Book Review: Everybody Lies (2017). Seth Stephens-Davidowitz.

The essence of this book, by a former Google data scientist, is an exploration of how Google searches reveal more about what we're really like than we ever previously knew or wanted to admit. 

This book is similar in its analysis and impact to OK Cupid founder Christian Rudder’s 2015 book Dataclysm, which made use of huge volumes of personal information collected from online dating sites to dissect the realities of sex, dating, race and other aspects of society, and our true beliefs and feelings about them. 

Both books are entertaining, thought-provoking and of great value for understanding why "big data" about everything we want to know and do, and what we thereby unintentionally reveal about ourselves, is such an important new tool for the social sciences, and for gaining a better understanding of our world and society. 

The author calls Google search and other search engines "digital truth serum" (that is, what we ask search sites, from the hoped-for privacy and relative anonymity of our web browsers, where we’re not trying to create a brand or image of ourselves for public consumption, as we do on Facebook and other social media platforms).  It’s a very good analogy.  Recommended.

Book Review: Eyes in the Sky (2019). Arthur Holland Michel.

This is a detailed account of the development of wide area surveillance tools and technology, at first in the context of IED campaigns against US troops in the Middle East, but now increasingly as a tool of domestic surveillance as well.  

The "eye in the sky" devices that have been developed use incredibly high-resolution wide area cameras mounted on planes or drones, with the ability to take multiple images per second of entire cities, and then can use the images and high-powered computers to be able to track people and activities forward and backward in time.  

The book does a good job of laying out the development history, and then evaluating both the pros and cons of having a "God's Eye" view available to the government agencies that now possess this technology. 

Its uses in war and law enforcement were the first and most obvious (and controversial) applications, with attendant civil liberty fears, but Michel also discusses positive potential uses for disaster management, environmental protection and various kinds of scientific research.  Recommended.

Book Review: The Rewiring America Handbook (2020). Saul Griffith.

This valuable work is only available (to my knowledge) as an e-book, in .pdf format.  Despite that minor accessibility limitation, the contents are very useful, well-presented and thought-provoking.  This is also the first major publication (it's really the introductory manifesto) of an organization (Rewiring America, at https://www.rewiringamerica.org ) which in the past several years has become an important advocacy group in the United States for finding practical solutions to the climate crisis.

The author is an Australian-American MIT-trained engineer, who (with a group of collaborators) has done detailed studies on what it will take to try to keep the world (and the United States) at a low-enough carbon level to avoid the worst effects of climate change.  His proposals are based on science- and engineering-based analyses of current conditions and problems.  He and his team of researchers are also well-versed in many of the economic issues and challenges related to climate and environmental policy, another crucial part of the story which he weaves into his prescriptions for averting the worst of the climate crisis.

There are a few key arguments made, mixed in with many sub-topics, graphs and studies:  first, meeting climate objectives will require a World-War II-scale industrial program, to build and deploy the technical infrastructure for power generation and the new grid;  second, we can all contribute significantly as individuals, without lowering our standards of living, by simply replacing or adding any personal infrastructure (cars, furnaces, stoves, solar panels) with new-tech all-electric versions;  third, an all-electric economy is cheaper in the long run, but requires heavy up-front investment, requiring inexpensive financing, which should be made widely available to consumers;  and fourth, building the all-electric economy will create on the order of 25 million good new jobs throughout all of American's zip codes, urban and rural.  

It is a very exciting and uplifting vision, with an abundance of supportive technical and financial detail included -- now all we have to do is figure out how to do it politically.  The .pdf of the book can be downloaded from Rewiring America’s site on the web, where you can now find other more specific and detailed reports and white papers on climate issues.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: This is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race (2021). Nicole Perlroth.

This book is a deeply researched and well-informed history of the development of cyberweapons, and the growth of the worldwide market for "Zero Day" exploits (undiscovered software bugs that can be used to take control of a computer).  The author has been covering this beat as a reporter since the early 2000s, and tracks how hacking moved from pranks done by teenage boys to tools of organized crime, and then on to the intelligence organizations of nation-states. 

She describes how tools that were first developed for spying and theft of secrets were repurposed into "kinetic" weapons, that could be used to inflict damage to physical infrastructure, starting with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear centrifuges via the "Stuxnet" virus, but then on into the vicious and massively harmful economic, power grid and communications shutdowns in Estonia and Ukraine carried out by the Russians.   

She also provides deeply disturbing accounts of the Russian attacks on democratic countries, using social media to undermine candidates and sow disinformation, while also attempting to access and disrupt actual voting systems in the U.S. and elsewhere. 

This is a "must read" book for anyone who wants to understand the full extent of the cyberwar threat to modern society caused by our utter dependence on computers to control every aspect of our daily lives and communities.  Highly recommended.