Showing titles in History & Culture

Decoding how moonshots are built and who gets to build them Moonshots shape the future―self-driving cars, space exploration, AI at planetary scale, and beyond. The ambition has been extraordinary. But what if we haven’t been ambitious enough? In Invent Now: The Next Leap in Moonshots, Dr...

What if the footprints you leave online are altering your existence? In "Algorithm of Your Ghost", Doctor Evelyn Vance explores the unseen ways that our digital lives intersect with our personal identities and the very fabric of our reality. In an era where every click, like, and share contributes to an evolving algorithm—that is, our digital echo—this audiobook serves as a wake-up call.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE By an award-winning technology reporter for The Wall Street Journal, a behind-the-scenes look at the manipulative tactics Facebook used to grow its business, how it distorted the way we connect online, and the company insiders who found the...

Why doesn’t the explosive growth of companies like Facebook and Uber deliver more prosperity for everyone? What is the systemic problem that sets the rich against the poor and the technologists against everybody else? When protesters shattered the windows of a bus carrying Google...

Want to Marie Kondo your digital life and develop a more tactful approach to technology? By a leading tech and digital culture journalist, Kill Reply All is a guide to tidying it all up. How do you reply to your colleague’s weird email? What would Emily Post say about your Tinder profi le?...

Homesteading Space is more than a story of technological and scientific success; it is also an absorbing, sometimes humorous, often inspiring account of the determined, hardworking individuals who shepherded the program through a near-disastrous launch, a heroic rescue, an exhausting study of Comet Kohoutek, and the lab's descent into the Indian Ocean. Featuring the unpublished in-flight diary of astronaut Alan Bean, it is replete with the personal recollections and experiences of the Skylab crew and those who worked with them in training, during the mission, and the return.

In Dear Future: You Can Keep The Change, Ronee Hulk offers a haunting and deeply human exploration of artificial intelligence and its quiet unravelling of the systems that once defined who we are. With automation racing ahead of imagination; algorithms deciding what we make, trade, and even how we are valued; Could the global economy fall apart; not through disorder but through the precision of its own design?

From the longest-serving Flight Director in NASA's history comes a revealing account of high-stakes Mission Control work and the Space Shuttle program that has redefined our relationship with the universe. A compelling look inside the Space Shuttle missions that helped lay the groundwork for the...

In A Hacker’s Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.

Futurists insist that AI will soon eclipse the capacities of the most gifted human mind. What hope do we have against superintelligent machines? But we aren't really on the path to developing intelligent machines. In fact, we don't even know where that path might be. Erik Larson takes us on a tour of the landscape of AI to show how far we are from superintelligence and what it would take to get there.

"Schiffer offers a detailed look under the smoke-filled hood... deploying a crisp, matter-of-fact style to excellent effect." — The New York Times "A sharp and deeply sourced fly-on-the-wall account... packed with original reporting." — Financial Times Before he conceived of the Department...

The Genius Makers tells the story of AI from pioneering days to current achievements to future potential. At the same time it takes the lid off what has effectively become an arms race between Google, Microsoft, Facebook and OpenAI, in which Google may be the clear frontrunner at present, but Facebook has shown itself to be both nimble and innovative, and OpenAI, the company recently founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, has made itself the confident upstart of the pack.

Brought to you by Penguin. The audiobook edition of Invisible Women, read by Caroline Criado Perez. **Winner of the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize 2019** **Winner of the Readers' Choice Books Are My Bag Award 2019** **Winner of the FT & McKinsey Business Book of the Year...

In Places of the Heart, Colin Ellard explores how our homes, workplaces, cities, and nature - places we escape to and can’t escape from - have influenced us throughout history and how our brains and bodies respond to different types of real and virtual space. As he describes the insight he and other scientists have gained from new technologies, he assesses the influence these technologies will have on our evolving environment and asks what kind of world we are, and should be, creating.

Brought to you by Penguin. In 2011, a 43-foot-high tsunami crashed into a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. In the following days, explosions would rip buildings apart, three reactors would go into nuclear meltdown, and the surrounding area would be swamped in radioactive water. It is now...

Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Through the weaponization of social media, the Internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the Internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), credited as the inspiration for radio, robots, and even radar, has been called the patron saint of modern electricity. Based on original material and previously unavailable documents, this acclaimed book is the definitive biography of the man considered by many to be the founding father of modern electrical technology.

Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

On a moonless night in January 1991, a dozen US aircraft appeared in the skies over Baghdad. To the Iraqi air defenses, the planes seemed to come from nowhere. Each aircraft was more than 60 feet in length and with a wingspan of 40 feet, yet its radar footprint was the size of a ball bearing. Here was the first extensive combat application of Stealth technology. And it was devastating.

Brought to you by Penguin. **THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** **THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** From the Palantir co-founder and The Economist’s ‘best CEO of 2024,’ and his deputy, a sweeping indictment of the West’s culture of complacency and a passionate call for the West to...