Information Abundance

Dig­i­tal enthu­si­asts typ­i­cally spend too much energy cheer-leading and no time focus­ing the world on the real prob­lems and threats that the Inter­net has pro­duced. This read­ing list is designed to as an anti­dote. It fea­tures a num­ber of authors who real­is­ti­cally warn us of the risks of mind­lessly embrac­ing pow­er­ful tools before we under­stand them, with­out rais­ing apoc­a­lyp­tic fears to scrap the under­tak­ing alto­gether. HT to Siva Vaid­hyanathan for trig­ger­ing this list with her review of Delete.

Read­ing List

• To read
• Rec­om­mended
• You have bet­ter things to do

• Jaron Lanier. You Are Not a Gad­get: A Man­i­festo, 2010
• Eliz­a­beth Losh. Vir­tu­alpoli­tik: An Elec­tronic His­tory of Gov­ern­ment Media-Making in a Time of War, Scan­dal, Dis­as­ter, Mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and Mis­takes, 2009 [blurb]
• Vik­tor Mayer-Schönberger. Delete: The Virtue of For­get­ting in the Dig­i­tal Age, 2009 [blurb]
• Daniel J. Solove
  • The Future of Rep­u­ta­tion: Gos­sip, Rumor, and Pri­vacy on the Inter­net, 2007 [blurb]
  • Under­stand­ing Pri­vacy, 2008 [blurv]
• Cass R. Sunstein
  • Republic.com 2.0, 2007 [blurb]
  • Info­topia: How Many Minds Pro­duce Knowl­edge, 2006 [blurb. Mem­o­rable for “infor­ma­tion cocoons, the cozy insu­late of com­fort­ing opin­ions that reaf­firm our core beliefs.]
• Jonathan Zit­train. The Future of the Inter­net — And How to Stop iIt, 2007 [online, pre­view. We are fac­ing within five years a sig­nif­i­cant, dev­as­tat­ing and immi­nent attack on Inter­net infra­struc­ture, caused by one of very many who have deployed “mal­ware” to the Inter­net. When it hap­pens, gov­ern­ments will have every­thing they need to argue for a rad­i­cal change in the free­dom of the Inter­net. Unless we pre­pare now… Great, con­vinc­ing, level-headed arguments.]