Customer Reviews

The Best of Technology Writing 2007

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Covering topics like crowd-sourcing, data prediction, driverless cars, virtual gaming environments, human powered vehicles, music analysis, network neutrality, digital film production, search data, crossword generators, online dating, and YouTube fame this collection collates many interesting and compelling essays on a variety of topics with a range of tones from humorous to philosophical. Of course, there's an obligatory piece from the Onion, but other good funny writing includes Phillip Smith's "The Worst Date Ever for an Apple Tech" and the dark, intriguing discussion of UrbanBaby.com entitled "Mothers Anonymous" by Emily Nussbaum. As for philosophy, Kevin Kelly's "Scan This Book!" makes a wonderful argument for freeing information whereas Clive Thompson's "A Head for Detail" reminds us that even though we can create a surrogate memory, we probably should avoid doing so unless we're willing to surf through a sea of metadata to find the memory we need. Finally, Jason Lanier's "Digital Maoism: the Hazards of the New Online Collectivism" should be required reading for anyone interested in the collision between information science and sociology. Overall, this essay collection (like the rest published annually by UM) serves as a great resource to discuss how new technological developments impact how we live, work, think, and feel.

This is a great collection of essays from the blogosphere covering tech topics and some integrating tech into very funny stories.

This is written pretty much as the who's who amongst bloggers for 2006-2007.

Great bedtime reading.

Superb collection of tech essays with some emphasis on the information technology/internet side of things. Nicely touches on the human element (social networking) and the changes that connected computers have brought to this aspect of human behavior. Very funny in parts.

This is a great book to carry around on your errands and read whenever you get the chance. It's full of short articles from multiple periodicals, blogs, newspapers, etc. They are all extremely well written, insightful, and relevant to todays technological state of the world (but what less would you expect from a collection of the BEST tech writing of the year). There are stories with meaningful psychological and philosophical implications, such as Aaron Swartz's, "A Non-Programmers Apology" that emphasizes the importance of following your passions for work. The last paragraph left me laughing and crying a bit - it's great. And there are stories that most anyone can enjoy, an example would be "Mothers anonymous" a great profile of [...], a open-posting website for all types of mothers across the work. The juxtaposition of this sort of motherhood advice with old Dr. Spock is hilarious and priceless...

I'd highly recommend this book, and I can't wait to read the newer collections.