Impact of science and technology on society Books
Octopus Publishing Group Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life
Book Synopsis'Enter Ormerod's vital manual' - Pandora Sykes'A statistic-packed investigation into a worldwide phenomenon... It is no exaggeration to say this book is essential reading for anyone' -METRO'Who better to help us wade through the muddy waters of the great Insta-sham?' -ELLEWhy Social Media is Ruining Your Life tackles head on the pressure cooker of comparison and unreachable levels of perfection that social media has created in our modern world. It uncovers how our relationship with social media has rewired our behavioural patterns, destroyed our confidence and shattered our attention spans. The book is a rallying cry that will provide you with the knowledge, tactics and weaponry you need to find a more healthy way to consume social media and reclaim your happiness.Trade ReviewIt will come as no surprise that social media and the inclination to compare our lives' to others is having a malign effect on humans. But it might be slightly more alarming to discover that it's not just bringing us down but rewiring our behavioural patterns. Read this book and then carve out some for room yourself and your brain. - Emerald StreetKatherine Ormerod investigates the worst aspects of being constantly connected and how to offset the negative impact on your life. - Mail OnlineOrmerod's well-researched book is packed full of wisdom that will not only make you feel less alone in your worries, it offers advice and tips to help you armour up against the all-consuming force that is social media. - Mashable
£11.69
Collective Ink Circle of the Snake, The: Nostalgia and Utopia in
Book SynopsisShocked by 9/11, the Great Recession, digital anxiety, and ecological collapse, the West suffers from nostalgia. People everywhere yearn for a utopian version of the past that never existed. Desperate for relief, many long to escape from the present. Some will stop at nothing to achieve it. In his essential new book, Grafton Tanner, author of Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts, argues that our nostalgia today is partly a consequence of the attention economy. At a time when historical literacy is crucial, and old prejudices are percolating into the present, Big Tech’s predictive algorithms are locking us into nostalgic feedback loops. The result is a precarious society with its gaze fixed on the good old days. Spanning from the ancient Sophists to Black Mirror, The Circle of the Snake is at once a reckoning with the myth of digital utopia and an incisive analysis of nostalgia as a weapon to spread fascism.
£12.34
Ad Lib Publishers Ltd Unequal: How extreme inequality is damaging
Book SynopsisThe ongoing war in Ukraine, between freedom and totalitarianism, has been brewing since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989: the great victory of liberal democracy over communism. In recent decades, authoritarian regimes have proliferated or become emboldened – from Myanmar and North Korea to Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and, of course, China. At the same time, we have seen wildly overpriced stock markets, the emergence of decentralised finance and its associated cryptocurrencies, and the idolization of inordinately expensive things, from watches and customised trainers to rare whiskies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The decoupling of capitalism from democracy, which gathered pace in the 1990s, has fostered an economic system powered by greed alone, able to prosper in brutal dictatorships, unchecked even by the financial crisis of 2007/8. Rampant inequality, fuelled by radically increased money supply, has been the result, with a tiny fraction of the world’s population owning more than the rest put together. This inequality has incited social unrest and contributed to the undermining of faith in the institutions of the democratic state. The citizens of Western democracies have been left to the mercy of unfettered capitalism, becoming data subjects, endlessly surveilled, marshalled and polarised. Today’s extreme capitalism, promoted by Milton Friedman and others, is exemplified by its modern monopolists – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, whose fortunes have been built on often immoral, if not illegal actions, and whose headline-grabbing antics appear to be motivated more by ego than any genuine desire to do good for humanity. In the 1990s, an understanding of social justice and an appreciation of democracy still survived, but public discourse has grown increasingly polarised and angry. The authors draw a line from the robber barons of the 1990s tech revolution to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, citing the marginalisation of democratic principles which has enabled the rise of authoritarian populists such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Jair Bolsonaro and, of course, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. An unanticipated fightback in Ukraine, with support from the EU and the West, has the potential to reclaim the lost spirit of freedom inherent in liberal democracy, but will it be enough?Trade ReviewPraise for The End of Money: ‘A page-turner rich in data and steeped with evidence and insights that flow from a deep understanding of the history of financial markets . . . a must-read before you buy your next – or first – non-fungible token, Chinese banking stock or US government bond’ Professor Adrian Saville, Gordon Institute of Business Science ‘A fascinating and enjoyable read . . . interspersed with illuminating anecdotes from our recent financial history . . . makes it clear that excessive debt and extreme money creation have eroded faith in the global financial system, perhaps best symbolised by the rise of cryptocurrencies’ Michael Jordaan, business Leader and venture capitalist
£11.69
C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd The Algorithm
Book SynopsisSelected as one of the Best Summer Books of 2024: Business' in the Financial Times
£14.24
Orion Publishing Co End Times: Asteroids, Supervolcanoes, Plagues and
Book SynopsisNewsweek and Bloomberg popular science and investigative journalist Bryan Walsh explores the history of extinction and offers a cutting-edge examination of existential risk, the dangerous mistakes we have yet to pay for, and concrete steps we can take to protect ourselves and future-proof our civilization.What is going to cause our extinction?How can we save ourselves and our future?End Times answers the most important questions facing humankindEnd Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable-and inevitable-end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, 15-year veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race.In End Times, Walsh examines threats that emerge from nature and those of our own making: asteroids, supervolcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, disease pandemics, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial intelligence. Walsh details the true probability of these world-ending catastrophes, the impact on our lives were they to happen, and the best strategies for saving ourselves, all pulled from his rigorous and deeply thoughtful reporting and research.Walsh goes into the room with the men and women whose job it is to imagine the unimaginable. He includes interviews with those on the front lines of prevention, actively working to head off existential threats in biotechnology labs and government hubs. Guided by Walsh's evocative, page-turning prose, we follow scientific stars like the asteroid hunters at NASA and the disease detectives on the trail of the next killer virus.Walsh explores the danger of apocalypse in all forms. In the end, it will be the depth of our knowledge, the height of our imagination, and our sheer will to survive that will decide the future.Trade ReviewTIME MAGAZINE, "11 New Books to Read in August!"ECO WATCH, "Best Environmental Books of August"A harrowing chronicle of a range of threats that could bring about human extinction in the not-so-distant future. * The Washington Post *Walsh does wonders in unknotting the dizzying agendas fueling many of the existential risks explored in END TIMES. * Scientific Inquirer *Instead of freaking out, read End Times. It's a wise and weirdly hopeful journey into civilization's darkest nightmares. * Jeff Goodell, author of The Water Will Come *It's not easy thinking about all the ways the world can end, let alone writing a whole book about them. But Bryan Walsh has managed the feat and then some, delivering a book that's as analytically astute as it is terrifically written. It takes a special kind of writer to pull this off, and in Bryan Walsh we found him. * Ian Bremmer, New York Times bestselling author of Us Versus Them: The Failure of Globalism *In End Times, Bryan Walsh has put together the loudest, scariest wake-up call possible. And yet it's not a book without hope: Walsh lays out a challenging series of believable scenarios that can allow human beings to thrive along with our fellow earth-dwellers, in a way that requires only qualities we already have: compassion, intelligence, focus, and determination * Mark Bittman, New York Times columnist and bestselling author *It takes a bold reporter and subtle thinker to survey the mortal threats we face and find a way towards hope; yet that is what Bryan Walsh has done in this terrifying, fascinating exploration of existential risk. Cascading catastrophes of the manmade kind are so frightful to consider that we naturally look the other way; but Walsh invites us to reckon with the world we've made, a crucial step towards taking responsibility for saving us from ourselves. The asteroids, the supervolcanoes, the plagues are not of our making; but the nukes, the climate disruption, the weaponized pathogens and challenges of AI are. With a storyteller's art and a scientists tools, Walsh helps us think the unthinkable, takes us to the observatories and laboratories where the future is made. Travel with him to doomsday and back, and nothing looks the same. * Nancy Gibbs, coauthor of New York Times bestseller The Presidents Club: Inside the World's Most Exclusive Fraternity *
£9.49
Imprint Academic Peirce and Spencer-Brown: History and Synergies
Book SynopsisThis special double issue of Cybernetics and Human Knowing is comprised of a collection of papers devoted to the cybernetics and mathematics of Charles Sanders Peirce with a special focus on its synergies with George Spencer-Brown''s thinking. Peirce was a truly original American philosopher and logician working in the late 1800s and early 1900s; Spencer-Brown is an English polymath, best known as the author of Laws of Form. The contributions reflect the extraordinary richness of Peirce''s work and his relevance to present concerns in cybernetics. The similarities in the focus on some of the deep foundational subjects are astonishing, amongst those especially the concept of the void or Firstness and the continuity of mind and matter.
£17.05
Springer Nature Switzerland AG Mathematics to the Rescue of Democracy: What does
Book SynopsisThis book explains, in a straightforward way, the foundations upon which electoral techniques are based in order to shed new light on what we actually do when we vote. The intention is to highlight the fact that no matter how an electoral system has been designed, and regardless of the intentions of those who devised the system, there will be goals that are impossible to achieve but also opportunities for improving the situation in an informed way. While detailed descriptions of electoral systems are not provided, many references are made to current or past situations, both as examples and to underline particular problems and shortcomings. In addition, a new voting method that avoids the many paradoxes of voting theory is described in detail. While some knowledge of mathematics is required in order to gain the most from the book, every effort has been made to ensure that the subject matter is easily accessible for non-mathematicians, too. In short, this is a book for anyone who wants to understand the meaning of voting. Trade Review“Paolo Serafini has the merit of presenting in a synthetic and pedagogical way the main aspects of the voting theory. This book would be well suited for undergraduate and graduate students who are new to voting theory … . the book is very enjoyable to read … . The present book adds its stone to the series of books on voting theory while distinguishing itself by its pedagogy and simplicity.” (Eric Kamwa, Journal of Economics, Vol. 134, 2021)“This book exposes a variety of social choice systems … . The electoral rules for the formation of the government of several countries are discussed, as examples of application of different aggregation methods, their particular problems and shortcomings are highlighted and opportunities of improvement underlined.” (Annibal Parracho Sant’Anna, zbMATH 1476.91002, 2022)Table of Contents
£18.74
Bloomsbury Publishing USA Empathy Machines
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£20.89
Broadview Press Ltd Bringing Biology to Life: An Introduction to the
Book SynopsisBringing Biology to Life is a guided tour of the philosophy of biology, canvassing three broad areas: the early history of biology, from Aristotle to Darwin; traditional debates regarding species, function, and units of selection; and recent efforts to better understand the human condition in light of evolutionary biology. Topics are addressed using no more technical jargon than necessary, and without presupposing any advanced knowledge of biology or the philosophy of science on the part of the reader. Discussion questions are also provided to encourage reader reflection.Trade Review“Mahesh Ananth’s Bringing Biology to Life does exactly what it promises, which is to bring to life core topics in philosophy of biology. This book will be eminently attractive not only to the relative beginner but also to the most erudite reader. Covered with remarkable breadth, depth, and élan are the following topics: the history of biological thought (notably Aristotle and Darwin), the units of selection problem, the nature of biological function, the problem of what a biological species is, and the implications of evolution for morality and ethics, psychology, and religion (especially so-called Intelligent Design). Those hoping to find a lively read will not be disappointed.” — David N. Stamos, York UniversityTable of Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology Chapter 2: Darwin’s Darwinism Chapter 3: The Unit of Selection Chapter 4: Biological Function Chapter 5: The Species Debate Chapter 6: Evolution and Ethics Chapter 7: Evolutionary Psychology Chapter 8: Evolution and Religion
£38.66
Broadview Press Western Technoscience
£38.21
MIT Press Living with Complexity The MIT Press
Book SynopsisWhy we don't really want simplicity, and how we can learn to live with complexity.If only today's technology were simpler! It's the universal lament, but it's wrong. In this provocative and informative book, Don Norman writes that the complexity of our technology must mirror the complexity and richness of our lives. It's not complexity that's the problem, it's bad design. Bad design complicates things unnecessarily and confuses us. Good design can tame complexity.Norman gives us a crash course in the virtues of complexity. Designers have to produce things that tame complexity. But we too have to do our part: we have to take the time to learn the structure and practice the skills. This is how we mastered reading and writing, driving a car, and playing sports, and this is how we can master our complex tools. Complexity is good. Simplicity is misleading. The good life is complex, rich, and rewarding—but only if it is understandable, sensible, and meaningful.
