Not Just An Account of One Gun, But a Story of Technology and Social Change
351495
If you're interested in Glocks, this book give you a lot of detail about where the guns came from and how they work (and are designed). But even more, you'll like this book if you're interested in reading about how we got where we are (presently, in the U.S.) in terms of superabundant handguns and a hypermilitarized police force. This is an account of how a piece of technology emerged in the 1980s and due to various forces (political, economic, legal, etc.) was part of sweeping change. In that way, it's a pretty amazing book.

The first part of the book covers how this gun, which was invented by some dude (okay, Gaston Glock) who was working out of his glorified garage, took off first in Europe and then in the U.S. That story line is followed through the rest of the book, explaining subsequent marketing to police forces and military agencies along with direct consumers. Details abound in this book, and I felt like I learned a lot about how this handgun in particular and handguns more generally gained in prominence and popularity from 1980 to the present.

I would have liked if Barrett (the author) had a more pronounced perspective. With that said, it's pretty cool how he traces the history of Glock handguns, matching up that story with stories about policing and politics. A lot has changed in the past few decades, when it comes to gun ownership and gun laws in the US, and the book gets into some of those developments.
1575998
I bought this book yesterday after reading a synopsis about it on Wired; it was absolutely fantastic.  The author takes the most important technological and cultural revolution of the last fifty years and pulls away the veneer to reveal a deep criminal underworld.  With the colored perspective that only a former hacker could offer, the author delivers both a survey course in the rise and fall of phreaking and hacking communities, as well as a compassionate narrative regarding its willing victims. Although I work in the tech field, I immediately realized that it was in no way a pre-requisite for enjoying this piece.  By focusing on characters and setting the author has done a terrific job of communicating the story without entangling the reader in unnecessary technical detail.
Every part disturbing as I hoped it would be, this book showcases how fragile the internet revolution has made sensitive data.  I felt like I was reading Le Carre, the double agents, the betrayal, it was everything to remind myself that this is a true story.  I have already recommended this to friends.
1037021
One of the delights of reading this book is that you get a sense of looking over the author's shoulder as he discovers the stories behind the places he explores. He looks at this incredibly complex interwoven complex of people and ideas and movements that have shaped a nation and finds a means of labeling the threads and spinning the similar fibers into a whole where in fact the disparate elements can still be discerned in the pattern of the resulting fabric. So from the Hudson valley to Silicon valley, this is the story of America, and increasingly the story of the planet.  Whether we follow a pioneer trail traced in mud ruts hardened nearly to stone, or the fiber optic cables the carry modern communication, we find our way to a the story of a people.
76148
This is the story of an age without budgets or limits.  It tells how Seymour Cray and his small team built not only the most powerful computers in the world, but commercialised them at the same time.

The book takes us from Cray's early days through the science and business of supercomputing, and it focusses more on the personalities than the technology, which to me at least is far more interesting.
4890228
Its a rare technology that becomes so pervasive and ubiquitous that for many people it becomes a necessary entity. Over the last decade, GPS is one of those technologies.

In Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds, author Greg Milner has written a highly engaging and fascinating book on the story of GPS.

More than just an embellishment of a Wikipedia entry on the topic; the book covers a wide variety of fascinating subjects connected to GPS. Matters from Polynesian navigation, precision agriculture, seismology all the way to meteorology and much more are detailed as to how they relate to navigation and GPS.

Chapter 5 is particularly interesting where Milner details the new phenomenon known as death by GPS. This is where GPS users lose cognitive ability, become disengaged from the road, and end up crashing or losing their way; ending in death. With all of the benefits that GPS affords, its meteoric rise into use means that we are now just beginning to take stock of how GPS can affect the cognitive map of people.

Milner writes that a study at Cornell University looked at the effect GPS use had on drivers and reached the conclusion that GPS has eliminated much of the need to pay attention. Sadly, that disengagement can result in tragic consequences.

Rather than just focusing on the satellites and underlying technology that makes GPS work, Milner goes behind the scenes and details the people and organizations that created GPS. While the benefits of GPS are astounding and revolutionary, Milner writes that it was not always such an easy sell. The creators of GPS had to deal with military and government bureaucracies, in which the GPS project came close to being cancelled on many occasions.

