Showing titles in History & Culture

The modern world has the ancient Romans to thank for the origins of many modern technologies, conveniences, and ideas, from running water, baths, and republican-style government to roads. Similarly, by the third century BCE, the Romans were prodigious monument builders, so much so that the memory of the great Roman Republic and the Roman Empire continues to exist within a cityscape of stone. Rome’s public spaces were filled with statues, arches, temples, and many other varieties of monumental images, and each of these structures had its own civic or religious function.

Screenwise offers a realistic and optimistic perspective on how to thoughtfully guide kids in the digital age. Many parents feel that their kids are addicted, detached, or distracted because of their digital devices. Using the foundation of their own values and experiences, parents and educators can learn about the digital world to help set kids up for success in a world fueled by technology.

Many of us learn about the major inventions that shape our world. But we too often overlook the objects we use every day. In The Story Behind, Emily Prokop, creator of the Webby Award nominated podcast, explores the who, how, and huh? of everything from Band-Aids to bubble gum; hypnosis to Hula Hoops; and lullabies to lead pipes. Along the way, she demonstrates how the major events of history - from wars, plagues and revolutions to historic achievements and discoveries - have influenced some of the world’s most pervasive inventions. 

In Push Play: Gaming for a Better World, Dr. Songyee Yoon describes how gaming can help us craft a better world together. Through stories from her career in the gaming industry, she outlines how innovations in gaming push industries forward and create a more equitable world for all.

Dive into the world of AI and transform yourself from a conversational AI beginner to a pro with "ChatGPT for Beginners Made Easy". This is a non-technical guide tailored for those new to technology and looking to learn AI through practical application.

When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface in July of 1969, they wore spacesuits made by Playtex: 21 layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of that spacesuit. It is a story of the triumph over the military-industrial complex by the International Latex Corporation, best known by its consumer brand of "Playtex" - a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics.

If you feel like you're losing your teen to technology, you're not alone. Screen time is rapidly replacing family time, and for teens especially, it is hardwiring the way they connect with their world. In Screens and Teens, Dr. Kathy helps you make sense of all this and empowers you to respond.

At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.

Today's unprecedented pace of change leaves many people wondering what new technologies are doing to our lives. Has social media robbed us of our privacy and fed us with false information? Are the decisions about our health, security and finances made by computer programs inexplicable and biased? Will these algorithms become so complex that we can no longer control them? Are robots going to take our jobs? John Browne presents an impassioned defence of progress and innovation and argues that we need not and must not put the brakes on technological advance.

Brilliant offers a sweeping view of a surprisingly revealing aspect of human history - from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future. Jane Brox plumbs the class implications of light - who had it, who didn't - through the many centuries when crude lamps and tallow candles constricted waking hours. Brillant is infused with human voices, startling insights, and - only a few years before it becomes illegal to sell most incandescent light bulbs in the United States - timely questions about how our future lives will be shaped by light.

As the speed and complexity of the world increases, governments and nonprofit organizations need new ways to effectively tackle the critical challenges of our time-from pandemics and global warming to social media warfare. In Power to the Public, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank describe a revolutionary new approach - public interest technology - that has the potential to transform the way governments and nonprofits around the world solve problems.

Ambassadors from Earth relates the story of the first unmanned space probes and planetary explorers - from the Sputnik and Explorer satellites launched in the late 1950's to the thrilling interstellar Voyager missions of the '70's - that yielded some of the most celebrated successes and spectacular failures of the space age. Jay Gallentine delivers a quirky and unforgettable look at the lives and legacy of the Americans and Soviets who conceived, built, and guided those unmanned missions to the planets and beyond.

Embark on a compelling exploration into the world of AI, where future reality meets boundless possibility. Can you afford to remain in the dark? When you watch a movie suggested by Netflix's AI, talk to your favorite brand's chatbot, or follow your car's navigation to the new restaurant in town, you interact with AI. Most people are spectators rather than actors in this fast-evolving digital epoch. This is where the insightful journey author Will Davis guides you on will change your perspective.

Near the end of the Apollo 15 mission, David Scott and fellow moonwalker James Irwin conducted a secret ceremony unsanctioned by NASA: they placed on the lunar soil a small tin figurine called The Fallen Astronaut, along with a plaque bearing a list of names. By telling the stories of those sixteen astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the quest to reach the moon between 1962 and 1972, this book enriches the saga of humankind's greatest scientific undertaking, Project Apollo, and conveys the human cost of the space race.

In 2013 Evan Spiegel, the brash CEO of the social network Snapchat, and his co-founder Bobby Murphy stunned the press when they walked away from a three-billion-dollar offer from Facebook: how could an app teenagers use to text dirty photos dream of a higher valuation? Was this hubris, or genius? In How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, tech journalist Billy Gallagher takes us inside the rise of one of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups. Snapchat began as a late-night dorm room revelation, the brainchild of Stanford English major Reggie Brown who was nursing regrets about photos he had sent.

If you want to avoid getting hacked, having your information spread, and discover the world of ethical hacking then pay attention.... Two manuscripts in one audiobook: Cybersecurity: An Essential Guide to Computer and Cyber Security for Beginners, Including Ethical Hacking, Risk Assessment, Social Engineering, Attack and Defense Strategies, and Cyber-Warfare, Ethical Hacking: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Using Penetration Testing to Audit and Improve the Cyber-Security of Computer Networks, Including Tips on Social Engineering.

In this pioneering work, technology lawyer Rahul Matthan traces the changing notions of privacy from the earliest times to its evolution through landmark cases in the UK, US and India. In the process, he reimagines the way we should be thinking about privacy today if we are to take full advantage of modern data technologies, cautioning against getting so obsessed with their potential harms that we design our laws to prevent us from benefiting from them at all.

If you want to learn about artificial intelligence without having to go through a boring textbook, then pay attention....

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.

In this book, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman offer listeners insight into the risks and benefits of driverless cars, and a lucid and engaging explanation of the enabling technology. Recent advances in software and robotics are toppling long-standing technological barriers that for decades have confined self-driving cars to the realm of fantasy. A new kind of artificial intelligence software called deep learning gives cars rapid and accurate visual perception. Human drivers can relax and take their eyes off the road.