Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business

By Frederic Dannen

This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information

By Andy Greenberg

This  book is shaping up wonderfully. I just love the title and the tribute to Woody Guthrie. It starts with a general history of privacy on the internet.

One of the first characters we meet is Phil Zimmerman, who explored the idea of the "one-time pad" and took it digital and named it PGP.

So Zimmrman is called.to testify for.Congress on cryptagraphy also indicted for hos PGP. And on the heels.pf all this we get the clipper chip. The chip.offer good encryption but the catch is there is a baxk door cor.the gov to check.anything encrypted with. It lead a group of cypherpunks to put "big brother inside"  stickers on the offending computers. That is until Intel got sue happy

The author meets with an early cryto-geek with the archives to a listserve for his friends. Anonynously posted to this group is a leak about the Australian government selling information to help people track down debtors. They figure.out is Julian Assange.pre-wikileaks. Riot huh?

So here we learn about TOR (stands for the onion router). Its that super-secret program that you can.use to gain anonymity on the internet. They say it really works but personally I would not trust it.

251 We travel next to Iceland where some of the worlds most controversial websites are hosted, including WikiLeaks and PiratesBay. And when the greedy global bankimg elite crashed this economy, the people took to the internet. The author quotes Robert Marshall,"The first facebook revolution didn't happen in Tunisia or Egypt." It happened right there in Iceland. The irate Icelanders fprcex.put the currupt and inept government and replaced it. One of.the main objectives was a law to permanently ban the "so called" International Monetary Fund from the country. Just a bit a advice here in general if the IMF shows up in your country to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, quickly put your hand on your wallet and keep walking. JS, just saying.

Pg268 Icelandic activist Jonsdottir, who, fed up with American requests for her private Twitter feed says,"The United States could also repeal the Patriot Act and try [a little] democracy instead of tyranny." This person is commenting on the.complete.disregard for privacy that the corpratocracy has inflicted on us here in America. In case there is still any doubt, nothing you do, say or write on the internet is private. Your information is bought, sold and traded all without your say so. Remember when we were free in America? Were we ever?

The author finally has a little chat with Evgeny Morrozov, whose book .Net Delusion argues that instead of the creating revolutions, it's creating a more effective surveillance system. When asked what he thinks of Wiki Leaks he says that yes they post embarrasing things about the rulers but so what. Then nothing happens, nothing changes.  Most people already know how corrupt their leaders are, they still support them. How do you fight that?

We finish up with all the excruciatong details of the breakup of Assange and Domscheit-Berg. The.subkect was covered beautifully in Bergs' memoir.

City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago

By Gary Krist

Chicago 1919, a year of disaster for those who lived it. From the firey crash of the Wingfoot Express to the murder of little Janet Wilkinson, to the transit strike, to ('dose bums) the Black Socks, the inhabitants of this western metropolis saw a little of every kind of trouble.

Their politicians (much like ours today) were ineffectual, partisan and got very little of the peoples' business accomplished. When asked of he wanted to clean up Chicago politics, Judge "Kennesaw Mountain" Landis, soon to be baseballs' first commissioner said,"i'd rather clean the shithouse."

This book gives all the sordid details of life in Chicago in that disasterous year of 1919

I give ot a 6/10 not bad.

Digital Vertigo: how today"s social revolution is dividing, diminishing and disorieting us

By Andrew Keen
Yet another book about our vanishing privacy in the digital age, this book aims to document the loss and the reasons.

Love this quote from pg 4 by German Sociologist Georg Simmel, "" living in the city "grants the individual a kind and amount of personal freedom which has no analogy whatever under any other condition."" There"s alot to be said about getting lost in the crowd of the big city. It"s pretty much complete anonymity. But with today"s technology, being just a face in the crowd is getting to be.much more difficult.

Pg 7 Here author Keen is talking with Linkedin CEO Reid Hoffman about social networks and those who, like Warren and Brandeis wish to be ''let alone.'' There remain many, who are not  ready for this digital Brave New World. @quixotic, Hoffmans" Twitter handle, counters brilliantly with Aristotle, ''that man is, by nature,
a social animal.'

