Impact of science and technology on society Books

Book SynopsisThe digital world is a place where even the most informed parents and teachers can feel one pace behind children. Bombarded with scare stories about the risks of everyday Internet interactions for young people, those caring for them are frequently left to navigate online minefields more or less on their own. This book is here to help. Two leading experts on digital childhoods, Dr Sandra Leaton Gray and Professor Andy Phippen, explore the realities of growing up online in the 21st century. They provide an informative and accessible guide to the issues young people face today, based on the latest research and scholarship. They also expose the many ways the child safeguarding industry means well, but often gets things very wrong. The authors explain the latest research on topics such as biometrics, encryption, cyphertext and sexting, and analyse their relevance to the next generation. They raise a number of key questions about the contemporary lives of young people, including their relationship with digital technologies such as games, social media, surveillance and tracking devices. They also challenge conventional thinking on these issues. Rather than relying on technology, they argue we should instead focus on the quality of relationships between children, their peers, their parents and with adults generally. Then we can build a healthy digital future for society as a whole.

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Book SynopsisWelcome, dear visitor, to a proud and storied nation. When you put down this guidebook, look around you. A nation isn’t land. A nation is people. Equal parts speculative and satirical, the stories in Matthew Baker's collection portray a world within touching distance of our own. This is an America riven by dilemmas confronting so many of us, turned on its head by one of the most innovative voices of the moment. Read together, these parallel-universe stories create a composite portrait of our true nature and a dark reflection of the world we live in.Trade ReviewA little revelation . . . The fantastical tales in this delightful book poke, with gleeful audacity, at the edges of contemporary America and late capitalism . . . Transitions of sex, gender, family, geographical borders, digital communication, language and even neurological states are examined in thrillingly imaginative stories . . . A witty, exuberant collection which variously reminded me of The Paper Menagerie, Friday Black, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Years and Years. Mind-bending, like all the best drugs * Big Issue *There’s a skew-whiff wonderfulness to the thirteen tales in this off-kilter look at contemporary America and all its contradictions . . . Tackling hot-button topics, Baker tip-tilts the perspective, offering something at once strange yet instantly familiar . . . It’s all masterfully done, and Baker’s prose is engagingly easeful, yet hypnotically elegant * Daily Mail *Conspicuously talented . . . Baker never takes the easy way out. He doesn’t brandish sharp swords at American capitalism or consumer excess or fears that masquerade as politics. Neither does he construct straw men, then ask the reader to applaud when he lights them on fire. Instead, he demonstrates charity toward his characters, who as Americans stand in for the prismatic nature of the country itself * Washington Post *Satirical and deeply humane, these poignant stories expose the moral bankruptcy at the rotten core of the American social contract * Esquire *Matthew Baker is the rarest of writers, one who can turn complex, high-concept stories into sublime character-driven psalms. His work is both highly original and refreshingly human -- Noah Hawley, creator of 'Fargo'Baker’s writing is taut yet lyrical, and brims with sensitivity towards the pitfalls of human experience * The Rumpus *How does he do it? Matthew Baker’s mind is an oyster producing pearl after pearl. Each story in Why Visit America offers an eerie and unsettling vision of our possible future while remaining emotionally truthful, and, as always, incredibly damn fun -- Kelly Luce, author of 'Pull Me Under'Matthew Baker's Why Visit America is at once deeply heartbroken by the state of our country and world, and also deeply hopeful about what both could be. These stories critically examine the harms wrought by American xenophobia, misogyny, transphobia and capitalism while also bearing an abiding, profound love for this planet and for its people. This is a brilliant collection that shines with imagination, and with empathy -- Anna Valente, author of 'The Desert Sky Before Us'With his unique brand of quirky, sardonic compassion, Matthew Baker offers us a book that’s like a cross-country road trip as seen through a funhouse mirror. At once trenchant and deeply tender, the stories in Why Visit America thrum with all that is exasperating, absurd, tragic, and still so compelling about life in these United States -- Naomi J. Williams, author of 'Landfalls'Matthew Baker's stories are wild in all the best ways but Why Visit America isn't just a triumph of weirdness - these stories use a variety of skewed lenses to offer smart critiques of the systems and beliefs humming through so much of American life. They also somehow manage to be, always, a ton of fun to read -- Lee Connell, author of 'Subcortical'This is the first of its kind, a work born of a deep understanding and a philosophical awareness of how things are. Over a century ago James Joyce aimed to write a moral history of his country: Matthew Baker has achieved that for his own. At the end of this acclaimed and untouchable collection there has been horror, but what remains is love * Lunate *Baker has a knack for this: for placing us in situations that are as foreseeable as they are creative; his musical, visual storytelling swaying us on-side, eliciting, ‘ahs’ and ‘ohs’, while we devour his original ideas about modern society. Within each parable, a sense of hope … It is this that makes his work most memorable (and with our current situation, relevant) long after reading * Port *Baker’s prose is astonishingly crisp, whilst his imagination and storytelling prowess are masterfully original and deeply touching, causing the reader to lose themselves in this most beguiling and transforming collection – once you’ve read Why Visit America, you’ll feel changed, you’ll feel enlightened and most of all you’ll be witnessing greatness * Storgy Magazine *

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Book SynopsisLies and inaccurate information are as old as humanity, but never before have they been so easy to spread. Each moment of every day, the Internet and broadcast media purvey misinformation, either deliberately or accidentally, to a mass audience on subjects ranging from politics to consumer goods to science and medicine, among many others. Because misinformation now has the potential to affect behavior on a massive scale, it is urgently important to understand how it works and what can be done to mitigate its harmful effects.Misinformation and Mass Audiences brings together evidence and ideas from communication research, public health, psychology, political science, environmental studies, and information science to investigate what constitutes misinformation, how it spreads, and how best to counter it. The expert contributors cover such topics as whether and to what extent audiences consciously notice misinformation, the possibilities for audience deception, the ethics Trade ReviewMisinformation and Mass Audiences is well worth reading...It represents a timely foray into the analysis of public misinformation, with a broad vista, providing a number of valuable insights into the phenomenon and often using examples from science communication. * Public Understanding of Science *Readers will find Misinformation and Mass Audiences helpful in developing a better understanding of the current environment and identifying areas for further study. Thoughtful communication practitioners will also benefit from this volume by forcing them to think deeply about the consequences, intended or not, of their work...Misinformation and Mass Audiences would be a good basis for an overall study of misinformation, but students in journalism, political science, public relations, or advertising will also find this collection valuable. * Communication Booknotes Quarterly *[A] robust primer for anyone looking for a social science perspective on misinformation...accessible to broad audiences looking to correct their misinformation about misinformation. * Choice Reviews *[O]ne of the first attempts to systematically analyze how misinformation functions in the modern age. * Vox *A valuable resource for laymen as well as scholars and journalists, [Misinformation and Mass Audiences] is a well-documented book and significant contribution toward understanding the complexity and diversity of misinformation in our lives. * Communications *This book is a clear and concise introduction to many of the important themes in misinformation studies. It is a valuable contribution to the new research agenda taking shape in political communication research. * International Journal of Press/Politics *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Misinformation among Mass Audiences as a Focus for Inquiry (Brian G. Southwell, Emily A. Thorson, and Laura Sheble) Part I. Dimensions of Audience Awareness of Misinformation Chapter 1. Believing Things That Are Not True: A Cognitive Science Perspective on Misinformation (Elizabeth J. Marsh and Brenda W. Yang) Chapter 2. Awareness of Misinformation in Health-Related Advertising: A Narrative Review of the Literature (Vanessa Boudewyns, Brian G. Southwell, Kevin R. Betts, Catherine Slota Gupta, Ryan S. Paquin, Amie C. O’Donoghue, and Natasha Vazquez) Chapter 3. The Importance of Measuring Knowledge in the Age of Misinformation and Challenges in the Tobacco Domain (Joseph N. Cappella, Yotam Ophir, and Jazmyne Sutton) Chapter 4. Measuring Perceptions of Shares of Groups (Douglas J. Ahler and Gaurav Sood) Chapter 5. Dimensions of Visual Misinformation in the Emerging Media Landscape (Jeff Hemsley and Jaime Snyder) Part II. Theoretical Effects and Consequences of Misinformation Chapter 6. The Effects of False Information in News Stories (Melanie C. Green and John K. Donahue) Chapter 7. Can Satire and Irony Constitute Misinformation? (Dannagal G. Young) Chapter 8. Media and Political Misperceptions (Brian E. Weeks) Chapter 9. Misinformation and Science: Emergence, Diffusion, and Persistence (Laura Sheble) Chapter 10. Doing the Wrong Things for the Right Reasons: How Environmental Misinformation Affects Environmental Behavior (Alexander Maki, Amanda R. Carrico, and Michael P. Vandenbergh) Part III. Solutions and Remedies for Misinformation Chapter 11. Misinformation and Its Correction: Cognitive Mechanisms and Recommendations for Mass Communication (Briony Swire and Ullrich Ecker) Chapter 12. How to Counteract Consumer Product Misinformation (Graham Bullock) Chapter 13. A History of Fact Checking in U.S. Politics and Election Contexts (Shannon Poulsen and Dannagal G. Young) Chapter 14. Comparing Approaches to Journalistic Fact Checking (Emily A. Thorson) Chapter 15. The Role of Middle-Level Gatekeepers in the Propagation and Longevity of Misinformation (Jeff Hemsley) Chapter 16. Encouraging Information Search to Counteract Misinformation: Providing "Balanced" Information about Vaccines (Samantha Kaplan) Conclusion: An Agenda for Misinformation Research (Emily A. Thorson, Laura Sheble, and Brian G. Southwell) Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Everything is in flux, as we are told over and over again. And yet, these are fluxes in which nothing ever really changes... Other thinkers have characterized globalized and financialized capitalism in this way; Neyrat sees it as a dilemma for critical thought as well... In a world where anything can be anyplace, and anything can switch places with anything else, philosophy must insist on its power to be, not everyplace, but noplace. It must never fit in, but always disturb its context, ... maintaining a relation with the very Outside that our dominant social, economic, and intellectual conditions seek to deny or suppress... Above all, Atopias is a work of ethics, exhorting us to recognize and find room for the many forms of existence with whom we share our planet." -- -from Steven Shaviro's ForewordTable of ContentsCritique of pure madness Book I: Toposophy 1.1 The undamaged and the contagious 1.2 Saturated immanence and transcendence x 1.3 Socratic divergence Book II: Theory of the trans-ject 2.1 Being-outside 2.2 Coalitions 2.3 Ab-solved freedom 2.4 Language and dis-joining 2.5 On the subject of animals Book III: The metaphysical proposition 3.1 The transgression of the principle of the excluded middle 3.2 The leap and the loop 3.3 The unlocatable 3.4 The madwoman of the out-of-place 3.5 Science(s), art, politics What cries out

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Book SynopsisFinancial Times Best Books of the Year 2018TechRepublic Top Books Every Techie Should ReadBook DescriptionHow will AI evolve and what major innovations are on the horizon? What will its impact be on the job market, economy, and society? What is the path toward human-level machine intelligence? What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances?Architects of Intelligence contains a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews where New York Times bestselling author, Martin Ford, uncovers the truth behind these questions from some of the brightest minds in the Artificial Intelligence community.Martin has wide-ranging conversations with twenty-three of the world's foremost researchers and entrepreneurs working in AI and robotics: Demis Hassabis (DeepMind), Ray Kurzweil (Google), Geoffrey Hinton (Univ. of Toronto and Google), Rodney Brooks (Rethink Robotics), Yann LeCun (Facebook) , Fei-Fei Li (Stanford and Google), Yoshua Bengio (Univ. of Montreal), Andrew Ng (AI Fund), Daphne Koller (Stanford), Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley), Nick Bostrom (Univ. of Oxford), Barbara Grosz (Harvard), David Ferrucci (Elemental Cognition), James Manyika (McKinsey), Judea Pearl (UCLA), Josh Tenenbaum (MIT), Rana el Kaliouby (Affectiva), Daniela Rus (MIT), Jeff Dean (Google), Cynthia Breazeal (MIT), Oren Etzioni (Allen Institute for AI), Gary Marcus (NYU), and Bryan Johnson (Kernel).Martin Ford is a prominent futurist, and author of Financial Times Business Book of the Year, Rise of the Robots. He speaks at conferences and companies around the world on what AI and automation might mean for the future.Meet the minds behind the AI superpowers as they discuss the science, business and ethics of modern artificial intelligence. Read James Manyika’s thoughts on AI analytics, Geoffrey Hinton’s breakthroughs in AI programming and development, and Rana el Kaliouby’s insights into AI marketing. This AI book collects the opinions of the luminaries of the AI business, such as Stuart Russell (coauthor of the leading AI textbook), Rodney Brooks (a leader in AI robotics), Demis Hassabis (chess prodigy and mind behind AlphaGo), and Yoshua Bengio (leader in deep learning) to complete your AI education and give you an AI advantage in 2019 and the future.

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Book SynopsisLooking beyond the business sector, Fred Gault examines the measurement of innovation in all economic sectors using an internationally agreed definition of innovation. This timely book explores the challenges and implications of measuring innovation, producing indicators to support policy development, monitoring, evaluation and learning. Examining innovation as a systems phenomenon, chapters offer readers an understanding of the impact of the innovation policy of governments, the strategy of businesses and the practice of households in a more digital economy. Gault also looks at the growing importance of restricted innovation as well as the informal economy and the difficulties around measuring social innovation. Concise and cutting-edge, this book will benefit economics and innovation scholars, particularly those looking into national innovation systems. Policy makers and organisations focused on the statistical measurement of innovation will also find this book offers helpful insights into the topic.Trade Review'Fred Gault is a pioneer when it comes to measure innovation. This book gives a comprehensive view of recent international developments. A must read for any innovation scholar or policy maker.' --Dietmar Harhoff, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Germany'In this very important new book, innovation statistics expert Fred Gault develops the policy implications of the new definition of innovation contained in the current Oslo Manual. For the first time, governments can provide a view of the innovation process as a true multisectoral systems phenomenon that includes important contributions from the household sector.' --Eric von Hippel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, USTable of ContentsContents: Preface PART I INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction to ‘Innovation Everywhere’ 2. Innovation systems PART II INNOVATION POLICY 3. Innovation policy prior to 2020 4. Monitoring and evaluation of innovation policy 5. Developing innovation policy PART III MEASURING INNOVATION 6. Defining innovation for measurement purposes 7. Measuring innovation in all economic sectors 8. Measuring innovation across economic sectors PART IV WHERE NEXT? 9. Innovation and future challenges 10. Innovation, measurement and policy 11. Conclusion References Index

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Book SynopsisThe cheap mobile phone is arguably the most significant personal communications device in history. In India, where caste hierarchy has reinforced power for generations, the disruptive potential of the mobile phone is even more striking than elsewhere. In 2001, India had 35 million telephones, only four million of them mobiles. Ten years later, it had more than 800 million phone subscribers; more than 95 per cent were mobile phones. In a decade, communications in India have been transformed by a device that can be shared by fisherfolk in Kerala, boatmen in Banaras, great capitalists in Mumbai and power-wielding politicians and bureaucrats in New Delhi. Village councils banned unmarried