The Best Technology Writing 2010

by Julian Dibbell

The iPad. The Kindle. Twitter. When the Best Technology Writing series was inaugurated in 2005, these technologies did not exist. Now they define our 21st-century lives. As Julian Dibbell writes in his introduction to The Best Technology Writing 2010, “The digital is us. Yet for that reason, it is also something more, a lightning rod for our feelings about technology in general.”  Whether it is Sam Anderson’s giddy but troubled defense of online distractions, David Carr’s full-throated elegy to the dying world of pre-digital publishing, Steven Johnson’s warm appreciation of Twitter’s bite-size contributions to collective human intelligence, or Evan Ratliff’s fascinating month-long quest to disappear without a digital trace, many of the essays gathered here register our intense and complicated fascination with digital media.  But as Dibbell notes,  these essays also remind  us that some of the most disruptive and fascinating technologies continue to come from beyond the digital world.  Jill Lepore’s writing on the politics of breast-feeding gadgetry, Stephen Silberman’s investigation of the placebo effect in pharmaceutical testing, Burkhard Bilger reporting on efforts to build a better cook stove for the developing world, and Tad Friend’s profile of electric-car developer Elon Musk’s efforts to head off environmental catastrophe all invite us to reflect on how many aspects of human experience remain fundamentally unchanged by digital technology.

Packed with marvelous essays on technologies old and new, The Best Technology Writing 2010 is an outstanding addition to this “fantastic” (Cory Doctorow), “fascinating” (Chris Anderson) series.

The Best Technology Writing 2010 includes essays written by:
Sam Anderson
Burkhard Bilger
Joshua Bearman
Mark Bowden
David Carr
Douglas Fox
Tad Friend
Ben Greenman
Vanessa Grigoriadis
James Harkin
Adam Higginbotham
Alex Hutchinson
Steven Johnson
Kevin Kelly
Jill Lepore
Alexis Madrigal
Javier Marias
Mike Massimino
Evan Ratliff
Daniel Roth
Clay Shirky
Steve Silberman
Annie Trubek
Lawrence Weschler

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction, Essays

338 pages, Paperback

First published September 4, 2010

Reviews

[Elizabeth]

Every December, I hit a bookstore (usually Common Good Books, owned by Garrison Keillor in St. Paul) or Amazon and pick up a stack of the "Best of" series. My favorite series is the best of science writing - but it was sold out. So I picked up this one. Let's see how it goes.
Vanish - Evan Ratliff. The author, a writer for Wired, sets out to "disappear" for a month and establish a new identify while a $5000 bounty is offered to anyone who can track him down. I'm not sure it's a perfect simulation - if you're really trying to disappear, joining a facebook group dedicated to finding you may not be your best strategy. It's still fascinating and scary to read about the technology available to track people down on-line. Quick, easy read. I enjoyed the author's crisp to the point writing style.

Baby Food - Jill Lepore One of my favorite lines "A brief history of food: when the rich eat white bread and buy formula, the poor eat brown bread and breast-feed; then they trade places." This essay focuses on the rise and fall and rise of breast-feeding, particularly on the role of breast pumps that allow women to provide breast milk to to their babies even if they work a full time job. It raises, but does not answer the question, of the value that our society places on women as mothers in the workforce. At higher class white collar jobs, employers seem to strive to outdo themselves in providing better places for women to "express" their milk - but as the author points out, would the mother and child be better if the mother took the time used to accomplish that and got home from work earlier every day. In our "advanced" culture, we still have not come up with a way to balance a woman's worth in the workplace with her worth as a mother. I would have been curious to see if there are studies on whether the benefits derived from breastfeeding are tied closely to the milk itself, or to the time with the mother. The article raises this questions, but does not address whether there have been any studies on the issue. I wish more time had been put into answering the latter question - though it still does not answer the bigger question, it could help society wrestle through these issues.

Thinking Machine - Douglas Fox. One of those articles I'm certain I'll need to reread again to understand. It describes how computer scientists/engineers are working to create a computer that better replicates the workings of the human brain. Human brains are more efficient from an energy standpoint than our current computers, but less precise. Need to spend more time thinking about the implictations of this.

[Anne]

I am so thrilled to have an essay included in this collection.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read on Kindle.

[Johanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much an inspiring read and an interesting choice of articles.

[Robert Monk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast-reading snippets from the future-now that many people aren't quite aware of, yet. Plus quirky, deep perspectives on technology we thought we knew.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish this series continued.