Clifford Nass, Corina Yen | Current, 2012 | Book
In the supposed "struggle" between people and machines, it turns out we people often treat computers like we do other people! We empathize with them, yell at them, grow attached. Nass, who passed away a few years ago, helps us accept this insight and see our relationships with each other anew.
Emily Chang | Portfolio, 2019 | Book
How can we make work dignified if each human being enters on different footing? Despite all its emphasis on metrics and therefore meritocracy, Silicon Valley is awful at treating contributions from anyone as equally valid. Instead of (merely) offering suggestions for what to do, Emily explains how this arose in the first place.
Ajay Agrawal, Avi Goldfarb and Joshua Gans | Harvard Business Review Press, 2018 | Book
What does artificial intelligence actually do better than humans, and therefore take away from our role in the economy? One answer: prediction. Machines can be (under certain conditions) so much better at anticipating the odds than we are. Our ability to know what may come to pass, which we often frame as "human judgment," might just be something we need to cede to the computers in the name of finding what makes us, truly, human. We are more than our ability to predict!
Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn | Wiley, 2018 | Book
Unfair systems make for unfair experiences for people working within them — and this book lists off the many reasons why too much corporate control of the economy, by too few corporations, has diminished the inherent fairness of a competitive economy.
George Packer | Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014 | Book
One of inequality's most searing pains is that it weakens our capacity to understand people who differ from us. Stories strengthen that muscle, and this book tells them, weaving a few yarns of a troubling America.
Srdja Popovic and Matthew Miller | Spiegel & Grau, 2015 | Book
If you have a change you want to provoke — at your workplace, in your country — this guide gives practical tips on putting common sense, funnies and heart to work for you. And not all those changes must be revolutions, even if sometimes that's exactly the blueprint that's required.