Brian Maki's "Little Black Book" offers a common sense approach to dealing with the difficulties that technology has introduced into our lives.As a computer teacher and consultant for over twenty decades, Maki has noticed how technology has generated rapid changes in our own lives to the stage where we're hooked on being"linked" continuously, feel a lack of patience once we are not linked, and have been bombarded with junk email, pc frustrations, and worst of all, the danger of identity theft.
The book's title refers to the demand for us to keep tabs on our electronic life via a non-digital, conservative means-preferably a newspaper book where we compose all our usernames and passwords, together with maintaining a list of any changes we make to our balances.
Through numerous brief, succinct chapters, Maki clarifies the concerns we must have about leaving our electronic footprint. He recommends frequently"googling ourselves," the way to update frequently so that we have less headaches in the future, the way to manage junk mail, the additional risks to identity theft when you've got a mobile phone, and the actual power that social media websites have over our own lives, and how we could shield ourselves from the data these websites are amassing about us.
After telling the story of William Weber, a guy whom Maki assisted to arrange his electronic life before his departure, Maki highlights just how few people consider what's going to happen to our electronic life and internet identity after we've died. He provides practical tips for tracking our electronic life and preparation for shutting accounts to safeguard against identity theft after our deaths.
This brief novel is beneficial for focusing on a topic most people never consider. Maki covers many topics which will lead to helping us to secure our identities, our possessions, our liberty, and general, our joy. As Maki says:
"You need to reexamine the way you interact with the world wide web, what you talk about, why you discuss this, and learn to not stick to the route of online trust . It's your electronic life to restrain."
Since Maki points out, technology will be with us to the remainder of our lives-it is not moving away-so we knowingly must learn how to control it and shield ourselves out of it, placing it at its appropriate place as essential simply to assist usrather than allowing it continue to control our own lives. I surely feel that the significance of this need, and that I hope other readers will also.