girls from having mobile phones. Families debated whether new brides should surrender them. Cheap mobile phones became photo albums, music machines and radios. Religious images and uplifting messages flooded tens of millions of phones each day. Pornographers and criminals found a tantalising new tool. In politics, organisations with cadres of true believers exploited a resource infinitely more effective than telegrams, postcards and the printing press for carrying messages to workers, followers and voters. Jeffrey and Doron focus on three groups - controllers: the bureaucrats, politicians and capitalists who wrestle over control of radio frequency spectrum; servants: the marketers, agents, technicians, tower-builders, repairers and second-hand dealers who carry mobile phones to the masses; and users: the politicians, activists, businesses and households that adapt the mobile phone to their needs. The book probes the whole universe of the mobile phone - from the contests of great capitalists and governments to control radio frequency spectrum, to the ways ordinary people build the troublesome and addictive device into their daily lives.Trade ReviewThis superb new book reminds us how little we have explored the new landscape of opportunity, aspiration and, inevitably, disappointment that mobile phones have opened up in India. -- Pankaj Mishra * Bloomberg *A comprehensive look at what cellphones have meant for India. Their story covers everything from family relations and gender barriers to terrorism and the relations of citizens to the state. Out of what could have been a dry study packed with statistics the authors have managed to write a superb book--informative, insightful, witty--that is essential reading for anyone interested in India, or technological change, or good stories told with clarity and purpose. * Wall Street Journal *This book is, overall, a very well researched, comprehensive and timely contribution to understanding the consequences of mobile phone technology, and its engaging and accessible style means it is likely to appeal to a variety of audiences. * Times Higher Education *How did India go from being a country in which making phone calls was exquisite torture to the world's second-largest market for mobile phones in just ten years? And what did this rapid proliferation of communication do to Indian society? Assa Doron's and Robin Jeffrey's ambitious survey is a good place to find some answers. ... 'The Great Indian Phone Book' is actually two books in one. The first half is a whirlwind recap of how India was connected, told simply and with a wealth of numbers. The second is an ethnographic study that dives into the intricacies of Indian society without pretending to be comprehensive. ... [T]he strength of the book lies in its repeated emphasis on technology as something that does not eliminate political and social structures, though it may modify them. * The Economist *a riveting account of India's wholesale uptake of mass telecommunication... The Great Indian Phone Book is as packed with thrills as it is with anecdotes and information. This is that rarest of literary marriages, scholarship with a light touch. * Asian Affairs *In this fine anthropological study, Doron and Jeffrey look at how the introduction and current widespread use of the cell phone has altered life in one of the world s largest countries. In 1991, there were 165 people for every telephone in India, but today this ratio is 2:1 or less. The authors cover the technical aspects of this rapid expansion, as well as some of the corruption involved, including the arrest of a former minister of communications. More compelling, though, are the stories of individual citizens and the changes, not always for the better, wrought by mobile phone ownership. For example, the growth of the cell phone industry resulted in new jobs in sales, tower construction, manufacturing, and repair, both by corporate employees and street craftsmen. The 2007 elections in Uttar Pradesh were profoundly affected by motivated citizens using their mobiles. In traditional households, it isn't uncommon for new brides to have their phones confiscated by their in-laws for modesty's sake. Pornography, terrorism, and surveillance abuses are just some of the criminal acts abetted by cell phones. This rich study reveals much about modern India and should be read by both students and scholars of technology and South Asia. * Publishers Weekly *A major achievement. The authors have explored every facet of this topic thoroughly, setting everything in its complex historical context. They demonstrate knowledge and true understanding