Social Technology

In the movies, robots can be terrifying. In reality, thinking machines are disrupting the world in ways that are even more disturbing than in Hollywood fantasies - but they also have the potential to change our lives for the better. In this stirring, visionary work, acclaimed roboticist Dr. Ayanna Howard explores how the tech world’s racial and sexual biases are infecting the next generation of Artificial Intelligence, with profoundly negative effects for humans of all genders and races.

In 1954, a group of boys attended a remote summer camp in Oklahoma. There they were split into two groups and encouraged to bully, harass and demonise each other. The results would make history as one of social psychology’s classic studies: the Robbers Cave experiment. Conducted at the height of the Cold War, the experiment officially had a happy ending: the boys reconciled, and psychologist Muzafer Sherif demonstrated that while hatred and violence are powerful forces, so, too, are cooperation and harmony.

What kind of fossils will we leave, as relics into the far future? A blizzard of new objects has suddenly appeared on Earth: plastic bottles, ballpoint pens, concrete flyways, chicken bones, cans, teabags, phones, shirts. They're produced for our comfort and pleasure then quickly discarded. This new-made treasure chest underpins our lives. But it is also giving a completely new style of fossilization to our planet. Designed to resist corrosion and decay, many will remain, petrified, as future geology.

You’ve heard all about TikTok and now you want to make on the most exciting thing that’s happened to social media since…well, the Internet? This book will set you on the right path for TikTok success. It’s for businesses who want to master TikTok quickly and profit from being a first mover.

In AI for Good: Applications in Sustainability, Humanitarian Action, and Health, a team of veteran Microsoft AI researchers delivers an insightful and fascinating discussion of how one of the world's most recognizable software companies is tackling intractable social problems with the power of artificial intelligence (AI). In the book, you'll see real in-the-field examples of researchers using AI with replicable methods and reusable AI code to inspire your own uses.

Creating a good podcast is more complicated than buying some equipment. You've probably read articles about which microphone to buy, which software to use and how to post your podcast on iTunes. Perhaps you've heard some "expert advice" that suggests writing a script or an outline. Podcast: Learn How to Stop Babbling and Start Podcasting Like a Pro is a step-by-step guide to help you develop ideas, write a script or outline for your show, and prepare your podcast.

Uncover everything you need to know about "deepfakes" and what could become the biggest information and communications meltdown in world history.

In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?

Artificial intelligence was meant to be the great social equalizer that helps promote fairness by removing human bias from the equation, but is this true? Given that the policing and judicial systems can display human bias, this book explores how the technology they use can also reflect these prejudices. From healthcare services to social scoring in exams, to applying for and getting loans, AI outcomes often restrict those most in need of these services. Through personal stories from an esteemed black data scientist and AI expert, this book attempts to demystify the algorithmic black box.

The key to a booming business is your community. Founder of social media consultancy The Selfhood Daisy Morris is here with the ultimate guide for all the side-hustlers, creators, business owners and freelancers looking to build a genuine community on social media. This audiobook drops the jargon - Daisy will teach you how to take your community on a journey. From brand awareness through to conversion, you will have the confidence to expand your reach while nurturing your existing fans, followers, subscribers and customers to turn them in to loyal and repeat customers.

In Artificial You, Susan Schneider says that it is inevitable that AI will take intelligence in new directions but urges that it is up to us to carve out a sensible path forward. As AI technology turns inward, reshaping the brain, as well as outward, potentially creating machine minds, it is crucial to beware. Homo sapiens, as mind designers, will be playing with "tools" they do not understand how to use: the self, the mind, and consciousness.

In no more than the blink of an eye, a naïve optimism about technology’s liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. System Error exposes the root of our current predicament - how big tech’s relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get- and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.

From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn't the age of distrust - far from it. Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history. A new world order is emerging: We might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their homes to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of "distributed trust", a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules....

On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree - becoming the first Native American doctor in US history. She earned her degree 31 years before women could vote and 35 years before Indians could become citizens in their own country. This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice and then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people.

It’s hard to avoid innovation these days. Nearly every product gets marketed as being disruptive, whether it’s genuinely a new invention or just a new toothbrush. But in this manifesto on the state of American work, historians of technology Lee Vinsel and Andrew L. Russell argue that our way of thinking about and pursuing innovation has made us poorer, less safe, and — ironically — less innovative. Drawing on years of original research and reporting, The Innovation Delusion shows how the ideology of change for its own sake has proved a disaster.

In this groundbreaking book, acclaimed media scholar and technology author Douglas Rushkoff calls on us to abandon the monopolist, winner-takes-all values we are unwittingly embedding into the digital economy and to embrace the more distributed possibilities of these platforms. He shows how we can optimize every aspect of the economy - from central currency and debt to corporations and labor - to create sustainable prosperity for business and people alike.

Collecting the most celebrated stories from the hit podcast RISK!, along with all-new true tales about explosive secrets and off-the-wall adventures, this book paints a spellbinding portrait of the transformational moments we experience in life but rarely talk about. No topics are off-limits in RISK!, no memories too revealing to share. From accidentally harboring a teen fugitive to being poisoned while tripping on LSD in the Mayan ruins, these stories transport readers into uncharted territory and show how your life can change when you take an extraordinary leap.

¿Siente que la búsqueda constante de clientes potenciales no lo lleva a ninguna parte? La verdad es que, incluso si tiene un plan de mercadeo brillante y es consistente con su estrategia de promoción... aún podría no ser suficiente. Las personas no quieren sentir que le están vendiendo y estan más conscientes de esto que nunca. Las redes sociales son uno de los mayores activos en el mercadeo en red que jamás hayan inventado, y una vez que sepa cómo usarlas correctamente, ¡estara disfrutando y ganando mucho dinero!

You are a podcaster. And if you were a beast on a David Attenborough nature documentary, that would be your plaintive cry. This is not a book about how to make a podcast. You know how to do that, and anyway, the tech in podcasting changes all the time. This book will be useful to you for the rest of your career, because it will show you how to make your podcast better. The Audience is Listening is a book of tough love that presents you with a repeatable process to earn and keep an audience.

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.