Steven Levy

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pages: 611 words: 188,732

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom) by Adam Fisher

adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, An Inconvenient Truth, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Apple Newton, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Bill Atkinson, Bob Noyce, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Byte Shop, circular economy, cognitive dissonance, Colossal Cave Adventure, Computer Lib, disintermediation, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, dual-use technology, Dynabook, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake it until you make it, fake news, frictionless, General Magic , glass ceiling, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Henry Singleton, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, hypertext link, index card, informal economy, information retrieval, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Rulifson, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, life extension, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Mondo 2000, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, pets.com, pez dispenser, popular electronics, quantum entanglement, random walk, reality distortion field, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Salesforce, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, skunkworks, Skype, Snow Crash, social graph, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Susan Wojcicki, synthetic biology, Ted Nelson, telerobotics, The future is already here, The Hackers Conference, the long tail, the new new thing, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, tulip mania, V2 rocket, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, Y Combinator

Stewart is not a Marxist, but it was a very Marxist view of the information economy. Steven Levy: It was a conversation, they were engaging. The whole thing was almost like a jazz improvisation. Just like building up in one of those long Coltrane songs or something like that. Stewart Brand: I was really just restating something that was written down in Levy’s book as “the hacker ethic.” Steven Levy: Information should be free. Stewart Brand: My only addition to that was to take away the “should” and turn it into a “want.” Steven Levy: He hacked me! That’s the way I put it. Stewart Brand: “Information wants to be free” was the meme that got loose and went viral from that discussion.

But while the engineers fought their individual battles for money and credit, it took a writer from New York City to realize that this new class of creatives added up to a bona fide culture complete with its own lore, jokes, and ethic. Steven Levy made the argument in a popular ethnography entitled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, and the weekend-long book party for its release was the first Hackers Conference. At the confab, the hackers of Silicon Valley (and beyond) met each other for the first time and awoke to the fact that they had nearly everything in common. Steven Levy: When I first started writing about technology, I did a story for Rolling Stone about hackers at Stanford, but it turned out to be totally different than what I thought it was going to be.

Kevin Kelly: We had the conference at Fort Cronkhite in southern Marin. It was barracks, really primitive barracks. Steven Levy: It was at this old army camp in the Headlands. A beautiful place, Fort Cronkhite. Kevin Kelly: And so some of the people who we invited came. The number 114 sticks in my mind. I think that was maybe the number of people that finally were there. They were all hackers to varying degrees. I think there was only one or two women. Maybe three or four. All the rest were guys. David Levitt: The Hackers Conference tried not to be a boys’ club, but they did not try that hard. Steven Levy: When I got out there my spirits soared. All those people were there and what they shared was that personality which I wrote about in the book.


pages: 275 words: 84,418

Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution by Fred Vogelstein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, cloud computing, commoditize, disintermediation, don't be evil, driverless car, Dynabook, Firefox, General Magic , Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Googley, Jeff Hawkins, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Neil Armstrong, Palm Treo, PalmPilot, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, software patent, SpaceShipOne, spectrum auction, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, tech worker, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, web application, zero-sum game

Fadell is not shy: Leo Kelion, “Tony Fadell: From iPod father to thermostat start-up,” BBC News, 11/29/2012. Fadell was truly: Steven Levy, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 54–74. Forstall couldn’t have been: Satariano et al., “Scott Forstall.” Despite the feuding: Christina Kinon, “Say What? Mike stolen during live Q&A on Fox,” New York Daily News, 6/30/2007; Steven Levy’s interview on FOX News is accessible at www.youtube.com/watch?v=uayBcHDxfww. Levy wrote about: Steven Levy, “A Hungry Crowd Smells iPhone, and Pounces,” Newsweek, 12/22/2007. Looking back, the iPhone launch: These two paragraphs come from Apple financial statements and various news reports and reviews widely available at the time.

Software developers would rush to write software for a platform in such demand. A self-reinforcing software ecosystem would be born. Page listened gamely. He looked at the prototype Rubin had brought with him. But Page had pretty much decided what he was going to do before the meeting even started: What if Google just bought Android? he asked. He later told Steven Levy, the author of In the Plex, “We had that vision [about what the future of mobile should look like], and Andy came along and we were like ‘Yeah we should do it. He’s the guy.’” Google bought Android for about $50 million plus incentives, and by July 2005 Rubin and his seven other Android cofounders were sharing their vision of the world with the rest of Google’s management team

He ran the company’s new mobile-computing group, where he developed some early PDAs (the Velo and Nino), which sold decently. They also introduced him to the power of digital music on portable devices. Fadell was getting ready to start his own company when Apple’s head of hardware, Jon Rubinstein, called, trying to recruit Fadell for a job that, astonishingly, he was not allowed to disclose. According to Steven Levy’s book The Perfect Thing, Fadell took the call on a ski slope in Colorado in January and expressed interest on the spot. He had idolized Apple since he was twelve, according to Levy. That was when he’d spent the summer of ’81 caddying to save up enough money to buy an Apple II. Weeks after Rubinstein’s call, Fadell joined Apple, only discovering then that he was being hired as a consultant to help build the first iPod.


Free as in Freedom by Sam Williams

Asperger Syndrome, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Debian, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Eben Moglen, Free Software Foundation, Guido van Rossum, Hacker Ethic, informal economy, Isaac Newton, John Conway, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Larry Wall, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Maui Hawaii, Multics, Murray Gell-Mann, PalmPilot, profit motive, Project Xanadu, Richard Stallman, Silicon Valley, slashdot, software patent, Steven Levy, Ted Nelson, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, urban renewal, VA Linux, Y2K

During his final stages of conflict with the administrators at the Laboratory for Computer Science over password systems, Stallman initiated a software " strike,"See Steven Levy, Hackers (Penguin USA [paperback], 1984): 419. refusing to send lab members the latest version of Emacs until they rejected the security system on the lab's computers. The move did little to improve Stallman's growing reputation as an extremist, but it got the point across: commune members were expected to speak up for basic hacker values. "A lot of people were angry with me, saying I was trying to hold them hostage or blackmail them, which in a sense I was," Stallman would later tell author Steven Levy. "I was engaging in violence against them because I thought they were engaging in violence to everyone at large."

From a hacker perspective, sitting in a car amidst all this mess is like listening to a CD rendition of nails on a chalkboard at full volume. "Imperfect systems infuriate hackers," observes Steven Levy, another warning I should have listened to before climbing into the car with Stallman. "This is one reason why hackers generally hate driving cars-the system of randomly programmed red lights and oddly laid out one-way streets causes delays which are so goddamn unnecessary [Levy's emphasis] that the impulse is to rearrange signs, open up traffic-light control boxes … redesign the entire system."See Steven Levy, Hackers (Penguin USA [paperback], 1984): 40. More frustrating, however, is the duplicity of our trusted guide.

There was Richard Greenblatt, the lab's in-house Lisp expert and author of MacHack, the computer chess program that had once humbled A.I. critic 43 Hubert Dreyfus. There was Gerald Sussman, original author of the robotic block-stacking program HACKER. And there was Bill Gosper, the in-house math whiz already in the midst of an 18-month hacking bender triggered by the philosophical implications of the computer game LIFE.See Steven Levy, Hackers (Penguin USA [paperback], 1984): 144. Levy devotes about five pages to describing Gosper's fascination with LIFE, a math-based software game first created by British mathematician John Conway. I heartily recommend this book as a supplement, perhaps even a prerequisite, to this one. Members of the tight-knit group called themselves " hackers."


pages: 280 words: 71,268

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World With OKRs by John Doerr

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Big Tech, Bob Noyce, cloud computing, collaborative editing, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google X / Alphabet X, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, intentional community, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, knowledge worker, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, Ray Kurzweil, risk tolerance, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, web application, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

They intuitively grasped how OKRs could keep an organization on course through the gales of competition or the tumult of a hockey-stick growth curve. Along with Eric Schmidt, who two years later became Google’s CEO, Larry and Sergey would be tenacious, insistent, even confrontational in their use of OKRs. As Eric told author Steven Levy, “Google’s objective is to be the systematic innovator of scale. Innovator means new stuff. And scale means big, systematic ways of looking at things done in a way that’s reproducible.” Together, the triumvirate brought a decisive ingredient for OKR success: conviction and buy-in at the top. * * * — As an investor, I am long on OKRs.

The Gospel of 10x If Andy Grove is the patron saint of aspirational OKRs, Larry Page is their latter-day high priest. In technology, Google stands for boundless innovation and relentless growth. In the world of objectives and key results, the company is synonymous with exponentially aggressive goals, or what author Steven Levy calls “the gospel of 10x.” Consider Gmail. The main problem with earlier web-based email systems was meager storage, typically 2 to 4 megabytes. Users were forced to delete old emails to make room for new ones. Archives were a pipe dream. During Gmail’s development, Google’s leaders considered offering 100MB of storage—an enormous upgrade.

It reinvented the category and forced competitors to raise their game by orders of magnitude. Such 10x thinking is rare in any sector, on any stage. Most people, Larry Page observes, “ tend to assume that things are impossible, rather than starting from real-world physics and figuring out what’s actually possible.” In Wired , Steven Levy elaborated: The way Page sees it, a ten percent improvement means that you’re doing the same thing as everybody else. You probably won’t fail spectacularly, but you are guaranteed not to succeed wildly. That’s why Page expects Googlers to create products and services that are ten times better than the competition.


pages: 281 words: 71,242

World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech by Franklin Foer

artificial general intelligence, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, big-box store, Buckminster Fuller, citizen journalism, Colonization of Mars, computer age, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Geoffrey Hinton, global village, Google Glasses, Haight Ashbury, hive mind, income inequality, intangible asset, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, move fast and break things, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, PageRank, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ray Kurzweil, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Singularitarianism, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, strong AI, supply-chain management, TED Talk, the medium is the message, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, Upton Sinclair, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, yellow journalism

“There was a cloak-and-dagger element to the procedure”: Steven Levy, In the Plex (Simon & Schuster, 2011), 354. “If you don’t have a reason to talk about it, why talk about it?”: Levy, In the Plex, 355. “Google’s leadership doesn’t care terribly much about precedent or law”: Levy, In the Plex, 353. “We are not scanning all those books to be read by people”: George Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral (Pantheon, 2012), 312–13. “Being negative is not how we make progress”: Page, Google Keynote, May 15, 2013. “How exciting is it to come to work if the best you can do”: Steven Levy, “Google’s Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter,” Wired, January 17, 2013.

But their discomfort only stirred Page to push forward with his point. “If we solve the problem I outlined, then we’re doing everything.” In moments of candor, Page and Brin admit that they imagine going even further than that—it’s not just about creating an artificial brain but welding it to the human. As Brin once told the journalist Steven Levy, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” Or as he added on a separate occasion, “Perhaps in the future, we can attach a little version of Google that you just plug into your brain.”

When the company decided to digitize every book in existence, it considered copyright law a trivial annoyance, hardly worth a moment’s hesitation. Of course, Google must have had an inkling of how its project would be perceived. That’s why it went about its mission quietly, to avoid scrutiny. “There was a cloak-and-dagger element to the procedure, soured by a clandestine taint,” Steven Levy recounts of the effort, “like ducking out of a 1950s nightclub to smoke weed.” Google’s trucks would pull up to libraries and quietly walk away with boxes of books to be quickly scanned and returned. “If you don’t have a reason to talk about it, why talk about it?” Larry Page would argue, when confronted with pleas to publicly announce the existence of its program.


pages: 380 words: 109,724

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US by Rana Foroohar

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AltaVista, Andy Rubin, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cashless society, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, computer age, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, deal flow, death of newspapers, decentralized internet, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, future of work, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, life extension, light touch regulation, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, PageRank, patent troll, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, price discrimination, profit maximization, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, search engine result page, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Snapchat, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, subscription business, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the long tail, the new new thing, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, warehouse robotics, WeWork, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Marissa Mayer (who once dated Larry Page) once pointed out that if you want to understand Page and his cofounder, you had to know they both went to Montessori schools, where the philosophy emphasizes firing students’ imaginations rather than just stuffing their heads with book learning. Mayer believes their unconventional educations fostered in both Googlers a willful independence and determination to go their own way, regardless of the expectations of others. As she put it to tech journalist Steven Levy in his wonderfully reported book about Google, In the Plex, one of the best sources for early history on the company, “In Montessori school you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so. This is really baked into how Larry and Sergey approach problems.”14 Just how much their early educations shaped them is impossible to tell, but there’s no question that their college years only reinforced this freewheeling “rules are made to be broken” ideal.

But the Googlers felt, in typical form, that such pesky rules didn’t apply to them. Plus, they couldn’t understand why anyone would think it was better for authors to make money on books than for the entire world to have free access to information. So in 2002, they simply began scanning pages, albeit covertly. As tech writer Steven Levy put it in his book, In the Plex, which devotes twenty pages to the book-scanning project, “The secrecy was yet another expression of the paradox of a company that sometimes embraced transparency and other times seemed to model itself on the NSA.”19 Schmidt, who had by then decided that “evil is what Sergey says is evil,”20 was all for the project, which he declared “genius.”21 The publishing industry disagreed.

Consider the issues of data privacy and antitrust, for example. One of the major turning points for Google on those issues was the acquisition in 2007 of the ad network DoubleClick, which was the leading firm that helped advertisers and ad agencies decide which websites would be best for hosting their ads. As Steven Levy writes in In the Plex, “the DoubleClick deal radically broadened the scope of the information Google collected about everyone’s browsing activity on the Internet.”20 Competitors and regulators alike questioned the deal, which eventually went through, in large part because Chicago School thinking didn’t really leave any room for a good antitrust argument against it (despite the fact that it would allow Google to essentially control the vast majority of advertising online).


pages: 394 words: 108,215

What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry by John Markoff

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple II, back-to-the-land, beat the dealer, Bill Duvall, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Buckminster Fuller, California gold rush, card file, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, different worldview, digital divide, Donald Knuth, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Edward Thorp, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fairchild Semiconductor, General Magic , general-purpose programming language, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, hypertext link, informal economy, information retrieval, invention of the printing press, Ivan Sutherland, Jeff Rulifson, John Markoff, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, Mahatma Gandhi, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mother of all demos, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, Paul Terrell, popular electronics, punch-card reader, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Robert X Cringely, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, Ted Nelson, The Hackers Conference, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, Turing test, union organizing, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, William Shockley: the traitorous eight

.: Creative Computing Press, 1976), pp. 247–50. 5.Ibid. 6.Author interview, Lee Felsenstein, Palo Alto, Calif., August 9, 2001. 7.Fred Moore, unpublished interview with Steven Levy, n.d. 8.John Draper website http://www.webcrunchers.com/crunch/story.html. 9.Author interview with Steven Jobs, Cupertino, Calif., June 2000. 10.Fred Moore, personal journal, 1975. 11.Fred Moore, unpublished interview with Steven Levy, n.d. 12.Ibid. 13.Homebrew Computer Club newsletter 1, March 15, 1975. 14.Ibid. 15.Author interview, Lee Felsenstein, Palo Alto, Calif., August 9, 2001. 16.Tape of San Francisco computer-club planning meeting, April 1975, courtesy of Irene Moore. 17.Doerr’s remark would later be linked to the dot-com era, but he made the claim first with respect to the personal-computer industry.

—Kevin Starr, author of Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990–2003 “John Markoff ’s wonderful recounting of the origins of personal computerdom makes a mind-blowing case that our current silicon marvels were inspired by the psychedelic-tinged, revolution-minded spirit of the Sixties. It’s a total turn-on.” —Steven Levy, author of Hackers, Crypto, and Insanely Great “Beautifully written, What the Dormouse Said does that important job of placing in a historical context the development of modern computer technology. It tells us not only what happened, but why. These people changed our world as much as any group ever and now I understand not only how it came to be but also why it was probably inevitable.”

Musicologist John Chowning, who at SAIL invented the technology that underlies modern music synthesizers, called it a “Socratean abode.” SAIL embodied what University of California computer scientist and former SAIL systems programmer Brian Harvey called the “hacker aesthetic.” Harvey’s description was a reaction to what Steven Levy in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution had described as a “hacker ethic,” which he characterized as the unspoken manifesto of the MIT hackers: Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!


pages: 274 words: 75,846

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You by Eli Pariser

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, A Pattern Language, adjacent possible, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, Apple Newton, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Black Swan, borderless world, Build a better mousetrap, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, disintermediation, don't be evil, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, fundamental attribution error, Gabriella Coleman, global village, Haight Ashbury, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Metcalfe’s law, Netflix Prize, new economy, PageRank, Paradox of Choice, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, power law, recommendation engine, RFID, Robert Metcalfe, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social graph, social software, social web, speech recognition, Startup school, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, Ted Nordhaus, The future is already here, the scientific method, urban planning, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler

The risk, as Eli Pariser shows, is that each of us may unwittingly come to inhabit a ghetto of one.” —Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus “ ‘Personalization’ sounds pretty benign, but Eli Pariser skillfully builds a case that its excess on the Internet will unleash an information calamity—unless we heed his warnings. Top-notch journalism and analysis.” —Steven Levy, author of In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives “The Internet software that we use is getting smarter, and more tailored to our needs, all the time. The risk, Eli Pariser reveals, is that we increasingly won’t see other perspectives. In The Filter Bubble, he shows us how the trend could reinforce partisan and narrow mindsets, and points the way to a greater online diversity of perspective.”

This isn’t to say that geeks and software engineers are friendless or even socially inept. But there’s an implicit promise in becoming a coder: Apprentice yourself to symbolic systems, learn to carefully understand the rules that govern them, and you’ll gain power to manipulate them. The more powerless you feel, the more appealing this promise becomes. “Hacking,” Steven Levy writes, “gave you not only an understanding of the system but an addictive control as well, along with the illusion that total control was just a few features away.” As anthropologist Coleman points out, beyond the Jocks-and-Nerds stereotypes, there are actually many different geek cultures. There are open-software advocates, most famously embodied by Linux founder Linus Torvalds, who spend untold hours collaboratively building free software tools for the masses, and there are Silicon Valley start-up entrepreneurs.

One of the best parts of the writing process was the opportunity to call up or sit down with extraordinary people and ask them questions. I’m thankful to the following folks for responding to my inquiries and helping inform the text: C. W. Anderson, Ken Auletta, John Battelle, Bill Bishop, Matt Cohler, Gabriella Coleman, Dalton Conley, Chris Coyne, Pam Dixon, Caterina Fake, Matthew Hindman, Bill Joy, Dave Karpf, Jaron Lanier, Steven Levy, Diana Mutz, Nicholas Negroponte, Markus Prior, Robert Putnam, John Rendon, Jay Rosen, Marc Rotenberg, Douglas Rushkoff, Michael Schudson, Daniel Solove, Danny Sullivan, Philip Tetlock, Clive Thompson, and Jonathan Zittrain. Conversations with Ethan Zuckerman, Scott Heiferman, David Kirkpatrick, Clay Shirky, Nicco Mele, Dean Eckles, Jessi Hempel, and Ryan Calo were especially provocative and helpful.


pages: 499 words: 144,278

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 4chan, 8-hour work day, Aaron Swartz, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, blue-collar work, Brewster Kahle, Brian Krebs, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, Conway's Game of Life, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, don't be evil, don't repeat yourself, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, false flag, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, growth hacking, Guido van Rossum, Hacker Ethic, hockey-stick growth, HyperCard, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, ImageNet competition, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, Larry Wall, lone genius, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Shuttleworth, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, microdosing, microservices, Minecraft, move 37, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Network effects, neurotypical, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, no silver bullet, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, OpenAI, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, planetary scale, profit motive, ransomware, recommendation engine, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, techlash, TED Talk, the High Line, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Zimmermann PGP, éminence grise

Bruce Damer DigiBarn TV: Mary Allen Wilkes Programming the LINC Computer in the mid-1960s, YouTube, 15:41, April 25, 2011, accessed August 16, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmv6p8hN0xQ. “a jig right around the equipment”: Joe November, “LINC: Biology’s Revolutionary Little Computer,” Endeavour 28, no. 3 (September 2004): 125–31. began to cluster around the lab: This section is drawn from Steven Levy’s superb book, particularly chapters 3 (“Spacewar”) and 4 (“Greenblatt and Gosper”): Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution—25th Anniversary Edition (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010). “in milliseconds to what you were doing”: Levy, Hackers, 67. “of the sun or moon it was”: Levy, Hackers, 139. a $120,000 machine: Russell Brandom, “ ‘Spacewar!’

Surrounded by a growing crew of young men—and they were all men—the students would spend all night in the lab, often with the lights turned out, lit by the eerie cathode rays. They were enthralled by the feeling of being in a direct, intellectual loop with the computer—“the rush of having this live keyboard under you and having this machine respond in milliseconds to what you were doing,” as Gosper later told the journalist Steven Levy in Levy’s book Hackers. They’d have an idea, code it, and instantly see the results; then tweak more and more, watching each idea come alive on-screen. When they started pursuing a new coding challenge, time stood still. “I was really proud of being able to hack around the clock and not really care what phase of the sun or moon it was,” Gosper said.

If they were hacking in the wee hours, as was typical, and their computer broke down, they’d need the proper tools to fix it—only to find that the daytime staff had locked the tools away. So they’d simply hack the locks (making a “master” key from a blank), and abscond with what they needed. “To a hacker, a closed door is an insult, and a locked door is an outrage,” as Steven Levy wrote of those MIT coders in Hackers. “Just as information should be clearly and elegantly transported within a computer, and just as software should be freely disseminated, hackers believed that people should be allowed access to files or tools that might promote the hacker quest to find out and improve the way the world works.


pages: 361 words: 81,068

The Internet Is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, Bob Geldof, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, computer age, connected car, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, data science, David Brooks, decentralized internet, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Davies, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Google Glasses, Hacker Ethic, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, income inequality, index card, informal economy, information trail, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, libertarian paternalism, lifelogging, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, nonsequential writing, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Occupy movement, packet switching, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer rental, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Potemkin village, power law, precariat, pre–internet, printed gun, Project Xanadu, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, the medium is the message, the new new thing, Thomas L Friedman, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, work culture , working poor, Y Combinator

The end result of this gigantic math project was an algorithm they called PageRank, which determined the relevance of the Web page based on the number and quality of its incoming links. “The more prominent the status of the page that made the link, the more valuable the link was and the higher it would rise when calculating the ultimate PageRank number of the web page itself,” explains Steven Levy in In the Plex, his definitive history of Google.62 In the spirit of Norbert Wiener’s flight path predictor device, which relied on a continuous stream of information that flowed back and forth between the gun and its operator, the logic of the Google algorithm was dependent on a self-regulating system of hyperlinks flowing around the Web.

“How big do you think this could be?” Doerr asked them when they met in 1999. “Ten billion,” Larry Page immediately shot back about a “business” that, at that point, not only didn’t have any revenue, but didn’t even have a coherent model for making money. “And I don’t mean market cap. I mean revenues.” Doerr, Steven Levy noted, “just about fell off his chair” at Page’s boldness.67 But he nonetheless invested in Google, joining Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital in a joint $25 million Series A round. But two years after the investment, in spite of Google’s establishing itself as the Web’s dominant search engine with 70 million daily search requests, the company—which by now had appointed the “grown-up” Eric Schmidt as CEO—hadn’t figured out a successful business model for monetizing the popularity of its free technology.

Doing away with the CPM pricing, Google introduced the auction sales model to AdWords, which some of America’s leading academic economists later described as “spectacularly successful” and “the dominant transaction mechanism in a large and rapidly growing industry.”68 Rather than buying online advertising at a set price, advertisers were now able to bid in what Steven Levy calls a real-time “unique auction” that simultaneously made online advertising more effective and profitable.69 Alongside AdWords, Google also developed an increasingly successful product called AdSense, which provided the tools to buy and measure advertising on websites not affiliated with the search engine.


pages: 468 words: 137,055

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy

Albert Einstein, Bletchley Park, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive dissonance, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, disinformation, Donald Knuth, Eratosthenes, Extropian, Fairchild Semiconductor, information security, invention of the telegraph, Jim Simons, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, knapsack problem, Marc Andreessen, Mitch Kapor, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Mondo 2000, Network effects, new economy, NP-complete, quantum cryptography, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web of trust, Whole Earth Catalog, zero-sum game, Zimmermann PGP, éminence grise

My agent, Flip Brophy, was once again a flawless advisor and facilitator. And some early readers caught mistakes and offered great suggestions (I won’t cite them by name because any errors are solely mine). Those who discover more are encouraged to get in touch with me through my Web site (www.steven levy.com), where I will post corrections and updates. Words, even in plaintext, can’t express what I owe my family, Andrew and Teresa. Steven Levy, September 2000 preface the telegraph, telephone, radio, and especially the computer have put everyone on the globe within earshot—at the price of our privacy. It may feel like we’re performing an intimate act when, sequestered in our rooms and cubicles, we casually use our cell phones and computers to transmit our thoughts, confidences, business plans, and even our money.

Davis, “Use of Clipper Chip in AT&T TSD 3600 During Phase of Production,” memo to Sessions, December 23, 1992. 240 Encryption, Law Enforcement Briefing document sent to Tenet, February 19, 1993. 244 slide show “Telecommunications Overview” prepared by the FBI’s Advanced Telephony Unit. 248 Barlow “Jackboots on the Infobahn,” reprinted in Ludlow’s High Noon on the Electronic Frontier, pp. 207–13. 249 Denning See Steven Levy, “Clipper Chick,” Wired, September 1996. 249 Pilgrim maiden Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown, p. 299. 249 important step “Statement by the Press Secretary,” The White House, April 16, 1993. 250 Times article John Markoff, “New Communication System Stirs Talk of Privacy vs. Eavesdropping,” April 16, 1993. 252 It’s not America Steven Levy, “Uncle Sam.” 252 Safire “Sink the Clipper,” New York Times, February 4, 1994. 253 lion’s den Baker’s speech was adapted as “Don’t Worry Be Happy: Why Clipper Is Good for You,” in Wired, June 1994. 253 Skipjack E.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182–190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published in 2001 by Penguin, A member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © Steven Levy, 2001 All rights reserved ISBN 0-7865-2194-5 Electronic edition: February 2002 Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.


pages: 915 words: 232,883

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, Albert Einstein, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 13, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, big-box store, Bill Atkinson, Bob Noyce, Buckminster Fuller, Byte Shop, centre right, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, computer vision, corporate governance, death of newspapers, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, fixed income, game design, General Magic , Golden Gate Park, Hacker Ethic, hiring and firing, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kanban, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, Paul Terrell, Pepsi Challenge, profit maximization, publish or perish, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Robert Metcalfe, Robert X Cringely, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, The Home Computer Revolution, thinkpad, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, vertical integration, Wall-E, Whole Earth Catalog

The Stanford Commencement: Interviews with Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell. Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement address. A Lion at Fifty: Interviews with Mike Slade, Alice Waters, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Avie Tevanian, Jony Ive, Jon Rubinstein, Tony Fadell, George Riley, Bono, Walt Mossberg, Steven Levy, Kara Swisher. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher interviews with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, All Things Digital conference, May 30, 2007; Steven Levy, “Finally, Vista Makes Its Debut,” Newsweek, Feb. 1, 2007. CHAPTER 36: THE iPHONE An iPod That Makes Calls: Interviews with Art Levinson, Steve Jobs, Tony Fadell, George Riley, Tim Cook. Frank Rose, “Battle for the Soul of the MP3 Phone,” Wired, Nov. 2005.

The article also described the mix of volatility and charisma displayed by his boss: “Jobs sometimes defends his ideas with highly vocal displays of temper that aren’t always bluster; rumor has it that he has threatened to fire employees for insisting that his computers should have cursor keys, a feature that Jobs considers obsolete. But when he is on his best behavior, Jobs is a curious blend of charm and impatience, oscillating between shrewd reserve and his favorite expression of enthusiasm: ‘Insanely great.’” The technology writer Steven Levy, who was then working for Rolling Stone, came to interview Jobs, who urged him to convince the magazine’s publisher to put the Macintosh team on the cover of the magazine. “The chances of Jann Wenner agreeing to displace Sting in favor of a bunch of computer nerds were approximately one in a googolplex,” Levy thought, correctly.

You could grab its cute little handle and lift it out of the elegant white box and plug it right into a wall socket. People who had been afraid of computers now wanted one, and they wanted to put it in a room where others could admire and perhaps covet it. “A piece of hardware that blends sci-fi shimmer with the kitsch whimsy of a cocktail umbrella,” Steven Levy wrote in Newsweek, “it is not only the coolest-looking computer introduced in years, but a chest-thumping statement that Silicon Valley’s original dream company is no longer somnambulant.” Forbes called it “an industry-altering success,” and John Sculley later came out of exile to gush, “He has implemented the same simple strategy that made Apple so successful 15 years ago: make hit products and promote them with terrific marketing.”


From Satori to Silicon Valley: San Francisco and the American Counterculture by Theodore Roszak

Buckminster Fuller, germ theory of disease, global village, Hacker News, Haight Ashbury, Internet Archive, Marshall McLuhan, megastructure, Menlo Park, Murray Bookchin, Norbert Wiener, Silicon Valley, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog

"Buddhist Anarchism" by Gary Snyder, Copy- From The Journal for Beings, McClure, Ferlinghetti & the Protection of All Meltzer, editors, City Lights, San Francisco. DELACORTE PRESS for "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" by Richard Brautigan, copyright 1968. Excerpted from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, reprinted by permission of Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, New York. DOUBLEDAY & CO. for Hackers by Steven Levy, copyright 1984. PRAEGER PUBLISHERS Society, edited for quote by Bill Voyd from Shelter and by Paul Oliver, copyright 1969. SAN FRANCISCO FOCUS MAGAZINE view with Stewart Brand in the for quotes from an inter- February 1985 issue. SAN FRANCISCO ORACLE for quotes from issues #6, 1967, and #12, 1967.

Robert Snyder, Buckminster Fuller, graphical Monologue! Scenario, New An Autobio- Martin's Press, York, 1970, p. 38. 4. Bill Voyd, "Drop City", Sources, Harper 5. St. Hugh Press, & Row, in New Theodore Roszak, Gardner, Children of Prosperity, New St. Martin's York, 1978, p. 37. New 6. Steven Levy, Hackers, Doubleday, p. 169-170. 7. Hackers, 8. San Francisco Oracle, No. 9. San Francisco Focus Magazine, Feb. 1985, 10. ed. York, 1972, p. 276. p. York, 1984, 251. 6, 1967. San Francisco Oracle, No. 56 12, 1967. p. 107. FROM SATORI TO SILICON VALLEY Theodore Roszak Theodore Roszak General Studies at is Professor of History and Chairman of California State University, Hay ward.


pages: 380 words: 118,675

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone

airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 11, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, big-box store, Black Swan, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, buy and hold, call centre, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Danny Hillis, deal flow, Douglas Hofstadter, drop ship, Elon Musk, facts on the ground, fulfillment center, game design, housing crisis, invention of movable type, inventory management, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Larry Ellison, late fees, loose coupling, low skilled workers, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PalmPilot, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, RFID, Rodney Brooks, search inside the book, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, skunkworks, Skype, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Hsieh, two-pizza team, Virgin Galactic, Whole Earth Catalog, why are manhole covers round?, zero-sum game

Six months after that investment, over the summer of 1998, Bezos and MacKenzie were in the Bay Area for a camping trip with friends, and Bezos told Shriram that he wanted to meet the Google guys. On a Saturday morning, Shriram picked up Bezos and his wife at a local hotel, the Inn at Saratoga, and drove them to his home. Page and Brin met them there for breakfast and demonstrated their modest search engine. Years later, Bezos told journalist Steven Levy that he was impressed by the Google guys’ “healthy stubbornness” as they explained why they would never put advertisements on their home page.6 Brin and Page left Shriram’s house after breakfast. Revealing once again his utter faith in passionate entrepreneurs’ power to harness the Internet, Bezos immediately told Shriram that he wanted to personally invest in Google.

Oprah Winfrey included the Rocketbook among her Ten Favorite Things in the inaugural issue of O magazine, and Wired wrote of the device, “It’s like an object that has tumbled out of the future.”2 NuvoMedia had an aggressive road map for rapid development. Eberhard planned to exploit economies of scale and advances in technology to improve the Rocketbook’s screen quality and battery life while driving down its price. (Over the 1999 holiday season, the basic model cost $169.) “Within five years,” he told Newsweek’s Steven Levy that December, “We’ll have front-surface technology that doesn’t require you to read behind glass.”3 But NuvoMedia still needed fresh capital, and Eberhard was growing nervous about the unsustainable dot-com bubble and the deteriorating fund-raising climate. In February 2000, he sold NuvoMedia to a Burbank-based interactive TV-guide firm called Gemstar in a stock transaction worth about $187 million.

My editor Jim Aley provided a careful first read. Diana Suryakusuma helped me assemble the photographs under a tight deadline. My friend and colleague Ashlee Vance proved an invaluable sounding board when I needed to discuss the thornier challenges of telling this story. I also want to thank fellow journalists Steven Levy, Ethan Watters, Adam Rogers, George Anders, Dan McGinn, Nick Bilton, Claire Cain Miller, Damon Darlin, John Markoff, Jim Brunner, Alan Deutschman, Tom Giles, Doug MacMillan, Adam Satariano, Motoko Rich, and Peter Burrows. Nick Sanchez provided stellar research and reporting assistance for this book, and Morgan Mason from the journalism program at the University of Nevada at Reno assisted with interviews of Amazon associates at the fulfillment center in Fernley, Nevada.


pages: 426 words: 117,775

The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child by Morgan G. Ames

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Benjamin Mako Hill, British Empire, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, clean water, commoditize, computer age, digital divide, digital rights, Evgeny Morozov, fail fast, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, hype cycle, informal economy, Internet of things, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Lou Jepsen, Minecraft, new economy, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Peter Thiel, placebo effect, Potemkin village, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, SimCity, smart cities, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Hackers Conference, Travis Kalanick

Under these conditions, Papert says, computers could finally scale up the ideals of “progressive education.”30 Papert attributes his realization that computers can be powerful tools for learning to his experiences with MIT’s hacker community, which he first encountered in Minsky’s Artificial Intelligence Lab in the 1960s. This group, which was first described in detail by journalist Steven Levy in his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984) and later analyzed by scholars tracing early computing cultures, also believed in unrestricted access to the mainframe computers in Minsky’s lab—Papert describes joining this group for all-night hacking sessions. Extending MIT’s longstanding culture of elaborate “hacks” (pranks), this group started calling themselves “hackers.”

“Impatient with the glacial pace of incremental reform, free of institutional memories of past shooting-star reforms” that failed to revolutionize day-to-day schooling and “sometimes hoping for quick profits as well as a quick fix,” educational historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban explain, reformers point to technology—such as Papert’s Logo-enabled computers and OLPC’s laptops—as the best method to “reinvent” education.75 4. Antiauthority and the Glorification of Healthy Rebellion The deep distrust of school apparent in these descriptions of constructionism reflects the hacker community’s mistrust of authority figures more generally—a mistrust so codified in the culture that Steven Levy canonized it in two of the six tenets of what he called the “hacker ethic.” Levy described this ethic, the core principles of the hacker community, drawing on the time he spent with the hacker group at MIT; the ethic was subsequently embraced by many in the hacker world. The third tenet reads, “Mistrust authority; promote decentralization,” and the fourth is “Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position.”76 This group decried school as an example of the authority they distrusted; instead, they found great solace in computers and celebrated others who felt the same.

Technical books such as The Boy Mechanic: 700 Things for Boys to Do (1913), the frontispiece of which “shows a boy ready to step off a cliff in a glider that he has built according to the instructions on page 171,” provided one avenue to channel this rebellion and a clearly-stated target: boys.82 Later, certain kinds of masculine rebellion became an integral part of early cyberculture communities, which historians Fred Turner and Nathan Ensmenger have shown adopted individualist countercultural norms to push back against early notions of computer programmers as mindless suits, low-status clerical work, or tools for corporate control.83 Narratives about the kinds of “all in good fun” masculine rebellion that computers could enable were popularized in the 1980s through nonfiction books such as Steven Levy’s Hackers, novels such as Neuromancer by William Gibson, and movies such as War Games and Tron.84 These media imbued cyberspace with metaphors steeped in rebellion: of the Wild West, of Manifest Destiny, of a new frontier of radical individualism and ecstatic self-fulfillment.85 It also encouraged a libertarian sensibility, where each actor was considered responsible for their own actions, education, and livelihoods—even when that meant ignoring the massive infrastructures that made the seemingly freewheeling space of the cyberspace frontier possible.


The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America by Margaret O'Mara

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, AltaVista, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business climate, Byte Shop, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, carried interest, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, Computer Lib, continuous integration, cuban missile crisis, Danny Hillis, DARPA: Urban Challenge, deindustrialization, different worldview, digital divide, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Dynabook, Edward Snowden, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, Frank Gehry, Future Shock, Gary Kildall, General Magic , George Gilder, gig economy, Googley, Hacker Ethic, Hacker News, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, Hush-A-Phone, immigration reform, income inequality, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, information retrieval, invention of movable type, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, job automation, job-hopping, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, means of production, mega-rich, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Norbert Wiener, old-boy network, Palm Treo, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Paul Terrell, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, pirate software, popular electronics, pre–internet, prudent man rule, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Snapchat, social graph, software is eating the world, Solyndra, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, supercomputer in your pocket, Susan Wojcicki, tacit knowledge, tech billionaire, tech worker, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the market place, the new new thing, The Soul of a New Machine, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, Timothy McVeigh, transcontinental railway, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, upwardly mobile, Vannevar Bush, War on Poverty, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, work culture , Y Combinator, Y2K

One result was one of the most famous pieces of television advertising in history, the jaw-dropping spot broadcast into millions of American living rooms during the 1984 Super Bowl, when a lithe young woman ran through a droning audience, hurled a hammer at a Big Brother–like image projected on a blue screen, and shattered it.5 The barely veiled punch at IBM, Apple’s chief rival, reflected a broader anti-establishment streak in this techie rhetoric that went beyond marketing plans and ad slogans. “Mistrust Authority—Promote Decentralization,” read one plank of the “hacker ethic” journalist Steven Levy used in 1984 to describe the remarkable new subculture of hardware and software geeks who had helped make the computer personal. “Authority” meant Big Blue, big business, and big government. It was the perfect message for the times. After more than ten years of unrelentingly dismal business news—plant shutdowns, blue-collar jobs vanishing overseas, fumbling corporate leaders, and the pummeling of American brands by foreign competitors—high-tech companies presented a bright, promising contrast.

The personal computer had triumphantly moved in, particularly for American children and teenagers. Computer nerds had become familiar, sympathetic pop-culture characters, whether they were fictional figures from movies or television, or real-life multimillionaires like Jobs and Gates. Right at the same time that the SDI battles were brewing, journalist Steven Levy was immortalizing the history of this rebellious breed in Hackers. (The Valley tech community had been so delighted by their heroic portrayal in the book that they reclaimed the label as an honorific, and Stewart Brand began holding an annual “Hackers Conference” to celebrate the movement they had forged.)

In 1985 came the most famous of the early BBSs: The WELL, or Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link, started by Stewart Brand and his merry band of hackers up in Marin County. The WELL’s fame came from the Silicon Valley celebrities who made it their first online hangout, including Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, journalist Steven Levy, Lotus founder Mitch Kapor, and of course Brand himself. The bland Ohioans running CompuServe (now owned by even blander tax preparer H&R Block) couldn’t compete with The WELL’s glamour and dash. The WELL’s pedigree was decidedly countercultural, as it hired a clutch of its founding staff from the legendary Tennessee commune The Farm, and devoted considerable discussion-thread and file-swapping bandwidth to the Dead.


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In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, AltaVista, Andy Rubin, Anne Wojcicki, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, autonomous vehicles, Bill Atkinson, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, business process, clean water, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, Dean Kamen, discounted cash flows, don't be evil, Donald Knuth, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dutch auction, El Camino Real, Evgeny Morozov, fault tolerance, Firefox, General Magic , Gerard Salton, Gerard Salton, Google bus, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Googley, high-speed rail, HyperCard, hypertext link, IBM and the Holocaust, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, large language model, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, one-China policy, optical character recognition, PageRank, PalmPilot, Paul Buchheit, Potemkin village, prediction markets, Project Xanadu, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, Rubik’s Cube, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, search inside the book, second-price auction, selection bias, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, SimCity, skunkworks, Skype, slashdot, social graph, social software, social web, spectrum auction, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, The future is already here, the long tail, trade route, traveling salesman, turn-by-turn navigation, undersea cable, Vannevar Bush, web application, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator

ALSO BY STEVEN LEVY The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government— Saving Privacy in the Digital Age Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation The Unicorn’s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com Copyright © 2011 by Steven Levy All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Designed by Ruth Lee Mui Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Levy, Steven. In the plex : how Google thinks, works, and shapes our lives / Steven Levy. —1st Simon & Schuster hbk. ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Google (Firm). 2. Google. 3. Internet industry—United States. I. Title. HD9696.8.U64G6657 2011 338.7'6102504—dc22 2010049964 ISBN 978-1-4165-9658-5 ISBN 978-1-4165-9671-4 (ebook) Contents Prologue Searching for Google One The World According to Google: Biography of a Search Engine Two Googlenomics: Cracking the Code on Internet Profits Three Don’t Be Evil: How Google Built Its Culture Four Google’s Cloud: Building Data Centers That Hold Everything Ever Written Five Outside the Box: The Google Phone Company and the Google TV Company Six GuGe: Google’s Moral Dilemma in China Seven Google.gov: Is What’s Good for Google Good for Government—or the Public?

I also drew on the accounts of the company provided by other journalists, notably John Battelle, The Search (Portfolio, 2005), David Vise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story (Delacorte, 2005), Randall Stross, Planet Google (Free Press, 2008), Richard Brandt, Inside Larry and Sergey’s Brain (Portfolio, 2009), and Ken Auletta, Googled (Penguin, 2009). I also consulted the hundreds of articles in magazines, newspapers, and online sources. Prologue 1 “Have you heard of Google?” I wrote about the APM trip in “Google Goes Globe-Trotting,” Newsweek, November 3, 2007. 2 “Google, the Net’s hottest search engine” Steven Levy, “Free PCs … for a Price,” Newsweek, February 22, 1999. It was an article about Bill Gross, contrasting his GoTo search engine’s prowess unfavorably to Google’s. 4 “We envision a world” The description is reprinted in a blog item by Dan Siroker, “What would you say you do here?” Siroker Brothers (blog), May 11, 2006.


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Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History by Thomas Rid

1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alistair Cooke, Alvin Toffler, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Claude Shannon: information theory, conceptual framework, connected car, domain-specific language, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, dumpster diving, Extropian, full employment, game design, global village, Hacker News, Haight Ashbury, Herman Kahn, Howard Rheingold, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kubernetes, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Morris worm, Mother of all demos, Neal Stephenson, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, operational security, pattern recognition, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Snow Crash, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telepresence, The Hackers Conference, Timothy McVeigh, Vernor Vinge, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, Zimmermann PGP

OEMsr-435 (New York: Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1944). 3.James Ellis, The Possibility of Secure Non-Secret Digital Encryption, research report no. 3006 (Cheltenham, UK: GCHQ/CESG, 1970). 4.Quoted in Steven Levy, Crypto (New York: Penguin, 2000), 396. 5.Clifford Cocks, quoted in Simon Singh, The Code Book (London: Fourth Estate, 1999), 285. 6.Ellis, Possibility. 7.“You did more with it than we did,” Ellis once told fellow cryptographer Whitfield Diffie, but he refused to say more. See the last paragraph of Steven Levy’s Crypto. 8.Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, “New Directions in Cryptography,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 22, no. 6 (November 1976): 644–54. 9.For an excellent and more detailed description, see Levy, Crypto, 90–124. 10.Martin Gardner, “A New Kind of Cipher That Would Take Millions of Years to Break,” Scientific American 237, no. 2 (August 1977): 120–24. 11.Singh mentions three thousand letters; Levy, seven thousand.

The article that spelled out the idea became one of his most influential papers, “Numbers Can Be a Better Form of Cash Than Paper.” But using this improved form of cash was not only about convenience and security. If crypto cash would not be adopted widely, Chaum feared, “invisible mass surveillance” would be inevitable, “perhaps irreversible.”17 Chaum’s idea was magically simple and powerful. Steven Levy, a perceptive chronicler of the grand cryptography debate of the 1990s, called him the “Houdini of crypto.”18 So powerful were Chaum’s ideas that an entire movement arose. That movement believed crypto was en route to making the state as we know it obsolete. Many of these early cryptographers had been exposed to a powerful streak of American culture: civil libertarianism with its deep-seated distrust of the federal government—or of any government.

May and Hughes began to rope in others. A group of sixteen people started meeting every Saturday in an office building near Palo Alto full of small tech start-ups. The room had a conference table and corporate-gray carpeting. Stewart Brand was at one of the first meetings, as were Kevin Kelly and Steven Levy, the two Wired writers. They were all united by that unique Bay Area blend: passionate about technology, steeped in counterculture, and unswervingly libertarian. The crypto group also shared one other thing: a frustration with the slow pace of cryptographic progress. Chaum’s ideas were ten years old, yet there was still no digital cash, no anonymity by remailer, no privacy, and no security built into the emerging cyberspace.


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Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff

A Pattern Language, air freight, Anthropocene, Apple II, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Beryl Markham, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Biosphere 2, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, butterfly effect, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, complexity theory, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, Danny Hillis, decarbonisation, demographic transition, disinformation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, feminist movement, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, Filter Bubble, game design, gentrification, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Herman Kahn, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, intentional community, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, Lewis Mumford, Loma Prieta earthquake, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Menlo Park, Michael Shellenberger, microdosing, Mitch Kapor, Morris worm, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, North Sea oil, off grid, off-the-grid, paypal mafia, Peter Calthorpe, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Stallman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Hackers Conference, Thorstein Veblen, traveling salesman, Turing test, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, young professional

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 22 Ken Kelley, “The Interview: Whole Earthling and Software Savant Stewart Brand,” SF Focus, February 1985, 76. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23 Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984), 27–32. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24 Fentress,“The Next to Last Book on Earth.” BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25 John Markoff, “Up to Date,” BYTE, March 1985, 355. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26 Steven Levy, “Hackers at 30: ‘Hackers’ and ‘Information Wants to Be Free,’ ” WIRED BackChannel, https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-at-30-hackers-and-information-wants-to-be-free/ BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27 Levy, “Hackers at 30.”

Although the first issue of the combined Whole Earth Review was titled “Computers as Poison,” Brand was outwardly sanguine: “Computers suppress our animal presence,” he told an SF Focus interviewer. “When you communicate through a computer, you communicate like an angel.”[23] Just a few years later he would realize how naive he had been. * * * Shortly after he arrived in Sausalito, Kevin Kelly read Steven Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, a book that portrayed three generations of “white hat” computer hackers (the good guys) ranging from the young programmers at MIT’s AI Lab decades earlier, through the Homebrew Computer Club, to the then new world of video game design. (The term hacker had only recently entered the national lexicon.

Brand married Ryan Phelan in 1983 in a Zen Buddhist ceremony at Green Gulch, a rural retreat center and farm in the hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. To appease Phelan’s mother, a Catholic prayer was read during the ceremony. Kevin Kelly had the original idea of an event that would allow the characters in Steven Levy’s Hackers to meet one another. Brand and Phelan helped organize the event, which was held in the fall of 1984. In response to a remark by Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, Brand said, “Information wants to be expensive . . . and information wants to be free.” Virtually everyone ignored the first half of his aphorism, and “Information wants to be free” would become the rallying cry of the dot-com era.


