David Given Schwarm

Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World by Joseph Menn My rating: 3 of 5 stars Basically an extended Wired article about CDC. Fun playful start, over blown contributions in the middle, tragic Gamer Gate Period, and important political legacy–a fairly standard arch & not much new information. I liked some of the early history–a fun reminder of where we came from. I continue to not be impressed on the impact hackers claim to have on computer trends–I mean yeah they were saying and doing all these things, but in my opinion, big tech shops mostly ignored them. The tragedy of having rapist members was odd since their was so much celebration of the prostitutes at the early events–there was this weird double standard on a lot of the issues by the author. And the Author becomes the story towards the end with all this stuff on politics that is boring and not really interesting at all or relevant to the topic–the book goes off the rails as the author becomes more and more proud of himself and looses sight of this subjects. I do not know–I guess we need books like this, but more technical & less hyperbolic would likely be a good starting point for the next story teller… View all my reviews