History Computer Technology

An entertaining, scientifically rigorous exploration of the social and biological effects of our wireless world. The way we use technology is affecting our health and happiness. Engaging and entertaining yet scientifically rigorous, this fully revised and updated second edition of i-Minds comprehensively explores an era of screen-based technology's assimilation into our lives, pondering it as both godsend and plague. i-Minds is for anyone interested in fostering health and happiness or who is struggling with the role of screened technology in our lives.

Twenty-one years after its incorporation and 16 years after its stock peak, Yahoo sold for 96% less than its value on January 3, 2000, when it had closed at an all-time high of $118.75 per share, resulting in a market capitalization of $120 billion. Wall Street valued Yahoo!, at that time in business less than six years, higher than it did Disney, News Corporation, and Comcast combined. Yahoo!'s story is one of missed strategies, failed opportunities, and poor execution.

As technology races ahead, what will people do better than computers? It’s easy to imagine a nightmare scenario in which computers simply take over most of the tasks that people now get paid to do. The best-selling author of Talent Is Overrated explains how the skills the economy values are changing in historic ways. The abilities that will prove most essential to our success are no longer the technical, classroom-taught left-brain skills that economic advances have demanded from workers in the past.

Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion.

The flight of Apollo 11 was a triumph of human endeavor, persistence, and technology, one of the greatest achievements in human history. This book begins with the mission that sent Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin to the moon, then follows American spaceflight through the harrowing rescue of Apollo 13 before moving on to the successful joint Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975.

Ten years ago the idea of getting into a stranger's car or walking into a stranger's home would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, but today it's as common as ordering a book online. Uber and Airbnb have ushered in a new era: redefining neighborhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business, and changing the way we travel. In the spirit of iconic Silicon Valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, another generation of entrepreneurs is using technology to upend convention and disrupt entire industries.

New York Times, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, Discover bestselling author Steven Kotler has written extensively about those pivotal moments when science fiction became science fact...and fundamentally reshaped the world. Now he gathers the best of his best, updated and expanded upon, to guide listeners on a mind-bending tour of the far frontier, and how these advances are radically transforming our lives.

Katrine Marçal’s Mother of Invention is a fascinating examination of business, technology, and innovation through a feminist lens. Marçal takes us on a tour of the global economy, arguing that gendered assumptions dictate which businesses get funding, how we value work, and how we trace human progress. And it carries a powerful message: If we upend our biases, we can unleash our full potential, tackling climate change and wielding technology to become more human, rather than less.

A worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Can the United States win? Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secret federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists - almost all foreign born - are not alone.

Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone and Nest Learning Thermostat and learned enough in over 30 years in Silicon Valley about leadership, design, startups, Apple, Google, decision-making, mentorship, devastating failure and unbelievable success to fill an encyclopaedia. So that's what this book is. An advice encyclopaedia. A mentor in a box. Build is full of personal stories, practical advice and fascinating insights into some of the most impactful products and people of the 20th century.

What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of platform capitalism. This book critically examines these new business forms.

Dan Schiller, who has conducted archival research on United States telecommunications for more than forty years, recovers the extraordinary social history of the major network systems of the United States. Drawing on arrays of archival documents and secondary sources, Schiller reveals that this history has been shaped by sharp social and political conflict and is embedded in the larger history of an expansionary United States political economy.

As both individuals and communities, we have a choice. We can struggle through the onslaught of information and play an eternal game of catch-up. Or we can choose to live in the present: favor eye contact over texting; quality over speed; and human quirks over digital perfection. Rushkoff offers hope for anyone seeking to transcend the false now.

With far-reaching implications, this urgent treatise promises to revolutionize our understanding of what it means to be human in the digital age. We used to say "seeing is believing"; now googling is believing. With 24/7 access to nearly all of the world's information at our fingertips, we no longer trek to the library or the encyclopedia shelf in search of answers. We just open our browsers, type in a few keywords, and wait for the information to come to us.

How we ultimately gained the American Customary System, the last traditional system in the world, and how Gunter's chain indelibly imprinted its dimensions on the land, on cities, and on our culture from coast to coast is both an exciting human and intellectual drama and one of the great untold stories in American history. Sagely argued and beautifully written, Measuring America offers readers nothing less than the opportunity to see America's history, and our democracy, in a brilliant new light.

There is a generational transformation in the workforce. But there is good news. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can help improve work processes, thus improving work experience and creating an environment that retains skilled workers.

For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. Technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered. When the pandemic hit, that future transformed into the present, almost overnight. And the reviews aren't great.

In an era of seemingly instant change, it's easy to think that today's revolutions - in communications, business, and many areas of daily life - are unprecedented. Today's changes may be new and may be happening faster than ever before. But our ancestors at times were just as bewildered by rapid upheavals in what we now call “networks” - the physical links that bind any society together.

In this perceptive and provocative look at everything from computer software that requires faster processors and more support staff to antibiotics that breed resistant strains of bacteria, Edward Tenner offers a virtual encyclopedia of what he calls "revenge effects" - the unintended consequences of the mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical forms of ingenuity that have been hallmarks of the progressive, improvement-obsessed modern age.

Humanity's first reusable spacecraft and the most complex machine ever built, NASA's space shuttle debuted with great promise and as a dependable source of wonder and national pride. But with the Challenger catastrophe in 1986, the whole space shuttle program came into question, as did NASA itself, so long an institution that was seemingly above reproach. Wheels Stop tells the stirring story of how, after the Challenger disaster, the space shuttle not only recovered but went on to perform its greatest missions.