A wonderful 99% Invisible episode on the height of the basket, how this led to an inbalance in the game through the invention of the dunk (and to some clearly racist reactions) and how the 3-pointer came from the ABA to save the day and open up the game.
This episode is part of a podcast series by ESPN. I am off to listen to more of the ‘Dunkumentaries‘…
There was a political dimension to all of this as well. The dunk was becoming popular at a turbulent time in the country. The Black Panthers were organizing and arming themselves in Oakland and some white Americans were worried a revolution was about to take place. The rise of dunking was seen by some racist critics as a literal manifestation of “Black Power,” embodied in masters of the dunk like Lew Alcindor, who would later change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Under pressure from critics of the dunk, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) made a decision to ban the dunk in 1967. The NBA (National Basketball Association) did not ban the dunk, but still faced criticism about the slowness of play in the league.
At the end of each year I list the books that I have read during that year. Earlier years were 2012, 2013 and 2014. Below you will find the list of books that I’ve read in 2015. Like last year I have also included my other media consumption (podcasts, RSS feeds and magazines).
My goal was to read 50 books of which at least half would be written by women and half by non-American authors. I managed to read 48 books (so close!) of which 12 were written by women (so far!) and 32 by authors that weren’t born in the US. Although I did read nearly twice as many women as last year, I really should do better. Here is the list of books and what I thought of them.
Digital Rights
I’ve read some wonderful books in this category. I now recommend Schneier’s book as a great introduction to current issues in digital rights. Brunton and Nissembaum published a beautiful little book with obfuscation tactics from many different domains. Van Gunsteren shows clearly how much damage a strong government focus on safety can do (and why we should always have a healthy distrust of our secret services). Levy’s history of the development of strong public crypto is a must-read to be able to understand the current crypto wars.
Bruce Schneier — Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (link)
Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum — Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest (link)
This year, like last year, we managed to read seven books in our book club. Brunton has shown me how every phase of the internet has its own version of spam, I can’t wait to read his forthcoming book on digital cash. Bostrom’s book was by far the most scary book that I’ve read all year, whereas Ronson’s was the funniest. Graeber’s book on bureaucracy wasn’t as strong as his book on debt.
Finn Brunton — Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (link)
Nick Bostrom — Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (link)
Bulawayo’s book was the one that I couldn’t forget this year. Her first-person perspective of a little girl in Zimbabwe (and then later in the US) was soul crushing at times. Naipaul’s famous novel about the African interior was harrowing. I loved reading Van Leeuwen’s timeless children book to a young boy in my family. Houellebecq’s take on a near future France where a moderate Islamic party has come to power was thought provoking.
Krog was a witness at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission and has written a masterpiece about the process. This is where you would start to try and understand South Africa I guess (and damn do I love Desmond Tutu). Most people will not have read Piketty’s book after buying it. They are wrong: it is a brilliant lesson in macro economics and the details are worth the effort. I’ve learned a few practical skills from books this year: Marie Kondo has changed my life with her distinctively Japanese take on organizing your house, Pro Git has taught me how to use Git productively and Practical Vim has finally managed to turn me into a decent Vim user. All men should read Solnit’s essay on ‘mansplaining’. Finally, Westerman has written a book with an insightful reflection on race. It is very meaningful voice in the current Dutch debates on racism.
I had three subscriptions in 2015 and they were the same as the year before: Wired Magazine, The New York Review of Books and De Correspondent. The latter has really matured in the last year and I enjoy their pieces every single morning.
On my Podcast player I still had This American Life and This Week in Tech on the top two spots. New podcasts that I don’t skip are Note to Self and Reply All. I still listen religiously to 99% Invisible and RadioLab, check out an occasional Planet Money episode and enjoyed Kritische Massa, the only Dutch podcast that I listened to.
My favourite feeds in my RSS Reader (shout out to Tiny Tiny RSS) are Morozov in The Guardian, Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing and Prosthetic Knowledge on Tumblr. In the digital rights space I follow EDRi, the EFF, Open Rights Group, Slashdot’s Your Rights Online, Privacy Nieuws, Privacy Barometer, Tactical Tech, Greenhost, Jaap-Henk Hoepman, Hans Schnitzler, Bruce Schneier, the Privacy Surgeon and Axel Arnbak. To see what evil they are up to I check out Facebook’s newsroom and the Google Blog. I also make sure I keep up to date with the self-hosted open source projects I use like Owncloud, Lychee, Yourls and Wallabag. The NRC decided to wall their garden and kill their RSS feeds. That meant I stopped reading Bas Heijne and Marcel van Roosmalen and that I switched to Trouw as my regular source of news.