The only quibble I have with the book is that on a number of occasions, Milner uses acronyms without defining what they mean.

While most people use GPS via their smartphones or portable GPS devices, its also embedded in many areas and technologies that deal with nearly every aspect of daily living. In Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds, Greg Milner has written an interesting book about one of the most important technologies of recent times.
4273649
Race Against The Machine is a short but fascinating look at the fundamental role technology is playing in our current economic situation and the way we need to adapt to its future possible impact. I was slightly worried at the start that it was going to focus on statistics and economics but in fact it gets to the heart of the social changes and challenges we face as we enter the third industrial age.

This book echoes Kevin Kelley's What Technology Wants and Sex Time and Power by Leonard Shlain, both of which predict ever faster technology change and the prospect of a phase shift - the tipping point seen in nature when change speeds up beyond a certain speed. I believe we are headed towards such a phase shift and the changes we will see will be of a fundamental nature far beyond the current "more of the same" thinking that seems to prevail in many organisations.

Last night at a dinner party I spent most of my time sitting between a stay at home mother and a musician both of whom were very apprehensive about the Internet and technology. The mum saw it as eroding face to face communication and "forcing" her to do things she didn't want to. The musician was very negative about the Internet and preferred sticking to the vagaries of promoters and marketers than to embrace the possibilities of building his own audience on the social web. It is these people that Andrew and Erik are describing in their book. People caught out by the speed at which things are changing and feeling that they are being disenfranchised rather than enabled by what is happening to them.

Not only do we need to improve education as the authors suggest but we need to educate the educators. Many of those involved in education don't really understand the world that Andrew and Erik describe - and which the children they teach will inhabit. We also need to educate people already in the workforce - to help them adapt to the changes they will increasingly face. In fact this is the optimistic scenario that the authors manage to cling to throughout the book - that we will adapt to what is happening and work with technology rather that fight against it. We will use our increased capabilities to invent totally new products and markets and new ways for people to make and exchange money.

For a book that pulls no punches about the challenges we face it still left me optimistic - even excited - about what lies ahead.
2088621
I can't write objectively about a book written by a friend in which my own name appears with some frequency. Please accept this biased review from a longtime Amazon reviewer.

Dan Feltham has captured an experience that was not only unique within the lives of all of us who participated with IBM in Vietnam, but certainly unique within the history of warfare. Every war is uniquely defined by the technologies it employs, and the rather slow human adaptation to those technologies. World War I, for instance, was defined by trenches, machine guns, gas and airplanes. Mechanically, the Vietnam War was defined by helicopters, computers, and awesome firepower. Politically it was defined by a foreign-policy that did not fit the beneficiary country, Vietnam and a military establishment that was out of sync with domestic social developments.

1960s computer technology was such a vast improvement over other forms of record recordkeeping that it absolutely had to be used to keep track of military supplies and personnel. It was also the best tool available for planning Air Force sorties, managing military intelligence databases, managing civil programs such as land reform, and management reporting on the progress of the war. Transpacific communications were still fairly primitive. A phone call to the United States was a rare and costly thing. Computers generally talked to each other by generating punched cards or magnetic tapes that would be carried to a transmission machine, then sent to another transmission machine to produce input to a computer on the other hand. It was cumbersome.

The upshot was that most of the computer programming in support of the Vietnam War was actually done in Vietnam. IBM supported the programmers, and quite frequently wound up doing some of the programming ourselves. I, for instance, programmed the computer support for keypunching and printing using the Vietnamese language. IBM had a total complement of something over 100 people in Vietnam maintaining computers, supporting programming, and doing the usual sales department tasks of configuring computers and taking orders.

Working in Vietnam changed the lives of this group of bachelors rather significantly. For most of us it was our first experience overseas. It gave us a vast opportunity to travel. We were quite handsomely paid; it did not take much effort to accumulate an appreciable nest egg. And, as the British said of Americans during the second war, we were "overpaid, oversexed, and over there."  We had a tremendous amount to offer young Vietnamese ladies who were working for a pittance and whose men were off fighting. And  they had the obvious to offer us, and they gave generously. Many of us married Vietnamese, and a substantial number remain happily so. Dan includes some touching love stories in the book.

