rithms are able to predict and manipulate our online behavior. McNamee’s “concerns had been building throughout 2016 and reached a peak with the news that the Russians were attempting to interfere in the presidential election.” He reached out to Zuckerberg and Sandberg with a two-page memo detailing his concerns and listing instances where Facebook was causing harm. The answer was swift and polite but treated McNamee’s letter as a PR problem rather than seriously addressing his concerns. Instead of further trying to appeal to Zuckerberg and Sandberg, McNamee teamed up with like-minded individuals like Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology and Renée DiResta of New Knowledge to prompt public and political action, which contributed to Zuckerberg testifying at two congressional hearings in April 2018. What McNamee is calling for is a regulatory -body “equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration (fda) for technology ” that ensures technology is once again deployed to serve humans, not vice versa. The concrete regulations he envisages reach from requiring third- party audits of algorithms , to making “a filter bubble-free view of Facebook News Feed and Google search results” mandatory, to granting users ownership and absolute control over their data including the ability to migrate data to other companies, which would significantly facilitate the entry of start-ups. Zucked is not a scientific study but the account of one person who came to worry about the impact of a company whose founder he once advised. This comes both with its advantages and shortcomings . Many arguments— on addictive behavior and mental health impacts, for example—the reader will likely be willing to follow. After all, don’t most of us feel like we are wasting too much time scrolling through the social-media platform of our choice? Yet intuition and personal experience do not necessarily extrapolate to the wider population. McNamee somewhat concedes this point and lists a wealth of material to complement his own. One book that is not included in this list is The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff, which was published only a week before Zucked. At nearly seven hundred pages in length, Zuboff’s book adds important depth to the argument that both are making, and, since its publication, McNamee himself has thrown considerable praise its way. Zuckerberg himself may not see the same need for regulation as many of his critics do, but today even he senses that there is something wrong with the power his company wields: “Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree.” Felix Haas Zurich, Switzerland Matthias Wittekindt Die Tankstelle von Courcelles Hamburg. Edition Nautilus. 2018. 256 pages. Die Tankstelle von Courcelles (The petrol station of courcelles) is the latest offering from German novelist Matthias Wittekindt. As a prequel to the series set in Fleurville, it sees Ohayon as a young gendarme investigating a fatal shooting. Although it was awarded second place in the prestigious Deutscher Krimi Preis in 2019, you could be forgiven for initially believing it is a coming-of-age novel. Ohayon’s minimal presence underlines that this novel is not a police procedural of the regional krimi genre, which is highNota Bene Dina Nayeri The Ungrateful Refugee Catapult In her first work of nonfiction, Dina Nayeri completely recalibrates the immigration conversation, raising provocative questions and providing human stories that illustrate the realities of life as a refugee. She calls particular attention to the harmful manner in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others, challenging her readers to rethink their preconceived notions of the refugee crisis. The urgency of the issue is augmented by Nayeri’s unfailing tenderness in telling stories that are both deeply personal and globally resonant. The Penguin Book of Migration Literature Ed. Dohra Ahmad Penguin Classics This compact but dense collection delivers precisely what it promises, a thoughtfully curated selection of literature penned by writers in migration from one country to another. With pieces drawn from various time periods (the selection by Phillis Wheatley being an especially powerful inclusion), the text is divided up broadly into writing about departures, arrivals, generational assimilation, and, in one case, a return to the place of origin...
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Dec 11, 2019
Terry Darr 
Open Access
