PositiveThe Financial Times (UK)... clear and insightful ... while the pandemic is addressed in a short preface, it is an imperfect guide to today’s challenge. And yet, its arrival is opportune and the deeper questions it explores are informative ... most practical when Berman lays out the strategies that have failed or worked to win over vaccine critics ... Berman succeeds in taking a thorough medical history and diagnosing the problem — but he does not offer a convincing cure ... The book is at once timely and not timely enough. For example, it characterises anti-vaxxers as mostly \'crunchy\' parents, hippies at home with homeopathy. It only briefly mentions a 2018 survey that showed a new correlation between rightwing ideologies and anti-vaccine sentiment on display in recent protests ... should be a call to arms for each of us to persuade others to take a vaccine, if it is proven safe and effective. Without such a crowdsourced approach, we will not have the time to win people over.
Roger McNamee
PositiveFinancial Times\"McNamee excels at grounding Facebook in the historical context of the technology industry. Shedding fresh light on an already deeply covered story, he describes how Facebook was born when tech start-ups were suddenly no longer limited by processing power, memory and network bandwidth ... While Zucked is an excellent account of the story so far, Facebook’s fate is far from sealed. McNamee admits his analysis is still more of an \'emerging hypothesis\' than a firm conclusion.\
Bruce Schneier
PositiveThe Financial Times\"The early architects of the internet did not want it to kill anybody. In cyber security expert Bruce Schneier’s new book, David Clark, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recalls their philosophy: \'It is not that we didn’t think about security. We knew that there were untrustworthy people out there, and we thought we could exclude them\'. Schneier describes how the internet, developed as a gated community, is now a battleground where these untrustworthy people cause great harm: harnessing computers to kill by crashing cars, disabling power plants and perhaps, soon enough, using bioprinters to cause epidemics ... Schneier skilfully guides readers through serious attacks that have happened already — and moves on to those he believes are just over the horizon ... This book is convincing, but not comforting. Schneier is clear on what should happen next but admits he is no political expert. In the end, today’s divided politics may end up being yet another vulnerability for hackers to exploit — and the internet may kill.
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David Patrikarakos
PositiveThe Financial TimesIn War in 140 Characters: How Social Media is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century, journalist David Patrikarakos meets the people behind these influential social media accounts, building dramatic narratives that show the power of what he calls 'Homo digitalis,' the online individual ...argues convincingly that individuals using social media can be more powerful than institutions ...a fascinating tour of how social media is being used in conflict the world over, from the propaganda and recruiting frequently covered in the press, to how informal groups are gathering to fact-check claims online ...he lacks a deep understanding of how platforms such as Facebook and Twitter work...filled with fantastic on-the-ground reporting on how social media is changing war.
Tim Wu
PositiveThe Financial Times[Wu] could hardly have chosen a better time to publish a history of attention-grabbing than the year in which a reality-TV star and infamous tweeter was elected as US president ... Wu is at times delightfully catty, bringing life to his argument ... Ultimately, The Attention Merchants is most concerned with the proper scope of advertising — with where and when rather than how it should be done.
