Social & Legal Aspects of Computing

A major new novel for VINTAGE, for global publication with the US and Canada in July 2022 Sadie and Sam have known one another since they were children, having met under unusual circumstances in a hospital. Now, Sadie is a student at MIT and Sam is at Harvard when they spot one a...nother in a T station and their lost friendship is instantly reignited. What transpires is an epic modern love story that follows these two great minds, along with Sam's charming roommate Marx, on a journey of artistic collaboration designing video games as they careen into adulthood. Stylish and open-hearted, this novel is a classic will-they-won't-they love story, but elevated and energised by being set in the imaginative world of gaming that gives it a radically different edge. It is a dynamic, original, gorgeous novel about the joys and importance of creativity, collaboration -- and the love that comes from friendship, not just romance.
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The runaway Dutch bestseller 'In the old days, anyone wanting to understand the world read the Bible. Anyone wanting to understand the world today should read this book.' Arjan Lubach 'This is even better than John le Carre, because it's true.' Matthijs van Nieuwkerk Summer 2017:... computer screens go blank in 150 countries. The NHS is so affected that hospitals can only take in patients for the casualty department. Ambulances are grounded. MRI scanners and blood refrigeration systems stop functioning. Computer screens turn on spontaneously and the words Oops, your important files are encrypted appear. Employees who desperately pull the plugs on their computers are too late. Restarting is pointless; the computers are locked. And now the attackers ask each victim to pay them 300 dollars. This is hijack software. Those who transfer the money get nothing in return. A month later, an unknown virus strike shuts down systems in France, India, Britain, Holland, Poland and Germany, before spreading to 60 further countries. Based on the cases he investigated over a period of six years, Huib Modderkolk takes the reader on a tour of the corridors and back doors of the globalised digital world. He reconstructs British-American espionage operations and reveals how the power relationships between countries enable intelligence services to share and withhold data from each other. Looking at key players including Edward Snowden, Russian hackers Cozy Bear and Evgeniy Bogachev, 'the Pablo Escobar of the digital era', Modderkolk opens our eyes to the dark underbelly of the internet with the narrative drive of a thriller.
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An unauthorized/unofficial biography --T.p. verso.

Occasionally, there are books that try to make sense of a key moment in history - and become an indispensable guide to the times we live in. This book one of them. In The Psychology of Totalitarianism, world-renowned Professor of Clinical Psychology Mattias Desmet deconstructs th...e societal conditions that allow collective psychosis to take hold. By analysing our current global situation and identifying the phenomenon of 'mass formation' - a type of collective hypnosis - he illustrates how close we are to repeating totalitarian behaviours within democratic structures. Totalitarianism is not a coincidence and does not form in a vacuum. Desmet explains how it arises from a collective psychosis that has followed a predictable script throughout history, its formation gaining strength and speed with each generation - from the Jacobins to the Nazis and Stalinists - in lockstep with technological advances. He demonstrates how governments, mass media and other large, 'mechanised' forces use fear, loneliness and isolation to demoralise populations to exert control, persuading large groups of people to act against their own interests, always with destructive results. Building on Hannah Arendt's essential work on totalitarianism, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Desmet offers a sharp critique of the cultural 'groupthink' that existed pre-pandemic but has steadily and inexorably advanced during the Covid crisis. He cautions against the dangers of our current societal landscape, media consumption and reliance on manipulative technologies and then offers simple solutions - both individual and collective - to prevent the willing sacrifice of our freedoms. The Psychology of Totalitarianism describes exactly how, during this extraordinary time of loneliness, free-floating anxiety and fear, we are surrending our freedoms and giving way to censorship and loss of privacy - driven by a dominant crisis narrative that excludes dissident views and relies on destructive groupthink. Desmet's w
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The benefits of living in a digital, globalised society are enormous; but so too are the dangers. We bank online, shop online, date, learn, work and live online. This book explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the 21st century: cyber crime, cyber warfare and cyber i...ndustrial espionage.
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