Bitcoin, the digital currency, was introduced in 2009 with little fanfare; five years later, shocking the world, it was worth $14 billion. This book explores the cyber currency by focusing on the remarkable stories and intriguing personalities ofthose responsible for its sudden success: Satoshi Nakamoto, the reclusive and anonymous genius who created Bitcoin; Ross Ulbricht, aka the Dread Pirate Roberts, administrator of the largest and most successful Dark Web drug superstore, using Bitcoi...

A tech-industry insider takes a critical look at the effect games are having on our short- and long-term happiness and assesses the cultural prospects of a society increasingly obsessed with gaming. The American "game economy" has become an enormous enterprise, devouring roughly one-ninth of America's entire economic output. This overview of arguably the most influential segment of the entertainment industry examines the perspectives of gaming enthusiasts, addicts, designers, arcade owners...

"A devastating portrait of the cultures and logics underlying big tech. Rushkoff is going to make you mad enough to fight back. A vital, lucid, and enraging read." —Naomi KleinFive mysterious billionaires summoned Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The subject? How to survive the "Event": the societal collapse they know is coming. Rushkoff argues that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley–style certainty that they ...

Twenty-six years after its original publication, Borsook’s “smart, funny and irreverent” (The New York Times) critique of high-tech has proved a prescient assessment of a toxic ethos which has seeped into every corner of our world.Cyberselfish saw the warning signs about a culture violently lacking in compassion, tremendously opposed to regulation, more comfortable with computers than people, and surprisingly ignorant. An ironic position, given th...

THE BASIS FOR THE FEATURE DOCUMENTARY EVERYONE IS LYING TO YOU FOR MONEYINSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERLONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR“A smart, savvy road map through the mayhem of the cryptocurrency madness.” —RON CHERNOW, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the disadvantages, power, and highlights of magical thinking.Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant” (Blythe Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • **“This transfixing debut from journalist Durán investigates the antidemocratic ideologies espoused by tech billionaires linked to the second Trump administration...It’s an ominous look at an insular elite arrayed against American democracy.” —**Publishers Weekly (starred review)A fearless and urgent chronicle of the tech-authoritarian movement from its early days in San Francis...

**A well-researched and entertaining look at how money is a made-up thing that has evolved over time to suit humanity's changing needs, from the co-host of the NPR podcast Planet Money."Should be required reading." —The New York Times**Money only works because we all agree to believe in it. In Money, Jacob Goldstein shows how money is a useful fiction that has shaped societies for thousands of years, from the rise of coins in ancient Greece to the first st...

The “brilliant” and “daringly original” (The New York Times) critique of digital networks from the “David Foster Wallace of tech” (London Evening Standard)—asserting that to fix our economy, we must fix our information economy.Jaron Lanier is the father of virtual reality and one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers. Who Owns the Future? is his visionary reckoning with the most urgent economic and social trend of our age: the poisonous ...

'If the word 'blockchain' makes you want to call a plumber, or you think Satoshi is some kind of raw fish, you need to read Cryptocurrency today. If you're already a bit-convert, you'll still learn a lot' Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money1988 saw the birth of the internet. 2008 gave us bitcoin. Today, cybercurrencies are changing the world we live in. What would a world without banks, credit cards or national currencies look like for a...

**An Esquire Best Book of 2024“An extremely important book.” —Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious GenerationA reflective, original invitation to recover and cultivate the human experiences that have atrophied in our virtual world.**We embraced the mediated life—from Facetune and Venmo to meme culture and the Metaverse—because these technologies offer novelty and convenience. But they also transform our sense of self and warp the boundaries betwee...

People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, and compile knowledge. We strove for an instantaneous network where time and space could be compressed. Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this "now" is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves ...