Showing titles in History

The story of the compass is shrouded in mystery and myth, yet most will agree it begins around the time of the birth of Christ in ancient China. A mysterious lodestone whose powers affected metal was known to the Chinese emperor. When this piece of metal was suspended in water, it always pointed...

Both entertaining and instructive, High Noon offers valuable lessons for taking charge of your destiny and succeeding in a fast-paced, unpredictable, and even hostile environment. It is the inside story of Sun Microsystem's rise to power, from its shaky start in Silicon Valley through its transformation under the aggressive and inspirational leadership of Scott McNealy.

In this book in praise of wait times, award-winning author Jason Farman passionately argues that the delay between call and answer has always been an important part of the message. Traveling backward from our current era of Twitter and texts, Farman describes how societies have worked to eliminate waiting in communication and how they have interpreted those times' meanings. And in a rebuttal to the demand for instant communication, Farman makes a powerful case for why good things can come to those who wait.

Time and predictability allows for some of the most extraordinary breakthrough inventions to be taken for granted in our modern life. Through eloquent and artfully illustrated verse Lande Jewels rediscovers the key paradigms and theories that shaped the science we know today. From heliocentrism to quantum mechanics and from MRI to Michael Faraday's electric motor, the history is told a poem at a time.

Hacker culture can be esoteric, but this entertaining reference is here to help. Written by a longtime hacker, this fun reference introduces you to key people and companies, fundamental ideas, and milestone films, games, and magazines in the annals of hacking. From phreaking to deepfakes, and from APT (advanced package tool) to zombie malware, grasping the terminology is crucial to understanding hacker culture and history.

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.

The Well was conceived during the Orwellian year of 1984, yet instead of heralding Big Brother, it became a boundary-breaking cultural invention that helped change our world.

In recent decades, most innovation has come from a single sector (information technology) and a single place (Silicon Valley). Walter Isaacson's The Innovators and Peter Thiel's Zero to One shed light on how that happened and what drives innovation more generally.

The Big Ratchet is the story of the ratchets: the technologies and innovations, big and small, that propelled our species from hunters and gatherers on the savannahs of Africa to shoppers in the aisles of the supermarket. Our species long lived on the edge of starvation. Now we produce enough food for all 7 billion of us to eat nearly 3,000 calories every day. This is such an astonishing thing in the history of life as to verge on the miraculous. The Big Ratchet is the story of how it happened.

Neither an advocate nor a critic of cultured meat, Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft spent five years researching the phenomenon. In Meat Planet, he reveals how debates about lab-grown meat reach beyond debates about food, examining the links between appetite, growth, and capitalism. Could satiating the growing appetite for meat actually lead to our undoing? Are we simply using one technology to undo the damage caused by another? Like all problems in our food system, the meat problem is not merely a problem of production. It is intrinsically social and political.

In Archaeology from Space, Sarah Parcak shows the evolution, major discoveries, and future potential of the young field of satellite archaeology. From surprise advancements after the declassification of spy photography, to a new map of the mythical Egyptian city of Tanis, she shares her field's biggest discoveries, revealing why space archaeology is not only exciting, but urgently essential to the preservation of the world's ancient treasures.

Why You’re Still Smarter Than AI: The Hidden Limits of Machine Thinking is a bold, deeply analytical, and empowering guide that dismantles the myth of AI supremacy. This isn't another book predicting robot takeovers or tech utopias—it’s a profound examination of what machines fundamentally lack and what makes human intelligence irreplaceable.

„Wie KI unsere Zukunft gestalten wird“ ist in einem leicht verständlichen Stil geschrieben und widmet sich einer der zentralen Fragen unserer Zeit: Was können wir von der rasanten Entwicklung der KI erwarten? Wie wird sie unser Leben und unsere Gesellschaft in den kommenden Jahrzehnten verändern?

Discover the epic saga of gaming evolution in The Complete History of Video Games: The Definitive List of the Top 100 Video Games Ever Made - a must-have for every gamer, collector, and industry enthusiast. This meticulously curated guide chronicles the most iconic, groundbreaking, and beloved video games of all time. From pixelated pioneers to modern masterpieces, this book takes you on a thrilling journey through the digital worlds that shaped generations.

In this provocative and optimistic rebuke to the catastrophists, Robert Bryce shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is providing consumers with Cheaper and more abundant energy, Faster computing, Lighter vehicles, and myriad other goods. That same desire is fostering unprecedented prosperity, greater liberty, and yes, better environmental protection.

Before Thomas Edison, light and fire were thought to be one and the same. Turns out, they were separate things altogether. This book takes a similar relationship, that of time and place, and shows how they, too, were once inseparable. Timekeeping was once a local affair, when small towns set their own pace according to the rising and setting of the sun.

Die Videospiele-Industrie sorgt seit Jahrzehnten nicht nur für virtuelle Unterhaltung, sondern sie schreibt einige ihrer größten Geschichten in Form von Skandalen, Kontroversen und denkwürdigen Ereignissen auch selbst. Dabei ist alles: von unterhaltsam und amüsant bis hin zu ekelhaft und abstoßend, aber auch überraschend.

Der Sound der originalen Dampflokomotiven der DR - jetzt als Hörbuch . Obwohl die Dampflokomotive technisch überholt ist, findet sie bei Eisenbahnern und traditionsbewußten Eisenbahnfreunden nach wie vor ihre Bewunderer.

Uma incrível jornada pela história da inovação ao longo dos séculos por um dos mais influentes pensadores da tecnologia. Refrigeração, relógios, lentes, água potável, gravação de som e luz artificial - elementos fundamentais de nossa vida diária - são esquadrinhados de forma totalmente original, desde sua remota criação por inventores diletantes, amadores e empreendedores visionários, aos efeitos e evoluções que desencadearam.

É curioso que a história dos computadores e da internet, ferramentas tão presentes em nosso dia a dia, seja tão pouco conhecida pela maioria das pessoas. E talvez mais interessante ainda seja o fato de, diferentemente de outras tecnologias revolucionárias a sua época, como o telefone e a lâmpada, essas invenções que mudaram a forma como vivemos serem em grande parte fruto de trabalho colaborativo.