Category Archives: Books (PSA)

Julie E. Cohen, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism (2019)

From Joseph Turow (Robert Lewis Shayon Chair Professor, The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania): “Julie Cohen presents a highly knowledgeable, nuanced analysis of the challenges that the twenty-first century’s digital environment presents to the legal and regulatory apparatus, which was built in the industrial age.  Every page holds important insights, and every chapter…

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2019)

“Zuboff’s book is the information industry’s Silent Spring.” –Christopher Hoofnagle, University of California, Berkeley

Samantha Barbas, Confidential Confidential: The Inside Story of Hollywood’s Notorious Scandal Magazine (2018)

From the Wall Street Journal: “In ‘Confidential Confidential,’ law professor Samantha Barbas recounts the inside story of the ‘little magazine that could’ with drama, humor, and verve…Ms. Barbas paces her terrific story well, and the book ends with her cogent analysis of Confidential’s larger significance.”

Joseph Turow, The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power (2018)

From Shoshana Zuboff (Harvard Business School): “The store is a battleground for new contests over privacy and individual autonomy. This fact-filled book performs a genuine public service and should put every shopper on high alert.”

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data (2018)

From Kevin Werbach (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania): “Anyone interested in the future of business should read this fascinating book as soon as possible. By now it is conventional wisdom–thanks in no small part to Mayer-Schönberger’s previous book–that big data will transform the way firms operate. Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data…

Edward Tenner, The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do (2018)

From Arthur Molella (Smithsonian Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation): “This masterly study challenges naïve assumptions that characterize our twenty-first-century world of electronic hyperefficiency. Computers, big data, and artificial intelligence are too often allowed to supersede human judgment and indeed undermine our very self-confidence as human beings. Yet no electronic machine can…

Meredith Broussard, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (2018)

From Times Higher Education: “Illustrated with examples from Broussard’s own work and experience, this is an intensely personal journey that gives a real sense of travelling with a friend. Her descriptions of hackathons and other aspects of start-up culture are honest and atmospheric, capturing the social as well as the technical aspects of the marketplace…

Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence (2018)

From Susan Athey (Stanford University): “Prediction Machines is a path-breaking book that focuses on what strategists and managers really need to know about the AI revolution. Taking a grounded, realistic perspective on the technology, the book uses principles of economics and strategy to understand how firms, industries, and management will be transformed by AI.”

Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor (2018)

From Henry Giroux (McMaster University): “Startling and brilliant… As Eubanks makes crystal clear, automation coupled with the new technologies of ethical abandonment and instrumental efficiency threaten not only the lives of millions who are viewed as disposable but also democracy itself. If you want to understand how this digital nightmare is reaching deep into the…

Bruce Schneier, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World (2018)

From the Financial Times: “Schneier skillfully guides readers through serious attacks that have happened already―and moves on to those he believes are just over the horizon…. Schneier sets out detailed solutions that should be required reading for politicians across the world.”