Showing titles in History & Culture

Ka-boom! probes extremes of size and speed, depth and density, and reveals the stickiest, sweetest, smelliest and nastiest substances known to science. In an unabashed celebration of the exceptional, David Darling takes an enlightening journey through the universe's weirdest and most wonderful extremes.

Welcome to the economy of algorithms. It’s here and it’s growing. In the past few years, we have been flooded with examples of impressive technology. Algorithms have been around for hundreds of years, but they have only recently begun to ‘escape’ our understanding. When algorithms perform certain tasks, they’re not just as good as us, they’re becoming infinitely better, and, at the same time, massively more surprising. We are so impressed by what they can do that we give them a lot of agency. But because they are so hard to comprehend, this leads to all kinds of unintended consequences.

This is what our future looks like: in the next decade, AI will be able to convince us that it’s human. During the 2030s, it will become ‘superintelligent’, vastly outstripping our capabilities by almost every measure. By 2045, it will be possible to connect our brains with these AIs using invisibly small nanotechnologies. Our minds and theirs will merge, expanding our consciousness more profoundly than we can fully comprehend, unlocking possibilities we can barely imagine. This is the singularity.

Since it was first published in 2005, Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near and its vision of the future have been influential in spawning a worldwide movement with millions of followers, hundreds of books, major films, and thousands of articles. During the succeeding decade, many of Kurzweil's predictions about technological advancements have been borne out, and their viability has become familiar to the public through such now commonplace concepts. In this entirely new book Ray Kurzweil brings a fresh perspective to advances in the singularity.

For decades, IBM shaped the way the world did business. IBM products were in every large organization, and IBM corporate culture established a management style that was imitated by companies around the globe. It was “Big Blue”—an icon. And yet over the years, IBM has gone through both failure and success. The company almost went out of business in the early 1990s, then came back strong with new business strategies and an emphasis on artificial intelligence. In this authoritative history, James Cortada tells the story of one of the most influential American companies of the last century.

Skip the iPhone, the iPod, and the Macintosh. If you want to understand how Apple Inc. became an industry behemoth, look no further than the 1977 Apple II. The Apple II was a versatile piece of hardware, but its most compelling story isn't found in the feat of its engineering, the personalities of Apple's founders, or the way it set the stage for the company's multibillion-dollar future. Instead, historian Laine Nooney shows, what made the Apple II iconic was its software.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, transportation in the United States underwent an extraordinary transformation. In The American Transportation Revolution, Aaron W. Marrs explores the cultural influence of steamboats and railroads, which fascinated Americans across the country.

Advances in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) have created a new class of computer systems that exhibit astonishing proficiency on a wide variety of tasks with superhuman performance, producing novel text, images, music, and software by analyzing enormous collections of digitized information. Soon, these systems will provide expert medical care; offer legal advice; draft documents; write computer programs; tutor our children; and generate music and art. These advances will accelerate progress in science, art, and human knowledge, but they will also bring new dangers.

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?

On the surface, a British poet, an UberEats courier in Pittsburgh, an Indian doctor, and a Chinese activist in exile have nothing in common. But they are in fact linked by a profound common experience—unexpected encounters with artificial intelligence. In Code Dependent, Murgia shows how automated systems are reshaping our lives all over the world, from technology that marks children as future criminals, to an app that is helping to give diagnoses to a remote tribal community.

In our modern world, our lives are driven by the latest media: public and private. Their continuous influence on every aspect of our lives leaves us with little to no chance of deciding what really matters. That is, the personal individual and or group decision-making in what matters most, the preservation and expressions of singularity and group identity. This book is an inspiration to adults who can make a difference in their attitude to make a difference among themselves and improve social areas and a better relationship among us, the great and larger human family.

Welcome to "Agile Mastery: Navigating the Path to Agile Excellence." In this book, we embark on a journey into the world of Agile development, where responsiveness, collaboration, and adaptability reign supreme. Whether you are a software professional, project manager, or business leader, this book is your guide to understanding, implementing, and mastering Agile practices.

Unlock a healthier relationship with technology through the transformative insights of Digital Wellness. In today's fast-paced digital landscape, it's easy to lose balance and let screens dominate every aspect of our lives. This essential guide offers a comprehensive approach to reclaiming your time, fostering mental well-being, and nurturing meaningful connections. Start your journey by gaining a deep understanding of how digital habits have evolved and the ways technology subtly shapes our behaviors. This foundation helps you to identify and assess your unique patterns of digital ...

Are You a Writer Who Has Been Marginalized by Traditional Publishing or Felt Overwhelmed by the Book Writing Process? Most of the dialogue around large language model artificial intelligence is about the dangers to intellectual property owners or even the human race, but there is another side to generative AI storytelling that remains largely untold: its potential to democratize voices that matter. Throughout the history of publishing, from the invention of the papyrus scroll to the printing press and from the typewriter to Google Docs, each new technological innovation has made it easier ...

Are you ready to transform your daily life with the incredible power of artificial intelligence? Dive into this easy-to-understand book and discover how you can harness the groundbreaking potential of ChatGPT to enhance every aspect of your life. In this engaging and accessible guide, renowned AI expert and author Benjamin Takahashi demystifies the world of ChatGPT, an AI-driven technology that is revolutionizing the way we live, work, and interact with our environment. Whether you're a tech-savvy enthusiast or an AI novice, this book will help you understand and apply the principles of ...

Artificial intelligence plays a major role in our lives now, and its pervasive influence spreads faster by the day. This book is for the curious who ponder not just how AI will shape our future but how we can shape AI to reflect our highest values and aspirations. It's for those seeking to understand the profound changes AI promises for our personal lives, careers, and the very fabric of society. And it's all told in an accessible narrative to inform and entertain.

We've all heard the mind-boggling statistics about technology and social media use. The numbers don't lie; our obsession with smartphones and social media is slowly eroding the very essence of our homes and families. We see it. We feel it. We know it. So what do we do about it? Spoiler alert: Forget parental control apps, time limits, or reward charts. This revolutionary path takes us into the heart of the beast itself: the social media algorithm.

Leading futurist and OneShared.World founder Jamie Metzl explores how genome sequencing, gene editing, artificial intelligence, and other technologies are not only changing our lives, but catalyzing each other in radical and accelerating ways. These technologies have the potential to improve our health, feed billions of people, supercharge our economies, and store essential information for millions of years, but can also—if we are not careful—do immeasurable harm.

Most people think about technology as something we created to serve us, but we may well be getting to the point where we are the ones who're serving an ever more sophisticated technology. With pragmatism and optimism, Dr Tim Sharp, aka Dr Happy, outlines strategies and tools to build your confidence to positively cope with the modern world.

What if AI can lie? Will AI take our jobs? Could AI overrule us? I grew tired of not knowing the answer to questions like these, so I did what any sensible person would do, I asked ChatGPT... The answers I got were revealing. Walk with me through these 10 questions to find out how ChatGPT will impact our lives. You'll be surprised at what you find.