Showing results by publisher "Ascent Audio" in Social Sciences

The respected Italian economist and journalist offers a bold and provocative argument that the speed of technological transformation is threatening our future.

Wallet Activism challenges you to rethink your financial power so can feel confident spending, earning, and saving money in ways that align with your values.

We've all heard that a picture is worth 1,000 words, but what if we don't understand what we're looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous - and easier to share than ever. However, they can also lead us astray. Charts lie in a variety of ways - displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns, and concealing uncertainty. In How Charts Lie, data visualization expert Alberto Cairo teaches us to not only spot the lies in deceptive visuals, but also to take advantage of good ones to understand complex stories.

In The Great Re-Start, noted financial expert and multiple New York Times bestselling author John Mauldin helps you understand the enormous and widespread social, political, and financial problems we are facing. Multiple different cycle theories all suggest a crisis coming at the end of the decade. Mauldin enables you to find your own personal path through them, as various crises reach a breaking point in the next few years.

Columbia Business School professor Sandra Matz reveals in fascinating detail how big data offers insights into the most intimate aspects of our psyches and how these insights empower an external influence over the choices we make. This can be creepy, manipulative, and downright harmful, with scandals like that of British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica being merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet big data also holds enormous potential to help us live healthier, happier lives.

While everyone is talking about "big data", the truth is that understanding the "little data" - the stats that underlie newspaper headlines, stock reports, weather forecasts, and so on - is what helps you make smarter decisions at work, at home, and in every aspect of your life. The average person consumes approximately 30 gigabytes of data every single day but has no idea how to interpret it correctly. Everydata explains, through the eyes of an expert economist and statistician, how to decipher the small bytes of data we consume in a day.

Unsupervised examines the fast-emerging technologies and tools that are already starting to completely revolutionize our world. Beyond that, the book takes an in-depth look at how we have arrived at this dizzying point in our history, who holds the reins of these formidable technologies, mostly without any supervision. It explains why we as business leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, educators, lawmakers, investors or users and all responsible citizens must act now to influence and help oversee the future of a technological world.

Bob Muglia helps us understand how innovation in data and information technology have led us to AI—and how this technology must shape our future. The long-time Microsoft executive, former CEO of Snowflake, and current tech investor maps the evolution of the modern data stack and how it has helped build today's economy and society. And he explains how humanity must create a new social contract for the artificial general intelligence (AGI)—autonomous machines intelligent as people-that he expects to arrive in less than a decade.

In The Opportunity Index, BlackRock managing director and cofounder of the #Talkaboutblack movement Gavin Lewis skillfully plots the origins of the racial wealth gap and its impact on the inequalities faced by the Black community today. Weaving a personal and at times moving narrative through some of the most disruptive events of our time, he offers a blueprint for businesses and individuals to understand the risks and opportunities presented by inequality and issues an urgent call to action.

Although there are more women in higher education than ever before—and increasingly in leadership positions—their paths to success are more difficult than those paved for men. Nine Guiding Principles for Women in Higher Education is a concise and accessible resource aimed at helping women faculty succeed in their academic careers. Karyn Z. Sproles offers guidance, humor, and courage to women in higher education, paying particular attention to those with children and women of color.

Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have long valued the independence of their work, sharing a strong occupational identity rooted in a tradition of autonomy. Yet these workers increasingly find themselves under many watchful eyes. Data Driven examines how digital surveillance is upending life and work on the open road, and raises crucial questions about the role of data collection in broader systems of social control.

The term "emerging market" refers to a country where incomes are currently low but that is likely to experience rapid growth and increasing economic competitiveness. Yet many of the characteristics of emerging markets—including demographic shifts, rising educational attainment, and growing urbanization—are also found closer to home, in communities that have been underserved by the existing financial-services system. Gregory Fairchild introduces listeners to the entrepreneurs whose efforts to reach marginalized groups are reshaping the emerging markets of the United States.

In How We Give Now, Lucy Bernholz shows that philanthropy is more than writing a check and claiming a tax deduction. For most of us- t he non-wealthy givers - philanthropy can be a way of living our values and fully participating in society. We give in all kinds of ways - shopping at certain businesses, canvassing for candidates, donating money, and making conscious choices with our retirement funds. We give our cash, our time, and even our data to make the world a better place.

Finnish inventor, composer, and futurist Perttu Pölönen argues that the next revolution is a human revolution. To counterbalance the world we digitalized, we need to develop creativity, perseverance, compassion, and curiosity - those same soft skills that give our lives meaning and set us apart from machines. What can we get from you that we can't get from Google? Join Pölönen as he takes a practical, personal look at our ever-changing technological landscape while investigating our ability to respond, adapt, and evolve as a society.

Ella Bell Smith and Stella Nkomo take an unflinching look at the differences between Black and White women's experiences at work. Based on groundbreaking research, the book compares and contrasts the experiences of 120 first-generation Black and White female managers in the American business area. In-depth histories bring to life the women's powerful and often difficult journeys from childhood to professional success, highlighting the roles that gender, race, and class played in their development.

Empowering women empowers everyone. Women with confidence, equal pay, and leadership opportunity enrich workplace culture and help the whole organization. The first step is understanding that gender balance is not a zero-sum game. The Next Smart Step is a clear, assured guide to understanding the challenge of gender imbalance, implementing solutions, and equipping listeners with the tools we all need to ensure change that is positive and enduring. It is about all of us becoming leaders.

Ageism is too often an accepted form of bias, even though the facts support the value of aging. Airline pilots forced to retire at the arbitrary age of 65 are usually at the top of their game. Forced retirement in most organizations remove highly skilled performers as well as role models and trainers for newer generations. Instead of revelling in who we are, we begin to try to look younger as soon as possible. People have become inured to "losing" abilities as they age instead of appreciating new abilities that only age can bestow.

In this volume of the MIT Press's Essential Knowledge series, Nick Montfort argues that the future is something to be made, not predicted. Montfort offers what he considers essential knowledge about the future, as seen in the work of writers, artists, inventors, and designers (mainly in Western culture) who developed and described the core components of the futures they envisioned. Montfort's approach is not that of futurology or scenario planning; instead, he reports on the work of making the future - the thinkers who devoted themselves to writing pages in the unwritten book.

Wounded Angels: Inspiration from Children in Crisis uses vignettes of children in crisis situations to portray how troubling behaviors can act as clues for ways children can grow stronger after traumatic stress. This text shows how children can guide caregivers and practitioners through hidden conflicts and, through case examples, provide opportunities to develop emotionally supportive relationships. Practitioners and caregivers can use Wounded Angels to encourage a resilient perspective for children.

There is no mistaking that inequality in the workplace is still prevalent in the form of salary inequity and unequal representation in leadership and board positions. Too often conversations about inequality can lead to men and women believing they are alike. Women and men are not the same, biologically or psychologically, and these differences lead to significant dissimilarities in how each approaches leadership situations.