£21.60
MIT Press Ltd How to Speak Machine with a new preface by the
Book SynopsisA simple, enduring framework for understanding the complex world of AI and machine learning?updated with a new preface.As the capabilities of AI and language models like ChatGPT continue to advance, it is more important than ever to understand the implications and potential pitfalls of these technologies. In this updated edition of How to Speak Machine, which was first published in 2019, John Maeda draws on his extensive experience as one of the world?s preeminent interdisciplinary thinkers on technology and design to provide actionable guidance for businesses, product designers, and policymakers. Using thoughtful explorations and occasionally whimsical examples, he identifies a framework that describes the key capabilities and pitfalls of any machine learning system?and how they can be used to create inclusive and world-changing products.Essential reading for anyone seeking a high-level understanding of how machines ?think? and what the future may hold, How to Speak Machine is more relevant than ever today?as AI becomes even more enmeshed in all areas of business and product design.
£18.90
Autonomedia And: Phenomenology of the End
Book SynopsisThe changes taking place in our aesthetic and emotional sensibility: a deep mutation in the psychosphere, caused by semio-capitalism.Franco “Bifo” Berardi''s newest book analyzes the contemporary changes taking place in our aesthetic and emotional sensibility—changes the author claims are the result of semio-capitalism''s capturing of the inner resources of the subjective process: our experience of time, our sensibility, the way we relate to each other, and our ability to imagine a future. Precarization and fractalization of labor have provoked a deep mutation in the psychosphere, and this can be seen in the rise of psychopathologies such as post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, panic, and attention deficit disorder. Sketching out an aesthetic genealogy of capitalist globalization, Berardi shows how we have arrived at a point of such complexity in the semiotic flows of capital that we can no longer process its excessive currents of information. A swarm effect now rules: it has become impossible to say “no.” Social behavior is trapped in inescapable patterns of interaction coded by techno-linguistic machines, smartphones, screens of every size, and all of these sensory and emotional devices end up destroying our organism''s sensibility by submitting it to the stress of competition and acceleration.Arguing for disentanglement rather than resistance, Berardi concludes by evoking the myth of La Malinche, the daughter of a noble Aztec family. It is a tale of a translator and traitor who betrayed her own people, yet what the myth portends is the rebirth of the world from the collapse of the old.
£15.29
Columbia University Press Artificial Intimacy
Book SynopsisThe evolutionary biologist Rob Brooks explores the latest research on intimacy and desire to consider how new technologies and fundamental human behaviors interact. He details how existing artificial intelligences can already learn and exploit human social needs—and are getting better at what they do.Trade ReviewFantastic, funny, informative, and very, very timely. -- Kate Devlin, author of Turned On: Science, Sex, and RobotsArtificial Intimacy is a great example of how to use an evolutionary perspective on human nature to illuminate an emerging, evolutionarily unprecedented area of modern life. -- Steve Stewart-Williams, author of The Ape That Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture EvolveRob Brooks weaves an engaging story of how this near future may look, drawing deeply on both his background as an evolutionary biologist and his skill as a scientific storyteller. Get ready for a roller-coaster ride into love and intimacy in your digital future. -- Toby Walsh, author of 2062: The World That AI MadeWitty, accessible, always fascinating but surely contentious, this is popular science that will appeal to readers of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. -- Books + Publishing'Artificial Intimacy' leaves the reader with a new understanding – and a million curiosities – about how technology influences our intimate relationships, and how that might change in the future. * AIPT Science *An in depth and well-researched narrative. An excellent book. * Nicole Barbaro, PhD *Artificial Intimacy weaves an engrossing story on the future that awaits us, without predicting whether or not it will be promising or dystopian. * The Hindu Business Line *Very accessible work...recommended. * Choice *This nuanced book written in clean, clear prose makes for compelling reading. * vijee venkatraman *Table of ContentsIntroduction: In the beginning …1. Meet the dollbots2. It’s not about the robot3. Groom your friends4. The intimacy algorithm5. How did sex become so complicated?6. When artificial intimacy goes bad7. Ploughs, pills and porn: How technology changes sex8. Tomorrow’s moral panic will be just like yesterday’s9. Make war not love10. A Fembot army to disarm the InCel insurrection11. There’s no such thing as free love12. A future in four fictionsAcknowledgmentsReferencesNotesIndex
£25.20
Harvard University Press Pandoras Hope Essays on the Reality of Science
Book SynopsisThrough case studies of scientists in the Amazon analyzing soil and in Pasteur’s lab studying the fermentation of lactic acid, Latour shows us the myriad steps by which events in the material world are transformed into items of scientific knowledge.Trade Review[Pandora’s Hope] brims with insight, and is frequently brilliant. It does what one always hopes for, but so rarely finds, in a philosophy book; it shakes assumptions so deeply held that you hardly knew they were there. It takes the world, reshuffles it, and deals it back; the cards are all the same, but the hand is crucially different… Pandora’s Hope, and its author, demand serious attention… Latour asks jarring and important questions and proposes jarring and brilliant answers. Kafka once wrote that a good book ought to have the fearsome impact of an ice ax. Pandora’s Hope does this. Having finished it, I am bloodied and befuddled. And I can think of no greater compliment for a book, or heartier endorsement. -- Noah J. Efron * Boston Book Review *In this book of impassioned and creative explorations into scientific life, Bruno Latour offers himself as a reasonable man who is ready and willing to lead combatants of the ‘science wars’ off the battle plain and onto higher ground… The text is comprised of essays about the genesis of and context for the science wars, case studies of scientific practice and elaboration of his current theoretical stances. His writing can be stimulating, fresh and at times genuinely moving… It is hard not to be caught up in the author’s obvious delight in deploying a classic work from antiquity to bring current concerns into sharper focus, following along as he manages to leave the reader with the impression that the protagonists Socrates and Callicles are not only in dialogue with each other but with Latour as well. -- Katherine Pandora * American Scientist *Show Latour an intellectual war zone and he’ll leap into the middle, to do battle with both sides… You can rely on [Pandora’s Hope] to shake your ideas up. And that’s almost never a bad thing, in science or elsewhere. -- Mike Holderness * New Scientist *Pandora’s Hope is Latour’s systematic defense of science studies, starting with impressions of his sojourn with five naturalists in Amazonia… His observations of [them] are overwhelmingly persuasive, and without a hint of supercilious hostility to the cause of science. Latour is proud to have been cited as co-contributor to their research report, and they must be equally pleased to figure in his. * Times Higher Education Supplement *His work sparkles with wit, sharp scholarship, graceful tropes, homely but apt metaphors, personal anecdotes at his own expense, and other jewels of the art of persuasion. It is always a pleasure to read or listen to Bruno, just for the vitality and fun of his mind. -- John Ziman * Interdisciplinary Science Reviews *Latour is concerned with making a case for the emerging field of ‘science studies,’ a discipline that proposes to study science and the scientific process itself on a philosophical and conceptual level. After an introductory chapter in which he lays the groundwork for science studies and its contributions to our knowledge of the nature of reality, Latour then provides a series of case studies showing scientists from various fields in action. In these case studies, which range from an analysis of a field trip by soil scientists in the Amazon to Louis Pasteur’s investigations of lactic acid fermentation in yeast, Latour carefully dissects the seen and unseen components of the scientists’ activity and thought. Latour’s engaging, clear writing style makes a difficult subject much easier to comprehend. -- R. K. Harris * Choice *Table of Contents"Do You Believe in Reality?" News from the Trenches of the Science Wars Circulating Reference: Sampling the Soil in the Amazon Forest Science's Blood Flow: An Example from Joliot's Scientific Intelligence From Fabrication to Reality: Pasteur and His Lactic Acid Ferment The Historicity of Things: Where Were Microbes before Pasteur? A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans: Following Daedalus's Labyrinth The Invention of the Science Wars: The Settlement of Socrates and Callicles A Politics Freed from Science: The Body Cosmopolitic The Slight Surprise of Action: Facts, Fetishes, Factishes Conclusion: What Contrivance Will Free Pandora's Hope? Glossary Bibliography Index
£27.86
Princeton University Press Sounding the Limits of Life
Book SynopsisWhat is life? What is water? What is sound? In Sounding the Limits of Life, anthropologist Stefan Helmreich investigates how contemporary scientists--biologists, oceanographers, and audio engineers--are redefining these crucial concepts. Life, water, and sound are phenomena at once empirical and abstract, material and formal, scientific and social.Trade Review"Winner of the 2016 Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts""This collection is extremely impressive. The notes and bibliography read like a veritable state-of-the-art of the field; the author has read and imbibed everything and everyone and is in firm command of his disciplinary landscape. Helmreich has been a leader among anthropologists in applying to science a new kind of methodologically sophisticated ethnography."---Oren Harman, European LegacyTable of ContentsList of Illustrations vii Sounding Life, Water, Sound ix CHAPTER 1 What Was Life? Answers from Three Limit Biologies 1 CHAPTER 2 Life Forms: A Keyword Entry (with Sophia Roosth) 19 CHAPTER 3 An Archaeology of Artificial Life, Underwater 35 CHAPTER 4 Cetology Now: Formatting the Twenty-First-Century Whale 44 CHAPTER 5 How Like a Reef: Figuring Coral, 1839-2010 48 CHAPTER 6 Homo microbis: Species, Race, Sex, and the Human Microbiome 62 CHAPTER 7 The Signature of Life: Designing the Astrobiological Imagination 73 CHAPTER 8 Nature/Culture/Seawater: Theory Machines, Anthropology, Oceanization 94 CHAPTER 9 Time and the Tsunami: Indian Ocean, 2004 106 CHAPTER 10 From Spaceship Earth to Google Ocean: Planetary Icons, Indexes, and Infrastructures 116 CHAPTER 11 Underwater Music: Tuning Composition to the Sounds of Science 137 CHAPTER 12 Seashell Sound 155 CHAPTER 13 Sound Studies Meets Deaf Studies (with Michele Friedner) 164 CHAPTER 14 Chimeric Sensing 173 Life, Water, Sound Resounding 183 Acknowledgments 189 Notes 195 Index 283
£25.20
Princeton University Press On the Future
Book SynopsisTrade Review"One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2018: Science""UK astronomer royal Martin Rees faces the future as scientist, citizen and 'worried member of the human species'. His bold, beautifully synthesized primer paces from human-driven challenges such as climate change to dizzying astronomical discoveries within and beyond the Solar System. . . A clarion call for global, rational, long-term thinking."---Barbara Kiser, Nature"A remarkable book not only because of the subject—the prospects of humanity—but because it is so reasonable. . . . Rees largely manages to steer clear of both fear mongering and cheerleading. The question of how we should deal with new technology has no easy answer, and the author doesn’t pretend that it does. Instead, in each case he lays out the important points to consider."---Sabine Hossenfelder, Wall Street Journal"Fortunately for Rees, the symptoms of his anxiety appear to be an exceptionally clear head and a capable grasp of the big picture. His sense of cosmic wonder shines through brilliantly in the book’s later chapters. Explanations of complex subjects like the Large Hadron Collider and the ongoing search for exoplanets benefit from his crisp, precise prose. . . . Rees is a seasoned science communicator, and in so far as his job is to get more and more people interested in the field, the book’s short length and approachable style is a shrewd move that will open a wormhole to the big questions for the curious."---Louie Conway, Vanity Fair"When politics seems impossible, it is sometimes good to take the long view. Astronomer Martin Rees’s On the Future offers a cosmological perspective on the present state of the world. Brexit seems a bit less all-or-nothing when set against the prospect of post-human space travel."---David Runciman, The Guardian"[Hawking and Rees] offer brisk, lucid peeks into the future of science and of humanity. They evince a profound faith in science’s power to demystify nature and bend it to our ends."---John Horgan, Wall Street Journal"[On the Future] offers forecasts of impending technological developments and words of hope for the human ability to use science to repair a wounded planet and improve lives. . . . This far-ranging but easily understood collection of ideas shares and communicates the enthusiasm of Rees’s ‘techno-optimist’ view of the prospects for humanity." * Publishers Weekly *"Short in extent but wide in range: from redesigning genes, through the likelihood of human-induced climate change, to the possibility of encounters with alien intelligence in the Universe. [On the Future]’s overall theme is that Earth’s growing population will flourish only if science and technology are deployed with ‘wisdom.’"---Andrew Robinson, Science"Rees neatly packages his sprawling subject matter into a guidebook for the responsible use of science to build a healthy and equitable future for humanity."---Daniel Ackerman, Scientific American"Rees is hardly the first to issue a stern warning about what lies ahead if complacency and consumerism rule, but his lucid, well-reasoned explanation of the stakes and inimitable prose lift this manifesto above the rest. An impassioned call to action from one of the world's foremost scientists. A book to be read by anyone on Earth who cares about its future." * Kirkus, starred review *"It is hard not to be fascinated as [Rees] builds his Eeyorish case – which is laid out with the dispassionate air of a superintelligent alien anthropologist observing our species’ eccentricities from afar. . . . [A] lucid and engaging book."---Tom Whipple, The Times"Lord Martin Rees manages weighty, often scary, matters with an eminently accessible lightness of touch in On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. . . . [A] short, crisply written new book."---John Cornwell, Financial Times"This slim volume, written in Rees’s characteristically elegant style, will frighten and inspire – and above all, entertain."---Clive Cookson, Financial Times"If you’re worried about the prospects for the human race, try Martin Rees’s On the Future for a sober, level-headed assessment."