Try free for 30 days
-
Paradox
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $21.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Free Will
- By: Mark Balaguer
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In our daily lives, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that we're in control of actions like these; if we are then we have free will. But in recent years, some have argued that free will is an illusion. The neuroscientist (and best-selling author) Sam Harris and the late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner, for example, claim that certain scientific findings disprove free will.
-
Quantum Entanglement
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Jed Brody
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Quantum physics is notable for its brazen defiance of common sense. (Think of Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive.) An especially rigorous form of quantum contradiction occurs in experiments with entangled particles. Our common assumption is that objects have properties whether or not anyone is observing them, and the measurement of one can't affect the other. Quantum entanglement rejects this assumption, offering impeccable reasoning and irrefutable evidence of the opposite. Is quantum entanglement mystical, or just mystifying?
-
Pragmatism
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: John R. Shook
- Narrated by: Steve Menasche
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pragmatism, America's homegrown philosophy, has been a major intellectual movement for over a century. Unlike its rivals, it reaches well beyond the confines of philosophy into concerns and disciplines as diverse as religion, politics, science, and culture. In this concise, engagingly written overview, John R. Shook describes pragmatism's origins, concepts, and continuing global relevance and appeal.
-
Data Science
- By: John D. Kelleher, Brendan Tierney
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It has never been easier for organizations to gather, store, and process data. Use of data science is driven by the rise of big data and social media, the development of high-performance computing, and the emergence of such powerful methods for data analysis and modeling as deep learning. Data science encompasses a set of principles, problem definitions, algorithms, and processes for extracting non-obvious and useful patterns from large datasets.
-
-
Excellent intro to Data Science & Machine Learning
- By Andrew M on 24-09-2022
-
Computational Thinking
- By: Peter J. Denning, Matti Tedre
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A few decades into the digital era, scientists discovered that thinking in terms of computation made possible an entirely new way of organizing scientific investigation; eventually, every field had a computational branch: computational physics, computational biology, computational sociology. More recently, "computational thinking" has become part of the K-12 curriculum. But what is computational thinking? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible overview.
-
Cynicism
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Ansgar Allen
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone's a cynic, yet few will admit it. Today's cynics excuse themselves half-heartedly - "I hate to be a cynic, but...." - before making their pronouncements. Narrowly opportunistic, always on the take, contemporary cynicism has nothing positive to contribute. The Cynicism of the ancient Greeks, however, was very different. Bold and shameless, it was committed to transforming the values on which civilization depends.
-
Free Will
- By: Mark Balaguer
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 2 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In our daily lives, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that we're in control of actions like these; if we are then we have free will. But in recent years, some have argued that free will is an illusion. The neuroscientist (and best-selling author) Sam Harris and the late Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner, for example, claim that certain scientific findings disprove free will.
-
Quantum Entanglement
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Jed Brody
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Quantum physics is notable for its brazen defiance of common sense. (Think of Schrödinger's Cat, famously both dead and alive.) An especially rigorous form of quantum contradiction occurs in experiments with entangled particles. Our common assumption is that objects have properties whether or not anyone is observing them, and the measurement of one can't affect the other. Quantum entanglement rejects this assumption, offering impeccable reasoning and irrefutable evidence of the opposite. Is quantum entanglement mystical, or just mystifying?
-
Pragmatism
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: John R. Shook
- Narrated by: Steve Menasche
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pragmatism, America's homegrown philosophy, has been a major intellectual movement for over a century. Unlike its rivals, it reaches well beyond the confines of philosophy into concerns and disciplines as diverse as religion, politics, science, and culture. In this concise, engagingly written overview, John R. Shook describes pragmatism's origins, concepts, and continuing global relevance and appeal.
-
Data Science
- By: John D. Kelleher, Brendan Tierney
- Narrated by: Chris Sorensen
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It has never been easier for organizations to gather, store, and process data. Use of data science is driven by the rise of big data and social media, the development of high-performance computing, and the emergence of such powerful methods for data analysis and modeling as deep learning. Data science encompasses a set of principles, problem definitions, algorithms, and processes for extracting non-obvious and useful patterns from large datasets.
-
-
Excellent intro to Data Science & Machine Learning
- By Andrew M on 24-09-2022
-
Computational Thinking
- By: Peter J. Denning, Matti Tedre
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 5 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A few decades into the digital era, scientists discovered that thinking in terms of computation made possible an entirely new way of organizing scientific investigation; eventually, every field had a computational branch: computational physics, computational biology, computational sociology. More recently, "computational thinking" has become part of the K-12 curriculum. But what is computational thinking? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers an accessible overview.
-
Cynicism
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Ansgar Allen
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone's a cynic, yet few will admit it. Today's cynics excuse themselves half-heartedly - "I hate to be a cynic, but...." - before making their pronouncements. Narrowly opportunistic, always on the take, contemporary cynicism has nothing positive to contribute. The Cynicism of the ancient Greeks, however, was very different. Bold and shameless, it was committed to transforming the values on which civilization depends.
-
Memes
- In Digital Culture
- By: Limor Shifman
- Narrated by: Karen Saltus
- Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this audiobook, Limor Shifman investigates Internet memes and what they tell us about digital culture. Shifman discusses a series of well-known Internet memes - including "Leave Britney Alone", the pepper-spraying cop, LOLCats, Scumbag Steve, and Occupy Wall Street's "We Are the 99 Percent". She offers a novel definition of Internet memes: digital content units with common characteristics, created with awareness of each other, and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the Internet by many users.
-
Cloud Computing
- The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Nayan B. Ruparelia
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most of the information available on cloud computing is either highly technical, with details that are irrelevant to nontechnologists, or pure marketing hype, in which the cloud is simply a selling point. This book, however, explains the cloud from the user's viewpoint - the business user's in particular. Nayan Ruparelia explains what the cloud is, when to use it (and when not to), how to select a cloud service, how to integrate it with other technologies, and what the best practices are for using cloud computing.
-
Extraterrestrials
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Wade Roush
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everything we know about how planets form and how life arises suggests that human civilization on Earth should not be unique. We ought to see abundant evidence of extraterrestrial activity - but we don't. Where is everybody? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, science and technology writer Wade Roush examines one of the great unsolved problems in science: Is there life, intelligent or otherwise, on other planets?
-
Citizenship
- By: Dimitry Kochenov
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The glorification of citizenship is a given in today's world, part of a civic narrative that invokes liberation, dignity, and nationhood. In reality, explains Dimitry Kochenov, citizenship is a story of complacency, hypocrisy, and domination, flattering to citizens and demeaning for noncitizens. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kochenov explains the state of citizenship in the modern world.
-
The Book
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Amaranth Borsuk
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive.
-
Auctions
- The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Timothy P. Hubbard, Harry J. Paarsch
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Although it is among the oldest of market institutions, the auction is ubiquitous in today's economy, used for everything from government procurement to selling advertising on the Internet to course assignment at MIT's Sloan School. Yet beyond the small number of economists who specialize in the subject, few people understand how auctions really work. This concise, accessible, and engaging book explains both the theory and the practice of auctions.
-
Waves
- By: Fredric Raichlen
- Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon
- Length: 4 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Waves, Fredric Raichlen traces the evolution of waves, from their generation in the deep ocean to their effects on the coast. He explains, in a way that is readily understandable to nonscientists, both the science of waves themselves and the technology that can be used to protect us against their more extreme forms, including hurricanes and tsunamis.
-
Collaborative Society
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Dariusz Jemielniak, Aleksandra Przegalinska
- Narrated by: Bruce Mann
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Humans are hard-wired for collaboration, and new technologies of communication act as a super-amplifier of our natural collaborative mindset. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the emergence of a new kind of social collaboration enabled by networked technologies. This new collaborative society might be characterized as a series of services and startups that enable peer-to-peer exchanges and interactions though technology.
-
Robots
- The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series
- By: John M. Jordan
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 5 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robots are entering the mainstream. Technologies have advanced to the point of mass commercialization - Roomba, for example - and adoption by governments - most notably, their use of drones. Meanwhile, these devices are being received by a public whose main sources of information about robots are the fantasies of popular culture. We know a lot about C-3PO and Robocop, but not much about Atlas, Motoman, Kiva, or Beam - real-life robots that are reinventing warfare, the industrial workplace, and collaboration.
-
Carbon Capture
- By: Howard J. Herzog
- Narrated by: Al Kessel
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide (CO2), and these CO2 emissions are a major driver of climate change. Carbon capture offers a path to climate change mitigation that has received relatively little attention. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Howard Herzog offers a concise guide to carbon capture, covering basic information as well as the larger context of climate technology and policy.
-
Spatial Computing
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Shashi Shekhar, Pamela Vold
- Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Billions of people around the globe use various applications of spatial computing daily - by using a ride-sharing app, GPS, social media check-ins, even Pokemon Go. Scientists and researchers use spatial computing to track diseases, map the bottom of the oceans, chart the behavior of endangered species, and create election maps in real time. Drones and driverless cars use a variety of spatial computing technologies. Spatial computing works by understanding the physical world, knowing and communicating our relation to places in that world, and navigating through those places.
-
Fertility Technology
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Donna J. Drucker
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late 1850s, a physician in New York City used a syringe and glass tube to inject half a drop of sperm into a woman's uterus, marking the first recorded instance of artificial insemination. From that day forward, doctors and scientists have turned to technology in ever more innovative ways to facilitate conception. Fertility Technology surveys this history in all its medical, practical, and ethical complexity, and offers a look at state-of-the-art fertility technology in various social and political contexts around the world.
Publisher's Summary
Thinkers have been fascinated by paradox since long before Aristotle grappled with Zeno's. In this volume in The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Margaret Cuonzo explores paradoxes and the strategies used to solve them. She finds that paradoxes are more than mere puzzles but can prompt new ways of thinking. A paradox can be defined as a set of mutually inconsistent claims, each of which seems true. Paradoxes emerge not just in salons and ivory towers but in everyday life. (An Internet search for "paradox" brings forth a picture of an ashtray with a "no smoking" symbol inscribed on it.) Proposing solutions, Cuonzo writes, is a natural response to paradoxes. She invites us to rethink paradoxes by focusing on strategies for solving them, arguing that there is much to be learned from this, regardless of whether any of the more powerful paradoxes is even capable of solution.
Cuonzo offers a catalog of paradox-solving strategies - including the preemptive strike (questioning the paradox itself), the odd guy out (calling one of the assumptions into question), and the you can't get there from here (denying the validity of the reasoning). She argues that certain types of solutions work better in some contexts than others and that as paradoxicality increases, the success of certain strategies grows more unlikely. Cuonzo shows that the processes of paradox generation and solution proposal are interesting and important ones. Discovering a paradox leads to advances in knowledge: New science often stems from attempts to solve paradoxes, and the concepts used in the new sciences lead to new paradoxes. As Niels Bohr wrote, "How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."