Hacker News Books

40,000 HackerNews book recommendations identified using NLP and deep learning

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comrhonJan 23, 2015

"The people who work at Google, Facebook, etc can’t imagine how everything they make is not, like, totally awesome."

This is basically the premise of Dave Eggers' The Circle which takes it to a very scary conclusion.

flippyheadonAug 11, 2014

Every since I read The Circle stuff like this seems to ring true.

clydethefrogonApr 19, 2016

Three years after publication, Dave Egger's The Circle is becoming more and more presageful. Exaggerations in the book are becoming actual quotes.

pushpoponJune 14, 2019

That episode was good, but the book/film The Circle I think covered this type of scenario better (even if the movie adaptation did leave a little to be desired)

legelonDec 31, 2015

There's a great book called The Circle by Dave Eggers that features a scenario with representatives also under constant surveillance. It wasn't painted to be too pretty. But I would agree that accountability in the face of "corruption from special interests" is one of the greatest issues in government.

ninkendoonDec 30, 2016

The Circle was an interesting idea wrapped in a really terrible book. Every page was full of terribly-paced plot development, one dimensional characters and cliched rip-offs of 1984.

__johnonJuly 11, 2015

You might be interested in The Circle by Dave Eggers.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle

ghaffonSep 12, 2016

See The Circle by David Eggers for a fictional account. I'm not sure I really recommend the book as SF, but it's an interesting read if taken as a deliberately over-the-top "if this goes on" sort of fable.

lexaponJune 16, 2015

Looking forward to reading this!

I've been on the lookout for "The Great American Internet Novel" for many years. Eggers' The Circle was crap.

ghaffonDec 11, 2019

The Circle (both book and film) was, sadly, a largely botched attempt to explore issues like privacy, the power of tech companies, widespread surveillance, etc.

Missed opportunity in that the book was only readable if you took it as a deliberately over the top "if this goes on" fable. And the film was mostly notable for how it squandered a top-notch cast.

juntoonFeb 1, 2015

  That would make a good episode of Black Mirror. Titled "The
Privacy Freaks", it would show people in a social network
observing the lives and making fun of the absurd things
privacy concerned people do to stay "out".

You should read "The Circle" by David Eggers. It is basically this.

mlang23onOct 15, 2020

I regularily see shady ads as well. This is the actual outrage IMO. Before going off and create a corporate censorship network, they should at least apply some "standars" to what they let through on the ad side.
But I guess it is all too late. The Circle proofs to be a pretty prophetic book.

ghaffonDec 25, 2016

On the one hand, I have some trouble recommending The Circle because it's so heavy-handed and overwrought. I nearly put it down. But, if you read it as a deliberately over-the-top "if this goes on" cautionary tale, it's a lot easier to appreciate it IMO.

closeparenonDec 30, 2016

It's easy to forget on HN, but there is far from universal buy-in for the notion that having or collecting data on people is unethical. Some may even consider it noble to optimize and perfect the world and its institutions (including commerce, via efficient advertising) using large-scale personal data.

The impulse to make something better by applying a database engine that you might feel for business processes, can just as easily be felt for customer interactions or the world at large.

For an interesting (and very critical) look at this philosophy I recommend The Circle by Dave Eggers.

hanswesterbeekonMar 24, 2016

That article reads identical to the first few chapers of The Circle by Dave Eggers.

ghaffonJan 6, 2016

Dave Eggers' The Circle is perhaps worth reading in this context. I don't actually think it's a very good book and is mostly tolerable if it's read in the vein of a deliberately exaggerated "if this goes on" cautionary tale. But there are a number of speeches by one of the characters (Bailey?) in the vein of why radical transparency is good.

dskangonAug 26, 2014

For anyone who's curious what a world in which everyone is forced to throw away their privacy and embrace complete transparency might look like, Dave Eggers wrote a fantastic book called The Circle (http://www.amazon.com/The-Circle-Dave-Eggers/dp/0385351399) that explores that very concept. Highly recommended.

mindcrimeonDec 6, 2016

It'll be interesting to see how well they pull this off. I read the novel and enjoyed it, although not as much as I had (hoped|expected|whatever) based on the premise. Still, the movie adaptation should have a chance to be pretty interesting.

And on a sorta related note... I just started watching Black Mirror and halfway though episode one (if not earlier), I was thinking "this is like The Circle by Dave Eggers".

ghaffonOct 5, 2015

I was ready to stop reading The Circle after a bit because it was so over-the-top. However, as the book went on, I found that it kinda worked for me if read as a deliberately and wildly exaggerated cautionary tale parable of sorts--rather than as serious speculative fiction. Still wasn't enamored with it but possibly worth a read.

mseebachonApr 17, 2018

Except it's (mis)representing itself as an insiders view. Kind of reminds me of The Circle, iirc the author made a point out of not researching how Google/Facebook works when writing it, instead preferring to indulge his fantasies.

At least The Circle didn't pretend not to be fiction, this seems like it wants to be journalism. And that's, frankly, a problem.

kjdal2001onDec 22, 2016

I wasn't a huge fan of The Circle. It did a decent job of presenting the creep of surveillance powers that come along with ever more useful social media features. But it didn't have a coherent argument against them. It was sort of left to the reader to see (or maybe just feel) how dangerous The Circle was getting, because most of the characters themselves didn't. Even the ones who did couldn't explain why.

