Books and resources
You are tasked with reading a whole book, cover to cover. Only requirement is that the book should not be a book from another course and should not be a pure technical book. Any other book is valid. Fiction books would be preferred. During the exam, you will have to briefly present the book and to make a connection between the topics seen in class or with any technological/societal topic.
The goal is to make you read something else than a technical manual and make you realise what you have to gain from reading non-purely technical stuff.
You can read in English, French or the language of your choice.
You can read on paper, e-ink. You can borrow from the library or download a pirated version on libgen.rs (please learn to use that wonderful resource).
Non-fiction books see in class
- The Victorian Internet (Tom Standage)
The history of the telegraph, the first global network
- The Typewriter Revolution (Richard Polt)
History of typewriters and considerations on using them in the 21st century
- La mécanique du texte (Thierry Crouzet)
Comment nos outils influencent l’écriture et, par conséquent, notre manière de penser
- Unix, a history and a memoir (Brian Kernighan)
How Unix was invented, by one of its core contributors
- In the beginning was the command line (Neal Stephenson)
Small essay about our interaction with computers (may be a bit old)
- The Daemon, the Gnu and the Penguin (Peter Salus)
A very nice and pleasant read about history of computing
- Richard Stallman et la révolution du logiciel libre (Sam Williams)
A nice biography of Richard Stallman
- Rebel Code (Glyn Moody)
The story on how opensource came to be
- Just for Fun (Linus Torvalds)
Linus Torvalds’s autobiography
- Efficient Linux at the Command line (Daniel J. Barrett)
Probably the best book ever about becoming very skilled with the command line
- Ce qu’il reste de nos rêves (Fleure Vasseur)
A non-fiction book about the life of Aaron Swartz
- Permanent Record (Edward Snowden)
- Mémoires Vives (traduction en français)
The story of Edward Snowden. Not fiction but reads like a thriller!
Suggestions of fiction books
Don’t hesitate to contribute some suggestions of book you read and though would be nice for next year students.
- Little Brother (Cory Doctorow)
Easy to read novel about being a geek teenager in a surveillance capitalist society
- Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson)
A novel who tell an alternative history of cryptography.
Movies
- War Games (1982)
- Hackers (1995)
- The Internet’s Own Boy (2014)