Information Age

Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.

We’re often told that disinformation is everywhere and that it’s endangering our democracy. But what if the war on disinformation itself is really just a weapon to squash any and all legitimate dissent? This program is read by the author. The Information State is an incisive examination of...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. “Strikingly original . . . A historian whose arguments operate on the scale of millennia has managed to capture the zeitgeist perfectly...

The thrilling story of the nineteenth century's moonshot: An Atlantic-spanning telegraph cable that created the global village and changed the world. In 1854, the American entrepreneur Cyrus Field set out to lay a 2,000-mile telegraph cable across the Atlantic. Nothing like it had ever been...

En Nexus, Harari contempla a la humanidad desde la amplia perspectiva de la historia para analizar cómo las redes de información han hecho y deshecho nuestro mundo. Durante los últimos 100.000 años, los sapiens hemos acumulado un enorme poder. Pero, a pesar de todos los descubrimientos, inventos y conquistas, ahora nos enfrentamos a una crisis existencial: el mundo está al borde del colapso ecológico, abunda la desinformación y nos precipitamos hacia la era de la I.A. Con todo el camino andando, ¿por qué somos una especie autodestructiva?

Now featuring a new preface by Peter Thiel Two renowned investment advisors and authors of the bestseller The Great Reckoning bring to light both currents of disaster and the potential for prosperity and renewal in the face of radical changes in human history as we move into the next century...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find...

As technologies of automated computation rapidly transform human culture, we are being urged to believe that human minds are machines and machines are potentially minds. But what if the question of machine consciousness is not a hard problem awaiting better theories and technologies, but malformed—born from a metaphysics that first exiled feeling, purpose, and meaning from nature? Remembering the Human Microcosm in the Age of Mechanized Intelligence challenges the corporate myth of “artificial intelligence” and the emerging threat of cognitive enclosure: the attempt to meter and ...

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story...

TechGnosis is a cult classic of media studies that straddles the line between academic discourse and popular culture; it appeals to both those secular and spiritual, to fans of cyberpunk and hacker literature and culture as much as new-thought adherents and spiritual seekers How does our...

"Unsettling, absolutely riveting, and—for better or worse—necessary reading." —Brian Christian, author of Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem An entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking—and why we all need to understand it. It’s a signal paradox of...

An engaging exploration of how people have taught, practiced, and thought about rhetoric—from the Iron Age to today “An entertaining history of great oratory.” —New Yorker Rhetoric gives our words the power to inspire. But it’s not just for politicians: it’s all around us, whether...

New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin shifts his keen insights from your brain on music to your brain in a sea of details. The information age is drowning us with an unprecedented deluge of data. At the same time, we’re expected to make more—and...

En Nexus, Harari contempla a la humanidad desde la amplia perspectiva de la historia para analizar cómo las redes de información han hecho y deshecho nuestro mundo. Durante los últimos 100.000 años, los sapiens hemos acumulado un enorme poder. Pero, a pesar de todos los descubrimientos, inventos y conquistas, ahora nos enfrentamos a una crisis existencial: el mundo está al borde del colapso ecológico, abunda la desinformación y nos precipitamos hacia la era de la I.A. Con todo el camino andando, ¿por qué somos una especie autodestructiva?

An eye-opening look at the small communities of propagandists revolutionizing politics, culture, and society. “Essential and riveting reading.” —Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation Invisible Rulers is about a profound transformation in power and influence that is altering our...

"Narrator Laurence Dobiesz’s reading is unhurried, almost leisurely, as he savors Amis’ wicked stylistic virtuosity and his dark humorous portraits of characters." —Booklist A wry, incisive satire of envy and ambition following a failed novelist’s absurd quest to sabotage his more...

A fun yet provocative look at the importance of staying curious in an increasingly indifferent world. Everyone is born curious. But only some retain the habits of exploring, learning, and discovering as they grow older. Those who do so tend to be smarter, more creative, and more successful. But...

On December 16, 1947, two physicists at Bell Laboratories, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of germanium half an inch long. The electrical power coming out of that piece of germanium was 100 times stronger than what went in. In that moment, the transistor was invented and the information age began. Crystal Fire recounts the story of the transistor team at Bell Labs, led by William Shockley, who shared the Nobel Prize with Bardeen and Brattain. 

Are we drowning in information, or simply being swept away by it? In The Age of Mess-Information, Victor Odasnac explores the chaotic collision of the internet, social media, mobile technology, and artificial intelligence—and how this has led to an overwhelming flood of information that is reshaping our society. Beyond misinformation and disinformation lies mess-information: a relentless barrage of narratives, truths, and lies that obscures clarity, erodes critical thinking, and leaves us questioning whether truth itself is even attainable. This thought-provoking book takes you on a ...

A truly global view of history covering over 350 of the world's most important turning points. This is an essential audiobook for every history buff. World History is the most accessible guide to the history of human civilization, covering the Neanderthals, the Assyrian Empire, Chinese dynasties...