of the historical and social issues. What is more, their work is eminently readable. -- Bill Kirkman * The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs *[I]n this book a historian and an anthropologist illustrate the titanic impact of the telecommunications industry on the largest democracy in the world . . . where there has been more dramatic growth in the spread of mobile phones than in any other region in the world. . . . They describe the unique potency of a cheap mobile phone that puts an immensely disruptive device within reach of the poor. . . . This is an important book that can usefully be read by students, social scientists, and business managers--indeed, by anyone interested in change and its effect on developing and complex societies. -- Denis O'Brien * Finance & Development *In 'The Great Indian Phone Book', Robin Jeffrey (a political scientist) and Assa Doron (an anthropologist) have produced a riveting study that traces the effects of mobile technology on the lives of everyday people, from the fishermen who can now more effectively set the price of their catch to the electronic technicians who make a living from repairing banged-up handsets. . . . Jeffrey and Doron offer a timely reminder that mobile cultures are moving in many directions simultaneously. With convergence, the technological gap between the mobile and other devices is closing--but the uses to which the mobile is put around the world remain impossibly diverse. -- Ramon Lobato * Inside Story *This book takes us on India's journey towards modernity through the story of the rise of the mobile telephone, tracking the incredible social, economic and political changes that have accompanied the explosion of mobile communications in India. * Contemporary South Asia *Jeffrey and Doron's landmark study of how the humble cell phone is changing the culture of Indian democracy in everyday life has no competitors. Their interdisciplinary analysis of popular aspirations and anxieties surrounding mobile telephones will invite and inspire comparative studies set in other emerging economies. A remarkable achievement. -- Dipesh Charkrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service ProfessorThis is a fascinating, smart and erudite volume on how the Indian cellphone industry developed, and what its extraordinary growth has meant for the country. It can serve as a kind of vade mecum for many thousands of interested readers seeking to learn about the subject whether as amateurs or as specialists entering a new domain. -- Arvind Rajagopal, Professor of Media Studies, New York UniversityA marvelous, briskly written book, combining a panoptical overview of the broader media landscape with gripping vignettes. Doron and Jeffrey write with insight and journalistic brio, making this book highly accessible to a very wide range of readers. -- Christopher PinneyA comprehensive chronicle of how mobile phones changed Indian lives and in the process India's economy. Capitalists, ministers, boatmen, farmers, advertising geniuses, porn peddlers, political workers and tireless salesmen populate this story. Jeffrey and Doron's sociological take on the mobile phone as a great leveller is rich and riveting. -- Sevanti Ninan, editor of 'The Hoot', and author of, inter alia, 'Through the Magic Window: Television and Change in India''The Great Indian Phone Book' is a wake-up call for anyone intrigued by today's network society. Engagingly written, intelligently researched, and enlivened with memorable anecdotes framed by deft exposition, it offers up a compelling and compellingly readable introduction to a subject of unquestioned significance: the remarkable emergence of the mobile telephone as an agent of change in the developing world. -- Richard R. John, author of 'Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications'An engaging and informative analysis of the use of cell phones in India, a nation of over one billion people, where this small device has been a harbinger of big social and economic changes--and an enabler of unbridled entrepreneurship. -- Tarun Khanna, author of 'Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures--and Yours'This book takes a comprehensive, and highly entertaining look at the mobile phone revolution and its implications for India . . . The authors . . . have clearly succeeded in their central mission of writing a book that would hold up its head as both sound scholarship and engaging reading. * The Commonwealth Lawyer *