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The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, Bellingcat, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, call centre, centre right, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, Computer Lib, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, dark pattern, data science, deep learning, deliberate practice, desegregation, disinformation, domesticated silver fox, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, Future Shock, game design, gamification, George Floyd, growth hacking, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, military-industrial complex, Oklahoma City bombing, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, profit maximization, public intellectual, QAnon, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, social web, Startup school, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator

For Friendster: “The Friendster Autopsy: How a Social Network Dies,” Robert McMillan, Wired, February 27, 2013, and “Friendster Patents Social Networking,” Pete Cashmore, Mashable, July 7, 2006. For Orkut: “Google’s Orkut Captivates Brazilians,” by Seth Kugel, New York Times, April 9, 2006. For Myspace: “The Decline of Myspace: Future of Social Media,” Karl Kangur, DreamGrow, August 13, 2012. 7 get off the startup roller coaster: Facebook: The Inside Story, Steven Levy, 2020, relays detailed, firsthand accounts from Zuckerberg and other high-ranking employees of the decision to turn down the Yahoo offer, as well as the subsequent news feed episode. 8 a matter of consensus: This phenomenon, known to social scientists as common knowledge, is perhaps best captured in “How Does Media Influence Social Norms?

Milner, 2021: 58. 40 “an outcome they prodded”: Ibid. 41 “Trolling is basically”: Schwartz. 42 “the perfect conditions”: Phillips and Milner: 78. 43 Auernheimer bragged of his role: “The End of Kindness: Weev and the Cult of the Angry Young Man,” Greg Sandoval, The Verge, September 12, 2013. 44 In 2010, TechCrunch: “We’re Awarding Goatse Security a Crunchie Award for Public Service,” Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, June 14, 2010. 45 “journalists drank alongside hackers”: “Lulz and Leg Irons: In the Courtroom with Weev,” Molly Crabapple, Vice News, March 19, 2013. 46 “We’re making a blue-ocean bet”: “The Kleiner Perkins sFund: A $250 Million Bet That Social Is Just Getting Started,” Michael Arrington, TechCrunch, October 21, 2010. 47 “three themes that you CEOs”: “CEO 2.0,” address by Bing Gordon to Endeavor Entrepreneur Summit in San Francisco, California, June 28, 2011. 48 the North American video game crash: A comprehensive account of this history can be found in “No Girls Allowed,” Tracey Lien, Polygon.com, December 2, 2013. 49 “They weren’t fighting for the right”: “How the Alt-Right’s Sexism Lures Men into White Supremacy,” Aja Romano, Vox, April 26, 2018. 50 “I remember people saying”: Facebook: The Inside Story, Steven Levy, 2020: 213. 51 Robin Dunbar had proposed: “Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size, and Language in Humans,” Robin Dunbar, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16, 1993. 52 the average Facebook user had about 130 friends: This was reported by Facebook’s now-defunct statistics page as of 2010. See, for example, “10 Fascinating Facebook Facts,” Mashable, July 22, 2010. 53 Friendster even capped: “Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing Community into Being on Social Network Sites,” Danah Boyd, First Monday 11, no. 12, December 2006. 54 “escaping the Dunbar curse”: “Like, How Many Friends Does Facebook Need?”

Adamic, Science 348, no. 6239, May 7, 2015. 28 “associated with adopting more extreme”: Ibid. 29 “Which of the big questions”: Exchange is from the comments field in “For the Next Hour I’ll Be Here Answering Your Questions on Facebook,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook.com, June 30, 2015. 30 “Every time you use Facebook”: “Inside Facebook’s AI Machine,” Steven Levy, Wired, February 2017. 31 “If they do these”: “News Feed: Getting Your Content to the Right People,” Adam Mosseri, presentation to Facebook F8 conference in San Francisco, April 21, 2016. 32 “When users spend more”: Doerr: 161. 33 Facebook engineers were automatically: “I was an eng leader on Facebook’s NewsFeed,” Krishna Gade, Twitter, February 11, 2021.


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The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

1960s counterculture, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Alvin Toffler, Apollo Guidance Computer, Apple II, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, beat the dealer, Bill Atkinson, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, Bob Noyce, Buckminster Fuller, Byte Shop, c2.com, call centre, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, commons-based peer production, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, content marketing, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Debian, desegregation, Donald Davies, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Dynabook, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, en.wikipedia.org, eternal september, Evgeny Morozov, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Gary Kildall, Google Glasses, Grace Hopper, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Hans Moravec, Howard Rheingold, Hush-A-Phone, HyperCard, hypertext link, index card, Internet Archive, Ivan Sutherland, Jacquard loom, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Leonard Kleinrock, Lewis Mumford, linear model of innovation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Macrae, packet switching, PageRank, Paul Terrell, pirate software, popular electronics, pre–internet, Project Xanadu, punch-card reader, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Robert Metcalfe, Rubik’s Cube, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, slashdot, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Susan Wojcicki, technological singularity, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, Teledyne, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Nature of the Firm, The Wisdom of Crowds, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, value engineering, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Yochai Benkler

The members of the “Signals and Power Subcommittee” tended to the relays, wires, circuits, and crossbar switches, which were rigged together on the underside of the board to provide a complex hierarchy of controllers for the numerous trains. In this tangled web they saw beauty. “There were neat regimental lines of switches, and achingly regular rows of dull bronze relays, and a long, rambling tangle of red, blue, and yellow wires—twisting and twirling like a rainbow-colored explosion of Einstein’s hair,” Steven Levy wrote in Hackers, which begins with a colorful depiction of the club.2 Members of the Signals and Power Subcommittee embraced the term hacker with pride. It connoted both technical virtuosity and playfulness, not (as in more recent usage) lawless intrusions into a network. The intricate pranks devised by MIT students—putting a live cow on the roof of a dorm, a plastic cow on the Great Dome of the main building, or causing a huge balloon to emerge midfield during the Harvard-Yale game—were known as hacks.

The first issue, in October 1972, had on its cover a drawing of a boat sailing into the sunset and the hand-scrawled declaration “Computers are mostly used against people instead of for people; used to control people instead of to free them; Time to change all that—we need a PEOPLE’S COMPUTER COMPANY.”81 Most issues featured lots of line drawings of dragons—“I loved dragons ever since I was thirteen,” Albrecht recalled—and stories about computer education, BASIC programming, and various learning fairs and do-it-yourself technology festivals.82 The newsletter helped to weave together electronic hobbyists, do-it-yourselfers, and community-learning organizers. Another embodiment of this culture was Lee Felsenstein, an earnest antiwar protestor with an electrical engineering degree from Berkeley who became a featured character in Steven Levy’s Hackers. Felsenstein was far from being a Merry Prankster. Even in the heady days of student unrest at Berkeley, he eschewed sex and drugs. He combined a political activist’s instinct for community organizing with an electronic geek’s disposition for building communications tools and networks.

But if they did a search and returned right away to revise their query, it meant that they were dissatisfied and the engineers should learn, by looking at the refined search query, what they had been seeking in the first place. Anytime users scrolled to the second or third page of the search results, it was a sign that they were unhappy with the order of results they received. As the journalist Steven Levy pointed out, this feedback loop helped Google learn that when users typed in dogs they also were looking for puppies, and when they typed in boiling they might also be referring to hot water, and eventually Google also learned that when they typed in hot dog they were not looking for boiling puppies.158 One other person came up with a link-based scheme very similar to PageRank: a Chinese engineer named Yanhong (Robin) Li, who studied at SUNY Buffalo and then joined a division of Dow Jones based in New Jersey.


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Protocol: how control exists after decentralization by Alexander R. Galloway

Ada Lovelace, airport security, Alvin Toffler, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Bretton Woods, Charles Babbage, computer age, Computer Lib, Craig Reynolds: boids flock, Dennis Ritchie, digital nomad, discovery of DNA, disinformation, Donald Davies, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Free Software Foundation, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, informal economy, John Conway, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, linear programming, macro virus, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Menlo Park, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Norbert Wiener, old-boy network, OSI model, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, phenotype, post-industrial society, profit motive, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Reflections on Trusting Trust, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, semantic web, SETI@home, stem cell, Steve Crocker, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, telerobotics, The future is already here, the market place, theory of mind, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Review, working poor, Yochai Benkler

Hackers are the type of technophiles you like to have around in a pinch, for given enough time they generally can crack any problem (or at least find a suitable kludge). Thus, as Bruce Sterling writes, the term hacker “can signify the freewheeling intellectual exploration of the highest and deepest potential of computer systems.”8 Or as Steven Levy glowingly reminisces about the original MIT hackers of the early sixties, “they were such fascinating people. . . . Beneath their often unimposing exteriors, they were adventurers, visionaries, power, it exists as an abstraction” (p. 13). A protocological analysis shows that control is almost never in abstract form.

You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better.12 Several of Levy’s points dovetail with my earlier conclusions about protocol. Like the hacker’s access to computers, protocol is unlimited and total. Like the hacker’s mistrust of authority, protocol also seeks to eliminate arbitrary 9. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984), p. ix. 10. This dictum is attributed to Stewart Brand, who wrote that “[o]n the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life.

Hacking 161 Access to computers . . . should be unlimited and total. All information should be free. Mistrust authority— promote decentralization. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. You can create art and beauty on a computer. Computers can change your life for the better. —Steven Levy, 1984 We explore . . . and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge . . . and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias . . . and you call us criminals . . . Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.


A People’s History of Computing in the United States by Joy Lisi Rankin

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Albert Einstein, Apple II, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Charles Babbage, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, Computer Lib, corporate social responsibility, digital divide, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, Howard Rheingold, Howard Zinn, it's over 9,000, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John von Neumann, language acquisition, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mother of all demos, Multics, Network effects, Norbert Wiener, pink-collar, profit motive, public intellectual, punch-card reader, RAND corporation, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, the market place, urban planning, Whole Earth Catalog, wikimedia commons

O’Neill, and Kerry J. Freedman, Transforming Computer Technology: Information Pro­ cessing for the Pentagon, 1962–1986 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine: J. C. R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (New York: Penguin Books, 2002); Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010). 51. Corbató, Merwin-­ Daggett, and Daley, “An Experimental Time-­ Sharing System,” 337. 52. Kurtz, Rieser, and Meck, “Application to the National Science ­Foundation”; Kemeny, “A Computing Center at a Liberal Arts College.” 53.

Note that all subsequent references to Kiewit Comments refer to the Rauner Library collection. 6. United States President’s Science Advisory Committee, Panel on Computers in Education (John R. Pierce et al.), Computers in Higher Education: Report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (Washington, DC: The White House, February 1967). 7. Detail on copies sold from Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010), 168; and from Bob Johnstone, Never Mind the Laptops: Kids, Computers, and the Transformation of Learning (New York: iUniverse, 2003), 66. 8. “Huntington,” ­People’s Computer Com­pany 1, no. 1 (October 1972): 3. 9.

Fano (1989), Charles Babbage Institute, retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, http://­hdl​ .­handle​.­net​/­11299​/­107281; David Walden and Tom Van Vleck, eds., The Compatible Time Sharing System (1961–1973), 50th Anniversary Commemorative Overview (Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society, 2011), http://­multicians​.­org​ /­t hvv​/­compatible​-­t ime​-­sharing​-­system​.­pdf; Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010). 12. John L. Rudolph, Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Audra J. Wolfe, “Speaking for Nature and Nation: Biologists as Public Intellectuals in Cold War Culture” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2002); Audra J.


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The Man From the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya

Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, Alvin Roth, Andrew Wiles, Benoit Mandelbrot, business cycle, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clockwork universe, cloud computing, Conway's Game of Life, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, DeepMind, deferred acceptance, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Georg Cantor, Greta Thunberg, Gödel, Escher, Bach, haute cuisine, Herman Kahn, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, Jean Tirole, John Conway, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, linear programming, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, Norman Macrae, P = NP, Paul Samuelson, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Schrödinger's Cat, second-price auction, side project, Silicon Valley, spectrum auction, Steven Levy, Strategic Defense Initiative, technological singularity, Turing machine, Von Neumann architecture, zero-sum game

Steven Wolfram, 1984, ‘Universality and Complexity in Cellular Automata’, Physica D, 10(1–2), pp. 1–35. 46. Steven Wolfram, 2002, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, Champagne, Ill. https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/. 47. Steven Levy, 2002, ‘The Man Who Cracked the Code to Everything …’, Wired, 1 June 2002, https://www.wired.com/2002/06/wolfram/. 48. Steven Levy, ‘Great Minds, Great Ideas’, Newsweek, 27 May 2002, p. 59, https://www.newsweek.com/great-minds-great-ideas-145749. 49. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/04/finally-we-may-have-a-path-to-the-fundamental-theory-of-physics-and-its-beautiful/. 50.

The company’s flagship product, Mathematica, is a powerful tool for technical computing, written in a language he designed. Since its launch in 1988, millions of copies have been sold. Wolfram began to work seriously on automata theory at the IAS. His achievements in the field are lauded – not least by himself – and he is dismissive of his predecessors. ‘When I started,’ he told journalist Steven Levy, ‘there were maybe 200 papers written on cellular automata. It’s amazing how little was concluded from those 200 papers. They’re really bad.’37 Like Fredkin, Wolfram thinks that the complexity of the natural world arises from simple computational rules – possibly just one rule – executed repeatedly.38 Wolfram guesses that a single cellular automaton cycling through this rule around 10400 times would be sufficient to reproduce all known laws of physics.39 There is, however, one thing the two scientists disagree about: who came up with the ideas first.40 Fredkin insists he discussed his theories of digital cosmogenesis with Wolfram at the meeting in the Caribbean, and there catalysed his incipient interest in cellular automata.

Von Neumann called the struts ‘rigid members’, an expression that I avoid for reasons that I hope are obvious. 19. He chooses a transmission state with its output on the southern side. 20. Umberto Pesavento, 1995, ‘An Implementation of Von Neumann’s Self-reproducing Machine’, Artificial Life, 2(4) (1995), pp. 337–54. 21. For a look at the history of that field, see Steven Levy, 1993, Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology, Vintage, New York. 22. Arthur W. Burks, 1966, Theory of Self-reproducing Automata, University of Illinois Press, Urbana. 23. Details are from Conway’s biography: Siobhan Roberts, 2015, Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway, Bloomsbury, London. 24.


pages: 205 words: 61,903

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, buy low sell high, Californian Ideology, carbon credits, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, digital capitalism, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, fake news, Filter Bubble, game design, gamification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megaproject, meme stock, mental accounting, Michael Milken, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mirror neurons, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), operational security, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SimCity, Singularitarianism, Skinner box, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the medium is the message, theory of mind, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , working poor

Chapter 2: Mergers and Acquisitions   25   Tech companies actively sought : Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace (New York: HarperOne, 1994).   25   “new communalists” : Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).   26   Operation Sundevil : Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (New York: Bantam, 1992).   26   “Governments of the Industrial World” : John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, 1996, https:// www .eff .org /cyberspace -independence.   26   fungus and bacteria : Qi Hui Sam, Matthew Wook Chang, and Louis Yi Ann Chai, “The Fungal Mycobiome and Its Interaction with Gut Bacteria in the Host,” International Journal of Molecular Sciences , February 4, 2017, https:// www .ncbi .nlm .nih .gov /pmc /articles /PMC5343866 /.   28   extolled the virtues of the deal : Saul Hansell, “America Online Agrees to Buy Time Warner for $165 Billion; Media Deal is Richest Merger,” New York Times , January 11, 2000, https:// www .nytimes .com /2000 /01 /11 /business /media -megadeal -overview -america -online -agrees -buy -time -warner -for -165 -billion .html.   28   the piece I wrote placed in the Guardian : Douglas Rushkoff, “Why Time Is Up for Warner,” Guardian , January 20, 2000, https:// www .theguardian .com /technology /2000 /jan /20 /onlinesupplement10.   29   People blamed : Seth Stevenson, “The Believer,” New York Magazine , July 6, 2007, https:// nymag .com /news /features /34454 /.   30   hired investment bank Salomon Smith Barney : Tim Arango, “How the AOL–Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong,” New York Times , January 10, 2010, https:// www .nytimes .com /2010 /01 /11 /business /media /11merger .html.   31   probably borrowed : Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2020).   32   stocks quadruple : Lisa Pham, “This Company Added the Word ‘Blockchain’ to Its Name and Saw Its Shares Surge 394%,” Bloomberg , October 27, 2017, https:// www .bloomberg .com /news /articles /2017 -10 -27 /what -s -in -a -name -u -k -stock -surges -394 -on -blockchain -rebrand.   33   “independent, host-led local organizations” : Dave Lee, “Airbnb Using ‘Independent’ Host Groups to Lobby Policymakers,” Financial Times , March 21, 2021, https:// www .ft .com /content /1afb3173 -444a -47fa -99ec -554779dde236.   33   Google was outspending : Shaban Hamza, “Google for the First Time Outspent Every Other Company to Influence Washington in 2017,” Washington Post , January 23, 2018, https:// www .washingtonpost .com /news /the -switch /wp /2018 /01 /23 /google -outspent -every -other -company -on -federal -lobbying -in -2017 /.   33   outspent by Facebook : Lauren Feiner, “Facebook Spent More on Lobbying than Any Other Big Tech Company in 2020,” CNBC , January 22, 2021, https:// www .cnbc .com /2021 /01 /22 /facebook -spent -more -on -lobbying -than -any -other -big -tech -company -in -2020 .html.   33   Numerous studies : Martin Gilens and Benjamin I.

Why Nietzsche Is Misunderstood,” Guardian , October 6, 2018, https:// www .theguardian .com /books /2018 /oct /06 /exploding -nietzsche -myths -need -dynamiting.   78   übermensch wannabes : Alex Ross, “Nietzsche’s Eternal Return,” New Yorker , October 4, 2019, https:// www .newyorker .com /magazine /2019 /10 /14 /nietzsches -eternal -return.   78   “I no longer believe” : Ross, “Nietzsche’s Eternal Return.”   79   “it’s hard to find actual examples” : Steven Levy, “Google’s Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter,” Wired , January 17, 2013, https:// www .wired .com /2013 /01 /ff -qa -larry -page /.   80   Zuckerberg told The New Yorker : Evan Osnos, “Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook before It Breaks Democracy?,” New Yorker , September 10, 2018, https:// www .newyorker .com /magazine /2018 /09 /17 /can -mark -zuckerberg -fix -facebook -before -it -breaks -democracy.   81   “I don’t expect” : Rick Merritt, “Moore’s Law Dead by 2022, Expert Says,” EE Times , August 27, 2013, https:// www .eetimes .com /moores -law -dead -by -2022 -expert -says /.

v =qYeZwUVx5MY. 139   Transitioning slowly : Richard Heinberg, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival (Gabriola, BC, Canada: New Society, 2021). 139   Degrowth is the only surefire way : For more on degrowth, see the books and resources listed on the Post Carbon Institute website, https:// www .postcarbon .org /. 140   the worst accusations about these people : For more, see Whitney Webb, One Nation Under Blackmail (Chicago: Trine Day, 2022); Whitney Webb, “The Cover-Up Continues: The Truth About Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Jeffrey Epstein,” Unlimited Hangout , July 24, 2021, https:// unlimitedhangout .com /2021 /05 /investigative -reports /the -cover -up -continues -the -truth -about -bill -gates -microsoft -and -jeffrey -epstein /. 140   “at the forefront” : Steven Levy, “Bill Gates and President Bill Clinton on the NSA, Safe Sex, and American Exceptionalism,” Wired , November 12, 2013. 141   Funders, scientists, and royals : Whitney Webb, “Isabel Maxwell: Israel’s ‘Back Door’ into Silicon Valley,” Unlimited Hangout, July 24, 2021, https:// unlimitedhangout .com /2020 /07 /investigative -reports /isabel -maxwell -israels -back -door -into -silicon -valley /; Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism , (Toronto: Alfred A.


pages: 515 words: 143,055

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

1960s counterculture, Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Bob Geldof, borderless world, Brownian motion, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, colonial rule, content marketing, cotton gin, data science, do well by doing good, East Village, future of journalism, George Gilder, Golden age of television, Golden Gate Park, Googley, Gordon Gekko, Herbert Marcuse, housing crisis, informal economy, Internet Archive, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Live Aid, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, mirror neurons, Nate Silver, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, Pepsi Challenge, placebo effect, Plato's cave, post scarcity, race to the bottom, road to serfdom, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, slashdot, Snapchat, Snow Crash, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, the built environment, The Chicago School, the scientific method, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Tim Cook: Apple, Torches of Freedom, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, Virgin Galactic, Wayback Machine, white flight, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

.*7 The walled garden made AOL money, some of it real, but also hastened the site’s loss of allure to the Internet, whose open design was the opposite of AOL’s, and which was by now growing a greater variety of things to see and do. By 2000, many people were just using AOL to connect to the web, finding ways to escape the walled garden and avoid AOL’s advertising blight altogether. These were only some of AOL’s many hidden weaknesses that contributed to its catastrophic implosion over the early 2000s. It was already, in Steven Levy’s memorable description, a “dead man walking”22 in advance of a meltdown fully chronicled elsewhere. Suffice it to say here: despite a $164 billion merger with Time Warner and its rich troves of content, AOL, as originally conceived, would become irrelevant, ultimately brought down by the rise of the popular, open Internet and its fast-multiplying attractions.

Of course, there was, as there always is, a quid pro quo: in its ripest state, the buying public was exposed to sales pitches; which might prove useful but then again might not. Google also began to collect a lot of information about a lot of people. Nevertheless, Page, who had the most qualms about advertising, told Wired’s Steven Levy that he’d begun to feel that AdWords was a good and just innovation. “From that point on,” writes Levy, “Brin and Page saw nothing but glory in the bottom line.”18 Page may have felt he’d outwitted the Devil, but so do all Faustian characters. While the safeguards in AdWords would keep Google’s core product uncompromised for the time being, corporate life is long, and shareholder demand for growth unremitting.

Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks, I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2011), 140. 17. Klein, Stealing Time, 247. 18. Swisher, Aol.com, 280. 19. William Forbes, Behavioural Finance (West Sussex, UK: Wiley, 2009), 158. 20. Klein, Stealing Time, at 167. 21. Complaint, SEC v. Kelly, 817 F.Supp.2d 340 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (08 Civ. 04612), 2008 WL 2149270, at *2. 22. Steven Levy, “Dead Man Walking?,” Newsweek, January 21, 1996, http://www.newsweek.com/​dead-men-walking-176866. CHAPTER 17: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CELEBRITY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX 1. Edwin Diamond, “Why the Power Vacuum at Time Inc. Continues,” New York, October 23, 1972. 2. Alan Brinkley, The Publisher (New York: Alfred A.


pages: 349 words: 95,972

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives by Tim Harford

affirmative action, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, assortative mating, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, Basel III, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cass Sunstein, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Erdős number, experimental subject, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, Frank Gehry, game design, global supply chain, Googley, Guggenheim Bilbao, Helicobacter pylori, high net worth, Inbox Zero, income inequality, industrial cluster, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Loebner Prize, Louis Pasteur, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Merlin Mann, microbiome, out of africa, Paul Erdős, Richard Thaler, Rosa Parks, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Susan Wojcicki, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, telemarketer, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the strength of weak ties, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, urban decay, warehouse robotics, William Langewiesche

Larry and Sergey left red and blue inflatable gym balls around, less as an aesthetic statement and more because they liked to work out with them.25 Google soon moved again, to an office-park facility in Mountain View. This office space later became known as the NullPlex, the space before the Googleplex itself. But again, the space was crude—a “mishmash,” said the facilities manager, George Salah. A “mongrel style,” said Steven Levy, journalist and unofficial historian of Google. One of the first high-priority projects to be tackled in the new space was the problem of how to make searches more responsive to the latest news. Google set up a war room, and again, it was a straightforward, unassuming space. Half a dozen engineers grabbed a conference room, set up their computers the way they wanted, and got to work.

Neither did he complain when the engineer later changed his mind and decided he’d like to put the wall back again; instead, he mused that the process had “made it a more Googley environment.” Any veteran of MIT’s Building 20 would recognize the thought process. And when the suit-and-tie executive Eric Schmidt joined Google as the new boss in 2001, he reassured Salah, “Don’t change a thing. Make sure it looks like a dorm room.”26 “No matter what happened,” writes Steven Levy, “engineers would have the run of the place.”27 • • • The offices at Chiat/Day may have looked superficially different from the offices at Kyocera, but they were managed with fundamentally the same tidy-minded aesthetic: This place should look the way the boss wants it to look. Google’s offices, like Building 20 at MIT, have been managed very differently: It doesn’t matter how this place looks.

Hilts, “Last Rites for a ‘Plywood Palace’ That Was a Rock of Science,” The New York Times, March 31, 1998, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/31/science/last-rites-for-a-plywood-palace-that-was-a-rock-of-science.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm; Eve Downing, “Letting Go,” Spectrum (Spring 1998), http://spectrum.mit.edu/articles/letting-go/; and Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, 25th Anniversary Edition (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010). 19. A lovely half-hour documentary, “Building 20: The Magical Incubator” was made by MIT in 1998. It’s tape T1217 in the MIT archives, online at: http://teachingexcellence.mit.edu/from-the-vault/mits-building-20-the-magical-incubator-1998; a definitive account of the merits of Building 20 is in chapter three of Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built (New York: Viking, 1994). 20.


pages: 519 words: 142,646

Track Changes by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum

active measures, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Babbage, commoditize, computer age, Computer Lib, corporate governance, David Brooks, dematerialisation, Donald Knuth, Douglas Hofstadter, Dynabook, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, feminist movement, forensic accounting, future of work, Future Shock, Google Earth, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Haight Ashbury, HyperCard, Jason Scott: textfiles.com, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, low earth orbit, machine readable, machine translation, mail merge, Marshall McLuhan, Mother of all demos, Neal Stephenson, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, pink-collar, planned obsolescence, popular electronics, Project Xanadu, RAND corporation, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social web, Stephen Fry, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, text mining, thinkpad, Turing complete, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog, Y2K, Year of Magical Thinking

A wrong choice on the part of a first-time buyer—who might arrive at the local computer store primed with good or bad advice from friends and the latest industry gossip gleaned from computer magazines, only to first be subjected to a hard sell from the sales staff—could mean thousands of dollars wasted or worse. Steven Levy, a technology journalist, summed up the nature of the decision: “I compare using a word processor to living with somebody. You go into it with all kinds of enthusiasms, and things are wonderful. Then, you see other word processors promising more. More features, friendlier style. The question is, is it worth tossing over a relationship in which you’ve invested months for a word-transpose toggle, an indexing function you’ll use maybe twice, and a split-screen capability?

VisiCalc, the spreadsheet program which debuted in 1979 for the Apple II, quickly sold several hundred thousand copies; indeed, its availability helped drive sales of the Apple computer itself.4 Its conception was influenced by the kind of early computer-generated imagery then on the big screen in films like Star Wars, particularly the “heads-up” combat displays: “Like Luke Skywalker jumping into the turret of the Millennium Falcon, [Dan] Bricklin saw himself blasting out financials, locking onto profit and loss numbers that would appear suspended in space before him,” wrote one commentator, tongue not entirely in cheek. “It was to be a business tool cum video game, a Saturday Night Special for M.B.A.s.”5 Journalist Steven Levy described the competitive culture that would arise around VisiCalc hacks and tricks, the quest for the “perfect” spreadsheet: “Spreadsheet hackers lose themselves in the world of what-if,” he wrote.6 Spreadsheets indeed lent themselves to speculation and scenario-spinning, to a future-oriented fugue state induced by the rows and columns scrolling past, figures rippling across the screen as fingertips adjusted a variable in a hidden formula.

For Bukowski and his Macintosh, see Jed Birmingham, “Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, and the Computer,” RealityStudio, September 11, 2009, http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/charles-bukowski-william-burroughs-and-the-computer/. 7. Charles Bukowski, “16-Bit Intel 8088 Chip,” Aileron 6, no. 1 (1985). 8. Steven Levy, quoted in Whole Earth Software Catalog, 46. 9. Judy Grahn, email to the author, January 2, 2012. 10. See Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Time Exxon Went Into the Semiconductor Business (and Failed),” Atlantic, May 17, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/the-time-exxon-went-into-the-semiconductor-business-and-failed/275993/. 11.


pages: 864 words: 272,918

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris

2021 United States Capitol attack, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, book scanning, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer age, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, digital map, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, estate planning, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global value chain, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Google Glasses, greed is good, hiring and firing, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, legacy carrier, life extension, longitudinal study, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, mortgage tax deduction, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, PageRank, PalmPilot, passive income, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, phenotype, pill mill, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, popular electronics, power law, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, semantic web, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social web, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Teledyne, telemarketer, the long tail, the new new thing, thinkpad, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, value engineering, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Wargames Reagan, Washington Consensus, white picket fence, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

“By the end of the 1960s,” writes economist Harry Braverman in his study of postwar shifts in the composition of the labor force, “rising rates of unemployment among ‘professionals’ of various kinds once more brought home to them that they were not the free agents they thought they were, who deigned to ‘associate themselves’ with one or another corporation, but truly part of a labor market, hired and fired like those beneath them.”2 The newest inventions and advances were for unused missiles. Making missiles and database systems was, if not morally repugnant, at least boring and pointless. Journalist Steven Levy writes that computers were “loathed by millions of common, patriotic citizens” who saw them as a “dehumanizing factor in society.”i3 The dull technophile engineer with a new stereo became a stereotype, and the Japanese commodity-electronics industry threatened from across the Pacific. Information technology was meant for more, and a line of theorist-administrators saw it coming together, starting with Vannevar Bush.

MIT’s famous anti-authoritarian hackers constantly thwarted administrative attempts to lock down their AI lab, proving repeatedly that there was no lock for sale that they couldn’t crack. But when Massachusetts militants planned to demonstrate at their beloved lab, the programmers didn’t object to the steel plates and Plexiglas. “Though previously some of the hackers had declared, ‘I will not work in a place that has locks,’” writes Steven Levy in his account of the lab in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, “after the demonstrations were over, and after the restricted lists were long gone, the locks remained.”103 It was the end of an era. Locking down was easier for corporations than it was for public and pseudo-public institutions such as universities.

Baran and Paul Marlor Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 332. 63. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, 26. 64. Johnson, The Broken Heart of America, 370–71. 65. Lester D. Earnest, “The Internet’s Grandfather, an Inventive Fraudster with Many Descendants” (Stanford University, January 25, 2014), https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/nets/sage.htm. 66. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010), 132. 67. Joel N. Shurkin, Terman’s Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992), 206. 68. Henry L. Minton, Lewis M. Terman: Pioneer in Psychological Testing (New York: NYU Press, 1988), 241 Chapter 3.2 The Solid State 1.


pages: 381 words: 78,467

100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family And by Sonia Arrison

23andMe, 8-hour work day, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Anne Wojcicki, artificial general intelligence, attribution theory, Bill Joy: nanobots, bioinformatics, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Clayton Christensen, dark matter, disruptive innovation, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Frank Gehry, Googley, income per capita, indoor plumbing, Jeff Bezos, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, Nick Bostrom, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, post scarcity, precautionary principle, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, rolodex, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Simon Kuznets, Singularitarianism, smart grid, speech recognition, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, sugar pill, synthetic biology, Thomas Malthus, upwardly mobile, World Values Survey, X Prize

See “President Clinton Announces the Completion of the First Survey of the Entire Human Genome, Hails Public and Private Efforts Leading to This Historic Achievement,” Human Genome Project Information, June 25, 2000, www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/clinton1.shtml; and www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/clinton2.shtml. 56 Ibid. 57 Steven Levy, “Geek Power: Steven Levy Revisits Tech Titans, Hackers, Idealists,” Wired, April 19, 2010, www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/ff_hackers/all/1. 58 Jeff Bezos, “We Are What We Choose,” Princeton University address to the Class of 2010 Baccalaureate, May 30, 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBmavNoChZc. 59 Nicholas Wade, “Researchers Say They Created a Synthetic Cell,” New York Times, May 20, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html. 60 J.

Bioinformatics are moving at the speed of Moore’s Law and sometimes faster. To the extent that wealthy technology moguls influence public opinion and hackers seem cool, the context for the longevity meme is sizzling hot. In a Wired magazine interview in April 2010, Bill Gates, America’s richest man, told reporter Steven Levy that if he were a teenager today, “he’d be hacking biology.”57 Gates elaborated, saying, “Creating artificial life with DNA synthesis, that’s sort of the equivalent of machine-language programming.” Whether or not his comments were meant as an endorsement of the field, the smart whiz kids who read Wired probably see it that way.


pages: 159 words: 42,401

Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance by Jessica Bruder, Dale Maharidge

air gap, anti-communist, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, Cambridge Analytica, cashless society, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, computer vision, crowdsourcing, deep learning, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, Firefox, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, medical malpractice, messenger bag, Neil Armstrong, Nomadland, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Robert Bork, Seymour Hersh, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, social graph, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, tech bro, Tim Cook: Apple, web of trust, WikiLeaks

Privacy advocates, politicians, technologists, and civil libertarians were alarmed by the Orwellian plan. Together, they formed a motley opposition with members ranging from the ACLU to Rush Limbaugh. “The precise object of their rage is the Clipper chip, officially known as the MYK-78 and not much bigger than a tooth,” wrote journalist Steven Levy. “Just another tiny square of plastic covering a silicon thicket. A computer chip, from the outside indistinguishable from thousands of others. It seems improbable that this black Chiclet is the focal point of a battle that may determine the degree to which our civil liberties survive in the next century.

p. 5 “peak indifference”: Cory Doctorow, “We Cannot Afford to Be Indifferent to Internet Spying,” Guardian, December 9, 2013. pp. 5–6 Clipper chip: Andi Wilson Thompson, Danielle Kehl, and Kevin Bankston, “Doomed to Repeat History? Lessons from the Crypto Wars of the 1990s,” New America, June 17, 2015, https://newamerica.org/; Steven Levy, “The Battle of the Clipper Chip,” New York Times Magazine, June 12, 1994; Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “Who Should Keep the Keys?” Time, March 14, 1994; Stewart A. Baker, “Don’t Worry Be Happy: Why Clipper Is Good for You,” Wired, May 1994. For a more appropriate soundtrack to government intrusion, try “Be Worry, Don’t Happy,” Oleg Berg’s minor-key transposition of the Bobby McFerrin classic: youtube.com/watch?


pages: 296 words: 86,610

The Bitcoin Guidebook: How to Obtain, Invest, and Spend the World's First Decentralized Cryptocurrency by Ian Demartino

3D printing, AltaVista, altcoin, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, buy low sell high, capital controls, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decentralized internet, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, forensic accounting, global village, GnuPG, Google Earth, Haight Ashbury, initial coin offering, Jacob Appelbaum, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, litecoin, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Oculus Rift, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, printed gun, QR code, ransomware, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, Skype, smart contracts, Steven Levy, the medium is the message, underbanked, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

In her 1994 article in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Dorothy Denning, then a chair of computer science at Georgetown University, wrote about one of these dangers: “[Cryptography] can be used to implement untraceable cash and anonymous, untraceable transactions. While such services can offer many privacy benefits, they also could facilitate money laundering and fraud.”5 Denning wasn’t the only one to express such misgivings. In a December 1994 Wired article, Steven Levy quotes a member of the American Bankers Association, Kawika Daguio, who writes: Speaking for myself, it would be dangerous and unsound public policy to allow fully untraceable, unlimited value digital currency to be produced…. It opens up opportunities for abuse that aren’t available to criminals now.

There is also the concern of becoming a target. If people can publicly see that you have just come into a large amount of money, this presents its own set of problems. Beyond that, privacy is just a human-rights issue. In an article about Digicash, the pre-Bitcoin attempt at a digital currency I talked about in an earlier chapter, Wired’s Steven Levy quotes the cryptographer and then-Digicash employee Niels Ferguson: Oh, the number of times I’ve had to argue with people that they need privacy! They’ll say, “I don’t care if you know where I spend my money.” I usually tell them, “What if I hire a private investigator to follow you around all day?

As it turns out, a lot, because the encryption techniques that are essential to Bitcoin have been the focus of a public debate since at least the early 1990s, and that debate ended up placing everything related to the topic of encryption under the umbrella of criminal activity. The association between Bitcoin and criminal elements was born directly from that. Back in 1995, author Steven Levy visited the offices of the now-defunct Cygnus Solutions, an early Internet cryptography company, and spoke about what the early Cypherpunks of the day were trying to accomplish: The people in this room hope for a world where an individual’s informational footprints—everything from an opinion on abortion to the medical record of an actual abortion—can be traced only if the individual involved chooses to reveal them; a world where coherent messages shoot around the globe by network and microwave, but intruders and feds trying to pluck them out of the vapor find only gibberish; a world where the tools of prying are transformed into the instruments of privacy.


pages: 416 words: 129,308

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant

Airbnb, animal electricity, Apollo Guidance Computer, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Black Lives Matter, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, cotton gin, deep learning, DeepMind, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frank Gehry, gigafactory, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Hangouts, Higgs boson, Huaqiangbei: the electronics market of Shenzhen, China, information security, Internet of things, Jacquard loom, John Gruber, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Large Hadron Collider, Lyft, M-Pesa, MITM: man-in-the-middle, more computing power than Apollo, Mother of all demos, natural language processing, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shock, pattern recognition, peak oil, pirate software, profit motive, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, special economic zone, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, TSMC, Turing test, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vannevar Bush, zero day

They helped prove that user interface design, long derided as dull—the province of grey user settings and drop-down menus; “knobs and dials” as Christie puts it—was ripe for innovation. As Bas and Imran’s stars rose inside Apple, they started casting around for new frontiers. Fortunately, they were about to find one. While training to be a civil engineer in Massachusetts, Brian Huppi idly picked up Steven Levy’s Insanely Great. The book documents how in the early 1980s Steve Jobs separated key Apple players from the rest of the company, flew a pirate flag above their department, and drove them to build the pioneering Macintosh. Huppi couldn’t put it down. “I was like, ‘Wow, what would it be like to work at a place like Apple?’”

When you ask Siri a question, here’s what happens: Your voice is digitized and transmitted to an Apple server in the Cloud while a local voice recognizer scans it right on your iPhone. Speech-recognition software translates your speech into text. Natural-language processing parses it. Siri consults what tech writer Steven Levy calls the iBrain—around 200 megabytes of data about your preferences, the way you speak, and other details. If your question can be answered by the phone itself (“Would you set my alarm for eight a.m.?”), the Cloud request is canceled. If Siri needs to pull data from the web (“Is it going to rain tomorrow?”)

In 1968, an idealistic computer scientist named Doug Engelbart brought together hundreds of interested industry onlookers at the San Francisco Civic Center—the same civic center where the iPhone 7 demo was made nearly forty years later—and introduced a handful of technologies that would form the foundational DNA of modern personal computing. Not only did Engelbart show off publicly a number of inventions like the mouse, keypads, keyboards, word processors, hypertext, videoconferencing, and windows, he showed them off by using them in real time. The tech journalist Steven Levy would call it “the mother of all demos,” and the name stuck. A video feed shared the programs and technologies being demoed onscreen. It was a far cry from the more polished product launches Jobs would become famous for decades later; Engelbart broadcast his own head in the frame as, over the course of an hour and a half, he displayed new feats of computing and made delightfully odd quips and self-interruptions.


The Unicorn's Secret by Steven Levy

Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Buckminster Fuller, card file, East Village, financial independence, Future Shock, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, index card, John Markoff, Marshall McLuhan, Ralph Nader, rolodex, Saturday Night Live, Skinner box, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, upwardly mobile, Whole Earth Catalog

I would also like to acknowledge the support of my family and friends, in particular Bruce Buschel, John Brockman, Helen and Lester Levy, Diane Levy, William Mooney, David Rosenthal, Randall Rothenberg, David Weinberg, Tim Whitaker, and Deborah Wise. Finally, I was lucky in having the companionship of Teresa Carpenter, who had been down this path before; besides her constant love and patience, I was able to get free advice at odd hours. STEVEN LEVY New York City, 1988 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Steven Levy is editor in chief of the online tech publication Backchannel. Former senior staff writer for WIRED and former chief technology correspondent for Newsweek, he is the author of seven books, including Hackers, Insanely Great, Artificial Life, The Perfect Thing, and Crypto.

The Unicorn’s Secret Murder in the Age of Aquarius Steven Levy CONTENTS PROLOGUE: Of Excellent Reputation 1 A CONDITION OF MYSTERY 2 THE MAKING OF THE GURU 3 DOODLEBUG 4 THE MAYOR OF POWELTON 5 FALLEN ANGEL 6 TURNING THE CORNER 7 WHERE FEAR COMES FROM 8 A PRISONER ON THE PLANET OF PATIENCE 9 PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS 10 “I DIDN’T KILL HER” 11 THE DARK SIDE 12 THE UNICORN’S SECRET 13 THE FLIGHT OF THE UNICORN EPILOGUE A NOTE ON SOURCES IMAGE GALLERY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR Prologue: Of Excellent Reputation First to take the stand was a corporate attorney. Like the others, he seemed steeped in an air of unreality.

His most recent book is the New York Times bestseller In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. Copyright © 1988 by Steven Levy Cover design by Olivia Brodtman ISBN: 978-1-5040-4213-0 This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. 180 Maiden Lane New York, NY 10038 www.openroadmedia.com Find a full list of our authors and titles at www.openroadmedia.com FOLLOW US @OpenRoadMedia


pages: 918 words: 257,605

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, algorithmic bias, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bartolomé de las Casas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, book scanning, Broken windows theory, California gold rush, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, connected car, context collapse, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, fake news, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, future of work, game design, gamification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Ian Bogost, impulse control, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, linked data, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, means of production, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, precision agriculture, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, smart cities, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social web, software as a service, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, union organizing, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, Wolfgang Streeck, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

., “Employee Lawsuit Accuses Google of ‘Spying Program,’” Information, December 20, 2016, https://www.theinformation.com/employee-lawsuit-accuses-google-of-spying-program. 6. See Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 116; Hal R. Varian, “Biography of Hal R. Varian,” UC Berkeley School of Information Management & Systems, October 3, 2017, http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/people/hal/biography.html; “Economics According to Google,” Wall Street Journal, July 19, 2007, http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2007/07/19/economics-according-to-google; Steven Levy, “Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability,” Wired, May 22, 2009, http://archive.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/17-06/nep_googlenomics; Hal R.

Why did Google’s Gmail, launched in 2004, scan private correspondence to generate advertising? As soon as the first Gmail user saw the first ad targeted to the content of her private correspondence, public reaction was swift. Many were repelled and outraged; others were confused. As Google chronicler Steven Levy put it, “By serving ads related to content, Google seemed almost to be reveling in the fact that users’ privacy was at the mercy of the policies and trustworthiness of the company that owned the servers. And since those ads made profits, Google was making it clear that it would exploit the situation.”64 In 2007 Facebook launched Beacon, touting it as “a new way to socially distribute information.”

Pressure for profit mounted sharply, despite the fact that Google Search was widely considered the best of all the search engines, traffic to its website was surging, and a thousand résumés flooded the firm’s Mountain View office each day. Page and Brin were seen to be moving too slowly, and their top venture capitalists, John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins and Michael Moritz from Sequoia, were frustrated.25 According to Google chronicler Steven Levy, “The VCs were screaming bloody murder. Tech’s salad days were over, and it wasn’t certain that Google would avoid becoming another crushed radish.”26 The specific character of Silicon Valley’s venture funding, especially during the years leading up to dangerous levels of startup inflation, also contributed to a growing sense of emergency at Google.


pages: 363 words: 94,139

Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney

Apple II, banking crisis, British Empire, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, company town, Computer Numeric Control, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, Dynabook, Ford Model T, General Magic , global supply chain, interchangeable parts, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, PalmPilot, race to the bottom, RFID, Savings and loan crisis, side project, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, the built environment, thinkpad, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, work culture

“Apple Takes a Bold New Byte at iMac,” New Zealand Herald, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=787149, January 21, 2002. 10. Email from Ken Segall, April 2013. 11. Interview with Dennis Boyle, October 2012. 12. Steven Levy, “The New iPod” Newsweek, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2004/07/25/the-new-ipod.html, July 25, 2004. 13. Steven Levy, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (Simon & Schuster, 2006) 102. 14. Jonathan Ive in conversation with Dylan Jones, editor of British GQ, following his award of honorary doctor at the University of the Arts London, © Nick Carson 2006.

Interview with Jon Rubinstein, October 2012. 6. Interview with Doug Satzger, January 2013. 7. Christopher Stringer testimony, Apple v. Samsung trial, San Jose Federal Courthouse, July 2012. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Interview with Gautam Baksi, June 2013. CHAPTER 8 Design of the iPod 1. Steven Levy, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness (Simon & Schuster, 2006), 36. 2. Ibid., 38. 3. Ibid., 133. 4. Sheryl Garratt, “Jonathan Ive: Inventor of the decade,” The Guartdian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/29/ipod-jonathan-ive-designer, November 28, 2009. 5.


pages: 372 words: 89,876

The Connected Company by Dave Gray, Thomas Vander Wal

A Pattern Language, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, Berlin Wall, business cycle, business process, call centre, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, complexity theory, creative destruction, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, disruptive innovation, en.wikipedia.org, factory automation, folksonomy, Googley, index card, industrial cluster, interchangeable parts, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, loose coupling, low cost airline, market design, minimum viable product, more computing power than Apollo, power law, profit maximization, Richard Florida, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, software as a service, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, two-pizza team, Vanguard fund, web application, WikiLeaks, work culture , Zipcar

Platforms are the company’s long-term memory, where knowledge and experience is stored and hard-coded into habits, routines, and autonomic functions. Notes for Chapter Sixteen HOTEL CHECK-INS “Designing Service Systems by Bridging the ‘Front stage’ and ‘Back stage,’ by Robert J. Glushko and Lindsay Tabas, Information Systems and E-Business Management, 7, no. 4 (September 2009): 407–427. CUSTOMER SERVICE AT AMAZON VS ZAPPOS Steven Levy, “Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think,” Wired, November 13, 2011. AMAZON AUCTIONS, ZSHOPS, AND MARKETPLACE Consumer Reports Talks with Amazon.com, recorded live on May 11, 2011, http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/14630179. Chapter 17. Power and control in networks An organization’s data is found in its computer systems, but a company’s intelligence is found in its biological and social systems

But such areas create conditions that are conducive to connection. Those very casual, simple conversations, when repeated over a long period of time, give people a greater awareness of the information patterns in the company as a whole. Google’s Director of Facilities, George Salah, intentionally increased density to increase the energy in the company. Steven Levy tells the story in his book In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (Simon & Schuster): Salah was surprised that when Silicon Graphics occupied the building, all the cubicles had relatively high walls. And the desks were all oriented inward, with almost no one facing out. So as you walk through the building, you couldn’t find a soul,” he says.

The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity By Richard Florida, Harper, 2010. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built By Stewart Brand, Viking Adult, 1994. Human Sigma: Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter By John Fleming and Jim Asplund, Gallup Press, 2007. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives By Steven Levy, Simon and Schuster, 2011. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy By Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, Harvard Business Review Press, 1998. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail By Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business Review Press, 1997.


pages: 332 words: 93,672

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy by George Gilder

23andMe, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Asilomar, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bob Noyce, British Empire, Brownian motion, Burning Man, business process, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, cellular automata, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, computer age, computer vision, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, decentralized internet, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disintermediation, distributed ledger, don't be evil, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Firefox, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, George Gilder, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, index fund, inflation targeting, informal economy, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, OSI model, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, quantitative easing, random walk, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, Susan Wojcicki, TED Talk, telepresence, Tesla Model S, The Soul of a New Machine, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, tulip mania, Turing complete, Turing machine, Vernor Vinge, Vitalik Buterin, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want. This of course erodes the advertising supported business model of the existing search engines. . . . [W]e believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm. Steven Levy’s definitive book on Google describes the situation as Google developed its ad strategy in 1999: “At the time the dominant forms of advertising on the web were intrusive, annoying and sometimes insulting. Most common was the banner ad, a distracting color rectangle that would often flash like a burlesque marquee.

Larry Page, hey, virtually all his quotes are accessible on Google! 4. David Gelernter, Mirror Worlds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 5. Page, ibid. 6. If you prefer the text version beyond all the Google search resources on the saga of its inventors and founders, it is lavishly there in Steven Levy’s In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), or in the silken New Yorker prose of media-savvy Ken Auletta, Googled: The End of the World as We Know It (New York: Penguin Books, 2010). The Olympian view from on high is expounded by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, with a foreword by Larry Page, How Google Works (New York: Hachette, 2014). 7. 

