Light reading list

News:

• ProPublica (https://propublica.org)
• The Guardian (https://theguardian.com)
• The Conversation (academic work distilled for normal humans) https://theconversation.com

Magazines:

• Aeon/Psyche

Blogs:

• writing.kemitchell.com – interesting stuff about tech and law
• https://steveklabnik.com/writing
• daringfireball.net is often worth a read

Podcasts:

• The Stackoverflow Developer Podcast – general discussions about software

Books:

You'll need to pick and choose from this section because the parts you'll enjoy depend on what you're interested.

Technical books

Do bear in mind that I have no formal background so none of this should require much in the way of experience :) It will probably be useful to understand some set theory and be familiar with general mathematical notation (this is pretty essential for most of computing). Nothing fancy is needed mind you, just enough to know "oh this symbol means this, let me go look it up."

• Practical Foundations for Programming Languages by Robert Harper > warning! Practical Foundations for Programming Languages has lots of mathematical notation and isn't really a good introductory work
• Understanding and Writing Compilers: A DIY guide
• Software Principles (open access) https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu This is an interesting primer on software development and gives some insight into how seriously scalable software can be built
• The Art of Prolog (open access) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-prolog-second-edition
• F sharp (I couldn't escape the hash there) for fun and profit (https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com). I haven't read much of this site's content but the stuff I have read seems useful. Not just F sharp – also useful for functional programming as a whole

Non-technical books

• Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neill (an interesting look into the things tech companies get up to).
• Roads and Bridges (https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-reports/roads-and-bridges-the-unseen-labor-behind-our-digital-infrastructure). I haven't read it myself, but looks like it could be of interest, particularly if you're not particularly technical and want to understand open source.
• Invisible Women – I haven't really read much of this but it seems like an interesting high-level overview of discrimination in design processes.

The ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) newsletter is also pretty interesting if you can manage to obtain hold of it.

I'll try and publish another list at some point with other interesting books.