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Book SynopsisHow will the world be powered in ten years' time? Not by fossil fuels. Energy experts are all saying the same thing: solar photovoltaics (PV) is our future. Reports from universities, investment banks, international institutions and large investors agree. It's not about whether the switch from fossil fuels to solar power will happen, but when. Solar panels are being made that will last longer than ever hoped; investors are seeing the benefits of the long-term rewards provided by investing in solar; in the Middle East, a contractor can now offer solar-powered electricity far cheaper than that of a coal-fired power station. The Switch tracks the transition away from coal, oil and gas to a world in which the limitless energy of the sun provides much of the energy the 10 billion people of this planet will need. It examines both the solar future and how we will get there, and the ways in which we will provide stored power when the sun isn't shining. We learn about artificial photosynthesis from a start-up in the US that is making petrol from just CO2 and sunlight; ideas on energy storage are drawn from a company in Germany that makes batteries for homes; in the UK, a small company in Swindon has the story of wind turbines; and in Switzerland, a developer shows how we can use hydrogen to make 'renewable' natural gas for heating. Told through the stories of entrepreneurs, inventors and scientists from around the world, and using the latest research and studies, The Switch provides a positive solution to the climate change crisis, and looks to a brighter future ahead.Trade ReviewA highly readable book * Financial Times *

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Book Synopsis• An agenda-setting book that asks what inclusion and equity should look like within the field of science communication. • Truly global in coverage, providing the perspectives of the groups that are marginalised and made invisible with the field, containing contributions from across the world. • Includes academic and practitioner perspectives.Table of ContentsIntroduction – Elizabeth Rasekoala Part I: The Practice(s) of Science Communication: Challenges and Opportunities for Race, Gender, Language and Epistemic Diversity, Representation and Inclusion 1. Inclusion Is More Than an Invitation: Shifting Science Communication in a Science Museum – C. James Liu, Priya Mohabir, Dorothy Bennett 2. Communicating Science On, to, and With Racial Minorities During Pandemics – John Noel Viana 3. Breaking the Silos, Science Communication for All – Amparo Leyman Pino 4. Building Capacity for Science Communication in South Africa: Afrocentric Perspectives From Mathematical Scientists – Mpfareleni Rejoyce Gavhi-Molefe and Rudzani Nemutudi Part II: Science Communication in the Global South: Leveraging Indigenous Knowledge, Cultural Emancipation and Epistemic Renaissance for Innovative Transformation 5. Challenges of Epistemic Justice and Diversity in Science Communication in Mexico: Imperatives for Radical Re-Positioning Towards Transformative Contexts of Social Problem Solving, Cultural Inclusion and Trans-Disciplinarity – Susana Herrera-Lima and Sofía Gutiérrez-Ramírez 6. Past, Present and Future: Perspectives on the Development of an Indigenous Science Communication Agenda in Nigeria – Temilade Sesan and Ayodele Ibiyemi 7. Harnessing Indigenous Knowledge Systems for Socially Inclusive Science Communication: Working Towards a “Science for Us, With Us” Approach to Science Communication in the Global South – Konosoang Sobane, Wilfred Lunga and Lebogang Setlhabane 8. Indigenous Science Discourse in the Mainstream: The Case of ‘Mātauranga and Science’ in New Zealand Science Review – Ocean Ripeka Mercier and Anne-Marie Jackson Part III: The Decolonisation Agenda in Science Communication: Deconstructing Eurocentric Hegemony, Ideology and Pseudo-Historical Memory 9. Decolonising Initiatives in Action: From Theory to Practice at the Museum of Us – Brandie Macdonald and Micah Parzen 10. Falling From Normalcy? Decolonisation of Museums, Science Centres & Science Communication – Mohamed Belhorma 11. African Challenges and Opportunities for Decolonised Research-Led Innovation and Communication for Societal Transformation – Akanimo Odon 12. Decolonising Science Communication in the Caribbean: Challenges and Transformations in Community-Based Engagement With Research on the ABCSSS Islands – Tibisay Sankatsing Nava, Roxanne-Liana Francisca, Krista T. Oplaat and Tadzio Bervoets Part IV: The Globally Diverse History of Science Communication: Deconstructing Notions of Science Communication as a Modern Western Enterprise 13. Shen Kua’s Meng Hsi Pi T’an (c. 1095 CE): China’s First Notebook Encyclopaedia as a Science Communication Text – Ruoyu Duan, Biaowen Huang and Lindy A. orthia 14. Making Knowledge Visible: Artisans, Craftsmen, Printmakers and the Knowledge Sharing Practices of 19th-Century Bengal – Siddharth Kankaria, Anwesha Chakraborty and Argha Manna 15. Advancing Globally Inclusive Science Communication: Bridging the North-South Divide Through Decolonisation, Equity, and Mutual Learning – Elizabeth Rasekoala

