Brandon Barkholz

Cal Newport does a fantastic job pricing down-towards practical tips on how to break the chains on email and ad hoc chat messages. Starting with a history of how we got here all the way to present day. While written by an academic, Newport's writing style is highly relatable. If you are drowning in email and ad hoc messages - this book is for you.

Kara is a thoughtful and reflective story-teller. The memoir provides a unique and up close look through the lens of a someone who covered the tech beat for decades. Some of my favorite quotes -

French philosopher Paul Virilio has a quote I think about a lot: “When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution…. Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.”

“No wonder, then, that self-congratulation and self-deception are now a part of the Valley’s ethos, right up there with fearless risk-taking, maniacal effort and programming genius,”

“The best ideas have to win,” Jobs insisted over and over to me. He utterly rejected the idea of speed (move fast) and destruction (break things).