I have noticed that a few privacy-focused communities like to keep a list of books. They tend to focus on non-fiction, and are filled with great recommendations that range from fact-filled wonders to cool trends, such as digital minimalism.
While I do occasionally take the time to read non-fiction, I am very much a speculative fiction type person.
Either way, I was wondering what your reading recs looked like? Fiction or not, but particularly those with some relation to technology and how we use it, and how it uses us.
For example, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, True Names by Verner Vinge, or obviously Brave New World by Huxley.
I kind of have the opposite issue with responding to this question, I have a shelf chock-full of non-fiction books on monopolies, tech policy, privacy, surveillance, economics etc. but basically nothing from the fiction side, aaaand I have a resolution this year to get through 10 works of fiction, which is likely not a lot to an avid reader, but coupled with my non-fic-diction could be problematic.
So far on that I’ve got through The Man Who Folded Himself - David Gerrold, and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - PKD. Needless to say I’ll be chasing up the books posted so far that I haven’t touched.
For me Always Coming Home - Ursula Le Guin and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - PKD (covering off my two favourite writers there) are both interesting for their tech-adjacent stories.
On my non-fiction pile for this year is 100 things we’ve lost to the Internet and The Internet is not what you think it is.
My thing with non-fiction is that I can’t stop reading. Some of them are filled with such great information or interesting anecdotes that I want to keep going. And then it is 3 in the morning and I am wrecked the next day at work. With fiction, I like stopping for the night and anticipating what happens next.
I haven’t read much (or any?) privacy-related fiction, either, but I quite liked the non-fiction This is How They Tell Me The World Ends. It makes a great sequel to Edward Snowden’s Permanent Record, albeit with more focus on security. However, it does hit on some very interesting points that are at least related to privacy.
I’ve been meaning to read 1984 for years and have heard of Snow Crash recently. I wonder if Farenheit 451 is at all related to privacy, because that’s another one I’ve been meaning to read for some years now.
not sure if this meets your criteria in the fiction dept., but Alternative 003 (pdf) by Leslie Watkins
Why do US and Soviet submarines meet every month beneath the polar ice caps? Why are the astronauts not telling the public what they saw on the moon? When did the first Earth probes really land on Mars? The chilling answers to these questions shatter the secrecy of a terrifying conspiracy against all humanity. Its code name: Alternative 003
i read it several decades ago and it got me thinking
Just added it to my e-reader. We’ll see. I have no criteria, as long at it looks at our relation with technology, good or bad. Your recommendation might be more of interest to my partner, but I will still give it a read!
the alleged COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) “pandemic” has been quite an eye-opening experience, even for normies, and even for people like myself who have been researching how the world actually works as opposed to how most people think it works
just when i started to think that things couldn’t get sillier, along comes a little “virus” that taught me (and a lot of doctors) a whole lot about the immune system, viruses, virology, germ theory and terrain theory
read these books and you’ll be far more educated in these subjects than your doctor…
The Contagion Myth - Why Viruses (including “Coronavirus”) Are Not the Cause of Disease - Dr. Thomas S. Cowan, 2020
Virus Mania, 3rd edition: How the Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense
