If everyone in our family / group / society / country was both trusting and trustworthy, we would never know to recognise the first non-trustworthy person to come along. Alternately, if too many people were untrustworthy, very little would get done, and the world would quickly run out of steel-reinforced doors. But how much is the right level of trust?…
News in the Category "Book Reviews"
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Review: Bruce Schneier’s “Liars and Outliers”
Sometimes it takes an expert from the wrong discipline to expose the hidden truths that guide our faith in one-another; our desire to do the right thing and why it is that some people break all the rules.
Trust is a tenuous concept. More, it is something of a ‘Goldilocks Phenomenon’ in that too much is just about as bad as too little.
Book Review: Liars and Outliers by Bruce Schneier
I recently read Bruce Schneier’s latest book – Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive.
It’s a good book, of potential interest not just to technology people, but also to anyone wishing to understand more about the way the world works. Schneier uses a wealth of examples to demonstrate that without implicit trust towards pretty much everyone around us, society falls apart.
Reading this book convinced me once more that calls for more surveillance and a more extensive police state must be resisted. The underlying assumption (that crime can be brought down to 0% if only we give up most of our liberties) is a false one. Schneier convincingly argues that the cost of wiping out crime is too high for society – we should therefore stop the hysteria about “total security” and get on with our lives…
Bruce Schneier’s Latest Book
It’s Liars and Outliers, and I would rate it the best economics book of the year thus far. He writes about his book here and here.
Schneier views our lives from the perspective of game theory. Every day, we must decide whether to cooperate or to defect. Do I try to arrive at work on time, or do I show up late? Do I drive safely or aggressively? Do I support the goals of my department, or do I work for myself? Does my department support the goals of the larger organization, or does it pursue its own interests? Does the larger organization work to support the goals of the society to which it belongs, or does it pursue its own goals?…
Liars and Outliers: Thoughts and Conclusions
In a previous post, we looked at the first half of Bruce Schneier’s interesting book. To recap, Liars and Outliers examines how trust mechanisms work, whether you’re ordering products online from people you’ve never met, or you’re paying a neighborhood kid to mow your lawn. In order for commerce to function, there must be a certain level of trust.
The second half of the book deals with Organizations, Corporations and Institutions and how their competing interests work out in real world situations. A model often used in the book is that of fishing. Overfishing will deplete the stock and eventually ruin the industry, so most individuals and companies don’t engage in it. However, ‘defectors’ may overfish because of the short term benefits and the low risk of getting caught…
Trust and the Development of Institutions: Reviewing Liars & Outliers
I managed to snag an early copy of Bruce Schneier’s new book, Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive. It’s a bit different from the books you normally see reviewed on development blogs. I’m a fan of Schneier’s sensible commentary on security issues, so I thought his book might provide some insights relevant to development work. I read it with general questions about institutional development—and specifically the issue of corruption—in mind.
A theory of coercion, compliance and trust
Schneier’s book provides a framework for understanding trust, compliance, cooperation, defection, coercion, and security across a variety of contexts. He starts by noting that trust is essential for our daily lives: we have to trust that merchants won’t cheat us, that other commuters will drive safely, and that the money we put in our bank account will be safe. Our economic and political systems wouldn’t function without trust. And we, in turn, can only trust others if society finds ways to promote cooperation…
Book Review: Liars and Outliers
“Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive,” Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier’s latest book, “Liars and Outliers,” isn’t about technology. Schneier, best known as a security and privacy guru, tackles a far larger issue than the World Wide Web: the webs of trust, relationships, reputation and security that have provided the framework for human society since our ancestors began living in groups. Trust may be a sobering topic, but Schneier doesn’t make the material heavy or dense; rather, it’s a genuinely fun and diverting read…
Nie Ma Działania Bez Zaufania
Bruce Schneier to jeden z najbardziej znanych na świecie ekspertów z zakresu kryptografii i bezpieczeństwa informacji. Jest autorem 11 książek oraz setek artykułów, jego blog „Schneier on Security” jest codziennie odwiedzany przez tysiące internautów. Bruce opublikował właśnie nową książkę pt. „Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive”.
Tym razem nie jest to jednak typowa książka o bezpieczeństwie, czego można się było spodziewać znając poprzednią twórczość oraz zainteresowania Schneidera. Bruce na swoim blogu sam przyznał, że książka bardzo ewaluowała w trakcie pisania. Ostatecznie powstała wyjątkowa publikacja – książka o zaufaniu i jego wpływie na społeczeństwo w którym funkcjonujemy…
Book Review: Liars and Outliers
It is said that the song Wipe Out launched a generation of drummers. In the world of information security, the classic Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C by Bruce Schneier may have been the book that launched a generation of new cryptographers. Schneier’s latest work of art is Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive. For those that are looking for a follow-up to Applied Cryptography, this it is not. In fact, it is hard to classify this as an information security title and in fact the book is marked for the current affairs/sociology section. Whatever section this book ultimately falls in, the reader will find that Schneier is one of the most original thinkers around…
Review: Secrets & Lies by Bruce Schneier
I’m not sure how I first heard about Bruce Schneier, but his ideas have appealed to me for a while now. He has an impressive background in computer cryptography, but his transition to a personality in the field of security that interests me most. Utilizing a technical background to build a more socially-relevant identity is a feat I personally hope to accomplish one day (just like Tony Stark, “Mannie” O”Kelly-Davis, or Mitchell Hundred). But enough gushing; let’s talk about the book.
First of all, I bought Secrets & Lies expecting the kind of social commentary Schneier makes when writing about “security theater.” This is not that book. The author is clearly still developing his voice here; his focus is still largely on technology. Apart from a single brief aside on how people internalize sensational threats, this book provides little in the way of sociology…
REVIEW: Bruce Schneier, Liars and Outliers: …
Chapter one is what would ordinarily constitute an introduction or preface to the book. Schneier states that the book is about trust: the trust that we need to operate as a society. In these terms, trust is the confidence we can have that other people will reliably behave in certain ways, and not in others. In any group, there is a desire in having people cooperate and act in the interest of all the members of the group. In all individuals, there is a possibility that they will defect and act against the interests of the group, either for their own competing interest, or simply in opposition to the group. (The author notes that defection is not always negative: positive social change is generally driven by defectors.) Actually, the text may be more about social engineering, because Schneier does a very comprehensive job of exploring how confident we can be about trust, and they ways we can increase (and sometimes inadvertently decrease) that reliability…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.