Books like Privacy's Blueprint — picked by fans

Hate Crimes in Cyberspace begins with a series of horror stories, showing in the most compelling and visceral way the harm caused by online harassment. Citron shows us that online harassment is disproportionately focused on women and marginalized people. Far from rare, the harassment is frighteningly prevalent. The harassers make vile threats of rape and murder, post nude photos, engage in doxing, and spew disturbing messages of hate. All the more terrifying is that the people seething with hatred are not in a distant faraway land. They are here among us; they are professionals, students, and others that appear polite in person. 

After opening our eyes to this harrowing shadowy world, Citron discusses how the law ought to respond. She argues that civil rights law can effectively address the problem – but the law must evolve to make this happen. She also thoughtfully explores how protections against harassment don’t… show more.

I had a hard time choosing which book by Richards to include, as his earlier book, Intellectual Privacy, is a superb discussion about how privacy is essential for our expression and consumption of ideas. In Why Privacy Matters, Richards broadens his focus to discuss other reasons why privacy is important. He debunks common myths, such as privacy is dying or privacy is about creepiness. In an eloquent and clear way, Richards explains why privacy matters for our identity, freedom, and protection. This book powerfully shows that how we think about privacy is essential to effectively safeguarding it. Richards writes in an engaging and accessible way, but his book has tremendous depth and insight. 

Anita Allen is one of the pioneers of privacy law who began exploring privacy issues long before most others. She holds a PhD in philosophy, and in all her books, she explores privacy in a rich theoretical way but also a personal way too. Deeply humanistic, her work is thought-provoking and wide-ranging. I could have listed many of her great books, but the one that stands out the most to me is Uneasy Access. One of the earliest books written about privacy, Uneasy Access discusses privacy in the most illuminating way. The book makes an enormous contribution in discussing the role that privacy plays in women’s lives, but its conceptual work on privacy provides such clarity that it makes this book one of the best theoretical discussions of privacy across all contexts. 

Ari Waldman’s Industry Unbound eviscerates many of the current privacy laws and corporate privacy programs. On the surface, we appear to be living in the golden age of privacy law. Privacy laws are being passed at a feverish rate. Many companies now have dedicated teams of individuals who build a privacy program at the company to comply with the laws, assess privacy risks, train employees, and ensure that products and services are designed in ways that are protective of privacy. Unfortunately, Waldman contends, these privacy programs are hollow. They amount to building a meaningless paper record and end up cloaking poor privacy practices with a pretty facade. Even those who do not agree with the potency of Waldman’s critique must take note of the concerns he raises. His arguments are essential to engage with.  

This book dazzles me every time I read it. It will change the way you think about files and how such humble little documents can help rule our lives. Vismann’s Files is not the easiest going, but it is filled with enough history and detail that one can just join for the ride and follow along. The late Cornelia Vismann died too young but she still managed to leave us with this truly transformative account of the relation between law and the data systems upon which all law always relies. Through a careful history that stretches from parchment scrolls to mid-twentieth-century secret intelligence files to the desktop computer, Vismann excavates the way in which the ethics, politics, and legality of social systems are highly dependent upon data designs.

Yes, Stella is a book – but it’s really a fable about how to cut through corporate inertia and bureaucracy to drive innovation.

When I first read it, I was blown away – a story about farm animals saving their farm from bankruptcy – with lots of clear and compelling messages. And it was actually fun to read. Since I first learned about it from one of the authors (we were working with a common client), I’ve recommended it to lots of other executives, and it’s made a difference.

One of the key lessons from Stella is that truly transformative innovation often needs to be separated from the core business – with different resources, budgets, metrics, and expectations. Otherwise it’s going to be in competition with the core business – and it will end up getting the short end of the stick in terms of money and people.

Then when… show more.

This book provides a backstage pass into IDEO, one of the top design firms in the world. Combining humor and storytelling with practical advice, it offers insights into their process of innovation, from observation and brainstorming to prototyping and breaking through barriers. Written before design thinking evolved into a major force in education and industry, this book welcomed me into IDEO's world of playful invention.

In this book, Baron provides an accessible and comprehensive guide to the latest knowledge on a specific digital activity: reading with screens. Her focused and nuanced perspective on a specific aspect of living with screens is a refreshing approach. I enjoyed reading about research on digital reading from various perspectives and the practical advice for applying this knowledge to my own reading habits. I particularly liked the engaging account of the differences between reading print and digital books and how that is different from audio stories. As someone who has been researching young children’s reading in relation to new media, I found the summary of research on various types of text particularly interesting.

Can ideas change the world? How does belief in political equality—the idea that everyone deserves basic unbridgeable liberties—affect innovation and economic development?

Dierdre McCloskey—one of the most creative and interesting economists alive—takes on these topics and much more in her characteristically witty, fast-paced style. She loves describing and refuting bad ideas—or even ideas widely regarded as brilliant—in an effort to go deeper into the forces that lifted humans out of poverty and sustain innovation to this day.

This is a recent book and it does what it says in the title, showing through dozens of examples across history how collective intelligence evolved. It includes some familiar recent examples, like Zooniverse and Foldit, Citizens Assemblies, and Taiwan, as well as surprising ones from Athens to medieval Europe.

The core of the book provides a theoretical perspective that distinguishes what the author calls ‘human swarm’, ‘stigmergic’, and ‘collaborative’ problem solving, in each case linking contemporary examples to historical ones.