My book for April is The Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher. Sharon and I saw her interviewed on the Bill Mahr HBO show. I was intrigued and bought the book.
Kara Swisher, a veteran tech journalist known for her sharp wit and incisive questioning, takes aim at the tech industry. Part memoir, part history, Burn Book chronicles the rise of Silicon Valley's elite and explores the motivations and ambitions that fueled the tech boom. Swisher weaves her own experiences covering the industry with profiles of tech's biggest names. Swisher holds these leaders accountable by highlighting the ways their pursuits of changing the world often resulted in unintended consequences.
For me, part of the book was a walk down memory lane. I bought a TRS-80 Model 1 in 1979. Over the next 45 years, I worked for financial services and healthcare companies working to implement technology. I was on business side of all the trends that she outlines; trying to sort out how to incorporate the consumer trends into the mainline business. One of the biggest impacts for me was how the consumer trends impacted business users expectations [read: just make it as easy as shopping on Amazon...]. The book isn't quite as a good as it vears into Swisher's profiles with the tech executives her personal history. Nevertheless, I recommend it to anyone who has worked in the tech industry over the last fifty years.
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