Category: books
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Quarterly review: FY14Q3
Below are links to all the off-the-cuff reviews of books and film from this quarter. I didn’t add to my list of more in depth reviews. During 2013Q3 I did not read as many books, but read a few comics and got addicted to Brian K. Vaughan’s Saga (vol 1, vol 2) and Matt Fraction’s…
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Quarterly review: FY2013Q2
Below are links to all the off-the-cuff reviews of books and film from this quarter, besides my more in depth reviews. During 2013Q2 my family spent 7 weeks in Japan, so there was quite a spike in my media consumption. I do not even list the television series that I watched while they were away.…
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4 more horsemen — a review of Cypherpunks
Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet by Andy Greenberg NOTE: Originally posted on Medium. This book is really a footnoted conversation between Julian Assange, Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn and Jérémie Zimmermann, some big names in the internet/activist/anarchist/online security communities. It would have been great to see this as a video, but in some…
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Unbridled optimism — a review of Abundance
Abundance: The future is better than you think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler Abundance is a book of two parts, with a sprinkling of Singularity University and XPRIZE promotion and some nice little autobiographical tidbits. The first part introduces the arguments against abundance (Thomas Malthus, Club of Rome, etc.) and attempts to brute force…
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The New Banality — a review of The New Digital Age
The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen Since I read This Machine Kills Secrets first, this book seems particularly dangerous to the web as a whole. Universal User Registration? A supranational committee for quarantining non-conforming IPs? This is a company guy and a government…
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ʎɥɔɹɐuɐoʇdʎɹɔ — a review of This Machine Kills Secrets
This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information by Andy Greenberg NOTE: Originally posted on Medium. “Hacker culture” is often characterized by curiosity, meritocracy, independence and self-reliance. It is no wonder that libertarianism enjoys such prevalence in Silicon Valley. “Freedom through encryption” is the clarion call of a…
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Future classic — a review of The Windup Girl
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi NOTE: Originally posted on Medium. Modern genre fiction, that is science fiction and fantasy from the post Cold War era, is certainly entertaining, but not challenging — a meal replacement pill as compared to Haute cuisine. The authoritarian communist threat is done, and the public generally views space exploration…
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Quarterly review: FY13Q1
Upon finishing a particularly thought-provoking book or film I will sometimes spend a few days mulling it over before writing a review on this blog. Sometimes I just dash off a quick review on Goodreads or Letterboxd. For the sake of completeness, I thought that each quarter I would post my list of off-the-cuff reviews.…
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My year in books, 2012
This year was a good one for books. I originally set 2012’s goal to 30. I thought with a new baby on the way I wouldn’t have as much time for reading. On the contrary, there was lots of manual labour giving me more time to listen to audiobooks. Since I didn’t read any more…
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From bits to atoms — a review of Makers
Makers: The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson Like others have mentioned, this book is pretty repetitive and drawn out. It is written in the shadows of his previous two books, but Anderson doesn’t seem to mind — cross-promotion abounds. Probably the most ingratiating bit is his constant construction of catchphrases. He writes as if…