Peter Thiel, with Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (New York: Crown Business, 2014), 75. 2. Alexander Mordvintsev, Christopher Olah, and Mike Tyka, “Inceptionism: Going Deeper into Neural Networks,” Google Research Blog, June 17, 2015, https://research.googleblog.com/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html. 3. Steven Levy, “Inside Deep Dreams: How Google Made Its Computers Go Crazy,” Wired, December 11, 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/12/inside-deep-dreams-how-google-made-its-computers-go-crazy/. 4. “Here’s How To Make Your Own Dreamscope A.I. Images” by “burnersxxx,” July 16, 2015, https://burners.me/tag/dreamscope/.


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Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th Anniversary Edition by Steven Levy

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, air freight, Apple II, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Buckminster Fuller, Byte Shop, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, corporate governance, Donald Knuth, El Camino Real, Fairchild Semiconductor, Free Software Foundation, game design, Gary Kildall, Hacker Ethic, hacker house, Haight Ashbury, John Conway, John Markoff, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mondo 2000, Multics, non-fiction novel, Norman Mailer, Paul Graham, popular electronics, RAND corporation, reversible computing, Richard Stallman, Silicon Valley, software patent, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, The Hackers Conference, value engineering, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator

Hackers Steven Levy Editor Mike Hendrickson Copyright © 2010 Steven Levy O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com. The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Hackers and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks.

In 1991, his efforts came to the attention of those in charge of parceling out the coveted McArthur Fellowship “genius grants.” The last time I saw him, Stallman was organizing a demonstration against the Lotus Development Corporation. His protest regarded their software patents. He believed, and still does, that information should be free. —Steven Levy August 1993 Appendix C. Afterword: 2010 “It’s funny,” says Bill Gates. “When I was young, I didn’t know any old people. When we did the microprocessor revolution, there was nobody old, nobody. They didn’t make us meet with journalists who were old people. I didn’t deal with people in their 30s.

Those are all pretty deep problems that need the same type of crazy fanaticism of youthful genius and naiveté that drove the PC industry, and can have the same impact on the human condition.” In other words, Gates expects hackers to be the heroes of the next revolution, too. Sounds good to me. —Steven Levy May 2010 Appendix D. Notes The main source of information for Hackers was over a hundred personal interviews conducted in 1982 and 1983. Besides these, I refer to a number of written sources. Part One Chapter 1 Some of the TMRC jargon was codified by Peter Samson in the unpublished "An Abridged Dictionary of the TMRC Language," circa 1959.


pages: 420 words: 100,811

We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves by John Cheney-Lippold

algorithmic bias, bioinformatics, business logic, Cass Sunstein, centre right, computer vision, critical race theory, dark matter, data science, digital capitalism, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Hans Moravec, Ian Bogost, informal economy, iterative process, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, lifelogging, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, price discrimination, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software studies, statistical model, Steven Levy, technological singularity, technoutopianism, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Toyota Production System, Turing machine, uber lyft, web application, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

Citing computer scientist Jonathan Grudin, in digital technology, we encounter a “steady erosion of clearly situated action. We are losing control and knowledge of the consequences of our actions. . . . We no longer control access to anything we disclose.”78 Gibberish and Obfuscation A prophetic anecdote begins Wired’s first-ever story on Internet privacy. It was early in 1993, and technology journalist Steven Levy had just arrived at the office of a Silicon Valley start-up. He was on assignment to observe a “cypherpunk” meeting, a group whose members used mathematically complex cryptography, or secret coding, to make their digital data turn to gibberish. His description of the meeting was a “time warp to the days when hackers ran free”: fifteen “techie-cum-civil libertarians” randomly lay on the floor or wandered around cubicles, only to eventually collect themselves, hours after the scheduled time, in order to share their crypto secrets.

Christian Fuchs, Social Media: A Critical Introduction (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013). 55. Wu, “United States of Secrets.” 56. Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson, “The Surveillant Assemblage,” British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 4 (2000): 605–622. 57. “DoubleClick.net Usage Statistics,” BuiltWith.com, July 28, 2016, http://trends.builtwith.com; Steven Levy, “How Google Search Dealt with Mobile,” Backchannel, January 15, 2015, https://backchannel.com; Frederic Lardinois, “Gmail Now Has 425 Million Users,” TechCrunch, June 28, 2012, http://techcrunch.com. 58. Microsoft, “Microsoft Statement on Proposed Acquisition of DoubleClick by Google,” April 15, 2007, http://news.microsoft.com. 59.

,” Journal of Social Issues 33, no. 3 (1977): 66–84; Leysia Palen and Paul Dourish, “Unpacking ‘Privacy’ for a Networked World,” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2003, 129. 76. Palen and Dourish, “Unpacking ‘Privacy,’” 132. 77. Ibid., 131 78. Jonathan Grudin, “Desituating Action: Digital Representation of Context,” Microsoft Research, 1991, http://research.microsoft.com. 79. Steven Levy, “Crypto Rebels,” Wired, May–June 1993, http://archive.wired.com. 80. Google, “Google’s Mission Is to Organize the World’s Information and Make It Universally Accessible and Useful,” 2015, www.google.com. 81. Brunton and Nissenbaum, “Vernacular Resistance.” 82. Daniel Howe, Helen Nissenbaum, and Vincent Toubiana, “TrackMeNot,” 2015, https://cs.nyu.edu. 83.


pages: 171 words: 54,334

Barefoot Into Cyberspace: Adventures in Search of Techno-Utopia by Becky Hogge, Damien Morris, Christopher Scally

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, Buckminster Fuller, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, disintermediation, DIY culture, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, game design, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, informal economy, information asymmetry, Jacob Appelbaum, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, mass immigration, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral panic, Mother of all demos, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, peer-to-peer, Richard Stallman, Silicon Valley, Skype, Socratic dialogue, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Hackers Conference, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks

In December 1968, Engelbart demonstrated a number of his experimental ideas to a conference of computer scientists in the San Francisco Convention Center. The event was later dubbed “The Mother of all Demos”, thanks to the fact that it was the world’s first sighting of a number of computing technologies, including the mouse, email and hypertext. According to Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, “Engelbarts support staff was as elaborate as one would find at a modern Grateful Dead concert” and that support staff included Stewart Brand, who volunteered a lot of time to set up the networked video links and cameras that made Engelbart’s demonstration go off with such a bang.

Brand had a sense that profound things were going on, “and I’ve sort of been drumming my fingers ever since because so many of the things that were foreseen at that point took a long time to arrive. So when I did the piece for Rolling Stone (the magazine’s publisher) Jann Wenner said at the time, ‘Well, you’ve just set in motion a whole new body of journalism that’s going to track down all this stuff.’ And in fact, it was ten years later that Steven Levy did the book Hackers, which sort of told the rest of the story.” Spurred on by Levy’s Hackers, in 1984, the same year of the inaugural Chaos Communication Congress in Germany, Brand convened the US’s first Hacker Con, in Marin County, California. “Organising the Hackers Conference was like some of the early hacking at MIT, so collaborative and rapid you couldnt keep track of who did what…” he wrote at the time, “But once they were on the scene, they were the worlds easiest group to work with.


pages: 204 words: 53,261

The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, Chelsea Manning, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, deskilling, Edward Snowden, Erik Brynjolfsson, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, Goodhart's law, Hyman Minsky, intangible asset, Jean Tirole, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Minsky moment, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, performance metric, price mechanism, RAND corporation, Salesforce, school choice, scientific management, Second Machine Age, selection bias, Steven Levy, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, WikiLeaks

Not only that, but with an eye on their eventual exit to some better job with another organization, mobile managers are on the lookout for metrics of performance that can be deployed when the headhunter calls. THE LURE OF IT Yet another factor is the spread of information technology (IT). In the early 1980s the invention and rapid adoption of the electronic spreadsheet and the resulting ease of tabulating and manipulating figures had wide-ranging effects. As a prescient analyst of the phenomenon, Steven Levy, wrote in 1984, The spreadsheet is a tool, but it is also a worldview—reality by the numbers…. Because spreadsheets can do so many important things, those who use them tend to lose sight of the crucial fact that the imaginary businesses that they can create on their computers are just that—imaginary.

Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman, Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity Without Getting Complicated (Boston, 2014), p. 6. 14. Rakesh Khurana, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs (Princeton, 2002), esp. chap. 3. The phenomenon is by no means confined to the corporate sector. 15. Steven Levy, “A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge,” Harper’s, November 1984, now online at https://medium.com/backchannel/a-spreadsheet-way-of-knowledge-8de60af7146e. 16. Seth Klarman, A Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing for the Thoughtful Investor (New York, 1991). CHAPTER 5. PRINCIPALS, AGENTS, AND MOTIVATION 1.


pages: 339 words: 57,031

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, Bill Atkinson, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, book value, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Californian Ideology, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, complexity theory, computer age, Computer Lib, conceptual framework, Danny Hillis, dematerialisation, distributed generation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Dynabook, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Fairchild Semiconductor, Ford Model T, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Gilder, global village, Golden Gate Park, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, intentional community, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Mother of all demos, new economy, Norbert Wiener, peer-to-peer, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Richard Stallman, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Hackers Conference, the strength of weak ties, theory of mind, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, Yom Kippur War

That year, a handful of selfdescribed computer hackers had been working with Art Kleiner, Kevin Kelly, and others to help generate ideas for the Software Catalog. But hackers as a group came to Brand’s attention only when one of the Catalog’s reviewers, a Bay area freelancer named Steven Levy, finished his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. In the book, Levy traced the origin of “hacking” back to the 1940s and the campus of MIT. There, at least a decade before the school began to teach computer programming to its undergraduates, the term referred to a particular style of work. According to Steven Levy, a Tak i n g t h e W h o l e E a r t h D i g i t a l [ 133 ] “hack” was “a project undertaken or a product built not solely to fulfill some constructive goal, but with some wild pleasure taken in mere involvement.”58 The first computer hackers emerged at MIT in 1959.

Having been alerted to the existence of a new and potentially influential community by a member of their own Whole Earth network (Levy), Brand and Kelly reached out to that community and entrepreneurially extended and diversified their own networks. In that sense, Brand and Kelly bridged what sociologist Ronald Burt would call a “structural hole” between their own, largely countercultural, network and the networks that governed production within key parts of the computer and software industries. Steven Levy, of course, had made the first connection, along with Whole Earth staffers such as Art Kleiner, who had been talking with hackers like Lee Felsenstein about directions for the Software Catalog. Now Brand, Kelly, and others were building on these connections and opening a much broader road between the two communities.

When CoEvolution Quarterly became the Whole Earth Review in 1984, Kelly inherited a growing network of potential writers and sources, one that increasingly spanned countercultural and technical communities. Kelly soon began to publish writers who had first appeared on the WELL or in connection with either the Hackers’ Conference or the Software Catalog, such as Steven Levy and Howard Rheingold. As Kelly began to travel in the Bay area’s digital circles, and especially as he and other Whole Earth regulars became interested in the emerging technologies of virtual reality, he picked up new writers. In 1989, for instance, he published an interview with novelist William Gibson, as well as a “Cyberpunk 101” reading list.


pages: 706 words: 202,591

Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy

active measures, Airbnb, Airbus A320, Amazon Mechanical Turk, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Burning Man, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, company town, computer vision, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, East Village, Edward Snowden, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, GPS: selective availability, growth hacking, imposter syndrome, indoor plumbing, information security, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lock screen, Lyft, machine translation, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Network effects, Oculus Rift, operational security, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, slashdot, Snapchat, social contagion, social graph, social software, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, techlash, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, web application, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, you are the product

ALSO BY STEVEN LEVY In the Plex Crypto The Perfect Thing Insanely Great Artificial Life The Unicorn’s Secret Hackers An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC penguinrandomhouse.com Copyright © 2020 by Steven Levy Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Blue Rider Press is a registered trademark and its colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Levy, Steven, author. Title: Facebook: the inside story / Steven Levy. Description: [New York] : Blue Rider Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019047909 (print) | LCCN 2019047910 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735213159 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735213166 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Facebook (Firm)—History. | Facebook (Electronic resource)—Social aspects.

Classification: LCC HM743.F33 L48 2020 (print) | LCC HM743.F33 (ebook) | DDC 302.30285—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047909 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047910 International Edition ISBN: 9781524746834 While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r1 In memory of Lester Levy, 1920–2017. Sorry you didn’t see that Super Bowl, Dad. Contents Also by Steven Levy Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction PART ONE 1. ZuckNet 2. Ad-Boarded 3. Thefacebook 4. Casa Facebook 5. Moral Dilemma 6. The Book of Change PART TWO 7. Platform 8. Pandemic 9. Sheryl World 10. Growth! 11. Move Fast and Break Things 12.


pages: 416 words: 108,370

Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, always be closing, augmented reality, Clayton Christensen, data science, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Ford Model T, full employment, game design, Golden age of television, Gordon Gekko, hindsight bias, hype cycle, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, information trail, invention of the printing press, invention of the telegraph, Jeff Bezos, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Roose, Kodak vs Instagram, linear programming, lock screen, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Minecraft, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, out of africa, planned obsolescence, power law, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social contagion, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, subscription business, TED Talk, telemarketer, the medium is the message, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Vilfredo Pareto, Vincenzo Peruggia: Mona Lisa, women in the workforce

Talking was social; radio was broadcast: Derek Thompson, “Facebook and Fear,” The Atlantic, May 10, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/the-facebook-future/482145/. “the perfect personalized newspaper”: Steven Levy, “Inside the Science That Delivers Your Scary-Smart Facebook and Twitter Feeds,” Wired, April 22, 2014, www.wired.com/2014/04/perfect-facebook-feed/. the “dozen doughnuts” problem: Steven Levy, “How 30 Random People in Knoxville May Change Your Facebook News Feed,” Backchannel, January 30, 2015, https://backchannel.com/revealed-facebooks-project-to-find-out-what-people-really-want-in-their-news-feed-799dbfb2e8b1#.srntqeuy7.

Facebook’s ability to watch its readers as they read is the dream of any publisher, going back to George Gallup.59 But it turns out that when a personalized newspaper holds up a perfect mirror before its audience, the reflection can be kind of gross. When the News Feed relies exclusively on user behavior, it can become pure sludge, an endless stream of nutrition-free diversions. The journalist Steven Levy has called this the “dozen doughnuts” problem. People know they shouldn’t eat doughnuts all day, but if a coworker puts a dozen doughnuts by your desk each afternoon, you might eat until your mouth is caked in sugar. The News Feed, too, can be a daily tabloid—a hyperminiaturized serving of celebrities, quizzes, and other forms of empty calories that people click on, telling Facebook’s algorithms to serve more doughnuts.


pages: 484 words: 104,873

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, artificial general intelligence, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bernie Madoff, Bill Joy: nanobots, bond market vigilante , business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, Chris Urmson, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer age, creative destruction, data science, debt deflation, deep learning, deskilling, digital divide, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Freestyle chess, full employment, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gunnar Myrdal, High speed trading, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, large language model, liquidity trap, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, McJob, moral hazard, Narrative Science, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, obamacare, optical character recognition, passive income, Paul Samuelson, performance metric, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, precision agriculture, price mechanism, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, rent-seeking, reshoring, RFID, Richard Feynman, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Salesforce, Sam Peltzman, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, strong AI, Stuxnet, technological singularity, telepresence, telepresence robot, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Future of Employment, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, union organizing, Vernor Vinge, very high income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce

Narrative Science’s technology is used by top media outlets, including Forbes, to produce automated articles in a variety of areas, including sports, business, and politics. The company’s software generates a news story approximately every thirty seconds, and many of these are published on widely known websites that prefer not to acknowledge their use of the service. At a 2011 industry conference, Wired writer Steven Levy prodded Narrative Science co-founder Kristian Hammond into predicting the percentage of news articles that would be written algorithmically within fifteen years. His answer: over 90 percent.2 Narrative Science has its sights set on far more than just the news industry. Quill is designed to be a general-purpose analytical and narrative-writing engine, capable of producing high-quality reports for both internal and external consumption across a range of industries.

A few places in which the story of the sardine fishermen of Kerala has been told are The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley, A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor, The Mobile Wave by Michael Saylor, Race Against the Machine by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Content Nation by John Blossom, Planet India by Mira Kamdar, and “To Do with the Price of Fish,” The Economist, May 10, 2007. And now this book joins the list. CHAPTER 4 1. David Carr, “The Robots Are Coming! Oh, They’re Here,” New York Times (Media Decoder blog), October 19, 2009, http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/the-robots-are-coming-oh-theyre-here. 2. Steven Levy, “Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?,” Wired, April 24, 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/04/can-an-algorithm-write-a-better-news-story-than-a-human-reporter. 3. Narrative Science corporate website, http://narrativescience.com. 4. George Leef, “The Skills College Graduates Need,” Pope Center for Education Policy, December 14, 2006, http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?

Davenport, Paul Barth, and Randy Bean, “How ‘Big Data’ Is Different,” MIT Sloan Management Review, July 20, 2012, http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-big-data-is-different. 7. Charles Duhigg, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” New York Times, February 16, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html. 8. As quoted in Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), p. 64. 9. Tom Simonite, “Facebook Creates Software That Matches Faces Almost as Well as You Do,” MIT Technology Review, March 17, 2014, http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525586/facebook-creates-software-that-matches-faces-almost-as-well-as-you-do/. 10.


pages: 397 words: 102,910

The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet by Justin Peters

4chan, Aaron Swartz, activist lawyer, Alan Greenspan, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Bayesian statistics, Brewster Kahle, buy low sell high, crowdsourcing, digital rights, disintermediation, don't be evil, Free Software Foundation, global village, Hacker Ethic, hypertext link, index card, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Lean Startup, machine readable, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Open Library, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, profit motive, RAND corporation, Republic of Letters, Richard Stallman, selection bias, semantic web, Silicon Valley, social bookmarking, social web, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, Twitter Arab Spring, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator

The US government provided the network infrastructure and initially decided to restrict commercial use of the service. (The last of these restrictions wasn’t lifted until 1995.) Thus these early users, prohibited from exploiting the network for profit, used it instead to foster the free exchange of information. This munificent ideology was encoded into what the author Steven Levy described in his insightful book Hackers as the “hacker ethic.” Hackers—a term for early computer programmers—wrote computer code and believed that other hackers should share their code and computing resources with their peers. This policy was, in part, a pragmatic one: at the time, computing resources were scarce, and possessiveness impeded productivity.

There are many battles to fight, and we need to keep going.70 Later that night, Swartz returned to the Supreme Court steps, where he talked and laughed and played the board game SET with the other members of his tribe, waiting for morning to come and the world to set itself right. The next morning, the courtroom was completely full. The Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was there; so was Hackers author Steven Levy. Jack Valenti was there, as was Sonny Bono’s widow, Representative Mary Bono. “The courtroom itself was an impressive structure,” Swartz noted on his blog. “Everything was very, very tall.”71 The court seemed skeptical of Lessig’s argument. “Many Justices repeatedly said that they felt [the CTEA] was a dumb law, that it took things out of the public domain without justification,” Swartz reported later on his blog.

year=1998&post=1998-10-22$5. 17 Michael Hart to Book People mailing list, October 19, 1998, http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive?year=1998&post=1998-10-19$5. 18 Eric Eldred to Book People mailing list, October 19, 1998, http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive?year=1998&post=1998-10-19$4. 19 Kaplan, “Online Publisher Challenges.” 20 Steven Levy, “Lawrence Lessig’s Supreme Showdown,” Wired, October 2002, http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/10.10/lessig.html. 21 David Streitfeld, “The Cultural Anarchist vs. the Hollywood Police State,” Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2002, http://articles.latimes.com/2002/sep/22/magazine/tm-copyright38. 22 Naftali Bendavid, “Lawyer in Microsoft Case Cut Teeth at U. of C.”


pages: 334 words: 104,382

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Burning Man, California gold rush, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, company town, data science, David Brooks, deal flow, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, game design, gender pay gap, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hacker News, high net worth, Hyperloop, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microservices, Parker Conrad, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, pull request, reality distortion field, Richard Hendricks, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, women in the workforce, Zenefits

AdWords allowed advertisers to place ads directly on the search results page, and AdSense enabled website owners to display Google ads that matched their content. Through AdSense, Wojcicki and the team at Google saw the chance to make all content on the web a potential advertising platform for the company. The potential was earth-shattering. “You do the content and leave the selling of the ads to Google,” she told Steven Levy in 2003, when he was a reporter at Newsweek. She predicted that the new technology would “change the economics of the web.” That proved to be an enormous understatement. Google’s new advertising platforms not only changed the economics of the web but also disrupted the economics of the magazine, newspaper, and television industries, and advertising itself

And it’s worth examining: Erik Larson, “Google Sued for Allegedly Paying Women Less Than Male Peers,” Bloomberg, Sept. 14, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-14/google-sued-by-women-workers-claiming-gender-discrimination. Google had no marketing budget: Adam Levy, “Susan Wojcicki: From Google Doodles to YouTube CEO,” Motley Fool, July 5, 2015, https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/07/05/susan-wojcicki-from-google-doodles-to-youtube-ceo.aspx. “You do the content”: Steven Levy, In the Plex (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 84. In this particular column: Rachel Hutton, “Meeting Our Campus Celebrities,” Stanford Daily, Nov. 9, 1998, https://stanforddailyarchive.com/cgi-bin/stanford?a=d&d=stanford19981109-01.1.4&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------. “outstandingly attractive woman”: Hutton, “Meeting Our Campus Celebrities.”

“Of course I do”: Sheryl Sandberg, “Sheryl Sandberg: Bloomberg Studio 1.0 (Full Show),” interview by author, Bloomberg, Aug. 9, 2017, video, 24:16, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-08-10/sheryl-sandberg-bloomberg-studio-1-0-full-show-video. “broader group of employees”: “Uber Report: Eric Holder’s Recommendations for Change.” A true marvel: Steven Levy, “One More Thing: Inside Apple’s Insanely Great (or Just Insane) New Mothership,” Wired, May 16, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/05/apple-park-new-silicon-valley-campus. “everything an Apple employee”: Beth Spotswood, “Apple’s Campus Has Everything—Oh, Except Daycare,” SFist, May 19, 2017, http://sfist.com/2017/05/19/apples_campus_has_everything_-_oh_e.php.


Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral by Ben Smith

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AOL-Time Warner, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deplatforming, Donald Trump, drone strike, fake news, Filter Bubble, Frank Gehry, full stack developer, future of journalism, hype cycle, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, lolcat, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, moral panic, obamacare, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, public intellectual, reality distortion field, Robert Mercer, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, skunkworks, slashdot, Snapchat, social web, Socratic dialogue, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, subscription business, tech worker, TikTok, traveling salesman, WeWork, WikiLeaks, young professional, Zenefits

It was a monumental decision, setting off a frantic wave of competition between the two platforms for this apparently positive and inspirational new source of traffic mined from politics and social movements. That frenzy would later draw in companies from BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post to The New York Times, all hungering after the traffic Facebook could send them. Facebook chronicler Steven Levy later wrote that after failing to acquire Twitter, “Facebook tried to copy a number of Twitter’s features, including a real-time urgency and an increased viral pulse.” He speculated that if Facebook had done the deal, it might not have felt so driven to compete with Twitter to mine the traffic and attention of politics, and that “maybe the News Feed would not have courted so much of the toxicity it became known for later on.”

Go to note reference in text Cerami had met: Ari Berman, Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics (New York: Picador, 2012). Go to note reference in text In an email to Twitter’s: Nick Bilton, Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal (New York: Portfolio, 2014). Go to note reference in text He speculated that if Facebook: Steven Levy, “The Alternative Universe Where Facebook Bought Twitter,” Wired, March 6, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/the-alternate-universe-where-facebook-bought-twitter. Go to note reference in text Chapter 13—$100 Million “I had looked over”: Joshua Green, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising (New York: Penguin Books, 2017).

Ryan Holiday’s 2018 Conspiracy supplied both secret narrative and Peter Thiel’s motivations in the plot against Gawker (along with a lot of digressions about classicism), and his reporting undergirds parts of chapters 9 and 27. David Kirkpatrick’s 2010 The Facebook Effect offers a rare glimpse at how Facebook saw itself, and how episodes like the One Million Voices Against FARC shaped its own actions and identity. Steven Levy’s 2020 Facebook: The Inside Story helped me understand how the company and our perceptions of it had changed. AJ Daulerio’s beautiful newsletter on sobriety, The Small Bow, offered a glimpse of both his own experience and Aileen Gallagher’s, and allowed me to include his perspective though Daulerio didn’t cooperate with this book.


pages: 173 words: 14,313

Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion: Rhetoric in the Peer-To-Peer Debates by John Logie

1960s counterculture, Berlin Wall, book scanning, cuban missile crisis, dual-use technology, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Free Software Foundation, Hacker Ethic, Isaac Newton, Marshall McLuhan, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, peer-to-peer, plutocrats, pre–internet, publication bias, Richard Stallman, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, search inside the book, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog

While it is already difficult to recall in full the culture and language of the first wave of hackers, there are a number of texts that function effectively as “time capsules,” offering snapshots of early hackers and their activities. Among the most important of these is a 1984 book by Steven Levy with the telling title, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Levy’s choice of “heroes” is underscored by the paperback edition’s front cover blurb, which reads, “What Tom Wolfe did for the original astronauts, Steven Levy has done for hackers.” Implicit in this comparison is the suggestion that hackers, like astronauts, are explor- Pa r l orPr e s s wwwww. p a r l or p r e s s . c om Hackers, Crackers, and the Criminalization of Peer-to-Peer Technologies 25 ers.


pages: 606 words: 157,120

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Automated Insights, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, classic study, cloud computing, cognitive bias, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, Dava Sobel, digital divide, disintermediation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, East Village, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, future of journalism, game design, gamification, Gary Taubes, Google Glasses, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, income inequality, invention of the printing press, Jane Jacobs, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, license plate recognition, lifelogging, lolcat, lone genius, Louis Pasteur, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, moral panic, Narrative Science, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, packet switching, PageRank, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, pets.com, placebo effect, pre–internet, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, smart meter, social graph, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yochai Benkler

Our new algorithmic overlords should not aspire to act like ethical automatons; only by being self-reflexive and morally imaginative can they live up to the heavy burden of their civic responsibilities. Alas, their current attitude is nowhere near that ideal. Wired ’s Steven Levy, in his hagiographic biography of Google, observes that “Brin and Page both believed that if Google’s algorithms determined what results were best—and long clicks indicated that the algorithms were satisfying the people who did the searching—who were they to mess with it.” Believe this they did—but why didn’t Steven Levy bother to inquire why? It’s time our technology reporters learn to control their hagiographic impulses and start challenging the just-so narratives spouted by Silicon Valley.

(New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 48. 133 “to the extent that . . . new media”: Anthony Ha, “Sean Parker: Defeating SOPA was the ‘Nerd Spring,’” TechCrunch, March 12, 2012, http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/12/sean-parker-defeating-sopa-was-the-nerd-spring. 133 “a vegetarian trapped inside the sausage factory”: quoted in Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 327. 133 “an incumbent protection machine”: Derek Thompson, “Google’s CEO: ‘The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists,’” The Atlantic, October 1, 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/10/googles-ceo-the-laws-are-written-by-lobbyists/63908. 133 “it is overdue to rethink”: Noveck, Wiki Government, 16. 133 “the digital environment offers”: ibid., 40. 133 “most of the work”: ibid., 40. 134 “a generative governance system can”: Parag Khanna and Ayesha Khanna, Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization, Kindle ed.

Siegler, “Marissa Mayer’s Next Big Thing: ‘Contextual Discovery’—Google Results without Search,” TechCrunch, December 8, 2010, http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/googles-next-big-thing. 144 “It is a mistake to look into the mirror”: James Robinson, “Twitter and Facebook Riot Restrictions Would Be a Mistake, Says Google Chief,” The Guardian, August 27, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/27/twitter-facebook-riot-restrictions-eric-schmidt. 145 “our role in the system”: Ian Paul, “Facebook CEO Challenges the Social Norm of Privacy,” PCWorld, January 11, 2010, http://www.pcworld.com/article/186584/facebook_ceo_challenges_the_social_norm_of_privacy.html. 145 What sociologist Donald MacKenzie wrote: Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). 146 “Brin and Page both believed”: Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 174. 147 “democracy on the Web works”: “Ten Things We Know to Be True,” Google, http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy. 147 “We’re scientists”: quoted in Shawn Donnan, “Think Again,” Financial Times, July 8, 2011, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/b8e8b560-a84a-11e0–9f50–00144feabdc0.html. 148 “It never occurred to me”: quoted in Levy, In the Plex, 171. 148 “criticize the consumer for doing things”: Julie Moos, “Transcript of Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Q&A at NAA,” Poynter.org, April 7, 2009, http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/95079/transcript-of-google-ceo-eric-schmidts-qa-at-naa. 149 “filters no longer filter out”: David Weinberger, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now that the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 11. 149 “instead of reducing information and hiding”: ibid., 13. 149 Weinberger identifies five “most basic properties”: ibid., 50. 150 This was the case with the Occupy Wall Street discussion: Tarleton Gillespie, “Can an Algorithm Be Wrong?


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The Wide Lens: What Successful Innovators See That Others Miss by Ron Adner

ASML, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, call centre, Clayton Christensen, Ford Model T, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Lean Startup, M-Pesa, minimum viable product, mobile money, new economy, RAND corporation, RFID, smart grid, smart meter, SoftBank, spectrum auction, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, supply-chain management, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, vertical integration

The value blueprint builds on these perspectives, with a focus on designing the most effective configuration to deliver the value proposition. 88 $550 device: “Sony Shows Data Discman,” New York Times, September 13, 1991. 88 The Rocket, developed by NuvoMedia: Martin Arnold, “From Gutenberg to Cyberstories,” New York Times, January 7, 1999. 88 That same year the SoftBook: Peter Lewis, “Taking on New Forms, Electronic Books Turn a Page,” New York Times, July 2, 1998. 88 Gemstar released two models: Ken Feinstein, “RCA REB1100 eBook Review,” CNET.com, February 21, 2001, http://reviews.cnet.com/e-book-readers/rca-reb1100-ebook/4505-3508_7-4744438.xhtml. 89 proof that the electronic book was ready for the mainstream: Doreen Carvajal, “Long Line Online for Stephen King E-Novella,” New York Times, March 16, 2000. 90 Random House’s e-book revenues doubled: Nicholas Bogaty, “eBooks by the Numbers: Open eBook Forum Compiles Industry Growth Stats,” International Digital Publishing Forum, press release, July 22, 2002, http://old.idpf.org/pressroom/pressreleases/ebookstats.htm. 90 “difficult to find, buy and read e-books”: Steven Levy, “The Future of Reading,” Newsweek, November 26, 2007. 90 Paltry content and intense digital rights management: Ginny Parker Woods, “Sony Cracks Open New Book with Reader,” Toronto Star, February 20, 2006. 90 “We’ve been very cautious in launching [the Reader]”: Michael Kanellos, “Sony’s Brave Sir Howard,” CNET.com, January 17, 2007, http://news.cnet.com/Sonys-brave-Sir-Howard/2008-1041_3-6150661.xhtml. 90 almost 20 percent cheaper than the Librié: Sony Librié ebook Review, eReaderGuide.Info, www.ereaderguide.info/sony_librie_ebook_reader_review.htm. 90 10,000 titles available at Connect.com: Edward Baig, “Sony Device Gets E-Book Smart,” USA Today, October 5, 2006. 91 the iPod of the book industry: David Derbyshire, “Electronic BookOpens New Chapter for Readers,” Daily Telegraph, September 28, 2006. 91 much fanfare from the press: Amanda Andrews, “Sony’s Hitting the Books,” Australian, February 28, 2006. 92 lowering publisher confidence: George Cole, “Will the eBook Finally Replace Paper?

Accessed July 15, 2011. 201 “no Kenyan is locked out of accessing basic banking services”: “M-Kesho: ‘Super Bank Account’ from Safaricom and Equity Bank,” Techmtaa.com, May 18, 2010, http://www.techmtaa.com/2010/05/18/m-kesho-super-bank-account-from-safaricom-and-equity-bank/. 207 “Creative Zen Vision:M certainly has the goods”: “CNET Editors Cover the Best of CES 2006,” CNET.com, http://www.cnet.com/4520-11405_1-6398234-1.xhtml. 207 “hand-held computer that’s fully in the iPhone’s class”: Walt Mossberg, “Palm’s New Pre Takes On iPhone,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2009. 207 “the Android tablet concept”: David Pogue, “It’s a Tablet. It’s Gorgeous. It’s Costly,” New York Times, November 10, 2010. 209 90 percent of the world that used Windows: Ian Fried, “Are Mac Users Smarter?” CNET.com, July 12, 2002, http://news.cnet.com/2100-1040-943519.xhtml. 210 iPod, boasting 100 million customers: Steven Levy, “Why We Went Nuts About the iPhone,” Newsweek, July 16, 2007. 210 Apple’s stock shot up 44 percent: Matt Krantz, “iPhone Powers up Apple’s Shares,” USA Today, June 28, 2007. 211 “four times the number of PCs that ship every year”: Morris, “Steve Jobs Speaks Out.” 211 Ericsson released the R380: Dave Conabree, “Ericsson Introduces the New R380e,” Mobile Magazine, September 25, 2001. 211 Palm followed up with its version: Sascha Segan, “Kyocera Launches First Smartphone in Years,” PC Magazine, March 23, 2010, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361664,00.asp#fbid=C81SVwKJIvh. 211 “one more entrant into an already very busy space”: “RIM Co-CEO Doesn’t See Threat from Apple’s iPhone,” InformationWeek, February 12, 2007. 212 the phone was exclusively available from only one carrier: In a handful of markets regulators ruled the exclusivity arrangement illegal. 212 “The bigger problem is the AT&T network”: David Pogue, “The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype,” New York Times, June 27, 2007. 212 priced at a mere $99 in 2007: Kim Hart, “Rivals Ready for iPhone’s Entrance; Pricey Gadget May Alter Wireless Field,” Washington Post, June 24, 2007. 212 “cause irreparable damage to the iPhone’s software”: Apple, press release, September 24, 2007. 213 “I say I like our strategy”: Steve Ballmer interviewed on CNBC, January 17, 2007. 213 They ran out of the older model six weeks before the July 2008 launch: Tom Krazit, “The iPhone, One Year Later,” CNET.com, June 26, 2008, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9977572-37.xhtml. 213 60 percent went to buyers who already owned at least one iPod: Apple COO Tim Cook’s comments at Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, cited in JPMorgan analyst report, “Strolling Through the Apple Orchard: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Scenarios,” March 4, 2008. 215 the average iPhone user paid AT&T $2,000: Jenna Wortham, “Customers Angered as iPhones Overload AT&T,” New York Times, September 2, 2009. 215 as high as $18 per user per month: Tom Krazit, “Piper Jaffray: AT&T Paying Apple $18 per iPhone, Per Month,” CNET.com, October 24, 2007, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9803657-37.xhtml. 216 Apple announced its 10 billionth app download: Apple.com, “iTunes Store Tops 10 Billion Songs Sold,” February 25, 2010, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/02/25iTunes-Store-Tops-10-Billion-Songs-Sold.xhtml.


pages: 224 words: 13,238

Electronic and Algorithmic Trading Technology: The Complete Guide by Kendall Kim

algorithmic trading, automated trading system, backtesting, Bear Stearns, business logic, commoditize, computerized trading, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, diversification, en.wikipedia.org, family office, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate swap, linked data, market fragmentation, money market fund, natural language processing, proprietary trading, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, random walk, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, short selling, statistical arbitrage, Steven Levy, transaction costs, yield curve

Macgregor’s software is a central hub for trading used by 100 blue-chip 146 Electronic and Algorithmic Trading Technology institutional clients including Babson Capital, Delaware Investments, and T. Rowe Price with about $5.5 trillion in assets. Rumors circulated that Reuters, SunGard, and Thomson Financial were among the bidders for Macgregor, according to industry sources.6 Broker neutrality will remain an important element in acquiring other order management systems. Steven Levy, president and CEO of Macgregor, says, ‘‘It is important to note that your broker neutrality and anonymity requirements will continue to be held paramount. You will continue to be able to trade with any broker and liquidity venue you chose.’’ This may possibly be the beginning trend of broker-dealers acquiring order management systems.

Herring, 44 Risk Effect, 11 Rule 390, 39, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49 P S Paper Portfolio, 54 Pegging, 101 Peter Bergan, 63 Piper Jaffray, 61, 62 Plexus Group, 36, 63, 94, 106, 143 Portfolio Insurance, 8, 11 Portware, 3, 35, 108, 165, 169 Post-trade, 21, 24, 53, 54, 68, 86, 103, 105, 134 Pre-trade, 21, 24, 53, 54, 63, 64, 67, 86, 91, 103, 107, 108, 109, 134 Prime Broker, 34, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 162 Program Trading, 8, 10, 12, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 80, 81, 100 Proprietary trading, 62 Putnam Investments, 92 Sales trader, 26 Salomon Brothers, 3 S&P 500, 10, 11, 12 Sarbanes-Oxley, 44 Security Exchange Act of 1934, 43 Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), 2, 6, 7, 10, 47, 75, 125, 126, 128, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137 Securities Industry Automation Corp (SIAC), 83, 87, 89 Self Regulatory Organizations (SRO), 126, 131, 133, 135 Sell-side, 4, 20, 77 Settlements, 15, 17, 18, 27, 43, 89, 153, 154 Slippage, 65 Smart order routing, 22, 101 Soft dollars, 21, 51 Sonic Financial Technologies, 36, 80, 143 Specialist, 43 Speer Leads & Kellog (SLK), 143 Straight Through Processing (STP), 19, 27, 116, 162 Strategy enabler, 19, 85 STN, 36 Sungard, 75, 89, 172, 173, 175 SunGard Transaction Network (STN), 145 Sub-penny Rule, 125, 128, 132, 140 Steven Levy, 146 Q Quant House, 170 Quantitative Services Group (QSG), 36, 106, 170 R Rabbit Portfolio, 54 Radianz, 173 Ray Killian, 143 Real Time (TCA), 65 Real-time data, 19 Reconciliation, 18 REDIPlus, 72, 74, 143 T T. Rowe Price, 146 TABB Group, 21, 72, 75, 81, 84, 87, 103, 104, 131, 144, 153, 155, 158, 160, 163 Index 203 Telekurs Financial, 121 Thomas Loeb, 94 Thomson, 89, 116, 117, 118, 119 Time slicing, 101 Time Weighted Average Price (TWAP), 10, 60, 62, 101, 150 TowerGroup, 161 Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE) Reporting, 70, 120, 121 Trade Through Rule, 39, 125, 131, 132 TradeWeb, 69, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121 Transaction Cost Analysis (TCA), 22, 63, 147 Transaction Cost Research (TCR), 103 Transaction Network Services, Inc.


pages: 461 words: 125,845

This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers by Andy Greenberg

air gap, Apple II, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Bletchley Park, Burning Man, Chelsea Manning, computerized markets, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, disinformation, domain-specific language, driverless car, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Fairchild Semiconductor, fault tolerance, hive mind, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Lewis Mumford, Mahatma Gandhi, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Mohammed Bouazizi, Mondo 2000, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, offshore financial centre, operational security, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, profit motive, Ralph Nader, real-name policy, reality distortion field, Richard Stallman, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, social graph, SQL injection, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Teledyne, three-masted sailing ship, undersea cable, Vernor Vinge, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, X Prize, Zimmermann PGP

That strategy meant that the members of the L0pht, hackers with names like Kingpin, Weld Pond, Count Zero, Space Rogue, Brian Oblivion, Silicosis, and Dildog, could refine their skills and break ground in digital penetration without ever stepping across the law. The L0pht’s misfits adhered instead to a sort of modernized version of the hacker code laid out ten years before by Steven Levy in the book Hackers: Don’t hack anyone else’s machines. Don’t break the law. Share everything, both physical materials and information. Ethics aside, the L0pht was a wellspring of epic mischief. Kingpin, a brilliant baby-faced hacker in his early twenties, had developed a hardware kit to eavesdrop on the unencrypted signals from pagers, a protocol known as POCSAG.

With the exception of any stray facts that may have been missed in my efforts to note all sources, everything I’ve written that’s not cited below can be attributed to my own reporting. Primary sources and interviews aside, I’m particularly indebted to a few prior books and articles as instructive signposts for my reporting and primary sources in their own right. They include Daniel Ellsberg’s memoir Secrets, Suelette Dreyfus and Julian Assange’s Underground, Steven Levy’s Crypto, Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s memoir Inside WikiLeaks, Robert Manne’s “The Cypherpunk Revolutionary: Julian Assange” in Australia’s The Monthly, Nathaniel Rich’s “The Most Dangerous Man In Cyberspace” in Rolling Stone, and Raffi Khatchadourian’s spectacular New Yorker article “No Secrets.” PROLOGUE: THE MEGALEAK trick companies’ employees into revealing their passwords over the phone Suelette Dreyfus and Julian Assange.

The Puzzle Palace (New York: Penguin Books, 1983). only weakness is the identity that ties them to their frail bodies Vernor Vinge. “True Names.” In True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (New York: Tor, 2001), first published in Dell Binary Star #5, 1981. M. T. Graves and the Dungeon Steven Levy. Crypto (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), p. 187. Herbert Zim’s Codes & Secret Writing Ibid. produce a solution in minutes Levy, p. 188. remove the pad’s random noise, breaking the ciphers “The Vernon Story,” published by the Center for Cryptologic History, NSA.gov, available at http://www.nsa.gov/about/_files/cryptologic_heritage/publications/coldwar/venona_story.pdf “Poe’s dictum will be hard to defend in any form” Martin Gardner.


pages: 254 words: 76,064

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito, Jeff Howe

3D printing, air gap, Albert Michelson, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Burning Man, business logic, buy low sell high, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, Computer Numeric Control, conceptual framework, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital rights, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ferguson, Missouri, fiat currency, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, frictionless, game design, Gerolamo Cardano, informal economy, information security, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, move 37, Nate Silver, Network effects, neurotypical, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, pirate software, power law, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, Productivity paradox, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Singh, Singularitarianism, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, the strength of weak ties, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Two Sigma, universal basic income, unpaid internship, uranium enrichment, urban planning, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

Hip-Hop Dancer,” TechRepublic, July 27, 2015, http://www.techrepublic.com/article/julia-hu-lark-founder-digital-health-maven-hip-hop-dancer/. 4 And expected to increase in value to $3 trillion by 2020. Michael De Waal-Montgomery, “China and India Driving $3T Consumer Electronics Boom, Smart Home Devices Growing Fastest,” VentureBeat, n.d., http://venturebeat.com/2015/11/05/china-and-india-driving-3t-consumer-electronics-boom-smart-home-devices-growing-fastest/. 5 Steven Levy, “Google’s Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter,” WIRED, January 17, 2013, http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-qa-larry-page/. 6 David Rowan, “Chinese Pirates Are Tech’s New Innovators,” Wired UK, June 1, 2010. 7 David Barboza, “In China, Knockoff Cellphones Are a Hit,” New York Times, April 27, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/technology/28cell.html. 8 Robert Neuwirth, “The Shadow Superpower,” Foreign Policy, accessed May 29, 2016, https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/28/the-shadow-superpower/. 9 Douglas S.

., A Century of Excellence in Measurements, Standards, and Technology: A Chronicle of Selected NIST Publications 1901–2000, NIST Special Publication 958 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2001). 38 W. Diffie and M. Hellman, “New Directions in Cryptography,” IEEE Transactions in Information Theory 22, no. 6 (November 1976): 644–54, doi:10.1109/TIT.1976.1055638. 39 Steven Levy, “Battle of the Clipper Chip,” New York Times Magazine, June 12, 1994, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/magazine/battle-of-the-clipper-chip.html. 40 R. L. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman, “A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems,” Communications of the ACM 21, no. 2 (February 1978): 120–26, doi:10.1145/359340.359342. 41 AP, “Firm Shuts Down Privacy Feature,” Calgary Herald, October 9, 2001. 42 CCNMatthews (Canada), “Radialpoint CEO a Finalist for Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards,” MarketWired, July 29, 2005. 43 Roberto Rocha, “What Goes Around Comes Around; Montreal-Based Akoha.com Encourages Acts of Kindness by Turning Altruism into a Game,” Gazette, July 14, 2009. 44 The Akoha Team, “Akoha Shutting Down August 15 2011,” Akoha Blog, August 2, 2011, https://blog.akoha.com/2011/08/02/akoha-shutting-down-august-15-2011/. 45 Michael J.


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Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb

Abraham Wald, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Air France Flight 447, Airbus A320, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Picking Challenge, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Black Swan, blockchain, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, financial engineering, fulfillment center, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, high net worth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, information retrieval, inventory management, invisible hand, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Lyft, Minecraft, Mitch Kapor, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, new economy, Nick Bostrom, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, performance metric, profit maximization, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Solow, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Levy, strong AI, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tim Cook: Apple, trolley problem, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, US Airways Flight 1549, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Scott Forstall, quoted in “How the iPhone Was Born,” Wall Street Journal video, June 25, 2017, http://www.wsj.com/video/how-the-iphone-was-born-inside-stories-of-missteps-and-triumphs/302CFE23-392D-4020-B1BD-B4B9CEF7D9A8.html. Chapter 13 1. Steve Jobs in Memory and Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress, Michael Lawrence Films, 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_GX50Za6c. Chapter 14 1. Steven Levy, “A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge,” Wired, October 24, 2014, https://backchannel.com/a-spreadsheet-way-of-knowledge-8de60af7146e. 2. Nick Statt, “The Next Big Leap in AI Could Come from Warehouse Robots,” The Verge, June 1, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/1/15703146/kindred-orb-robot-ai-startup-warehouse-automation. 3.

This discussion is based on Dirk Bergemann and Alessandro Bonatti, “Selling Cookies,” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 7, no. 2 (2015): 259–294. 7. One example is Mastercard Advisors consulting services, which use Mastercard’s vast quantity of data to provide a variety of predictions, ranging from consumer fraud to retention rates. See http://www.mastercardadvisors.com/consulting.html. Chapter 17 1. As told to Steven Levy. See Will Smith, “Stop Calling Google Cardboard’s 360-Degree Videos ‘VR,’” Wired, November 16, 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/11/360-video-isnt-virtual-reality/. 2. Jessir Hempel, “Inside Microsoft’s AI Comeback,” Wired, June 21, 2017, https://www.wired.com/story/inside-microsofts-ai-comeback/. 3.


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Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal

Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Big Tech, bitcoin, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, commons-based peer production, context collapse, continuous integration, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, death of newspapers, Debian, disruptive innovation, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, eternal september, Ethereum, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Guido van Rossum, Hacker Ethic, Hacker News, Induced demand, informal economy, information security, Jane Jacobs, Jean Tirole, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kubernetes, leftpad, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, node package manager, Norbert Wiener, pirate software, pull request, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Ronald Coase, Ruby on Rails, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Nature of the Firm, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, two-sided market, urban planning, web application, wikimedia commons, Yochai Benkler, Zimmermann PGP

Code, like livestock, needs liberation from humanity, even at the expense of personal convenience. To write free software, then, was to be free of the constraints that normally plagued commercial software environments. Free software was counterculture, and it fell right in line with the burgeoning hacker culture of the times. The term “hacker” was popularized by author Steven Levy, who memorably captured a portrait of the 1980s hacker generation in the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. In Hackers, Levy profiles a number of well-known programmers of the time, including Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Richard Stallman. He suggests that hackers believe in sharing, openness, and decentralization, which he calls the “hacker ethic.”17 According to Levy’s portrait, hackers care about improving the world, but don’t believe in following the rules to get there.

