Here are 47 books that The Filing Cabinet fans have personally recommended if you like
The Filing Cabinet.
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I’ve always been attracted to picking apart “taken-for-granted” things and wondered how ubiquitous and mundane technologies have become that way. What were they before they were ordinary? When I started researching and writing about push buttons, I discovered that the interfaces right under our fingers have a long and complex history. I loved reading about a time when pushing a button was both a novelty and a danger, and these recommended books similarly reframe familiar technologies as anything but familiar. I hope that these books will add a little bit of strangeness to the every day, just like they did for me!
I opened up this book as a skeptic–how interesting could a history of this ubiquitous writing tool be? However, I quickly ate my words (a fitting metaphor for such a book) after diving into Henry Petroski’s meticulously researched and easy to read tale of how a common thing becomes common in the first place.
While the book is a study in engineering, it’s also a story of people who doodle, think, design, and imagine. Petroski taught me that much as we live in a digital age, we’re indebted to the simple and impressively designed artifacts that stick around century after century.
Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve always been attracted to picking apart “taken-for-granted” things and wondered how ubiquitous and mundane technologies have become that way. What were they before they were ordinary? When I started researching and writing about push buttons, I discovered that the interfaces right under our fingers have a long and complex history. I loved reading about a time when pushing a button was both a novelty and a danger, and these recommended books similarly reframe familiar technologies as anything but familiar. I hope that these books will add a little bit of strangeness to the every day, just like they did for me!
Ainissa Ramirez is a scientist and a storyteller, and from page one of this book, I found myself transfixed by her ability to make complex things comprehensible. From the springs that make clocks work and the carbon filaments that help us see to the electrons in glass that now power computers and smartphones, Ramirez taught me how much matter matters in understanding technological developments of the present moment.
My favorite part of the book is her writing style, as she begins each chapter with an inviting anecdote, like how Abraham Lincoln’s body was carried in a funeral rail car made possible by the steel in train tracks.
A “timely, informative, and fascinating” study of 8 inventions—and how they shaped our world—with “totally compelling” insights on little-known inventors throughout history (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction)
In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines 8 inventions and reveals how they shaped the human experience:
• Clocks • Steel rails • Copper communication cables • Photographic film • Light bulbs • Hard disks • Scientific labware • Silicon chips
Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention…
I’ve always been attracted to picking apart “taken-for-granted” things and wondered how ubiquitous and mundane technologies have become that way. What were they before they were ordinary? When I started researching and writing about push buttons, I discovered that the interfaces right under our fingers have a long and complex history. I loved reading about a time when pushing a button was both a novelty and a danger, and these recommended books similarly reframe familiar technologies as anything but familiar. I hope that these books will add a little bit of strangeness to the every day, just like they did for me!
We live in a world of documents caught between new and old, between paper and bits–from library cards and movie tickets to PDFs–and media historian Lisa Gitelman explains why the “document” itself is so critical a category in modern society. Medical facilities, schools, governments, and prisons all require documentation, so this book is particularly useful in thinking about how societies organize around knowledge infrastructures and artifacts.
I marvel at how the book (and all of Gitelman’s work) is able to move so facilely between different historical moments and objects, weaving them together into a tapestry that is more than the sum of its parts. While we might think of “media” as radio, TV, newspapers, or the internet, Gitelman helped me understand that media is so much more.
Paper Knowledge is a remarkable book about the mundane: the library card, the promissory note, the movie ticket, the PDF (Portable Document Format). It is a media history of the document. Drawing examples from the 1870s, the 1930s, the 1960s, and today, Lisa Gitelman thinks across the media that the document form has come to inhabit over the last 150 years, including letterpress printing, typing and carbon paper, mimeograph, microfilm, offset printing, photocopying, and scanning. Whether examining late nineteenth century commercial, or "job" printing, or the Xerox machine and the role of reproduction in our understanding of the document, Gitelman…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I’ve always been attracted to picking apart “taken-for-granted” things and wondered how ubiquitous and mundane technologies have become that way. What were they before they were ordinary? When I started researching and writing about push buttons, I discovered that the interfaces right under our fingers have a long and complex history. I loved reading about a time when pushing a button was both a novelty and a danger, and these recommended books similarly reframe familiar technologies as anything but familiar. I hope that these books will add a little bit of strangeness to the every day, just like they did for me!