---John Naughton, The Observer"The importance of science in society has no greater spokesperson than Lord Martin Rees." * The Economist *"By no means merely a happiness pill, Martin Rees's On the Future: Prospects for Humanity nonetheless encourages the reader to think beyond the new norms of diminished and collapsing expectations. . . . This is less a book than a set of goggles that provides the reader a glimpse of a wider spectrum of possibility than would otherwise be visible."---Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Education"Rees is clear-sighted and pithy. . . . His account of the planets and exoplanets on which we might one day descend feels thrillingly real. . . . Wonderfully optimistic."---James McConnachie, Sunday Times"Rees shows us an optimistic yet realistic way of contemplating the what is to come, as long as we broaden our thinking and realise that we’re all on this crowded planet together."---Sandra Kropa, BBC Sky at Night Magazine"It would be easy for a book about the future to turn gloomy, but this one balances concerns with hopeful prospects." * Foreword Reviews *"[An] eloquent book."---John Thornhill, Financial Times"Rees dispenses his apocalyptic overview of the coming decades like cocktail party wisdom. The author, who moves in elevated circles and has the papal ear, is an affable doom merchant."---Anjana Ahuja, New Statesman"An overview of the great science-based possibilities for mankind, as well as an expert’s gentle warning against what will happen to life on earth if we continue to form our thinking around short-term goals."---Rozalind Dineen, Times Literary Supplement"With the authority that only someone of his calibre could command, Martin Rees presents his vision of the future of mankind." * Nature Astronomy *"This little gem is divided into four beautifully-crafted chapters providing broad perspective, personal anecdotes, some seldom-mined historical background, strong scientific emphasis, and hope."---Bruce L. Dietrich, Planetarian"In [On the Future], Rees turns his focus closer to home, examining the existential threats that face humanity over the next century. From cyberattacks to advances in biotechnology to artificial intelligence to climate change, Rees, Britain's astronomer royal, says we are living at a critical juncture — one that could define how the human species fares."---Denise Chow, NBC News MACH"[On the Future] shrewdly weighs up our chances of survival."---Andy Martin, Belfast Telegraph"A rallying call for the sort of rational thinking that seems to have become unpopular in recent years. . . . A short, but persuasive, book."---Dominic Lenton, Engineering & Technology"A really important book."---David Runciman, Talking Politics podcast"Overall, this is a wise and humane overview of the challenges we all face, with much practical guidance about how best to tackle these in terms of responsible scientific and technological innocation related to deeper human values."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer"Lord Rees is the source on all things future-of-humanity." * Mayday *"[A] condensed masterpiece of analysis and observation."---Jonathan Power, New York Journal of Books"Reading On the Future will equip the reader with the means to challenge their representatives to lift their eyes above the daily grind of politics and set their sights on a brighter future which humanity can enjoy if the correct decisions are made in respect of the development and application of science and technology."---K. Alan Shore, Contemporary Physics"I found reading Rees’s ideas here rewarding. I also learned a lot from this book. . . as such, I am very positive about this book and I think that all ethicists should read it."---Wouter Kalf, Ethical Perspectives
£15.19
Princeton University Press The Future of Immortality
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the William A. Douglass Book Prize in Europeanist Anthropology, Society for the Anthropology of Europe""Bernstein uses history as well as the contemporary landscape to riase questions about the chaging status of the category "human" in increasingly medically engineered bodies. In wonderfully thought-provoking passages, she muses over the relationships between body and mind, biology and technology to rethink, enlarge and playfully undermine the understanding of life itself."---Kate Brown, Times Literary Supplement"A magic dwells. . . By holding these different viewpoints up against each other, [and] Bernstein shows us just how intricate the question of what makes us human really is."---Justine Buck Quijada, Politics, Religion, & Ideology
£19.80
Pluto Press Sad by Design
Book SynopsisWe live in a time of engineered intimacy, toxic memes and online addiction. Can we ever break free?Trade Review'Dystopian ... a scathing indictment of a technology that transforms the very notion of self into a sharing platform.' -- Eva Illouz, author of 'Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation''Sad by Design: on Platform Nihilism, despite the title, is not a sad book. It dissects our digital addictions with the dynamite power of critical theory. It's a savage journey into the heart of the digital self, and a wake-up call to break free of our own enslavement' -- Donatella Della Ratta, author of 'Shooting a Revolution: Visual Media and Warfare in Syria''Geert Lovink, who is expertly familiar with digital dynamics - technological as well as social - provides in this book a searing criticism of platform nihilism, considered above all as a perversion of computational design' -- Bernard Stiegler, author of 'The Age of Disruption: Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism'Table of ContentsSeries Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Society of the Social 1. Overcoming the Disillusioned Internet 2. Social Media as Ideology 3. Distraction and its Discontents 4. Sad by Design 5. Media Network Platform: Three Architectures 6. From Registration to Extermination: On Technological Violence 7. Narcissus Confirmed: Technologies of the Minimal Selfie 8. Mask Design: Aesthetics of the Faceless 9. Memes as Strategy: European Origins and Debates 10. Before Building the Avant-Garde of the Commons Notes Bibliography
£22.49
Cornell University Press Whose Science Whose Knowledge
Book SynopsisSandra Harding here develops further the themes first addressed in her widely influential book, The Science Question in Feminism, and conducts a compelling analysis of feminist theories on the philosophical problem of how we know what we...Trade ReviewWhose Science, Whose Knowledge? represents a transition from gender to power considerations in Harding's continuous efforts to raise questions about the theory and practice of science. -- Shulamit Reinharz * Gender & Society *Harding's account offers a good insight into a variety of feminist responses to the hegemony apparently exercised by scientific thinking. Some readers will take the book as a challenge to the sociology of science to examine its arguments and assumptions in the light of standpoint theory and feminist postmodernism. -- Steven Yearley * British Journal of Sociology *This is an important book that has much to offer practicing scientists but probably will not be read by many of them. That is a shame, because its bold claims are usefully unsettling and its argument begs for engagement. One of the basic messages of Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?—that all fields of natural science are best analyzed from within the social sciences, of which they are logically a part, rather than taken as external models for the social sciences—has potential consequences for most, perhaps all, scientific practice. -- Rayna Rapp, New School for Social Research * Science *
£24.69
Johns Hopkins University Press Oliver Heaviside
Book SynopsisNow available in paperback with a new preface by the author, this acclaimed biography will appeal to historians of technology and science, as well as to scientists and engineers who wish to learn more about this remarkable man.Trade ReviewHow was it that a man who had no formal education after the age of sixteen could apply operational calculus to technological problems in a way that other eminent mathematical physicists had not? Why was a charged layer of the ionosphere named after him? The best way to gain an insight into the life and work of this eccentric genius will be to delve into this delightful book. International Journal of Electrical Engineering Educators A good book by a careful, historically minded engineer... A lively, informative narrative of Heaviside's life and work. Nahin has exhaustively resurveyed archives and contemporary sources and is very much at home in historical discussions of Victorian physics. IsisTable of ContentsContents: Preface to the Johns Hopkins Edition Preface to the Original Edition A Note of Mathematics A Note of References A Note on Money Acknowledgements 1 The Origins of Heaviside ( A Description of mid-19th century Victorian England.) The Man The Nature of His Work The Grim World of Heaviside's Youth Notes and References 2 The Early Years (The young Heaviside, his family circumstances, and his education.) The Beginning A Lucky Marriage First (and Last) Job A Lifetime Decision Tech Note: Where Is the Fault? Notes and References 3 The First Theory of the Electric Telegraph (Historical discussion of Professor William Thomson's 1854 diffusion theory, the starting point of Heaviside's work.) Thomson and Stokes The Law of Squares The Atlantic Cable The Speed of the Current Phase Distortion Tech Note: How Thomson Thought Electricity "Soaks" into an Infinitely Long Cable Notes and References 4 Heaviside's Early Telegraphy Work (An account of the introduction effects into cable analysis, and the nature of Heaviside's mode of working.) A Full-Time Student The Telegraph Papers The Problem of Signal Rate Assymmetry A "Mathematical Monster" Arithmatic Drudgery Tech Note: Why a Cable Is Slower in One Direction than in the Other Notes and References 5 The Scienticulist (An introduction to William Henry Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of the British Post Offics and Heaviside's great nemesis.) Heaviside's Nemesis Subdividing the Electric Light The Age of the "Practical Man" A Public Debate Why Preece Prevailed (for a While) A Clash of Personalities Preece's Ability The Telephone Affair Heavisides Refuses to Be Shackled Tech Note: Preece's Analysis of the Electric Light Notes and References 6 Maxwell's Electricity (The state of knowledge at Maxwell's death om 1879.) Introduction The Men before Maxwell Action-at-a-Distance The Luminiferous Ether Faraday and Lines of Force William Thomson Maxwell The Displacement Current Post-script: Just What Is Electricity, Anyway? Tech Note 1: A Technically Nice, Often Taught, but Historically False "Explanantion" of the Displacement Current Tech Note 2: Action-at-a-Distance, Fields, and Faraday's Electronic State Notes and References 7 Heaviside's Electrodynamics (How Heaviside formulated the field equations and what he did with them.) The Conversion of a Skeptic The Electrician The Importance of Mr. Biggs Getting Off to a Bad Start Reformulating Maxwell's Equations A Friend in Germany More Germans: Foppl, Boltzmann, and Planck Energy and Its Flux Moving Charges A Friend at Cambridge Faster-than-Light Dr. Heaviside, F.R.S. Tech Note 1: The Duplex Equations Tech Note 2: The Localization of Electromagnetic Field Energy Tech Note 3: Heaviside's Derivation of hte Electromagnetic Energy Flow Vector in Space Tech Note 4: Poynting;s Physics (and Oliver's Objection) Notes and References 8 The Battle With Preece (The story of the " KR-Law" and Preece's efforts to suppress Heaviside's influence.) High-Tech Hardware, Low-Tech Theory Early Mathematical Analysis The Peculiar Experiments of David Hughes Preece's " KR-Law" and Heaviside's Attack Oliver Lodge's Oscillating Leyden Jar "Experience" versus "Theory" Heaviside's Vindication A Change of Scene-and Fame Back in Print-in Style! His Friends Try to Help More Battles Tech Note1: The Skin Effect Tech Note 2: The " KR-Law" Tech Note 3: Preece and Lodge on Lightning Tech Note 4: Heaviside and S. P. Thompson on the Distortionless Circuit Notes and References 9 The Great Quarterionic War (The development of vectors by Heaviside and by Gibbs, and the debate with Tait.) More Debates Peter Tait, the Warrior of Victorian Science William Hamilton and Quarterions Before 1890-The Calm Before the Storm The Vector Analysis of Josiah Willard Gibbs Tait Throws Down the Gauntlet The Battle The Aftermath Off to War-Again Tech Note 1: Numbers and Vecotrs-Real, Complex and Hypercomplex Tech Note 2: Hamilton's Insight at the Brougham Bridge Tech Note 3: Quarterions Are Complex! Notes and References Strange Mathematics (Operational calculus.) "Rigorous Mathematics In Narrow, Physical Mathematics Bold and Broad" The Operator Concept Heaviside's Operators The Expansion Theorem The Royal Society Affair The Aftermath of the Rejection A New Friend at Cambridge Tech Note 1: Heaviside's Resistance Operators Tech Note 2: The Problem with the p and 1/ p Operators Tech Note 3: The Meaning of Heaviside's Fractional Operator, and Impulses Tech Note 4: Heaviside and Divergent Series Notes and References 11 The Age-of-the-Earth Controversy (The debate between Perry and Kelvin, and Heaviside's support of Perry via his operational methods.) Historical Origin of the Debate The Problem of Fossils Kelvin's Theory perry's Rebuttal of Kelvin's Theory Perry's Theory of Discontinuous Diffusivity Kelvin's Defense and Perry's Reply The End of the Debate An Assessment of the Debate A Final Word Tech Note 1: Heaviside's Operator Solution of Kelvin's Original One-Dimensional Problem Tech Note 2: Heaviside's Operator Solution of Perry's Problem of Discontinuous Diffusivity Notes and References 12 The Final Years of the Hermit (The Personal life of Heaviside after 1900, when essentially all his scientific work was done.) A "Gentleman" with a Pension Life in the Country Another Change at The Electrician The Passing of the Century-and of a Friend and a Foe The Catches up t Heaviside-and Leaves Him Behind Oliver Puts His Name on the Atmosphere Increasing Trouble with Life Life at Homefield Death Takes and Past-and the Present The End of the Hermit A Last Look Notes and References 13 Epilogue (An evaluation of Heaviside's impact since his death.) The Legend Grows Heaviside Profiled in TimeMagazine! Formulas Under the Floor Last Words Notes and References Index Credits
£31.95
Duke University Press Captivating Technology
