Books about technology, how it shapes our lives, its pitfalls, and how things can get better.
Tech Should (and Can) be Better Public
Created and curated by Derek Caelin
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Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock
4 stars
An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological …
Derek Caelin says: We need to prioritize and value marginalized users when we build tools.
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Code and other laws of cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig
4 stars
Although the book is named Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig uses this theme sparingly. It is a fairly …
Derek Caelin says: An aging tome (the surveillance capitalism bogeyman of the era this was written is AOL) but still incredibly relevant and sound.
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Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tüfekçi
Could the ability to organize massive protests quickly on Facebook and Twitter be making those protests vulnerable in the long …
Derek Caelin says: How we organize impacts the resilience, capacity, and cohesion of movements.
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Derek Caelin says: The big tech companies that underly our digital world impact what everything that is built upon them.
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Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
3 stars
Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for …
Derek Caelin says: Many tech solutions are designed to mitigate the problems on society rather than challenge the structural and systemic factors causing them.
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Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, A New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet by Trebor Scholz, Nathan Schneider
3 stars
Real democracy and the Internet are not mutually exclusive.
Here, for the first time in one volume, are some of …
Derek Caelin says: What if we built tools where the users of the tool were the owners, rather than the product to be sold.
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Antisocial media by Siva Vaidhyanathan
3 stars
"If you wanted to build a machine that would distribute propaganda to millions of people, distract them from important issues, …
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Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
4 stars
A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life — and threaten to …
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Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism by Wendy Liu
4 stars
Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why …
