Overwhelmed by Social Media, Cybersecurity and Other Tech Topics? Read These Books

“AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future,” by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan
Mr. Lee, a former president of Google China, and Mr. Qiufan, a science-fiction novelist, join forces to portray how artificial intelligence will shape the world 20 years from now.

“The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race,” by Walter Isaacson
This biography of Jennifer Doudna, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry for her work on the Crispr system of gene editing, also looks at the ethics of genetic engineering.

“Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed,” by Ben Rich and Leo Janos
In this work, now-deceased Lockheed engineer Ben Rich describes Skunk Works, the company’s plane-development program. It spawned the vaunted U-2 and Stealth aircraft.

“Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code,” by Ruha Benjamin
The book posits that automation speeds up and deepens discrimination while appearing neutral or even benevolent. The author argues that discriminatory designs encode inequities by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies.

“Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity,” by Scott Galloway
This book looks at who stands to win and lose from the Covid-19 pandemic. “We’re still not post-corona,” Ms. Ferguson says, “but the predictions Galloway makes in the book remain on track.”

“Terra Ignota,” a quartet of novels by Ada Palmer
The books are set in the year 2454. A series of events has led the world to war after 300 years of peace following the end of the nation-state.

“An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination,” by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang
This is an account of the controversies enveloping Facebook in recent years. The authors argue that the company’s missteps were an inevitability rather than an anomaly.

“Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy,” by Cathy O’Neil
The book focuses on the societal impact of big-data algorithms, which often reinforce our inequalities, Ms. O’Neil argues.



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