Talk to Me by James Vlahos

“How Voice Computing Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Think” is the subtitle of a new non-fiction book, TALK TO ME, by author James Vlahos. He argues that we are entering the era of voice computing and that like previous technological disruptions (e.g., changes with mainframes, desktops, internet search and mobile computing), it will involve a paradigm shift and platform war. Vlahos divides his text into three parts labeled Competition, Innovation and Revolution, with about ten percent allocated to notes and an index. Of course, there’s quite a bit of discussion about Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, plus chatbots, conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language systems. Some of the historical background describes the roughly twenty-five-year development of Siri and “her component technologies” and briefly touches on the choice of Alexa as a wake word. Later, there is an entire chapter devoted to personalities, noting our penchant to personify and to invest more emotionally when a digital assistant is anthropomorphic (if you doubt this, take a moment and think back to Microsoft’s annoying on-screen helper, Clippy). Vlahos also discusses some of the reasons why female voices were chosen and the potential for truly individualized AIs in the future (described in US Patent 8,996,429) whereby “the bot can present the best possible personality to any given user.” Other factors like the impact of virtual companionship on one’s desire to socialize, and downsides such as eavesdropping or privacy concerns are included. Overall, Vlahos succeeds in making the potential advances of voice computing understandable and relevant, thereby captivating student interest with TALK TO ME.

Alpha Girls by Julian Guthrie

ALPHA GIRLS by Julian Guthrie profiles four women who succeeded in the male dominated culture of Silicon Valley, specifically in venture capital, “an industry that is not well known but has enormous influence.”  Guthrie shares events - both professional and personal - at various times in these women’s lives.  She begins in the 1980s when they were studying engineering or business at elite universities like the University of Virginia, Stanford, Purdue, Harvard, and Brown. The women’s backgrounds are different: Theresia Gouw’s family is from Jakarta, Indonesia, Magdalena Yeşil grew up in Turkey and is fluent in four languages, Sonja Hoel Perkins had worked briefly at the London Stock Exchange and later joins Menlo Ventures, and MJ Elmore is from the Midwest but stays in Menlo Park, California after getting a job at institutional Venture Partners (IVP) also on Sand Hill Road. The next section of the book deals with the mid to late 1990s and the opportunities that technology and the Internet offered. Guthrie injects a great deal of “name-dropping” and life style description (e.g., annual Hawaiian getaway for women of venture capital).  She also stresses how over time, and for various reasons, each woman struggles with belonging. The text continues through 2018 and Guthrie makes additional observations in her author’s note, saying, “research shows that companies with more diversity, particularly with more women in leadership, offer higher returns on capital and greater innovation.” 

Guthrie defines an Alpha Girl as “a woman of any age who refuses to give up on her dreams.” As a reader, it is interesting to observe the inter-generational differences and the author’s “surprise” at how hard it was for these women to share. Guthrie and the even younger women who are just starting out today do face discrimination, but thanks to the many conversations and changes that have occurred, their more recent experiences are certainly different - and hopefully less lonely - from those faced by the “pioneers” profiled in ALPHA GIRLS. It is fascinating to look at the changes that have occurred and to continue the discussions about future change: to view more about “The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime” see the videos and interviews which are available on Julian Guthrie’s web site. I will be recommending this text (and Melinda Gates’ The Moment of Lift) as a possible independent read for our business classes, although its main audience will be older. ALPHA GIRLS contains some photographs and a helpful index, but no bibliography.     

Google It by Anna Crowley Redding

GOOGLE IT by Anna Crowley Redding is an easy to read, but detail-filled, positive summary of the history of Google. It begins with some surprising facts about the childhoods and Stanford years of founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. And I especially loved the idea that citation in academic papers is what prompted Page to consider using backlinks to develop PageRank.  As an early internet user, it was also fun to reflect upon descriptions that Redding shares about internet download speeds (0.056 megabytes per second) of twenty years or so ago versus today’s expectations (20 Mbps). School Library Journal recommends this book for grades 6 and up – I agree, although I also feel that our high school students could use this for background and as an interesting and very basic start to a paper that would evolve into a discussion of one or more of the many controversies which Google has faced.

Upon reflection, not providing a more thorough review of these issues is a missed opportunity and therefore a weakness of GOOGLE IT. Redding mentions the concerns about censorship in China, for example, but she could have included more recent events related to that idea versus just explaining that the Chinese mainland based search engine was shut down by Google in 2010.  Instead, she truly is focused on providing a very accessible history with chapters on older topics like Y2K and creation of the Google logo. Again, she mentions hiring the first female engineer (Marissa Mayer, Google employee #20) in 1999, but that is the only time the word female appears in the book and the word women does not appear at all, despite a history of concerns about prejudices, James Damore’s viral memo and subsequent firing, and the macho Silicon Valley culture in general. Redding does comment briefly about recent (2017) efforts to establish “Howard West” and thereby support and increase the percentage of African American employees (2.5% in most recent Google report).  Likewise, she writes about privacy, but does not really address employee concerns about Defense Department contracts and she seems more interested in the possibility of bringing search to remote locations rather than issues with tracking users who may have switched off “location services.” In addition, there is no explanation of antitrust or the record five billion dollar European fine. Sadly, the word “ethics” appears only once in Redding’s text although she, like Christopher Mims’ article in today's Wall Street Journal, refers to Google’s motto (“Don’t be evil”) and its stated mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”