As long as they keep writing newsletters I will keep reading Stephen Downes and Audrey Watters.
A goodbye to Goodreads
For quite a few years I have used Goodreads to keep track of what books I read and wanted to read. I was increasingly uncomfortable with feeding Amazon’s algorithms and databases so decided to code my own book management system with the features that I like. With a little help from PHP, Bootstrap and SQLite you can see the result at books.hansdezwart.nl. It isn’t completely finished yet (RSS feeds are the most important missing feature), but it is getting close and already is making me very happy.
What will I be reading in 2016?
I want to make even more conscious decisions about what I read in the coming year. I want to read more female, more non-Western and more non-white authors. I also want to read more books that are at least 30 years old. I’ve written it two times before, but next year should now really be a year in which I’ll read more McLuhan. One book a week is the quantitive goal.
The first few times I used Airbnb to stay with somebody, I brought my hosts stroopwafels and some very old Dutch cheese. Over the past few years I’ve lost that sentiment. Now, I see what has been termed the ‘sharing economy’ as a way for large information monopolies to monetize any excess social capital, while outsourcing all risks to their workers (they don’t call them workers, as workers have rights).
I’ve read a lot about how impossible it is to earn a decent living in this ‘sharing economy’ (read Morozov for example) but Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything trilogy of podcasts titled ‘Instaserfs’ still really made me think. In the series Andrew Callaway is asked to “drive, shop, clean, deliver, and serve for a whole month” and to record his experiences.
Ethan Zuckerman has done an excellent job explaining why you should listen to the shows, below are just a few things that I noticed.
Andrew could have probably made a lot more money if he had invested more time in referrals. Nearly all the companies he worked for spent a lot of time trying to teach him how to find other people who would do the same. This is why he starts calling it the ‘pyramid scheme economy’ at some point.
I used to think that these services were dehumanizing the workers (basically letting them do the pattern recognition tasks that the algorithms can’t do yet), but the show makes a convincing case that the customers are the ones that are becoming less human. At some point Andrew has to wait is getting a burrito for someone. First he can’t find parking and then he has to wait in line. Everything is taking a long time, so he knows that both the service he is working for and the customer are getting upset. He then asks himself the question: how can you ever learn empathy if you don’t never have to share the experience of waiting in line.
The final episode is a little bit too designed for my taste, but I did appreciate Mary Gray’s commentary on the general precariousness of work. Will this be something that most of us will have to start dealing with in the next few years?
I’ve written before about how the lack of diversity in the companies that are shaping our world is literally hurting people. I specifically referred to Eric Meyer being confronted with his deceased daughter. Facebook does realise their lack of diversity is also hurting their business. So they’ve started an internal course to battle what they term unconscious bias. They’ve put an interesting set of videos of the course online. From their blogpost:
To reflect the diversity of the 1.4 billion people using our products, we need to have people with different backgrounds, races, genders and points of view working at Facebook. Diverse teams have better results, so this is not only the right thing to do – it’s also good for our business.
and:
One of the most important things we can do to promote diversity in the workplace is to correct for the unconscious bias that all of us have.
I am aware that so-called affirmitive action has gotten a bad reputation, but if I were to change a company’s culture on this topic, this isn’t where I would start. To really make an impact these information giants will have to start directly addressing the structural societal problems that lead the lack of diversity.
Interested to learn more about diversity in the technology sector? Check out these resources.
At the end of each year I try to list the books that I’ve read during that year. I’ve done this in 2012 and in 2013. Below you’ll find the list of books that I’ve read in 2014. This year I’ve also added the other media that I regularly consume: what magazines and newspapers do I read, what are some notable RSS feeds that look at and what podcasts have been on my playlist?
Covers and ratings of the books I’ve read in 2014
I’ve read 39 books in 2014. That is, once again, significantly less than in earlier years. It has been a busy year at work and I have occasionally struggled to find the time to read. Here is what I did manage to read this year and what I thought of it.
