Showing titles in History & Culture

Nobody meant for this to happen. Facebook didn't mean to facilitate a genocide. Twitter didn't want to be used to harass women. YouTube never planned to radicalise young men. But with billions of users, these platforms need only tweak their algorithms to generate more 'engagement'. In so doing, they bring unrest to previously settled communities and erode our relationships. Social warming has happened gradually - as a by-product of our preposterously convenient digital existence.

Peter has motor neurone disease, a condition universally considered by doctors to be terminal. It will destroy his nerve cells, and he is told that within an average of two years, it will take his life, too. But, face to face with death, he decides there is another way. Using his background in science and technology, he navigates a new path, one that will enable him not just to survive but to thrive.

What really distinguishes the people who literally change the world - those creative geniuses who give us one breakthrough after another? What differentiates Marie Curie or Elon Musk from the merely creative, the many one-hit wonders among us? Melissa Schilling, one of the world's leading experts on innovation, invites us into the lives of eight people - Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs - to identify the traits and experiences that drove them to make spectacular breakthroughs, over and over again.

More people know who Khloe Kardashian is than who Rene Descartes was. Most can't find Delaware on a map, correctly spell the word occurrence, or name the largest ocean on the planet. But how important is it to fill our heads with facts? A few keystrokes can summon almost any information in seconds. Why should we bother learning facts at all? Best-selling author William Poundstone confronts that timely question in Head in the Cloud.

As far back as stories go, pioneers have reached for the skies. In the last 200 years, they have mastered the air and made the modern world possible. Reach for the Skies is my look at the history of flight through the stories and people who have inspired me throughout my life. It is a story of pioneers, and of course it includes the world-famous Montgolfiers and the Wright brothers, but I also want to describe some of the lesser-known trailblazers.

Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century.

It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills - and maybe an advanced degree or two. These days, high-level tasks are increasingly being handled by algorithms that can do precise work not only with speed but also with nuance. These "bots" started with human programming and logic, but now their reach extends beyond what their creators ever expected.

In the 1940s and '50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible.

James Howard Kunstler's critically acclaimed and best-selling The Long Emergency, originally published in 2005, quickly became a grassroots hit, going into nine printings in hardcover. Kunstler's shocking vision of our post-oil future caught the attention of environmentalists and business leaders alike, and stimulated widespread discussion about our dependence on fossil fuels and our dysfunctional financial and government institutions.

If you’re anything like journalist Stephanie McNeal—aka, a millennial woman—you spend hours every day indulging in Instagram’s infinite scroll. The influencers on the platform aren’t just providing eye candy; these tastemakers impact how we cook, consume, parent, decorate, think, and live. But what exactly is going on behind the curtain of the perfectly curated Instagram grids we obsess over the most? Through intimate, funny, and vulnerable reporting, McNeal takes us through the looking glass and into the secretive real world of three major influencers.

This engrossing book explores the profound implications of personal information on the Internet, preserved forever even if it is false, biased, or humiliating. Brimming with examples of online gossip, slander, and rumor, the book discusses the tensions between privacy and free speech and proposes how to balance the two. What information about you is on the Internet?

Sugar substitutes have been a part of American life since saccharin was introduced at the 1893 World's Fair. In Empty Pleasures, the first history of artificial sweeteners in America, Carolyn de la Pena blends popular culture with business and women's history, examining the invention, production, marketing, regulation, and consumption of sugar substitutes such as saccharin, Sucaryl, NutraSweet, and Splenda.

Edison and Tesla were arch-enemies with competing visions as to how to electrically empower America. Their hostility played out in the infamous War of the Currents. Radio, television, robots, electric cars, self-driving cars, solar heating, the internet, and the cellphone were on the mind of one or the other of these geniuses. Which one ultimately proved to have the more accurate and enduring vision for the world? Who is in the news today and why? Come and find out the answers.

Ignite your untapped potential with ChatGPT and revolutionize your personal and professional life using this comprehensive, step-by-step guide to AI mastery! With up to 40% of daily work activities capable of being automated, there's never been a better time to dive into the world of AI. In this guide, you'll uncover everything you need to know about ChatGPT and how to use it to streamline your workflow and enhance your productivity. You'll gain practical insights into how to make ChatGPT work for you.

If you want to learn about artificial intelligence, then pay attention.... So, what is the deal with intelligent machines? Will they soon decide on things such as copyright infringement? How about self-driving trucks and cars? What kind of impact will smart machines have on society and the future of human jobs? This book will give you a glimpse into the most fascinating topic of the 21st century - artificial intelligence (AI), a hypothetical simulation of a living brain inside a computer.

We may love books, but do we know what lies behind them? In The Book, Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue, and board from which a book is made tell as rich a story as the words on its pages - of civilizations, empires, human ingenuity, and madness. In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000-year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations, and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today.

Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it's hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It's becoming clear that the tech industry's promised "innovation" is neither sustainable nor always desirable.

From quantum computing to VR training, and from 3D-printing to brain-computer interface, new technologies are reshaping business on the factory floor and in the C-suite. What should you and your company be doing now to take advantage of the new opportunities these technologies are creating - and avoid falling victim to disruption? The Year in Tech, 2022 will help you understand what the latest and most important tech innovations mean for your organization and how you can use them to compete and win in today's turbulent business environment.

The robots are here. They make our cars; they deliver fast food; they mine the sea floor. And in the near-future, their presence will increasingly enter our homes and workplaces - making human-robot interaction a frequent everyday occurrence. What will this future look like? What will define the relationship between humans and robots? Here Kate Darling, a world-renowned expert in robot ethics, shows that in order to understand the new robot world, we must first move beyond the idea that this technology will be something like us.

Fakten, wissenschaftlich fundiert und eindeutig belegt, sind Gold wert. Besonders dann, wenn Fake News oder Halbwahrheiten die öffentliche Debatte bestimmen und ein sachlicher Diskurs nicht mehr möglich ist. Ob Klimawandel, Homöopathie, Feinstaub oder Erblichkeit von Intelligenz - die Wissenschaftsjournalistin Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim räumt bei diesen und anderen großen Streitthemen mit diesem Missstand auf. Klarsichtig und kurzweilig legt sie dar, was faktisch niemand mehr bestreiten kann und worauf wir uns alle einigen können.