Pines and Plains Libraries

"Google. Facebook. Twitter. Repeat. We live in a world unimaginable even a few decades ago, one like no other in human history. It's a parallel world where we can be on the move in the real world, yet always hooked into an alternative time and place. And although it's a two-dimensional world of sight and sound, it offers instant information, connected identities, and constant novelty. In this world, our screen technologies are increasingly where we...

When Mae is hired to work for the world's largest and most powerful tech and social media company, she sees it as an opportunity. As she rises through the ranks, she is encouraged by the company's founder, Eamon Bailey, to engage in a groundbreaking experiment that pushes the boundaries of privacy, ethics and ultimately her personal freedom. Her participation in the experiment, and every decision she makes begin to affect the lives and future of her...

"Shoshana Zuboff, named "the true prophet of the information age" by the Financial Times, has always been ahead of her time. Her seminal book In the Age of the Smart Machine foresaw the consequences of a then-unfolding era of computer technology. Now, three decades later she asks why the once-celebrated miracle of digital is turning into a nightmare. Zuboff tackles the social, political, business, personal, and technological meaning of "surveillance...

There was a time when the sight of a Western Union delivery boy coming up the walk filled Americans with a sense of excitement or trepidation. Between its invention in the mid-nineteenth century and its post-1960s relegation to money transfer and congratulations, the telegraph served as the primary medium for urgent messages. Telegram! collects the most poignant and revealing examples of this earliest form of instant communication. Organized into...

Are tech giants the new robber barons of the digital age? Many governments and ordinary people are increasingly uncomfortable with the monopolistic might a small number of tech companies are amassing, the taxes they are avoiding, the data they are collecting, the privacy they are undermining, and the way they are functioning as extraterritorial powers beholden to no state and to no citizen or consumer. All sides of this super-charged debate are represented...