Showing titles in History & Culture

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development...

Technology promises to save humanity. How's that working out? In this comedy-science podcast, comedy legends Richard Ayoade (determinedly pessimistic) and Warwick Davis (inexplicably cheerful) venture beneath Audible HQ to the Future Tense lab, fully equipped to interrogate the future we're all being told to look forward to.

Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.

In a world more connected than ever, we have never been more divided. The Echo Chamber Effect is a powerful and deeply thought-provoking exploration of how social media platforms quietly shape the way we think, feel, and interact. Drawing on psychology, technology, and human behaviour, Elira Fontayne exposes the subtle mechanics that transform our online experiences into self-reinforcing bubbles of belief.

Longlisted for the Audiobook Download of the Year, 2007.
How much should you pay for a return trip to the moon? How are Winnie the Pooh and the artificial heart related? Did teenagers exist before 1950? If not, who invented them? James May's 20th Century answers all these questions and more.

How AI Really Thinks takes you behind the screen and uncovers the ten core secrets that make modern artificial intelligence work. You’ll discover why data acts as AI’s fuel, how algorithms function as its rulebook, and how machines learn from examples the same way people learn from experience. You’ll explore the training methods that help AI recognise pictures and understand speech, and you’ll see how neural networks—loosely inspired by the human brain—allow AI to detect patterns far too complex for us to notice.

Nichol tells the remarkable tale of how the ejection seat was first conceived during the Second World War as countless lives were lost in accidents and in battle. In the wake of the war, that technological race to save aircrew lives using explosive seats continued at an incredible pace. Nichol tells the story of the brave men who risked their lives testing those early devices, and interviewed the first British pilot to eject back in 1949, when ejection, from pulling the handle to being under the parachute, took thirty seconds. Today, that figure is down to around one second.

Audie Award, History/Biography, 2016. On the night of July 20, 1969, our world changed forever when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Based on in-depth interviews with 23 of the 24 moon voyagers, as well as those who struggled to get the program moving, A Man on the Moon conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail.

To live in 19th-century Britain was to experience an astonishing series of changes, of a kind for which there was simply no precedent. There were revolutions in transport, communication and work; cities grew vast; and scientific ideas made the intellectual landscape unrecognisable. This was an exhilarating time but also a horrifying one. In his new book, David Cannadine has created a bold, fascinating new interpretation of the British 19th century in all its energy and dynamism, darkness and vice.

Audible editor Sam Danis delves into spatial audio with Dolby Atmos: what it is, what makes it so immersive, and what the future holds for audio entertainment. Featuring conversations with experts in sound design and production, as well as samples from some of the most unique Audible productions available in Dolby Atmos. Listen in to discover the storytelling magic this innovative technology can offer.

In Dear Future: You Can Keep The Change, Ronee Hulk offers a haunting and deeply human exploration of artificial intelligence and its quiet unravelling of the systems that once defined who we are. With automation racing ahead of imagination; algorithms deciding what we make, trade, and even how we are valued; Could the global economy fall apart; not through disorder but through the precision of its own design?

Futurists insist that AI will soon eclipse the capacities of the most gifted human mind. What hope do we have against superintelligent machines? But we aren't really on the path to developing intelligent machines. In fact, we don't even know where that path might be. Erik Larson takes us on a tour of the landscape of AI to show how far we are from superintelligence and what it would take to get there.

In Understanding Artificial Intelligence: Of Minds and Machines, philosopher Patrick Grim traces the story of AI from ancient legends to the neural networks behind today’s breakthroughs. You see how modern systems became so powerful so quickly. You also explore the very meaning of “intelligence,” discovering how modern AI succeeds by drawing on three resources: vast datasets that let systems learn from examples; deep-learning architectures loosely modeled on the brain’s layers; and feedback loops that help models refine their behavior.

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.

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead — or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

Coexisting with AI: Work, Love, and Play in a Changing World is an exploration of how AI can be used at each stage of our lives. It helps listeners understand the positive impact of AI and where governance is needed from both an individual and business perspective. From childhood through to aging, this book delivers a holistic understanding of this exciting new technology in language that anyone can understand regardless of technical expertise.

The story of human civilization can be read most deeply in the materials we have found or created, used or abused. They have dictated how we build, eat, communicate, wage war, create art, travel, and worship. Some, such as stone, iron, and bronze, lend their names to the ages. Others, such as gold, silver, and diamond, contributed to the rise and fall of great empires.

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...

In the Shadow of the Moon tells the story of the most exciting and challenging years in spaceflight, with two superpowers engaged in a titanic struggle to land one of their own people on the moon. Drawing on interviews with astronauts, cosmonauts, their families, technicians, and scientists, as well as rarely seen Soviet and American government documents, the authors craft a remarkable story of the golden age of spaceflight as both an intimate human experience and a rollicking global adventure.