Book SynopsisThe contributors to Captivating Technology examine how carceral technologies such as electronic ankle monitors and predictive-policing algorithms are being deployed to classify and coerce specific populations and whether these innovations can be appropriated and reimagined for more liberatory ends.Trade Review"The book comes at a timely moment, contributing to pressing contemporary conversations about predictive algorithms, bias in AI, new modes of surveillance, and the myriad ways our increasingly technologically mediated lives are experienced unequally along lines of race, class, and gender. . . . Captivating Technology offers a meaningful contribution to public and scholarly discussions of technological (in)justice." -- Naomi Zucker * Somatosphere *"Benjamin presents a rich and original contribution to critical studies of race and technoscience." -- Clara Hick * Ethnic and Racial Studies *“Captivating Technology is a powerful and deeply creative text that excavates suppressed histories just as much as it works towards building new futures.” -- Susila Gurusami * Surveillance & Society *“Captivating Technology...is an excellent collection that is compelling both in rich individual chapters and in the synthetic whole.... One of the strengths of this collective volume is its deliberate use of literary technologies.” -- Vivette García-Deister and Anne Pollock * BioSocieties *“[Captivating Technology] is an ideal in action; unfettered by carceral imaginations, scholars can invent different worlds that replace—and not merely, through reform, extend—the discriminatory societies we have made together.” -- David Theodore * Technology and Culture *Table of ContentsForeword / Troy Duster xi Acknowledgments / Ruha Benjamin xv Part I. Carceral Techniques from Plantation to Prison 1. Naturalizing Coercion: The Tuskegee Experiments and the Laboratory Life of the Plantation / Britt Rusert 25 2. Consumed by Disease: Medical Archives, Latino Fictions, and Carceral Health Imaginaries / Christopher Perreira 50 3. Billions Served: Prison Food Regimes, Nutritional Punishment, and Gastronomical Resistance / Anthony Ryan Hatch 67 4. Shadows of War, Traces of Policing: The Weaponization of Space and the Sensible Preemption / Andrea Miller 85 5. This Is Not Minority Report: Predictive Policing and Population Racism / R. Joshua Scannell 107 Part II. Surveillance Systems from Facebook to Fast Fashion 6. Racialized Surveillance in the Digital Service Economy / Winifred Poster 133 7. Digital Character in "The Scored Society": FICO, Social Networks, and the Competing Measurements of Creditworthimess / Tamara K. Nopper 170 8. Deception by Design: Digital Skin, Racial Matter, and the New Policing of Child Sexual Exploitation / Mitali Thakor 188 9. Employing the Carceral Imaginary: An Ethnography of Worker Surveillance in the Retail Industry / Madison Van Oort 209 Part III. Retooling Liberation from Abolitionists to Afrofuturists 10. Anti-Racist Technoscience: A Generative Tradition / Ron Eglash 227 11. Techo-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation across the African Diaspora and Global South / Nettrice R. Gaskins 252 12. Making Skin Visible through Liberatory Design / Lorna Roth 275 13. Scratch a Theory, You Find a Biography: A Conversation with Troy Duster 308 14. Reimagining Race, Resistance, and Technoscience: A Conversation with Dorothy Roberts 328 Bibliography 349 Contributors 389 Index 393
£22.79
Stanford University Press What Is Real?
Book SynopsisEighty years ago, Ettore Majorana, a brilliant student of Enrico Fermi, disappeared under mysterious circumstances while going by ship from Palermo to Naples. How is it possible that the most talented physicist of his generation vanished without leaving a trace? It has long been speculated that Majorana decided to abandon physics, disappearing because he had precociously realized that nuclear fission would inevitably lead to the atomic bomb. This book advances a different hypothesis. Through a careful analysis of Majorana's article "The Value of Statistical Laws in Physics and Social Sciences," which shows how in quantum physics reality is dissolved into probability, and in dialogue with Simone Weil's considerations on the topic, Giorgio Agamben suggests that, by disappearing into thin air, Majorana turned his very person into an exemplary cipher of the status of the real in our probabilistic universe. In so doing, the physicist posed a question to science that is still awaiting an answer: What is Real?
£15.29
University of Minnesota Press Gut Anthro: An Experiment in Thinking with
Book SynopsisA fascinating ethnography of microbes that opens up new spaces for anthropological inquiry The trillions of microbes in and on our bodies are determined by not only biology but also our social connections. Gut Anthro tells the fascinating story of how a sociocultural anthropologist developed a collaborative “anthropology of microbes” with a human microbial ecologist to address global health crises across disciplines. It asks: what would it mean for anthropology to act with science? Based partly at a preeminent U.S. lab studying the human microbiome, the Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University, and partly at a field site in Bangladesh studying infant malnutrition, it examines how microbes travel between human guts in the “field” and in microbiome laboratories, influencing definitions of health and disease, and how the microbiome can change our views on evolution, agency, and life.As lab scientists studied the interrelationships between gut microbes and malnutrition in resource-poor countries, Amber Benezra explored ways to reconcile the scale and speed differences between the lab, the intimate biosocial practices of Bangladeshi mothers and their children, and the looming structural violence of poverty. In vital ways, Gut Anthro is about what it means to collaborate—with mothers, local field researchers in Bangladesh, massive philanthropic global health organizations, with the microbiome scientists, and, of course, with microbes. It follows microbes through various enactments in scientific research—microbes as kin, as data, and as race. Revealing how racial categories are used in microbiome research, Benezra argues that microbial differences need transdisciplinary collaboration to address racial health disparities without reifying race as a straightforward biological or social designation.Gut Anthro is a tour de force of science studies and medical anthropology as well as an intensely personal and deeply theoretical accounting of what it means to do anthropology today. Cover alt text:Black background overlaid with a pink organic path suggestive of a human digestive system. Title appears within the guts as if being processed.Trade Review"From start to finish, Gut Anthro demonstrates how relations are integral to science. With bold, page-turning prose, Amber Benezra traces microbiokinships from kitchen tables to scientific laboratories, offering a refreshingly honest analysis of how knowledge and process are one and the same. Miscarriage. Diarrhea. Career ambitions. Humanitarian hubris. Anthropological complicity. We learn from microbes—and the messy, fragile, tenacious humans that study them—how much the minute details of mundane life matter. Alternately hopeful and unsettling, this is a book that expertly does what microbes have always done: change how we see, how we collaborate, and who we are."—Emily Yates-Doerr, author of The Weight of Obesity: Hunger and Global Health in Postwar Guatemala"This is an utterly arresting ethnographic examination of a networked bioscience project that stretches from sample collection in Bangladesh to data analysis at a U.S. university. Amber Benezra offers an account—rigorous, revelatory, wrenching—of the vexed promises of acting as both participant and observer in the contact zones of today’s international biomedical research."—Stefan Helmreich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press Metaphysical Experiments: Physics and the
Book SynopsisAn engaging critique of the science and metaphysics behind our understanding of the universe The James Webb Space Telescope, when launched in 2021, will be the premier orbital observatory, capable of studying every phase of the history of the universe, from the afterglow of the Big Bang to the formation of our solar system. Examining the theoretical basis for key experiments that have made this latest venture in astrophysics possible, Bjørn Ekeberg reveals that scientific cosmology actually operates in a twilight zone between the physical and metaphysical. Metaphysical Experiments explains how our current framework for understanding the universe, the Big Bang theory, is more determined by a deep faith in mathematical universality than empirical observation. Ekeberg draws on philosophical insights by Spinoza, Bergson, Heidegger, and Arendt; on the critical perspectives of Latour, Stengers, and Serres; and on cutting-edge physics research at the Large Hadron Collider, to show how the universe of modern physics was invented to reconcile a Christian metaphysical premise with a claim to the theoretical unification of nature.By focusing on the nonmathematical assumptions underlying some of the most significant events in modern science, Metaphysical Experiments offers a critical history of contemporary physics that demystifies such concepts as the universe, particles, singularity, gravity, blackbody radiation, the speed of light, wave/particle duality, natural constants, black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. Ekeberg’s incisive reading of the metaphysical underpinnings of scientific cosmology offers an innovative account of how we understand our place in the universe.Trade Review"In this provocative and sharply written account, Bjørn Ekeberg makes a radical case for the social construction of physics and its truths, urging that the mathematical unification of physical phenomena is not only physics’ goal but also a deeply metaphysical requirement for its progress—progress put into doubt, not to say crisis, by the emergence of mathematical theories (such as multiverse or string theory) that seem ‘untestable in any empirical sense and probably remain beyond the horizon of experimental physics.’"—Brian Rotman, author of Becoming Beside Ourselves: The Alphabet, Ghosts, and Distributed Human Being "What if the basis of contemporary cosmology were false? This stirring question launches Bjørn Ekeberg on a lucid exploration of modern scientific history, leading to the recent marriage of cosmology with experimental particle physics. Well-informed in contemporary philosophy, Ekeberg provides a unique synthesis that will be of interest to philosophers of science and contemplative scientists alike."—Graham Harman, Southern California Institute of Architecture "This erudite, idiosyncratic book more than earns a place on the library shelf." —CHOICETable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: A Cosmic World-Object1. The Metaphysics Experiment: From Particle Collider to the Cosmos2. God, That Is, Nature: The Invention of the Universe3. Probability and Proliferation: The Invention of the Particle4. Big Bang Metaphysics: The Universe of Modern CosmologyConclusion: A Question of RelevanceNotesBibliographyIndex
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press An Ecotopian Lexicon
Book SynopsisPresents thirty novel terms that do not yet exist in English to envision ways of responding to the environmental challenges of our generation As the scale and gravity of climate change becomes undeniable, a cultural revolution must ultimately match progress in the realms of policy, infrastructure, and technology. Proceeding from the notion that dominant Western cultures lack the terms and concepts to describe or respond to our environmental crisis, An Ecotopian Lexicon is a collaborative volume of short, engaging essays that offer ecologically productive terms—drawn from other languages, science fiction, and subcultures of resistance—to envision and inspire responses and alternatives to fossil-fueled neoliberal capitalism. Each of the thirty suggested “loanwords” helps us imagine how to adapt and even flourish in the face of the socioecological adversity that characterizes the present moment and the future that awaits. From “Apocalypso” to “Qi,” “ ~*~ “ to “Total Liberation,” thirty authors from a range of disciplines and backgrounds assemble a grounded yet dizzying lexicon, expanding the limited European and North American conceptual lexicon that many activists, educators, scholars, students, and citizens have inherited. Fourteen artists from eleven countries respond to these chapters with original artwork that illustrates the contours of the possible better worlds and worldviews.Contributors: Sofia Ahlberg, Uppsala U; Randall Amster, Georgetown U; Cherice Bock, Antioch U; Charis Boke, Cornell U; Natasha Bowdoin, Rice U; Kira Bre Clingen, Harvard U; Caledonia Curry (SWOON); Lori Damiano, Pacific Northwest College of Art; Nicolás De Jesús; Jonathan Dyck; John Esposito, Chukyo U; Rebecca Evans, Winston-Salem State U; Allison Ford, U of Oregon; Carolyn Fornoff, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Michelle Kuen Suet Fung; Andrew Hageman, Luther College; Michael Horka, George Washington U; Yellena James; Andrew Alan Johnson, Princeton U; Jennifer Lee Johnson, Purdue U; Melody Jue, U of California, Santa Barbara; Jenny Kendler; Daehyun Kim (Moonassi); Yifei Li, NYU Shanghai; Nikki Lindt; Anthony Lioi, Juilliard School of New York; Maryanto; Janet Tamalik McGrath; Pierre-Héli Monot, Ludwig Maximilian U of Munich; Kari Marie Norgaard, U of Oregon; Karen O’Brien, U of Oslo, Norway; Evelyn O’Malley, U of Exeter; Robert Savino Oventile, Pasadena City College; Chris Pak; David N. Pellow, U of California, Santa Barbara; Andrew Pendakis, Brock U; Kimberly Skye Richards, U of California, Berkeley; Ann Kristin Schorre, U of Oslo, Norway; Malcolm Sen, U of Massachusetts Amherst; Kate Shaw; Sam Solnick, U of Liverpool; Rirkrit Tiravanija, Columbia U; Miriam Tola, Northeastern U; Sheena Wilson, U of Alberta; Daniel Worden, Rochester Institute of Technology.Trade Review"Part dream, part provocation ... (with) a wonky yet infectious hopefulness."—The New Yorker"We understand that an era is ending, but we do not know what will happen after it. Maybe changing words from 70 thousand years ago helps us cope with reality."—Vogue Poland"A fascinating collection of non-English or newly invented words that impart something of the complexities of everyday life in an era of warming skies and oceans, mass degradation, precarity, and insecurity, each of which also helps map a possible future."—Science Magazine"A perfect artifact of our complicated present."—Los Angeles Review of Books"The texts, which are written mostly by professorial types whose specialties include English literature, anthropology and environmental studies, range from the drearily academic to the gloriously weird. But the entries’ basic messages are: do not despair; be humble; get creative."—ArtReview Asia"An Ecotopian Lexicon is a fascinating, thought-provoking book. It’s worth a read."—The Weekly Anthropocene"How can we better locate, through a vocabulary no longer inspired by neoliberal capitalism, the escape route from the Anthropocene? The necessary words are in a book that is a utopia in the form of a dictionary: An Ecotopian Lexicon. The lexicon contains poetic, esoteric and exotic suggestions. The authors of the individual entries identify their ecological and ecopsychological potential... Do words like apocalypso, cibopathic, fotminne, blockadia, gyebale, sound strange? Of course, because they don't exist; but they could come in handy."—La Reppublica"The climate crisis provides opportunity and impetus for humans to make some of the changes, big and small, that we need to continue to progress. An Ecotopian Lexicon provides us with some of the creativity, language and concepts we need to make these very necessary changes."—Language & Ecology"The essays vary in their theoretical density, but the editors have curated what is, on the whole, a very approachable collection, and one that I can imagine being meaningful not just for scholars in the environmental humanities, but for environmentally conscious citizens outside the academy as well."—Ancillary Review of Books"With the look and feel of a small coffee table book—including original artwork, loanwords highlighted in sage green, and suggestive ‘paths’ at the end of each entry to chart a less linear browsing experience—it invites and rewards re-reading. . . . There is so much work to do, and this book reminds us to use all the creative resources at our disposal to do that work as joyfully as possible."—ISLE"An Ecotopian Lexicon offers a fresh mode of engaging."—Kenyon Review"This delightful dictionary of differences also represents what might just be the best method we have for mapping the gaps in our conceptual landscape. On that basis, I recommend it wholeheartedly."—Extrapolation "An Ecotopian Lexicon proves to be an endeavor both revolutionary and futuristic"—Utopian Studies"An Ecotopian Lexicon is a delightful book, conceived and executed with a rare combination of scholarly rigor and heartfelt commitment."—Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press The Lichen Museum