I've seen the future and it is social says author Keen. Web 3.0 companies that will dominate the immidiate digital future will be social. All of the majpr players in the digital space are vying fpr position in the very lucrative social future.

Email is already out dated, i'll text you the reasons why.

"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." Scott Mcneally Sun Microsystems.

A super node is someone witb alot of online connections/friends. In the future these people will be sought out for their abiloty to influence others.

Pg 62 "Wealth equals connectivity in the web 3.0 world."

Those days when we could just move away and reinvent ourselves may no longer be possible. The web has a long memory.

Can we really trust industry to respect our privacy? I think that would be a little naive to believe. I mean it's bogus and if we dont adopt some cool rules now, then we'll just be bogus too.

Poor Prince Albert, instead of his Crystal Palace leading to the clanking together of crystal goblets in a celebration of internationlal brotherhood, it lead to Kristallnact. Technology, however seductive, will never unite us.

148 Here we hear about the Oxford Mal, the former prison turned into a luxury hotel. The peepholes have been reversed to allow us to see out at all times but not view our neighbors. This is the metaphor for this book and  for us in this digital age. Im reminded of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer gets some to reverse their peepholes so everyone can see in at all times, hilarity ensues. The video is on Youtube.

162 So who will protect our privacy online. In a sort of e-G8, a summit was held.to discuss these very questions. The big-wigs of Web 3.0, i.e. Zuckerberg and Schmidt say no to government regulation. That position does not surprise me at all. They have had it theie own way for a long time now and the smug attitude that no one could.possibly grasp whats going on digitally but them is really starting to get old.

Do i want "hands-off" my internet from government? Yes, mostly, but unrestrained entrepreneurism is never a good thing.

168 We have lived through Big Coal, Big Oil, Big Food and Big Pharma and now we are heading for the world of Big Data. This will be the next oppressor of the poor and plaything of the rich.

173 At last we ask the question.  "how many complex relationships can one person maintain?" anyway. Is it ten, 50,  or ten thousand?

175 this number, dubbed Dunbar's number is 150. That is how many we can manage. So if you have 5000 friends on facebook 4850 of them are not your friends.

Good book, covrered the sudject well. No fire though just smoke.

The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising

by Andrew Cracknell

Ahh we go back to the golden years of Madison Avenue. DDB was teaching America to "think Small" and others were teaching us not to "eat the whole thing" Later we would ask the ultimate question, "Where's the Beef/" These are those creative souls who sold us the stuff we did not need and we loved them for it. 

Ever since (saucy old) Bernays we have been tricked and cudgeled and cajoled into parting with our hard earned. And these are the people that make it happen.

I picked this up in deference to the AMC series Mad Men which I was just barely able to watch. Like most "historical" pieces, i love watching the history but usually am repelled by the spectacle. When they start adding stuff that wasn't "correct" just to make the story into something that it wasn't I usually turn it off. 

This was a good look at a great place in time in American history.

I give it a 5/10

The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything

The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything by Michael Saylor

The first revolution was agricultural and it took thousands of years. On the second revolution, the industrial, the time was speed up to just a few hundred years to remake society and makes its changes felt. Well now this third revolution Mobile Intelligence, will cut it down to "tens of years". according to the author Michael Saytlor.

Desktops were more mobile than mainframes, laptops were very mobile, but boil all that off and the vapor is mobile intelligence with tablets ans smartphones. This is what Mr Saylor speaks of in this book.

I recommend it for anyone who follows technology and the changes it brings.  

500 Days by Kurt Eichenwald

This book is about the "behinds the scenes" machinations of the Bush team just after 9/11. These are the people at the very center of power who will shape the policies that will guide America's response to the tragedy. The players are all listed from Addington, (Cheney's Cheney), to Yoo,  to the principals the cabinet members to Potus himself. I mean here is where it all originated wireless phone taps, torture memo's, Gitmo, to all else in the war on terror.

I read this because I love Eichenwald. If you have not yet read conspiracy of fools yet check that out its the definitive Enron book.

3 Stars.... Got the job done but certainly no fires were lit.