September Book Club


Civic tech isn’t just about coding and designing. There are a lot of great books and articles out there that address society, culture, technology, discrimination, economics, and all those other things we care about. So lets read and talk about some of them.

Depending on who you talk to, computing and innovation seem to be the same- thing right now. Silicon Valley is pumping out new, computer powered companies every day, with promises to ‘disrupt’ virtually every market we can think of. Is all that ‘disruption’ good? Is ‘disrupt’ a healthy term for defining the one of the largest segments of our economy? And what happens to people who work in these disrupted industries? For September, let’s read a couple of articles about ‘disruption’ and it’s impact on people: The Disruption Machine by Jill Lepore (20 pages) and How Technology Is Destroying Jobs by David Rotman (9 pages). For extra credit, feel free to read Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation After the Lepore Critique by Chris Newfield, which is kind of dense, but provides some context and history on what Lepore is discussing.

If you know of any related articles that you think would be good to talk about, leave a comment below. I’ll be happy to add an article or two to this list.

For this Book Club meeting, we are excited to again hold this event in conjunction with the HotHouse co-working pilot at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. No gallery tour is yet planned, but that may change.

As usual, food will be provided.

Want to help organize future book clubs? Let us know at contact@opentwincities.org

Got ideas of what to read for future book club meetings? Add them to https://workflowy.com/shared/7c2f4fb4-41d4-d38d-55c7-ec631e6d0436/ .