Book SynopsisA radical proposal for how a tiny organism can transform our understanding of human relations Serving as both a guide and companion publication to the conceptual art project of the same name, The Lichen Museum explores how the physiological characteristics of lichens provide a valuable template for reimagining human relations in an age of ecological and social precarity. Channeling between the personal, the scientific, the philosophical, and the poetic, A. Laurie Palmer employs a cross-disciplinary framework that artfully mirrors the collective relations of lichens, imploring us to envision alternative ways of living based on interdependence rather than individualism and competition.Lichens are composite organisms made up of a fungus and an alga or cyanobacteria thriving in a mutually beneficial relationship. The Lichen Museum looks to these complex organisms, remarkable for their symbiosis, diversity, longevity, and adaptability, as models for relations rooted in collaboration and nonhierarchical structures. In their resistance to fast-paced growth and commodification, lichens also offer possibilities for humans to reconfigure their relationship to time and attention outside of the accelerated pace of capitalist accumulation.Drawing together a diverse set of voices, including personal encounters with lichenologists and lichens themselves, Palmer both imagines and embodies a radical new approach to human interconnection. Using this tiny organism as an emblem through which to navigate environmental and social concerns, this work narrows the gap between the human and natural worlds, emphasizing the notion of mutual dependence as a necessary means of survival and prosperity.Trade Review "The Lichen Museum is a deeply engaging, provocative, humorous, and moving account of why we should pay more attention to lichens. As lichens can be found anywhere, the entire surface of the earth becomes the lichen museum. A. Laurie Palmer weaves together personal anecdotes, theoretical interventions, photography, and detailed research to draw attention to how lichens can offer new ways to think through questions of relationality, life and death, and our mutual obligations to each other."—Heather Davis, author of Plastic Matter "Meditative and inquisitive, The Lichen Museum is an interdisciplinary work about learning from the most unassuming of species."—Foreword "Reading this work feels like taking a series of walks with a particularly curious and sensitive companion, consistently attentive to otherwise neglected facets of the actual environment. "—e-flux "As an environmentally engaged artist, Palmer introduces readers to lichens through personal observations, extensive research, and critical evaluation of past and current scientific study of this complex living organism and offers her musings on the potential philosophical and poetic implications of these symbiotic organisms."—CHOICE
£72.00
University of Minnesota Press The Lichen Museum
Book SynopsisA radical proposal for how a tiny organism can transform our understanding of human relations Serving as both a guide and companion publication to the conceptual art project of the same name, The Lichen Museum explores how the physiological characteristics of lichens provide a valuable template for reimagining human relations in an age of ecological and social precarity. Channeling between the personal, the scientific, the philosophical, and the poetic, A. Laurie Palmer employs a cross-disciplinary framework that artfully mirrors the collective relations of lichens, imploring us to envision alternative ways of living based on interdependence rather than individualism and competition.Lichens are composite organisms made up of a fungus and an alga or cyanobacteria thriving in a mutually beneficial relationship. The Lichen Museum looks to these complex organisms, remarkable for their symbiosis, diversity, longevity, and adaptability, as models for relations rooted in collaboration and nonhierarchical structures. In their resistance to fast-paced growth and commodification, lichens also offer possibilities for humans to reconfigure their relationship to time and attention outside of the accelerated pace of capitalist accumulation.Drawing together a diverse set of voices, including personal encounters with lichenologists and lichens themselves, Palmer both imagines and embodies a radical new approach to human interconnection. Using this tiny organism as an emblem through which to navigate environmental and social concerns, this work narrows the gap between the human and natural worlds, emphasizing the notion of mutual dependence as a necessary means of survival and prosperity.Trade Review "The Lichen Museum is a deeply engaging, provocative, humorous, and moving account of why we should pay more attention to lichens. As lichens can be found anywhere, the entire surface of the earth becomes the lichen museum. A. Laurie Palmer weaves together personal anecdotes, theoretical interventions, photography, and detailed research to draw attention to how lichens can offer new ways to think through questions of relationality, life and death, and our mutual obligations to each other."—Heather Davis, author of Plastic Matter "Meditative and inquisitive, The Lichen Museum is an interdisciplinary work about learning from the most unassuming of species."—Foreword "Reading this work feels like taking a series of walks with a particularly curious and sensitive companion, consistently attentive to otherwise neglected facets of the actual environment. "—e-flux "As an environmentally engaged artist, Palmer introduces readers to lichens through personal observations, extensive research, and critical evaluation of past and current scientific study of this complex living organism and offers her musings on the potential philosophical and poetic implications of these symbiotic organisms."—CHOICE
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene: Doing
Book SynopsisA methodological follow-up to Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet The environmental and climatic crises of our time are fundamentally multispecies crises. And the Anthropocene, a time of “human-made” disruptions on a planetary scale, is a disruption of the fabric of life as a whole. The contributors to Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene argue that understanding the multispecies nature of these disruptions requires multispecies methods.Answering methodological challenges posed by the Anthropocene, Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene retools the empirical study of the socioecological chaos of the contemporary moment across the arts, human science, and natural science. Based on critical landscape history, multispecies curiosity, and collaboration across disciplines and knowledge systems, the volume presents thirteen transdisciplinary accounts of practical methodological experimentation, highlighting diverse settings ranging from the High Arctic to the deserts of southern Africa and from the pampas of Argentina to the coral reefs of the Western Pacific, always insisting on the importance of firsthand, “rubber boots” immersion in the field.The methodological companion to Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene (Minnesota, 2017), this collection puts forth empirical studies of the multispecies messiness of contemporary life that investigate some of the critical questions of our time.Contributors: Filippo Bertoni, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin; Harshavardhan Bhat, U of Westminster; Nathalia Brichet, U of Copenhagen; Janne Flora, Aarhus U, Denmark; Natalie Forssman, U of British Columbia; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Kirsten Hastrup, U of Copenhagen; Colin Hoag, Smith College; Joseph Klein, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andrew S. Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Daniel Münster, U of Oslo; Ursula Münster, U of Oslo; Jon Rasmus Nyquist, U of Oslo; Katy Overstreet, U of Copenhagen; Pierre du Plessis, U of Oslo; Meredith Root-Bernstein; Heather Anne Swanson, Aarhus U; Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, U of California,Santa Cruz; Stine Vestbo.Trade Review "From snorkel fins to worn sneakers, drip torches, boats, dogsleds, and the hooves of a horse, Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene is a bold essay collection that pays attention to the ambulatory prosthetics that we wear or carry into particular fields (ocean, forest, savannah, university) and their many histories—material, colonial, multispecies. Situated knowledge has found its footing."—Melody Jue, author of Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater "Explicitly cross-disciplinary, [Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene] will be of wide interest to colleges and universities with larger libraries."—CHOICE "Where [Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene] really shines—and offers something new—is in its ethical and political imperative to develop novel methodologies to understand our current moment."—H-Net Reviews
£26.99
University of Minnesota Press Scale Theory: A Nondisciplinary Inquiry
Book SynopsisA pioneering call for a new understanding of scale across the humanities How is it possible that you are—simultaneously—cells, atoms, a body, quarks, a component in an ecological network, a moment in the thermodynamic dispersal of the sun, and an element in the gravitational whirl of galaxies? In this way, we routinely transform reality into things already outside of direct human experience, things we hardly comprehend even as we speak of DNA, climate effects, toxic molecules, and viruses. How do we find ourselves with these disorienting layers of scale? Enter Scale Theory, which provides a foundational theory of scale that explains how scale works, the parameters of scalar thinking, and how scale refigures reality—that teaches us how to think in terms of scale, no matter where our interests may lie. Joshua DiCaglio takes us on a fascinating journey through six thought experiments that provide clarifying yet provocative definitions for scale and new ways of thinking about classic concepts ranging from unity to identity. Because our worldviews and philosophies are largely built on nonscalar experience, he then takes us slowly through the ways scale challenges and reconfigures objects, subjects, and relations. Scale Theory is, in a sense, nondisciplinary—weaving together a dizzying array of sciences (from nanoscience to ecology) with discussions from the humanities (from philosophy to rhetoric). In the process, a curious pattern emerges: attempts to face the significance of scale inevitably enter terrain closer to mysticism than science. Rather than dismiss this connection, DiCaglio examines the reasons for it, redefining mysticism in terms of scale and integrating contemplative philosophies into the discussion. The result is a powerful account of the implications and challenges of scale, attuned to the way scale transforms both reality and ourselves.Trade Review "Scale Theory is an exceptionally astute and lucid remapping of the concept of scale. Working through a lively set of thought experiments, Joshua DiCaglio invents a scalar theory to move beyond conventional—often reductive and parochial—understandings of scale. From the not-so-simple conceptual and material status of objects, to questions of process, relations, and consciousness, to the scalar repercussions for subjects, experience, and the very practices of interpretation, DiCaglio delineates and performs a far-reaching scale theory for the predicaments of the present."—Peter C. van Wyck, Concordia University, Montréal "There are few more important, and few more difficult topics to study, than the role of scale in society and nature. This is why I’m so damn thankful for Joshua DiCaglio’s, Scale Theory. He assembles a clear and systematic theory of scale and then demonstrates how its practice can transform our understanding of ourselves and our perceptions of the world. It’s really more than a book; it’s a vision, a guide, and a provocation to help us better navigate a world that exceeds our capacity to understand it."—Phillip Thurtle, author of Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life "Enthralling."—Leonardo "DiCaglio’s evidence disrupts the frame of situated knowledge."—Science as Culture Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: Learning to ScalePart I. Algorithms for a Theory of Scale1. Distance and Resolution: The First Experiential Origin of Scale2. Measurement and Perspective: The Second Experiential Origin of Scale3. Scope and Accumulation: The Third Experiential Origin of Scale4. To the Bottom: The First Thought Experiment in Scale5. From the Top: The Second Thought Experiment in Scale6. In the Scalar Simulation: The Third Thought Experiment in ScalePart II. Configurations for a Theory of Scale7. In-formations of the Whole: Scalar Configurations of Objects8. I Am the Transhuman Cosmos: Scalar Configurations of Subjects9. Cutting and Claiming Everything: Scalar Configurations of RelationsPart III. Rhetorical Technologies for a Theory of Scale10. Mapping the Vast Unknowing: The Science of Scale, the Scale of Science11. The Cosmos Seeing Itself: Representations of Scale, Scales of Representation12. Transformations by Involution: The Contemplative Practices of Scale, Scaling ContemplationAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£23.39
University of Minnesota Press The Birth of Computer Vision
Book SynopsisA revealing genealogy of image-recognition techniques and technologies Today’s most advanced neural networks and sophisticated image-analysis methods come from 1950s and ’60s Cold War culture—and many biases and ways of understanding the world from that era persist along with them. Aerial surveillance and reconnaissance shaped all of the technologies that we now refer to as computer vision, including facial recognition. The Birth of Computer Vision uncovers these histories and finds connections between the algorithms, people, and politics at the core of automating perception today.James E. Dobson reveals how new forms of computerized surveillance systems, high-tech policing, and automated decision-making systems have become entangled, functioning together as a new technological apparatus of social control. Tracing the development of a series of important computer-vision algorithms, he uncovers the ideas, worrisome military origins, and lingering goals reproduced within the code and the products based on it, examining how they became linked to one another and repurposed for domestic and commercial uses. Dobson includes analysis of the Shakey Project, which produced the first semi-autonomous robot, and the impact of student protest in the early 1970s at Stanford University, as well as recovering the computer vision–related aspects of Frank Rosenblatt’s Perceptron as the crucial link between machine learning and computer vision.Motivated by the ongoing use of these major algorithms and methods, The Birth of Computer Vision chronicles the foundations of computer vision and artificial intelligence, its major transformations, and the questionable legacy of its origins. Cover alt text: Two overlapping circles in cream and violet, with black background. Top is a printed circuit with camera eye; below a person at a 1977 computer.Trade Review"A key technology of our time, computer vision is embedded in both our professional and everyday lives in numerous ways—from helping doctors diagnose diseases to enabling organizations to obtain accurate information about remote natural disaster zones and refugee camps to allowing billions of people to capture better images with their phone cameras. Focusing on the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s, James E. Dobson offers the first book tracing the development of computer vision. Combining historical research and theoretical analysis, The Birth of Computer Vision is an invaluable contribution to the fields of media theory, software studies, and algorithm studies."—Dr. Lev Manovich, author of Cultural Analytics"In this timely and eye-opening book, James E. Dobson provides a penetrating analysis of the opportunities and challenges of facial recognition and other computer vision technology by excavating its formation from the sediment of history, tracing its connections to the military industrial complex of the Cold War, and critically examining the notable successes and failures of embryonic research efforts and prototypes."—David J. Gunkel, author of Deconstruction