MP3s are a curious thing; they’re of the digital moment, and yet they’re already old-fashioned, given that we’re much more likely to stream than to save.
Jonathan Sterne’s book is one that I come back to over and over again because he impressed upon me the importance of thinking about format when trying to understand media. He explains the MP3’s “promiscuous social life” since the 1990s as it has moved between corporations and individuals, as a commodity sold and also one pirated and shared peer-to-peer.
As a curious student of musical culture, I’m intrigued by the seismic shifts that have occurred in the last decade, and Sterne reminded me that how music moves depends significantly on the form it takes in the first place.
MP3: The Meaning of a Format recounts the hundred-year history of the world's most common format for recorded audio. Understanding the historical meaning of the MP3 format entails rethinking the place of digital technologies in the larger universe of twentieth-century communication history, from hearing research conducted by the telephone industry in the 1910s, through the mid-century development of perceptual coding (the technology underlying the MP3), to the format's promiscuous social life since the mid 1990s.
MP3s are products of compression, a process that removes sounds unlikely to be heard from recordings. Although media history is often characterized as a progression…
Colin Koopman researches and teaches about technology ethics at the University of Oregon, where he is a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the interdisciplinary certificate program in New Media & Culture. His research pursuits have spanned from the history of efforts in the early twentieth century to standardize birth certificates to our understanding of ourselves as effects of the code inscribed into our genes. Koopman is currently at work on a book that will develop our understanding of what it takes to achieve equality and fairness in data systems, tentatively titled Data Equals.
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.
Quod non est in actis, non est in mundo. (What is not on file is not in the world.) Once files are reduced to the status of stylized icons on computer screens, the reign of paper files appears to be over. With the epoch of files coming to an end, we are free to examine its fundamental influence on Western institutions. From a media-theoretical point of view, subject, state, and law reveal themselves to be effects of specific record-keeping and filing practices. Files are not simply administrative tools; they mediate and process legal systems. The genealogy of the law described…
I love computers, and especially computer systems. I’m interested in how different pieces of hardware and software, like processors, operating systems, compilers, and linkers, work together to get things done. Early in my career, as a software security tester, I studied how different components interacted to find vulnerabilities. Now that I work on compilers, I focus on the systems that transform source code into a running program. I’m also interested in how computer systems are shaped by the people who build and use them—I believe that creating safer, more reliable software is a social problem as much as a technical one.
Although I don’t work in government, this is a book I’ll come back to whenever I need a reminder to put user needs ahead of process or wisdom about how to work inside a large bureaucracy to make that happen. Where Meltdown focuses on spectacular blow-ups, this book explores run-of-the-mill failures—like long, complicated online forms and websites that only load in specific, outdated browsers. (Though bigger failures, like the launch of healthcare.gov, get airtime too.)
I appreciated this book’s thoughtful analysis of how government software gets built—it goes beyond the stereotype of the incompetent government employee and digs into the underlying reasons that even competent and dedicated public servants can struggle to deliver critical software. Many of those reasons apply to private companies, too.
Learn more about Jennifer Pahlka's work at recodingamerica.us.
"The book I wish every policymaker would read." -Ezra Klein, The New York Times
A bold call to reexamine how our government operates-and sometimes fails to-from President Obama's former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America
Just when we most need our government to work-to decarbonize our infrastructure and economy, to help the vulnerable through a pandemic, to defend ourselves against global threats-it is faltering. Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
Some
time after starting out as an academic in the field of strategy, I became aware
of the fact that strategists thought and acted as if board members and
shareholders simply did not exist—executives made strategy. The
revelatory moment for me came when I tested this conception of the world
against the reality that I knew, Europe and family business, settings where shareholders
in particular have always played a critical role in deciding on the direction
of the firm. Ever since, I have made it my mission—in research, in
teaching, and in consulting—to make sure that strategy and governance
questions are always raised at the same time.
This is one of the very few books about corporate governance that provides truly useful, non-obvious tools for improving performance. Starting with a very good exposition of the challenges of modern corporate governance, Martin Hilb offers a variety of charts, self-tests, and questions for reflection that help owners, board members, and executives come to grips with their different roles in directing and controlling the firm. The situations discussed and the advice offered are relevant for listed and private companies – the best short primer on how to apply corporate governance.
