payphones, the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the insecurity of modern locks.

Cyberspies: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking, and Digital Espionage


Gordon Corera - 2015
    The book is rich with historical detail and characters, as well as astonishing revelations about espionage carried out in recent times by the UK, US, and China. Using unique access to the National Security Agency, GCHQ, Chinese officials, and senior executives from some of the most powerful global technology companies, Gordon Corera has gathered compelling stories from heads of state, hackers and spies of all stripes.Cyberspies is a ground-breaking exploration of the new space in which the worlds of espionage, diplomacy, international business, science, and technology collide.

Microsoft Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA


John Walkenbach - 2013
    Naturally, that means John Walkenbach returns with a new edition of his bestselling VBA Programming book and covers all the methods and tools you need to know in order to program with Excel. With this comprehensive guide, Mr. Spreadsheet shows you how to maximize your Excel experience using professional spreadsheet application development tips from his own personal bookshelf.Featuring a complete introduction to Visual Basic for Applications and fully updated for the latest features of Excel 2013, this essential reference includes an analysis of Excel application development and is packed with procedures, tips, and ideas for expanding Excel's capabilities with VBA.Offers an analysis of Excel application development and a complete introduction to VBA Features invaluable advice from Mr. Spreadsheet himself, bestselling author John Walkenbach, who demonstrates all the techniques you need to create Excel applications, both large and small Covers navigating the Excel interface, formatting worksheets, interacting with other Office applications, working with collaboration tools, and using sample workbooks and John Walkenbach's award-winning Power Utility Pak to help enhance your Excel skills Provides tips, tricks, and techniques for expanding Excel's capabilities with VBA that you wont find anywhere else Excel 2013 Power Programming with VBA is packed with procedures, tips, and ideas for achieving Excel excellence with VBA.

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are


Seth Stephens-Davidowitz - 2017
    This staggering amount of information—unprecedented in history—can tell us a great deal about who we are—the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential—revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health—both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.