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Latest Read: The Attention Merchants

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu. He holds an undergrad in biophysics from McGill University and a JD from Harvard Law School. He served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy. Today he teaches at Columbia Law School.

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu

So, do you know how Madison avenue hijacked the web? Ever consider a time when you searched online for a product, a lawn mower for example. And before you realize that it was only minutes before your facebook feed started popping lawn mower ads into your feed?

Perhaps a Youtube channel is promoting a certain lawn mower vendor is a link pushed into your social media accounts? How many times have you noticed an online brand working into your internet life? In fact, have you even noticed that family, coworkers and friends are also falling victim to the attention merchants? Look deeper with your social media links to and from family and friends.

Tim is revealing for some the very idea that your internet life is under assault. He believes that American business actually depends on how much attention you pay to their messages. From advertising, branding, and even sponsored social media profiles.

Their focus is to gain your attention and put your eyes and mouse clicks on their internet sites. All to sell you that lawn mower.

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Latest Read: We See It All

We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance by Jon Fasman. Jon is a senior reporter at The Economist for 15 years. He holds a Master of Philosophy from Oxford. His writing has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and The Washington Post.

We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance

Jon is revealing how current laws and policies are too far behind the times regarding next generation technologies. Ultimately, Jon asks for the public to hold government at the federal, state, and local levels accountable to protect privacy rights and liberty of their citizens.

In fact, this book’s investigation into the legal, political, and moral issues surrounding how law enforcement, including courts utilize surveillance systems confronts the citizen of any country reveals that citizens may live in a free country in the name of safety.

This has certainly escalated rapidly since 9/11. Issues of next generation system already deployed impact privacy and the rights of citizens.

Jon is addressing such topics as moral, legal, and political that are now generating data by advanced tools. For example scanning technologies including facial recognition, license-plate readers are triggering activity by law enforcement.

This certainly book draws similar outcomes to The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, and Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine. Law enforcement use of technologies results in higher ticket and arrest data in unique zip codes across major metropolitan areas.

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Latest Read: Permanent Record

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden. Ed’s story moves from his early childhood to his military service post 9/11, to his role implementing technology surveillance for the CIA and NSA.

After sustaining stress fractures in both legs during special forces training he left the military. In fact, Edward then joined the NSA as a contractor in 2006. The following year he was stationed at the CIA office in Geneva Switzerland with diplomatic cover.

Yet, after six years of work within our country’s intelligence communities Edward became a whistleblower by leaking files revealing a global surveillance network was being conducted not only against America’s enemies in the new war on terror, but also against American citizen.

However, his real message is in fact, the most advanced technologies leveraged by the government are used against America’s enemies AND against our fellow citizens. Edward certainly documents how the United States government was able to collect every single phone call, text message, and email from every US Citizen. This results in a new, unprecedented (and certainly mind boggling) mass surveillance across the entire globe.

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Latest Read: How Markets Fail

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy. John is a staff writer at The New Yorker and teaches at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. This book was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction.

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy

John has certainly written a very well structured book on economic markets divided into three parts: Utopian Economics, Reality-Based Economics, and The Great Crunch. This provides necessary insights to the very long history of economics. In addition, John shows how they have repeatedly failed from the 1700s to the the 2008 economic crisis.

I certainly enjoyed John sharing multiple points of historic economic failures via the insights of all economic experts at the time.

Utopian Economics

John places part one into a Utopian view. He reveals how attempts to link the macro and micro divisions of the economic model result in errors. At the same time it may not really apply across today’s COVID, gig economy.

Repeatedly the economic experts in the 1800s were very wrong. This view really cannot translate today across the globalized world. He also views the economic crisis of 2008 as a drastic market failure. The development and repair were excluded by the systems of the dominant economic paradigm of the past three decades.” John certainly illustrates how utopians believed in the infallible invisible hand of the market via Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill.

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Education Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest Read: The Kill Chain

Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins by Andrew Cockburn. Andrew is a British journalist and the Washington DC editor of Harper’s Magazine and has written extensively about US military issues.

The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

This book reveals the evolution of drone and air technology warfare. The US military strategy has certainly shifted to developing assassination machines since World War II. In addition, Andrew writes admirably about the US defense industry’s long desire to fight wars after Vietnam with advanced air technology.

The opening chapter documents human error by pilots of a MQ-1 Predator flown during Operation Noble Justice that mistakenly killed several Afghan civilians. Accordingly, Afghanistan President Hamid Kaarzai protested to President Bush.

Indeed, upon review by US military, payments to families of the dead included $5,000. Andrew is revealing this event was simply apart of a long history of hardware and human flaws regarding drone and airborne attacks. From the QH-50C drone to today’s modern Predator, drone technology continues failing to yield results from very lofty ambitions. The long and disappointing development of the Predator is very interesting. Andrew reveals much as political forces, not military or intelligence pushed this drone technology.

In addition, the 2010 leak of a drone footage in Baghdad that killed two Reuters journalists in 2007 were the result of remote pilots mistakenly viewing footage and acting upon false information. Audio statements included the idea that the Reuters journalists were carrying long rifles. Upon review, the two were in fact, carrying digital cameras.

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