Showing titles in History & Culture

The Internet and smartphone are just the latest in a 250-year-long cycle of disruption that has continuously changed the way we live, the way we work, and the way we interact. The coming Augmented Age, however, promises a level of disruption, behavioral shifts, and changes that are unparalleled. While consumers today are camping outside of an Apple store waiting to be one of the first to score a new Apple Watch or iPhone, the next generation of wearables will be able to predict if we're likely to have a heart attack and recommend a course of action.

Multi-award-winning scientific futurist Dr. Catherine Ball presents insights into how technology and science are providing answers to many of the challenges the world is facing today—food shortages, war and conflict, the decline in local manufacturing, health and ageing, and global warming—and asks why we are not embracing these technologies more widely. Dr. Catherine opens our eyes to the amazing, wide world of technological advancements and explores the role we all have in learning more, owning the conversations, and determining what we want technology to be.

A new dawn of brain tracking and hacking is coming. Will you be prepared for what comes next? Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where...

Palo Alto is nice. The weather is temperate, the people are educated, rich, healthy, enterprising. Remnants of a hippie counterculture have synthesized with high technology and big finance to produce the spiritually and materially ambitious heart of Silicon Valley. It is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system. In Palo Alto, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did.

In today’s hyperconnected world, screen addiction isn’t just a bad habit, it’s a silent epidemic. Smartphones have become constant companions, quietly rewiring our brains, reshaping behavior, and stealing presence, peace, and purpose. If you compulsively check your phone, lose hours to social media, or feel anxious without a screen, you’re not alone and this book is for you.

For too long, under the influence of corporate giants and tech enthusiasts, we’ve accepted the idea that change always means better. But rapidly developing technology isn’t neutral – it’s ambivalent, and capable of enormous harm. To improve our well-being, help future generations flourish and recover our shared humanity, we must become more critical, mindful users of technology, and more discerning of how it uses us.

In Distracted, journalist Maggie Jackson ponders our increasingly cyber-centric world and fears we're entering a dark age of interruption that will render us unable to think critically, work creatively or cultivate meaningful relationships.

The machines are here. After decades of sci-fi doomsaying and marketing hype, advanced A.I. and automation technologies have leapt out of research labs and Silicon Valley engineering departments and into the centre of our lives. The world's biggest corporations are racing to automate jobs and some experts predict that A.I could put millions of people out of work. But all is not lost. With a little effort, we can become futureproof.

Brought to you by Penguin. Discover how artificial intelligence thinks and reasons, and how we can make the most of their super-human abilities, in the must read new book from the prize-winning technology writer and author of The Dark Net and The People vs Tech. Knowing how to speak to AI –...

Behind every great revolution is a vision, and behind perhaps the greatest revolution of our time, personal computing, is the vision of J.C.R. Licklider. In a simultaneously compelling personal narrative and comprehensive historical exposition, Waldrop tells the story of the man who not only instigated the work that led to the internet, but also shifted our understanding of what computers were and could be.

In The Next Renaissance, acclaimed AI advisor Zack Kass presents an optimistic and compelling vision of how artificial intelligence will shape our lives. Drawing on historical context, cutting-edge advancements, and firsthand experience, Kass lays out how AI will become a collaborative partner in building a better, more creative, and more compassionate world. Just as the original Renaissance revolutionized art, science, and society.

In A Hacker’s Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.

The world of technology is changing all the time. A product that is innovative and brand-new today can be old news tomorrow as we are in a constant state of looking for the newest and most innovative things that we can use. And when it comes to helping us stay on top of this technology, artificial intelligence is leading the pack. This audiobook will provide you all the information you need to understand and learn how artificial intelligence is being used in our modern world.

From Adam Steltzner, who led the Entry, Descent, and Landing team in landing the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars, comes a profound book about breakthrough innovation in the face of the impossible The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is home to some of history’s most jaw-dropping feats of...

Timepieces are one of humanity's most ingenious innovations. Their invention was more significant for human culture than the printing press, or even the wheel. They have travelled the world with us, from the depths of the oceans to the summit of Everest, and even to the Moon. They regulate our daily lives and have sculpted the social and economic development of society in surprising and dramatic ways.

When Pete Etchells was 13, his father died from motor neurone disease. In order to cope, he immersed himself in a virtual world - first as an escape, but later to try to understand what had happened. Etchells is now a researcher into the psychological effects of video games, and was co-author on a recent paper explaining why WHO plans to classify "game addiction" as a danger to public health are based on bad science and (he thinks) are a bad idea. In this, his first book, he journeys through the history and development of video games via scientific study....

La biografía definitiva de Steve Jobs, el fundador de Apple, escrita con su colaboración.Tras más de cuarenta entrevistas con Steve Jobs y con un centenar de personas de su entorno, familiares, amigos, adversarios y colegas, esta es la biografía definitiva de uno de los iconos indiscutibles de nuestro tiempo, del genio cuya creatividad, energía y perfeccionismo revolucionaron seis industrias: informática, películas de animación, música, teléfonos, tabletas y edición digital.

'You won't look at your screens in the same way after reading this book' Grace Blakeley, author of VULTURE CAPITALISM 'Logging Off is a life-saving book' Mikaela Loach, author of IT'S NOT THAT RADICAL 'A harrowing but important read' Carole Cadwalladr We live in a digital world. In the 30 years...

How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous "smart" house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the secrets to quashing a robot mutiny.

'More than just a memoir. A manifesto for a whole way of thinking' Daily Mail 'An idiosyncratic and gripping memoir about his life and the indomitable career of the Cube' Observer 'The rise and enduring power of the world's most popular puzzle toy . . . Cubed is less a memoir than a chronicle of...