This assignment took a special breed of manager. One could not go simply by the book - there were unusual judgment calls to be made every day, not infrequently involving the well-being and even the lives of those of us working there. Dan devotes a lot of the book to giving tribute to the extraordinary men who lead the enterprise. I will say for myself and saying that my friendships from this era, now more than 40 years past, remain the strongest of my business life, and that one of my best friends remains the third level manager who oversaw our operation from Washington DC. These guys represent the greatest generation, or at least following immediately in their footsteps.

I'll close with a thank you to Dan for bringing closure to this project which has occupied him for a couple of decades. It had to be done now, and it was done right.
3638458
Books about technology's progress and impact are a little too common. Some of us readers avoid most tech business books after we read the first one that teaches us nothing new. And then there are so many that boldly predict a future that never happens  again wasting our time. Hence, I've been avoiding them for years.

But an excerpt from "Dogfight..." caught my eye, and being that it was about Apple (admitted Apple addict since finding a Mac in a friend's closet in 1984) I felt it was time to 'read tech' again. I'm thankful I did.

The author is engaging, so it's a hard book to put down. The insights into the cultures of the two companies and the changing use of patents in legal strategy may be nothing new to daily readers of the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Mashable, TechCrunch and other sources. But for the readers who choose not to take on a steady diet of those topicsmuch less analyze the rapidly transforming world of entertainment contentthis book presents a valuable, concise, and presumed accurate perspective on some of the most important change going on in business today.

While the author doesn't predict the future, he gives us enough understanding of the many players in the two key fields slowly merging, entertainment and technology, that we come away from the book wiser, more aware, and optimistic about our lives to come.
369147
While it would be reasonable to expect the history of a device to bore, The One Device reads more like a biography than a history and flows more like a novel than a biography. This is due in no small part to author Brian Merchants skill as a researcher and storyteller, but then, iPhones genesis, development, and eventual delivery do not lack for drama. Along the way, the reader will discover interesting, sometimes troubling subplots, e.g., many iPhone technologies are not as new or original as you might think, Steve Jobs as visionary-instigator is largely revisionist PR, and iPhone components, which come from all over the world, often incur great human cost. You know how the story endswith you and me holding a device that changed how we communicate, shop, get our news, and spend our leisure time. The One Device will keep you reading to find out how the backstory unfolds.
1001887
This is an engaging narrative about the history of social media, from the beginnings in ancient Mesopotamia to the modern era.  While there was a lot that I already knew about how the Romans sent messages, what I did enjoy was the added research author Tom Standage added from a sociological perspective, such as Robert Dunbar's studies of the correlation between the neocortex ratio and group size in primates.

The Reformation of 1523 and his Edict of Worms written by Martin Luther is also well-known, and in fact the earlier chapters may be a rehash of old social studies books from several decades ago.  This makes for an interesting compare-and-contrast study of mass communications over the centuries.  Which proves that humans have always had some form of social media and only the tools have changed since then.  From clay tablets and chariot-driven messengers,  smoke signals and village criers to our modern day internet social media forums, we are a social animal that like to announce our latest events and want some kind of attention for it.

While the focus here in this book is about mass communications, Standage's study of social media and its transformation is an interesting read.  Chapter 9, "The Rise of Mass Media: the Centralization Begins" and Chapter 10, "The Opposite of Social Media: Media in the Broadcast Era" are a good prelude to the final chapter, "The Rebirth of Social Media: From Arpanet to Facebook."  Interesting is also credit that Standage gives to the near instant and constant news updates during the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2010, proof that the fast and far-reaching social media forums today can help foment change in countries still on the glocal watch list, like China, North Korea, Russia and a few others.

