Contributions by:
Brian Trench
Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press,by Kristina Borjesson, Revised and Expanded Edition, Prometheus Books, 2004 This collection of essays and articles is intriguing and irritating in almost equal measure. The inside stories of life in the news media are revealing: they show how many sectors of the American media are…
Read Full Article...When an author is as publicly active as Lawrence Lessig, and when a book comes with a supporting web site, an author’s blog, and surrounded by previous and subsequent discussions of many of its themes and proposals, the reviewer can find it difficult to know where to start. Anybody with more than a passing interest…
Read Full Article...On a sweltering summer’s evening the crowd packed into Connolly Books, Dublin’s last radical bookshop, heard Conor McCabe’s book presented as “an examination of the house itself and not just of the broken furniture” that could become a “weapon.” The house and the furniture are seriously dilapidated. Following several years of steady growth in the…
Read Full Article...In the four months between its UK and US publication this book has left indelible marks. Ben Goldacre’s case for comprehensive reporting of drug trials has been cited in British parliamentary debates, national newspapers and medical journals. He has become a central figure in a new campaign to change the regulation of trials, requiring all…
Read Full Article...Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy – the many faces of Anonymous, by Gabriella Coleman. Verso Books. 2014 The Politics of Open Science, by Alessandro Delfanti. Pluto Press, 2014 Hardly a day passes without some news of hacking in the headlines. Somebody hacks into a bank’s systems, governments hack into email servers routinely, the North Koreans or…
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