Preface

This is hardly a book on digital technology, but more on the organisational and societal impact of managing this at scale. For a better understanding of digital technology I highly recommend Brian Kernighan’s “Understanding the Digital World”. () And if you want to have fun while learning how to understand software, I’d highly recommend “The Nature of Code” by Daniel Schiffman (). As you will find out in this book, I am putting on some very specific lenses to look at the world. You may find them restrictive; you may find them arbitrary(?), you may find them opiniated. Yes, this specific way of looking at the effects of digital technology has its limits. However, the essence of understanding is to be able to extract the core elements out of something. Paradoxically, only by restricting the way we look at things can we see more clearly. Cut through the noise. Like Goethe said: “In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister”, though he applied that to a different subject. ...