Anyone who uses social media today can relate to the last chapter and agree that social media as we know it today is here to change.  A highly-recommended read.
3575748
steven levy truly does a great job writing about computers from its beginnings as the domain of a very few select, perhaps nerdy, but extremely intelligent group of students and non-students at MIT to the explosion of  personal computers in the 1980s. the book ends at 1984 (when it was first  published), so it does not go into the internet boom, but up until that  point it provides an extensive and also entertaining view of what was going  on and who was making it all happen.
i highly recommend this book to  everyone that wants to know the beginnings of our technology-driven  society, whether you are technical minded or not. don't be discouraged by  the talk of machines you may never have heard of or programming languages  and hardware terms you're not familiar with -- these are important to the  story, no doubt, but levy explains everything clearly from where the term  'hackers' orignated to why IBM 'hulking giants' were so disdained to what  chip does what. and the main story being told is not in the machinery  itself, but in the people.
the book reads like fiction. from the middle  school genius kids who were openly accepted into the MIT hackers groups, to  the cocky 19-year-old named bill gates who refused to share his code openly  the way everyone else was doing with each other at the time, and to the  20-something millionaires of the gaming revolution in the 1980s, levy shows  us what was happening but also gives us insight into what made these people  who they were.
levy has done his research. with facts from extensive  interviews, re-interviews, newspaper articles and other resources, he's  managed to put together not just a story about the birth and 'growing up'  of personal computing, but also show us the human spirit of these geniuses  and artists. if you are at all interested in 'hacking' (whether  computer-based or otherwise) this book will doubtless inspire you to spend  sleepless nights working on your creations knowing that amazing things can  happen when you put your mind to it.
as a woman, i'm only sorry that  there weren't more women hackers to admire and look up to among all the  men, but then, that's not a flaw of the book so much as a sad truth of  history.
this book may be out of print, but it is not outdated, and well  worth searching through a few used bookstores to find a copy. borrow mine  if you must :)
1128448
Tech advances have changed our world radically over the last decade and are changing it faster still. Through this impeccably researched book, besides understanding how published music and movies & TV businesses have changed, we can get profound insights into how much power we as individuals have given to Big Data companies, how our society, indeed our politics, or democracy is being changed under our noses.
1424877
For the past several years, it seems as though I rarely have any discussion with business executives or consumers that sooner or later doesn't turn to the topic of change and how technology is driving that change. In the longer and more focused conversations, we often wind up sharing views about where things are headed. Usually, we end up being either a bit giddy with exciting possibilities or totally bummed out over the impossibility of keeping up. And then came Jaron Lanier's 2013 book Who Owns the Future?

The question is intriguing to me. Who will own the future? Lanier makes a solid case that we are at a point to change the trajectory of ownership from information moguls, in the form of "Siren Servers," to a vast middle class. His argument, solid though it may be, is not always easy to follow. I found this book made me think deeply about topics and concepts to which I had previously only given light treatment.

In a nutshell, and overly simplified, here is the premise: Anyone and everyone connected to and actively using the web is providing data to the myriad companies they touch electronically. That data is being collected, stored, aggregated and used to sell you back the targeted ads so coveted by the companies selling products and services. We have the computing horse power to track the original source of the information, but we do not. If we did, we could make sure "micro or nano-payments" are made to every individual whose information is used by people all the way up the food chain. Such a system of payment for data would create a more equitable distribution of income from the massive amount of data we're collecting and by doing so, create a vast middle income class that would in turn provide real customer opportunities for companies.

"The information economy that we are currently building doesn't really embrace capitalism, but rather a new form of feudalism." - Jaron Lanier

At this point, we are willingly giving up our data without compensation because we are enticed by the "free" use of applications, websites and cloud computing. If we continue on this path, technology of all kinds will continue to destroy more jobs than it creates thus hollowing out an already diminishing middle class. The system is obviously not sustainable. To quote the author; "The cloud is driven by statistics, and even in the worst individual cases of personal ignorance, dullness, idleness, or irrelevance, every person is constantly feeding data into the cloud these days. The value of such information could be treated as genuine, but it is not. Instead, the blindness of our standards of accounting to all that value is gradually breaking capitalism."

Lanier reminds us that we all know, or at least should know, that there is no pure form of capitalism, and we have never really experienced anything other than a regulated capitalism. Therefore, we should not be afraid to "tweak" our system to be sure that we do not allow the continued demised of the middle class or our whole system will fail.