,” GNU Operating System, July 30, 2019, https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html. 16 Nicole Martinelli, “Walking the Walk: Why It’s a Crooked Path for Free Software Activists,” Super User, February 8, 2019, https://superuser.openstack.org/articles/walking-the-walk-why-its-a-crooked-path-for-free-software-activists/. 17 Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th Anniversary Edition (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2010). 18 Linus Torvalds (torvalds), “Add Support for AR5BBU22 [0489:e03c],” Linux Pull Requests, GitHub, May 11, 2012, https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-5654674. 19 Eric S.


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12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Charles Babbage, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, digital rights, discovery of DNA, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, flying shuttle, friendly AI, gender pay gap, global village, Grace Hopper, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, housing crisis, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microdosing, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, off grid, OpenAI, operation paperclip, packet switching, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, Plato's cave, public intellectual, QAnon, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, spinning jenny, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, TikTok, trade route, Turing test, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

And no one was showing the girls pictures of the ENIAC and its all-female team, nor were professors goading the boys to see if any of them could manage what the women had done – without a manual. * * * In fact, history was being distorted to exclude those women and others like them. In 1984, Steven Levy published his bestselling book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Levy’s book has no women in it. Women aren’t heroes and they aren’t important in computing. The book is still in print, without corrections, and is marketed as a ‘classic’. * * * 1984 is the slipping point. Young women began dropping out of computer-science courses, or not enrolling at all.

Susan Sellers, 1994 The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Shulamith Firestone, 1970 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari, 2011 Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez, 2019 The I-Ching Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society, Cordelia Fine, 2017 (and everything she has written and will write) The Gendered Brain: The New Neuroscience That Shatters the Myth of the Female Brain, Gina Rippon, 2019 The Future Isn’t Female Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, 2002 Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing, Marie Hicks, 2017 Algorithims of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, Safiya Umoja Noble, 2018 The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, Dava Sobel, 2016 Let it Go: My Extraordinary Story – from Refugee to Entrepreneur to Philanthropist, the memoir of Dame Stephanie Shirley, 2012 (If you don’t have time for this, just find her TED Talk.) Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener, 2020 The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, 1949 Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy, 1984 Psychology of Crowds, Gustave Le Bon, 1896 Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg, 2013 Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights, Helen Lewis, 2020 A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, 1929 Your Computer Is on Fire, various editors, 2021 (haven’t read this at time of going to press but looks great) The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker, 2002 Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, Adrienne Rich, 1976 The Better Half: On the Genetic Superiority of Women, Sharon Moalem, 2020 Jurassic Car Park Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949 The War of the Worlds, H.


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Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex by Yasha Levine

23andMe, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Anne Wojcicki, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, British Empire, Californian Ideology, call centre, Charles Babbage, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, collaborative editing, colonial rule, company town, computer age, computerized markets, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, digital map, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, El Camino Real, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, fault tolerance, gentrification, George Gilder, ghettoisation, global village, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Hangouts, Greyball, Hacker Conference 1984, Howard Zinn, hypertext link, IBM and the Holocaust, index card, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, life extension, Lyft, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), packet switching, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, private military company, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, slashdot, Snapchat, Snow Crash, SoftBank, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Susan Wojcicki, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telepresence, telepresence robot, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Hackers Conference, Tony Fadell, uber lyft, vertical integration, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks

An auto-suggest spellchecker feature allowed Google to recognize minor but important quirks in the way people used language in order to guess the meaning of what people typed rather than just matching text to text. “Today, if you type ‘Gandhi bio,’ we know that ‘bio’ means ‘biography.’ And if you type ‘bio warfare,’ it means ‘biological,’” another Google engineer explained. Steven Levy, a veteran tech journalist whose early career included a stint at Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Software Catalog in the 1980s, gained unprecedented insider access to write the history of Google. The result was In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, a hagiographic but highly informative story of Google’s rise to dominance.

The story of Sergey Brin’s search for terrorists in Google’s logs comes from I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59, an amazing insider account by former Google employee Douglas Edwards. All direct quotes of Edwards in this chapter come from his book. 2. Vivian Marino, “Searching the Web, Searching the Mind,” New York Times, December 23, 2001. 3. Google engineer Amit Patel, quoted in Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 46. 4. Douglas Edwards, I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), chap. 16. 5. President George W. Bush, “Remarks on Improving Counterterrorism Intelligence,” the American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, February 14, 2003, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?

John Ince, “The Lost Google Tapes,” January 2000, quoted in Walter Isaacson’s The Innovators, chap. 11. 32. “It’s all recursive. It’s all a big circle,” Larry Page later explained at a computer forum a few years after launching Google. “Navigating Cyberspace,” PC forum held in Scottsdale, AZ, 2001, quoted in Steven Levy’s In the Plex, 21. 33. John Battelle, “The Birth of Google,” Wired, August 1, 2005. 34. Ince, “The Lost Google Tapes,” quoted in Isaacson, The Innovators, chap. 11. 35. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, “The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web,” Stanford University InfoLab, January 29, 1998, http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf. 36.


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Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground by Kevin Poulsen

Apple II, Brian Krebs, Burning Man, corporate governance, dumpster diving, Exxon Valdez, fake news, gentrification, Hacker Ethic, hive mind, index card, Kickstarter, McMansion, Mercator projection, offshore financial centre, packet switching, pirate software, Ponzi scheme, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, SQL injection, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, traffic fines, web application, WikiLeaks, zero day, Zipcar

See http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/articles/203/5729/threaded (May 24, 2001). Max says he did not consider himself an informant and only provided technical information. Chapter 4: The White Hat 1 The first people to identify themselves as hackers: The seminal work on the early hackers is Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984). Also see Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006). 2 Tim was at work one day: This anecdote was recalled by Tim Spencer.

District Court for the Eastern District of New York. 4 “We were lucky in this case, because Salgado’s purchaser was cooperating with the FBI”: Written testimony of Robert S. Litt, deputy attorney general, before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection, House Commerce Committee, September 4, 1997 (http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/daag9_97.htm). 5 But the feds lost the crypto wars: For a detailed history, see Steven Levy, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (New York: Penguin Books, 2002). Chapter 31: The Trial 1 “So, you take my girls out to party now?”: Interview with Giannone. 2 Once a jury is seated, a defendant’s chances for acquittal are about one in ten: Fiscal year 2006.


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Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andy Rubin, benefit corporation, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, Chris Wanstrath, citation needed, cloud computing, context collapse, crowdsourcing, data science, deal flow, decentralized internet, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, eternal september, fake news, feminist movement, Firefox, gentrification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, green new deal, helicopter parent, holacracy, Internet Archive, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julie Ann Horvath, Kim Stanley Robinson, l'esprit de l'escalier, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Mondo 2000, moral panic, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, packet switching, PageRank, pre–internet, profit motive, Project Xanadu, QAnon, real-name policy, recommendation engine, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social graph, Social Justice Warrior, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Turing complete, Wayback Machine, We are the 99%, web application, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, you are the product

We can back up our files, but this is a time-consuming task that isn’t exactly fail-proof. While backing up files is an individual solution, Google’s deletion of information is a break in shared knowledge: blog readers looking to reread an old post that has been lost are left with only their faulty memories of it. Steven Levy’s 2011 book In the Plex details a baffling exchange with Sergey Brin, who couldn’t understand why he was writing a book about the company in the first place. “Why don’t you just write some articles?” Brin asked Levy. “Or release this a chapter at a time?” (Mark Zuckerberg had similar antipathy. On his own social network, in its early years, he responded to the profile topic “Favorite Books” with “I don’t read.”)

Information about the event I was part of at the Institute of Contemporary Arts is on its website (“The Influence of Technology,” February 25, 2014), along with the dead YouTube link. The transcript of my talk is available here: https://archive.fo/OcY4H. In addition to the quotes from Sergey Brin about books in “That horrid Google on the prowl!!!,” in Steven Levy’s In the Plex (Simon & Schuster, 2011), and Ken Auletta’s Googled: The End of the World as We Know It (Penguin Press, 2009, 124), I found Zuckerberg’s statement “I don’t read” in Katherine Losse’s memoir The Boy Kings (Free Press, 2012, 6). In addition to Auletta and Levy’s encounters with Brin, John Battelle says in the footnotes of his book The Search (Portfolio, 2005) that “in exchange for sitting down with me, Page wanted the right to review every mention of Google, Page, or Brin in my book, then respond in footnotes.


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The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? by David Brin

affirmative action, airport security, Ayatollah Khomeini, clean water, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, data acquisition, death of newspapers, Extropian, Garrett Hardin, Howard Rheingold, illegal immigration, informal economy, information asymmetry, information security, Iridium satellite, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, packet switching, pattern recognition, pirate software, placebo effect, plutocrats, prediction markets, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Robert Bork, Saturday Night Live, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, telepresence, The Turner Diaries, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UUNET, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, workplace surveillance , Yogi Berra, zero-sum game, Zimmermann PGP

When the CDA was argued before the United States Supreme Court, one aspect in dispute was whether Internet-based services such as America Online should be viewed as “common carriers,” which are not responsible for content, or whether their role is more that of “publishers,” answerable if some client uses their channels to pander or commit libel. At that level, the arguments may seem picky and recondite. But the fundamental issue can be expressed more simply. As Newsweek correspondent Steven Levy put it, Here is the nub: in cyberspace, the most democratic of mediums, should priority be given to allowing adults to exercise their constitutional right to speech? Or, as the CDA dictates, should they have to curb their expression—even certain constitutionally protected speech with redeeming social value like sex-education, highfalutin nude art, and George Carlin comedy routines—so that Net-surfing children will not be exposed to so-called patently offensive content?

By constantly ratcheting up the number of bits in their keys, encryptors should retain the advantage at any particular point in time. Assuming both sides truly have the same level of power available. But what if one side quietly gets its mitts on a petaflop machine, or a potent quantum unit, years ahead of its competitors? Then the inherent advantage shifts dramatically. As Steven Levy of Newsweek put it, “The strength of cryptography determines whoʼs going to try to break in.... if itʼs the Mafia or a national government, theyʼll have plenty of resources.” (Recall box 3 of the “plausibility matrix” on page 272.) The important thing to realize is that you can never know if this is not already the case.

In fact, both companies are said to be developing high-speed Web browsers to patrol the Net looking for music infringements. Well-funded content owners may be among the first to have truly sophisticated software agents doing their work of policing their own self-interest on the Net around the clock. 108 ... one paramount source of danger ... Steven Levy, Newsweek technology columnist and author of Crypto, a book about the cryptography revolution, who has been following the “Clipper chip” controversy and its followons, observed the persistence of single-direction ire in the controversy over encryption. “As the years go by, the subject gains more attention, almost all of it directed at attacking the governmentʼs case....” 109 ... governments that are well grounded in what works ...


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Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley

air freight, Apple II, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Bob Noyce, card file, classic study, cuban missile crisis, dumpster diving, Garrett Hardin, Hush-A-Phone, index card, Jason Scott: textfiles.com, John Markoff, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Neal Stephenson, popular electronics, Richard Feynman, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, The Home Computer Revolution, the new new thing, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, undersea cable, urban renewal, wikimedia commons

Riches, or promises of riches, or maybe just a fun job that might pay the bills beckoned. In 1976 former phone phreaks Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were selling Apple I computers to their fellow hobbyists. “Jobs placed ads in hobbyist publications and they began selling Apples for the price of $666.66,” journalist Steven Levy wrote. “Anyone in Homebrew could take a look at the schematics for the design, Woz’s BASIC was given away free with the purchase of a piece of equipment that connected the computer to a cassette recorder.” The fully assembled and tested Apple II followed later that year. By 1977 microcomputers had begun to enter the mainstream.

Just as the phone company thought it was natural to mix computers and phone switches, John Draper thought it was natural to mix computers and phone phreaking. Draper was not the first to have this insight; students at MIT in the mid-1960s had interfaced one of the school’s PDP-6 microcomputers to the telephone line and used it as a computerized blue box. According to hacker historian Steven Levy, “At one point, [the telephone company] burst into the ninth floor at Tech Square, and demanded that the hackers show them the blue box. When the hackers pointed to the PDP-6, the frustrated officials threatened to take the whole machine, until the hackers unhooked the phone interface and handed it over.”

Bevard, “Five Students Psych Bell System, Place Free Long Distance Calls,” Harvard Crimson, May 31, 1966 <db991>. 8 Locke dug up the Herald article: Ron Kessler, “Student Dialers Play Their Way to Global Phone Calls, Non-Pay,” Boston Herald, May 27, 1966, p. 1 <db471>. 10 “Signaling Systems for Control of Telephone Switching”: C. Breen and C. A. Dahlbom, “Signaling Systems for Control of Telephone Switching,” Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 39, no. 6, November 1960, p. 1381 <db445>. 11 used a telephone dial to select the train to be controlled: Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, 25th Anniversary Edition (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media), p. 8. Chapter 2: Birth of a Playground 14 the best known was created by Claude Chappe: J-M Dilhac, “The Telegraph of Claude Chappe—An Optical Telecommunications Network for the XVIIth Century,” IEEE Global History Network, at http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/images/1/17/Dilhac.pdf. 15 In America the inventor was Samuel Morse: The Supreme Court of the United States declared Morse to be the sole inventor of the telegraph; see Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers (New York: Walker Publishing Company, 2007), p. 183.


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Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, air freight, Airbnb, Amazon Picking Challenge, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, business climate, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gigafactory, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kiva Systems, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, NSO Group, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, private spaceflight, quantitative hedge fund, remote working, rent stabilization, RFID, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, search inside the book, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, two-pizza team, Uber for X, union organizing, warehouse robotics, WeWork

He founded Blue Origin—the name refers to humanity’s birthplace, Earth—with a hypothesis that quickly proved incorrect: that significant advancements in space would require alternatives to liquid-fueled rockets. For the first few years, Blue resembled “a club more than a company,” as journalist Steven Levy later wrote in Wired, a think tank that included a dozen aficionados, like novelist Neal Stephenson and science historian George Dyson, who brainstormed radical and unproven ways to travel into space. By 2003, Bezos had changed course, acknowledging the unrivaled efficiency of conventional liquid propulsion.

Anne Kornblut, Matt Mosk, Adam Piore, Sean Meshorer, Ethan Watters, Michael Jordan, Fred Sharples, Ruzwana Bashir, Adam Rogers, Daniel McGinn, and Charles Duhigg all offered friendship and assistance at various moments of need. Nick and Chrysta Bilton generously hosted me on several trips to Los Angeles; Nick and Emily Wingfield offered the same hospitality in Seattle. Steven Levy has provided wise counsel and invaluable friendship over many years. I’m extremely fortunate to have a large and supportive family, including my brothers, Brian Stone and Eric Stone, Dita Papraniku Stone and Becca Zoller Stone, Luanne Stone, Maté Schissler and Andrew Iorgulescu, and Jon and Monica Stone.

the firm landed a Falcon 9 booster: Loren Grush, “SpaceX Successfully Lands Its Rocket on a Floating Drone Ship for the First Time,” The Verge, April 8, 2016, https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/8/11392138/spacex-landing-success-falcon-9-rocket-barge-at-sea (January 24, 2021). “a club more than a company”: Steven Levy, “Jeff Bezos Wants Us All to Leave Earth—for Good,” Wired, October 15, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/jeff-bezos-blue-origin/ (January 24, 2021). Residents of the town of Van Horn: Clare O’Connor, “Jeff Bezos’ Spacecraft Blows Up in Secret Test Flight; Locals Describe ‘Challenger-Like’ Explosion,” Forbes, September 2, 2011, https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/09/02/jeff-bezos-spacecraft-blows-up-in-secret-test-flight-locals-describe-challenger-like-explosion/?


pages: 371 words: 93,570

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans

4chan, Ada Lovelace, air gap, Albert Einstein, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Charles Babbage, colonial rule, Colossal Cave Adventure, computer age, crowdsourcing, D. B. Cooper, dark matter, dematerialisation, Doomsday Book, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, East Village, Edward Charles Pickering, game design, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Haight Ashbury, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, Honoré de Balzac, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, hypertext link, index card, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Jacquard loom, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, junk bonds, knowledge worker, Leonard Kleinrock, machine readable, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mondo 2000, Mother of all demos, Network effects, old-boy network, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, packet switching, PalmPilot, pets.com, rent control, RFC: Request For Comment, rolodex, San Francisco homelessness, semantic web, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, tech worker, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, telepresence, The Soul of a New Machine, Wayback Machine, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Y2K

Cavers seek connections, which they discover through systematic survey, collective effort, and a willingness to forge ahead into the darkness, knowing full well that when the end appears, it may be a small place, a crack in the rock so tight only the wind can broach it. The game is a set of instructions for re-creating Mammoth; those instructions explode into pencil passageways, antechambers, and pits. Adventure can be won only with a map, just as caves are survived only by those who know the way back out. Steven Levy, in his history of computer culture, compares Adventure to the craft of programming itself, writing that “the deep recesses you explored in the Adventure world were akin to the basic, most obscure levels of the machine that you’d be traveling in when you hacked assembly code. You could get dizzy trying to remember where you were in both activities.”

“Adventure’s Colossal Cave, at least”: Walt Bilofsky, “Adventures in Computing,” Profiles: The Magazine for Kaypro Users 2, no. 1 (1984): 25, https://archive.org/stream/PROFILES_Volume_2_Number_1_1984-07_Kaypro_Corp_US/PROFILES_Volume_2_Number_1_1984-07_Kaypro_Corp_US_djvu.txt. “the deep recesses you explored”: Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, 25th Anniversary Edition (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010), 113. His daughters were told to use it: Jerz, “Somewhere Nearby Is Colossal Cave.” “analogous to the democratization of reading”: Mary Ann Buckles, “Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame ‘Adventure’” (PhD thesis, University of California, San Diego, 1985).


pages: 304 words: 93,494

Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton

4chan, Airbus A320, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Blue Bottle Coffee, Burning Man, friendly fire, index card, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, messenger bag, PalmPilot, pets.com, rolling blackouts, rolodex, Ruby on Rails, Saturday Night Live, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, social web, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, technology bubble, traveling salesman, US Airways Flight 1549, WikiLeaks

(IEDs were “improvised explosive devices” planted by insurgents to kill Americans.) “Interesting,” Jack said nervously, pulling his head back inside and taking a deep breath. He looked at the others in his helicopter and smiled slightly. Scott was snapping pictures with a digital camera, Cohen was on his BlackBerry, and Steven Levy, a reporter, was writing in his notepad. Beyond Cohen’s ability to talk his way into almost any situation, he also had another very impressive skill: an knack for bringing the press along on his excursions. Levy, a columnist for Wired, had been invited to come along as this particular delegation’s embedded reporter.

Marin, Ryan Block, Tom Bodkin, Danah Boyd, Matt Buchanan, David Carr, Brian Chen, Mathias Crawford, Tony and Mary Conrad, Tom Conrad, Paddy Cosgrave, Dennis Crowley, Damon Darlin, Anil Dash, Mike Driscoll, Aaron Durand, Josh Felser, Tim Ferris, Brady Forrest, David Gallhager, Michael Galpert, John Geddes, Shelly Gerrish, Ashley Khaleesi Granata, Mark Hansen, Quentin Hardy, Leland Hayward, Erica Hintergardt, Mat Honan, Arianna Huffington, Kate Imbach, Larry Ingrassia, Walter Isaccson, Mike Issac, Joel Johnson, Andrei Kallaur, Paul Kedrosky, Kevin Kelly, Jeff Koyen, Brian Lam, Jeremy LaTrasse, Steven Levy, Allen Loeb, Kati London, Om Malik, John Markoff, Hubert McCabe, Christopher Michel, Claire Cain Miller, Trudy Muller, Tim O’Reilly, Carolyn Penner, Nicole Perlroth, Megan Quinn, Narendra Rocherolle, Jennifer Rodriguez, Evelyn Rusli, Naveen Selvadurai, Ryan and Devon Sarver, Elliot Schrage, Mari Sheibley, MG Siegler, Courtney Skott, Robin Sloan, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Suzanne Spector, Brad Stone, David Streitfeld, Gabriel Stricker, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Kara Swisher, Clive Thompson, Deep Throat, Baratunde Thurston, Mark Trammell, Sara Morishige Williams, Nick Wingfield, Jenna Wortham, Aaron Zamost, Edith Zimmerman.


pages: 317 words: 98,745

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace by Ronald J. Deibert

4chan, air gap, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Brian Krebs, call centre, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, connected car, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, digital divide, disinformation, end-to-end encryption, escalation ladder, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Firefox, Gabriella Coleman, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Hacker Ethic, Herman Kahn, informal economy, information security, invention of writing, Iridium satellite, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kibera, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, low earth orbit, Marshall McLuhan, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, planetary scale, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, South China Sea, Steven Levy, Streisand effect, Stuxnet, Ted Kaczynski, the medium is the message, Turing test, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, unit 8200, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day

MIT Museum Hack archivist Brian Leibowitz notes that in the 1960s students on campus began to use the word as a noun to describe a great prank, and by the late 1960s the meaning included activities that “tested limits of skill, imagination, and wits.” By the mid-1980s, the term was primarily being used at MIT to describe “pranks” and “unapproved exploring” of parts of the Institute or inaccessible places on campus. Over time hacking came to connote a wide range of often extreme methods and ends. Steven Levy, author of Hackers, points out that “the word now has two branches, one used among computer programmers and the one used in the media.” But few self-identified hackers remain faithful to the original spirit and ethic that first attracted people like Oxblood Ruffin and me; and, worse, today “hacker” and “hacking” are almost entirely synonymous with criminal acts, one or the other word invariably emblazoned in headlines each time Anonymous strikes or a data breach occurs.

The relationship between the Occupy Movement and Anonymous is detailed in Sean Captain, “The Real Role of Anonymous in Occupy Wall Street,” Fast Company, October 17, 2011, http​://www.f​astcompa​ny.com/​178839​7/th​e-real-ro​le-of-anon​ymo​us-at-occ​upy-wa​ll-str​eet. 8 is it wise to actually encourage DDoS attacks: Yochai Benkler explains why Anonymous should not be viewed as a threat to national security in “Hacks of Valor,” Foreign Affairs, April 4, 2012, http​://ww​w.forei​gnaffa​irs.com​/arti​cles​/1​3738​2​/​yocha​i-benk​ler​/​hack​s-of-val​or. 9 One of the few to study this question in depth: Gabriella Coleman’s work offers a comprehensive history and analysis of Anonymous: Gabriella Coleman “Our Weirdness Is Free: The Logic of Anonymous – Online Army, Agent Chaos, and Seeker of Justice,” Triple Canopy (2012), http​://canop​ycano​pycan​opy.com​/​15​/our​_​weir​dness​_​is​_​free; and “Peeking Behind the Curtain at Anonymous: Gabriella Coleman at TEDGlobal 2012,” TED Blog, June 27, 2012, http​://blo​g.ted.c​om/20​12/06​/27​/peeki​ng-behi​nd-the-cur​tain-at-an​onymo​us-gabr​iell​a-colem​an-at-te​dglob​al–201​2/. 10 MIT Museum Hack archivist: A history of MIT hacks is detailed in T.F. Peterson, Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011). See especially Brian Leibowitz, “A Short History of the Terminology,” in Nightwork, ed. T.F. Peterson. See also Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2010). 11 “… and the one used in the media”: Molly Sauter’s SXSW presentation on media portrayals of hackers is available at “Policy Effects of Media Portrayals of Hacktivists,” SXSW, http​://schedule.​sxsw.co​m/201​2/eve​nts​/eve​nt​_IA​P1​2520. 12 numerous examples of security research being stifled: The Electronic Frontier Foundation traces the chilling effects of the “anti-circumvention” provisions in the DMCA on research in “Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years Under the DMCA,” http​s://ww​w.eff.or​g/wp​/uninte​nded-cons​equence​s-und​er-dm​ca/#fo​otnote​ref1​3_p​du4g​gq.


Data Action: Using Data for Public Good by Sarah Williams

affirmative action, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrei Shleifer, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, Charles Babbage, City Beautiful movement, commoditize, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data philanthropy, data science, digital divide, digital twin, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, fake news, four colour theorem, global village, Google Earth, informal economy, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, John Snow's cholera map, Kibera, Lewis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, mass incarceration, megacity, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, nowcasting, oil shale / tar sands, openstreetmap, place-making, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, selection bias, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Sidewalk Labs, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, Steven Levy, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, transatlantic slave trade, Uber for X, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, Works Progress Administration

USING DATA CREATIVELY The term hacker conjures up images that range from nefarious Russian spies trying to influence the United States elections to computer geeks sitting in their dorm rooms eating junk food and playing Minecraft. For many, hacking means following the hacker ethos, summarized in the preface of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy: “sharing, openness, decentralization, and getting your hands on machines at any cost to improve the machines, and to improve the world.” 1 Yet the Hacker Code of Ethics, as first documented in Levy's book, leaves ample room for interpretation. This means “hacks” can be used toward the development of both “good” and “bad” applications.

ACM 56, no. 7 (July 2013): 33–36, https://doi.org/10.1145/2483852.2483864; Amelia McNamara and Mark Hansen, “Teaching Data Science to Teenagers,” in Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Teaching Statistics, 2014. 63 Nicole Lazar and Christine Franklin, “The Big Picture: Preparing Students for a Data-Centric World,” Chance 28, no. 4 (2015): 43–45. Chapter 3 1 Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, vol. 14 (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984). 2 Patrick Greenfield, “The Cambridge Analytica Files: The Story so Far,” Guardian, March 25, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/26/the-cambridge-analytica-files-the-story-so-far. 3 Annabel Latham, “Cambridge Analytica Scandal: Legitimate Researchers Using Facebook Data Could Be Collateral Damage,” The Conversation, accessed July 6, 2019, http://theconversation.com/cambridge-analytica-scandal-legitimate-researchers-using-facebook-data-could-be-collateral-damage-93600. 4 “Reporter Shows the Links between the Men behind Brexit and the Trump Campaign,” NPR.org, accessed July 6, 2019, https://www.npr.org/2018/07/19/630443485/reporter-shows-the-links-between-the-men-behind-brexit-and-the-trump-campaign. 5 Matthew Rosenberg, “Academic behind Cambridge Analytica Data Mining Sues Facebook for Defamation,” New York Times, March 15, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/technology/aleksandr-kogan-facebook-cambridge-analytica.html. 6 Matthew Zook et al., “Ten Simple Rules for Responsible Big Data Research,” PLOS Computational Biology 13, no. 3 (March 30, 2017): e1005399, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005399. 7 One notable way of alienating entire communities is by crime mapping: creating hot-spot analyses to pinpoint where crimes take place is to mark clusters as criminal neighborhoods.


pages: 561 words: 157,589

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, DevOps, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disinformation, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, gravity well, greed is good, Greyball, Guido van Rossum, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kaizen: continuous improvement, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, Lean Startup, Leonard Kleinrock, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, microbiome, microservices, minimum viable product, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, OSI model, Overton Window, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, software as a service, software patent, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strong AI, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the map is not the territory, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Fadell, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, VA Linux, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Immelt, Peter Schwartz, Peter Bloom, Andy McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson, David Autor, Larry Katz, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Sebastian Thrun, Yann LeCun, Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Mike George, Rana Foroohar, Robin Chase, David Rolf, Andy Stern, Natalie Foster, Betsy Masiello, Jonathan Hall, Lior Ron, Paul Buchheit, Sam Altman, Esther Kaplan, Carrie Gleason, Zeynep Ton, Mikey Dickerson, Wael Ghonim, Tim Hwang, Henry Farrell, Amy Sellars, Mike McCloskey, Hank Green, Brandon Stanton, Jack Conte, Limor Fried, Phil Torrone, Seth Sternberg, Palak Shah, Keller Rinaudo, Stephane Kasriel, Bryan Johnson, Patrick Collison, Roy Bahat, Paddy Cosgrave, Steven Levy, Lauren Smiley, Bess Hochstein, Nat Torkington, Clay Shirky, Lawrence Wilkinson, Jessi Hempel, Mark Burgess, Carl Page, Maggie Shiels, Adam Davidson, and Winnie King, you also gave me the gift of your time and insight during the research and writing that led up to this book. I’d also like to thank the people who taught me much of what I’ve shared in this book.

Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Jennifer Petoff, and Niall Richard Murphy (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2016), online at https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/site-reliability-engineering/9781491929117/ch01.html. CHAPTER 7: GOVERNMENT AS A PLATFORM 125 “subsidized access to data they were willing to pay for”: Carl Malamud, “How EDGAR Met the Internet,” media.org, retrieved March 30, 2017, http://museum.media.org/edgar/. 126 freely available on the Internet: Steven Levy, “The Internet’s Own Instigator,” Backchannel, September 12, 2016, https://backchannel.com/the-internets-own-instigator-cb6347e693b. 128 “the first Internet president”: Omar Wasow, “The First Internet President,” The Root, November 5, 2008, http://www.theroot.com/the-first-internet-president-1790900348. 129 “vending machine government”: “The Next Government: Donald Kettl,” IBM Center for the Business of Government, retrieved March 30, 2017, http://www.businessofgovernment.org/blog /presidential-transition/next-government-donald-kettl. 130 “not merely at an election one day in the year, but every day”: “Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C.

,” talk given at Next:Economy Summit, San Francisco, October 10–11, 2016, https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/next economy-summit-2016/9781491976067/video282513.html. 332 automate the application for asylum: Elena Cresci, “Chatbot That Overturned 160,000 Parking Fines Now Helping Refugees Claim Asylum,” Guardian, March 6, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/tech nology/2017/mar/06/chatbot-donotpay-refugees-claim-asylum-legal-aid. 335 with an apprenticeship: Steven Levy, “How Google Is Remaking Itself as a ‘Machine Learning First’ Company,” Backchannel, June 22, 2016, https://backchannel.com/how-google-is-remaking-itself-as-a-machine-learning-first-company-ada63defcb70. 336 “The Internet Was Built on O’Reilly Books”: Publishers Weekly, February 21, 2000. That cover was reproduced in a blog post by brian d. foy, “The Internet Was Built on O’Reilly Books,” program mingperl.com, October 28, 2015, https://www.programmingperl.org/2015/10/the-internet-was-built-on-oreilly-books/. 337 the cover story featured Charles Benton: Make, January 2005, https://www.scribd.com/doc/33542837/MAKE-Magazine-Volume-1. 337 “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it”: Phil Torrone, “Owner’s Manifesto,” Make, November 26, 2006, http://makezine.com/2006/11/26/owners-manifesto/. 338 denying them the right to repair: Cory Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age (San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2014). 338 who controls products that the consumers nominally own: Jason Koebler, “Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors with Ukrainian Firmware,” Vice, March 21, 2017, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/why-american-farmers-are-hacking-their-tractors-with-ukrainian-firmware. 338 we wrote a book together: Dale Dougherty and Tim O’Reilly, Unix Text Processing (Indianapolis: Hayden, 1987). 339 study of motivations of people working on open source software projects: Karim Lakhani and Robert Wolf, “Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects,” in Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, ed.


pages: 568 words: 164,014

Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat by John P. Carlin, Garrett M. Graff

1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, air gap, Andy Carvin, Apple II, Bay Area Rapid Transit, bitcoin, Brian Krebs, business climate, cloud computing, cotton gin, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, eat what you kill, Edward Snowden, fake news, false flag, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Hacker Ethic, information security, Internet of things, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Ken Thompson, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, millennium bug, Minecraft, Mitch Kapor, moral hazard, Morris worm, multilevel marketing, Network effects, new economy, Oklahoma City bombing, out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, performance metric, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Richard Stallman, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, South China Sea, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, The Hackers Conference, Tim Cook: Apple, trickle-down economics, Wargames Reagan, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day, zero-sum game

As a term, hacking derived from the good-natured pranks central to the culture of places like MIT, where students delighted in practical jokes and collegiate stunts such as surreptitiously placing an old Chevrolet, painted like an MIT police car, atop the school’s iconic Great Dome, or writing a computer program that calculated the most efficient way to travel over all of New York City’s subway system. The school even hosted a website, hacks.mit.edu, recounting its proud history of “good hacks.” By comparison, MIT labeled devious computer- or phone-related endeavors as “cracking.” As Steven Levy wrote in his 1984 book Hackers, which began to popularize the term, computer programmers and designers were “adventurers, visionaries, risk-takers, artists, and the ones who most clearly saw why the computer was a truly revolutionary tool.”9 Levy described a “Hacker Ethic” that held that “essential lessons can be learned about the systems—about the world—from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things.

In this new era, though, the software appeared just as improvised—sold on floppy discs packaged in Ziploc bags, with simplistic graphics and labels stuck on by hand.34 The definition of the term hacker morphed, too, as the internet grew large enough—and accrued enough users—that damaging it could cause real harm. In fact, when Steven Levy’s book Hackers was published in the early 1980s, it was written as an elegy to a lost time and generation, when free-minded thinkers and tinkerers dominated the computer landscape—before the buttoned-up bureaucrats seized control of the digital world. “It is painful for me to bring back the memories of this time,” said Richard Stallman in the book, the MIT hacker who had advocated for no passwords.

“Hello New York: Michael Fusco on Violent Crime in New York,” Saturday Night Live, NBC, www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/leftover-night/n10009?snl=1. 8. John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, n.d., www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence. 9. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (O’Reilly Media, 2010), ix. 10. Ibid., 27. 11. Ibid., 91–92. 12. Ibid., 134. 13. John Markoff, “The Odyssey of a Hacker: From Outlaw to Consultant,” New York Times, January 29, 2001, www.nytimes.com/2001/01/29/business/the-odyssey-of-a-hacker-from-outlaw-to-consultant.html. 14.


pages: 281 words: 95,852

The Googlization of Everything: by Siva Vaidhyanathan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, AltaVista, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, borderless world, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, computer age, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, data acquisition, death of newspapers, digital divide, digital rights, don't be evil, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full text search, global pandemic, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Howard Rheingold, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, libertarian paternalism, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pirate software, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, single-payer health, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technoutopianism, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thorstein Veblen, Tyler Cowen, urban decay, web application, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

In the late 1990s, a search for “Asian” on almost any other search engine would have generated torrents of pornography featuring Asian models. Today, such a search on Google generates a first page of links devoted to Asian American history and culture and Asian foods. 5. Introduction to the Google Ad Auction, 2009, video online at www .youtube.com; Steven Levy, “Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability,” Wired, May 22, 2009; Search Advertising: Dr. Hal Varian, SIMS 141, course in the School of Information, University of California at Berkeley, 2007, video available at www.youtube.com; “Talking Business: Stuck in Google’s NOT ES TO PAGES 15 –18 223 Doghouse,” New York Times, September 13, 2008; “Big Brands?

Ogilvy, “Google in China: Government Censorship and Corporate Reputation,” Journal of Business Strategy 28, no. 3 (2007): 12–22. NOTES TO PAGES 130–35 243 34. Matt Looney and Evan Hansen, “Google Pulls Anti-scientology links,” CNET News, March 21, 2002, http://news.cnet.com. 35. Schrage, Testimony of Google Inc.; Steven Levy, “Google and the China Syndrome,” Newsweek, February 13, 2006, 14; “Here Be Dragons,” Economist, January 28, 2006, 59–60. 36. Nolan, The China Dilemma, 57. 37. Ibid. 38. Iris Hong, “Google Boosts China Revenues but Falls Back in Share of Searches,” Telecomasia.net, June 8, 2009, www.telecomasia.net. 39.


pages: 368 words: 96,825

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

3D printing, additive manufacturing, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Boston Dynamics, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, company town, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deal flow, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, Firefox, Galaxy Zoo, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, gravity well, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Jono Bacon, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, microbiome, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Narrative Science, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, optical character recognition, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, rolodex, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart grid, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, superconnector, Susan Wojcicki, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Turing test, urban renewal, Virgin Galactic, Wayback Machine, web application, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

They laughed at us and said it was impossible. But they were willing to try. . . . And now, six years later we can translate between sixty-four different languages. In many languages, we’re better than an average human translator and we can do it instantly and for free.”41 Or, to offer an even more colorful example, in a Steven Levy story for Wired, Astro Teller talked about wheeling an imaginary time machine into Page’s office, plugging it in, and then demonstrating that it works. “Instead of being bowled over,” says Teller, “Page asks why it needs a plug. Wouldn’t it be better if it didn’t use power at all? It’s not because he’s not excited about time machines or ungrateful that we built it.

v=9pmPa_KxsAM. 40 Joann Muller, “No Hands, No Feet: My Unnerving Ride in Google’s Driverless Car,” Forbes, March 21, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2013/03/21/no-hands-no-feet-my-unnerving-ride-in-googles-driverless-car/. 41 Robert Hof, “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Deep Learning,” MIT Technology Review, April 23, 2013, http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513696/deep-learning/. 42 Steven Levy, “Google’s Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter,” Wired, January 17, 2013, http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-qa-larry-page/all/. 43 Larry Page, “Beyond Today—Larry Page—Zeitgeist 2012.” 44 Larry Page, “Google+: Calico Announcement,” Google+, September 2013, https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage/posts/Lh8SKC6sED1. 45 Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, “Google vs.


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The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups by Randall Stross

affirmative action, Airbnb, AltaVista, always be closing, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Burning Man, business cycle, California gold rush, call centre, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, don't be evil, Elon Musk, Hacker News, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, index fund, inventory management, John Markoff, Justin.tv, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, medical residency, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Morris worm, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QR code, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, software is eating the world, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, transaction costs, Y Combinator

Carleen Hawn, “The F|R Interview: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham,” Gigaom, May 3, 2008, http://gigaom .com/2008/05/03/the-fr-interview-y-combinators-paul-graham/. 4. PG, “Great Hackers,” July 2004, www.paulgraham.com/gh.html. 5. PG, “The Word ‘Hacker,’ ” April 2004, http://paulgraham.com/gba.html. Steven Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984) extricates the word “hacker” from derogatory associations. To Levy, “hacker” simply means “those computer programmers and designers who regard computing as the most important thing in the world.” He traces the hacker culture back to the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT in the late 1950s. 6.

HT, “What I Expected.” 14. HT, “Demo Day,” Meal Ticket blog, February 13, 2007, http://mealticket.wordpress.com/2007/02/13/demo-day/. 15. HT, “What I Expected.” 16. HT, “What I Expected.” 17. Patrick Collison, “Surprises,” Patrick Collison blog, October 18, 2009, http://collison.ie/blog/2009/10/surprises. 18. Steven Levy, “Taking the Millions Now,” Newsweek, April 5, 2008, www.newsweek.com/2008/04/05/taking-the-millions-now.html. 19. “Graduate Entrepreneurs Sell Business for Millions,” University of Oxford press release, May 7, 2008, www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2008/080507b.html. 20. HT, “Leaving Live Current and Vancouver,” HT blog, September 5, 2009, http://blog.harjtaggar.com/leaving-live-current-and-vancouver. 21.


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An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, George Floyd, global pandemic, green new deal, hockey-stick growth, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, information security, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, natural language processing, offshore financial centre, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social web, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WikiLeaks

Sulzberger’s kind notes on our coverage were always a welcome surprise in our inbox, and his enthusiasm for our tech coverage has been inspiring. This book also builds on the reporting of many other journalists who have tirelessly worked to shed light on the company. To name a few: Ryan Mac, Craig Silverman, Sarah Frier, Deepa Seetharaman, Casey Newton, Julia Angwin, Kara Swisher, David Kirkpatrick, Steven Levy, Jeff Horowitz, Lizza Dwoskin, Julia Carrie Wong, Brandy Zadrozny, and Ben Collins. Our readers—Kashmir Hill, Jessica Garrison, Kevin Roose, Natasha Singer, Scott Shane, and Brian Chen—were incredibly generous. They offered pages of feedback—from the most abstract and philosophical to specific challenges to reporting and our ideas.

“It was the first point where we had to look at the future”: Mark Zuckerberg’s August 16, 2016 interview with Sam Altman, “How to Build the Future,” can be viewed on YouTube. 15. he spent most of his time working on an idea: Stephen Levy, “Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Lost Notebook,” Wired, February 12, 2020. 16. Zuckerberg imagined a personalized hierarchy of “interesting-ness”: Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2020). 17. But the morning brought angry users: Tracy Samantha Schmidt, “Inside the Backlash against Facebook,” Time, September 6, 2006. 18. “When we watched people use it”: UCTV’s “Mapping the Future of Networks with Facebook’s Chris Cox: The Atlantic Meets the Pacific,” October 8, 2012, can be viewed on YouTube. 19.


Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design by Giles Colborne

call centre, Firefox, Ford Model T, HyperCard, Menlo Park, slashdot, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, sunk-cost fallacy

That’s sort of the middle, and that’s where most people stop…. But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem—and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.” —Steve Jobs (quoted in Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything by Steven Levy) As Luke Wroblewski, former Chief Design Architect at Yahoo!, says, ”Your first design may seem like a solution, but it is usually just an early definition of the problem you are trying to solve.” In my experience, roughly the first third of any project is spent trying to figure out what’s really important.


pages: 502 words: 107,657

Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Eric Siegel

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, backtesting, Black Swan, book scanning, bounce rate, business intelligence, business process, butter production in bangladesh, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, commoditize, computer age, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data is the new oil, data science, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental subject, Google Glasses, happiness index / gross national happiness, information security, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, lifelogging, machine readable, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, mass immigration, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Norbert Wiener, personalized medicine, placebo effect, prediction markets, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Coase, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Shai Danziger, software as a service, SpaceShipOne, speech recognition, statistical model, Steven Levy, supply chain finance, text mining, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Davenport, Turing test, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, X Prize, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

They “came up with a classifier” by working to “find a plane [in hyperspace] which says that most things on this side of the place are red, and most of the things on that side of the plane are the opposite of red.” This is descriptive and definitional of machine learning. Steven Levy, “TED 2011: The ‘Panda’ That Hates Farms: A Q&A with Google’s Top Search Engineers,” Steven Levy interview with Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts of Google, March 3, 2011. www.wired.com/business/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/all/. Aaron Wheeler, “How Google’s Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever—Whiteboard Friday,” Daily SEO blog, June 23, 2011. www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-panda-update-changed-seo-best-practices-forever-whiteboard-friday.


pages: 345 words: 105,722

The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling

Apple II, back-to-the-land, Future Shock, game design, ghettoisation, Hacker Conference 1984, Haight Ashbury, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, index card, informal economy, information security, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, machine readable, Mitch Kapor, pirate software, plutocrats, radical decentralization, Silicon Valley, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, technological determinism, The Hackers Conference, the scientific method, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review

Hacking can describe the determination to make access to computers and information as free and open as possible. Hacking can involve the heartfelt conviction that beauty can be found in computers, that the fine aesthetic in a perfect program can liberate the mind and spirit. This is "hacking" as it was defined in Steven Levy's much-praised history of the pioneer computer milieu, Hackers, published in 1984. Hackers of all kinds are absolutely soaked through with heroic anti-bureaucratic sentiment. Hackers long for recognition as a praiseworthy cultural archetype, the postmodern electronic equivalent of the cowboy and mountain man.

Sixty people attended, myself included—in this instance, not so much as a journalist as a cyberpunk author. Many of the luminaries of the field took part: Kapor and Godwin as a matter of course. Richard Civille and Marc Rotenberg of CPSR. Jerry Berman of the ACLU. John Quarterman, author of The Matrix. Steven Levy, author of Hackers. George Perry and Sandy Weiss of Prodigy Services, there to network about the civil-liberties troubles their young commercial network was experiencing. Dr. Dorothy Denning. Cliff Figallo, manager of the Well. Steve Jackson was there, having finally found his ideal target audience, and so was Craig Neidorf, "Knight Lightning" himself, with his attorney, Sheldon Zenner.


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Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Black Lives Matter, Boycotts of Israel, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, carbon credits, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, computer age, cross-subsidies, dark pattern, data is the new oil, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, game design, growth hacking, Ian Bogost, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, It's morning again in America, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, laissez-faire capitalism, Lean Startup, light touch regulation, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Metcalfe’s law, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, software is eating the world, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine (Berkeley: Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1984), is the best book I know on the early days of the personal computer industry, from computer clubs to the start of Microsoft and Apple, to the battle that followed. The revised edition, which bears a different subtitle, follows the industry into its declining years. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984), investigates a key subculture in Silicon Valley. Levy wrote this as it was happening, which makes the book particularly helpful, as in the case of The Facebook Effect. Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, by Katie Hafner and John Markoff (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), picks up the story of Hackers and carries it forward

There is a very strong argument that the success of Amazon represents the greatest accomplishment of any startup since 1990. Bezos is amazing. His relatively low profile masks the pervasive influence of his company. Like The Facebook Effect, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, by Steven Levy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), is exceptionally sympathetic to its subject. That is the price of getting access to a tech giant. As long as you remind yourself that Google adjusts search results based on what it perceives to be your interests and that YouTube’s algorithms promote conspiracy theories, you will get a great deal of value from this book.


Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", A Pattern Language, Alvin Toffler, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, business climate, citizen journalism, computer vision, conceptual framework, creative destruction, Dennis Ritchie, digital divide, disinformation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, experimental economics, experimental subject, Extropian, Free Software Foundation, Garrett Hardin, Hacker Ethic, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, Herman Kahn, history of Unix, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, invention of the telephone, inventory management, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Lewis Mumford, Metcalfe's law, Metcalfe’s law, more computing power than Apollo, move 37, Multics, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, pez dispenser, planetary scale, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, RFID, Richard Stallman, Robert Metcalfe, Robert X Cringely, Ronald Coase, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, seminal paper, SETI@home, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, slashdot, social intelligence, spectrum auction, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, urban planning, web of trust, Whole Earth Review, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Before the word “hacker” was misappropriated to describe people who break into computer systems, the term was coined (in the early 1960s) to describe people who create computer systems. The first people to call themselves hackers were loyal to an informal social contract called “the hacker ethic.” As Steven Levy described it, this ethic included these principles: Access to computers should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative. All information should be free. Mistrust authority—promote decentralization.45 Without that ethic, there probably wouldn’t have been an Internet to commercialize.

Wilkinson, “Reciprocal Food Sharing in the Vampire Bat,” Nature 308 (March 8, 1984): 181184. 43. Manfred Milinski, “TIT FOR TAT in Sticklebacks and the Evolution of Cooperation,” Nature 325 (29 January 1987): 433435. 44. P. Farb, Man’s Rise to Civilization as Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State (New York: Dutton, 1968). 45. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1984). 46. J. H. Saltzer, D. P. Reed, and D. D. Clark, “End-to-End Arguments in System Design,” ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 2 (November 1984): 277288. 47. Howard Rheingold, Tools for Thought (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). 48.


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Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A. I. To Google, Facebook, and the World by Cade Metz

AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, Amazon Robotics, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Big Tech, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, carbon-based life, cloud computing, company town, computer age, computer vision, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital map, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, Frank Gehry, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Earth, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, Internet Archive, Isaac Newton, Jeff Hawkins, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Markoff, life extension, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Menlo Park, move 37, move fast and break things, Mustafa Suleyman, new economy, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, OpenAI, PageRank, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, profit motive, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, tech worker, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, Turing test, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Y Combinator

Brockman vowed to build the new lab they all seemed to want: Cade Metz, “Inside OpenAI, Elon Musk’s Wild Plan to Set Artificial Intelligence Free,” Wired, April 27, 2016, https://www.wired.com/2016/04/openai-elon-musk-sam-altman-plan-to-set-artificial-intelligence-free/. nearly $2 million for the first year: OpenAI, form 990, 2016. Musk and Altman painted OpenAI as a counterweight: Steven Levy, “How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers from Taking Over,” “Backchannel,” Wired, December 11, 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-elon-musk-and-y-combinator-plan-to-stop-computers-from-taking-over/. backed by over a billion dollars in funding: Ibid. AI would be available to everyone: Ibid.

as a twenty-year-old college sophomore: Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny,” New Yorker, October 3, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/sam-altmans-manifest-destiny. “Self-belief is immensely powerful”: Sam Altman blog, “How to Be Successful,” January 24, 2019, https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful. “As time rolls on and we get closer to something”: Steven Levy, “How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers from Taking Over,” Backchannel, Wired, December 11, 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-elon-musk-and-y-combinator-plan-to-stop-computers-from-taking-over/. “It will just be open source and usable by everyone”: Ibid. he and his researchers released a new charter for the lab: “OpenAI Charter,” OpenAI blog, https://openai.com/charter/.


pages: 396 words: 117,149

The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World by Pedro Domingos

Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Arthur Eddington, backpropagation, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Benoit Mandelbrot, bioinformatics, Black Swan, Brownian motion, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, constrained optimization, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental subject, Filter Bubble, future of work, Geoffrey Hinton, global village, Google Glasses, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, incognito mode, information retrieval, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, John Markoff, John Snow's cholera map, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, large language model, lone genius, machine translation, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Zuckerberg, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Narrative Science, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, NP-complete, off grid, P = NP, PageRank, pattern recognition, phenotype, planetary scale, power law, pre–internet, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, scientific worldview, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, the long tail, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, white flight, yottabyte, zero-sum game

“Spreadsheet data manipulation using examples,”* by Sumit Gulwani, William Harris, and Rishabh Singh (Communications of the ACM, 2012), is an example of how computers can program themselves by observing users. Competing on Analytics, by Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris (HBS Press, 2007), is an introduction to the use of predictive analytics in business. In the Plex, by Steven Levy (Simon & Schuster, 2011), describes at a high level how Google’s technology works. Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian explain the network effect in Information Rules (HBS Press, 1999). Chris Anderson does the same for the long-tail phenomenon in The Long Tail (Hyperion, 2006). The transformation of science by data-intensive computing is surveyed in The Fourth Paradigm, edited by Tony Hey, Stewart Tansley, and Kristin Tolle (Microsoft Research, 2009).

