Librería Portfolio

What happens when a naive intern is granted unfettered access to people´s most private thoughts and actions? Young Stephen Thorpe lands a coveted internship at Ubatoo, an Internet empire that provides its users with popular online services, from a search engine and shopping to e-mail and social networking. When Stephen´s boss asks him to work on a project with the American Coalition for Civil Liberties, Stephen innocently obliges, believing he is mining Ubatoo´s vast databases to protect the ever-growing number of people unfairly targeted in the name of national security. But nothing is as it seems. Suspicious individuals--do-gooders, voyeurs, government agents, and radicals--surface, doing all they can to access the mass of desires and vulnerabilities gleaned from scouring Ubatoo´s wealth of intimate information. Entry into Ubatoo´s vaults of personal data need not require technical wizardry--simply knowing how to manipulate a well-intentioned intern may be enough.

Set in today´s cutting-edge data mining industry, The Silicon Jungle is a cautionary tale of data mining´s promise and peril, and how others can use our online activities for political and personal gain just as easily as for marketing and humanitarian purposes. A timely thriller, The Silicon Jungle raises serious ethical questions about today´s technological innovations and how our most confidential activities and minute details can be routinely pieced together into rich profiles that reveal our habits, goals, and secret desires--all ready to be exploited in ways beyond our wildest imaginations.

Shumeet Baluja is a senior staff research scientist at Google. He was formerly the chief technology officer of Jamdat Mobile and chief scientist at Lycos. He holds a PhD in computer science and has served as an adjunct faculty member in both the computer science department and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Reviews:

´Baluja´s clever, cynical debut explores the frightening possibilities of data mining. . . . A nod to Upton Sinclair´s muckraking The Jungle, which scared its readers into regulating the meat-packing industry, this lively if depressing novel suggests that computer snooping is too seductive to control, despite the consequences.´--Publishers Weekly

´[F]righteningly convincing. . . . The read is quick, the questions will linger, and the ideas are so intriguing. . . . Baluja simplifies the abstract world of tech-speak for the rest of us while aiming to do for the Internet what Upton Sinclair´s The Jungle did for the meat industry: make readers reconsider its safety. For fans of intelligent thrillers.´--Stephen Morrow, Library Journal

´In the era of the ubiquitous web company, The Silicon Jungle provides ample food for thought.´--Zena Iovino, New Scientist

´[T]his cautionary tale is fascinating for its exploration of technology as a conduit for crime.´--Michele Leber, Booklist Online