Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World
By: Bruce Schneier
Book description (via Amazon): "As we open our lives to this future, often called the Internet of Things, we are beginning to see its enormous potential in ideas like driverless cars, smart cities, and personal agents equipped with their own behavioral algorithms. But every knife cuts two ways. All computers can be hacked. And Internet-connected computers are the most vulnerable. Forget data theft: cutting-edge digital attackers can now crash your car, your pacemaker, and the nation’s power grid. In “Click Here to Kill Everybody,” renowned expert and best-selling author Bruce Schneier examines the hidden risks of this new reality."
Why you should read it: Anyone who’s had their credit card information stolen knows the feeling of vulnerability that comes along with it. But in the world of IoT, a hacker can do much more than financial damage. Schneier – a true security guru – explores attacks that are possible now or will be in the near future. Read this book to get prepared.
Agile for Everybody: Creating Fast, Flexible, and Customer-First Organizations
By: Matt LeMay
Book description (via O’Reilly): "The agile movement provides real, actionable answers to the question that keeps many company leaders awake at night: How do we stay successful in a fast-changing and unpredictable world? Agile has already transformed how modern companies build and deliver software. This practical book demonstrates how entire organizations – from product managers and engineers to marketers and executives – can put agile to work. Author Matt LeMay explains agile in clear, jargon-free terms and provides concrete and actionable steps to help any team put its values and principles into practice."
Why you should read it: Like an agile workshop in a book, this read promises practical, actionable steps to take agile from theory to reality within your organization. LeMay also highlights real examples of agile in action across a variety of companies, which can help bring the ideas to life.
DevOps For The Modern Enterprise: Winning Practices to Transform Legacy IT Organizations
By: Mirco Hering
Book description (via Amazon): "Mirco Hering, a thought leader in managing IT within legacy organizations, lays out a roadmap to success for IT managers, showing them how to create the right ecosystem, how to empower people to bring their best to work every day, and how to put the right technology in the driver's seat to propel their organization to success. But just having the right methods and tools will not magically transform an organization; the cultural change that is the hardest is also the most impactful. Using principles from Agile, Lean, and DevOps as well as first-hand examples from the enterprise world, Hering addresses the different challenges that legacy organizations face as they transform into modern IT departments."
Why you should read it: We’ve heard again and again from IT leaders that culture change is the hardest part of implementing DevOps. Hering recently told us: “We are past the days where we had to educate stakeholders that DevOps is a good thing, which is great. But now we see places where the focus is purely on what can be or is already automated. Those places have hired or built some excellent tech people, but the management of the overall process has sometimes been lost. In 2019, we need to focus on the incremental nature of DevOps.” Pick up this book if you want to think smarter about DevOps this year.
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
By: Adam Alter
Book description (via Amazon): "Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction — an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans. In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible."
Why you should read it: There’s no denying the addictive nature of social media and smartphones, but this downside also comes with a lot of good, like the ability to connect and communicate with people all over the world. If you want to learn how to harness the good parts and mitigate the bad parts of the addictive technologies in your life, pick up this book.
Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That Will Improve and/or Ruin Everything
By: Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
Book description (via Amazon): "In this smart and funny book, celebrated cartoonist Zach Weinersmith and noted researcher Dr. Kelly Weinersmith give us a snapshot of what's coming next – from robot swarms to nuclear fusion powered-toasters. By weaving their own research, interviews with the scientists who are making these advances happen, and Zach's trademark comics, the Weinersmiths investigate why these technologies are needed, how they would work, and what is standing in their way."
Why you should read it: A lighter option that promises plenty of laughing and learning for science and technology buffs. One five-star reviewer noted: “Not only are many different facets of technology explained clearly and thoroughly, but the comics add a good dose of humor and even aid in the explanations. An excellent choice to get caught up on the many exciting fields of mature and emerging science.”