£20.69
Oxford University Press On Time
Book SynopsisThis text revolves around a new and unusual view on the most fundamental puzzle of physics. It focusses on the key aspect that makes the role of the time dimension fundamentally different: causality. It deals on the one hand with general relativity, and on the other hand with quantum theory. The implicit and intuitive way by which causality is usually taken for granted is just made explicit and less self-evident, shedding a new light on the gravity-quantum conflict. The case is made that gravity is a necessary condition for a causal universe. But upon turning to the pure unitary quantum physics explaining the nature of matter one is dealing with the strictly a-causal time expressed through the thermal quantum field theory machinery. When this a-causal microscopic and causal macroscopic world meet, one encounters the wavefunction collapse, that itself may be rooted in the quantum-gravity conflict. Modern ideas are discussed resting on eigenstate thermalization showing how this may lie eventually at the origin of irreversible thermodynamics, with its famous second law setting also a direction of time. The case is anchored in the sophisticated modern mathematical machinery of both general relativity and quantum physics which is normally barely disseminated beyond the theoretical physics floors. The book is unique in the regard that the consequences of this machinery - Riemannian geometry and Penrose diagrams, thermal quantum fields, quantum non-equilibrium and so forth -- are explained in an original, descriptive language conveying the conceptual consequences while avoiding mathematical technicalities.
£18.99
University of Minnesota Press Cosmopolitics I
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsPreface, Book I. The Science Wars, 1. Scientific Passions, 2. The Neutrino’s Paradoxical Mode of Existence, 3. Culturing the Pharmakon?, 4. Constraints, 5. Introductions, 6. The Question of Unknowns, Book II. The Invention of Mechanics: Power and Reason, 7. The Power of Physical Laws, 8. The Singularity of Falling Bodies, 9. The Lagrangian Event, 10. Abstract Measurement: Putting Things to Work, 11. Heat at Work, 12. The Stars, Like Blessed Gods, 13. If We Could . . ., Book III. Thermodynamics: the Crisis of Physical Reality, 14. The Threefold Power of the Queen of Heaven, 15. Anamnesis, 16. Energy is Conserved!, 17. The Not So Profound Mystery of Entropy, 18. The Obligations of the Physicist, 19. Percolation, 20. In Place of an Epilogue, Notes, Index
£19.79
University of Minnesota Press On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects
Book SynopsisFew thinkers have been as influential upon current discussions and theoretical practices in the age of media archaeology, philosophy of technology, and digital humanities as the French thinker Gilbert Simondon. Simondon’s prolific intellectual curiosity led his philosophical and scientific reflections to traverse a variety of areas of research, including philosophy, psychology, the beginnings of cybernetics, and the foundations of religion. For Simondon, the human/machine distinction is perhaps not a simple dichotomy. There is much we can learn from our technical objects, and while it has been said that humans have an alienating rapport with technical objects, Simondon takes up the task of a true thinker who sees the potential for humanity to uncover life-affirming modes of technical objects whereby we can discover potentiality for novel, healthful, and dis-alienating rapports with them. For Simondon, by way of studying its genesis, one must grant to the technical object the same ontological status as that of the aesthetic object or even a living being. His work thus opens up exciting new entry points into studying the human’s rapport with its continually changing technical reality. This first complete English-language translation of Gilbert Simondon’s groundbreaking and influential work finally presents to Anglophone readers one of the pinnacle works of France’s most unique thinkers of technics.
£25.19
Prometheus Books Individualism Old and New
Book SynopsisAmerica's most renowned social philosopher John Dewey shines his powerful intellect on the serious public and cultural issues surrounding the place of the individual in a technologically advanced society. In this penetrating study, he addresses the fear that personal creative potential will be trampled by assembly-line monotony, political bureaucracy, and an industrialized culture of uniformity. Armed with his pragmatic approach and his belief in the power of critical intelligence, Dewey argues that individualism has in fact been offered a uniquely higher plane of technological development upon which to grow, mature, and redefine itself.
£11.39
Duke University Press The Economization of Life
Book SynopsisMichelle Murphy examines the ways in which efforts at population control since World War II have tied reproduction to neoliberal capitalism, showing how data collection practices have been used to quantify the value of a human life in terms of its ability to improve the nation-state's gross domestic product.Trade Review"Though this book be concise, it is fierce. It can be read, and reread, with profit by undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers. Highly recommended." -- T. E. Sullivan * Choice *"The Economization of Life convincingly links experimentality to what has been one of the most popular developmental trends of the past two decades. . . . Michelle Murphy’s bold and sharp book opens many new lines of inquiries." -- Stephen Macekura * Diplomatic History *"This is a valuable book that should be read by anyone who is interested in the mid-twentieth-century population control movement, including its history and socioeconomic context, or anyone who still adheres to the neoliberal view that population growth (or 'overpopulation,' as it is often called) has been and continues to be one of the greatest problems facing human society." -- Garland E. Allen * Isis *"Murphy weaves helpful threads of history, literature, and economics, guides the reader through complicated ideas, and leaves enough notes so research can continue beyond the book’s borders. . . . The Economization of Life is a useful and an instructive tool for policy makers and researchers on population and reproductive health, and for scholars and students in gender, women, and sexuality studies, or anyone who may be concerned with matters of reproductive rights." -- Kira Frank * Wagadu *"It takes a study as rigorous as Murphy’s to expose the double-edged nature of human capital: galvanizing self-improvement of, and popular support for, underprivileged populations, even as it does so according to metrics that have investor interests—rather than general well-being—as their goal." -- Hadas Weiss * Public Books *"The Economization of Life is a book that sticks. Author Michelle Murphy delicately surfaces the history and persistence of racist and eugenicist logics as they comprise global economies and state governance practices, and, in a bold and self-reflexive gesture, describes how these same logics operate in feminist organizations and academic research. Murphy's work forced me to grapple with unresolvable tensions, particularly between long term liberation and short term survival, which were simultaneously troubling and eye-opening. I can see these now in places where they used to be hidden." -- Lourdes Vera * Somatosphere *"The Economization of Life gives us important tools to bring the work of reproductive justice from the world of feminist social justice organizing to the world of feminist scholarship. It shows us that the economy is an effect that materializes its own causes, supported by a structure of belief that holds together otherwise disparate data and calculations. With enough effort, it urges us, we should be able to divest from that enabling belief, and instead follow models for a regenerative politics, committing instead to reproductive justice as an infrastructure of regeneration." -- Kalindi Vora * Somatosphere *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Bottles and Curves 1 Arc 1. Phantasmagrams of Population and Economy 1. Economy as Atmosphere 17 2. Demographic Transitions 35 3. Averted Birth 47 4. Dreaming Technoscience 55 Arc II. Reproducing Infrastructures 5. Infrastructures of Counting and Affect 59 6. Continuous Incitement 73 7. Experimental Exuberance 78 8. Dying, Not Dying, Not Being Born 95 9. Experimental Otherwise 105 Arc III. Investable Life 10. Invest in a Girl 113 11. Exhausting Data 125 12. Unaligned Feeling 133 Coda. Distributed Reproduction 135 Notes 147 Bibliography 179 Index 211
£18.89
Duke University Press Virgin Mary and the Neutrino
Book SynopsisIn Virgin Mary and the Neutrino, first published in French in 2006 and here appearing in English for the first time, Isabelle Stengers experiments with the possibility of addressing modern practices not as a block but through their divergence from each other. Drawing on thinkers ranging from John Dewey to Gilles Deleuze, she develops what she calls an ecology of practices into a capacious and heterogeneous perspective that is inclusive of cultural and political forces but not reducible to them. Stengers first advocates for an approach to sciences that would emphasize the way each should be situated by the kind of relationships demanded by what it attempts to address. This approach turns away from the disabling scientific/nonscientific binary-like the opposition between the neutrino and the Virgin Mary. An ecology of practices instead stimulates an appetite for thinking reality not as an arbiter but as what we can relate to through the generation of diverging concerns and obligations.Trade Review“Virgin Mary and the Neutrino is an extraordinary exploration of the events that have shaped the relationship between scientific practices and the public—the devastating effects of which we see today, especially in ecological situations. It is also the best introduction to Isabelle Stengers’s body of work, which is undoubtedly one of the most important and original in contemporary thought.” -- Didier Debaise, author of * Nature as Event: The Lure of the Possible *“Virgin Mary and the Neutrino counts among the contemporary classics written by one of the most creative and boldest philosophers of science. Isabelle Stengers’s proposals have the inevitable quality of inducing thought. This book will initiate anyone, no matter the stage of their career, who wants to become familiar with Stengers’s inspiring brilliance.” -- Marisol de la Cadena, author of * Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds *Table of ContentsTranslator’s Preface vii 1. Scientists in Trouble 1 2. The Force of Experimentation 17 3. Dissolving Amalgams 38 4. The Sciences in Their Milieus 61 5.Troubling the Public Order 86 Intermezzo: The Creation of Concepts 111 6. On the Same Plane? 119 7. We Are Not Alone in the World 144 8. Ecology of Practices 169 9. The Cosmopolitical Test 197 Appendix: The First Experimental Apparatus? 207 Notes 217 Bibliography 235 Index 241
£19.79
Penguin Books Ltd The Filter Bubble
Book SynopsisImagine a world where all the news you see is defined by your salary, where you live, and who your friends are. Imagine a world where you never discover new ideas. And where you can''t have secrets.Welcome to 2011.Google and Facebook are already feeding you what they think you want to see. Advertisers are following your every click. Your computer monitor is becoming a one-way mirror, reflecting your interests and reinforcing your prejudices.The internet is no longer a free, independent space. It is commercially controlled and ever more personalised. The Filter Bubble reveals how this hidden web is starting to control our lives - and shows what we can do about it.Trade ReviewAn illuminating flash-forward of what might be -- Colin Fraser * Scotland on Sunday *Highlights an important and easily overlooked aspect of the internet's evolution that affects everyone who uses it * The Economist *Pariser is an excellent debunker of internet clichés... [he] comes as close as anyone has to explaining the misgivings that a lot of internet users feel -- Christopher Caldwell * The Financial Times *A book designed to agitate us into awareness, because this may be the only way we can first discover and then burst the bubble... a polemic and warning -- Brian Appleyard * The Sunday Times *Explains how insidious customization of the web is limiting our access to information, and narrowing rather than expanding our horizons * Observer *Well-written, thoroughly researched and informative . . . the possibilities become truly amazing - or, if you prefer, scary * Scotsman *Astonishing * Andrew Marr *Explosive * Chris Anderson *
£10.44
Prometheus Books Shadows of Science: How to Uphold Science, Detect
Book SynopsisIn this enlightening and entertaining book, author and Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier takes readers on a journey to the contentious boundary zone between science and its antagonists: pseudoscience (pretend science) and anti-science (open hostility to science). Pseudoscience romps in the shadows of science but takes on the guise of science to excite, sell, mislead, and deceive the public. Anti-science denigrates, even denies, findings of science for ideological ends. In this dangerous age of misinformation (and dis-information), we need science’s remarkable truth-seeking tools more than ever to help counter society’s crazier impulses in which opinion, beliefs, and lies trump facts, evidence, and truth.In one sense, Shadows of Science is Frazier’s love letter to science, one of humanity’s greatest inventions, one we should exalt for its unique ability to find provisional truths about nature. In congenial prose he reports on recent discoveries and describes how science works and how its error-correcting mechanisms lead eventually to new knowledge. He tells the stories of some of our champions of science and reason. He describes the little-appreciated values of science, how it embraces uncertainty and humility, and its emphasis on fact-based observation and experiment. Pseudoscience adopts some of science’s language and has a beguiling appeal, but there the similarities end. Frazier has professionally reported on frontier scientific discoveries and observed and exposed the pretensions and dangers of pseudoscience and anti-science his entire career. Here he shares his experiences, his knowledge and insights, and his love and passion for our ability to learn what’s real about the natural world—and to identify and expose fake science, pretend science, and anti-science in all their multifarious forms.
