Right. Let’s start this.
I found myself going back to services like Goodreads to track my books and thought about moving towards beyond that. First, I found out that Goodreads does have an RSS feature, so I could still stalk my smart friends (Tommaso, if you’re reading, it’s you!) for great suggestions without an account/profile on that, so that’s good. And for my own tracking, I thought I could create a category on this to keep track of my readings. Haven’t thought about a way to “port” the reading challenge, which I think it’s fun, but I’ll look into that.
So, there are two books that I read this past month (ish) that I would highly recommend to anyone.
First, it’s Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari: a historic overview of the balance between information and order, power and truth; from ancient history to the dawning of the AI era. Although, hearing about the author, I am being cautious about praising him overall, I have to admit reading this book reinforced my idea of getting off from socials as quickly as possible. The way we have been feeding the upcoming AI industry is such a scam and we should all accept that we have been victim, and we should claim our data back. I appreciated a lot the part about data as new currency and the challenge about taxation in this scenario. Also, the obvious warnings about the tech-oligarchs, which by now in January 2025 feels uncomfortably too late, thanks for the awful American election outcomes. I wish people did care a bit more.
To read more: https://www.ynharari.com/book/nexus/
The second book, you might see a pattern here, is The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. This book focuses on the damage of smartphone and (but actually mostly) social media on children and adolescence. I am for sure no GenZ-er, but I could definitely recognise some unhealthy behaviour I had in the past, and maybe some even now, and reading actual data on how the damage we did to ourselves, well it’s disheartening. And then you think about all that Harari wrote about all other damages these tools (read it as you wish) did to us, and then the question is simple: how did we let this happen? And most importantly, how do we change it? Giving up the internet as we know it is not just hard but also quite sad, but it is actually already happening. The invasion of false information, machine generated content, fake and impersonal interactions, and then you add the unhealthy amount of time we spend interacting with it, because it is all so easy… That’s not fun any more. I remember a time when being on the internet, or using a computer, was fun, entertaining, informative, creative even! Video games were safe calming spaces, finding information about your favourite artist was easy and trauma-free, having the first conversation online with people all over the country and the world felt exciting and uniting. And now, everything feels aggressive, competitive and worst of all addictive. This goes way beyond children and adolescence, however they do suffer the most, and we cannot even find some time to stop and think about how to fix it. If you decide to spend that time, this book is a good shy start. I recommend it to anyone, especially parents.
To read more: https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/book
Any suggestion? A text or an email is always welcome 🙂 A call too, but warn me first! xD