Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Technology & Society

The authors of the best-selling Bold and The Rise of Superman explore altered states of consciousness and how they can ignite passion, fuel creativity, and accelerate problem solving, in this groundbreaking book in the vein of Daniel Pink's Drive and Charles Duhigg's Smarter Faster Better.

In Rad Future, science influencer Isabelle Boemeke shatters the fear and misinformation surrounding this technology and shows how the actual science tells a different story. It turns out that nuclear-generated electricity—nuclear electricity—is our best option for ensuring the future of the planet. Nuclear can power cities, desalinate water, create carbon-free fertilizer, and heat homes, all with the smallest environmental footprint of any energy source.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.

In Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Jaron Lanier draws on his insider's expertise to explain precisely how social media works - by deploying constant surveillance and subconscious manipulation of its users - and why its cruel and dangerous effects are at the heart of its current business model and design. As well as offering 10 simple arguments for liberating yourself from its addictive hold, his witty and urgent manifesto outlines a vision for an alternative that provides all the benefits of social media without the harm.

Merchants of Doubt has been praised—and attacked—around the world, for reasons easy to understand. This book tells, with “brutal clarity” (Huffington Post), the disquieting story of how a loose-knit group of high-level scientists and scientific advisers, with deep connections in politics and industry, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades.

Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking does its part to prepare you against nefarious hackers. Now you can do your part by putting to good use the critical information this audiobook provides.

Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer. As a result, the unfettered pursuit of growth defines economic life around the world. Yet this prosperity has come at an enormous price. At this time of uncertainty about growth and its value, award-winning economist Daniel Susskind provides an essential reckoning. In a sweeping analysis full of historical insight, he argues that we cannot abandon growth but shows instead how we must redirect it, making it better reflect what we truly value.

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we get a loan, how much we pay for insurance—are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: everyone is judged according to the same rules and bias is eliminated. And yet, as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated and incontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination.

In the coming decades, the technology that enables virtual and augmented reality will improve beyond recognition. Within a century, world-renowned philosopher David J. Chalmers predicts, we will have virtual worlds that are impossible to distinguish from non-virtual worlds. But is virtual reality just escapism? In a highly original work of 'technophilosophy', Chalmers argues categorically, no: virtual reality is genuine reality. Virtual worlds are not second-class worlds. We can live a meaningful life in virtual reality - and increasingly, we will.

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 A World Without Email, Cal Newport argues that this steady flow of distractions disrupts us from achieving any meaningful work, causes us undue stress and is costing businesses millions in the form of untapped potential. Newport shows us how to completely reimagine and redesign workflow and processes without the constant pings of emails distracting us.

In How To Think About AI, Richard Susskind draws on his experience of working on AI since the early 1980s. For Susskind, balancing the benefits and threats of artificial intelligence is the defining challenge of our age. He explores the history of AI and possible scenarios for its future. His views on AI are not always conventional. He positions ChatGPT and generative AI as no more than the latest chapter in the ongoing story of AI and claims we are still at the foothills of developments.

A New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against the rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley during the mobile era. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a pause-resisting story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior, that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic 12-month periods in American corporate history.

Cutting through the noise of AI evangelists and AI doom-mongers, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world. In Co-Intelligence, he urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher and coach.

Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.

Nat Eliason had six months to make as much money as possible before his first child was born. So, he turned to where countless others did in 2021: crypto. Within a year, he'd made millions writing code holding hundreds of millions of dollars of other people's money. He'd been hacked. He'd sold a picture of a monkey for two hundred grand. He'd become an influencer, speaking at conferences, and writing a weekly newsletter to tens of thousands of fans. Best of all, Nat had amassed a small fortune. But how much of this money was even real?

In this groundbreaking and provocative treatise, Alexander C. Karp, co-founder and chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies, and Nicholas W. Zamiska, head of corporate affairs at the company, offer a searing critique of our collective abandonment of creative and cultural ambition. They argue that in order for the West to maintain its geopolitical advantage—and the freedoms that we take for granted—the software industry must redirect its attention to our most urgent challenges and rebuild its relationship with government.

Artificial intelligence touches nearly every part of your day. While you may initially assume that technology such as smart speakers and digital assistants are the extent of it, AI has in fact rapidly become a general-purpose technology, reverberating across industries including transportation, healthcare, financial services, and many more. In our modern era, an understanding of AI and its possibilities for your organization is essential for growth and success. Artificial Intelligence Basics has arrived to equip you with a fundamental, timely grasp of AI and its impact.

From coffee shops to city grids to TikTok feeds and Netflix homepages the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences. This network of mathematically determined choices - the 'filterworld' - has taken over, almost unnoticed, as we've grown accustomed to an insipid new normal. But to have our tastes, behaviours, and emotions governed by computers calls the very notion of free will into question. Internationally recognized journalist and New Yorker staff writer Kyle Chayka journeys through this ever-tightening web woven by algorithms.

Why do some leap ahead while others fall behind in today's chaotic, hyperconnected world? In New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms confront the biggest stories of our age - the rise of megaplatforms like Facebook and Uber; the out-of-nowhere rise of Trump and Corbyn - and reveal what's really behind them: the rise of New Power. For most of human history, the rules of power were clear. To get ahead or get things done, you mastered 'old power', which is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven....