Book Notes

I recently read Tarleton Gillespie's Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture.  It's a remarkably comprehensive study of issues surrounding digital copyright.  He gets beyond the simplistic rhetoric heard from both sides to look at the broader story in historical, political, and social terms.  On digital rights management (DRM), in particular, he discusses how the strategy has moved beyond legal or public relations campaigns to a "turn to technology."  Enforcing a technological solution, by building the restrictions right into devices, is dangerous not only because it subverts tenets of copyright law like "fair use," but because it sets a dangerous precedent by hiding choice away from users.  There are also chapters on the Strategic Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), encryption in DVDs, and the FCC's "broadcast flag."  Tarleton Gillespie has a blog here.

The Best of Technology Writing 2007 is edited by Steven Levy and looks to be a great collection.  Several of the articles, such as a couple by Kevin Kelly and Jaron Lanier, will be familiar to anyone who paid much attention to tech media or blogs last year, but there are a number of lesser-known articles as well.

Aubrey de Grey has written a book, Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime.  After reading the material for Technology Review's SENS Challenge last year I think I've had my fill of Aubrey de Grey's prose for one lifetime (finite or not), so I think I'll pass.  Here is a review by Paul Boutin in the Wall Street Journal: Battling Time's Ravages.

Comments

[lynda]

Hello Kevin...

I just came across your blogsite here...I'm often amazed at how much of society seems to embrace every techy devise that comes to market without much critique...

Personally, I'm still disturbed that my phone machine talks...I don't want a machine that talks to me - and I don't need one that talks to me...When I mentioned this to the young customer service guy at radio shack, it seemed he just didn't quite know what to make of my complaint and my request..."Don't you have ANY phone machines that don't talk?"...I find this quite disturbing...I know there is much worse in the world going on - but, if I can't even get a phone machine that doesn't talk...then what obnoxious, unimaginable horrors lie waiting down the pike?...

take care,
lynn

[Kevin]

Hi Lynn, thanks for your comment. I remember the first time I got an answering machine that spoke to me and I was a little disturbed as well, especially because it said "I", as in "I will erase all messages".

Good luck in your search...

Kevin