Books like Program or Be Programmed

This book starts in a similar historical location as Bod’s book but quickly moves through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—settling into the “information theory” era established by Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, and others in the 1940s-1960s.

I love this book because it situates the intellectual climate leading to our current dystopia of information overload. Gleick’s teasing of chaos theory inevitably pushes the reader to explore his book on the subject from the 1980s: Chaos: Making a New Science (1987).

I always find myself applying algorithmic thinking in my everyday life—it affects the way I put away dishes, navigate to the store, and organize my to-do lists. And I think others could benefit from that mindset.

So, when I read this book, my reaction was "Yes! That's what I want people to know. I just wish I could have said it that well!" The authors (who I know, but didn't know they wrote a book together), did a fantastic job of selecting algorithms with deep human connections. Really! And they explain them just right, without getting too mathematical but while still hitting the key ideas with clarity and accuracy. Fantastic!

Lee covers and connects two of my favorite topics, creativity, and technology. From the facts and truths of technology to the role models play in creativity (looking at how early philosophers suggested modeling thought), he argues that computers are not universal machines and that their power comes from their partnership with humans.

My first 3 picks put much of the blame for widespread attention capture on greedy actors engaged in a “race to the bottom of the brainstem” (Tristan Harris, former Google employee, became popular opponent of exploitative big tech). 

Although Carr does not shy from that theme, he seems to put much of the responsibility on our own shoulders: it is we who must resist many temptations of convenience in order to preserve our own cognitive strengths, such as creativity. Otherwise, we become shallow thinkers and reliant on AI even for something as characteristically human as wisdom. 

Carr’s follow-up to this book, The Glass Cage, is also very intriguing, and it offers a little more hope for a humanity that is currently bound up in a web of frightening technological dependency.

In my mind, Carr nails the real threats of AI: a total dumming-down of humanity to a level where we… show more.

John Brockman has composed 150 short essays on the dominant question of our time, how is the Internet changing the way you think? This sparked the basis of my book. 

From pessimistic to optimistic views, the experts bring together different perspectives in different fields.

Too early to tell? Is our thinking becoming more shallow? Some say the web is a work of genius and the greatest achievement of the human race.

The fields of Psychology, Economics, and Biology are well-known for offering interesting and informative introductory courses that provide a doorway into the area for budding scientists but also essential background knowledge appropriate for any educated person.

In Computer Science, we don't really do things that way. I wanted to offer a new kind of Computer Science introductory course that laid out the coolest ideas we have to offer along with compelling descriptions of why they matter.

I ended up using this book as the required reading in the class I built because it tells a personal, moving story while taking the reader from the nuts and bolts of bits and bytes all the way up to cutting-edge ideas surrounding artificial intelligence. It's a great read! Plus, it's short so I thought I could get my students to actually finish it.

So much of the public conversation around AI focuses on the extremes: "It's Going to Take Our Jobs And We'll Never Be Able To Work Ever Again!" or "It's Going To Create a Utopia And We'll Never Have To Work Ever Again!"

To be honest, I don't put a lot of credence into either of these perspectives. What I adore about this book is that it puts the technology in perspective in a concrete and laugh-out-loud funny way. Through detailed examples, it provides a glimpse into how the technology works, how it can be applied to real problems, and where it falls jaw-droppingly short. 

Palfrey is not just a known authority on internet law and emerging media, but also the former head of the prep school Phillips Academy, Andover; the former executive director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, a research center that studies cyberspace and internet-related legal issues; the head of the MacArthur Foundation; and, I learned before speaking with him, a great-great-grandson of Teddy Roosevelt. This book, newly updated, delves into the myriad permutations of what it means to grow up in a digital world, with your every move captured and publicized. Yes, it focuses on children growing up digital, but it will be of interest to anyone who has questions and concerns about the future of privacy—meaning, just about all of us. 

This might well be the least-read book on my list, but I hope that will change soon. Lanham is a Professor of Rhetoric who argues that Andy Warhol was the best economist of attention of the twentieth century, and an exemplar for the economy of the twenty-first, in which value is created through knowledge and attention. Lanham’s inspired distinction between stuff and fluff convincingly demonstrates that the modern economy is more about the experience, style, and packaging of the stuff, rather than the other way around. And that is a good thing. In one of the many digressions in the book he presents Friedrich Hayek as the Dadaist among the economists. This book is a wild ride, with insights on every page. 

A Seat at the Table is a wonderful book about how the role of tech leaders in general and CIO specifically have changed dramatically over the last decades.

From a cost center where spending should be kept to an absolute minimum, with a strong focus on hardware to an enabling role that drives and innovate business. Mark Schwartz guides us through these changes in his normal entertaining way.

I've rarely (never) laughed out loud from a business book but this one did that for me.