Maybe I just went into the book expecting an examination of the types of tradeoffs we make when interacting with social media, and instead got a thriller. The Circle works pretty well as a thriller to be honest, its just that there is still room for a more serious novel on its subject matter.

smbvonMay 27, 2021

It feels like the fiction novel The Circle (by Dave Eggers) was used as a handbook to create a company.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18302455-the-circle

mlang23onJuly 2, 2019

It is already 6 years old. I had a great time reading it when a friend recommended it to me about 3 years ago: The Circle by Dave Eggers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)

And do yourself a favour, never watch the movie version from 2017. The end has been butchered which ruins the whole message of the story.

gedraponDec 22, 2016

- Introductory Statistics with R by Dalgaard, Peter. A solid introduction to stats, don't be scared by R bit in the title - it contains plenty of maths/theory so that knowledge is widely applicable. Brilliant introductory for everyone who wants to do something stats related. It's amazing how much can be done with no fancy deep learning algorithms, just plain simple stats.

- Statistics Done Wrong by Alex Reinhart. Plenty of gotchas with real world examples from academia. Well written and easy to read.

- The Circle by Dave Eggers. This one was scary. About imaginary corporation (a blend of Facebook and Google and Amazon) and probably not too distant future. If you liked Black Mirrors, you will love this.

- Brave New World by Huxley, Aldous. Classic novel with interesting thoughts about engineered society, where every human is assigned class, purpose in the society and feature at birth.

- Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Bilton, Nick. Read this book in a weekend, really well written and well researched about the inception of Twitter.

- Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Tetlock, Philip E. A study on people with above average ability to forecast feature events (mostly geo-political). Talks about measuring predictions and improving them.

- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Brilliant book about overlooking rare events which have dramatic consequences because 'it's unlikely to happen'.

teekertonFeb 24, 2020

Also: The Circle by Dave Eggers.

wyldfireonMay 23, 2017

It doesn't seem that simple. It sounds as if the scope includes more than just products.

> The lawsuit alleges that Google’s leaks policy covers essentially all company information and prohibits reasonable discussion about company activities.

...

> One policy allegedly even prevents employees from writing a novel about working for a large Silicon Valley corporation — like, for instance, Dave Eggers’ dystopian novel, The Circle — without first getting final draft approval from Google.

John Doe v. Google, Inc [1].

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/334736972/John-Doe-vs-Google...

passepartoutonMar 14, 2015

> When Facebook makes you use a real name it's not because theres some "Mr. Evil" at the top level plotting to steal your freedom, it's because it leads to a better working social network.

You clearly have not thought of the situations where using your real name can be dangerous (see for example activists) or just plain misleading for the purpose of the page (see for example, famous authors etc.). The factors of real life and people needing to hide behind a pseudonym should not be disregarded so absolutely by Facebook.
I can see where your comment is coming from, but as you say about Stallman, the world is not all black and white and people should have a right to this grey area even on a social network.

Read this: https://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/10-reasons-to-le...
Also, The Circle by Dave Eggers is a bit of a frightening example.

ilzmastronJan 26, 2015

Childhoods end - Humanity takes the next step in evolution

Anhilliation - Fish out of water like story of exploring a mysterious, horrific, environment (2 sequels drag on for too much after this one though)

Many Ray Bradbury stories (Martian chronicles, and the Everyman collection contain the best ones)

Infinite Jest (Alternate American future of a culture of addiction and depravity, partly mediated by technology)

The Circle (haven't read, but like the author, life inside the biggest tech company of the future)

wallfloweronApr 9, 2016

From the article about Facebook Live

> If anything, Live further exposes Facebook’s active, seemingly unquenchable thirst for more ways to become the middleman in your digital interactions. It literally wants you to broadcast your life on the platform. But, as noted earlier, being caged doesn’t come that naturally to humans.

From "The Circle" by Dave Eggers - a "fiction" novel about a Facebook-like mega infoglomerateorporation.

> Lionel can give me access to any of the cameras he wants. It's just like friending someone, but now with access to all their live feeds. Forget cable. Forget five hundred channels. If you have one thousand friends, and they have ten cameras each, you now have ten thousand options for live footage.
...
The words dropped onto the screen:
ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN.
"Folks, we're at the dawn of the Second Englightenment. And I'm not talking about a new building on campus. I'm talking about an era where we don't allow the majority of human thought and action and achievement and learning to escape as if from a leaky bucket."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(Eggers_novel)

smacktowardonAug 29, 2019

> Even now, there are still a few novelists who set out to grab the reader by the lapels. Seaton commends Dave Eggers’ urgent Silicon Valley satire The Circle (2013) for crystallising concerns about social media in the form of a thriller and causing ripples in the worlds of tech and politics.

Oh God, I hope not. I read The Circle and found it to be a mess, making flawed arguments about subjects Eggers seems to not fully understand. (A review I wrote at the time goes into more detail on this: https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2015/06/book-review-the-circle/)

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