Always a pleasure to read. And even more so when the summer holidays start and we can take to the beach or wherever to relax for a few weeks all those half-finished books and the others that were given to us and we haven’t started yet.

But it’s also a time to discover new titles, tech books to recommend… like this article we’re publishing today in MCPRO, in which we collect some of the most interesting news this year, from “How to do nothing about it” by Jenny Odell to Tripp Mike’s analysis of the new company that Apple has become, or what the Infocracy is, the likely “replacement” for our democracies in which trolls and algorithms play their cards. Let’s get started!

Infocracy: Digitization and the Crisis of Democracy – Byung-Chul Han

We live in a time when thousands of bots spread fake news, social networks are full of hate speech that influences the formation of public opinion, and armies of trolls intervene in political campaigns, influence the formation of public opinion and generate disinformation.

Conspiracy theories and propaganda dominate the political debate. Through psychometrics and digital psychopolitics, trying to influence voting behavior and avoid making conscious decisions. Byung-Chul Han’s new essay describes the crisis of democracy and attributes it to the structural change of the public sphere in the digital world. He also gives this phenomenon a name: infocracy.

Build: The Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Building – Tony Fadell

Tony Fadell was part of the General Magic team that dreamed up and built the forerunner of the smartphone in 1990. He later led the Apple teams that created the iPod and iPhone and other products that changed the history of technology.

Build is a container for the many lessons Fadell has learned about leadership, design, startups, decision-making, mentoring, failure and success during his more than 30 years of experience in Silicon Valley. In this book, he explains that you don’t have to reinvent everything from scratch to make something great. Some basic principles of cooperation and management can lay the foundation for the greatest technological advances.

The Pragmatic Programmer – David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

The Pragmatic Programmer is one of those rare technical books that gets read, re-read, and re-read for years. Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this highly influential book in 1999 to help their customers build better software and rediscover the joy of writing code.

Now, more than twenty years later, this new edition re-examines what it means to be a modern programmer. Topics range from personal responsibility and professional development architecture to make the code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse.

Written as a series of self-contained sections and full of old and new anecdotes, thoughtful examples, and interesting analogies, this book illustrates the best approaches and biggest pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. Whether you’re a beginner, an experienced programmer, or a responsible software project manager, this book will develop the habits and attitudes that form the foundation for long-term success in any career.

After Steve: How Apple Became a Billion Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul – Tripp Mickle

Author Tripp Mickle, a veteran Apple reporter who has published numerous articles and reports on the company, took an in-depth look at the drastic changes that have taken place at Apple. America’s favorite tech company since the death of its co-founder and spiritual leader Steve Jobs in 2011.

“After Steve” tells the untold story of the rise of the company’s COO-turned-CEO Tim Cook and the waning influence of chief designer Jony Ive, whom Jobs considered his godchild.

Mickle interviews hundreds of people in and around the company to describe the highlights of the Cook era, as well as tackle the big questions about how Apple could develop new, world-changing products as its profits shifted away from the iPhone.

Cyber ​​Security for Managers – Víctor Eduardo Deutsch

Cyber ​​attacks on organizations of all kinds have grown exponentially. Every day we read reports about companies and public entities that have suffered significant, even devastating, losses as a result of the actions of cybercriminals. Are we entering too dangerous a business? Are digital risks predictable? Do we have to live in fear of a cyber security incident? How should we act in the face of such an attack?

Most managers are very well trained and trained to manage the traditional risks of companies, but they have doubts when they face these new digital challenges, because they do not have training in this area or it is still at the beginning and the attacks are becoming quieter, more intelligent and sophisticated.

Cybersecurity for Managers empowers those in charge of companies and non-security or IT teams to manage the three fundamental pillars of cyber security: identify the risks that have emerged, put controls in place, and put in place the processes and organization needed to do it effectively. With simple language and a practical approach, the book also includes real cases and numerous case studies makes complex problems easier to explain and examples from history that draw analogies to the challenges of the digital age.

How to do nothing – Jenny Odell

In a world where our value is determined by productivity and performance, doing nothing can be our greatest form of protest. This is what Jenny Odell argues in this work, which radically questions the capitalization of our time, the profitability of our attention and the state of impatience and anxiety in which we live.

Marked by the invasive logic of social media and the cult of personal branding, we have forgotten what inactivity means. In this view, “doing nothing” means buying time for yourself, being contemplative and practicing perception, reconnecting with physical reality, and finding ways to relate to each other that benefit neither companies nor algorithms.

Far from being anti-technology, How to Do Nothing is a manifesto against the discourse of efficiency and techno-determinism, an original essay in which reclaiming our space from a breakneck pace is an act of resistance.