Showing titles in Technology & Society

Life Mode On is a revolutionary approach to living a better life with technology and our personal devices, from digital lifestyle expert Dr Joanne Orlando. These are no quick fixes; these are real, practical solutions for long-term fulfilment in our increasingly digital world. Dr Jo helps people to understand their technology use and make it better.

“Enough with speculation about our digital future. Infinite Reality is the straight dope on what is and isn’t happening to us right now, from two of the only scientists working on the boundaries between real life and its virtual extensions.” —Douglas Rushkoff, author of Program or Be...

There's no escaping it - we live in a digital world. We work, play, socialize, and learn online, and the internet provides many amazing opportunities. Unfortunately, because of our basic biology, we're all susceptible to overuse and addiction to screens. Video games, social media, porn, and even scrolling online, taps into that pleasurable dopamine reward system. So, when is it time to log off or put the phone down and get help? 

Two of the biggest design problems in Artificial Intelligence are how to build robots that behave in line with human values and how to stop them ever going rogue. One under-explored solution to these alignment and control problems might be to examine how these are already addressed in the design of humans. Robot Souls looks at developments in AI and reviews the emergence of ideas of consciousness and the soul. It places our 'junk code' in this context and argues that it is time to foreground that code, and to use it to look again at how we are programming AI.

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.

In our ever-connected world, inner peace isn’t about rejecting technology—it’s about having a better relationship with it. You need boundaries, but that doesn’t mean you should feel guilty every time you pull out your phone. Reclaim Your Mind offers a middle way: a balanced, mindful approach to everyday tech. With relatable anecdotes and short, easy-to-follow exercises in every chapter, Reclaim Your Mind provides seven key strategies to help you use technology wisely.

Edward Ashford Lee explores the ways that engineers use models and abstraction to build inventive artificial worlds and to give us things that we never dreamed of - for example, the ability to carry in our pockets everything humans have ever published. But he also attempts to counter the runaway enthusiasm of some technology boosters who claim everything in the physical world is a computation - that even such complex phenomena as human cognition are software operating on digital data. 

Over a million copies of this networking classic have been sold worldwide! Now Susan Roane's invaluable advice is available in audio You enter a crowded room. For a moment every eye is on you. And a little voice inside you cries, "HELP!" If this has ever happened to you, you're not alone!...

After Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin dropped out of college and launched Bitcoin Magazine, he wrote the Ethereum white paper, which proposed an open source protocol that would take what Bitcoin did for money and do it for everything else: contracts, social networks, and sharing economies. Now, less than a decade later, his idea is valued at about half a trillion dollars, and it is the foundation for the weird new world of NFT artworks, virtual real estate, and decentralized autonomous organizations.

Read by the author. Join the Challenge: One Thousand Unplugged Hours in One Year Former social media addict, Hannah Brencher discovered first-hand that turning off her phone had a substantial impact on her mental health, relationships, time management, and outlook on the world. Like so many of...

Ich dachte, Palantir sei nur ein Name – ein weiteres Tech-Unternehmen im endlosen Strom digitaler Innovation. Ich lag falsch! Was ich entdeckt habe, ist kein harmloses Start-up, sondern das Herzstück einer neuen globalen Kontrollarchitektur. Eine Software, geboren im Krieg, perfektioniert zur Überwachung und Manipulation ganzer Gesellschaften – und nun auf dem Weg in dein Leben. Ich erzähle nicht nur, was Palantir tut – ich zeige, was es mit uns macht. Mit unserem Denken, unserem Handeln, unserem Vertrauen in Demokratie, Recht und Menschlichkeit.

"For those looking for a smart, no-bullshit, effective guide to finding love, look no further."—Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity "While I’m not sure what Carrie Bradshaw would have made of today’s new world of dating, I do know this: armed with Love Rules, she would have figured...

At some point in your career, you'll realize there's more to being a software engineer than dealing with code. With more than forty stand-alone stories, Lopp walks through a complete job lifecycle, starting with the interview and ending with the realization that it might be time to move on. You'll learn how to handle baffling circumstances in your job, understand what you want from your career, and discover how to thrive in your workplace.

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.

Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, drones, self-driving vehicles, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. On the other hand, the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening future - eugenics, a jobless economy, a complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. Wadhwa says that we need to ask three questions about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are the risks and the rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence?

It's a tough time to be a woman on the internet. Over the past two generations, the political map of human relations has been redrawn by feminism and by changes in technology. In Cybersexism, Laurie Penny goes to the dark heart of the matter and asks why threats of violence are being used to try to silence female voices, analyses the structure of online misogyny, and makes a case for real freedom of speech - for everyone.

Restoring Our Sanity Online is the entertaining, informative, and frequently jaw-dropping social reset by Mark Weinstein, contemporary tech leader, privacy expert, and one of the visionary inventors of social networking. This book is for all of us. Casual and heavy users of social media, parents, teachers, students, techies, entrepreneurs, investors, and elected officials. Restoring Our Sanity Online is the catapult to an exciting, enriching, and authentic future. Listeners will embark on a captivating journey leading to an inspiring and actionable reinvention.

La confianza en la Inteligencia Artificial no es solo un requisito regulatorio, sino una cuestión de ética empresarial, conciencia cultural y diseño responsable. Este libro adopta un enfoque integral, revelando cómo los Sistemas de IA Confiables van más allá de algoritmos, servidores y bases de datos, para incluir también la apariencia, el entorno y a los humanos.

Every time you scroll, click, or swipe, invisible systems are quietly deciding what you see next. How Algorithms Shape Your Choices takes listeners behind the screen to uncover how recommender engines, attention metrics, and predictive models influence not only what we consume—but what we believe. In clear, accessible language, it reveals how the digital world builds personalized realities that guide our thoughts and behaviors without asking for permission.

Internationally renowned privacy expert Daniel J. Solove draws from a range of fields, from law to philosophy to the humanities, to illustrate the profound changes technology is wreaking upon our privacy, why they matter, and what can be done about them. Solove provides incisive examinations of key concepts in the digital sphere, including control, manipulation, harm, automation, reputation, consent, prediction, inference, and many others.