Showing titles in Technology & Society

Thrive in a world with unwritten rules… before now. The Corporate Life Survival Guide is a detailed how-to book on mastering office politics. With chapters on workplace life, situations to avoid, and achieving a work/life balance, it draws on the author’s quarter century of experience as an employee, contractor, and consultant. Insightful guidance and illustrative anecdotes will help you understand important missteps, the consequences, and how to prevent them. Always practical, the book will quickly improve the savvy of workers who are new to office life, making a successful career ...

The idea that human history is approaching a "singularity" - that ordinary humans will someday be overtaken by artificially intelligent machines or cognitively enhanced biological intelligence, or both - has moved from the realm of science fiction to serious debate. Some singularity theorists predict that if the field of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to develop at its current dizzying rate, the singularity could come about in the middle of the present century.

AI + The New Human Frontier: Reimagining the Future of Time, Trust + Truth by Erica Orange, a renowned futurist, offers a compelling exploration of generative AI's potential to enhance human creativity rather than replace it. This pivotal book navigates how AI tools will help shape the human experience, and aid in augmenting human ingenuity and imagination.

In Code Work, Hector Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx coders' personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. Beltrán shows how these hackers apply concepts from the code worlds to their lived experiences, deploying batches, loose coupling, iterative processing (looping), hacking, prototyping, and full-stack development in their daily social interactions-at home, in the workplace, on the dating scene, and in their understanding of the economy, culture, and geopolitics.

Conseguir una IA ética también es responsabilidad tuya La inteligencia artificial ha dejado de ser un argumento inquietante de las películas de ciencia ficción para convertirse en una cuestión tan real como urgente. Su evolución y los inevitables debates éticos que acarrea nos incumben a todos, pero suele delegarse esta responsabilidad en los propios directivos de las empresas tecnológicas, a menudo coaligados con quienes tienen intereses económicos. Abrumados por un mundo que no terminamos de entender y que intuimos atractivo y peligroso, miramos hacia otro lado.

Our society has a technology problem. Many want to disconnect from screens but can't help themselves. These days we spend more time online than ever. Some turn to self-help measures to limit their usage, yet repeatedly fail, while parents feel particularly powerless to help their children. Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies shows us a way out. Rather than blaming users, the book shatters the illusion that we autonomously choose how to spend our time online. It shifts the moral responsibility and accountability for solutions to corporations.

For decades, technology encouraged people to squander their time and intellect as passive consumers. Today, technology has finally caught up with human potential. In Cognitive Surplus, Internet guru Clay Shirky forecasts the thrilling changes we will all enjoy as new digital technology puts our untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last.

In 2008, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit. Suddenly Silicon Valley, not NASA, was the epicentre of the new Space Age. Start-ups and investors began to realise that the heavens - ungoverned and unregulated - were open for business. When the Heavens Went on Sale tells the remarkable, unfolding story of this frenzied race to control access to outer space. Ashlee Vance follows four pioneering companies - Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab - as they attempt to launch thousands of low-cost rockets and satellites into orbit.

Regardless of whether you work in an office, remotely, or hybrid, we are all virtual communicators. Andrew Brodsky is here to explain that, yes, that meeting could have been an email. And that email? Maybe it should have been a voice memo. Your camera? It’s okay to turn it off, sometimes even better. Many of us give far too little thought to our virtual communication, and end up feeling isolated, overlooked and burnt out. Ping distils Brodsky’s cutting-edge social science research on remote communication tools.

When businesses try to "do AI", they place an abstract solution before problems and customers without fully considering whether it is wise, whether the hype is true, or how AI will impact their organization in the long term. Often absent is sound reasoning for why they should go down this path in the first place. Doing AI explores AI for what it actually is - and what it is not - and the problems it can truly solve.

Dark Data explores the many ways in which we can be blind to missing data and how that can lead us to conclusions and actions that are mistaken, dangerous, or even disastrous. Examining a wealth of real-life examples, from the Challenger shuttle explosion to complex financial frauds, Hand gives us a practical taxonomy of the types of dark data that exist and the situations in which they can arise, so that we can learn to recognize and control for them.

Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it's hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It's becoming clear that the tech industry's promised "innovation" is neither sustainable nor always desirable.

Deep beneath our feet, vast and sprawling, lies one of the most sophisticated empires the world has ever known. At first glance, it might not look like much - it is made up of fibre optic cables and obscure payment systems. But according to prominent political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, this network is the key source of American power on the global stage, more significant than its military might. Underground Empire weaves together tales of economic conflict, shadowy surveillance technologies and covert infrastructure projects to present an explosive new vision of geopolitics.

Today, Artificial Intelligence seems mystical and magical to most people. While this wave of change will touch every aspect of our daily lives, most of us still do not understand AI’s capabilities, limitations, or history. In this book, Dr. Alok Aggarwal – one of the early innovators and developers in this field – sets out to demystify Artificial Intelligence by explaining the science and engineering in non-technical terms we can all understand.

“A fascinating, provocative case that the metaverse will not merely transform our virtual experience—it may actually enrich the quality of our lives” (Adam Grant)—from the visionary co-founder of one of today’s most innovative technology companies.

Social worker, activist, and cultural commentator Feminista Jones explores how Black women are changing culture, society, and the landscape of feminism by building digital communities and using social media as powerful platforms. As Jones reveals, some of the best-loved devices of our shared social media language are a result of Black women’s innovations, from well-known, movement-building hashtags (#BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and #BlackGirlMagic) to the now ubiquitous use of threaded tweets as a marketing and storytelling tool.

What will it take to restore balance to our world, repair past injustices, and support future generations' survival? Looking deeply into the web of life that created and supports us, and drawing inspiration from diverse cultural traditions and perspectives, spirited thinkers Michael Pawlyn and Sarah Ichioka propose a bold set of regenerative principles with potential to transform how we design, make, and manage our buildings; infrastructure; and communities.

Digital technology is transforming every corner of the economy, fundamentally altering the way things are done, who does them, and what they earn for their efforts. In The Wealth of Humans, Economist editor Ryan Avent brings up-to-the-minute research and reporting to bear on the major economic question of our time: can the modern world manage technological changes every bit as disruptive as those that shook the socioeconomic landscape of the 19th century? Find out.

In 1979, Elizabeth Eisenstein provided the first full-scale treatment of the 15th-century printing revolution in the West in her monumental two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. This abridged edition, after summarizing the initial changes introduced by the establishment of printing shops, goes on to discuss how printing challenged traditional institutions and affected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.

From the Pulitzer Prize winner and number one international best-selling author of The World Is Flat, an essential and entertaining field guide to thriving in the 21st century. We all sense it - something big is going on. You feel it in your workplace. You feel it when you talk to your children. You can't miss it when you read the newspapers or watch the news. Our lives are speeding up - and it is dizzying.