£17.99
University of Minnesota Press Exposed
Book SynopsisTrade Review "Accessibly written, lucidly argued, and capacious in its ambit, there is so much in this book to savor, to be inspired by, and to provoke."—Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, author of Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman "In addition to the descriptions and analyses of imaginative activism, strange agencies of non-human entities, and the politics of place, Alaimo develops compelling theories of self, action, and being human along the way."—Jack Halberstam, University of Southern California "Despite the gravity of her subject matter, Alaimo’s examples and writing are often playful. This not only echoes the complexity and occasional contradictions of environmental politics but also makes Exposed a very enjoyable read. This book is much more than a theoretical exploration; it calls on us to rethink what it means to be human and act accordingly."—New Books Network "A must read for members of the American Rock Garden Society, as well as those living in similar areas worldwide."—Natural Areas JournalTable of ContentsContents Introduction: Dwelling in the Dissolve Part I: Posthuman Pleasures 1. This Is about Pleasure: An Ethics of Inhabiting 2. Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of “Queer” Animals Part II. Insurgent Exposure 3. The Naked Word: Spelling, Stripping, Lusting as Environmental Protest 4. Climate Systems, Carbon-Heavy Masculinity, and Feminist Exposure Part III. Strange Agencies in Anthropocene Seas 5. Oceanic Origins, Plastic Activism, and New Materialism at Sea 6. Your Shell on Acid: Material Immersion, Anthropocene Dissolves Conclusion: Thinking as the Stuff of the World Acknowledgments Notes Index
£19.94
HarperCollins Publishers Footprints
Book SynopsisA profound meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene and an urgent search for the fossilsindustrial, chemical, geologicalthat humans are leaving behindA Times Book of the Year A Daily Telegraph Book of the YearWhat will the world look like ten thousand or ten million years from now?In Footprints, David Farrier explores what traces we will leave for the very deep future. From long-lived materials like plastic and nuclear waste, to the 50 million kilometres of roads spanning the planet, in modern times we have created numerous objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time. Our carbon could linger in the atmosphere for 100,000 years, and the remains of our cities will still exist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock. These future fossils have the potential to tell remarkable stories about how we lived in the twenty-first century.Through literature, art, and science, Footprints invites us to think about how we will be remembered in the myths, sTrade Review‘Fascinating’ Margaret Atwood on twitter ‘What do we owe to the world that comes after us? In this superbly researched and imagined book, David Farrier invites us to expand our sense of deep time to include the deep future’ Caspar Henderson, author of A New Map of Wonders ‘Footprints bears witness to the hastening catastrophe of the Anthropocene, illustrating not just the permanence of the traces humans leave behind, but also the impermanence of the human. Profound, urgent, transformative, it is a remarkable book.’ James Bradley, author of Ghost Species ‘Mr Farrier’s prose glitters … As Mr Farrier notes, even if pollution and consumption ceased tomorrow, their effects would take millennia to unwind. Human life is etched into the fossil record for aeons to come. “The challenge is to learn…to examine our present by the eerie light cast by the onrushing future.” His subtle, elegant book rises to that challenge’ Economist ‘It is an oddly hopeful exploration of deep time and a world doing just fine without us.’ New Scientist ‘Farrier races through the past and makes brief stops in the present before soaring into the deep future, all the while exploring our capacity as human beings to leave traces behind us … It echoes many of the concerns of nature writers such as Kathleen Jamie, Katharine Norbury and Robert Macfarlane, but from a different coign of vantage. Farrier is less nature writer an more ‘smart thinker’ … At its best, there are moments when the eye of the poet and the analyst come together in memorable flight’ Literary Review ‘All decent people want to be remembered well. In the ancient world, moral life was often seen as the effort to be a good ancestor. If that’s how you see things, David Farrier’s brilliant, plangent book will leave you gasping with shame. Our grandchildren (if any survive) will look back on us with contempt’ The Oldie, Charles Foster
£9.49
Harvard University Press Dynamism
Book SynopsisNobel Laureate Edmund Phelps argues that the high level of innovation in the West was not a result of scientific discoveries plus entrepreneurship. Rather, modern values—particularly the individualism and self-expression prevailing among the people—fueled the dynamism needed for widespread innovation.Trade ReviewThis book should be read by anyone interested in innovation. Ned Phelps, who is renowned for his original thinking and rigor, together with his colleagues, provide profound analytic insights which reveal the sources of dynamism across countries and time. -- Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development, University of Oxford, and coauthor of Age of DiscoveryIn this important book, Edmund Phelps, along with Raicho Bojilov, Hian Teck Hoon, and Gylfi Zoega, push economics back to its roots of understanding human satisfaction and flourishing. Linking satisfaction to innovation, they highlight entrepreneurship as commercializing the technological frontier. The ultimate payoff of this activity is dynamism, the flywheel of continuous innovation and the engine of mass flourishing. From this magisterial framing the authors tackle case studies of innovation globally, going from careful modeling if growth to reassurances about the effects of robots on our lives. This is a must-read book for any serious student of the economy’s—and our own human—potential. -- Glenn Hubbard, Dean Emeritus and Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics and Finance (Graduate School of Business) and Professor of Economics (Arts and Sciences), Columbia UniversityEdmund Phelps and his colleagues have further developed his previous work on the sources of a nation’s economic dynamism by delving deeply into the idea of human flourishing. Their findings on the central role of daily work, the knowledge we acquire from doing it, and the innovations we inevitably bring to it are utterly convincing. The authors’ tracing of economic dynamism to the worth people place on their own craftsmanship (there is no better expression for it) is social science at its most sublime. -- Partha Dasgupta, Frank Ramsey Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Cambridge, and author of Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminishing PlanetOver the years, Edmund Phelps has developed a deep and important theory explaining why productivity growth in the U.S. increased dramatically in the nineteenth century and has declined in recent decades. This book puts the theory to the empirical test. It is essential reading for those who care about the past and future of capitalism. -- Eric Maskin, Harvard University, Nobel Laureate in EconomicsA fresh breath of air to stale debates about how to restore long-term growth in advanced economies…Phelps’s perspective is a necessary complement to the standard intellectual frameworks that tend to guide policy thinking around innovation and productivity growth…His iconoclasm shows by example how economics can benefit from an open-mindedness to broader social thinking. -- Martin Sandbu * Financial Times *
£28.76
HarperCollins Publishers Inc The Quiet Zone
Book SynopsisIn this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and WiFi are banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet.“Captures the complex beauty of a disconnected way of life.” —The NationWith a new afterword to the paperback editionDeep in the Appalachian Mountains lies the last truly quiet town in America. Green Bank, West Virginia, is a place at once futuristic and old-fashioned: It’s home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers search the depths of the universe using the latest technology, while schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads. With a ban on all devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the observatory’s telescopes, Quiet Zone residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity. But a community that on the surface seems idyllic is a place of contradictions, where the provincial meets the seemingly supernatural and quiet can serve as a cover for something darker.Stephen Kurczy embedded in Green Bank, making the residents of this small Appalachian village his neighbors. He shopped at the town’s general store, attended church services, went target shooting with a seven-year-old, square-danced with the locals, sampled the local moonshine. In The Quiet Zone, he introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters. There is a tech buster patrolling the area for illegal radio waves; “electrosensitives” who claim that WiFi is deadly; a sheriff’s department with a string of unsolved murder cases dating back decades; a camp of neo-Nazis plotting their resurgence from a nearby mountain hollow. Amongst them all are the ordinary citizens seeking a simpler way of living. Kurczy asks: Is a less connected life desirable? Is it even possible?The Quiet Zone is a remarkable work of investigative journalism—at once a stirring ode to place, a tautly wound tale of mystery, and a clarion call to reexamine the role technology plays in our lives.Trade Review"An expressionistic new work of nonfiction. Part folk history, part gonzo travelogue, The Quiet Zone colorfully annotates an elaborate contradiction: a last bastion of the disconnected world. ... Kurczy finds high drama and dark secrets in the woods, but he also captures the complex beauty of a disconnected way of life that is dying out at an alarming rate. ... A time capsule of a not-so-distant past, of an approach to life that is rapidly slipping from collective memory." — The Nation “[Readers] needing a reminder of the simple pleasure of reconnecting with real people in real life will enjoy the journey.” — Nir Eyal, New York Times Book Review "Kurczy's deep reporting uncovers... strange things in these hills. ... What makes this book formidable is Kurczy's relentless investigating." — USA Today "What a fascinating book! This corner of America is unique for its electromagnetic silence—but once Stephen Kurczy starts looking he finds that it's unique in other ways too. The Quiet Zone will live on in your memory." — Bill McKibben, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Nature "[A] fascinating, deeply reported and slightly eerie look at an unusual corner of America. ... With compassion and a journalist's eye [Kurczy] delivers a compelling portrait." — BookPage (Starred Review) “Captivating. … A multilayered illustration of a unique community where things aren’t always what they seem.” — Kirkus Reviews "A vividly written book that captures an unusual place with a story-teller's touch, perfectly timed to this moment of confronting our complicated relationships to technology." — ELIZABETH CATTE, author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia "A quest for our most precious substance—peace and quiet—leaps with exuberant aplomb in to the murk of American kookery—electrosensitives, Nazis, unsolved murders—and reveals that simplicity is far more complicated, far more weird and wonderous, than the self-proclaimed #simplelife." — MARK SUNDEEN, author of The Man Who Quit Money and The Unsettlers "Colorful. ... Kurczy succeeds in unlocking many secrets of this insular community." — Publishers Weekly “Cleareyed and compassionate. … Surprising and deeply enlightening” — Shawangunk Journal "An engaging and sympathetic study of the myriad people who call this unique place home." — Booklist "An enthralling story." — The Parkersburg News and Sentinel (West Virginia) "Readers discover a corner of America relatively untouched by technology's influence. ... The Quiet Zone is more than just a celebration of one of the few quiet places the world might offer those seeking refuge from a tech-driven world: It is a celebration of the unique people and fortitude that shapes an area most outsiders would overlook. ... Gives voice to many memorable people. ... One of the many beauties of Kurczy’s book is the respect and admiration the author gives the people of Pocahontas County." — Southern Review of Books "Gripping." — Daily Mail (UK) "A captivating read. ... A remarkable work of deep reporting." — Engineering & Technology Magazine (UK)
£11.69
Cornerstone Bit Rot
Book SynopsisIn Bit Rot, Douglas Coupland explores the different ways in which twentieth-century notions of the future are being shredded, and creates a gem of the digital age. Reading the stories and essays in Bit Rot is like bingeing on Netflix . . . you can''t stop with just one.Bit rot' is a term used in digital archiving to describe the way digital files can spontaneously and quickly decompose. As Coupland writes, bit rot also describes the way my brain has been feeling since 2000, as I shed older and weaker neurons and connections and enhance new and unexpected ones'. Bit Rot the book explores the ways humanity tries to make sense of our shifting consciousness. Coupland, just like the Internet, mixes forms to achieve his ends. Short fiction is interspersed with essays on all aspects of modern life. The result is addictively satisfying for Coupland's legion of fans hungry for his observations about our world. For almost three decades, his unique pTrade ReviewCoupland adopts…an Andy Warholish mode, somewhere between mocking, lamenting, celebrating even the most troubling aspects of postmodernity. * Times Literary Supplement *[Coupland’s] new collection has its basis in that rarefied literary form, the art catalogue … [he] is at his best when he muses on new opportunities and challenges presented by technology. * The National *[T]he Vancouver-based tech-seer, critic, author and artist again proves himself to be one of the most entertaining and thoughtful futurologists on the planet. * The Herald *Bit Rot is wry and wise, terrifying and hilarious, and it makes us LOL while still using “LOL” correctly. * i Paper *Every page is full of wit, surprise and delight * Dluxe Magazine *
