The book was written as a cautionary tale for consumers, and as such it seems to be skewed toward aggrandizing incidents to create the perception that our use of technology leaves us in a highly vulnerable position in a world of hackers, thieves, fraudsters, and others who would seek to do us harm for their own profit and entertainment. And yet, latter chapters swing to the opposite extreme, dismissing the concern over privacy as being as silly as the tribal fear of photography stealing your soul.
This doesn't really add up to a balanced perspective, and calls to mind the metaphor that suggests that if you put one foot in lava and the other in liquid nitrogen, you should be comfortable on average. But to be fair, while the author did touch upon the extremes, the majority of the book finds a fairly reasonable position in between them - and it's likely my discomfort is the result of having a differing opinion about what level of security a person should accept, or advocate that others should accept.
Even so, I muddled through in spite of periodic malaise: the author does bring to light a number of considerations for the use of technology that are worth considering. It's a sensitive issue for customers to decide how much privacy they will sacrifice and how much risk they will accept for the sake of convenience, and important to consider a for those who work in technology professions and in industries where significant amounts of highly sensitive personal data are handled - as ultimately, those who design the technology are providing the options that customers must consider in making their choice.
Ultimately, I'd agree with the trust of his dissertation: that people are generally better off if they can make informed decisions - neither overly panicked about imaginary threats, nor soothed to ignoring the real ones that exist.
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