The Birth of the Mind, by Gary Marcus (Basic Books, 2004), explains how evolution could give rise to the human brain’s complex abilities. Chapter Five “Evolutionary robotics,” by Josh Bongard (Communications of the ACM, 2013), surveys the work of Hod Lipson and others on evolving robots. Artificial Life, by Steven Levy (Vintage, 1993), gives a tour of the digital zoo, from computer-created animals in virtual worlds to genetic algorithms. Chapter 5 of Complexity, by Mitch Waldrop (Touchstone, 1992), tells the story of John Holland and the first few decades of research on genetic algorithms. Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning,* by David Goldberg (Addison-Wesley, 1989), is the standard introduction to genetic algorithms.


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Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol

Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Boeing 747, Cal Newport, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, dark matter, delayed gratification, different worldview, discovery of DNA, double helix, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake news, fear of failure, functional fixedness, Gary Taubes, Gene Kranz, George Santayana, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Inbox Zero, index fund, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, late fees, lateral thinking, lone genius, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, move fast and break things, multiplanetary species, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occam's razor, out of africa, Peter Pan Syndrome, Peter Thiel, Pluto: dwarf planet, private spaceflight, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality distortion field, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Schrödinger's Cat, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Skinner box, SpaceShipOne, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subprime mortgage crisis, sunk-cost fallacy, TED Talk, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Yogi Berra

c_id=137&objectid=10890750; “Google Tests Out Internet-Beaming Balloons in Skies Over New Zealand,” (San Francisco) SFist, June 16, 2013, http://sfist.com/2013/06/16/google_tests_out_internet-beaming_b.php; Derek Thompson, “Google X and the Science of Radical Creativity,” Atlantic, November 2017, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/x-google-moonshot-factory/540648/; Loon.com, “Loon: The Technology,” video, YouTube, uploaded June 14, 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcw6j-QWGMo&feature=youtu.be; Alex Davies, “Inside X, the Moonshot Factory Racing to Build the Next Google,” Wired, July 11, 2018, www.wired.com/story/alphabet-google-x-innovation-loon-wing-graduation; Steven Levy, “The Untold Story of Google’s Quest to Bring the Internet Everywhere—by Balloon,” Wired, August 13, 2013, www.wired.com/2013/08/googlex-project-loon. 2. Chris Anderson, “Mystery Object in Sky Captivates Locals,” Appalachian News-Express, October 19, 2012, www.news-expressky.com/news/article_f257128c-1979-11e2-a94e-0019bb2963f4.html. 3.

,” Forbes, August 8, 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/innovatorsdna/2017/08/08/how-does-amazon-stay-at-day-one/#36d005d67e4d. 45. Tim Ferriss, “Maria Sharapova,” episode 261 (transcript), Tim Ferriss Show, May 30, 2018, https://tim.blog/2018/05/30/tim-ferriss-show-transcript-maria-sharapova. 46. Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (New York: Riverhead Books, 2015), 259. 47. Steven Levy, “Google Glass 2.0 Is a Startling Second Act,” Wired, July 18, 2017, www.wired.com/story/google-glass-2-is-here. 48. Heather Hargreaves, “How Google Glass Will Change How You Do Business,” Entrepreneur Handbook, March 25, 2019. 49. Ian Osterloh, “How I Discovered Viagra,” Cosmos, April 27, 2015, https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/how-i-discovered-viagra; Jacque Wilson, “Viagra: The Little Blue Pill That Could,” CNN, March 27, 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/health/viagra-anniversary-timeline/index.html. 50.


Hacking Capitalism by Söderberg, Johan; Söderberg, Johan;

Abraham Maslow, air gap, Alvin Toffler, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, commoditize, computer age, corporate governance, creative destruction, Debian, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, digital capitalism, digital divide, Donald Davies, Eben Moglen, Erik Brynjolfsson, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, frictionless, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Rheingold, IBM and the Holocaust, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invention of radio, invention of the telephone, Jacquard loom, James Watt: steam engine, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Ken Thompson, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Mitch Kapor, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Norbert Wiener, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, packet switching, patent troll, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, planned obsolescence, post scarcity, post-Fordism, post-industrial society, price mechanism, Productivity paradox, profit motive, RFID, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, Ronald Coase, safety bicycle, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, software patent, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, tech worker, technological determinism, technoutopianism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Davenport, Thorstein Veblen, tragedy of the anticommons, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Whole Earth Catalog, Yochai Benkler

A principal difference, though not the only one, is the motivational force behind hacking. The advocates of appropriate technology were led to experiment with Do-It-Yourself techniques as a deduction of their politics. Hackers, on the other hand, write code primarily for the sake of it, and politics flows from this playfulness. Steven Levy writes about the hardware hackers gathering at the Home-brew Computer Club in the mid 1970s. His retrospect gives an account of the two, partially coinciding, partially inconsistent, sentiments expressed by the people involved. They were drawn together by the excitement of tinkering with electronics.

One of the principles of Cudos is that scientific results ought to be freely shared among colleagues. 10. John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Viking, 2005). 11. Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor—A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986). 12. Steven Levy, Hackers—Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Delta, 1994), 214. 13. Paul Ceruzzi, “Inventing Personal Computing”, in ed. Donald MacKenzie & Judy Wajcman, The Social Shaping of Technology, 2nd edition (Buckingham: Philadelphia, Pa: Open University Press 1999). 14. In the United States, the scope of copyright was originally limited to the protection of maps, charts, and books.


pages: 396 words: 113,613

Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin, Cory Doctorow

Aaron Swartz, AltaVista, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, book value, collective bargaining, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate personhood, corporate raider, COVID-19, disintermediation, distributed generation, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, Firefox, forensic accounting, full employment, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, George Floyd, gig economy, Golden age of television, Google bus, greed is good, green new deal, high-speed rail, Hush-A-Phone, independent contractor, index fund, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, John Gruber, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microplastics / micro fibres, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, Network effects, New Journalism, passive income, peak TV, Peter Thiel, precision agriculture, regulatory arbitrage, remote working, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech bro, tech worker, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, time value of money, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Turing complete, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, WeWork

It wasn’t until mid-2005 that Google Video even offered a way to play back its videos, and even then, clumsily, it required users to install separate software to do so.5 Google was eating YouTube’s dust. That’s not to say things were progressing entirely smoothly above the pizza shop. From the moment users began uploading videos, the founders were sweating under legal pressure from irate content companies demanding they do more to prevent copyright infringement. As journalist Steven Levy explains, however, they pressed on: “Even though YouTubers knew that people who were uploading videos didn’t really have the right to do so, they believed that YouTube would be all right as long as there weren’t complaints from copyright holders about specific videos, in which case they could respond.”6 This approach was backed by the US’s “safe harbor” law, which protects platforms from liability for hosting infringing content that is uploaded by users, so long as they move “expeditiously” to remove it once it comes to their attention.

Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, 2nd ed. (London: Polity, 2018), 2. 3. Burgess and Green, YouTube, 74. 4. Jefferson Graham, “Video Websites Pop Up, Invite Postings,” USA Today, Nov. 21, 2005, https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/2005-11-21-video-websites_x.htm. 5. Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 247. 6. Levy, In the Plex, 248. 7. 17 USC § 512; “Directive on Electronic Commerce,” 2000/31/EC, Official Journal L178, European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, June 8, 2020, Articles 12–14, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?


pages: 356 words: 116,083

For Profit: A History of Corporations by William Magnuson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, bank run, banks create money, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, buy low sell high, carbon tax, carried interest, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, creative destruction, disinformation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Exxon Valdez, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Ida Tarbell, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, move fast and break things, Peter Thiel, power law, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, scientific management, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, Snapchat, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Steven Levy, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, union organizing, work culture , Y Combinator, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

He stayed there for a mere two years, and, by all accounts, his time was marked by social awkwardness and loads of skipped classes. Reading through early interviews and articles about Zuckerberg, a single feature appears with almost comical frequency. At some point, after being asked a question, Zuckerberg would simply stare back at the interviewer, not answering, for minutes at a time. One author, Steven Levy, referred to these episodes as “trancelike silences.” Another described the look as an “intense stare that bordered on the psychopathic.” Another named it “the eye of Sauron.” “He will sit back and stare at people,” one early coworker said. Despite the awkwardness, though, by his sophomore year, Zuckerberg had become something of a celebrity on campus due to a series of popular but controversial programs he launched at the university.

John Cassidy, “Me Media,” New Yorker, May 14, 2006; Michael M. Grynbaum, “Mark E. Zuckerberg ’06: The Whiz Behind thefacebook.com,” Harvard Crimson, June 10, 2004. 4. Claire Hoffman, “The Battle for Facebook,” Rolling Stone, Sept. 15, 2010; S. F. Brickman, “Not-So-Artificial Intelligence,” Harvard Crimson, Oct. 23, 2003. 5. Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story 13 (2020). 6. Interview with Mark Zuckerberg, “How to Build the Future,” Y Combinator, Aug. 16, 2016. 7. Katharine A. Kaplan, “Facemash Creator Survives Ad Board,” Harvard Crimson, Nov. 19, 2003. 8. Kaplan, “Facemash Creator Survives Ad Board”; Hoffman, “The Battle for Facebook.” 9.


pages: 935 words: 197,338

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby

"Susan Fowler" uber, 23andMe, 90 percent rule, Adam Neumann (WeWork), adjacent possible, Airbnb, Apple II, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, Bob Noyce, book value, business process, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deal flow, Didi Chuxing, digital map, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Dutch auction, Dynabook, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, family office, financial engineering, future of work, game design, George Gilder, Greyball, guns versus butter model, Hacker Ethic, Henry Singleton, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, liberal capitalism, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, Masayoshi Son, Max Levchin, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, microdosing, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, mortgage debt, move fast and break things, Network effects, oil shock, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, plutocrats, power law, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, super pumped, superconnector, survivorship bias, tech worker, Teledyne, the long tail, the new new thing, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, two and twenty, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban decay, UUNET, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Vision Fund, wealth creators, WeWork, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Zenefits

In sum, it is true that military dollars supported both university research and, via procurement spending, the growth of private businesses, but it is not clear that this factor explains why Silicon Valley emerged as America’s leading innovation hub. Indeed, Silicon Valley only overtook the Boston area in the late 1970s and 1980s—precisely when federal funding and military procurement became less important. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 5 Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly Media, 2010), 14. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 6 Spencer E. Ante, Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2008), 167. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7 Another unpersuasive theory about Silicon Valley’s advantage emphasizes the weather.

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 7 Another unpersuasive theory about Silicon Valley’s advantage emphasizes the weather. Aside from the fact that the weather isn’t bad in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, two university towns that were among the four original hubs for the Pentagon’s ARPANET, it isn’t quite clear that weather attracted engineering talent. In his classic history of early programmers, Steven Levy reports that luring engineers from MIT to San Francisco was “no small feat, since hackers were generally opposed to the requirements of California life, particularly driving and recreational exposure to the sun.” Levy, Hackers, 134. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 8 To be sure, some inventions did originate in the Valley: the microprocessor (Intel); the computer mouse (Xerox PARC); and so on.

,” Forbes, Oct. 4, 1999, forbes.com/1999/10/04/feat.html#10cf995a1652. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34 Moritz recalled, “The understanding when we invested was that a CEO would, among others, be hired over time.” Moritz, author interviews. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 35 Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 79–80. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 36 The lieutenant was Dave Whorton. See John Heilemann, “Journey to the (Revolutionary, Evil-Hating, Cash-Crazy, and Possibly Self-Destructive) Center of Google,” GQ, Feb. 14, 2005.


pages: 179 words: 43,441

The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, circular economy, clean water, collaborative consumption, commoditize, conceptual framework, continuous integration, CRISPR, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, future of work, global value chain, Google Glasses, hype cycle, income inequality, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, life extension, Lyft, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, Narrative Science, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear taboo, OpenAI, personalized medicine, precariat, precision agriculture, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, reshoring, RFID, rising living standards, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social contagion, software as a service, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Future of Employment, The Spirit Level, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y Combinator, Zipcar

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-we-taking-9313474.html 61 Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever & the OpenAI team, “Introducing OpenAI”, 11 December 2015 https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/ 62 Steven Levy, “How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers From Taking Over”, 11 December 2015 https://medium.com/backchannel/how-elon-musk-and-y-combinator-plan-to-stop-computers-from-taking-over-17e0e27dd02a#.qjj55npcj 63 Sara Konrath, Edward O’Brien, and Courtney Hsing. “Changes in dispositional empathy in American college students over time: A meta-analysis.”


pages: 413 words: 119,587

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots by John Markoff

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, AI winter, airport security, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Atkinson, Bill Duvall, bioinformatics, Boston Dynamics, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, call centre, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Chris Urmson, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive load, collective bargaining, computer age, Computer Lib, computer vision, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data acquisition, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, deskilling, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, dual-use technology, Dynabook, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, future of work, Galaxy Zoo, General Magic , Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Gunnar Myrdal, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, haute couture, Herbert Marcuse, hive mind, hype cycle, hypertext link, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, Ivan Sutherland, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, John Conway, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, medical residency, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Norbert Wiener, PageRank, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Philippa Foot, pre–internet, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Richard Stallman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, semantic web, Seymour Hersh, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, skunkworks, Skype, social software, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, strong AI, superintelligent machines, tech worker, technological singularity, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, telemarketer, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tenerife airport disaster, The Coming Technological Singularity, the medium is the message, Thorstein Veblen, Tony Fadell, trolley problem, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, zero-sum game

Bloomfield, The Question of Artificial Intelligence: Philosophical and Sociological Perspectives, in Annals of the History of Computing 10, no. 3 (1998). 15.Ibid. 16.Nilsson, The Quest for Artificial Intelligence, 77. 17.AI@50, Dartmouth College Artificial Intelligence Conference, July 13–15, 2006. 18.Interview with John McCarthy, Stanford University, July 19, 2001. 19.Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984). 20.Interview with John McCarthy, Stanford University, July 19, 2001. 21.Raj Reddy, “Celebration of John McCarthy’s Accomplishments,” Stanford University, March 25, 2012, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

.%20interface%20agents.pdf. 27.Ibid. 6|COLLABORATION 1.Rodney Brooks, Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us (New York: Pantheon, 2002), 28. 2.Ibid., 29. 3.Ibid., 31. 4.Rodney Brooks, “Elephants Don’t Play Chess,” Robotics and Autonomous Systems 6 (1990): 3–15, people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/elephants.ps.Z. 5.Ibid. 6.Brooks, Flesh and Machines, 31. 7.Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984), 132. 8.R. H. MacMillan, Automation: Friend or Foe, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 1. 9.Levy, Hackers, 130. 10.Lee Felsenstein, “The Golemic Approach,” LeeFelsenstein.com, http://www.leefelsenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Golemic_Approach_MS.pdf. 11.Ibid., 4. 12.Evgeny Morozov, “Making It,” New Yorker, January 13, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2014/01/13/140113crat_atlarge_morozov?


pages: 387 words: 119,409

Work Rules!: Insights From Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock

Abraham Maslow, Abraham Wald, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Black Swan, book scanning, Burning Man, call centre, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, citizen journalism, clean water, cognitive load, company town, correlation coefficient, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deliberate practice, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, Fairchild Semiconductor, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, helicopter parent, immigration reform, Internet Archive, Kevin Roose, longitudinal study, Menlo Park, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, nudge unit, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, power law, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rana Plaza, random walk, Richard Thaler, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, six sigma, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, survivorship bias, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tony Hsieh, Turing machine, Wayback Machine, winner-take-all economy, Y2K

“I’d say this is something that followed me into adulthood.”21 Larry’s and Sergey’s ideas about how work could be were also informed by their early experiences at school. As Sergey has commented: “I do think I benefited from the Montessori education, which in some ways gives the students a lot more freedoms to do things at their own pace.” Marissa Mayer, at the time a Google vice president of product management and now CEO of Yahoo, told Steven Levy in his book In the Plex: “You can’t understand Google… unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids.”22 This teaching environment is tailored to a child’s learning needs and personality, and children are encouraged to question everything, act of their own volition, and create.

Adam Lashinsky, “Larry Page: Google should be like a family,” Fortune, January 19, 2012, http://fortune.com/2012/01/19/larry-page-google-should-be-like-a-family/. 20. Larry Page’s University of Michigan Commencement Address, http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2009/05/larry-pages-university-of-michigan.html. 21. Mark Malseed, “The Story of Sergey Brin,” Moment, February–March 2007, http://www.momentmag.com/the-story-of-sergey-brin/. 22. Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). 23. John Battelle, “The Birth of Google,” Wired, August 2005, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/battelle.html. “Our History in Depth,” Google, http://www.google.com/about/company/history/. 24.


pages: 457 words: 126,996

Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Story of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman

1960s counterculture, 4chan, Aaron Swartz, Amazon Web Services, Bay Area Rapid Transit, bitcoin, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, David Graeber, Debian, digital rights, disinformation, do-ocracy, East Village, Eben Moglen, Edward Snowden, false flag, feminist movement, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, gentrification, George Santayana, Hacker News, hive mind, impulse control, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, lolcat, low cost airline, mandatory minimum, Mohammed Bouazizi, Network effects, Occupy movement, Oklahoma City bombing, operational security, pirate software, power law, Richard Stallman, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, SQL injection, Steven Levy, Streisand effect, TED Talk, Twitter Arab Spring, WikiLeaks, zero day

They quickly distinguished their politics and ethics from the university hackers of MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Stanford; these hackers, who in the 1960s stayed up all night to access their beloved computers otherwise tied up for official use during the day, were chronicled majestically by journalist Steven Levy.14 Though these early hackers also had an affinity for pranking, they abided by a a more robust ethos of transparency and access than underground hackers. Many underground hackers were puckish in their pranking and hacking pursuits. They were mischief-makers and merry wanderers of the network.

Many of these insights are delectably explored in Lewis Hyde’s majestic account Trickster Makes this World: Mischief, Myth, and Art (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998). 11. Ibid. p. 9 12. Alex Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007). 13. Phil Lapsley, Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell (New York: Grove Press, 2013), 226. 14. Steven, Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution—25th Anniversary Edition (Sebastapol: CA O’Reilly Media, 2010). 15. Adam L. Penenberg, “A Private Little Cyberwar,” forbes.com, Feb. 21, 2000. 16. “Biography of u4ea,” soldierx.com, last accessed May 21, 2014, available at https://www.soldierx.com/hdb/u4ea. 17.


pages: 675 words: 141,667

Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks (Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise) by Andrew L. Russell

Aaron Swartz, American ideology, animal electricity, barriers to entry, borderless world, Californian Ideology, Charles Babbage, Chelsea Manning, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, Computer Lib, creative destruction, digital divide, disruptive innovation, Donald Davies, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Hacker Ethic, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Rheingold, Hush-A-Phone, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Leonard Kleinrock, Lewis Mumford, means of production, Menlo Park, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, open economy, OSI model, packet switching, pre–internet, radical decentralization, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Steve Crocker, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technological determinism, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, vertical integration, web of trust, work culture

In many ways, hackers were responding to the prevailing closed world discourse that was obsessed with geopolitical containment and driven by the military centralization of command and control. The hacker ideology of the 1960s had its roots in communities of programmers at MIT and in the San Francisco Bay area. According to Steven Levy’s account, East Coast hackers emphasized their technical fascination with computers (the Hands-On Imperative) and disdain for any gatekeepers that interfered; West Coast hackers tended to situate their tinkering within a broader countercultural critique of technology and authority in modern society.

Nelson, Sources of Industrial Leadership: Studies of Seven Industries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 79–132; Chandler, Inventing the Electronic Century, 94–106; Ceruzzi, A History of Modern Computing, 128–143, 161–173; Gerald W. Brock, The Second Information Revolution (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2003), 106–111. 29 Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1984); Edwards, Closed World; Atsushi Akera, “Voluntarism and the Fruits of Collaboration: The IBM User Group, Share,” Technology and Culture 42 (2001): 710–736; Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin, 2006); Ted Friedman, Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2005); Steven W.


Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing (Writing Science) by Thierry Bardini

Apple II, augmented reality, Bill Duvall, Charles Babbage, classic study, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, Donald Davies, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, experimental subject, Grace Hopper, hiring and firing, hypertext link, index card, information retrieval, invention of hypertext, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Rulifson, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, Leonard Kleinrock, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Mother of all demos, Multics, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, packet switching, Project Xanadu, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Silicon Valley, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, Ted Nelson, the medium is the message, theory of mind, Turing test, unbiased observer, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture

There were two main ways to interface with NLS, through teletypes, for the purpose of com- munications over the ARPANET, and through display terminals or consoles in the "special device channel." The teletype terminal, a distant offspring of research in type printing for te- legraphy, had been the standard interface for time-sharing systems since the early 1960's. It was basically a typewriter transformed for telegraphy input and printing, accurately described by Steven Levy as "a typewriter converted 128 SRI and the oN-Line System for tank warfare, its bottom anchored In a military gray housing" (Levy 1984a, 28). As John McCarthy recollected: My first attempts to do something about time sharing was in the fall of 1957, when I came to the MIT Computation Center on a Sloan Foundation fellowship from Dartmouth College.

In the graphical user interface, signs do exhibit a "similarity" with the thing in the world that they represent: they are iconic previsualiza- tions of objects that they participate in creating in the world: papers, docu- ments, texts, pictures, and so on. 17 It is obvious from the start, therefore, that the graphical interface is iconic in essence, since with it, we move from an in- dexical manipulation to iconic visualization. As Steven Levy realized, and as Alan Kay very often commented, this tran- sition happened with the creation of an illusion. The virtual desktop was not a mere metaphor, since the user did not identify the false residual of the meta- phor. Instead, it was an effect produced by the craft of the designer in making the user believe that there is a correspondence between the icons that he or she moves and transforms on the screen and the referential paper objects that they represent.


From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry by Martin Campbell-Kelly

Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, business process, card file, Charles Babbage, computer age, computer vision, continuous integration, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, Donald Knuth, Gary Kildall, Grace Hopper, history of Unix, hockey-stick growth, independent contractor, industrial research laboratory, information asymmetry, inventory management, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Larry Ellison, linear programming, longitudinal study, machine readable, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, Multics, Network effects, popular electronics, proprietary trading, RAND corporation, Robert X Cringely, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, SimCity, software patent, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, vertical integration

See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962); Thomas Parke Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1982). 26. Douglas K. Smith and R. C. Alexander, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer (Morrow, 1988); Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (HarperBusiness, 1999). 27. Steven Levy, Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (Penguin, 1994). 28. See, e.g., “A Fierce Battle Brews Over the Simplest Software Yet,” Business Week, November 21, 1983: 61–63. 29. Phil Lemmons, “A Guided Tour of VisiOn,” Byte, June 1983: 256ff. 30. Irene Fuerst, “Broken Windows,” Datamation, March 1, 1985: 46, 51–52. 31.

Enthusiasts have not done such a good job of recording the corporate and intellectual history of videogames, although there are some important exceptions. The best and most systematic historical account of the industry is Leonard Herman’s Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Videogames (second edition: Rolenta, 1997). 3. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Penguin, 1994). 4. Interview with Nolan Bushnell in Slater, Portraits in Silicon, pp. 296–307. 5. Scott Cohen, Zap! The Rise and Fall of Atari (McGraw-Hill, 1984), p. 30. 6. Watkins, Competitive Assessment of the US Video Game Industry, p. 7. 7. Cohen, Zap!


Howard Rheingold by The Virtual Community Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier-Perseus Books (1993)

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", Alvin Toffler, Apple II, bread and circuses, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, commoditize, conceptual framework, disinformation, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, experimental subject, General Magic , George Gilder, global village, Gregor Mendel, Hacker Ethic, Haight Ashbury, Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, intentional community, Ivan Sutherland, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, license plate recognition, loose coupling, Marshall McLuhan, megaproject, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mitch Kapor, Morris worm, multilevel marketing, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, profit motive, RAND corporation, Ray Oldenburg, rent control, RFC: Request For Comment, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, telepresence, The Great Good Place, The Hackers Conference, the strength of weak ties, urban decay, UUNET, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, young professional

They wanted to reinvent computing; the computer industry giants and the mainstream of computer science weren't interested in reinventing computing. So Licklider and his successors at ARPA, Robert Taylor and Ivan Sutherland (both in their twenties), started funding the young hackers--the original hackers, as chronicled in Steven Levy's book Hackers, not the ones who break into computer systems today. They also funded Engelbart, whose Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at Stanford Research Institute lasted for more than a decade and created the first word processors, conferencing systems, hypertext systems, mouse pointing devices, mixed video and computer communications--the technical foundation for half a dozen of the biggest high-tech industries today.

Baxter reported that he had been informed that the Hackers' Conference was an 26-04-2012 21:46 howard rheingold's | the virtual community 15 de 36 http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/9.html underground organization of computer outlaws that was probably part of the same grand conspiracy as the NuPrometheus League. Hacker used to mean something different from what it means now. Steven Levy's 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution was about the unorthodox young programmers who created in the 1960s and 1970s the kind of computer technology that nonprogrammers used in the 1980s and 1990s. Although they kept odd hours and weren't fashion plates, and although they weren't averse to solving lock-picking puzzles, the original hackers were toolmakers, not burglars.


pages: 524 words: 130,909

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin

3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, anti-communist, bank run, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Blitzscaling, Boeing 747, borderless world, Cambridge Analytica, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, David Brooks, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Ethereum, Extropian, facts on the ground, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Frank Gehry, Gavin Belson, global macro, Gordon Gekko, Greyball, growth hacking, guest worker program, Hacker News, Haight Ashbury, helicopter parent, hockey-stick growth, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, life extension, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, moral panic, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, operational security, PalmPilot, Paris climate accords, Patri Friedman, paypal mafia, Peter Gregory, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, randomized controlled trial, regulatory arbitrage, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, social distancing, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, techlash, technology bubble, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, the new new thing, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, Vitalik Buterin, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Y2K, yellow journalism, Zenefits

advocacy group Mijente: “Anduril’s New Border Surveillance Contract with the U.S. Marine Corps and CPB,” Mijente, July 24, 2019, https://mijente.net/2019/07/anduril/; “Palantir Played Key Role in Arresting Families for Deportation, Document Shows,” Mijente, May 2, 2019, https://mijente.net/2019/05/palantir-arresting-families/. advanced artificial intelligence: Steven Levy, “Inside Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s Bid to Build a Border Wall,” Wired, June 11, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/palmer-luckey-anduril-border-wall/. posted the same message: Kari Paul, “Tech Workers Protest Data Mining Firm Palantir for Role in Immigrant Arrests,” The Guardian, May 13, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/13/tech-workers-palantir-immigration-protest-github.

landing the contract: Cade Metz et al., “What’s a Palantir? The Tech Industry’s Next Big I.P.O.,” The New York Times, August 26, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/technology/palantir-ipo.html. CHAPTER NINETEEN: TO THE MAT urged Zuckerberg to consider: Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect. early-morning board meeting: Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2020), 158. not long after the IPO: Michael Wolff, “The Facebook Fallacy,” MIT Technology Review, May 22, 2012, https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/05/22/255726/the-facebook-fallacy/. “we know what we’re doing”: Levy, Facebook, 293.


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The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It) by Jamie Bartlett

Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Californian Ideology, Cambridge Analytica, central bank independence, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, computer vision, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of work, general purpose technology, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Hans Moravec, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, information retrieval, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Gilmore, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mittelstand, move fast and break things, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, off grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, payday loans, Peter Thiel, post-truth, prediction markets, QR code, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, smart contracts, smart meter, Snapchat, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological singularity, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, the long tail, the medium is the message, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, too big to fail, ultimatum game, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, Y Combinator, you are the product

One journalist in Guatemala said 66 per cent of their traffic disappeared overnight. Similarly, Google tweaked its algorithm to make sure – so it said – that fake news fell down its ranking. It clobbered Alternet, a site dedicated to fighting white supremacy – their traffic collapsed, falling by 40 per cent almost overnight. 17 Steven Levy, ‘Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s Future, From Virtual Reality to Anonymity’, Wired, 30 April 2014. 18 Andrew Wilson, ‘The Ideas Industry’, www.thinktheology.co.uk, 16 August 2017. 19 This is all available from the website http://googletransparencyproject.org. While there are doubtless instances where collaboration and funding from the private sector benefits academics, institutions and students, according to the Google Transparency Project, of 330 studies about policy issues directly relevant to Google’s operations and revenue – subjects like anti-trust, privacy and data security, net neutrality, copyright – 54 per cent were either partly funded by, or affiliated with academics or institutions funded by Google.


pages: 209 words: 53,175

The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness by Morgan Housel

airport security, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Madoff, book value, business cycle, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, discounted cash flows, diversification, diversified portfolio, do what you love, Donald Trump, financial engineering, financial independence, Hans Rosling, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, John Bogle, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, new economy, Paul Graham, payday loans, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, side hustle, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, stocks for the long run, tech worker, the scientific method, traffic fines, Vanguard fund, WeWork, working-age population

Few would have said “30 million times larger within my lifetime.” But that’s what happened. The counterintuitive nature of compounding leads even the smartest of us to overlook its power. In 2004 Bill Gates criticized the new Gmail, wondering why anyone would need a gigabyte of storage. Author Steven Levy wrote, “Despite his currency with cutting-edge technologies, his mentality was anchored in the old paradigm of storage being a commodity that must be conserved.” You never get accustomed to how quickly things can grow. The danger here is that when compounding isn’t intuitive we often ignore its potential and focus on solving problems through other means.


pages: 554 words: 149,489

The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change by Bharat Anand

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, AOL-Time Warner, Benjamin Mako Hill, Bernie Sanders, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, electricity market, Eyjafjallajökull, fulfillment center, gamification, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, late fees, managed futures, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Minecraft, multi-sided market, Network effects, post-work, price discrimination, publish or perish, QR code, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, selection bias, self-driving car, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, social web, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuart Kauffman, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, two-sided market, ubercab, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

Information in this section draws on Bharat Anand and Peter Olson, “The Random House Response to the Kindle,” HBS No. 709-486 (Boston: Harvard Business Publishing, February 27, 2009); Peter Olson and Bharat Anand, “The Kindle: Igniting the Book Business,” Book Business 12, no. 4 (June 2009): 26–28. Disclosure: I taught a paid executive education program for senior executives at Penguin Random House in 2013 and 2015. “Reinventing the Book” Steven Levy, “Amazon: Reinventing the Book,” Newsweek , November 17, 2007. “If it’s allowed to take hold” Ken Auletta, “Publish or Perish: Can the iPad Topple the Kindle, and Save the Book Business?,” New Yorker, April 26, 2010. the top ten CEOs of the past decade “The Entrepreneurs of the Decade: 2000 to 2009,” Inc ., December 2009.

the numbers hadn’t increased much “Apple’s iTunes Store Passes 35 Billion Songs Sold Milestone,” MacDailyNews, May 29, 2014, accessed March 30, 2016; http://mac -dailynews.com/​2014/​05/​29/​apples-itunes-store-passes-35-billion-songs-sold-milestone-itunes-radio-now-has-40-million-listeners/ . “If anything can play on anything” John Markoff, “Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection,” New York Times . A tire manufacturer I owe this example to Felix Oberholzer-Gee. “This isn’t a device, it’s a service” Jeff Bezos quoted in Steven Levy, “Amazon: Reinventing the Book,” Newsweek . In 2009 Tata Motors Information about Tata Nano here and elsewhere in the book is drawn primarily from Krishna Palepu, Bharat Anand, et al., “Tata Nano—The People’s Car,” HBS No. 710-420 (Boston: Harvard Business Publishing, rev. March 28, 2011), and public sources where listed.


pages: 464 words: 155,696

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart Into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender, Rick Tetzeli

Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, Apple II, Apple Newton, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Beos Apple "Steve Jobs" next macos , Bill Atkinson, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Bob Noyce, Byte Shop, Charles Lindbergh, computer age, corporate governance, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, El Camino Real, Fairchild Semiconductor, General Magic , Isaac Newton, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, Marc Andreessen, market design, McMansion, Menlo Park, Paul Terrell, Pepsi Challenge, planned obsolescence, popular electronics, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Stephen Fry, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Catalog

I believe that we pay taxes, and that the city then gives us services.” Over the last few months, a steady flow of visitors came by the house in Palo Alto. Bill Clinton came to visit, as did President Obama, for dinner with a select group of Silicon Valley leaders. John Markoff, of the New York Times, and Steven Levy, who had written several books about Silicon Valley, including ones about the development of the Macintosh and the iPod, dropped by together to pay their respects. Bill Gates wound up spending four hours with Steve one afternoon. “Steve and I will always get more credit than we deserve, because otherwise the story’s too complicated,” Gates says.

We also relied on passages from the following books: Gates, by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews; Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future, by John Sculley; The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs, by Chrisann Brennan; Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World’s Most Colorful Company, by Owen W. Linzmayer; Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age, by Michael A. Hiltzik; and Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything, by Steven Levy; as well as Moritz’s The Little Kingdom, and Wozniak and Smith’s iWoz. Other journalistic sources included “The Fall of Steve” by Bro Uttal, published in Fortune on August 5, 1985; and the PBS television documentary The Entrepreneurs, broadcast in 1986. The Golden Gate Weather website, http://ggweather.com/sjc/daily_records.html#September, provided the precise weather data for the day of Jobs’s visit to the Garden of Allah.


pages: 528 words: 146,459

Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly, William Aspray, Nathan L. Ensmenger, Jeffrey R. Yost

Ada Lovelace, air freight, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Bletchley Park, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, Build a better mousetrap, Byte Shop, card file, cashless society, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, combinatorial explosion, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, Computer Lib, deskilling, don't be evil, Donald Davies, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Edward Jenner, Evgeny Morozov, Fairchild Semiconductor, fault tolerance, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, game design, garden city movement, Gary Kildall, Grace Hopper, Herman Kahn, hockey-stick growth, Ian Bogost, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, interchangeable parts, invention of the wheel, Ivan Sutherland, Jacquard loom, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, linked data, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, Multics, natural language processing, Network effects, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Occupy movement, optical character recognition, packet switching, PageRank, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Pierre-Simon Laplace, pirate software, popular electronics, prediction markets, pre–internet, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, Robert X Cringely, Salesforce, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, the market place, Turing machine, Twitter Arab Spring, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Von Neumann architecture, Whole Earth Catalog, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, young professional

Thierry Bardini’s Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing (2000) does justice to a once-unsung hero of the personal-computer revolution. Books focusing on the Macintosh development include John Sculley’s insider account Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple (1987) and Steven Levy’s external view Insanely Great (1994). A selection of business histories of Microsoft (all of which discuss the Windows operating system) was listed in the notes to Chapter 10. We found the most thoughtful account of Microsoft’s forays into CD-ROM publishing and consumer networks to be Randall Stross’s The Microsoft Way (1996).

The early days are chronicled in Robert Reid’s Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days That Built the Future of Business (1997), while the crash is recounted in John Cassidy’s Dot.con (2003). As individual enterprises rise to prominence, business histories of them soon appear. We found useful Robert Spector’s Amazon.com: Get Big Fast (2000) and Karen Angel’s Inside Yahoo! (2001). The most significant work on Google to date is Steven Levy’s Into the Plex: How Google Works and Shapes Our Lives (2011). While highly celebratory, Andrew Lih’s The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia (2009) is nevertheless useful. Social networking discussion draws in part from David Kirkpatrick’s study of Facebook, The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World (2010).


pages: 547 words: 160,071

Underground by Suelette Dreyfus

airport security, Free Software Foundation, invisible hand, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Loma Prieta earthquake, military-industrial complex, packet switching, PalmPilot, pirate software, profit motive, publish or perish, RFC: Request For Comment, Ronald Reagan, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, uranium enrichment, urban decay, WikiLeaks, zero day

It was basically impossible to learn about computer security unless you broke into secret security mailing list repositories to read what the system administrators – the keepers of all power in the early internet – were doing behind the scenes to secure their machines. Underground, along with Bruce Sterling’s The Hacker Crackdown and Steven Levy’s Hackers, shine a light onto this now lost world. The project called on a network of good people around the world who decided to let us in. These were not just hackers but others, people who were just willing to share resources because they wanted a good story, told well, for history’s sake. The critics have been kind to Underground; I hope it’s because it has delivered that.

He had already developed a fascination for computers, having received the simplest of machines, a Sinclair ZX81 with 1 k of memory, as a birthday present from his parents. Rummaging through outdoor markets, he found a few second-hand books on hacking. He read Out of the Inner Circle by Bill Landreth, and Hackers by Steven Levy. By the time he was fourteen, Anthrax had joined a Melbourne-based group of boys called The Force. The members swapped Commodore 64 and Amiga games. They also wrote their own demos – short computer programs – and delighted in cracking the copy protections on the games and then trading them with other crackers around the world.


pages: 598 words: 134,339

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier

23andMe, Airbnb, airport security, AltaVista, Anne Wojcicki, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Benjamin Mako Hill, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Brewster Kahle, Brian Krebs, call centre, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, congestion charging, data science, digital rights, disintermediation, drone strike, Eben Moglen, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, experimental subject, failed state, fault tolerance, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, Firefox, friendly fire, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, informal economy, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, lifelogging, linked data, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, moral panic, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, national security letter, Network effects, Occupy movement, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, payday loans, pre–internet, price discrimination, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, real-name policy, recommendation engine, RFID, Ross Ulbricht, satellite internet, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, South China Sea, sparse data, stealth mode startup, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, telemarketer, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, undersea cable, unit 8200, urban planning, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, workplace surveillance , Yochai Benkler, yottabyte, zero day

in 2012, it banned them from user-to-user: eBay (2 Oct 2012), “Sellers: E-mail addresses and some URLs no longer allowed in member-to-member messages,” http://announcements.ebay.com/2012/10/sellers-e-mail-addresses-and-some-urls-no-longer-allowed-in-member-to-member-messages. Websites that profit from advertising: Steven Levy (22 Apr 2014), “Inside the science that delivers your scary-smart Facebook and Twitter feeds,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/2014/04/perfect-facebook-feed. sites that allow you to opt out: Nate Anderson (24 Jul 2008), “.06% opt out: NebuAd hides link in 5,000-word privacy policy,” Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/07/06-opt-out-nebuad-hides-link-in-5000-word-privacy-policy.

Hoffman et al. (10 Jun 1999), “Growing development of foreign encryption products in the face of U.S. export regulations,” Report GWU-CPI-1999-02, Cyberspace Policy Institute, George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science, http://cryptome.org/cpi-survey.htm. the crypto wars: This is a good account of those times. Steven Levy (May 1993), “Crypto rebels,” Wired, http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_pr.html. NSA surveillance is costing: These three aspects were discussed in this document. Danielle Kehl et al. (29 Jul 2014), “Surveillance costs: The NSA’s impact on the economy, Internet freedom and cyberspace,” Open Technology Institute, New America Foundation, http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/surveillance_costs_the_nsas_impact_on_the_economy_internet_freedom_cybersecurity.


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After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul by Tripp Mickle

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, airport security, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Boeing 747, British Empire, business intelligence, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, desegregation, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Frank Gehry, General Magic , global pandemic, global supply chain, haute couture, imposter syndrome, index fund, Internet Archive, inventory management, invisible hand, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, megacity, Murano, Venice glass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, thinkpad, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Travis Kalanick, turn-by-turn navigation, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, Y2K

Desperately in need of a boost: Interview with then Apple design chief Robert Brunner; interviews with Tangerine’s Clive Grinyer, Peter Phillips, and Martin Darbyshire; interview with Steve Bailey; Burrows, “Who Is Jonathan Ive?”; Parker, “The Shape of Things to Come.” Chapter 3: The Operator On some days, Cook: Steven Levy, “An Oral History of Apple’s Infinite Loop,” Wired, September 16, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/apple-infinite-loop-oral-history/. Tim Cook grew up wanting: Violla Young, “Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) Interview in Oxford,” YouTube, July 18, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQ8qQP4zdk: “I saw my dad go to work and not love what he did.

Much of the credit: Jon Rubinstein, Ive’s manager, led the development of the iMac, making the critical choices of the components and firmware that powered the machine. In his home country: John Ezard, “iMac Designer Who ‘Touched Millions’ Wins £25,000 Award,” Guardian, June 3, 2003. Over the next three weeks: Kahney, Jony Ive; interview with Doug Satzger. In most places that decision: Isaacson, Steve Jobs. In early 2001, Jobs moved: Steven Levy, “An Oral History of Apple’s Infinite Loop,” Wired, September, 16, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/apple-infinite-loop-oral-history. “Jony and I think up”: Isaacson, Steve Jobs, 342. a Bang & Olufsen phone: Austin Carr, “Apple’s Inspiration for the iPod? Bang & Olufsen, Not Braun,” Fast Company, November 6, 2013, https://www.fastcompany.com/3016910/apples-inspiration-for-the-ipod-bang-olufsen-not-dieter-rams.


pages: 903 words: 235,753

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty by Benjamin H. Bratton

1960s counterculture, 3D printing, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, additive manufacturing, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, Charles Babbage, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, company town, congestion pricing, connected car, Conway's law, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Graeber, deglobalization, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, distributed generation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, functional programming, future of work, Georg Cantor, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, High speed trading, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Laura Poitras, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, McMansion, means of production, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, OSI model, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, peak oil, peer-to-peer, performance metric, personalized medicine, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-Fordism, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reserve currency, rewilding, RFID, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, skeuomorphism, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Startup school, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, the long tail, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y Combinator, yottabyte

Woodruff, “Applications of the Shannon-Hartley Theorem to Data Streams and Sparse Recovery,” 2012, retrieved from IBM Watson researcher site May 8, 2015, http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-dpwoodru/pw12.pdf. 29.  For the OptIPuter project, for example, each major component could be on a different continent, but they all work together as if it were a single self-contained machine. See http://www.optiputer.net/. 30.  See, for example, Steven Levy, “Going with the Flow: Google's Secret Switch to the Next Wave of Networking,” Wired, April 17, 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/04/going-with-the-flow-google/ and James C. Corbett, Jeffrey Dean, Michael Epstein, Andrew Fikes, Christopher Frost, JJ Furman, Sanjay Ghemawat, Andrey Gubarev, Christopher Heiser, Peter Hochschild, Wilson Hsieh, Sebastian Kanthak, Eugene Kogan, Hongyi Li, Alexander Lloyd, Sergey Melnik, David Mwaura, David Nagle, Sean Quinlan, Rajesh Rao, Lindsay Rolig, Yasushi Saito, Michal Szymaniak, Christopher Taylor, Ruth Wang, and Dale Woodford, “Spanner: Google's Globally-Distributed Database,” technical paper, October 2012, http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/spanner-osdi2012.pdf. 31. 

Sebastian Thrun, “Google's Driverless Car,” TED, March 2011, http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_thrun_google_s_driverless_car. The relative “autonomy” of the car from the driver is a gradient. The design problem is not one of full autonomy of the car replacing full autonomy of the driver, but of varying degrees of cyborgization, drawing on those with which car culture is already comfortable. 56.  Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). 57.  For those who honestly don't know, the Google driverless car project is a research initiative to develop cars that can autonomously navigate all roads without human steerage (or much of it), using a combination of laser-guided mapping, video cameras, radar, motion sensors, on-board computing, and other tools.

Such a system doesn't need independent taxi drivers, because the system knows where the quickest routes are and what streets are blocked, and can set an ideal route from the outset. The system knows all the conditions and can institute a more sophisticated set of rules that determines how the taxis proceed, and even figure whether some taxis should stay in their garages while fire trucks pass.” Steven Levy, “Going with the Flow: Google's Secret Switch to the Next Wave of Networking,” Wired.com, April 15, 2012, http://www.wired.com/2012/04/going-with-the-flow-google/all/. 59.  John Thackara, “Lightness,” in In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 18–19: “Power tools are another example.


pages: 210 words: 56,667

The Misfit Economy: Lessons in Creativity From Pirates, Hackers, Gangsters and Other Informal Entrepreneurs by Alexa Clay, Kyra Maya Phillips

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, Alfred Russel Wallace, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, Burning Man, collaborative consumption, conceptual framework, cotton gin, creative destruction, different worldview, digital rights, disruptive innovation, double helix, fear of failure, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Hacker Ethic, Howard Rheingold, informal economy, intentional community, invention of the steam engine, James Watt: steam engine, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, megacity, Neil Armstrong, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, peer-to-peer rental, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, supply-chain management, union organizing, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, work culture , Zipcar

Today Sam Roberts is working with his brother Oliver on 4G mobile telecommunication network deployments throughout Europe, and continuing to embrace the hacker imperative: the driving need to understand how systems work and then put them back together in enhanced forms. THE HACKER MOVEMENT In his book Hackers, Steven Levy chronicles the birth and development of the hacker movement. He starts with the first iteration of hackers: the group who coalesced during the early 1960s, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) acquired its first programmable computer. This cohort’s obsessive programming of the machines, and the relationship they built with the systems, gave rise to the Hacker Ethic, an informal, organically developed and agreed-upon manifesto that, in several iterations, still drives the hacker movement forward: • Access to computers—and anything that might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total


pages: 202 words: 59,883

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel

Albert Einstein, Apple II, augmented reality, call centre, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, connected car, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, factory automation, Filter Bubble, G4S, gamification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Internet of things, job automation, John Markoff, Kickstarter, lifelogging, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mars Rover, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, New Urbanism, PageRank, pattern recognition, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, sensor fusion, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, social graph, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, TSMC, ubercab, urban planning, Zipcar

However, if after you returned you were looking up the name of the wonderful little shop you discovered up-island, you might see the same offer. In the former situation the ad is relevant; in the latter it’s worthless. Sometimes such ads are beneath worthless; they are downright tasteless. When tech author and journalist Steven Levy tweeted that a plane had crashed at San Francisco International Airport in June 2013, he reported that an Expedia ad suddenly appeared “urging me to fly somewhere on vacation.” Such gaffes are far from uncommon and often leave a long-lasting negative impression on the very people they are trying to attract.


The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop

Ada Lovelace, air freight, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Apple II, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bill Atkinson, Bill Duvall, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Bletchley Park, Boeing 747, Byte Shop, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, Dennis Ritchie, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, experimental subject, Fairchild Semiconductor, fault tolerance, Frederick Winslow Taylor, friendly fire, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, functional programming, Gary Kildall, Haight Ashbury, Howard Rheingold, information retrieval, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Ivan Sutherland, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Rulifson, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Leonard Kleinrock, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, Multics, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, pink-collar, pneumatic tube, popular electronics, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Robert Metcalfe, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, The Soul of a New Machine, Turing machine, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, Von Neumann architecture, Wiener process, zero-sum game

But it just so happened that among the students in their class were several members of the Tech Model Railroad Club, a band of techno-geek undergradu- ates who spent their free time creating ever more elaborate train layouts con- trolled by ever more intricate electrical switching networks, the more ingenious the better. Borrowing an ancient MIT slang word for a practical joke, the railroad club's members had taken to calling any particularly clever bit of controller de- sign a hack. And as the writer Steven Levy described in 1984, the hackers in McCarthy and Rochester's course soon got so caught up in the fiendishly intri- cate joys of programming that they started hanging around the Computation Center till all hours, the better to gain access to the 704. There they were discov- ered one day by former railroad-club member Jack Dennis, now the staffer in charge of the TX-O, who asked them if they would like to come upstairs and see that machine.