£9.99
Vintage Publishing The Glass Cage
Book SynopsisIn The Glass Cage, Pulitzer Prize nominee and bestselling author Nicholas Carr shows how the most important decisions of our lives are now being made by machines and the radical effect this is having on our ability to learn and solve problems.In May 2009 an Airbus A330 passenger jet equipped with the latest glass cockpit' controls plummeted 30,000 feet into the Atlantic. The reason for the crash: the autopilot had routinely switched itself off. In fact, automation is everywhere from the thermostat in our homes and the GPS in our phones to the algorithms of High Frequency Trading and self-driving cars. We now use it to diagnose patients, educate children, evaluate criminal evidence and fight wars. But psychological studies show that we perform best when fully involved in a task, while the principle of automation that humans are inefficient is self-fulfilling. The glass cockpit is becoming a glass cage.In this utterly engrossing exposé, bestselling writer NicTrade ReviewNicholas Carr is among the most lucid, thoughtful and necessary thinkers alive. The Glass Cage should be required reading for everyone with a phone -- Jonathan Safran FoerWritten with restrained objectivity, The Glass Cage is nevertheless as scary as any sci-fi thriller could be -- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal ExperienceNicholas Carr is the rare thinker who understands that technological progress is both essential and worrying. The Glass Cage is a call for technology that complements our human capabilities, rather than replacing them -- Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes EverybodyA very necessary book, that we ignore at our peril. I read it without putting it down -- Iain McGilchrist, author of The Master and His EmissaryAn important book ... deep and valuable * The Times *
£14.39
Penguin Books Ltd The Master Algorithm
Book Synopsis''Pedro Domingos demystifies machine learning and shows how wondrous and exciting the future will be'' Walter Isaacson, author of Steve JobsSociety is changing, one learning algorithm at a time, from search engines to online dating, personalized medicine to predicting the stock market. But learning algorithms are not just about Big Data - these algorithms take raw data and make it useful by creating more algorithms. This is something new under the sun: a technology that builds itself. In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos reveals how machine learning is remaking business, politics, science and war. And he takes us on an awe-inspiring quest to find ''The Master Algorithm'' - a universal learner capable of deriving all knowledge from data.Trade ReviewPedro Domingos demystifies machine learning and shows how wondrous and exciting the future will be -- Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and The InnovatorsMachine learning is a fascinating world never before glimpsed by outsiders. Pedro Domingos initiates you to the mysterious languages spoken by its five tribes, and invites you to join in his plan to unite them, creating the most powerful technology our civilization has ever seen -- Sebastian Seung, Professor, Princeton, and author of 'Connectome'Machine learning, known in commercial use as predictive analytics, is changing the world. This riveting, far-reaching, and inspiring book introduces the deep scientific concepts to even non-technical readers, and yet also satisfies experts with a fresh, profound perspective that reveals the most promising research directions. It's a rare gem indeed -- Eric Siegel, founder of Predictive Analytics World and author of 'Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die'With terms like 'Machine Learning' and 'Big Data' regularly making headlines, there is no shortage of hype-filled business books on the subject. There are also textbooks that are too technical to be accessible. For those in the middle-from executives to college students-this is the ideal book, showing how and why things really work without the heavy math. Unlike other books that proclaim a bright future, this one actually gives you what you need to understand the changes that are coming -- Peter Norvig, Director of Research, Google and coauthor of 'Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach'[The Master Algorithm] does a good job of examining the field's five main techniques...The subject is meaty and the author ... has a knack for introducing concepts at the right moment * Economist *Machine learning is the single most transformative technology that will shape our lives over the next fifteen years. This book is a must-read-a bold and beautifully written new framework for looking into the future -- Geoffrey Moore, author of 'Crossing the Chasm'This is an incredibly important and useful book. Machine learning is already critical to your life and work, and will only become more so. Finally, Pedro Domingos has written about it in a clear and understandable fashion -- Thomas H. Davenport, Distinguished Professor, Babson College and author of 'Competing on Analytics and Big Data @ Work'Starting with the audacious claim that all knowledge can be derived from data by a single 'master algorithm,' Domingos takes the reader on a fast-paced journey through the brave new world of machine learning. Writing breezily but with deep authority, Domingos is the perfect tour guide from whom you will learn everything you need to know about this exciting field, and a surprising amount about science and philosophy as well -- Duncan Watts, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research, and author of 'Six Degrees and Everything Is Obvious *Once You Know the Answer'A delightful book by one of the leading experts in the field. If you wonder how AI will change your life, read this book -- Sebastian Thrun, Research Professor, Stanford, Google Fellow and Inventor of the Self-Driving CarAn exhilarating venture into groundbreaking computer science * Booklist (starred review) *Domingos writes with verve and passion, and the book has a strong narrative * New Scientist *Pedro Domingos is a man with a quest, and a hypothesis, which is likely - one day - to change the world . . . Domingos is a genial and amusing guide . . . This is a highly inclusive book, aimed at a wide range of readers from the merely curious to those who might be interested in pursuing a career in the field . . . Descriptions and discussions are presented with a commendable lack of jargon and the examples are clear and accessible -- John Gilbey * Times Higher Education *Wonderfully erudite, humorous, and easy to read. * KDNuggets *The Master Algorithm does a good job of examining the field's five main techniques...The subject is meaty and the author...has a knack for introducing concepts at the right moment * Economist *
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Thank You for Being Late
Book SynopsisTHE NEW INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WORLD IS FLATWe all sense it: something big is going on. Life is speeding up, and it is dizzying. Here Thomas L. Friedman reveals the tectonic movements that are reshaping our world, how to adapt to this new age and why, sometimes, we all need to be late.''A master class ... As a guide for perplexed Westerners, this book is very hard to beat ... an honest, cohesive explanation for why the world is the way it is, without miracle cures or scapegoats'' John Micklethwait, The New York Times Book Review''Wonderful ... admirably honest ... injects a badly needed dose of optimism into the modern debate'' Gillian Tett, Financial Times''His main piece of advice for individuals, corporations, and countries is clear: Take a deep breath and adapt. This world isn''t going to wait for you'' Fortune''A humane and empathetic book'' David Henkin, The Washington PostTrade ReviewHis most ambitious book - part personal odyssey, part commonsense manifesto ... An honest, cohesive explanation for why the world is the way it is, without miracle cures or scapegoats. And that is why everybody should hope this book does very well indeed -- John Micklethwait * The New York Times *Engaging ... In some senses Thank You For Being Late is an extension of [Friedman's] previous works, woven in with wonderful personal stories (including admirably honest discussions about the nature of being a columnist). What gives Friedman's book a new twist is his belief that upheaval in 2016 is actually far more dramatic than earlier phases. -- Gillian Tett * Financial Times *
£12.34
Oxford University Press Inc The Innovation Complex Cities Tech and the New
Book SynopsisYou hear a lot these days about innovation and entrepreneurship and about how good jobs in tech will save our cities. Yet these common tropes hide a stunning reality: local lives and fortunes are tied to global capital. You see this clearly in metropolises such as San Francisco and New York that have emerged as superstar cities. In these cities, startups bloom, jobs of the future multiply, and a meritocracy trained in digital technology, backed by investors who control deep pools of capital, forms a new class: the tech-financial elite. In The Innovation Complex, the eminent urbanist Sharon Zukin shows the way these forces shape the new urban economy through a rich and illuminating account of the rise of the tech sector in New York City. Drawing from original interviews with venture capitalists, tech evangelists, and economic development officials, she shows how the ecosystem forms and reshapes the city from the ground up.Zukin explores the people and plans that have literally rooted digital technology in the city. That in turn has shaped a workforce, molded a mindset, and generated an archipelago of tech spaces, which in combination have produced a now-hegemonic innovation culture and geography. She begins with the subculture of hackathons and meetups, introduces startup founders and venture capitalists, and explores the transformation of the Brooklyn waterfront from industrial wasteland to innovation coastline. She shows how, far beyond Silicon Valley, cities like New York are shaped by an influential triple helix of business, government, and university leaders--an alliance that joins C. Wright Mills''s power elite, real estate developers, and ambitious avatars of academic capitalism. As a result, cities around the world are caught between the demands of the tech economy and communities'' desires for growth--a massive and often--insurmountable challenge for those who hope to reap the rewards of innovation''s success.Trade ReviewZukin's work mainly provides a fascinating insight into a city in transition... Zukin's book can convince us to make cities sustainable, not only physically but also in a social sense. * Wouter J. Verheul, Delft University of Technology, TESG *There are many ways agglomeration serves to create value through innovation. However, Zukin goes beyond the typically described positive effects, in particular efficient knowledge diffusion, to recognize the negative social and economic effects. * S. J. Gabriel, CHOICE *I found the book particularly interesting for those scholars dealing with innovation and entrepreneurship in a rather quantitative manner, since it may help them to better comprehend the interesting stories behind innovative entrepreneurship, which too often risk being hidden by the 'cold' numbers of econometrics. * Luca Grilli, Regional Studies *Sharon Zukin's Innovation Complex proves once again that she is one of the most astuteobservers of American cities. For decades, innovation and the tech industry were thought to be the province of the suburbs. But Zukin shows how and why innovation and startup companies have come back to the city en masse and the economic contradictions that the rise of the urban innovation complex brings. * Richard Florida, author ofThe Rise of the Creative Class *With a keen eye and a sly sense of irony, Sharon Zukin takes us behind the doors of the startups, venture capital firms, business incubators, co-working spaces, and coding camps that have made New Yorka major hub of what she aptly dubs 'The Innovation Complex.' Beneath the technical wizardry and relentless boosterism of this new world, Zukin sees reasons to be skeptical about its promises to deliver a better life for us all. * Joshua B. Freeman, author of Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World? *In The Innovation Complex, Sharon Zukin masterfully reveals how New York City-of all places-pivoted to tech and established an ecosystem rivaling Silicon Valley.In the process, she helps us understand cities, the startup world, and the economic tensions that come with progress. * Steven Levy, author In the Plex and Facebook: TheInside Story *Sharon Zukin deftly argues in The Innovation Complex that tech capitals do not simply bubble up from a primordial soup of young entrepreneurs' inventions. They are made through ideas, norms, and narratives as well as by policies and investments. Zukin takes us on a tour of the specific places and activities that make up the New York City innovation complex-hackathons, meetups, innovation districts, tech campuses, boot camps, and co-working spaces. What we come to see is the political process of innovation itself and how this process reconfigures cities. The result is a nuanced and critical look at the costs that a tech boom exacts on cities and citizens. * Gina Neff, University of Oxford, author of Venture Labor: Work and the Burden of Risk in Innovative Industries *Table of Contents1. Imagining Innovation 2. Hackathons and the Spirit of the New Capitalism 3. Meetups: Leveraging the Community 4. Accelerators, Startups, and the Circulation of Capital 5. The VC Office and the Concentration of Capital 6. Brooklyn's "Innovation Coastline" 7. Pipelines: Talent, Meritocracy, and Academic Capitalism 8. "The Address of Innovation" 9. Author's Note: On Methods and Journeys
£25.64
