Best tech books

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford
 
 People who are interested in the future of technology tend to believe that its impact on jobs and the economy is, and will be, largely benign. 
 
 OK, people in…

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
 
This is an odd cocktail of a book made up of three ingredients, shaken or stirred together with varying success. 
 
First, there’s the science: beautifully written, poetic but rigorous explanations of how trees grow and reproduce: like Biology A level taught by Seamus…

Computer Wars: The Fall of IBM and the Future of Global Technology by Charles Ferguson
 
With hindsight, tech change looks like a story of serial revolutions. But at any one time, things seem pretty stable and it’s surprisingly hard to spot those revolutions until they’re part of history…

What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly
 
Kelly is a distinguished tech journalist (former executive editor of Wired magazine) and knows everyone who’s ever been anyone in Silicon Valley. Like all the best techies of a…

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen
 
 
There’s an interesting idea behind this book: a prof from Harvard Business School, having overcome a life-threatening cancer, considers how we would live our lives if we…

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy
 
Levy is one of the best informed and best connected journalists writing about tech companies, and this book is the result of more than two hundred interviews with Google staff past and present and his…

The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser
 
 
Eli Pariser’s concept of the filter bubble is a metaphor: he fears we’re increasingly exposed only to information that software has chosen for us in response to how we have behaved online in the past…

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford
 
People who are interested in the future of technology tend to believe that its impact on jobs and the economy is, and will be, largely benign. 
 
OK, people in…

How to Thrive in the Digital Age by Tom Chatfield
 
How should we adapt our personal and professional lives to the new tools of digital communication? Answers tend to polarise between hopes that the digital revolution is the answer to all our problems…