Book Review: Swipe to Unlock by Aditya Agashe, Neel Mehta and Parth Detroja
Swipe to Unlock by Aditya Agashe, Neel Mehta and Parth Detroja is, as promised, a primer on technology and business strategy. With technology pervading every aspect of our life, it is an important book that tries to present this world of technology and business in terms which can be understood by anyone willing to know more.
The book is primarily divided into two parts - the first part explains the basics of various technologies like algorithms, big data and machine learning, and the second part explains the business perspective behind these technologies.
The authors don’t just explain the what of the technologies like Google search, Spotify recommendations or Facebook news feed algorithms, they dive into depth about the reasons why they are better.
For example, when we type any word in the Google search box, the search engine does not just get the links of pages which have these words, it also decides, among the billions of pages available, what are the best results. This evolved from counting the number of links that point to a page to establish it’s authenticity to the more sophisticated search engine optimization algorithms that avoid websites that are link-farms ( websites with a bunch of links on them). These insights help us understand the rationale behind these technologies and help us think like a technologist, which is the goal of the authors stated at the very beginning of the book.
The second part of the book delves into the business behind these increasingly sophisticated technologies and for me, this was the most illuminating part of the book. The authors answer various questions like why would a retailer like Nordstorm offer free WiFi, or why does Amazon provide free delivery with Prime even if it is making losses? The tech acquisitions of LinkedIn, Instagram and WhatsApp have also been discussed and I couldn’t help but think how big this industry has grown in the last few decades, with many tech companies among the world’s most valuable companies. As in the first part, the authors provide various insights that give us a glimpse into this industry that is changing rapidly. The case study that stuck to me was how Amazon changes its prices every fifteen minutes to be competitive. How does it do that? Big Data! Amazon constantly evaluates buying patterns and even predicts what the customers could buy and stocks up the nearest warehouses to ensure faster delivery.
The downsides of the tech industry are discussed too, the biggest being privacy. The regulations that exist to monitor data collection are few and almost nowhere near sufficient. This too has been addressed by the authors presenting the case from a neutral perspective and calling for more attention to this area. The problems of monopoly, net neutrality etc. are discussed at length, covering the lesser known problems in the industry.
In summary, the book does achieve what it sets out to do - provide a big picture about the tech industry. While it might get overwhelming at times with the amount of new terms thrown at us, the result of sitting through them is a better insight into the workings of this industry.
