Showing titles in Technology & Society

Since the 1990s China has been climbing up the ladder of quality, from doing knockoffs to designing its own high-end goods. Xiaomi - its name literally means "little rice" - is landing squarely in this shift in China's economy. But the remarkable rise of Xiaomi from startup to colossus is more than a business story because mobile phones are special. The common desiderata of the global population, mobile phones offer the kind of freedom and connectedness that autocratic countries are terrified of.

Are your kids unable to step away from the screens? Here is a practical, step-by-step guide that gives parents the tools to teach children, from toddlers to teens, how to gain control of their technology use.

The Age of Living Machines describes some of the most exciting new developments and the scientists and engineers who helped create them. Virus-built batteries. Protein-based water filters. Cancer-detecting nanoparticles. Mind-reading bionic limbs. Computer-engineered crops. Together they highlight the promise of the technology revolution of the 21st century to overcome some of the greatest humanitarian, medical, and environmental challenges of our time.

As Audrey Kurth Cronin explains in Power to the People, what we are seeing now is an exacerbation of an age-old trend. Over the centuries, the most surprising developments in warfare have occurred because of advances in technologies combined with changes in who can use them. Indeed, accessible innovations in destructive force have long driven new patterns of political violence. When Nobel invented dynamite and Kalashnikov designed the AK-47, each inadvertently spurred terrorist and insurgent movements that killed millions and upended the international system.

Silicon Valley is imperializing the planet. With nearly bottomless supplies of cash and ambition, a small group of companies have been gradually seizing symbolic and practical civic leadership in America and worldwide. But Silicon Valley does not answer to the electorate; nor have they been voted into office. And the perils of their influence are only now making themselves known.

Silicon Valley technology is transforming the way we work, and Uber is leading the charge. Upending our understanding of work in the digital age, Uberland paints a future where any of us might be managed by a faceless boss. Based on award-winning technology ethnographer Alex Rosenblat's experience of riding over 5,000 miles with Uber drivers, daily visits to online forums, and face-to-face discussions with senior Uber employees, Uberland goes beyond the headlines to reveal the complicated politics of popular technologies that are manipulating both workers and consumers.

A revolution is under way across the globe, yet very few people understand it. Basic Blockchain explains everything you need to know to understand the technology that will soon disrupt and revolutionise everything from financial and health services to the property market and how we vote.

A simple walk around the block set journalist Spike Carlsen, bestselling author of A Splintered History of Wood, off to investigate everything he could about everything we take for granted in our normal life—from manhole covers and recycling bins to bike lanes and stoplights. In this...

Este no es un libro de oráculos o vaticinios, sino las reflexiones de dos autores que consideran que estar informados es la mejor forma de navegar la indefectible ola de la inteligencia artificial. En una conversación tan lúcida como estimulante, el neurocientífico superventas Mariano Sigman y el emprendedor Santiago Bilinkis repasan el origen, las utilidades y los riesgos de esta tecnología.

How optimization took over the world and the urgent case for a new approach Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underlie everything from airline schedules to dating...

The Age of Prediction is about two powerful, and symbiotic, trends: the rapid development and use of artificial intelligence and big data to enhance prediction, as well as the often paradoxical effects of these better predictions on our understanding of risk and the ways we live. Beginning with dramatic advances in quantitative investing and precision medicine, this book explores how predictive technology is quietly reshaping our world in fundamental ways, from crime fighting and warfare to monitoring individual health and elections.

Combining the deft social analysis of Where Good Ideas Come From with the optimistic arguments of Everything Bad Is Good For You, New York Times bestselling author Steven Johnson’s Future Perfect makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from...

This book presents a timely and significant addition to the ongoing discourse around the ethical implications of AI in general, as well as the new and disruptive AI technologies, such as generative AI platforms like ChatGPT.

The AI Revolution: 10 Industries Being Transformed by AI by Julian Vexley is a timely and powerful exploration of how artificial intelligence is reshaping the very fabric of our world—one sector at a time. As the invisible engine behind a new era of efficiency, creativity, and insight, AI is no longer a futuristic idea. It is here, it is real, and it is changing everything.

Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, drones, self-driving vehicles, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. On the other hand, the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening future - eugenics, a jobless economy, a complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. Wadhwa says that we need to ask three questions about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are the risks and the rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence?

Our increasing reliance on technology and the Internet has opened a window for mathematicians and data researchers to gaze through into our lives. Using the data they are constantly collecting about where we travel, where we shop, what we buy, what interests us, they can begin to predict our daily habits, and increasingly we are relinquishing our decision making to algorithms - are we giving up this up too easily?

Technology is advancing faster than ever - but for better or for worse? On the one hand, astonishing technological developments from personalized genomics to self-driving cars to drones to artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. On the other hand, these very same technologies could raise the specter of a frightening and alienating future - eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and an ever-worsening spiral of economic inequality.

Foreign Policy managing editor and former CNN South Asia bureau chief Ravi Agrawal takes listeners on a journey across India, through remote rural villages and massive metropolises, to highlight how one tiny device - the smartphone - is changing all facets of Indian life. The rise of smartphones, and with them access to the internet, has caused nothing short of a revolution in India. In the West, technological advances have progressed step-by-step, starting with landline phones.

From two White House veterans, an urgent case for why democracies must achieve preeminence in AI—and a bracing warning about what victory will require Humanity may soon create AI systems that can outperform humans at virtually every cognitive task. Whoever wields that technology will gain a...

An acclaimed New York Times Magazine writer brings us into the world of the controversial technology firm Palantir and its very colorful and outspoken CEO, Alex Karp, tracing the ascent of Big Data, the rise of surveillance technology, and the shifting global balance of power in the 21st century...