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Category Archives: Recommended Books

A History of Bookmaking, From Scrolls to Scrolling

HyperAllergic: “If you’re shopping for the bibliophile on your list this holiday season (or you are said bibliophile), look no further! The Book by Design: The Remarkable Story of the World’s Greatest Invention (2023, University of Chicago Press) is an ambitious compendium that seeks to catalog and analyze the history of the book in myriad… Continue Reading

Hitting the Books: How the ‘Godfather of Cybercrime’ got his start on eBay

Engadget – “From bunk Beanie Babies to signal-stealing cable boxes, Brett Johnson has scammed them all. The internet has connected nearly everybody on the planet to a global network of information and influence, enabling humanity’s best and brightest minds unparalleled collaborative capabilities. At least that was the idea, more often than not these days, it… Continue Reading

This Is Why You Feel Existential Dread When You Open Instagram and TikTok

Gizmodo: “In Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities, David Auerbach argues the the distinctly modern feeling of a loss of control over our lives is the result of these new online forces. The vast influence of Facebook, Google, TikTok, and other tech giants is neither in the… Continue Reading

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm

London Review of Book, Laleh Khalili – “When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe. Bodley Head, 354 pp., £20, October, 978 1 84792 625 8: “…Bogdanich and Forsythe’s​ book is a damning account of the way McKinsey has made workplaces unsafe, ditched consumer protections, disembowelled regulatory agencies,… Continue Reading

Data Cartels

Data Cartels The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information. Sarah Lamdan is Professor of Law at the City University of New York School of Law: “In our digital world, data is power. Information hoarding businesses reign supreme, using intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain influence and control. Sarah Lamdan brings us into the unregulated… Continue Reading

Restating the Law in the Shadow of Codes: The ALI in Its Formative Era, in The American Law Institute at 100: A Centennial History

DeMott, Deborah, Restating the Law in the Shadow of Codes: The ALI in Its Formative Era, in The American Law Institute at 100: A Centennial History (Andrew S. Gold & Robert W. Gordon eds) forthcoming 2023, Oxford University Press (August 28, 2022). Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2022-53, Available at… Continue Reading

Book Review – A Sober Look at the ‘Cartoonishly Chaotic’ Trump White House

The New York Times: “In The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, political journalists keep their cool as they chronicle the outrageous conduct and ugly infighting that marked a presidency like no other. If “The Divider” has a dominant theme, it may be the struggle within the “almost… Continue Reading

A Prehistory of Social Media

Driscoll, Kevin. “A Prehistory of Social Media.” Issues in Science and Technology 38, no. 4 (Summer 2022): 20–23. “The standard account of internet history took shape in the early 1990s, as a mixture of commercial online services, university networks, and local community networks mutated into something bigger, more commercial, and more accessible to the general… Continue Reading

Why you (probably) won’t finish reading this story

Vox: “We live in a distracted world, almost certainly the most distracted world in human history. And if you’re part of this circus, you’re drowning in options and gadgets and screens and you’re being pulled in a million directions seemingly all at once. If you spend any time online, you already know this. You’re constantly… Continue Reading