Anyone can walk into anybody else's office, and a gentleman doesn't read anybody else's mail."24 But to the hackers-that fiendishly clever band of obsessives who had learned to program one-on-one at the TX-O and the PDP-1, and who had now found a haven on the ninth floor of Tech Square, in Marvin Minsky's AI Lab-passwords were anathema. As Steven Levy noted in his 1984 book, Hackers, "to the hackers, passwords were even more odious than locked doors. What could be worse than someone telling you that you weren't authorized to use his computer?" The whole thing was so . . . corporate, like hav- ing to wear a nametag and sign in with a guard in the lobby.

Taylor, Digital Systems Research Center Reports, vol. 61 (Palo Alto, Calif., 1990). 32. LICklIder, "Interactive Information Processing." 33. J. C. R. LicklIder, "The System System," In Human Factors In Technology, ed. E. Bennett, J. Degan, and J. Spiegel (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), 627-28. 34. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Double- day, 1984), 28-29. 35. Ibid., 47. 36. Olsen, NMAH oral history. 37. Ibid. 38. QIoted In Clark, "The LINC Was Early and Small," 368. 39. "The Project MAC Interviews," 42. 40. "The CTSS Interviews," 44, 46. 41. Ibid., 42. 42.


pages: 230 words: 61,702

The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data by Michael P. Lynch

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Mechanical Turk, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, bitcoin, Cass Sunstein, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, data science, Edward Snowden, Firefox, Google Glasses, hive mind, income inequality, Internet of things, John von Neumann, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, patient HM, prediction markets, RFID, sharing economy, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Twitter Arab Spring, WikiLeaks

While neuromedia is currently still in the realm of science fiction, it may not be as far off as you think.1 The migration of technology into our bodies—the cyborging of the human—is no longer just fantasy.2 And it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the possibilities are not lost on companies such as Google: “When you think about something and don’t really know much about it, you will automatically get information,” Google CEO Larry Page is quoted as saying in Steven Levy’s recent book In the Plex. “Eventually you’ll have an implant, where if you think about a fact, it will just tell you the answer.”3 This possibility raises some disquieting questions about society, identity and the mind. But as Larry Page’s remark suggests, the deeper question is about information and knowledge itself.


pages: 215 words: 61,435

Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen

classic study, David Brooks, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, intentional community, Lewis Mumford, mortgage debt, Nicholas Carr, plutocrats, price mechanism, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shared worldview, Steven Levy, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

For a fuller discussion of this history, see Anthony Kronman, Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), especially chapters 3–4. 6. A locus classicus that wed radical feminism with optimistic belief in technology’s ability to alter human nature remains Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (New York: Morrow, 1970). 7. Steven Levy, “GU NAACP President Discusses Diversity Issues,” Hoya, October 19, 2010. “I feel [that] money and the lack of it, as well as the lack of opportunity to participate in our consumerist, capitalist society and economy, proves difficult. For many minorities, they find that they’re not located on the same playing field as the rest of the nation.” http://www.thehoya.com/gu-naacp-president-discusses-diversity-issues/#.


pages: 201 words: 60,431

Long Game: How Long-Term Thinker Shorthb by Dorie Clark

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Blue Ocean Strategy, buy low sell high, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, digital nomad, driverless car, Elon Musk, fail fast, Google X / Alphabet X, hedonic treadmill, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, Lean Startup, lockdown, minimum viable product, passive income, pre–internet, rolodex, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, solopreneur, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Levy, the strength of weak ties, Walter Mischel, zero-sum game

Maria Konnikova, “The Struggles of a Psychologist Studying Self-Control,” The New Yorker, October 9, 2014. 3. BJ Fogg, “Start Tiny,” Tinyhabits.com, accessed March 9, 2021. 4. Jeff Bezos, “2017 Letter to Shareholders,” About Amazon. Amazon, April 18, 2018, https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2017-letter-to-shareholders. 5. Steven Levy, “Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think,” Wired, November 13, 2011, https://static.longnow.org/media/djlongnow_media/press/pdf/020111113-Levy-JeffBezosOwnstheWebinMoreWaysThanYouThink.pdf. Index accomplishments, savoring, 203–205 adaptability, 200–201. See also choices long-term thinking and, 5–6 advisers, 128, 129–154, 167, 170–171.


pages: 700 words: 160,604

The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anne Wojcicki, Apollo 13, Apple II, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, Bernie Sanders, Colonization of Mars, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Dean Kamen, discovery of DNA, discovery of penicillin, double helix, Edward Jenner, Gregor Mendel, Hacker News, Henri Poincaré, iterative process, Joan Didion, linear model of innovation, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, mouse model, Nick Bostrom, public intellectual, Recombinant DNA, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, synthetic biology, the scientific method, Thomas Malthus, wikimedia commons

Because of its small size and highly specific targeting capability, the Cas13d that Hsu discovered was chosen by Qi as the best enzyme to target the coronavirus in human lung cells. In the competition to come up with good acronyms, Qi scored high. He dubbed his system PAC-MAN, which he had extracted from “prophylactic antiviral CRISPR in human cells.” The name was that of the chomping character in the once popular video game. “I like video games,” Qi told Wired’s Steven Levy. “The Pac-Man tries to eat cookies, and it is chased by a ghost. But when it encounters a specific kind of cookie called the power cookie—in our case a CRISPR-Cas13 design—suddenly it turns itself to be so powerful. It can start eating the ghost and start cleaning up the whole battlefield.”15 Qi and his team tested PAC-MAN on synthesized fragments of the coronavirus.

Jon Arizti-Sanz, Catherine Freije… Pardis Sabeti, and Cameron Myhrvold, “Integrated Sample Inactivation, Amplification, and Cas13-Based Detection of SARS-CoV-2,” bioRxiv, May 28, 2020. 13. Author’s interviews with Stanley Qi. 14. Silvana Konermann… and Patrick Hsu, “Transcriptome Engineering with RNA-Targeting Type VI-D CRISPR Effectors,” Cell, Mar. 15, 2018. 15. Steven Levy, “Could CRISPR Be Humanity’s Next Virus Killer?,” Wired, Mar. 10, 2020. 16. Timothy Abbott… and Lei [Stanley] Qi, “Development of CRISPR as a Prophylactic Strategy to Combat Novel Coronavirus and Influenza,” bioRxiv, Mar. 14, 2020. 17. Author’s interview with Stanley Qi. 18. IGI weekly Zoom meeting, Mar. 22, 2020; author’s interviews with Stanley Qi and Jennifer Doudna. 19.


pages: 239 words: 70,206

Data-Ism: The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else by Steve Lohr

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, bioinformatics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Carl Icahn, classic study, cloud computing, computer age, conceptual framework, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Danny Hillis, data is the new oil, data science, David Brooks, driverless car, East Village, Edward Snowden, Emanuel Derman, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Future Shock, Google Glasses, Ida Tarbell, impulse control, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of writing, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, lifelogging, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, meta-analysis, money market fund, natural language processing, obamacare, pattern recognition, payday loans, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, precision agriculture, pre–internet, Productivity paradox, RAND corporation, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Salesforce, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, six sigma, skunkworks, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tony Fadell, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, yottabyte

C3. http://faculty-web.at.northwestern.edu/economics/gordon/WSJ_121222.pdf. 8: The Yin and Yang of Behavior and Data Yoky Matsuoka was known as a robot wizard: Matsuoka’s descriptions and quotes come mainly from an interview on Nov. 18, 2011. Nest was cofounded by Tony Fadell: I did an article on Nest when it introduced its first thermostat in October 2011. But the definitive account of Nest’s founding was by Steven Levy, published online by Wired, titled “Brave New Thermostat: How the iPod’s Creator Is Making Home Heating Sexy,” Oct. 25, 2011. I’ve talked to Fadell several times in recent years, but his descriptions and quotes here, unless otherwise noted, come from two interviews, on May 8, 2012, and Nov. 13, 2013.


pages: 244 words: 66,599

Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything by Steven Levy

Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Bill Atkinson, computer age, Computer Lib, conceptual framework, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, General Magic , Howard Rheingold, HyperCard, information retrieval, information trail, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Marshall McLuhan, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, Pepsi Challenge, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, rolodex, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Ted Nelson, The Home Computer Revolution, the medium is the message, Vannevar Bush

Insanely Great: the Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything by Steven Levy ISBN 13: 9780670852444 ISBN 10: 0670852449 Hardcover New York, New York, U.s.a.: Viking Adult, 1994 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe a huge debt to my sources at Apple, the thirdparty community, and the wider Macintosh world at large. For ten years they have patiently answered my queries, explained technical issues to me, and more often than not provided me with enlightening conversation that illuminated my thinking about matters both Mac and non-Mac. I am especially grateful to the help far beyond the call of duty to Mac Team members Bill Atkinson, Steve Capps, Andy Hertzfeld, Joanna Hoffman, and Susan Kare, who have always been there for me when I needed them.


pages: 199 words: 64,272

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

Alan Greenspan, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, back-to-the-land, bank run, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, break the buck, card file, central bank independence, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Edmond Halley, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, index card, invention of movable type, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, life extension, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, side hustle, Silicon Valley, software is eating the world, Steven Levy, the new new thing, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs

David Chaum published “Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete” in Communications of the ACM. Chaum described his early life to me in a phone interview. The patent I quote from is for a “Cryptographic identification, financial transaction, and credential device.” The Wired quote is from “E-Money (That’s What I Want),” by Steven Levy. The New York Times Magazine quote is from “Dead as a Dollar,” by James Gleick. Citibank’s e-money program, and the international spread of DigiCash, are described in The Age of Cryptocurrency. The Greenspan quote is from a 1997 speech, “Privacy in the Information Age.” Timothy May described his discovery of Chaum’s work, and his role in creating the cypherpunks, in an interview with me.


pages: 232 words: 71,237

Kill It With Fire: Manage Aging Computer Systems by Marianne Bellotti

anti-pattern, barriers to entry, business logic, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer age, continuous integration, create, read, update, delete, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, database schema, Dennis Ritchie, DevOps, fault tolerance, fear of failure, Google Chrome, Hans Moravec, iterative process, Ken Thompson, loose coupling, microservices, minimum viable product, Multics, no silver bullet, off-by-one error, platform as a service, pull request, QWERTY keyboard, Richard Stallman, risk tolerance, Schrödinger's Cat, side project, software as a service, Steven Levy, systems thinking, web application, Y Combinator, Y2K

Legacy modernization projects do not fail because one mistake was made or something went wrong once. They fail because the organization deploys solutions that actually reinforce unsuccessful conditions. If you’re coming into a project in the middle, your most important task as a leader is figuring out where those cycles are and stopping them. 1 Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). 7 Design as Destiny Design is not about making things look pretty. Many software engineers I’ve worked with have never considered this fact before it was pointed out to them. It’s an easy mistake to make.


pages: 234 words: 67,589

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future by Ben Tarnoff

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic management, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, business logic, call centre, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, decentralized internet, deep learning, defund the police, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Edward Snowden, electricity market, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial intermediation, future of work, gamification, General Magic , gig economy, God and Mammon, green new deal, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Leo Hollis, lockdown, lone genius, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Menlo Park, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, pets.com, profit maximization, profit motive, QAnon, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, smart grid, social distancing, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, techlash, Telecommunications Act of 1996, TikTok, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, undersea cable, UUNET, vertical integration, Victor Gruen, web application, working poor, Yochai Benkler

Smith, “Shopping Centers: The New Building Type,” Progressive Architecture (June 1952): 67–109. 86, Real malls are in the … On online mall rent-seeking, in addition to Sadowski, “The Internet of Landlords,” see Paul Langley and Andrew Leyshon, “Platform Capitalism: The Intermediation and Capitalization of Digital Economic Circulation,” Finance and Society 3, no. 1 (2017): 11–31. 88, In 1998, the same year … Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011), 32–34. The paper was Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 30 (1998): 107–17. 88, Having too much data … IPv4, introduced in 1981, uses a 32-bit address space, which allows for approximately 4.3 billion addresses.


pages: 641 words: 182,927

In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City's Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis by Clifton Hood

affirmative action, British Empire, Carl Icahn, coherent worldview, Cornelius Vanderbilt, David Brooks, death of newspapers, deindustrialization, family office, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Google Earth, jitney, mass immigration, new economy, New Urbanism, P = NP, plutocrats, Ray Oldenburg, ride hailing / ride sharing, Scientific racism, selection bias, Steven Levy, streetcar suburb, The Great Good Place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, tontine, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, urban planning, We are the 99%, white flight

Social Register Association, Social Register, 1986 (New York: Social Register Association, 1985), 501; Social Register Association, Social Register, 1988 (New York: Social Register Association, 1987), 939, 998; Social Register Association, Social Register, 1990 (New York: Social Register Association, 1989), 910; Social Register Association, Social Register, 2013 (New York: Social Register Association, 2012), 887. 120. Quoted in Steven Levy, “Getting In,” New York Magazine 13 (June 30, 1980): 23. 121. Ibid., 23–24. 122. New York Times, April 7 and June 23, 1985. 123. New York Tribune, May 3, 1903, January 3, 1904; New York Times, May 4, 1902; “Town & Country Life,” Town and Country, 52 (June 14, 1902): 29–35; and “Town & Country Life,” Town and Country, 52 (June 21, 1902): 22–25. 124.

Once a bastion of white Protestants and a trifling number of Jews and Catholics, it did not run its first photograph of an African American bride until 1954. In the 1970s and 1980s, the presence of representative Asian Americans and African Americans became routinized, and in 2002 the Times began carrying announcements for same-sex couples. New York Times, May 29, 1983, August 18, 2002; and Steven Levy, “Getting In,” New York Magazine 13 (June 30, 1980): 23–24. 136. New York Times, September 14, 1997; W. P. Carey, 2011 Annual Report (New York: n.p., 2012), 2–5, 9–17; “Profiles: Executive Profile of Thomas E. Zacharias,” Bloomberg Businessweek, accessed June 26, 2011, http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?


pages: 651 words: 186,130

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth

4chan, active measures, activist lawyer, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boeing 737 MAX, Brexit referendum, Brian Krebs, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Vincenzetti, defense in depth, digital rights, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hacker News, index card, information security, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, lockdown, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Menlo Park, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral hazard, Morris worm, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, NSO Group, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open borders, operational security, Parler "social media", pirate software, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, Seymour Hersh, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, South China Sea, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, web application, WikiLeaks, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

—Gary McGraw, PhD, founder, Berryville Institute of Machine Learning and author of Software Security “Usually, books like this are praised by saying that they read like a screenplay or a novel. Nicole Perlroth’s is better: her sensitivity to both technical issues and human behavior give this book an authenticity that makes its message—that cybersecurity issues threaten our privacy, our economy, and maybe our lives—even scarier.” —Steven Levy, author of Hackers and Facebook For Tristan, who always pulled me out of my secret hiding spots. For Heath, who married me even though I couldn’t tell him where I was hiding. For Holmes, who hid in my belly. CONTENTS Author’s Note Prologue PART I: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 1. Closet of Secrets 2.

On the subsequent fallout for tech companies and the NSA, see “Google’s Schmidt: NSA Spying on Data Centers Is ‘Outrageous,’ ” Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2013; Mike Masnick, “Pissed Off Google Security Guys Issue FU to NSA, Announce Data Center Traffic Now Encrypted,” Techdirt, November 6, 2013; Alexei Oreskovic, “Google Employees Lash Out at NSA over Reports of Cable Tapping,” Reuters, November 6, 2013; as well as my own reporting with Vindu Goel and David Sanger for the New York Times: “Internet Firms Step Up Efforts to Stop Spying,” December 5, 2013; and David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, “Internet Giants Erect Barriers to Spy Agencies,” New York Times, June 6, 2014. I highly recommend Steven Levy’s comprehensive account, “How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet,” Wired, January 7, 2014. The first public account of Google’s Project Zero debut appeared in Wired. See Andy Greenberg, “Meet ‘Project Zero,’ Google’s Secret Team of Bug-Hunting Hackers,” July 15, 2014. The first major vulnerability Project Zero uncovered in Microsoft touched off a war of words between the two companies.


pages: 263 words: 75,610

Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

digital divide, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Firefox, full text search, George Akerlof, information asymmetry, information retrieval, information security, information trail, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, John Markoff, Joi Ito, lifelogging, moveable type in China, Network effects, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, power law, RFID, slashdot, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systematic bias, The Market for Lemons, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Vannevar Bush, Yochai Benkler

Darden School of Business Working Paper No. 03–05. 2003. Telegeography. Global Bandwidth Research Service. Washington, DC: Pri-Metrica 2008. Executive Summary available free of charge at http://www.telegeography.com/products/gb/index.php. Thompson, Clive. “A Head for Detail,” in The Best of Technology Writing, Steven Levy, ed. 94–114. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. 2007. Timmer, John. “Google Bows to EU Pressure, Cuts Data Retention Period Again.” Ars Technica (Sept. 9, 2008). http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080909-google-bows-to-eu-pressure-cuts-data-retention-period-agaom.html. Turow, Joseph, Jennifer King, Chris Hoofnagle, Amy Bleakley, and Michael Hennessy.


pages: 275 words: 77,017

The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers--And the Coming Cashless Society by David Wolman

addicted to oil, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, cross-subsidies, Diane Coyle, fiat currency, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, German hyperinflation, greed is good, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, mental accounting, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, offshore financial centre, P = NP, Peter Thiel, place-making, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, Steven Levy, the payments system, transaction costs, WikiLeaks

v=VemU6EZtnwc. 22 Digital Money Blog, May 10, 2010; and Dave Birch, personal correspondence, November 2010. 23 William Greider, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country (New York: Touchstone, 1987), p. 53. 24 Michael Salmony, Digital Money Forum address, London, March 10, 2010. 25 http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/annual09/sec5/c1t11.htm; and “As Plastic Reigns, the Treasury Slows Its Printing Presses,” New York Times, July 6, 2011. 26 John McCormick, “Loomis Fargo & Co.: Making Money Move, Efficiently,” http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/Loomis-Fargo-Co-Making-Money-Move-Efficiently/, November 8, 2005; also Steven Levy, “E-Money (That’s What I Want),” Wired, December 1994. 27 Ronald Mann, Charging Ahead: The Growth and Regulation of Payment Card Markets (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 39, quoting Swartz. 28 Daniel D. Garcia Swartz, Robert W. Hahn, and Anne Layne-Farrar, “The Economics of a Cashless Society: An Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of Payment Instruments,” Washington, D.C.: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, 2004), p. 25, citing Humphrey et al. 29 Currency News, July 2009, pp. 6–7. 30 Digital Money Blog, May 11, 2009, “Viking Expedition,” citing “China sees change scarcity,” chna.org.cn, November 20, 2007. 31 David Birch, The Digital Money Reader (Guildford, UK: Mastodon Press, 2010), pp. 54–55, citing “Police Escort for Elderly ATM Users,” Daily Telegraph, May 6, 2009, and “DIY Students Tackle Japanese ATM Fraud,” Finextra.com, November 8, 2008. 32 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704482704576072231420350872.html?


pages: 296 words: 78,631

Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms by Hannah Fry

23andMe, 3D printing, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Brixton riot, Cambridge Analytica, chief data officer, computer vision, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Chrome, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, John Markoff, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, RAND corporation, ransomware, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, selection bias, self-driving car, Shai Danziger, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, sparse data, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, systematic bias, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, trolley problem, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web of trust, William Langewiesche, you are the product

Feng-Hsiung Hsu, ‘IBM’s Deep Blue Chess grandmaster chips’, IEEE Micro, vol. 19, no. 2, 1999, pp. 70–81, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/755469/. 3. Garry Kasparov, Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2017). 4. TheGoodKnight, ‘Deep Blue vs Garry Kasparov Game 2 (1997 Match)’, YouTube, 18 Oct. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bd1Q2rOmok&t=2290s. 5. Ibid. 6. Steven Levy, ‘Big Blue’s Hand of God’, Newsweek, 18 May 1997, http://www.newsweek.com/big-blues-hand-god-173076. 7. Kasparov, Deep Thinking, p. 187. 8. Ibid., p. 191. 9. According to Merriam–Webster. The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition makes more of the mathematical nature of algorithms: ‘a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer’. 10.


pages: 255 words: 76,834

Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda

1960s counterculture, anti-pattern, Apple Newton, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, bash_history, Bill Atkinson, Charles Lindbergh, conceptual framework, Donald Knuth, en.wikipedia.org, Free Software Foundation, HyperCard, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lock screen, premature optimization, profit motive, proprietary trading, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Robert X Cringely, Silicon Valley, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, The Soul of a New Machine, Tony Fadell, work culture , zero-sum game

Notes Please note that some of the links referenced in this work may no longer be active. 2. The Crystal Ball 1. Free Software Foundation, GNU Operating System. [Online]. Accessed November 12, 2017. Various pages on this website provide the history, the philosophy, and licenses for the GNU Project. https://www.gnu.org 2. Steven Levy, Insanely Great, the Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (New York: Penguin Books, 1994). The Mac has been an inspiration to me from the moment I first saw one in college in 1984, and if Steven hadn’t written his book about how the people at Apple created it, you wouldn’t be reading this book right now. 3.


pages: 271 words: 77,448

Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will by Geoff Colvin

Ada Lovelace, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, Black Swan, call centre, capital asset pricing model, commoditize, computer age, corporate governance, creative destruction, deskilling, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, flying shuttle, Freestyle chess, future of work, Google Glasses, Grace Hopper, Hans Moravec, industrial cluster, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, job automation, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, Narrative Science, new economy, rising living standards, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, social intelligence, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City uses Watson . . . http://www.mskcc.org/blog/msk-trains-ibm-watson-help-doctors-make-better-treatment-choices. Corporate Insight, a research firm . . . http://public.corporateinsight.com/blog/will-ibms-watson-make-your-financial-advisor-obsolete. A company called Narrative Science . . . Much of the description of the company comes from Steven Levy, “Can an Algorithm Write a Better News Story Than a Human Reporter?” Wired, 24 April 2012. Updated at www.narrativescience.com. In mid-2014, the Associated Press assigned . . . “The A.P. Plans to Automate Quarterly Earnings Articles,” New York Times, 1 July 2014, p. B5. Schools from the elementary level . . .


pages: 289 words: 22,394

Virus of the Mind by Richard Brodie

Abraham Maslow, cognitive dissonance, disinformation, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Gödel, Escher, Bach, joint-stock company, multilevel marketing, New Journalism, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, publish or perish, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy

.* When we use the word evolution, as in “the evolution of species by natural selection,” we’re making a distinction between the winners of that battle, which continue to exist, and the losers, *Experiments in modeling evolution through computers are part of the fascinating new field known as artificial life. Read Steven Levy’s excellent book Artificial Life (Vintage Books, 1993) to learn more about it. 48 Evolution which don’t. Natural selection means that the forces of nature are doing the selecting, as opposed to the artificial selection of breeding pedigreed dogs, for example, in which people do the selecting.


pages: 268 words: 75,850

The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems-And Create More by Luke Dormehl

3D printing, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, augmented reality, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, computer age, death of newspapers, deferred acceptance, disruptive innovation, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, Florence Nightingale: pie chart, Ford Model T, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, fulfillment center, Google Earth, Google Glasses, High speed trading, Internet Archive, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Kodak vs Instagram, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, machine readable, machine translation, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, price discrimination, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, Rosa Parks, scientific management, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Slavoj Žižek, social graph, speech recognition, stable marriage problem, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technological solutionism, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, upwardly mobile, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator

Like many high-tech businesses, Google models itself as a libertarian utopia: the type of company where employees used to be allowed one extra day per week to pursue their own lines of inquiry, and are as likely to spend their time ascending Google’s indoor rock-climbing wall or having free food served up to them by a former Grateful Dead chef as they are to be coding. However, as Steven Levy points out in In the Plex, his 2011 study of Google, the search leviathan’s apparent loopiness is “the crazy-like-a-fox variety and not the kind calling for straightjackets.”26 Despite Google’s widely publicized quirks, its irreverent touches are data-driven to a fault. “At times Google’s largesse can sound excessive,” notes an article in Slate.


pages: 238 words: 73,824

Makers by Chris Anderson

3D printing, Airbnb, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Buckminster Fuller, Build a better mousetrap, business process, carbon tax, commoditize, company town, Computer Numeric Control, crowdsourcing, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deal flow, death of newspapers, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, DIY culture, drop ship, Elon Musk, factory automation, Firefox, Ford Model T, future of work, global supply chain, global village, hockey-stick growth, hype cycle, IKEA effect, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, inventory management, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Menlo Park, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, planned obsolescence, private spaceflight, profit maximization, QR code, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Ronald Coase, Rubik’s Cube, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, slashdot, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceShipOne, spinning jenny, Startup school, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize, Y Combinator

The leaders of the Maker Movement echo the fervor of Steve Jobs, who saw in the personal computer not just the opportunity to start a company but also a force that would change the world. But don’t forget: he was right. Indeed, Jobs himself was inspired by his Maker upbringing. Writing in Wired,12 Steven Levy explained the connection, which led to the original Apple II in 1977: His dad, Paul—a machinist who had never completed high school—had set aside a section of his workbench for Steve, and taught him how to build things, disassemble them, and put them together. From neighbors who worked in the electronics firm in the Valley, he learned about that field—and also understood that things like television sets were not magical things that just showed up in one’s house, but designed objects that human beings had painstakingly created.


The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention by Simon Baron-Cohen

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Asperger Syndrome, assortative mating, autism spectrum disorder, bioinformatics, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, David Attenborough, discovery of penicillin, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Fellow of the Royal Society, Greta Thunberg, intentional community, invention of agriculture, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jim Simons, lateral thinking, longitudinal study, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, neurotypical, out of africa, pattern recognition, phenotype, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, social intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, theory of mind, twin studies, zero-sum game

His mother patiently taught him social skills long after the age when his peer group had intuitively mastered these, giving him a set of rules about how to behave in social situations. Although Gates’s affective empathy is clearly intact—he gives millions of dollars to alleviate suffering in the poorest parts of the world—these biographical accounts suggest that his social development was delayed, while his systemizing was way ahead of his peers. Steven Levy, reviewing the documentary in Wired magazine and having interviewed Gates dozens of times, commented that “Bill Gates arrived on Earth as a Martian.” His profile fits that of a hyper-systemizer. Edison famously went through 10,000 loops of checking and rechecking his if-and-then patterns to detect important mistakes or to find novel valuable patterns.


pages: 786 words: 195,810

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman

Albert Einstein, animal electricity, Apollo 11, Asperger Syndrome, assortative mating, autism spectrum disorder, Bletchley Park, crowdsourcing, Douglas Engelbart, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental subject, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, hydroponic farming, hypertext link, IBM and the Holocaust, index card, Isaac Newton, John Markoff, Kickstarter, language acquisition, Larry Wall, megacity, meta-analysis, Mother of all demos, Neil Armstrong, neurotypical, New Journalism, pattern recognition, placebo effect, scientific mainstream, side project, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Skype, slashdot, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, sugar pill, the scientific method, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, Yom Kippur War

Asperger’s Association of New England, http://www.aane.org/asperger_resources/articles/adults/i_am_a_survivor.html 172 spacecraft: National Space Science Data Center. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftSearch.do?launchDate=1967&discipline=All the first undergraduate course in computer programming: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy. O’Reilly Media, 2010, p. 11. he coined the term artificial intelligence: “A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence,” J. McCarthy, M. L. Minsky, N. Rochester, and C. E. Shannon. Aug. 31, 1955. If his colleagues wanted him to read a paper: Scientific Temperaments, Philip Hilts.

Zerbe. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22766/22766-h/22766-h.htm He advocated installing a terminal in every home: “The Home Information Utility,” John McCarthy. Man and Computer: Proceedings of the International Conference, Bordeaux, France, 1970. Basel. S. Karger, 1972, pp. 48–57. habitually unwashed, Coke-guzzling, Chinese-takeout-eating obsessives: See the descriptions of TMRC hackers in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy. O’Reilly Media, 2010. As hard-core fans of science fiction, ham radio, and Japanese monster movies: “Spacewars and Beyond: How the Tech Model Railroad Club Changed the World,” Henry Jenkins. http://henryjenkins.org/2007/10/spacewars_and_beyond_how_the_t.html#sthash.vNI7iDoK.dpuf equal parts of “science, fiction, and science fiction”: Scientific Temperaments, p. 266.


pages: 562 words: 201,502

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

4chan, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Apollo 11, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, carbon footprint, ChatGPT, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, drone strike, effective altruism, Elon Musk, estate planning, fail fast, fake news, game design, gigafactory, GPT-4, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, hive mind, Hyperloop, impulse control, industrial robot, information security, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Jony Ive, Kwajalein Atoll, lab leak, large language model, Larry Ellison, lockdown, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mars Society, Max Levchin, Michael Shellenberger, multiplanetary species, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, OpenAI, packet switching, Parler "social media", paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, remote working, rent control, risk tolerance, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sam Bankman-Fried, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, seminal paper, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, SpaceX Starlink, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Streisand effect, supply-chain management, tech bro, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wikimedia commons, William MacAskill, work culture , Y Combinator

Just as humans work collectively to stop evil actors, so too would a large collection of independent AI bots work to stop bad bots. For Musk, this was the reason to make OpenAI truly open, so that lots of people could build systems based on its source code. “I think the best defense against the misuse of AI is to empower as many people as possible to have AI,” he told Wired’s Steven Levy at the time. One goal that Musk and Altman discussed at length, which would become a hot topic in 2023 after OpenAI launched a chatbot called ChatGPT, was known as “AI alignment.” It aims to make sure that AI systems are aligned with human goals and values, just as Isaac Asimov set forth rules to prevent the robots in his novels from harming humanity.

Calia Cofield, “Blue Origin Makes Historic Reusable Rocket Landing in Epic Test Flight,” Space.com, Nov. 24, 2015; Davenport, Space Barons. 39. The Talulah Roller Coaster: Author’s interviews with Talulah Riley, Elon Musk, Maye Musk, Kimbal Musk, Navaid Farooq, Bill Lee. Junod, “Force of His Will.” 40. Artificial Intelligence: Author’s interviews with Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Luke Nosek, Shivon Zilis. Steven Levy, “How Elon Musk and Y Combinator Plan to Stop Computers from Taking Over,” Backchannel, Dec. 11, 2015; Cade Metz, “Inside OpenAI, Elon Musk’s Wild Plan to Set Artificial Intelligence Free,” Wired, Apr. 27, 2016; Maureen Dowd, “Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse,” Vanity Fair, Apr. 2017; Elon Musk talk, MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department’s Centennial Symposium, Oct. 24, 2014; Chris Anderson interview with Elon Musk, TED Conference, Apr. 14, 2022. 41.


pages: 337 words: 86,320

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

affirmative action, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Asian financial crisis, Bernie Sanders, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Black Lives Matter, Cass Sunstein, computer vision, content marketing, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Filter Bubble, game design, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Seder, John Snow's cholera map, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, price discrimination, quantitative hedge fund, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, TaskRabbit, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, working poor

Also see Marcelle Chauvet, Stuart Gabriel, and Chandler Lutz, “Mortgage Default Risk: New Evidence from Internet Search Queries,” Journal of Urban Economics 96 (2016). 60 Bill Clinton: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Seventh International World-Wide Web Conference, April 14–18, 1998, Brisbane, Australia. 61 porn sites: John Battelle, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (New York: Penguin, 2005). 61 crowdsource the opinions: A good discussion of this can be found in Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). 64 “Sell your house”: This quote was also included in Joe Drape, “Ahmed Zayat’s Journey: Bankruptcy and Big Bets,” New York Times, June 5, 2015, A1. However, the article incorrectly attributes the quote to Seder.


pages: 316 words: 87,486

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American ideology, antiwork, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Burning Man, centre right, circulation of elites, Clayton Christensen, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, Frank Gehry, fulfillment center, full employment, George Gilder, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mass immigration, mass incarceration, McMansion, microcredit, mobile money, moral panic, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, payday loans, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, postindustrial economy, pre–internet, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Republic of Letters, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, union organizing, urban decay, WeWork, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, young professional

“Uber and the American Worker,” a speech Plouffe delivered at “the DC tech incubator 1776,” dated November 3, 2015, and available on the Uber website. http://newsroom.uber.com/2015/11/1776. 13. Schmidt can be seen making these statements in a YouTube recording of his SXSW talk, which also featured his coauthor, Jared Cohen, and the interviewer Steven Levy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmzcCSF_zXQ. 14. It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us (Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 294. 15. The economist Dean Baker suggested to me this interpretation of inno-as-circumvention. See “The Opportunities and Risks of the Sharing Economy,” his testimony before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, September 29, 2015. 16. 


pages: 302 words: 85,877

Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World by Joseph Menn

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Andy Rubin, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, commoditize, corporate governance, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Firefox, Gabriella Coleman, Google Chrome, Haight Ashbury, independent contractor, information security, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, Jason Scott: textfiles.com, John Gilmore, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Naomi Klein, NSO Group, Peter Thiel, pirate software, pre–internet, Ralph Nader, ransomware, Richard Stallman, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, tech worker, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, zero day

For kindly housing and looking after me during my research trips, I would like to thank Ralph and Shan Logan, Andrea Shallcross and Jonathan Burn, Rachel Layne and John Mulrooney, Barbara Bestor and Tom Stern, and assorted relatives. I am also indebted to a number of talented and hardworking authors who brought clarity to various aspects of historic and current issues in security touched on here, including John Markoff, Phil Lapsley, Fred Kaplan, Ronald Deibert, Shane Harris, Andy Greenberg, Bruce Sterling, Steven Levy, and Gabriella Coleman. For those interested in learning more about the bulletin board era, I strongly recommend Jason Scott Sadofsky’s multipart documentary and his text file collection, both publicly available. I would especially like to thank my keen-eyed editor, Colleen Lawrie, agent David Patterson, and media advisor Elinor Mills.


pages: 313 words: 84,312

We-Think: Mass Innovation, Not Mass Production by Charles Leadbeater

1960s counterculture, Andrew Keen, barriers to entry, bioinformatics, c2.com, call centre, citizen journalism, clean water, cloud computing, complexity theory, congestion charging, death of newspapers, Debian, digital divide, digital Maoism, disruptive innovation, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, folksonomy, frictionless, frictionless market, future of work, game design, Garrett Hardin, Google Earth, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Ethic, Herbert Marcuse, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jean Tirole, jimmy wales, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lateral thinking, lone genius, M-Pesa, Mark Shuttleworth, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, microcredit, Mitch Kapor, new economy, Nicholas Carr, online collectivism, Paradox of Choice, planetary scale, post scarcity, public intellectual, Recombinant DNA, Richard Stallman, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, slashdot, social web, software patent, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

Available from http:// msu.edu/%7enellison/facebook_ica_2006.pdf 12 Danah Boyd, ‘None of This Is Real: Identity and Participation in Friendster’, University of California, Berkeley. Available from http://www.danah.org/ papers/NoneOfThisIsReal.pdf 13 http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiHistory 14 The Economist New Media Survey, ‘The Wiki Principle’, The Economist, April 2006. Available from http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory. cfm?story_id=6794228 15 See Steven Levy and Brad Stone, ‘The New Wisdom of the Web’, Newsweek, April 2006. Available from http:// www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12015774/site/newsweek 16 Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture (Chicago, IL/London: University of Chicago Press, 2006) 17 Patrice Flichy, The Internet Imaginaire (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007) 18 Charles Leadbeater, ‘The DIY State’, Prospect 130, January 2007 19 Fred Turner, op. cit. 20 John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (Penguin, 2006) 21 Patrice Flichy, The Internet Imaginaire (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007) 22 Jonathan Lethem, ‘The Ecstasy of Influence’, Harper’s Magazine, February 2007 23 Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162 (1968), pp. 1243–48 24 Elenor Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Cambridge University Press, 1990) 25 Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1999) and Free Culture (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2004) 26 Melvyn Bragg, The Routes of English (BBC Factual and Learning, 2000); Melvyn Bragg, The Adventure of English (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2003) 27 Jonathan Lethem, ‘The Ecstasy of Influence’, Harper’s Magazine, February 2007 28 Cory Doctorow et al., ‘On “Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism” By Jaron Lanier’, Edge (2006). http://www.edge.org/discourse/digital_ maoism.html 29 Paul A.


pages: 304 words: 82,395

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Kenneth Cukier

23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Black Swan, book scanning, book value, business intelligence, business process, call centre, cloud computing, computer age, correlation does not imply causation, dark matter, data science, double entry bookkeeping, Eratosthenes, Erik Brynjolfsson, game design, hype cycle, IBM and the Holocaust, index card, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, lifelogging, Louis Pasteur, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, obamacare, optical character recognition, PageRank, paypal mafia, performance metric, Peter Thiel, Plato's cave, post-materialism, random walk, recommendation engine, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systematic bias, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Turing test, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List,” Washington Post, August 20, 2004, p. A01 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html). [>] Google’s hiring practices—See Douglas Edwards, I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), p. 9. See also Steven Levy, In the Plex (Simon and Schuster, 2011), pp. 140–141. Ironically, Google’s co-founders wanted to hire Steve Jobs as CEO (despite his lack of a college degree); Levy, p. 80. Testing 41 gradations of blue—Laura M. Holson, “Putting a Bolder Face on Google,” New York Times, March 1, 2009 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html).


pages: 314 words: 83,631

Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet by Andrew Blum

air freight, cable laying ship, call centre, digital divide, Donald Davies, global village, Hibernia Atlantic: Project Express, if you build it, they will come, inflight wifi, invisible hand, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Leonard Kleinrock, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mercator projection, messenger bag, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, New Urbanism, packet switching, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, satellite internet, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, undersea cable, urban planning, UUNET, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Google confirms at least one billion searches per day: Matt McGee, “By The Numbers: Twitter Vs. Facebook Vs. Google Buzz,” Search Engine Land, February 23, 2010 (http://searchengineland.com/by-the-numbers-twitter-vs-facebook-vs-google-buzz-36709). Its total cost was $1.8 million: For an account of Google’s arrival in The Dalles, see Steven Levy, In the Plex (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 192–95. “It was visionary—this little town…”: Ibid., p. 192. I’d even read a little note about it: The site has since been changed, but it was accessible as of June 2011 at http://www.google.com/corporate/datacenter/index.html; a copy is preserved here: http://kalanaonline.blogspot.com/2011/02/where-is-your-data-google-and-microsoft.html.


pages: 327 words: 84,627

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth by Jeremy Rifkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, book value, borderless world, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, decarbonisation, digital rights, do well by doing good, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, failed state, general purpose technology, ghettoisation, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, impact investing, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Joseph Schumpeter, means of production, megacity, megaproject, military-industrial complex, Network effects, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planetary scale, prudent man rule, remunicipalization, renewable energy credits, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, union organizing, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

“The AT&T Issue Brief on Energy Management,” August 2018, https://about.att.com/ecms/dam/csr/issuebriefs/IssueBriefs2018/environment/energy-management.pdf (accessed February 22, 2019); “Intel Climate Change Policy Statement,” December 2017, https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/environment-climate-change-policy.html (accessed February 22, 2019); Cisco, “CSR Environmental Sustainability,” https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/csr/impact/environmental-sustainability.html (accessed February 22, 2019). 24.  Steven Levy, “The Brief History of the ENIAC Computer: A Look Back at the Room-Size Government Computer That Began the Digital Era,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 2013, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-brief-history-of-the-eniac-computer-3889120/ (accessed March 12, 2019). 25.  Simon Kemp, Digital in 2018: Essential Insights into the Internet, Social Media, Mobile, and Ecommerce Use Around the World, Hootsuite and We Are Social Global Digital Report, 3. 26.  


pages: 245 words: 83,272

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World by Meredith Broussard

"Susan Fowler" uber, 1960s counterculture, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Babbage, Chris Urmson, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cognitive bias, complexity theory, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data science, deep learning, Dennis Ritchie, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, gamification, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, Hacker Ethic, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, life extension, Lyft, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, Paradox of Choice, payday loans, paypal mafia, performance metric, Peter Thiel, price discrimination, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ross Ulbricht, Saturday Night Live, school choice, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, TechCrunch disrupt, Tesla Model S, the High Line, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, theory of mind, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, trolley problem, Turing test, Uber for X, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, women in the workforce, work culture , yottabyte

It’s really very bizarre, but this was a self-energizing community. These hackers had their own language. They could get things done in three days that would take a month. If somebody appeared who had the talent, the magic touch, they would fit in.” The TMRC and Minsky’s lab were later immortalized in Stewart Brand’s The Media Lab and Steven Levy’s Hackers: The Heroes of the Computer Revolution, in addition to many other publications.6 The hacker ethic is also what inspired Mark Zuckerberg’s first Facebook motto: “Move fast and break things.” Minsky was part of Zuckerberg’s curriculum at Harvard. Minsky and a collaborator, John McCarthy, organized the very first conference on artificial intelligence, at the Dartmouth Math Department in 1956.


The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work by Vishen Lakhiani

Abraham Maslow, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, data science, deliberate practice, do what you love, Elon Musk, fail fast, fundamental attribution error, future of work, gamification, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, meta-analysis, microbiome, performance metric, Peter Thiel, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, social bookmarking, social contagion, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TED Talk, web application, white picket fence, work culture

But these are wasting bullets. Wasting bullets is 100 percent correct, according to the OODA philosophy. Because you will shoot down more enemy planes. The pace of innovation is the most important thing. I don’t care if we fail 40 to 50 percent of the time. Google fails that often too. According to Steven Levy in his book In the Plex Google fails at 40 percent of everything they start. (Remember the Google Glass or Google Plus?) But by moving fast we learn, orient, adapt, and innovate faster than the competition. Failure is completely OKAY. In fact, it’s enshrined in our OKRs (50 percent of your OKRs must have a 50 percent rate of failure).


pages: 328 words: 84,682

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power by Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer, David B. Yoffie

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, asset light, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, collective bargaining, commoditize, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deep learning, Didi Chuxing, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, Firefox, general purpose technology, gig economy, Google Chrome, GPS: selective availability, Greyball, independent contractor, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Roose, Lean Startup, Lyft, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Metcalfe’s law, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Network effects, pattern recognition, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, too big to fail, transaction costs, transport as a service, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Vision Fund, web application, zero-sum game

When measuring unique daily site visits, IE remained the market-share leader by a narrow margin in 2016, leading Chrome 43 percent to 39 percent, with Firefox a distant third at just over 10 percent. In terms of page views, Chrome has a huge lead, with over 60 percent share, while Firefox and IE battled for second place, with 15.7 percent and 13.7 percent, respectively. 52.Steven Levy, “Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web,” Wired, September 2, 2008. 53.Megan Geuss, “Which Browser Should You Use?” PCWorld, February 26, 2012. 54.Ann Bednarz, “Browser Wars,” Network World, November 2, 2011. 55.All quoted in “Google Cell Platform No Threat, Rivals Say: Move Seen to Give Search Engine Leg Up on Mobile Advertising,” Ottawa Citizen, November 6, 2007. 56.Jay Yarow, “Here’s What Steve Ballmer Thought About the iPhone Five Years Ago,” Business Insider, June 29, 2012. 57.Peter Bright, “Windows Phone 7: The Ars Review,” ArsTechnica, October 22, 2010. 58.Sascha Segan, “Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS,” PCMag, October 20, 2010. 59.Joshua Topolsky, “Windows Phone 7 Review,” Engadget, October 20, 2010. 60.Dieter Bohn and Chris Ziegler, “Windows Phone 8 review,” Verge, October 29, 2012. 61.Bright, “Windows Phone 7.” 62.See Sam Oliver, “Nokia Ditches Symbian, Embraces Microsoft Windows Phone for New Handsets,” AppleInsider, February 11, 2011. 63.Pete Cunningham, quoted in Kevin J.


pages: 864 words: 222,565

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, American energy revolution, Apple II, basic income, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, Columbine, complexity theory, Computer Lib, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, declining real wages, digital nomad, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Frank Gehry, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Golden Gate Park, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, hydraulic fracturing, index card, information retrieval, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kitchen Debate, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, megastructure, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Own Your Own Home, Paul Graham, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality distortion field, remote working, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, Thomas Malthus, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

Felsenstein dreamed of constructing a better network around a true personal computer, and, after hearing about a gathering for like-minded enthusiasts, he drove his pickup to the garage of an engineer named Gordon French, who hosted the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club on March 5, 1975. In his classic book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, writer Steven Levy described it as “a textbook example” of Fuller’s concept of synergy, in which the whole became more than the sum of its parts, and with Felsenstein as its moderator, it grew into the birthplace of an entire industry. Fuller was there in spirit as well. Toward the back of the garage sat Steve Wozniak, who was working with Jobs on the computer that would be sold as the Apple II.

