Tech Should (and Can) be Better Public

Created and curated by Derek Caelin

Books about technology, how it shapes our lives, its pitfalls, and how things can get better.

  1. Design Justice by 

    5 stars

    An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological …

    Derek Caelin says:

    We need to prioritize and value marginalized users when we build tools.

  2. Code and other laws of cyberspace by 

    No rating

    Although the book is named Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig uses this theme sparingly. It is a fairly …

    Derek Caelin says:

    An aging tome (the surveillance capitalism bogeyman of the era this was written is AOL) but still incredibly relevant and sound.

  3. Twitter and tear gas by 

    5 stars

    A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements' greatest strengths and frequent challenges. To understand …

    Derek Caelin says:

    How we organize impacts the resilience, capacity, and cohesion of movements.

  4. Derek Caelin says:

    The big tech companies that underly our digital world impact what everything that is built upon them.

  5. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by 

    4 stars

    Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for …

    Derek Caelin says:

    Many tech solutions are designed to mitigate the problems on society rather than challenge the structural and systemic factors causing them.

  6. Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, A New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet by ,

    No rating

    Real democracy and the Internet are not mutually exclusive.

    Here, for the first time in one volume, are some of …

    Derek Caelin says:

    What if we built tools where the users of the tool were the owners, rather than the product to be sold.

  7. Antisocial media by 

    3 stars

    "If you wanted to build a machine that would distribute propaganda to millions of people, distract them from important issues, …

  8. Weapons of Math Destruction by 

    No rating

    A former Wall Street quant sounds an alarm on the mathematical models that pervade modern life — and threaten to …

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