JUNE BOOK

Our book for June is very topical, Reset:  Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society (link), a CBC Massey Lectures offering by Ronald J. Diebert, founder of Citizen Lab, the world-renowned digital tech and security group.  Join the gang at our usual Zawa's location (link) on Tuesday, June 11 as we delve into the pros and cons of our brave new digital world.  It's the regular 7pm kickoff and all are welcome.  With a modicum of luck we'll have a sun drenched evening on the patio.

Drawing from the cutting-edge research of the Citizen Lab, the world-renowned digital security research group which he founded and directs, Ronald J. Deibert exposes the impacts of this communications ecosystem on civil society. He tracks a mostly unregulated surveillance industry, innovations in technologies of remote control, superpower policing practices, dark PR firms, and highly profitable hack-for-hire services feeding off rivers of poorly secured personal data. Deibert also unearths how dependence on social media and its expanding universe of consumer electronics creates immense pressure on the natural environment. In order to combat authoritarian practices, environmental degradation, and rampant electronic consumerism, he urges restraints on tech platforms and governments to reclaim the internet for civil society.

MAY BOOK

We're back to fiction for May.  Our selection is Brideshead Revisited (link) by English author Evelyn Waugh.  The book was adapted for television as an 11 part BBC miniseries in 1981 and later filmed in 2008.  Join the usual suspects on Tuesday, May 14 at our Zawa's haunt (link) at 7pm.  All welcome all the time.

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the years before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes to finally recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.