Humane Tech Reading List
These books explain the concerns that inspire the humane technology movement, which aims to bring about a world in which people are respected and supported by the tech they use instead of being exploited.
“What is the problem?”, the interviewer asked, at the beginning of the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma. He was met by pauses and gulps by his expert interviewees. “Yeah, I’m trying to give a single, succinct… I’m trying to touch on many different problems” replied one former Facebook employee.
Allow me to rephrase the question with context: What is so harmful about the big tech platforms and the business models behind them? This is the question that The Social Dilemma attempts to answer. The film is intended to shock, and certainly makes an impact, with expert interviews bolstered by a dramatisation that includes personified algorithms. You go away from the film with a sense that something is wrong and needs to change, and you have some idea what that is, but would perhaps struggle to explain it clearly.
If you’re one of the more than 100 million who have seen The Social Dilemma and are ready to learn more, you could do worse than start with the books we’ve curated below. Many of the authors of these books were featured in the film and are advisors or allies of the Center for Humane Technology. Others were not, but their works contribute to an overall understanding of the problems we are facing around distracting and addictive tech.
You’ll learn the meaning of myriad terms like the attention economy, behavioural modification, surveillance capitalism, and persuasive tech. Your understanding of “the problem” will be crystallised and you’ll hopefully be able to explain these harms to your friends. You’ll also understand some of the solutions being proposed to bring about more ethical and humane tech.
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Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, Natasha Dow Schüll
“Addiction by Design is a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life. At stake in Schull’s account of the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance is a blurring of the line between design and experience, profit and loss, control and compulsion.”
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff
“In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.“
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkle
Third edition of a 2011 book explaining how our relationship with technology is making us spend less time with each other even if we are physically in the same room.
The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, Tim Wu
“Feeling attention challenged? Even assaulted? American business depends on it. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of messaging, advertising enticements, branding, sponsored social media, and other efforts to harvest our attention. Tim Wu argues that this condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century’s growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human attention.“
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Jonathan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff
Discusses the problems of the generation born after around 1995 (gen-Z). Particularly of interest, the story of how smart phones and social media use in teens is raising anxiety levels.
Future Minds: How the Digital Age Is Changing Our Minds, Why This Matters, and What We Can Do About It, Richard Watson
Written just as smart phones were becoming ubiquitous, a futurologist explains the new challenges of the digital age in changing our minds, and suggests how we can minimise the downsides of this transition.
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, Adam Alter
A professor of psychology and marketing explains addictive technology and the business models that depend on keeping us hooked.
Mind Change: How digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains, Susan Greenfield
Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield compares the changes to our brains in the digital age to the climate change crisis, claiming that “Mind Change, just like climate change, is global, unprecedented, controversial and multifaceted”
mindful.technology review: “Mind Change is far from the most captivating read, so I would not recommend as an introduction to the topic, but for those wanting to dive deeper and perhaps start exploring the scientific literature, it’s worth a read.”
The New Possible: Visions of Our World beyond Crisis, Justin Rosenstein, Tristan Harris, 26 others
A collection of essays presenting ideas for the post-pandemic world. The book is associated with One Project, a non-profit founded by Justin Rosenstein, who worked on creating the Like button at Facebook but is now a Humane Tech enthusiast as well as co-founder of Asana. Also includes an essay from Tristan Harris, President of Center for Humane Technology.
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, Nicholas Carr
This is the 10th anniversary edition of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist. It explains how, due to neuroplasticity, our use of the internet may be changing our brains, for example to reduce our attention spans.
Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier, a pioneer of VR, explains how social media platforms engage in “behavioral modification”, why this is a concern, and suggests we disengage from these platforms at least until alternatives emerge that better respect our individuality.
mindful.technology review: “At just under 150 pages, this is a short and snappy book, which might just convince you to quit social media. As the book’s conclusion says, you do not have to stay quit forever: you can consider it an experiment”
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, Cathy O’Neil
How algorithms and big data are impacting our lives, are without the human factor, are often uncontestable and lead to discrimination.
Is there a humane tech book we’ve missed that you would recommend? Let me know in the comments!
Originally published at https://mindful.technology on January 7, 2022.
At mindful.technology, I review meditation and digital well-being apps. I write about digital habits and how humane technology can be less distracting and addictive, allowing us to have a healthier balance between our online and offline lives.
