Author: Adam Alter
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Review By: Shana

Alter's book packed a particular gut punch for me. Like many, I sometimes joke about being attached to my wireless devices, and I can point to many times I stayed up later, failed to run errands, or put off important chores because I was engrossed (or mindlessly scrolling) in the internet, social media, or a game. But as Alter explained the history of addiction and behavioral addiction, how it is defined, how it works in the brain, and then how our brains specifically interact with technology, I started to see myself and my relationship with my devices in a different way.

Author: Luke Harding
Rating: 3 Stars
Review By: Shana

Solid journalistic recounting of Edward Snowden's exposure of extralegal surveillance by the NSA. The book reads well and offers some perspective that was not possible to get in real time as one headline after another assaulted the world. While the author sometimes seems a bit dramatic (which can color the objectivity of certain passages), overall the facts and events are recounted with a fair amount of balance. 

Author: John Markoff
Rating: 4 Stars
Review By: Shana

This is a thorough and thoughtfully written history of the sometimes-at-odds scientific pursuits of AI (artificial intelligence) and IA (intelligence augmentation). Markoff does an admirable job of giving enough detail and technical information to truly explain the scientific developments, but not so much as to make a lay reader feel overwhelmed. He has interwoven the technical feats with the biographies and personalities of the key players, as well as the dueling philosophies at the heart of how we currently interact with automated and robotic technology, how we should do so in the future, and the attendant dangers.

​Solid book. Nothing new (in that if you have read widely on privacy and cyber issues, you likely have had most of this covered), but if you need a primer, you could do worse. Caveat: Schneier has definite opinions on the proper course of things, on the rightful balance between security and privacy, and his opinion is not tempered. 

Author: Dan Lyons​ 
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Review By: Shana

​A funny and slightly disturbing memoir recounting journalist Dan Lyons’s brief stint at a tech start-up (HubSpot). Lyons spent most of his career as a journalist, reporting on business and technology matters. However, after years as a reporter and in the spate of media outlet downsizing, he finds himself desperate for a job and decides to roll the dice and try a tech start-up (an industry he has long reported on). He brings his keen eye and foreknowledge of technology business to his new job, and what follows is a fish-out of water story that will make any reader over the age of 35 feel old.