Any good tech books to read?

[Chrisb319]

Any recomendation, not stuff like How to: more like Biographies...Kevin Mitnick, x-hacker biographies...etc. Something easy to read in terms of content.

[Lovechild]

Lawrence Lessig has written some good books on legal issues, copyright and free culture.

Richard M. Stallman also has an essay collection out which is quite good.

I'm told Linus' book is a fun read as well, but I haven't read it myself - Personally I think writting the book was a waste of valuable coding time.

Other than that, look at the old MIT, AT&T Bell labs people, some of them tell fasinating stories about the technology that shaped our future.

[wulf]

The "Linus" book - Just for Fun gives some interesting background. If you're looking for relevant biographical works, I think it should definitely have a place on your list. Another one I read a while ago is Where Wizards Stay Up Late (can't remember the author but could check) which is a history of how the Internet developed.

You could also try Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line (http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~shane/dokumentasjon/commandline.html) if you want some online reading... and his Crytonomicon, while fiction, has plenty of cryptographical geekery to appeal to a technical audience (as well as being a great novel in it's own right).

Wulf