Recommended reading for right now
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting social distancing we have composed a recommended reading list focused around books that will engage, fascinate, and delight.
Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime, A MusiComic Manifesto »
By GE WANG
Do you want to embrace your creative side? Try Artful Design. What we make, makes us. This is the central tenet of Artful Design, a photorealistic comic book that examines the nature, purpose, and meaning of design. Using music as a universal phenomenon that has evolved alongside technology, this book breaks down concrete case studies in computer-mediated toys, tools, games, and instruments, including the best-selling app Ocarina. Ge Wang implores us to both embrace and confront technology, not purely as a means to an end, but in its potential to enrich life.
Interested in this book? Consider tuning in every Wednesday 1 PM for Artful Design Television an online, multi-format weekly series encompassing artful design, music, coding, critical making with helpings of history and philosophy. No experience needed; it's free and all are welcome. For details or to register please visit the Artful Design TV page.
Silver in the Graphic Novel/Drawn Book - General category in the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards
The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism »
By NICK COULDRY and ULISES A. MEJIAS
Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free—it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, the book offers a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.
"A profound exploration of how the ceaseless extraction of information about our intimate lives is remaking both global markets and our very selves. The Costs of Connection represents an enormous step forward in our collective understanding of capitalism's current stage, a stage in which the final colonial input is the raw data of human life. Challenging, urgent, and bracingly original."
—Naomi Klein, Gloria Steinem Chair of Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies, Rutgers University
Motherhood: A Confession »
By NATALIE CARNES
Thinking about what it means to be a parent? Try Motherhood. What if Augustine's Confessions had been written not by a man, but by a mother? How might her tales of desire, temptation, and transformation differ from his? In this memoir, Natalie Carnes describes giving birth to a daughter and beginning a story of conversion strikingly unlike Augustine's—even as his journey becomes a surprising companion to her own.
The challenges Carnes recounts will be familiar to many parents. She wonders what and how much she should ask her daughter to suffer in resisting racism, patriarchy, and injustice.