Lee Felsenstein: Lee Felsenstein, email to author, December 18, 2020. “an architect and engineer”: Charles Raisch, “Pueblo in the City,” Mother Jones, May 1976, 30. ideas for the Exploratorium: Hilde Hein, The Exploratorium: The Museum as Laboratory (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 239n10. Efrem Lipkin: Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010), 164–65. Ken Colstad and Mark Szpakowski: “St. Jude Memorial and Virtual Wake,” https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/190/St-Jude-Memorial-and-Virtual-Wak-page01.html (accessed April 2021). “a textbook example”: Levy, Hackers, 219.


pages: 298 words: 89,287

Who Are We—And Should It Matter in the 21st Century? by Gary Younge

affirmative action, Berlin Wall, British Empire, call centre, David Brooks, equal pay for equal work, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, feminist movement, financial independence, gentrification, glass ceiling, global village, illegal immigration, inflation targeting, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral panic, phenotype, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Skype, Steven Levy, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wolfgang Streeck, World Values Survey

Johnson, Lyndon Joint Committee of Women’s Societies and Social Workers Jones, Melanie Jordan, Michael Judaism Jewish identity Jewish Life Information Center (ITIM) Zionism and Judge, Timothy Judiciary (American) Judt, Tony Kaiser, Jens Kamiya, Gary Karelitz, Avraham Yeshayahu Kasrils, Ronnie Katičić, Radoslav Katy, Judith Keane, Roy Kennedy, Geraldine Kennedy, Martin Kennedy, Robert Kerry, John Kerry, Teresa Heinz Khan, Chaka KhoiKhoi people King, Martin Luther King-O’Riain, Rebecca Chiyoko Kinsley, Michael Koppel, Ted Kroft, Steve Kyl, Jon Labour Party (UK) Lacorne, Denis Laing, Abraham Laing, Sandra Lajitas (Texas) Latif, Farasat Latinos/Latinas Lee, J. J. Leningrad Leterme, Yves Lévesque, René Levi sisters, Lilia and Alma Levitt, Steven Levy, Andrea Limbaugh, Rush Linkebeek List, Friedrich Little People of America Lloyd, T. Walker Locke, Jeremiah Lulu da Silva, Luiz Inácio MacIntyre, Alasdair McCain, John McCarthy, Joseph McCarthy, Mick McCourt, Frank McKay, Ruth B. Malcolm X Mamdani, Mahmood Marcerelli, Matthew Markiewicz, Countess Constance Marley, Bob Marriage– childbirth, parenthood and marital status forced marriage gay intermarriage Marshall, Thurgood Marx, Karl Marxism Marylebone Cricket Club Matthews, Chris Maupin, Armistead May, Rollo May, Theresa Melvin, Harold Metropolitan Police (UK) Mexico City student massacre Mfume, Kweisi Miles, Thomas J.


pages: 285 words: 86,853

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, Charles Babbage, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Claude Shannon: information theory, commoditize, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, DeepMind, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Shoup, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Conference 1984, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Ian Bogost, industrial research laboratory, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Conway, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, lifelogging, Loebner Prize, lolcat, Lyft, machine readable, Mother of all demos, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Netflix Prize, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, PageRank, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, power law, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, ride hailing / ride sharing, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skinner box, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, wage slave

In Snow Crash, Hiro Protagonist satirically defines the icon of the hacker figure, working at the periphery of monolithic cultural systems to make crucial interventions through technical skill, idealistic motivation, and a blithe disregard for traditional mores. Hiro is a character right out of the trickster archetype that technology journalist Steven Levy chronicles in Hackers; a character who came to life around Silicon Valley pioneer Stewart Brand’s Hackers Conference in 1984.2 The computational systems of the novel, from the various security systems to the Metaverse itself, were created by hackers and are subject to their manipulations. As a high-water mark in the cyberpunk genre, Snow Crash both embellished and consecrated hackers as potent and capricious architects of computational reality.


pages: 316 words: 90,165

You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves by Hiawatha Bray

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Albert Einstein, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Boeing 747, British Empire, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, crowdsourcing, Dava Sobel, digital map, don't be evil, Easter island, Edmond Halley, Edward Snowden, Firefox, game design, Google Earth, GPS: selective availability, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Harrison: Longitude, John Perry Barlow, John Snow's cholera map, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, license plate recognition, lone genius, openstreetmap, polynesian navigation, popular electronics, RAND corporation, RFID, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Thales of Miletus, trade route, turn-by-turn navigation, uranium enrichment, urban planning, Zipcar

Jerry Brotton, A History of the World in Twelve Maps (London: Allen Lane, 2012), 417–418. 6. Kevin Maney, “Tiny Tech Company Awes Viewers,” USA Today, March 21, 2003. 7. John Timmer, “New Satellite to Give Google Maps Unprecedented Resolution,” Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/business/2008/09/new-satellite-to-give-google-maps-unprecedented-resolution/. 8. Steven Levy, “The Earth Is Ready for Its Close-Up,” Newsweek, June 6, 2005, 13. 9. UNOSAT Humanitarian Rapid Mapping Service, “Overview 2011,” http://unosat.web.cern.ch/unosat/unitar/Overview2011UNOSATRapidMapping_final2.pdf. 10. Danny Bradbury, “Taking Your Network to Extremes,” Computer Weekly, March 27, 2007. 11.


pages: 330 words: 91,805

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism by Robin Chase

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Kessler, Anthropocene, Apollo 13, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business climate, call centre, car-free, carbon tax, circular economy, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, congestion charging, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, decarbonisation, different worldview, do-ocracy, don't be evil, Donald Shoup, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eyjafjallajökull, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, frictionless, Gini coefficient, GPS: selective availability, high-speed rail, hive mind, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Kinder Surprise, language acquisition, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, machine readable, means of production, megacity, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, Post-Keynesian economics, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Turing test, turn-by-turn navigation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, vertical integration, Zipcar

You could pay for your share of the driving expenses online, without having to awkwardly hand over exact change for your share of the trip expenses (we would charge each party 10 percent of the transaction for doing so). And both passengers and drivers could say whether they would ride with the other person again, creating a trusted network. I was proud of the product we launched with, and Steven Levy, the author of popular books about Apple and Google, broke the story about GoLoco in Newsweek: “If Chase has her way, GoLoco will be the behavioral equivalent of the Prius, zapping enviro-guilt while cooling off Gaia.”1 We persuaded close friends and employees to create complete personal profiles to fuel our start.


pages: 297 words: 89,820

The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness by Steven Levy

Apple II, Bill Atkinson, British Empire, Claude Shannon: information theory, en.wikipedia.org, General Magic , Herbert Marcuse, indoor plumbing, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, reality distortion field, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, social web, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, technology bubble, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell

The sequence of the chapters in the book has been shuffled in different copies, with only the opening and concluding sections excepted. "Shuffle" is a hallmark of the digital age—and The Perfect Thing, via sharp, insightful reporting, is the perfect guide to the deceptively diminutive gadget embodying our era. STEVEN LEVY is a senior editor and the chief technology correspondent for Newsweek magazine. He is the author of five previous books, including Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which was voted the best sci-tech nonfiction book of the last twenty years by readers of PC magazine, and Insanely Great, the definitive account of the Macintosh computer.


pages: 374 words: 89,725

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger

Airbnb, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, clean water, disruptive innovation, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fear of failure, food desert, Google X / Alphabet X, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Joi Ito, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, new economy, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ray Kurzweil, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TED Talk, Thomas L Friedman, Toyota Production System, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, Zipcar

From my interviews with Nikhil Goyal, April 2013; for more, see Goyal’s book, One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student’s Assessment of School (Bravura Books, 2012). 24 alumni have become known as the Montessori Mafia . . . Peter Sims, “The Montessori Mafia,” Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2011. 25 Marissa Mayer—now the head of Yahoo! . . . Steven Levy, “Larry Page Wants to Return Google to Its Startup Roots,” Wired, April 2011. 26 Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher . . . Meyer gave his talk, “Math Class Needs a Makeover,” at TEDxNYED, March 2010. 27 Why do movie tickets cost the same for hits or duds? . . . Robert H. Frank, “How Can They Charge That?


Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", crack epidemic, desegregation, Multics, Ronald Reagan, Steven Levy, the scientific method, urban planning, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois

Bailey given money by at police robbery in politics popularity of promotion of prostitution and random gunshots and recruiting by at regional meeting Robert Taylor demolition feared by Robert Taylor survey by sales directors of on sex trade S.V. made gang leader by S.V.’s first meeting with S.V.’s information and on S.V.’s legal concerns S.V.’s relationship with S.V.’s teaching and S.V.’s underground-economy studies approved by S.V.’s writings as source of pride for Taneesha incident and at voter-registration drive Wilson family helped by worries of Justice Department, U.S. Justin (Taneesha’s baby) Kalia (gang member) Katchen (S.V.’s girlfriend) Keisha Kennedy-King College Kenny (gang member) Kris Lake Park projects scheduled demolition of LaShona (J.T.’s cousin) Las Vegas, Nev. Latin King Lee-Lee Legends South Levitt, Steven Levy, Cordella liberals Local Advisory Council (LAC) Los Angeles, Calif. ”Lounge,” Mae, Ms. (J.T.’s mother) background of at back-to-school party cooking of move of on prostitutes on sex trade visitors to Mafia Marcus, Reggie, see Reggie, Officer marijuana Marna Mayne (gang leader) MCs (Mickey Cobras) MC Southside Fest Medicaid men of neighborhood network of Mexican Americans Michael (gang member) Millie Milwaukee, Wis.


pages: 292 words: 94,660

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back by Jacob Ward

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, AI winter, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Amazon Mechanical Turk, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, drone strike, endowment effect, George Akerlof, George Floyd, hindsight bias, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeffrey Epstein, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Lyft, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, natural language processing, non-fungible token, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, QAnon, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, selection bias, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, smart cities, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Levy, survivorship bias, TikTok, Turing test

As usual with AI, it’s about offloading the laborious System 1 work: “We can automate a lot of the more repetitive mechanical aspects and present the human with just the most critical information at the end of the day, so they can make an informed decision about what’s happening.” According to a 2018 report from Wired’s Steven Levy, Customs and Border Patrol tested Lattice for ten weeks, and detected fifty-five people attempting to cross the US-Mexico border in the process. The company has been widely criticized by academics and watchdogs, including Whittaker, for selling technology that made policies like the Trump administration’s family-separation policy easier to implement.


How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa

2021 United States Capitol attack, activist lawyer, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, Big Tech, Brexit referendum, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cognitive bias, colonial rule, commoditize, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, delayed gratification, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, future of journalism, iterative process, James Bridle, Kevin Roose, lockdown, lone genius, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Milgram experiment, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, obamacare, performance metric, QAnon, recommendation engine, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, the medium is the message, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Twitter Arab Spring, work culture

“Duterte Declares State of Lawlessness in PH,” Rappler, September 3, 2016, https://www.rappler.com/nation/145043-duterte-declares-state-of-lawlessness-ph/. 36.Editha Caduaya, “Man with Bomb Nabbed at Davao Checkpoint,” Rappler, March 26, 2016, https://www.rappler.com/nation/127132-man-bomb-nabbed-davao-checkpoint/. 37.These were the specific stories on the websites that had the misleadingly repurposed Rappler story: http://ww1.pinoytribune.com/2016/09/man-with-high-quality-of-bomb-nabbed-at.html; http://www.socialnewsph.com/2016/09/look-man-with-high-quality-of-bomb.html; http://www.newstrendph.com/2016/09/man-with-high-quality-of-bomb-nabbed-at.html. 38.Rappler Research, “Davao Bombing,” Flourish, July 8, 2019, https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/230850/. 39.Ralf Rivas, “Gambling-Dependent Philippines Allows POGOs to Resume Operations,” Rappler, May 1, 2020, https://www.rappler.com/business/259599-gambling-dependent-philippines-allows-pogos-resume-operations-coronavirus/. 40.This is the now-nonexistent link to the Rappler Facebook post that was taken down: https://www.facebook.com/rapplerdotcom/posts/1312782435409203. 41.John Naughton, “The Goal Is to Automate Us: Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” Guardian, January 20, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook. 42.There are four books about Facebook that I would recommend: David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010) traces the beginning and the development of Mark Zuckerberg. Published in 2010, it came out at a time of wonder. On the business model, Shoshana Zuboff coined the term surveillance capitalism in 2019; see The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2019). Steven Levy’s Facebook: The Inside Story (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2020) chronicled the company’s fall. And finally, Sinan Aral’s The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health—and How We Must Adapt (New York: Currency, 2020) details some of the dangers but remains a favorable view of the giant, providing the possibility of redemption. 43.Naughton, “The Goal Is to Automate Us.” 44.James Bridle, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff Review—We Are the Pawns,” Guardian, February 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/02/age-of-surveillance-capitalism-shoshana-zuboff-review. 45.Shoshana Zuboff wants the market in our behavioral data, like the slave trade, abolished.


pages: 352 words: 96,532

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon

air freight, Bill Duvall, Charles Babbage, Compatible Time-Sharing System, computer age, conceptual framework, Donald Davies, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, fault tolerance, Hush-A-Phone, information retrieval, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Leonard Kleinrock, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Multics, natural language processing, OSI model, packet switching, RAND corporation, RFC: Request For Comment, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, speech recognition, Steve Crocker, Steven Levy, The Soul of a New Machine

Steve Wolff helped us understand the often labyrinthine events that took place in the 1980s, particularly concerning NSF’s role in the development of the Internet. The manuscript was read in whole or in part in various stages of completion by Vint Cerf, Lyman Chapin, Steve Crocker, Peter Denning, Frank Heart, Bob Kahn, John Kelley, Larry Landweber, Steven Levy, Hank Long, Paul McJones, Alex McKenzie, Peter Preuss, Larry Roberts, Einar Stefferud, Bob Taylor, John Vittal, Dave Walden, and Susan Zacharias. Everett Hafner, perfectionist and workhorse, kept us honest. The manuscript benefited tremendously from the keen mind and careful pen of Richard Lyon.


pages: 322 words: 99,066

The End of Secrecy: The Rise and Fall of WikiLeaks by The "Guardian", David Leigh, Luke Harding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, air gap, banking crisis, centre right, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cloud computing, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, Downton Abbey, drone strike, end-to-end encryption, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, friendly fire, global village, Hacker Ethic, impulse control, Jacob Appelbaum, Julian Assange, knowledge economy, machine readable, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, operational security, post-work, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steven Levy, sugar pill, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

“It’s about understanding the environment in which we operate, taking it apart, and then expanding upon it and recreating it. Central to it is the idea that information should be free, combined with a deep distrust of authority.” House points to a book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Steven Levy, which chronicles the rise of the “hacker ethic” at MIT. “Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about … the world from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things,” Levy writes. “They resent any person, physical barrier, or law that tries to keep them from doing this.


pages: 390 words: 96,624

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom by Rebecca MacKinnon

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business cycle, business intelligence, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital Maoism, don't be evil, Eben Moglen, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, future of journalism, Global Witness, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Mark Zuckerberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, national security letter, online collectivism, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, pre–internet, race to the bottom, real-name policy, Richard Stallman, Ronald Reagan, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Crocker, Steven Levy, Tactical Technology Collective, technological determinism, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

Today, things are more subtle”: Jailan Zayan, “Egypt, Tunisia Finding that Road to Freedom Is Rocky,” Agence France Presse, May 26, 2011. 6 President Barack Obama waxed enthusiastic about the political power of social networking: Full transcript at www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/04/20/remarks-president-facebook-town-hall (accessed June 21, 2011). 7 A classic example was Google’s clash with the Chinese government: A full account of those events can be found in Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). Also see John Pomfret, “In China, Google Users Worry They May Lose an Engine of Progress,” Washington Post, March 20, 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031900986.html (accessed June 21, 2011). 9 geopolitical vision for a digitally networked world: Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, “The Digital Disruption: Connectivity and the Diffusion of Power,” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 6 (November/December 2010), 75–85. 10 In his book The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser: Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (New York: Penguin Press, 2011). 10 Siva Vaidhyanathan warns: Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 10 As Harvard’s Joseph Nye points out in The Future of Power: Joseph S.


The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason

Albert Einstein, augmented reality, barriers to entry, blood diamond, citizen journalism, creative destruction, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, future of work, glass ceiling, global village, Hacker Ethic, haute couture, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Urbanism, patent troll, peer-to-peer, prisoner's dilemma, public intellectual, RAND corporation, RFID, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, SETI@home, side hustle, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, urban sprawl, Whole Earth Catalog

Anders Bylund, “Mark Cuban on the tiered Internet,” Arstechnica.com, February 8, 2006. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/cuban.ars. Page 59 Nicol Wistreich, “Disney Co-Chair recognises ‘piracy is a business model’,” Netribution.co.uk, October 10, 2006. www.netribution.co.uk/2/content/view/ 972/182/. Steven Levy, “Q&A: Jobs on iPod’s Cultural Impact,” Newsweek, October 15, 2006. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15262121/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/ 1098/. Page 59 Associated Press, “‘Patent trolling’ firms sue their way to profits,” MSNBC, March 18, 2006. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11860819/. Page 60 Kristen Philipkoski, “Monsanto Prevails in Patent Fight,” Wired, May 21, 2004. www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/05/63555.


pages: 493 words: 98,982

The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, global supply chain, helicopter parent, High speed trading, immigration reform, income inequality, Khan Academy, laissez-faire capitalism, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, open immigration, Paris climate accords, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, Yochai Benkler

Kim Parker, “The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education,” Pew Research Center, August 19, 2019, pewsocialtrends.org/essay/the-growing-partisan-divide-in-views-of-higher-education . 73. Obama quoted in Adam J. White, “Google.gov ,” The New Atlantis , Spring 2018, p. 15, thenewatlantis.com/publications/googlegov . The video of Obama’s talk at Google is at youtube.com/watch?v=m4yVlPqeZwo&feature=youtu.be&t=1h1m42s . 74. Ibid. See also Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 317. 75. Author’s search of Obama’s use of “cost curve,” using the online archive of the American Presidency Project, presidency.ucsb.edu/advanced-search . 76. Author’s search of Obama’s use of “incentivize,” using the online archive of the American Presidency Project, presidency.ucsb.edu/advanced-search . 77.


pages: 397 words: 109,631

Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking by Richard E. Nisbett

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, big-box store, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive dissonance, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, cosmological constant, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, do well by doing good, Edward Jenner, endowment effect, experimental subject, feminist movement, fixed income, fundamental attribution error, Garrett Hardin, glass ceiling, Henri Poincaré, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Neil Armstrong, quantitative easing, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, Shai Danziger, Socratic dialogue, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, William of Occam, Yitang Zhang, Zipcar

Kim, Beom Jun KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) Kissinger, Henry Kitayama, Shinobu Korea Kremer, Michael Krugman, Paul Kuhn, Thomas Kunda, Ziva kurtotic curves Lakatos, Imre Larrick, Richard Latané, Bibb Latin law of large numbers; observations and; sample values and learning; animal studies of; classroom size and; of language; machine; standardized tests as measures of; statistics, everyday benefits of; unconscious; about Venn diagrams; see also reinforcement learning theory Lehman, Darrin Lempert, Richard Lepper, Mark leptokurtic curve Levi, Primo Levitt, Steven Levy, Dan Lewicki, Pawel Life of Samuel Johnson, The (Boswell) LifeSkills Training Lincoln, Abraham Lingua Franca Literary Digest Liu, Amy Liu, Shu-hsien Logan, Robert logic; conditional; of cost-benefit theory; of decision theory; deontic; formal (see also syllogisms); propositional; violations of; see also reasoning London: weather in London School of Economics loss aversion Lowell, Amy Lysenko, Trofim macroeconomics Maier, N.R.F.


pages: 391 words: 105,382

Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations by Nicholas Carr

Abraham Maslow, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, Airbus A320, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, centralized clearinghouse, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collaborative consumption, computer age, corporate governance, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data science, deskilling, digital capitalism, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, failed state, feminist movement, Frederick Winslow Taylor, friendly fire, game design, global village, Google bus, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, hive mind, impulse control, indoor plumbing, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Joan Didion, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, lolcat, low skilled workers, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, mental accounting, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norman Mailer, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, self-driving car, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Singularitarianism, Snapchat, social graph, social web, speech recognition, Startup school, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the long tail, the medium is the message, theory of mind, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler

The internet had transformed many things, but it had not transformed us. The New New Age The yearning for a higher consciousness didn’t burst with the bubble. Web 1.0 may have turned out to be spiritual vaporware, but now we have the hyper-hyped upgrade: Web 2.0. In a new profile of the influential technology publisher Tim O’Reilly, Wired writer Steven Levy suggests that “the idea of collective consciousness is becoming manifest in the internet.” He quotes O’Reilly: “The internet today is so much an echo of what we were talking about at Esalen in the ’70s—except we didn’t know it would be technology-mediated.” Levy then asks, rhetorically, “Could it be that the internet—or what O’Reilly calls Web 2.0—is really the successor to the human potential movement?”


pages: 240 words: 109,474

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner

AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, book scanning, Colossal Cave Adventure, Columbine, corporate governance, Free Software Foundation, game design, glass ceiling, Hacker Ethic, informal economy, Marc Andreessen, market design, Marshall McLuhan, Neal Stephenson, Saturday Night Live, side project, Silicon Valley, SimCity, slashdot, Snow Crash, software patent, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, X Prize

Carmack had heard about hackers: In 1982 a Disney movie called Tron told the story of a video game designer, played by Jeff Bridges, who hacked himself into a video game world; in a 1983 movie called WarGames, Matthew Broderick played a young gamer who hacked into a government computer system, and nearly triggered Armageddon. But this book’s story was different–it was real. Written by Steven Levy in 1984, it explored the uncharted history and culture of the “Whiz Kids Who Changed Our World.” The book traced the rise ol renegade computer enthusiasts over twenty-five rollicking years, from the mainframe experimentalists at MIT in the fifties and sixties to the Homebrew epoch of Silicon Valley in the seventies and up through the computer game start-ups of the eighties.


pages: 465 words: 109,653

Free Ride by Robert Levine

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Anne Wojcicki, book scanning, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, citizen journalism, commoditize, company town, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Firefox, future of journalism, Googley, Hacker Ethic, informal economy, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Justin.tv, Kevin Kelly, linear programming, Marc Andreessen, Mitch Kapor, moral panic, offshore financial centre, pets.com, publish or perish, race to the bottom, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, Telecommunications Act of 1996, the long tail, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

More important, Napster would have had to change the expectations of an audience it had conditioned to expect free music, and it would have had to do so while competing with illegal services that were still free—and free to offer copyrighted movies and unreleased music when it couldn’t. That hasn’t kept technology pundits from insisting the music business missed its big chance. In The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness, the former Newsweek technology correspondent Steven Levy blames the labels for not making their content free online the way newspapers did, although that didn’t work out very well for them (or for Newsweek, for that matter).20 Levy writes that when he interviewed Barry, he saw a look in his eyes that said, “Why didn’t they work with us?”21 But Barry is hardly as naive as Levy makes him sound, and even he doesn’t think the labels were as clueless as some people say.


pages: 371 words: 108,317

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, bank run, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, Computer Lib, connected car, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Filter Bubble, Freestyle chess, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, index card, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lifelogging, linked data, Lyft, M-Pesa, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, means of production, megacity, Minecraft, Mitch Kapor, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, off-the-grid, old-boy network, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, placebo effect, planetary scale, postindustrial economy, Project Xanadu, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, robo advisor, Rodney Brooks, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social graph, social web, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, The future is already here, the long tail, the scientific method, transport as a service, two-sided market, Uber for X, uber lyft, value engineering, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WeWork, Whole Earth Review, Yochai Benkler, yottabyte, zero-sum game

Nelson, Literary Machines (South Bend, IN: Mindful Press, 1980). “intertwingularity”: Theodor H. Nelson, Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now (South Bend, IN: Nelson, 1974). total number of web pages: “How Search Works,” Inside Search, Google, 2013, accessed April 26, 2015. 90 billion searches a month: Steven Levy, “How Google Search Dealt with Mobile,” Medium, Backchannel, January 15, 2015. 50 million blogs in the early 2000s: David Sifry, “State of the Blogosphere, August 2006,” Sifry’s Alerts, August 7, 2006. 65,000 per day are posted: “YouTube Serves Up 100 Million Videos a Day Online,” Reuters, July 16, 2006. 300 video hours every minute, in 2015: “Statistics,” YouTube, April 2015, https://goo.gl/RVb7oz.


pages: 422 words: 104,457

Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance by Julia Angwin

AltaVista, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Chelsea Manning, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Graeber, Debian, disinformation, Edward Snowden, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Garrett Hardin, GnuPG, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Ida Tarbell, incognito mode, informal economy, Jacob Appelbaum, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market design, medical residency, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, prediction markets, price discrimination, randomized controlled trial, RFID, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, security theater, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart meter, sparse data, Steven Levy, Tragedy of the Commons, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero-sum game, Zimmermann PGP

And in 1999, the United States dropped: Jeri Clausing, “White House Eases Export Controls on Encryption,” New York Times, September 17, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/09/biztech/articles/17encrypt.html. It developed the “Clipper chip” to encrypt: John Markoff, “Technology; Wrestling over the Key to the Codes,” New York Times, May 9, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/09/business/technology-wrestling-over-the-key-to-the-codes.html. copies of the encryption keys: Steven Levy, “Battle of the Clipper Chip,” New York Times, June 12, 1994, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/magazine/battle-of-the-clipper-chip.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. In 1994, Matt Blaze at AT&T Bell Labs: Matt Blaze, in discussion with author, May 8, 2013. “It is insufficient to protect ourselves”: Bruce Schneier, Applied Cryptology: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C (New York: Wiley, 1996).


pages: 398 words: 107,788

Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking by E. Gabriella Coleman

activist lawyer, Benjamin Mako Hill, commoditize, Computer Lib, crowdsourcing, Debian, disinformation, Donald Knuth, dumpster diving, Eben Moglen, en.wikipedia.org, financial independence, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, ghettoisation, GnuPG, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker Ethic, Hacker News, Herbert Marcuse, informal economy, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, Jaron Lanier, Jason Scott: textfiles.com, Jean Tirole, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Larry Wall, Louis Pasteur, machine readable, means of production, Multics, Neal Stephenson, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, pirate software, popular electronics, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, software patent, software studies, Steve Ballmer, Steven Levy, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, Ted Nelson, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Hackers Conference, the scientific method, The Soul of a New Machine, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, web application, web of trust, Yochai Benkler

Hackers, however, evince considerable diversity and are notoriously sectarian, constantly debating the meaning of the words hack, hacker, and hacking. Yet almost all academic and journalistic work on hackers commonly whitewashes these differences, and defines all hackers as sharing a singular “hacker ethic.” Offering the first definition in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, journalist Steven Levy (1984, 39) discovered among a couple of generations of MIT hackers a unique as well as “daring symbiosis between man and machine,” where hackers placed the desire to tinker, learn, and create technical beauty above all other goals. The hacker ethic is shorthand for a list of tenets, and it includes a mix of aesthetic and pragmatic imperatives: a commitment to information freedom, a mistrust of authority, a heightened dedication to meritocracy, and the firm belief that computers can be the basis for beauty and a better world (ibid., 39–46).


pages: 392 words: 108,745

Talk to Me: How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think by James Vlahos

Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Big Tech, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, Colossal Cave Adventure, computer age, deep learning, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, Geoffrey Hinton, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jeff Bezos, lateral thinking, Loebner Prize, machine readable, machine translation, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, OpenAI, PageRank, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, TechCrunch disrupt, Turing test, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

After a colleague shared Colossal Cave Adventure on a computer network, the game was passed around to more and more players. It attained a 1970s sort of virality and inspired other popular interactive text-based adventure games including Zork. In 1981 Crowther’s creation was honored by being the first game available for the original IBM PC. Decades later, the noted technology writer Steven Levy would note, “Playing adventure games without tackling this one is like being an English major who’s never glanced at Shakespeare.” Like Eliza, text-based computer games such as Colossal Cave Adventure were also many people’s first experience of something powerful: communicating with what felt like a sentient machine.


pages: 363 words: 105,039

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, air gap, Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, call centre, Citizen Lab, clean water, data acquisition, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, false flag, global supply chain, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, machine readable, Mikhail Gorbachev, no-fly zone, open borders, pirate software, pre–internet, profit motive, ransomware, RFID, speech recognition, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, tech worker, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, WikiLeaks, zero day

Extra thanks to Dan Novack for his steel backbone as legal counsel, and others at Doubleday/Penguin Random House, including Sean Yule, Beth Pizio, Kate Hughes, Todd Doughty, Michael Goldsmith, Hannah Engler, and Ingrid Sterner. Other miscellaneous but heartfelt thanks go out (in no particular order) to Mike Assante, Sam Chambers, James Lewis, Kenneth Geers, Alan Paller, Oleh Derevianko and the staff of ISSP in Kiev, Anne Applebaum, Cliff Stoll, Steven Levy, Alex Gladstein, Maryna Antonova, Khatuna Mshvidobadze, Zurab Akhvlediani, Elena Ostanina, Autumn Maison, Roman Dobrokhotov, Fyodor Mozgovoy, Adrian Chen, Joshua Corman, Trevor Timm, Ben Wizner, Edward Snowden, Patrick Neighorn, Cristiana Brafman Kittner, Marina Krotofil, Ben Miller, Anna Keeve, Ranson Burkette, Ilina Cashiola, Jessica Bettencourt, Sarah Kitsos, Jaime Padilla, Mike Smith, Walter Weiss, Nadya and Stephan Wasylko, Natalie Jaresko, Tom Mayer, Jasmine Lake, Bryan Fogel, Sarahana Shrestha, Sabrina Bezerra, Sam Greenberg, Naima Zouhali, and Steve Worrall, and a very big, special thank-you to Bertha Auquilla.


pages: 363 words: 109,077

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future by Alec Ross

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, clean water, collective bargaining, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, dumpster diving, employer provided health coverage, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, independent contractor, information security, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, late capitalism, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, megacity, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, mortgage tax deduction, natural language processing, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open economy, OpenAI, Parag Khanna, Paris climate accords, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, special economic zone, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, working poor

Anduril was contracted to build: Lee Fang, “Defense Tech Startup Founded by Trump’s Most Prominent Silicon Valley Supporters Wins Secretive Military AI Contract,” Intercept, March 9, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/03/09/anduril-industries-project-maven-palmer-luckey/. The company went on to build: Steven Levy, “Inside Palmer Luckey’s Bid to Build a Border Wall,” Wired, June 11, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/palmer-luckey-anduril-border-wall/. Russian president Vladimir Putin remarked: Radina Gigova, “Who Vladimir Putin Thinks Will Rule the World,” CNN, September 2, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/01/world/putin-artificial-intelligence-will-rule-world/index.html.


pages: 407 words: 108,030

How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations With Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason by Lee McIntyre

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alfred Russel Wallace, An Inconvenient Truth, Boris Johnson, carbon credits, carbon tax, Climategate, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crisis actor, different worldview, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dunning–Kruger effect, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, experimental subject, fake news, false flag, green new deal, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Shellenberger, obamacare, off-the-grid, Paris climate accords, post-truth, precautionary principle, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, scientific mainstream, selection bias, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, stem cell, Steven Levy, the scientific method, University of East Anglia, Upton Sinclair, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks

Oliver Milman, “Revealed: Quarter of All Tweets about Climate Crisis Produced by Bots,” Guardian, February 21, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-tweets-twitter-bots-analysis; Ryan Bort, “Study: Bots Are Fueling Online Climate Denialism,” Rolling Stone, February 21, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/bots-fueling-climate-science-denialism-twitter-956335/. 33. Whether or not Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be the “arbiter of truth,” so many people get their news from his website that perhaps it already is. Steven Levy, “Mark Zuckerberg Is an Arbiter of Truth—Whether He Likes It or Not,” Wired, June 5, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-is-an-arbiter-of-truth-whether-he-likes-it-or-not/. 34. Tony Romm, “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Says in Interview He Fears ‘Erosion of Truth’ but Defends Allowing Politicians to Lie in Ads,” Washington Post, October 17, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/17/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-says-interview-he-fears-erosion-truth-defends-allowing-politicians-lie-ads/. 35.


pages: 302 words: 82,233

Beautiful security by Andy Oram, John Viega

Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, An Inconvenient Truth, Bletchley Park, business intelligence, business process, call centre, cloud computing, corporate governance, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, defense in depth, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, en.wikipedia.org, fault tolerance, Firefox, information security, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, market design, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Leeson, Norbert Wiener, operational security, optical character recognition, packet switching, peer-to-peer, performance metric, pirate software, Robert Bork, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, security theater, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, Skype, software as a service, SQL injection, statistical model, Steven Levy, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Upton Sinclair, web application, web of trust, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

What do you have to hide? Twenty years later, the cultural attitude is closer to, Why don’t you have it? Don’t you understand that you have to protect your data? The definitive history of The Crypto Wars and the cultural shift in cryptography has not yet been written. Nonetheless, a good place to start is Steven Levy’s Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (Penguin). From PGP 3 to OpenPGP After the status of PGP 2 became calmer, Phil, along with Derek Atkins and Colin Plumb, started work on a new version of PGP software, PGP 3. PGP 3 contained a number of improvements to the RFC 1991 protocol, including: • Support for multiple public-key pairs in a PGP key.


pages: 394 words: 117,982

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David E. Sanger

active measures, air gap, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, computer age, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, Google Chrome, Google Earth, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, Mark Zuckerberg, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, off-the-grid, RAND corporation, ransomware, Sand Hill Road, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, WikiLeaks, zero day

Cook’s social and political intuition: Todd Frankel, “The Roots of Tim Cook’s Activism Lie in Rural Alabama,” Washington Post, March 7, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/03/07/in-rural-alabama-the-activist-roots-of-apples-tim-cook/?utm_term=.5f670fd2354d. “more than 5½ years”: Computer-security experts question that figure, because Apple does not fully realize how quickly the NSA’s supercomputers can crack codes. the agency developed the “Clipper chip”: Steven Levy, “Battle of the Clipper Chip,” New York Times, June 12, 1994, www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/magazine/battle-of-the-clipper-chip.html. the Clinton administration retreated: Susan Landau, Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 84. Morell and his colleagues sided with Big Tech: Richard A.


The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick by Jonathan Littman

Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, centre right, computer age, disinformation, game design, Hacker Ethic, Howard Rheingold, information security, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, Mitch Kapor, power law, profit motive, Silicon Valley, Steven Levy, telemarketer

What are programs "useful in unscrambling cellular telephone codes" doing on Shimomura's computer? I flip the page to "The Greatest Hits of Hacking," photos of six of the most famous hackers of all time, Mitnick, Poulsen, Morris, and others. But that's just part of Newsweek's hacker coverage for the week. On the facing page is an article by Steven Levy, the author of Hackers. It's the photo that catches my eye, an inspired, superimposed cybermontage, a giant close-up of Shimomura's intense face glowing with magenta and fluorescent green light. Above his flowing black locks floats a miniature ghost of the warrior in Buddha pose, hands poised on the keyboard, and at his side, what looks like the sword of a samurai.


pages: 402 words: 110,972

Nerds on Wall Street: Math, Machines and Wired Markets by David J. Leinweber

"World Economic Forum" Davos, AI winter, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 11, asset allocation, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bob Litterman, book value, business cycle, butter production in bangladesh, butterfly effect, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, collateralized debt obligation, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, Craig Reynolds: boids flock, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Danny Hillis, demand response, disintermediation, distributed generation, diversification, diversified portfolio, electricity market, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Gordon Gekko, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, implied volatility, index arbitrage, index fund, information retrieval, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Ivan Sutherland, Jim Simons, John Bogle, John Nash: game theory, Kenneth Arrow, load shedding, Long Term Capital Management, machine readable, machine translation, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, market fragmentation, market microstructure, Mars Rover, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, negative equity, Network effects, optical character recognition, paper trading, passive investing, pez dispenser, phenotype, prediction markets, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Renaissance Technologies, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, semantic web, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Small Order Execution System, smart grid, smart meter, social web, South Sea Bubble, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, time value of money, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, Turing machine, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, value engineering, Vernor Vinge, Wayback Machine, yield curve, Yogi Berra, your tax dollars at work

It has links in to all of these references, plus color and animated versions of the black & white screen grabs found in the book. The site will be updated often with new and topical items. Notes 1. A term of respect popularized by Michael Lewis in his 1989 book, Liar’s Poker (W.W. Norton). 2. Emanuel Derman, “Finance by the Numbers,” Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2007. 3. Much of Steven Levy’s 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Doubleday) takes place in the PDP-1 lab at MIT. Hacking had no criminal connotation at the time. The book is still in print. 4. Start with Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960) for a weighty tome, or “How RAND Invented the Postwar World,” by Virginia Campbell, in Invention & Technology magazine (Summer 2004) for a much more compact read. 5.


pages: 429 words: 114,726

The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise by Nathan L. Ensmenger

barriers to entry, business process, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, deskilling, Donald Knuth, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, functional programming, future of work, Grace Hopper, informal economy, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, job satisfaction, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, loose coupling, machine readable, new economy, no silver bullet, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, post-industrial society, Productivity paradox, RAND corporation, Robert Gordon, scientific management, Shoshana Zuboff, sorting algorithm, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, the market place, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, Turing machine, Von Neumann architecture, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K

David Anderegg, Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2007); Benjamin Nugent, American Nerd: The Story of My People (New York: Scribner, 2008). 7. Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (New York: Penguin, 1976); Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1984); Katie Hafner, CYBERPUNK: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier, Revised (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995). 8. Philip Scranton, “None-too-Porous Boundaries: Labor History and the History of Technology,” Technology and Culture 29, no. 744–778 (1988); Stephen Barley, “Technicians in the Workplace: Ethnographic Evidence for Bringing Work into Organization Studies,” Administrative Science Quarterly 41, no. 3 (1996): 404–441; Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor Pinch, eds., How Users Matter: The Co-construction of Users and Technologies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). 9.


pages: 309 words: 114,984

The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age by Robert Wachter

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Airbnb, Atul Gawande, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Checklist Manifesto, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, cognitive load, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Firefox, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, general purpose technology, Google Glasses, human-factors engineering, hype cycle, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Internet of things, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lifelogging, Marc Benioff, medical malpractice, medical residency, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, pets.com, pneumatic tube, Productivity paradox, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Hendricks, Robert Solow, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TED Talk, The future is already here, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Toyota Production System, Uber for X, US Airways Flight 1549, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Yogi Berra

This breadth allows him to prescribe commonsense solutions to the problems emerging from the inevitable marriage between the fields, which he reveals as a more troubled union than many suspect. The Digital Doctor not only enlightens and awakens, but is a delight to read—rare for such an important book.” —Steven Levy author of Hackers and In the Plex “A fascinating and insightful look at the digital transformation of healthcare, thoroughly researched and brought to life by dozens of stories and interviews with practicing clinicians. Wachter plots a realistic road map for navigating the obstacles ahead, without the hype that frequently accompanies digital health solutions.


pages: 397 words: 110,222

Habeas Data: Privacy vs. The Rise of Surveillance Tech by Cyrus Farivar

Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, autonomous vehicles, call centre, citizen journalism, cloud computing, computer age, connected car, do-ocracy, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, Ferguson, Missouri, Frank Gehry, Golden Gate Park, information security, John Markoff, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, lock screen, Lyft, national security letter, Occupy movement, operational security, optical character recognition, Port of Oakland, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech worker, The Hackers Conference, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, uber lyft, WikiLeaks, you are the product, Zimmermann PGP

Mailsafe: Harold Joseph Highland, “Encryption packages offer business users a choice,” Computerworld, July 13, 1987. Available at: https://books.google.com/​books?id=-_HA2pUErI8C&pg=PT94&dq=%22rsa+mailsafe%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjDr​PHLhMPUAhWV8oMKHdVwBhoQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=%22rsa%20mailsafe%22&f=false. Around that same time, Phil Zimmerman: Steven Levy, Crypto (Penguin Books, 2002), p. 191. Pretty Good Privacy: John Markoff, “Move on Unscrambling Of Messages Is Assailed,” The New York Times, April 17, 1991. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/​1991/​04/​17/​business/​move-on-unscrambling-of-messages-is-assailed.html. “to obtain the plaintext contents”: Joseph Biden, “All Information (Except Text) for S.266 - Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act of 1991,” January 24, 1991. https://www.congress.gov/​bill/​102nd-congress/​senate-bill/​266/​all-info.


pages: 404 words: 115,108

They Don't Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy by Lawrence Lessig

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, Columbine, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, disinformation, do-ocracy, Donald Trump, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, illegal immigration, income inequality, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, Joi Ito, Mark Zuckerberg, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Parag Khanna, plutocrats, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, speech recognition, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, Upton Sinclair, Yochai Benkler

Others are clear there’s a competitive harm, but unsure about the remedy. For a fantastic analysis of the antitrust problem raised by “free” data, see Dirk Bergemann and Alessandro Bonatti, “The Economics of Social Data” (working paper, January 15, 2019) (while identifying a competitive problem, the authors have no clear remedy beyond data portability). 94.Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 172–73. 95.Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion on May 10, 2011. “Microsoft Officially Welcomes Skype,” Microsoft, October 13, 2011, available at link #124. Microsoft revealed its speech recognition capabilities through an announcement that demonstrated Star Trek–like technology (the “universal translator”).


pages: 409 words: 112,055

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, computer vision, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DevOps, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Exxon Valdez, false flag, geopolitical risk, global village, immigration reform, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kubernetes, machine readable, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Morris worm, move fast and break things, Network effects, open borders, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, quantum cryptography, ransomware, Richard Thaler, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, software as a service, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day

As the internet has gone from being the place you go to visit bulletin boards on esoteric topics to undergirding all of modern existence, the early vision for cyberspace as a domain beyond the reach of the state now seems hopelessly naïve. The internet pioneer John Perry Barlow is often held up as the embodiment of this “techno-utopian” vision for the internet. The founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Barlow is a fascinating character. Steven Levy described him as a “cowboy, poet, romantic, family man, philosopher, and ultimately, the bard of the digital revolution.” When he died in early 2018, Rolling Stone titled his obituary “John Perry Barlow, Grateful Dead Lyricist, Dead at 70.” Barlow wrote such classics as “Mexicali Blues” with band member Bob Weir.


pages: 444 words: 117,770

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, ASML, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boston Dynamics, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, ChatGPT, choice architecture, circular economy, classic study, clean tech, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, drone strike, drop ship, dual-use technology, Easter island, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, energy transition, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, facts on the ground, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, global pandemic, GPT-3, GPT-4, hallucination problem, hive mind, hype cycle, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, lab leak, large language model, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, license plate recognition, lockdown, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, microcredit, move 37, Mustafa Suleyman, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Nikolai Kondratiev, off grid, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, plutocrats, precautionary principle, profit motive, prompt engineering, QAnon, quantum entanglement, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, satellite internet, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, SpaceX Starlink, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steven Levy, strong AI, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, techlash, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, TSMC, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, warehouse robotics, William MacAskill, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, zero day

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Over many hours, Lemoine Nitasha Tiku, “The Google Engineer Who Thinks the Company’s AI Has Come to Life,” Washington Post, June 11, 2022, www.washingtonpost.com/​technology/​2022/​06/​11/​google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT He told an incredulous Wired interviewer Steven Levy, “Blake Lemoine Says Google’s LaMDA AI Faces ‘Bigotry,’ ” Wired, June 17, 2022, www.wired.com/​story/​blake-lemoine-google-lamda-ai-bigotry. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “As soon as it works” Quoted in Moshe Y. Vardi, “Artificial Intelligence: Past and Future,” Communications of the ACM, Jan. 2012, cacm.acm.org/​magazines/​2012/​1/144824-artificial-intelligence-past-and-future/​fulltext.