Lanier's is an important book with a timely and serious message. Technologists and business leaders would do well to read this call to change the direction in which we now find ourselves heading. Technology can be seen as creating this challenge as well as being able to mitigate the negative effects. To do so, we must see that we are creating an unsustainable model and make the necessary corrections, difficult as that may be.
4128520
I really don't care or want a long diatribe about the technological process of putting Google Maps and Earth together.  And fortunately, that is not what Bill Kilday is doing in this book.  He is telling you how all this came about-- how it affected our daily lives, culture, and thinking--and exploded a new world on us.  As a Texan, I have to say that the first thing that hit me in reading this book, was what a great story-teller Kilday is, which is a
Texas tradition. That's what makes this a fun, informative read, and a great overview of how we have been changed by this particular part of the technological world.  I don't think I could have gotten a better approach to all of this.
4866154
very current and interesting read about how  technology has altered the society of today and will change to world of tomorrow
3564848
I recently read Walter Isaacson's fascinating book "The Innovators" which detailed the historic evolution of innovation and the compilation of developments that, over the centuries, have now come to inform and underwrite the on-going tech and digital revolution of our time. If Isaacson's book is the "who, what, when and how" of this revolution, Gerd Leonhard's recent book, "Technology vs. Humanity", takes things one step further with an essential corollary  that suggests that we have reached a key inflection / reflection point that begs the essential question: "OK, now that we're here, just exactly what is the broader significance  of this revolution?"

Leonhard sets out the potential impact (individual, societal, the good, bad and ugly) of current and emerging technologies, exploring those functions that, in an ethical sense, tech can, cannot, could or should not be allowed to perform. The book is a well sequenced, concise, and accessible read that considers the practical benefits of these technologies while weighing up their attendant ethical and moral challenges.  The challenges are diverse and the exploration of the shortcomings and limits of technology (AR / VR and others), and their inherent inability to actually be as human as some purport, is well argued and illustrated.

While not overly gloomy or dystopian (these scenarios are explored, however) "Technology vs. Humanity" is a guardedly optimistic yet cautionary tale suggesting that, if the technology elephant is not already fully in the room, it certainly has a rather large  and suspicious foot in the door and that the need for action is imperative before opening the door any further.

"Technology vs. Humanity" repeatedly describes technological evolution as "gradually, then suddenly", and I sense that, although not expressly articulated, what comes next would likely be, "and then it's too late." This book is a wake up call to individuals and is particularly so for policy makers at the national, international and, especially, supranational level of public policy and regulation. This would also include the private sector: business stakeholders, those responsible for corporate social responsibility and, very importantly, ethical investors large and small all of whom need to be asking serious questions about the wider individual and societal impact of the  technologies they use and promote. Leonhard structures the on-going debate by providing a useful framework consisting of nine suggested principles and seven essential questions.

The clock is ticking - read "Technology vs. Humanity" gradually, suddenly or however you like, but get on with it before it is too late.
2446592
This informative and engaging book provides a behind the scenes look at the digital music revolution, bringing readers into the complex drama surrounding the development of the MP3 audio compression standard and the evolution of technology that allowed for fast and easy copying of music. Computer technology, acoustics, audio engineering, music industry politics, and other factors that play a part in this mix are explored with insight and wit by author Stephen Witt.

I would have to say that the title is a bit misleading, as the music industry that existed before MP3s hasn't ended, it has just been forced to radically change its focus and form of operation. There also isn't really a "patient zero" of piracy, as once the technology and software needed to copy music came into the public domain there were many people using it. Witt just focuses on the key, influential layers in these dramas, while explaining the evolution of technology that brought these revolutionary changes in the music and recording business. I found this book to be informative and riveting, telling the backstory to what many of us have observed as music consumers or musicians. As a person who worked in college radio and record stores in the early 90s and was an avid collector and amateur musician, I saw many of the things that Witt discusses: the rise of MP3s in online filing sharing and the steady decline of the CD as technology allowed for distribution and streaming of music and ease of piracy that could never be reigned in.

For anyone with an interest in the music industry this book is a fascinating and enjoyable read.