Showing titles in History & Culture

Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (and other Oddities) is a collection of Lucy Snyder's humorous essays, fiction, and articles, some culled from places like Strange Horizons and Spacesuits and Six-Guns and some brand new. This collection of 13 short stories, articles, and essays from Lucy A. Snyder will appeal to any fan of zombies, aliens, or installation manuals.

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.

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.

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.

Tomorrow's Mind is not just a book about AI; it's a journey into the future of our own minds, a future that is being written now, with every algorithm and every line of code. As AI continues to shape our world, this book is an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand the profound impact it will have on the way we think, create, and decide.

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.

Alan Turing can be regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. But who was Turing, and what did he achieve during his tragically short life of 41 years? Best known as the genius who broke Germany's most secret codes during the war of 1939-45, Turing was also the father of the modern computer. Today, all who 'click-to-open' are familiar with the impact of Turing's ideas. Here, B. Jack Copeland provides an account of Turing's life and work, exploring the key elements of his life-story in tandem with his leading ideas and contributions.

Life Mode On is a revolutionary approach to living a better life with technology and our personal devices, from digital lifestyle expert Dr Joanne Orlando. These are no quick fixes; these are real, practical solutions for long-term fulfilment in our increasingly digital world. Dr Jo helps people to understand their technology use and make it better.

The New Digital Age is the product of an unparalleled collaboration: full of the brilliant insights of one of Silicon Valley's great innovators - what Bill Gates was to Microsoft and Steve Jobs was to Apple, Schmidt (along with Larry Page and Sergey Brin) was to Google - and the Director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, formerly an advisor to both Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Never before has the future been so vividly and transparently imagined. From

The Eudaemonic Pie is the bizarre true story of how a band of physicists and computer wizards took on Las Vegas. It chronicles the origins of personal computers, the history of gambling, and the comedy of living a good life governed according to reason (eudaemonia).

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.