System Error by Rob Reich

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deplatforming, digital rights, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Lean Startup, linear programming, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, Philippa Foot, premature optimization, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, spectrum auction, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trolley problem, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, union organizing, universal basic income, washing machines reduced drudgery, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, When a measure becomes a target, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, you are the product

believe the story about Gates: Ciara O’Rourke, “No, the Gates Foundation Isn’t Pushing Microchips with All Medical Procedures,” PolitiFact, May 20, 2020, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/may/20/facebook-posts/no-gates-foundation-isnt-pushing-microchips-all-me/; Linley Sanders, “The Difference Between What Republicans and Democrats Believe to Be True About COVID-19,” YouGov, May 26, 2020, https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/05/26/republicans-democrats-misinformation. When Gates was asked: Steven Levy, “Bill Gates on Covid: Most US Tests Are ‘Completely Garbage,’” Wired, August 7, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/bill-gates-on-covid-most-us-tests-are-completely-garbage/. “putting power in people’s hands”: Mark Zuckerberg, “A Blueprint for Content Governance and Enforcement,” Facebook, November 15, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/notes/751449002072082/.


pages: 476 words: 125,219

Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy by Robert W. McChesney

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, access to a mobile phone, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, AOL-Time Warner, Automated Insights, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, business cycle, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, classic study, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collective bargaining, company town, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Brooks, death of newspapers, declining real wages, digital capitalism, digital divide, disinformation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Dr. Strangelove, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, fulfillment center, full employment, future of journalism, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Google Earth, income inequality, informal economy, intangible asset, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, Post-Keynesian economics, power law, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, single-payer health, Skype, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Spirit Level, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, yellow journalism, Yochai Benkler

They also became conglomerates because media economics, as discussed in chapter 3, are rather unlike traditional markets for goods and services. Conglomeration is an especially effective way to reduce risk. An excellent discussion of this is in Wu, Master Switch, ch. 17. 137. Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (New York: Knopf, 2010), 87. 138. Steven Levy, “How the Propeller Heads Stole the Electronic Future,” New York Times Magazine, Sept. 24, 1995, 58. 139. Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget, 87. 140. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776; New York: Modern Library, 1937), 173. 141. This episode is chronicled in John Motavalli, Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet (New York: Viking, 2002).


pages: 480 words: 123,979

Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters With Reality and Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier

4chan, air gap, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, carbon footprint, cloud computing, collaborative editing, commoditize, Computer Lib, cosmological constant, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, game design, general-purpose programming language, gig economy, Google Glasses, Grace Hopper, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, Howard Rheingold, hype cycle, impulse control, information asymmetry, intentional community, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kuiper Belt, lifelogging, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Mother of all demos, Murray Gell-Mann, Neal Stephenson, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, peak TV, Plato's cave, profit motive, Project Xanadu, quantum cryptography, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skinner box, Skype, Snapchat, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, telepresence, telepresence robot, Thorstein Veblen, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons

If you pay attention, you’ll find cameos of me in early cyberpunk novels. My head might float by. Flattering Mirror Fiction about VR has mostly been quite dark ever since cyberpunk. The Matrix movies; Inception. Meanwhile, norms for tech journalism became hell-bent on positivity. VR engaged a new generation of journalists, like Steven Levy, Howard Rheingold, Luc Sante, and Mondo 2000’s Ken Goffman, aka R. U. Sirius. I’ll highlight two figures who were particularly influential as well as dear to me: Kevin Kelly and John Perry Barlow. Kevin is a fine example of a trusted friend with whom I disagree completely. When I met him, he was editing and writing in publications connected to Stewart Brand’s world, post–Whole Earth Catalog; he later became the first editor in chief of Wired.


pages: 480 words: 119,407

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, Cambridge Analytica, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, data science, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, gender pay gap, gig economy, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, lifelogging, low skilled workers, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, phenotype, post-industrial society, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, speech recognition, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, tech bro, the built environment, urban planning, women in the workforce, work culture , zero-sum game

This is bad enough when it comes to human-on-human recruitment, but with the rise of algorithm-driven recruiting the problem is set to get worse, because there is every reason to suspect that this bias is being unwittingly hardwired into the very code to which we’re outsourcing our decision-making. In 1984 American tech journalist Steven Levy published his bestselling book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Levy’s heroes were all brilliant. They were all single-minded. They were all men. They also didn’t get laid much. ‘You would hack, and you would live by the Hacker Ethic, and you knew that horribly inefficient and wasteful things like women burned too many cycles, occupied too much memory space,’ Levy explained.


pages: 320 words: 87,853

The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information by Frank Pasquale

Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American Legislative Exchange Council, asset-backed security, Atul Gawande, bank run, barriers to entry, basic income, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, bonus culture, Brian Krebs, business cycle, business logic, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Chelsea Manning, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, computerized markets, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Debian, digital rights, don't be evil, drone strike, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, Flash crash, folksonomy, full employment, Gabriella Coleman, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Earth, Hernando de Soto, High speed trading, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Ian Bogost, informal economy, information asymmetry, information retrieval, information security, interest rate swap, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Bogle, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, kremlinology, late fees, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, mobile money, moral hazard, new economy, Nicholas Carr, offshore financial centre, PageRank, pattern recognition, Philip Mirowski, precariat, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, regulatory arbitrage, risk-adjusted returns, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, search engine result page, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social intelligence, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steven Levy, technological solutionism, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, two-sided market, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Laurianne McLaughlin, “The Straight Story on Search Engines,” ComputerWorld, June 25, 2002, http://www.computerworld.com.au /article /27204 /straight _story_search _engines/. (“Despite our misgivings, the situation is not completely hopeless. There’s always Google. Not only does Google deliver exceptionally relevant matches, but it’s also the best of the bunch at identifying ads.”) 67. Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010); John Battelle, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (New York: Portfolio, 2005); Randall Stross, Planet Google (New York: Free Press, 2008). 68.


pages: 468 words: 124,573

How to Build a Billion Dollar App: Discover the Secrets of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs of Our Time by George Berkowski

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, Black Swan, business intelligence, call centre, crowdsourcing, deal flow, Dennis Tito, disruptive innovation, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, game design, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, minimum viable product, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, Paul Graham, QR code, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, TechCrunch disrupt, Travis Kalanick, two-pizza team, ubercab, Y Combinator

.’, article and video interview on FirstRound.com, firstround.com/article/how-dave-goldberg-of-surveymonkey-built-a-billion-dollar-business-and-still-gets-home-by-5-30. 4 Ibid. 5 Mike Rose, ‘Supercell’s Secret Sauce’, article on Gamasutra.com, 7 December 2012, www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/183064/supercells_secret_sauce.php. 6 Ibid. 7 Alyson Shontell and Andrea Huspeni, ‘15 Incredible Employee Perks That Will Make You Wish You Worked at a Startup’, article on BusinessInsider.com, 31 May 2012, www.BusinessInsider.com/killer-startup-perks-2012-5. 8 Heather Leonard, ‘Facebook Generates Over $1 Million in Revenue Per Employee’, article on BusinessInsider.com, 19 March 2013, www.BusinessInsider.com/facebook-has-high-revenue-per-employee-2013-3. 9 Megan Rose Dickey, ‘“Clash of Clans” Maker Had a Monster Year in 2013: Revenue Increased Nearly Ninefold’, article on BusinessInsider.com, 12 February 2014, www.BusinessInsider.com/gaming-startup-supercell-2013-revenue-2014-2. 10 Steven Levy, ‘Google’s Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter’, article on Wired.com, 17 January 2013, www.wired.com/business/2013/01/ff-qa-larry-page/all/. 11 Peter Murray, ‘Google’s Self-Driving Car Passes 300,000 Miles’, article on Forbes.com, 15 August 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/08/15/googles-self-driving-car-passes-300000-miles/. 12 For more information about Project Loon, visit www.google.com/loon/. 13 ‘Google X’, entry on Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_X.


pages: 400 words: 121,988

Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets by Donald MacKenzie

algorithmic trading, automated trading system, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, Cambridge Analytica, centralized clearinghouse, Claude Shannon: information theory, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, diversification, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, family office, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Google Earth, Hacker Ethic, Hibernia Atlantic: Project Express, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inventory management, Jim Simons, level 1 cache, light touch regulation, linked data, lockdown, low earth orbit, machine readable, market design, market microstructure, Martin Wolf, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, Satoshi Nakamoto, Small Order Execution System, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steven Levy, The Great Moderation, transaction costs, UUNET, zero-sum game

That was a time-consuming and expensive process, and though the resultant system usually worked, it was typically neither elegant nor efficient. Island’s system, in contrast, had both been conceived and most of its original core software written by just one person, Josh Levine. His approach was captured by Steven Levy’s description in Hackers (Levy 1984), even though the programmers Levy discusses were from an earlier generation. Hackers, as the term was originally used, were not necessarily people who broke into computer systems, but rather programmers who saw themselves as part of an informal but identifiable subculture, with a loosely related set of beliefs and preferences: distrust of authority, bureaucracy, and centralization; disdain for organizational rank; support for freedom of information and for ready, widely available, hands-on access to computer systems; and, perhaps above all, a distinctive programmer’s aesthetic.


pages: 411 words: 119,022

Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell

air gap, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bike sharing, Bill Atkinson, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, do what you love, Elon Musk, fail fast, follow your passion, General Magic , Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, hiring and firing, HyperCard, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kanban, Kickstarter, Mary Meeker, microplastics / micro fibres, new economy, pets.com, QR code, QWERTY keyboard, rolodex, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, synthetic biology, TED Talk, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Y Combinator

Reading List Here are some of the books and articles that have helped me, my friends, and mentors, in no particular order: Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, Adam Grant In Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki The Monk and the Riddle, Randy Komisar Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture, Scott Belsky The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness, Steven Levy Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, David Kelley and Tom Kelley Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, Ben Horowitz Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups, Ali Tamaseb Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R.


pages: 521 words: 118,183

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, cable laying ship, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crisis actor, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, digital nomad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, fail fast, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, geopolitical risk, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google bus, Google Chrome, GPT-3, green new deal, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, one-China policy, open economy, OpenAI, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, satellite internet, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, Solyndra, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, Susan Wojcicki, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, TSMC, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Valery Gerasimov, vertical integration, Wargames Reagan, Westphalian system, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Propaganda Campaign in Vietnam (New York: Westview Press, 1981), 3, 29. 5 Rid, Active Measures, 12. 6 Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003), 5–6. 7 Onora O’Neill, “Shoot the messenger,” The Guardian, May 1, 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/comment/story/0,3604,707820,00.html. 8 Michiko Kakutani, review of David Shenk, “Data Smog”: Created by Overload of Information, New York Times, July 8, 1997, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/06/daily/data-book-review.html. 9 Niraj Chokshi, “That Wasn’t Mark Twain: How a Misquotation Is Born,” New York Times, April 26, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/famous-misquotations.html. 10 Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral, “The Spread of True and False News Online,” MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, http://ide.mit.edu/sites/default/files/publications/2017%20IDE%20Research%20Brief%20False%20News.pdf. 11 Craig Silverman, “This Analysis Shows How Viral Fake Election News Stories Outperformed Real News On Facebook,” BuzzFeed News, November 16, 2016, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook#.sf9JbwppAm. 12 Jamie Susskind, Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 230. 13 Brooke Donald, “Stanford researchers find students have trouble judging the credibility of information online,” Stanford News and Media, November 22, 2016, https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-find-students-have-trouble-judging-credibility-information-online. 14 Joel Breakstone, Mark Smith, and Sam Wineburg, “Students’ Civic Online Reasoning,” Stanford, https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:gf151tb4868/Civic%20Online%20Reasoning%20National%20Portrait.pdf. 15 Matt McKinney, “ ‘If it’s going viral, it must be true’: Hampton Roads kids struggle with fake news, teachers say,” Virginian-Pilot, November 28, 2016, https://www.pilotonline.com/news/education/article_4a785dfb-3dd3-5229-9578-c4585adfefb4.html. 16 Yosh Halberstam and Brian Knight, “Homophily, Group Size, and the Diffusion of Political Information in Social Networks: Evidence from Twitter,” National Bureau of Economic Research, November 2014, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w20681/w20681.pdf. 17 Zeynep Tufekci, “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer,” New York Times, March 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html. 18 “The Flat Earth Society,” Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/FlatEarthToday/. 19 Singer and Brooking, LikeWar, 126. 20 Steven Levy, “ ‘Hackers’ and ‘Information Wants to Be Free,’ ” Medium, November 21, 2014, https://medium.com/backchannel/the-definitive-story-of-information-wants-to-be-free-a8d95427641c#.y7d0amvr3. 21 Michael M. Grynbaum, “Right-Wing Media Uses Parkland Shooting as Conspiracy Fodder,” New York Times, February 20, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/business/media/parkland-shooting-media-conspiracy.html. 22 Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D.


pages: 431 words: 129,071

Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us by Will Storr

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, bitcoin, classic study, computer age, correlation does not imply causation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, gamification, gig economy, greed is good, intentional community, invisible hand, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Lyft, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, Mother of all demos, Nixon shock, Peter Thiel, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, QWERTY keyboard, Rainbow Mansion, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, tech bro, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, twin studies, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, War on Poverty, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

In 1968, the year of the demo, the Institute’s co-founder Michael Murphy had written: ‘Esalen: Where Man Confronts Himself’, Michael Murphy, Stanford Alumni Almanac, May 1968. with one 1985 Esquire story reporting ‘scientists’: ‘Encounters at the Mind’s Edge’, George Leonard, Esquire, June 1985. Tim O’Reilly, the man who in 2005 christened the internet’s: ‘The Trend Spotter’, Steven Levy, Wired, 1 October 2010. ‘There is an impression that Doug goes off in a corner and hatches ideas’ . . . etc.: Bootstrapping, Thierry Bardini (Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 198–200. Engelbart was treating his people like ‘laboratory animals’: ‘Chronicle of the Death of a Laboratory: Douglas Engelbart and the Failure of the Knowledge Workshop’, Thierry Bardini and Michael Friedewald, History of Technology (2003), 23, pp. 191–212, at p. 206.


pages: 542 words: 132,010

The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain by Daniel Gardner

Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, Doomsday Clock, feminist movement, haute couture, hindsight bias, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), lateral thinking, Linda problem, mandatory minimum, medical residency, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, Oklahoma City bombing, placebo effect, precautionary principle, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, social intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, the long tail, the scientific method, Timothy McVeigh, Tunguska event, uranium enrichment, Y2K, young professional

Kent, Robert Kern, Montague Kerry, John Kessler, David Kim Jong King . J. Knetsch, Jack Kolbig, Uwe Kone, Daboula Koop . Everett Kramer, Barry Krewski, Daniel Kunstler, James Howard Lanning, Ken Leiserowitz, Anthony Leovy, Jill Lessner, Richard Levin, Irwin Levitt, Steven Levy, Douglas Lewinsky, Monica Lewis, Jeffrey Lichtenfeld, Leonard Lichtenstein, Sarah Lichter, Robert Livingstone, Ken Loewenstein, George Lomborg, Bjorn Lunsford, Jessica Luntz, Frank Lynch, Timothy Macallair, Daniel Macdonald, Ken Mack, Andrew MacLeod, Ian mad cow disease.


pages: 460 words: 131,579

Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse by Adrian Wooldridge

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Black Swan, blood diamond, borderless world, business climate, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Exxon Valdez, financial deregulation, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, George Gilder, global supply chain, Golden arches theory, hobby farmer, industrial cluster, intangible asset, It's morning again in America, job satisfaction, job-hopping, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, meritocracy, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Norman Macrae, open immigration, patent troll, Ponzi scheme, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, profit motive, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, the long tail, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, vertical integration, wealth creators, women in the workforce, young professional, Zipcar

Howard Gardner, Five Minds for the Future (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2007), pp. 18–19. CHAPTER 6: RETHINKING THE COMPANY 1. Auletta, Googled, pp. 17–18. 2. Martin Thomas, Loose: The Future of Business Is Letting Go (London: Headline, 2011), pp. 181–82. 3. Auletta, Googled, p. 21. 4. Steven Levy, “Larry Page wants to return Google to its startup roots,” Wired, March 18, 2011. 5. Auletta, Googled, p. 15. 6. Mark Zuckerberg, speech at Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, June 23, 2010. 7. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World (New York: Portfolio, 2010), p. 253. 8.


pages: 494 words: 142,285

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World by Lawrence Lessig

AltaVista, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Bill Atkinson, business process, Cass Sunstein, commoditize, computer age, creative destruction, dark matter, decentralized internet, Dennis Ritchie, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Davies, Erik Brynjolfsson, Free Software Foundation, Garrett Hardin, George Gilder, Hacker Ethic, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, history of Unix, Howard Rheingold, Hush-A-Phone, HyperCard, hypertext link, Innovator's Dilemma, invention of hypertext, inventory management, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Ken Thompson, Kenneth Arrow, Larry Wall, Leonard Kleinrock, linked data, Marc Andreessen, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, Network effects, new economy, OSI model, packet switching, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, price mechanism, profit maximization, RAND corporation, rent control, rent-seeking, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, smart grid, software patent, spectrum auction, Steve Crocker, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systematic bias, Ted Nelson, Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Chicago School, tragedy of the anticommons, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, vertical integration, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Merges, “Institutions for Intellectual Property Transactions: The Case of Patent Pools,” in Expanding the Boundaries of Intellectual Property, Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss and Diane Leenheer Zimmerman, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 127-28. 96 Bessen and Maskin, “Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation.” 97 Steven Levy, “The Great Amazon Patent Debate,” Newsweek (March 13, 2000): 74 (“I asked Bezos if Amazon would have developed 1-Click even if there were no patent system to protect it and anyone could legally rip it off. 'Yes,' he responded without hesitation. 'Very definitely.' “). This point suggests a related reason to be skeptical about these patents.


How I Became a Quant: Insights From 25 of Wall Street's Elite by Richard R. Lindsey, Barry Schachter

Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andrew Wiles, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, asset allocation, asset-backed security, backtesting, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black-Scholes formula, Bob Litterman, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, butter production in bangladesh, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized markets, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, Donald Knuth, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, global macro, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, implied volatility, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Ivan Sutherland, John Bogle, John von Neumann, junk bonds, linear programming, Loma Prieta earthquake, Long Term Capital Management, machine readable, margin call, market friction, market microstructure, martingale, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, P = NP, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, performance metric, prediction markets, profit maximization, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, seminal paper, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, Silicon Valley, six sigma, sorting algorithm, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Levy, stochastic process, subscription business, systematic trading, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, transfer pricing, value at risk, volatility smile, Wiener process, yield curve, young professional

Presentation Speech by Professor Bertil Näslund of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, December 10, 1997. From Les Prix Nobel, the Nobel Prizes 1997, Tore Frängsmyr, ed., Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 1998. 9. Perry Mehring, Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005). Chapter 1 1. Much of Steven Levy’s 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, takes place in the PDP-1 lab at MIT. Hacking had no criminal connotation at the time. The book is still in print. 2. It is now complete, and is utterly awesome. See the video at http://www.deltawerken.com/The-Oosterschelde-storm-surgebarrier/324.html.


pages: 440 words: 132,685

The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World by Randall E. Stross

Albert Einstein, centralized clearinghouse, Charles Lindbergh, cotton gin, death of newspapers, distributed generation, East Village, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, Livingstone, I presume, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, plutocrats, Saturday Night Live, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, urban renewal, vertical integration, world market for maybe five computers

Even the loquacious Johnson: Edward Johnson to Uriah Painter, 7 December 1877, PTAE, 3:661. feeling quite well: Over one hundred years later, Steve Jobs borrowed the same parlor trick when he pulled the first Macintosh computer out of a bag and had it introduce itself on stage in January 1984: “Hello, I am Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag.” See Steven Levy, Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (New York: Viking, 1994), 182. Edison was given credit: “The Talking Phonograph,” Scientific American, 22 December 1877, PTAED, MBSB10300. In France, Leon Scott claimed that his phonautograph anticipated Edison’s phonograph, which he criticized for not creating an intelligible visual record of human speech.


pages: 642 words: 141,888

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen

23andMe, 4chan, An Inconvenient Truth, Andy Rubin, Anne Wojcicki, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, Burning Man, business logic, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cloud computing, Columbine, company town, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital map, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, game design, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Golden age of television, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, growth hacking, Haight Ashbury, immigration reform, James Bridle, John Perry Barlow, Justin.tv, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kinder Surprise, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Minecraft, mirror neurons, moral panic, move fast and break things, non-fungible token, PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, systems thinking, tech bro, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Walter Mischel, WikiLeaks, work culture

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Chapter 2: Raw and Random endless rodent problem: Amici’s owner didn’t recall mice on the premises, but the building was shared with another restaurant, which has since changed hands. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT YouTube could net at least: Botha also wrote that Reid Hoffman, a Flickr investor and former PayPal leader, had assured YouTube that Flickr would not be trying video anytime soon. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT later call YouTube: Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 249. Additional context about Amazon, Microsoft, and Google from Sequoia Capital. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT she cried once it began: Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly, “The Secret Rules of the Internet,” The Verge, April 13, 2016, https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderator-history-youtube-facebook-reddit-censorship-free-speech.


pages: 525 words: 142,027

CIOs at Work by Ed Yourdon

8-hour work day, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, business intelligence, business process, call centre, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, distributed generation, Donald Knuth, fail fast, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, Googley, Grace Hopper, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Innovator's Dilemma, inventory management, Julian Assange, knowledge worker, Mark Zuckerberg, Multics, Nicholas Carr, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), rolodex, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the new new thing, the scientific method, WikiLeaks, Y2K, Zipcar

The creation of the ARPANET, the creation of DARPA, without which we wouldn’t have had the ARPANET, without which we wouldn’t have had the NSFnet, without which we wouldn’t have had the Internet, without which we wouldn’t have had Google, right? Yourdon: Yeah, that’s true. That is a good point. No one has mentioned that, and that obviously is a social or human creation, that led to all this other stuff. Fried: And there’s this other unique—I’m a big fan of Steven Levy’s book, Hackers [Doubleday, 1984]. Yourdon: Mm-hmm. Fried: There was this unique point in time where our culture was created that we now see evidenced in Linux and open-source software—and in a dramatically lower cost to compute that comes from that. And as a result now people talk about open-source hardware as well, but this notion that people should be able—if you believe what Levy has in the book, it came out of this belief that computers should be open, that anyone should be able to use them and experiment with them and learn to program.


pages: 470 words: 144,455

Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World by Bruce Schneier

Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Bletchley Park, business process, butterfly effect, cashless society, Columbine, defense in depth, double entry bookkeeping, drop ship, fault tolerance, game design, IFF: identification friend or foe, information security, John Gilmore, John von Neumann, knapsack problem, macro virus, Mary Meeker, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral panic, Morris worm, Multics, multilevel marketing, mutually assured destruction, PalmPilot, pez dispenser, pirate software, profit motive, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Russell Brand, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, slashdot, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steven Levy, systems thinking, the payments system, Timothy McVeigh, Y2K, Yogi Berra

–Jim Wallner, National Security Agency “The news media offer examples of our chronic computer security woes on a near-daily basis, but until now there hasn’t been a clear, comprehensive guide that puts the wide range of digital threats in context. The ultimate knowledgeable insider, Schneier not only provides definitions, explanations, stories, and strategies, but a measure of hope that we can get through it all.” –Steven Levy, author of Hackers and Crypto “In his newest book, Secrets and Lies:Digital Security in a Networked World, Schneier emphasizes the limitations of technology and offers managed security monitoring as the solution of the future.” –Forbes Magazine Secrets and Lies DIGITAL SECURITY IN A NETWORKED WORLD Bruce Schneier Wiley Publishing, Inc.


pages: 527 words: 147,690

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection by Jacob Silverman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, basic income, Big Tech, Brian Krebs, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, context collapse, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, fake it until you make it, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, game design, global village, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, life extension, lifelogging, lock screen, Lyft, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Minecraft, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, payday loans, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, postindustrial economy, prediction markets, pre–internet, price discrimination, price stability, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, real-name policy, recommendation engine, rent control, rent stabilization, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social graph, social intelligence, social web, sorting algorithm, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telemarketer, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yottabyte, you are the product, Zipcar

June 19, 2009. nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/20ventura.html. 341 “I think in tweets”: David Roberts. “Goodbye for Now.” Grist. Aug. 19, 2013. grist.org/article/goodbye-for-now. 342 “an escalating cycle”: Lasch. Culture of Narcissism, 90. 343 “the performing self”: ibid. 345 “Awareness commenting on awareness”: ibid. 346 “like television”: Steven Levy. “Inside the Science That Delivers Your Scary-Smart Facebook and Twitter Feeds.” Wired. April 22, 2014. wired.com/2014/04/perfect-facebook-feed. 346 “method actors”: de Zengotita. Mediated, 11. 347 “conflictual ways”: “Fetishism of Digital Commodities and Hidden Exploitation: The Cases of Amazon and Apple.”


pages: 559 words: 157,112

Dealers of Lightning by Michael A. Hiltzik

Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, beat the dealer, Bill Atkinson, Bill Duvall, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Boeing 747, business cycle, Charles Babbage, computer age, creative destruction, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Edward Thorp, El Camino Real, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, index card, Ivan Sutherland, Jeff Rulifson, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, L Peter Deutsch, luminiferous ether, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Multics, oil shock, popular electronics, reality distortion field, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, speech recognition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, the medium is the message, The Soul of a New Machine, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog, zero-sum game

Cost of Dorado and comparison to VAX: Thacker in Goldberg, p. 285. Cost of VAX: Bell, Gordon, in Goldberg, p. 45. It was difficult to think: Thacker in Goldberg, p. 285. They were such an efficient heater: Sosinski. Xerox executives made: Perry & Wallich, p. 73. Chapter 23: Steve Jobs Gets His Show and Tell You can have your Lufthansa heist: Steven Levy, Insanely Great, p. 78. Joe Wilson had predicted: Jacobson & Hillkirk,, p. 58. The answer was to create: George White, 10/6/97. When the company raised $7 million: Michael Moritz, The Little Kingdom, p. 271. Raskin recollection of Jobs and Wozniak: Raskin, “Mac and Me,” in The Analytical Engine 2.4, November 1995 (Computer History Association of California).


pages: 562 words: 153,825

Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance State by Barton Gellman

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, active measures, air gap, Anton Chekhov, Big Tech, bitcoin, Cass Sunstein, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data science, Debian, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, evil maid attack, financial independence, Firefox, GnuPG, Google Hangouts, housing justice, informal economy, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Laura Poitras, MITM: man-in-the-middle, national security letter, off-the-grid, operational security, planetary scale, private military company, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Robert Gordon, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, seminal paper, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, social graph, standardized shipping container, Steven Levy, TED Talk, telepresence, the long tail, undersea cable, Wayback Machine, web of trust, WikiLeaks, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

More valuably, the EFF lays out a method for thinking about the particular “threat model” in each case. I also sent one of the occasional blog posts I wrote for Time online, “The Case of the Stolen Laptop: How to Encrypt, and Why,” Techland, August 6, 2010, http://ti.me/1Qjdu5f. the cypherpunks of the 1990s: See Steven Levy, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government, Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (New York: Viking, 2001). See also Eric Hughes, “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto” (1993), www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html; and John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, February 8, 1996, www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence.


pages: 483 words: 145,225

Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution by Glyn Moody

barriers to entry, business logic, commoditize, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Debian, Dennis Ritchie, Donald Knuth, Eben Moglen, Free Software Foundation, ghettoisation, Guido van Rossum, history of Unix, hypertext link, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gilmore, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, Marc Andreessen, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Multics, Network effects, new economy, packet switching, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, slashdot, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, thinkpad, VA Linux

And they brought me over to somebody else who was a manager, who talked with me, and said, ‘OK, we’ll hire you.’” Little did he suspect it at the time, but Stallman was about to enter a kind of hacker’s paradise. The hot-house environment created by a tightly knit bunch of great programmers inventing and exploring the new worlds opened up by computing is vividly evoked in Steven Levy’s 1984 book Hackers. Levy describes the classic hacker life: feats of virtuoso coding that ignored minor irritations like times of the day or night; sleeping on the floor of the AI Lab when exhaustion finally won out over inspiration; the countless Chinese meals, the heated conversations, the love of word-play, the pranks.


pages: 523 words: 154,042

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks by Scott J. Shapiro

3D printing, 4chan, active measures, address space layout randomization, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, availability heuristic, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Brian Krebs, business logic, call centre, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Debian, Dennis Ritchie, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, evil maid attack, facts on the ground, false flag, feminist movement, Gabriella Coleman, gig economy, Hacker News, independent contractor, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Linda problem, loss aversion, macro virus, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Minecraft, Morris worm, Multics, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, pirate software, pre–internet, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, SQL injection, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, technological solutionism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the new new thing, the payments system, Turing machine, Turing test, Unsafe at Any Speed, vertical integration, Von Neumann architecture, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, young professional, zero day, éminence grise

Dimand, The History of Game Theory, Volume 1: From the Beginnings to 1945 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 129. few branches of mathematics: The American Mathematical Society dedicated a whole issue of articles laying out some of von Neumann’s contributions. See Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64, no. 3, pt. 2 (May 1958), especially the Stan Ulam article. (it weighed thirty tons): Steven Levy, “A Brief History of the ENIAC,” Smithsonian Magazine, November 2013, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-brief-history-of-the-eniac-computer-3889120/. Levy claims that the ENIAC had 18,000 vacuum tubes, the figure used in the text, but other estimates range from 17,468 to 19,000. to study natural systems: John von Neumann, Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, edited and completed by Arthur W.


pages: 615 words: 168,775

Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age by Leslie Berlin

AltaVista, Apple II, Arthur D. Levinson, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, Bill Atkinson, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Bob Noyce, book value, Byte Shop, Charles Babbage, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, computer age, Computer Lib, discovery of DNA, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, Donald Knuth, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Edward Thorp, El Camino Real, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial independence, game design, Haight Ashbury, hiring and firing, independent contractor, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet of things, inventory management, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, Larry Ellison, Leonard Kleinrock, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Minecraft, Mother of all demos, Oklahoma City bombing, packet switching, Project Xanadu, prudent man rule, Ralph Nader, Recombinant DNA, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, Teledyne, union organizing, upwardly mobile, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, work culture

A deep bow to these people who shared their expertise and assistance: the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences 2012–2013 fellows, Janet Abbate, Bob Andreatta, David Brock, Carolyn Caddes, Martin Campbell-Kelly, Catherine de Cuir, Beth Ebben, Benj Edwards, Bret Field, Terry Floyd, Daniel Hartwig, the HP Alumni Association, Paula Jabloner, Kathy Jarvis, Laurene Powell Jobs, Kris Kasianovitz, Mike Keller, Chigusa Kita, Greg Kovacs, Steven Levy, Sara Lott, Anna Mancini, Natalie-Jean Marine Street, John Markoff, Pam Moreland, Mary Munill, Tim Noakes, Bill O’Hanlan, Margaret O’Mara, Sue Pelosi, Nadine Pinell, Sarah Reis, Paul Reist, Nora Richardson, James Sabry, Larry Scott, Lenny Siegel, Lisa Slater, Kurt Taylor, Bill Terry, and Fred Turner.


pages: 533

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech by Jamie Susskind

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Robotics, Andrew Keen, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, automated trading system, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business process, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, computer age, computer vision, continuation of politics by other means, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, digital divide, digital map, disinformation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of work, Future Shock, Gabriella Coleman, Google bus, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, industrial robot, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, machine translation, Metcalfe’s law, mittelstand, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, night-watchman state, Oculus Rift, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, payday loans, Philippa Foot, post-truth, power law, price discrimination, price mechanism, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, selection bias, self-driving car, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, tech bro, technological determinism, technological singularity, technological solutionism, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, universal basic income, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture , working-age population, Yochai Benkler

Tom Simonite, ‘Pentagon Bot Battle Shows How Computers Can Fix Their Own Flaws’, MIT Technology Review, 4 August 2016 <https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602071/pentagon-botbattle-shows-how-computers-can-fix-their-own-flaws/?utm_ campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=post> (accessed 1 December 2017). 54. Rawls, Theory of Justice, 326–31. 55. Steven Levy, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age (New York: Penguin, 2002), 1. 56. Robert Scoble and Israel Shel, The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Change Everything (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017), 124.


Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM by Paul Carroll

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Fairchild Semiconductor, full employment, Gary Kildall, John Markoff, Mitch Kapor, popular electronics, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, six sigma, software patent, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, thinkpad, traveling salesman

Michael Killen, IBM: The Making o f the Common View (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 206-210. 3. Manes and Andrews, Gates, 323. 4. Ibid., 361. Magic: The People, Power and Politics Behind the IBM Personal Computer (New York: Facts on File, 1988), 62-63. 2. Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews, Gates (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 136. 3. Chposky and Leonsis, Blue Magic, 75. 4. Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes o f the Com­ puter Revolution (N ew York: Dell Publishing Co., 1984), 386. 3 1. William Rodgers, Think: A Biography o f the Watsons and IBM (New York: Stein and Day, 1969), 20-22. 2. Ibid., 11. 3. Ibid., 28-29. 4. Thomas J. Watson, Jr., and Peter Petre, Fa­ ther, Son ir Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond (N ew York: Bantam Books, 1990), 19. 5.


pages: 1,239 words: 163,625

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated by Gautam Baid

Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, availability heuristic, backtesting, barriers to entry, beat the dealer, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, book value, business process, buy and hold, Cal Newport, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, Clayton Christensen, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, dividend-yielding stocks, do what you love, Dunning–Kruger effect, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Everything should be made as simple as possible, fear index, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, follow your passion, framing effect, George Santayana, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, Henry Singleton, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, index fund, intangible asset, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lao Tzu, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Masayoshi Son, mental accounting, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive income, passive investing, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, power law, price anchoring, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, six sigma, software as a service, software is eating the world, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, stocks for the long run, subscription business, sunk-cost fallacy, systems thinking, tail risk, Teledyne, the market place, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, time value of money, transaction costs, tulip mania, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, wealth creators, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Anshul Khare, “Investing and the Art of Metaphorical Thinking,” Safal Niveshak, November 21, 2016, https://www.safalniveshak.com/investing-art-metaphorical-thinking. 13. Dean LeBaron and Romesh Vaitilingam, Dean LeBaron’s Treasury of Investment Wisdom: 30 Great Investing Minds (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2001). 14. Steven Levy, “Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think,” Wired, November 13, 2011, https://www.wired.com/2011/11/ff_bezos. 15. Aye M. Soe, Berlinda Liu, and Hamish Preston, SPIVA U.S. Scorecard, S&P Dow Jones Indices, Year-End 2018, https://www.spindices.com/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2018.pdf. 16.


Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media by Peter Warren Singer, Emerson T. Brooking

4chan, active measures, Airbnb, augmented reality, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, Comet Ping Pong, content marketing, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, global reserve currency, Google Glasses, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker News, illegal immigration, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, Jacob Silverman, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Mohammed Bouazizi, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, moral panic, new economy, offshore financial centre, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, pattern recognition, Plato's cave, post-materialism, Potemkin village, power law, pre–internet, profit motive, RAND corporation, reserve currency, sentiment analysis, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social web, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, too big to fail, trade route, Twitter Arab Spring, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, Upton Sinclair, Valery Gerasimov, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, Yochai Benkler

THE EMPIRES STRIKE BACK 83 “‘Truth’ is a lost cause”: Peter Pomerantsev and Michael Weiss, “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money” (report, Institute of Modern Russia, 2014), http://www.interpretermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/The_Menace_of_Unreality_Final.pdf. 83 “Information wants”: Steven Levy, “‘Hackers’ and ‘Information Wants to Be Free,’” Backchannel (blog), Medium, November 21, 2014, https://medium.com/backchannel/the-definitive-story-of-information-wants-to-be-free-a8d95427641c. 83 “The Net interprets”: Philip Elmer-Dewitt, “First Nation in Cyberspace,” Time, December 6, 1993, http://kirste.userpage.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html. 83 “the Japanese guy”: Bruce Sterling, “Triumph of the Plastic People,” Wired, January 1, 1995, https://www.wired.com/1995/01/prague/. 84 first so-called internet revolution: Olesya Tkacheva et al., Internet Freedom and Political Space (RAND, 2013), 121. 84 government censors: Lev Grossman, “Iran Protests: Twitter, the Medium of the Movement,” Time, June 17, 2009, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html. 84 98 percent of the links: “Iran and the ‘Twitter Revolution,’” Pew Research Center, June 25, 2009, http://www.journalism.org/2009/06/25/iran-and-twitter-revolution/. 84 “The Revolution”: Andrew Sullivan, “The Revolution Will Be Twittered,” The Daily Dish (blog), The Atlantic, June 13, 2009, http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/06/the-revolution-will-be-twittered/200478/. 84 Nobel Peace Prize: Lewis Wallace, “Wired Backs Internet for Nobel Peace Prize,” Wired, November 20, 2009, https://www.wired.com/2009/11/internet-for-peace-nobel/. 84 Mohamed Bouazizi: Yasmine Ryan, “The Tragic Life of a Street Vendor,” Al Jazeera, January 20, 2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/01/201111684242518839.html. 85 “Is Egypt about to have”: Abigail Hauslohner, “Is Egypt About to Have a Facebook Revolution?


pages: 662 words: 180,546

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown by Philip Mirowski

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Adam Curtis, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, blue-collar work, bond market vigilante , bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, constrained optimization, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, debt deflation, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, disinformation, do-ocracy, Edward Glaeser, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, incomplete markets, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, loose coupling, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, Nash equilibrium, night-watchman state, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, precariat, prediction markets, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, school choice, sealed-bid auction, search costs, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Myth of the Rational Market, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, working poor

,” on Hyman Minsky influence of on “informational efficacy” and “allocative efficiency,” on Keynesian Theory in New York Review of Books orthodox economics profession on reason for becoming an economist “The Return of Depression Economics,” Kydland–Prescott notion L La Bute, Neil Laibson, David Laissez-faire Lal, Deepak LAMP (Liberal Archief, Ghent) Lanchester, John Landsbanki Lange, Oskar Lasn, Kalle Late Neoliberalism Lehman Brothers Leoni, Bruno Les Mots et les Choses Levin, Richard Levine, David Levitt, Steven Levy, David Lewis, Michael, The Big Short Liberatarianism Liberty Institute Liberty International Liberty League LIBOR scandal Lilly Endowment LinkedIn L’Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales at Geneva Litan, Robert Competitive Equity The Derivatives Dealer’s Club “In Defense of Much, But Not All, Financial Innovation,” writings of Lloyd’s Bank Lo, Andrew on economic crisis Harris & Harris Group Professor of Finance A Non-Random Walk Down Wall Street “Reading About the Financial Crisis,” Lohmann, Larry “Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit” (Romer) Lowenstein, Roger LSE (London School of Economics) Lucas, Robert E.


pages: 757 words: 193,541

The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services, Volume 2 by Thomas A. Limoncelli, Strata R. Chalup, Christina J. Hogan

active measures, Amazon Web Services, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, business process, cloud computing, commoditize, continuous integration, correlation coefficient, database schema, Debian, defense in depth, delayed gratification, DevOps, domain-specific language, en.wikipedia.org, fault tolerance, finite state, Firefox, functional programming, Google Glasses, information asymmetry, Infrastructure as a Service, intermodal, Internet of things, job automation, job satisfaction, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, level 1 cache, load shedding, longitudinal study, loose coupling, machine readable, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, Marc Andreessen, place-making, platform as a service, premature optimization, recommendation engine, revision control, risk tolerance, Salesforce, scientific management, seminal paper, side project, Silicon Valley, software as a service, sorting algorithm, standardized shipping container, statistical model, Steven Levy, supply-chain management, systems thinking, The future is already here, Toyota Production System, vertical integration, web application, Yogi Berra

• Krishnan details Google’s DiRT program in “Weathering the Unexpected” (Krishnan 2012). • Allspaw explained the theory and practice of Etsy’s program in “Fault Injection in Production” (Allspaw 2012b). • Tseitlin details the Netflix Simian Army and explains how it has improved resilience and maximized availability in “The Antifragile Organization” (Tseitlin 2013). Later Steven Levy was allowed to observe Google’s annual DiRT process first-hand for an article he wrote for Wired magazine titled “Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center” (Levy 2012). After the 2012 U.S. presidential election, an article in The Atlantic magazine, “When the Nerds Go Marching in,” described the Game Day exercises conducted by the Obama for America campaign in preparation for election day 2012 (Madrigal 2012).


pages: 612 words: 187,431

The Art of UNIX Programming by Eric S. Raymond

A Pattern Language, Albert Einstein, Apple Newton, barriers to entry, bioinformatics, Boeing 747, Clayton Christensen, combinatorial explosion, commoditize, Compatible Time-Sharing System, correlation coefficient, David Brooks, Debian, Dennis Ritchie, domain-specific language, don't repeat yourself, Donald Knuth, end-to-end encryption, Everything should be made as simple as possible, facts on the ground, finite state, Free Software Foundation, general-purpose programming language, George Santayana, history of Unix, Innovator's Dilemma, job automation, Ken Thompson, Larry Wall, level 1 cache, machine readable, macro virus, Multics, MVC pattern, Neal Stephenson, no silver bullet, OSI model, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, premature optimization, pre–internet, publish or perish, revision control, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Robert Metcalfe, Steven Levy, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, transaction costs, Turing complete, Valgrind, wage slave, web application

“Hints for Computer System Design”. October 1983. Available on the Web. [Lapin] J. E. Lapin. Portable C and Unix Systems Programming. Prentice-Hall. 1987. ISBN 0-13-686494-5. [Leonard] Andrew Leonard. BSD Unix: Power to the People, from the Code. 2000. Available on the Web. [Levy] Steven Levy. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Anchor/Doubleday. 1984. ISBN 0-385-19195-2. Available on the Web. [Lewine] Donald Lewine. POSIX Programmer's Guide: Writing Portable Unix Programs. 1992. O'Reilly & Associates. ISBN 0-937175-73-0. 607pp.. [Libes-Ressler] Don Libes and Sandy Ressler.


pages: 636 words: 202,284

Piracy : The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns

active measures, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Charles Babbage, commoditize, Computer Lib, Corn Laws, demand response, distributed generation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Edmond Halley, Ernest Rutherford, Fellow of the Royal Society, full employment, Hacker Ethic, Howard Rheingold, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, Lewis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan, Mont Pelerin Society, new economy, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, pirate software, radical decentralization, Republic of Letters, Richard Stallman, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, software patent, South Sea Bubble, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, Ted Nelson, The Home Computer Revolution, the scientific method, traveling salesman, vertical integration, Whole Earth Catalog

By 1963 a TMRC acolyte named Stewart Nelson (who had experimented with phones and radio in Poughkeepsie before arriving at MIT) had made the obvious next step, using a PDP1 computer to sing MF tones into the AT&T network. Soon the students had made their way into systems across the nation. Department of Defense contractors were a particular target. The subsequent trajectory of hacking from Cambridge to Palo Alto and beyond has been well known since Steven Levy’s classic Hackers. Originally a term for a practical joke of the childish but technically neat kind long popular at places like MIT and Caltech, it now came to mean the virtuoso feats of computer cognoscenti – those who neglected every other aspect of life in order to tweak digital systems to create elegant solutions (“hacks”) to tricky problems.


Four Battlegrounds by Paul Scharre

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, active measures, activist lawyer, AI winter, AlphaGo, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, artificial general intelligence, ASML, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business continuity plan, business process, carbon footprint, chief data officer, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, DALL-E, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of journalism, future of work, game design, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, global supply chain, GPT-3, Great Leap Forward, hive mind, hustle culture, ImageNet competition, immigration reform, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, large language model, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, new economy, Nick Bostrom, one-China policy, Open Library, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, phenotype, post-truth, purchasing power parity, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, smart cities, smart meter, Snapchat, social software, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, tech worker, techlash, telemarketer, The Brussels Effect, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, TikTok, trade route, TSMC

Norton, April 24, 2018), 137–145. 31. RACE TO THE BOTTOM 254“race to the bottom”: Portions of this chapter are adapted, with permission, from Paul Scharre, “Debunking the AI Arms Race Theory,” Texas National Security Review 4, no. 3 (Summer 2021): 121–132, http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/13985. 254“move fast and break things”: Steven Levy, “Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s Future, from Virtual Reality to Anonymity,” Wired, April 30, 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/04/zuckerberg-f8-interview/. 254“We are under so much pressure”: Jack Shanahan, interview by author, April 1, 2020. 254twenty-five years from initial concept: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program (Congressional Research Service, updated May 27, 2020) https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL30563.pdf; The Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program, which later became the Joint Strike Fighter program, was created in 1993.


pages: 795 words: 215,529

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick

Albert Einstein, American ideology, Arthur Eddington, Brownian motion, Charles Babbage, disinformation, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Eddington experiment, Ernest Rutherford, gravity well, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Higgs boson, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Murray Gell-Mann, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, pattern recognition, Pepto Bismol, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sand Hill Road, Schrödinger's Cat, sexual politics, sparse data, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, uranium enrichment

Does the new terminology express cynicism or disdain by particle theorists toward their own creations?” “An Historian’s Interest in Particle Physics,” in Brown et al. 1989, 53. 310 THE WINTER FERMI DIED: Gell-Mann, interview. 311 MOST OF HIS BODY WAS CREMATED: Thomas S. Harvey, telephone interview; William L. Laurence, “Key Clue Sought in Einstein Brain,” New York Times, 20 April 1955; Steven Levy, “My Search for Einstein’s Brain,” New Jersey Monthly, August 1978, 43. 311 VARIOUS NINETEENTH-CENTURY RESEARCHERS: Could 1981. 312 IS THERE A NEUROLOGICAL SUBSTRATE: Obler and Fein 1988, 6. 313 ENLIGHTENED, PENETRATING, AND CAPACIOUS MINDS: Duff 1767, 5. 313 RAMBLING AND VOLATILE POWER: Ibid., 9. 313 IMAGINATION IS THAT FACULTY: Ibid., 6–7. 314 IN POINT OF GENIUS: Gerard 1774, 13. 314 A QUESTION OF VERY DIFFICULT SOLUTION: Ibid., 18. 315 IT IS ONE OF THE HOPES: Quoted in Root-Bernstein 1989, 1. 315 A PHYSICIST STUDYING QUANTUM FIELD THEORY: Coleman, interview. 315 FROM GEOMETRY TO LOGARITHMS: Hood 1851, 10–11. 316 THE ASTROPHYSICIST WILLY FOWLER: Thorne, interview; Fowler, interview conducted by Charles Weiner, 30 May 1974, AIP: “I just thought Feynman’s talking through his hat, what can he possibly mean, what can general relativity have to do with these objects?”


pages: 708 words: 223,211

The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture by Brian Dear

air traffic controllers' union, AltaVista, Alvin Toffler, Apple II, Apple Newton, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, complexity theory, computer age, Computer Lib, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Fairchild Semiconductor, finite state, Future Shock, game design, Hacker News, Howard Rheingold, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, lateral thinking, linear programming, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Mitch Kapor, Mother of all demos, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Palm Treo, Plato's cave, pre–internet, publish or perish, Ralph Nader, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skinner box, Skype, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, the medium is the message, The Soul of a New Machine, three-martini lunch, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Catalog

I’m also grateful for the kindness and hospitality of Paul Tenczar (who made himself available for numerous interviews over the years) and his wife, Darlene; they let me rummage through a suitcase full of Paul’s photographic slides. Thanks to Andy Hertzfeld, Paul Resch, Bill Galcher, Donald Norman, Dan O’Neill, and Ray Ozzie for reviewing all or portions of the manuscript over the years. Thanks also to writers Steven Levy and John Markoff, whose inspiring writing, support, and encouragement have helped give me the strength to finish this book. Thanks to Ralph Nader and William C. Taylor, authors of The Big Boys: Power and Position in American Business (Pantheon, 1986), who without hesitation gave me two boxes full of all of their research on Control Data Corporation, including raw interview transcripts and handwritten reporter’s notes, which I put to extensive use in Part Three of this book.


pages: 788 words: 223,004

Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts by Jill Abramson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alexander Shulgin, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, Charles Lindbergh, Charlie Hebdo massacre, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, cloud computing, commoditize, content marketing, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, death of newspapers, digital twin, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, East Village, Edward Snowden, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, glass ceiling, Google Glasses, haute couture, hive mind, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Khyber Pass, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, Paris climate accords, performance metric, Peter Thiel, phenotype, pre–internet, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Snapchat, social contagion, social intelligence, social web, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, telemarketer, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, vertical integration, WeWork, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

By October inbound traffic: Justin Osofsky, “More Ways to Drive Traffic to News and Publishing Sites,” Facebook, October 21, 2013, https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-media/more-ways-to-drive-traffic-to-news-and-publishing-sites/585971984771628. One change would privilege: Varun Kacholia, “News Feed FYI: Showing More High Quality Content,” Facebook, August 23, 2013, https://www.facebook.com/business/news/News-Feed-FYI-Showing-More-High-Quality-Content. Only a few years earlier: Steven Levy, “Inside the Science That Delivers Your Scary-Smart Facebook and Twitter Feeds,” Wired, April 22, 2014, https://www.wired.com/2014/04/perfect-facebook-feed/. So Facebook launched an internal effort: Victor Luckerson, “Here’s How Facebook’s News Feed Actually Works,” Time, July 9, 2015, http://time.com/collection-post/3950525/facebook-news-feed-algorithm/.


pages: 821 words: 227,742

I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution by Craig Marks, Rob Tannenbaum

Adam Curtis, AOL-Time Warner, Bernie Sanders, Bob Geldof, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, crack epidemic, crowdsourcing, financial engineering, haute couture, Live Aid, Neil Armstrong, Parents Music Resource Center, pre–internet, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sensible shoes, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Tipper Gore, upwardly mobile

Both articles took disapproving tones. Time sniffed that “the majority of clips now in circulation are labored ephemera with heavily imitative associations,” unfavorably compared Duran Duran (“an affable, uninspired British band currently aglow with success”) to Beethoven, and concluded, “the pervading silliness is worrisome.” Steven Levy, writing in Rolling Stone, unfavorably compared “superficial, easy-to-swallow” acts such as Adam Ant to Bob Dylan. To bolster his accusation that “heavy-metal pounding” videos were dangerously violent, he quoted Dr. Thomas Radecki, chairman of the right-wing National Coalition on TV Violence, who a year later testified to Congress on behalf of the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) and served on their board of directors.


The Art of SEO by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Jessie Stricchiola, Rand Fishkin

AltaVista, barriers to entry, bounce rate, Build a better mousetrap, business intelligence, cloud computing, content marketing, dark matter, en.wikipedia.org, Firefox, folksonomy, Google Chrome, Google Earth, hypertext link, index card, information retrieval, Internet Archive, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, linked data, mass immigration, Metcalfe’s law, Network effects, optical character recognition, PageRank, performance metric, Quicken Loans, risk tolerance, search engine result page, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, social bookmarking, social web, sorting algorithm, speech recognition, Steven Levy, text mining, the long tail, vertical integration, Wayback Machine, web application, wikimedia commons

Embedding important keywords or entire paragraphs in an image or a Java console renders them invisible to the spiders. Likewise, the search engines cannot easily understand words spoken in an audio file or video. However, Google has begun to leverage tools such as Google Voice Search in order to “crawl” audio content and extract meaning (this was first confirmed in the book In the Plex by Steven Levy, published by Simon & Schuster). Baidu already has an MP3 search function, and the Shazam and Jaikoz applications show the ability to identify song hashes today as well. Using alt attributes, originally created as metadata for markup and an accessibility tag for vision-impaired users, is a good way to present at least some text content to the engines when displaying images or embedded, nontext content.


pages: 1,351 words: 385,579

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, bread and circuses, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, California gold rush, Cass Sunstein, citation needed, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, Columbine, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, crack epidemic, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, delayed gratification, demographic transition, desegregation, Doomsday Clock, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, experimental subject, facts on the ground, failed state, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fudge factor, full employment, Garrett Hardin, George Santayana, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, global village, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, impulse control, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, lake wobegon effect, libertarian paternalism, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, McMansion, means of production, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mirror neurons, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, nuclear taboo, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, Republic of Letters, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, security theater, Skinner box, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, technological determinism, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Turing machine, twin studies, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Lawrence, Saint Lea, Rod leaders: complexity of speeches intelligence of motives of narcissism of openness to experience in overconfidence in selection of women see also autocracy; democracy; despotism; monarchy League of Nations Leary, Timothy LeBlanc, Steven Lebow, Richard Ned Lee, Harper Lehrer, Tom Lemkin, Raphael Lennon, John Leonardo da Vinci Leopold, king of Belgium Levi, Michael Levi, Primo Levi, Werner, The Coming End of War Leviathan: aggression curbed by and commerce emergence of and human nature international introduction of concept legitimate use of force by monarchies and Pacifist’s Dilemma in violence triangle see also anarchy; government; states Levin, Jack Levitt, Steven Levy, Jack Lewis, Bernard liberal democracy liberalism: classical and conservatism and gentle commerce and intelligence and morality and nationalism and Rights Revolutions use of term Liberal Peace Liberia, civil war in libertarianism Liebenberg, Louis life history theory lightning strikes limbic system Lincoln, Abraham Lindow Man literacy Lithgow, William Li Zhisui Lloyd George, David Locke, John Some Thoughts Concerning Education Two Treatises on Government Lodge, David Loewenstein, George London Blitz Long, William Long Peace chemical weapons democratic peace disarmament great power wars and Humanitarian Revolution introduction of concept Kantian Peace Liberal Peace nuclear peace numbers related to violence in 20th century Lorenz, Konrad loss aversion Lott, Trent Luard, Evan Luria, Alexander Luther, Martin macabre voyeurism Macaulay, Thomas McCauley, Clark McClure, Samuel McCormack, Mary Ellen McCullough, Michael MacDonald, Heather Mack, Andrew McKinley, William McLuhan, Marshall McNamara, Robert S.


pages: 889 words: 433,897

The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey by Emmanuel Goldstein

affirmative action, Apple II, benefit corporation, call centre, disinformation, don't be evil, Firefox, game design, Hacker Ethic, hiring and firing, information retrieval, information security, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, late fees, license plate recognition, Mitch Kapor, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Oklahoma City bombing, optical character recognition, OSI model, packet switching, pirate software, place-making, profit motive, QWERTY keyboard, RFID, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, satellite internet, Silicon Valley, Skype, spectrum auction, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, undersea cable, UUNET, Y2K

Until now, however, hackers have had to worship their idols from afar. Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier unites hackers in this true-life testimony by presenting an in-depth, up-front view of these “techno-menaces” without the overreactive doomsday prophecies that usually accompany such a work. Cyberpunk is a fitting sequel to Steven Levy’s classic Hackers. Whereas Levy’s treatise addressed the origins of hacking in its infancy, Cyberpunk is the New Testament depicting hacking as it is in the here and now. More than just a synthesis of current trends, however, Cyberpunk depicts the hacking lifestyle and cyberpunk culture that has evolved alongside our boundless fascination with computers and information.