Digital Rights
Menner’s book with pictures from the Stasi archives is another way to powerfully visualise the banality of evil. Malamud Smith’s book is already a bit older but very valuable in how it frames the ability to have a personal life as something that is essential for humanity. Greenwald was a bit too full of bluster for my taste and Pariser’s book is very much worth the effort, even if you have seen his TED talk.
Simon Menner — Top Secret: Images from the Stasi Archives (link)
Janna Malamud Smith — Private Matters: In Defense Of The Personal Life (link)
Katja Franko Aas — Technologies of InSecurity: The Surveillance of Everyday Life (link)
Glenn Greenwald — No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State (link)
Eli Pariser — The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (link)
B00k C7ub 4 N3rd$
We’ve read seven books in our book club this year. Dow Schüll and Scott both managed to blow my mind. Dow Schüll’s work is very impressive because she manages to tie 10 years of observation of slot machines in Vegas to philosophy of technology. Scott has given me a key concept in understanding the state: legibility. Rushkoff’s book disappointed as his concepts (like ‘narrative collapse’) didn’t stick. Garton Ash going back to East Germany to read his 300+ pages of Stasi files and confronting his informants was enlightening.
Natasha Dow Schüll — Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (link)
James C. Scott — Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (link)
Douglas Rushkoff — Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (link)
Timothy Garton Ash — The File : A Personal History (link)
Luke Harding — The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man (link)
Chimamanda Adichie’s book had me captivated from the beginning to the end. It painfully exposes the perspective of the immigrant and shows how much race is still an issue in the US. I travelled through Iran in late October and read some related fiction. As always it was Kapuściński who impressed me the most. Few writers can demonstrate so much insight in so few words.
Jean-Yves Ferri — Asterix bij de Picten (Asterix, #35) (link)
Non-fiction
I couldn’t really find any way to further categorise this diverse set of non-fiction books, so I’ve bundled them all together. Pollan’s short book is the first sensible thing I’ve seen about food in a long time. His strategy: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” is what I now live by. I’ve always been a bit hesitant to read De Bono (he seemed too much like a hyped-up American consultant). I was wrong. His six ‘thinking hats’ helped me tremendously in keeping meetings very productive. Pinker has written a seminal book about the historical decline of violence, the man writes like an angel. Munroe’s serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions were hilarious and managed to teach me a lot at the same time. Cillier, finally, found a way to succinctly explain complexity theory. Lakoff on metaphors was very worth my while and I love anything that gives us Ai Weiwei’s voice.
Michael Pollan — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (link)
Antoine Vigne — Le Corbusier In His Own Words (link)
Barry C. Lynn — Cornered : The new monopoly capitalism and the economics of destruction (link)
Tony Buzan — How to Mind Map: The Ultimate Thinking Tool That Will Change Your Life (link)
My consumption of other media
In 2014 I continued my subscriptions of Wired (which I find barely tolerable at times) and the New York Review of Books (wonderful!). There were no other magazines that I read regularly. The only daily ‘newspaper’ that I subscribed to was De Correspondent.
The playlist of my podcast player included (in this order of preference): This American Live, This Week in Tech, 99% Invisible, WNYC’s Radiolab, Guardian Tech Weekly,Security Now, Triangulation and occasionally a part of Argos.
I subscribed to (and read) Stephen Downes’ Ol’Daily newsletter, Audrey Watter’s newsletter and Springwise Weekly.
The newsfeeds in my RSS reader that I made sure to read were: NRC, Tweakers, Ribbonfarm, Kars and Alper at Hubbub, Bruce Schneier, Freedom to Thinker, Prosthetic Knowledge, the EFF, the Guardian Tech, Privacynieuws, the Privacy Surgeon, XKCD, Adam Curtis, Zeynep Tufceki, Jevgeny Morozov, Slashdot’s Your Rights Online and of course everything that Bits of Freedom, my place of work, produces.
What will I be reading in 2015?
I am about halfway in Piketty’s ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ and want to make sure that I make the time to read some original McLuhan, some classics in cybernetics, the Club of Rome’s original ‘Limits to Growth’ and some more Žižek.
Update (21 february 2015): I’ve set a goal for my reading in 2015:
