Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Where do you stop? That’s the trickiest part.”

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier

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I bought this book when it came out in 2017. Ironically, I didn’t get around to reading it until a camping trip this past weekend! It seems silly to go out into the woods to read about video games. However, I’m glad I did have the time and space to finally sit down with a fun read instead of a “should” read. In the end, we only have so much time on earth, so why not do what makes us happy? For me maybe that’s […]

“If there’s a purpose to life it’s to love and communicate.”

Cyberville: Clicks, Culture, and the Creation of an Online Town by Stacy Horn

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A tip of the hat for tech & culture writer Joanne McNeil for mentioning this book in her excellent Lurking. Cyberville is the story of New York City’s 1990s “online salon,” Echo. Stacy Horn founded Echo and authored this book. However,  the book features clips of lengthy discussions from Echo and its Echoids, so in effect the book is collectively authored. As are all online communities. That’s really what this book is about – the co-creation of online communities. While it was written in 1998, […]

Mad Money

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

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My journey through Silicon Valley continues as I learn more and more about its major events and players. And boy, do all of these guys really like Ayn Rand. Like many, I was disappointed at the downfall of Gawker. While I felt like the site (and its offshoots) could be too proud of itself and unaware that its establishment as an institution made their criticisms of institutions a little flat, I think it performed an important service to the media in terms of calling out bs. Being […]

Technocracy

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener

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By design, I know as little about the tech world as possible. I’ve never spent time in northern California, rarely read tech articles (except if they’re bashing the gaetekeepers of social media), and just generally avoid news of that world. I’ve been dipping my toe in the water lately, first with Bad Blood and now this one. That has less to do with curiosity about the world they depict and more to their popularity. I’m glad this one was written by someone my age because I don’t […]

One for the times

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Well, this one was certainly timely. Startup is a tech story set in New York, not Silicon Valley. All the main characters work for two companies in the same building–one, the titular startup and the other a TechCrunch-style news source. The characters feel a little stock, frankly. There’s the tech bro, the jaded reporter, the dogged reporter, the put-upon wife, the pretty girl. As tech bro starts to secure another round of fund for his (honestly, useless) app, a story starts to break that he […]

You’re Not Paranoid, You Really Have No Privacy

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  The title of this book really is Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (WTF). As it clips along you find yourself wondering: who can you really trust? Who is watching you and why? Who is the greater threat: government or unregulated big corporations? We’ve given up our privacy willingly, but what else are we giving up? What if we’re giving away ourselves, only to have to buy it back? And why am I laughing?   Leila, a non-profit worker stationed in Myanmar, is familiar with a government […]



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