In the 5th edition of this successful book Martin Hilb presents an innovative and integrated approach to the theory and practice of corporate governance. Central to this approach is a set of instruments - developed and tested by the author - that can be used by boards to offer effective strategic direction and control to their organizations. The board instruments can be readily applied to the selection, review, remuneration and development of board members, and for conducting board self-evaluations. This new approach to corporate governance is based on four guiding principles: keep it situational, keep it strategic, keep it integrated,…
I have been an information technology and cybersecurity professional for over two decades. I’ve learned over and over again that “people are the weakest link.” You can build the most secure system in the world, with stringent password requirements. But if the user writes their password down and leaves it where someone else can see it, system security is irrelevant! The easiest way to gain access to a system is via “social engineering” – to trick a human being into giving you the access you need, rather than trying to hack the systemitself. The books on this list will help the reader lower their chances of being exploited like this.
Security expert Bruce Schneier wrote this excellent book, talking about the “Goliaths” who are looking to exploit individuals’ data. Focusing more on politics (specifically US politics) than the other books on this list, Schneier talks about the Edward Snowden classified information reveal. He talks about mass surveillance conducted by the US and other governments around the world, and lays out in detail why this should concern us all.
Data is everywhere. We create it every time we go online, turn our phone on (or off) or pay with a credit card. This data is stored, studied, bought and sold by companies and governments for surveillance and for control. "Foremost security expert" (Wired) Bruce Schneier shows how this data has led to a double-edged Internet-a Web that gives power to the people but is abused by the institutions on which those people depend.
In Data and Goliath, Schneier reveals the full extent of surveillance, censorship and propaganda in society today, examining the risks of cybercrime, cyberterrorism and cyberwar.…
I have over 2 decades of finance control and general management experience spanning the manufacturing and retail sectors, in big names like LVMH. A finance controller’s job is all about efficiency and involves learning every new tool available that can help to achieve that goal. Through this work, I realized how many people are not ready for the tidal wave of disruption about to hit employees with AI and other technological changes. I was utterly shocked at not being able to find a single sensible guidebook with solutions actionable by workers.
The first comprehensive book on new tech and its impacts, following big steps made in AI progress in the early 2010s. The authors bring home the point that we are undergoing a watershed moment as tools no longer substitute merely for physical labor encroach on mental tasks – hence the book’s title.
After centuries of fleeing blue-collar jobs to take refuge in cerebral work, we are being left with nowhere to run. Not only that, but past technology would automate a given task, whereas the looming Artificial Intelligence is bound to intervene in many, many tasks currently handled by humans.
In recent years, computers have learned to diagnose diseases, drive cars, write clean prose and win game shows. Advances like these have created unprecedented economic bounty but in their wake median income has stagnated and employment levels have fallen. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee reveal the technological forces driving this reinvention of the economy and chart a path towards future prosperity. Businesses and individuals, they argue, must learn to race with machines. Drawing on years of research, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies and policies for doing so. A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will radically alter…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I am a scientist and technologist, trained in theoretical quantum physics, who became an Emeritus Professor of Network Technology from Oslo’s metropolitan university. I’ve strenuously tried to communicate the wonder of science to students and industry throughout my career. I’m also a long-standing fan of science fiction who grew up with heroes in both fact and fiction. The idea of future society has haunted me my whole life. I’m an optimist, who looks to the darker tales as warnings of futures we hope to avoid. Read these tales with a determination for us all to do better.
This book is not fiction, but rather a popular book about the direction of technology.
It was part of the original source inspiration for my own book. Written in 2003, it looked into the research about how mobile devices were beginning to change society, and redraw the lines to lead to modern tribalism. The book is now dated, as we have lived through twenty years of experience and much has changed.
Nevertheless, as a portrait of a moment in history, eminently readable, this book is an eye-opener.
How the convergence of mobile communications and computing is driving the next social revolution-transforming the ways in which people meet, mate, work, buy, sell, govern, and create. When Howard Rheingold sneaks off down an untrodden trail, everyone else follows. He is always onto something marvelous no one has seen before. An ever-considerate guide, he navigates this new world with ease, compassion, and grace, and gives you the inside story, with no punches pulled. Tech talk? Howard could get your mother to understand. }From Tokyo to Helsinki, Manhattan to Manila, Howard Rheingold takes us on a journey around the world for…
