2008

Author: Seth Shulman
Published: 2008
 

The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret makes a very convincing argument that Bell stole a key component of his successful design of a telephone from Elisha Gray. Using methodical research techniques, Shulman breaks down the many questions and contradictions that he discovered, many of which were raised in challenges to Bell's 1876 patent.
 

Fascinating read, though it should be taken with a full biography of Bell for though his claim to 'inventing' the telephone is tarnished, he was certainly responsible for many, many more innovations.
 

And lest one feel sorry for Elisha Gray (though he did miss out on a huge fortune), the book proves that the real inventor of the telephone was a German named Philipp Reis. Reis had a working device to transmit voices electronically in 1863, thirteen years before Bell's famous shout. Reis was apparently too modest to exploit his discovery commercially.

Author: Lawrence Lessig
Published: 2008
 

Excellent book. May be too simplistic for those conversant in copyright issues, but a good primer to help me better understand copyright, RIAA, and that whole Long Tail thing (sort of).
 

Also, very thorough explanation of how content can be closely held, open source, or a hybrid of the two. But how does this all relate to fiction writing?
 

Whatever incentives there may be to stay in the commons with complex, collaborative goods, that same incentive doesn't carry over automatically to all creative works. For these works [e.g. novels], nothing more than a norm will support keeping the resource open. And whether, or how, that norm survives is not, to me at least, clear. p.242

In other words: stay tuned.

Author: Charles Stross
Published: 2008
 

A bawdy tale of the racy adventures of a sexbot.

Author: Cory Doctorow
Published: 2008
 

This book should have a subtitle. Something like "Cory Doctorow's Technology Manifesto." Or, "Many things and people that have pissed off Cory Doctorow and why you should be pissed off too."