Wonderful, @dankallen. Thank you for volunteering 
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I came across this article on fighting social-media addiction by reading. Reminded me of @sidnya’s suggestion to fight the urge to grab a smartphone by picking up a book instead.
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Thank you for volunteering to review my book. Please pm me so I can share the details with you.
Hi Pat,
Please do let me know the right way to go about the book review. Thanks!
A post was merged into an existing topic: Humane Technology reading lists
All, here is something I made for our club. We can talk about ways to improve it, and of course it can be made in bright, happy colors as well as serious ones.
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Agree on the feature request for @aschrijver: keep this thread open. I’d love to keep commenting on this one for months! [Also, can links open in new tabs?] Just bought the book! Stoked.
Question @gkrishnaks: What do you use to read ebooks? Tablet? Kindle?
Don’t worry @loundy, we never close threads prematurely. Once facilitated a project remains active, but if people do not participate they’d just be ‘on hold’.
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@loundy which book did you just buy? 
A kind hearted person once decided to gift me a Kindle Paperwhite without checking with me first… well surprise gift. So yes I use it but not the default store. Only load in books manually via USB. For example I bought machine learning books oreilly bundle in humblebundle few months back and USB-transferred the books.
Oh good god heck yes @patm - love it!
In conversations about Humane Tech, Walden seems to be coming up everywhere these days. If you’ll forgive me for going full-fledged liberal arts for a moment: Walden is what we talk about when we talk about Humane Tech. Culturally-speaking, I see Thoreau as the world’s first “entitled Millenial.” (He’s the kind of person who wouldn’t be at Burning Man, but he’d have a whole lot to say about it.)
For me, Thoreau recently popped up in Rebecca Solnit’s Call Them by Their True Names (my favorite essay of the whole lot is available for free. Have at it!) Also, Walden appears in Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, and Kevin Roose’s recent viral piece in the New York Times about quitting his iPhone to “unbreak his brain.”
Whether we like it or not, Walden is practically a Holy Text for this community. Undoubtedly, that’s a double-edged sword. The fact that most people just pretend to read it is ironic to the extreme. Our movement (I think) is about slowing down. Being with intention. And, significantly more challenging: Being with intention with technology.
I think it would be awesome if we could all rally around a single book and then maybe have a Google Hangouts in a month or two after everyone has read it. Everyone should be able to weigh-in on the book selection process, of course. I’d like to nominate Walden!
Also, this Thoreau smackdown in The New Yorker is, I think, one of the best things ever published in that magazine (which is saying a lot!)
PS Three cheers to @aschrijver. Keep crushing it!
PSS Check out this thread, friends @PatMc @andrewmurraydunn @blankson - the movement is picking up steam!! 
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Doctorow’s Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free and I’m going to read it on my iPad!
Oh cool, glad you picked it up. It’s a fantastic book. Have you read any other book(s) of his? I read little brother and its sequel long ago.
I really wish to buy his WalkAway novel but it’s not directly sold in India at a cheaper price i.e have to pay price + import shipping charges. I will wait for when price reduces a bit in his official store (as I can’t buy in kindle’s store…)
Nope - nothing. But I’m eager to jump in!
I saw that Neil Gaiman & Amanda Palmer wrote intros. I’m just finishing up Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and I’m, like, jaw on the floor about how not good it is, lol. The dialogue is stale and the few female characters are basically sex objects. I’ve heard so much about Neil Gaiman for so long that I’m surprised/confused.
I’ve been wanting to read Doctorow forever. Very excited about this.
Nice, check https://craphound.com for “Little Brother” which has always been $ 0 online ebook form, and for a price on paper copy - as he published that book itself under creative commons license B-)
Since our little community has turned up a notch… i.e. building has started, lets widen the scope of this bookclub to introduce the kinds I like most, and not only these serious and often depressing ones. After all we need some more fun while building.
I hereby propose adding the best of sci-fi and fantasy to the shelves, if there is relevance to dreaming up the future with maximum imagination and fantasy. I think we need these kinds of books sorely, to improve and hone our storytelling, PR Poetry and engagement strategies.
Lesson learned: Sci-fi books are becoming real fact, and together with Fantasy books they are the best tools to tickle your imagination and creativity. And reading them is so much fun and utterly relaxing.
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We could also include books about the world’s best female hacker: Lisbeth Salander. A champion and heroine of women everywhere, Lisbeth also rights wrongs committed against women.
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I only read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Think it’s worth it to keep going with the series? (Happy [slightly late] International Women’s Day!)
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Couldn’t agree more!! 
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Right, let’s not talk about “1984-ish” books all the time 
If you wish to read about a highly inspirational person’s life in their own words, I recommend : “An Autobiography : The Story of My Experiments With Truth” by Mahatma Gandhi.
A nice online simple html version here hosted at Columbia Uni site : http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00litlinks/gandhi/ + bottom of page has printer friendly version of chapters grouped together.
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