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Book SynopsisHow analyzing scientific practices can alter debates on the relationship between science and reality Numerous scholarly works focus solely on scientific metaphysics or biological practice, but few attempt to bridge the two subjects. This volume, the latest in the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science series, explores what a scientific metaphysics grounded in biological practices could look like and how it might impact the way we investigate the world around us. From Biological Practice to Scientific Metaphysics examines how to reconcile the methods of biological practice with the methods of metaphysical cosmology, notably regarding the origins of life. The contributors take up a wide range of traditional metaphysics and philosophy of science topics, including natural kinds, medicine, ecology, genetics, scientific pluralism, reductionism, operationalism, mechanisms, the nature of information, and more. Many of the chapters represent the first philosophical treatments of significant biological practices. From causality and complexity to niche constructions and inference, the contributors review and discuss long-held objections to metaphysics by natural scientists. They illuminate how, in order to learn about the world as it truly is, we must look not only at what scientists say but also what they do: for ontology cannot be read directly from scientific claims. Contributors: Richard Creath, Arizona State U; Marc Ereshefsky, U of Calgary; Marie I. Kaiser, Bielefeld U; Thomas A. C. Reydon, Leibniz U Hannover and Michigan State U; Lauren N. Ross, U of California, Irvine; Rose Trappes, U of Exeter; Marcel Weber, U of Geneva; William C. Wimsatt, U of Chicago. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

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Book SynopsisIn Genomics with Care Mike Fortun presents an experimental ethnography of contemporary genomics, analyzing science as a complex amalgam of cognition and affect, formal logics and tacit knowledge, statistics, and ethics. Fortun examines genomics in terms of care—a dense composite of affective and cognitive forces that drive scientists and the relations they form with their objects of research, data, knowledge, and community. Reading genomics with care shows how each resists definition yet is so entangled as to become indistinguishable. Fortun analyzes four patterns of genomic care—curation, scrupulousness, solicitude, and friendship—seen in the conceptual, technological, social, and methodological changes that transpired as the genetics of the 1980s became the genomics of the 1990s, and then the “post-genomics” of the 2000s. By tracing the dense patterns made where care binds to science, Fortun shows how these patterns mark where scientists are driveTrade Review“Genomics with Care is an inventive, generous, funny, rigorous, and path-opening contribution to the anthropology of science that teaches readers new methods of understanding science as a vocation. Mike Fortun deftly fuses attention to the social affects and effects that accompany research in today’s molecular biology. This utterly splendid book reminds us what science and science studies are for.” -- Stefan Helmreich, author of * A Book of Waves *“This brilliant and much-needed intervention into science and technology studies provides an affecting model for reading not just genomics, but the sciences in general. It opens a new path for thinking and writing differently in relation to the natural sciences. Indeed, it is a superb model for scholars and students who wish to read any text, community, or epistemology in a caring and critical way.” -- Elizabeth A. Wilson, author of * Gut Feminism *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Poem-Like Tolls 1: A Prelude 1 Part I. Genomics, Double Binds, Affects 1. Fors 13 2. Labyrinth Life: Affect Excess Infrastructure 42 3. Double Binds of Science 80 Poem-Like Tolls 2: An Interlude Part II. Minding the Infrastructure of Genomics 4. Curation: Of Data’s Limits 111 5. Scrupulousness: Of Experiment’s Limit 141 6. Solicitude: Of Science’s Limit 183 7. Friendship: Of Community’s Limits 221 Poem-Like Tolls 3: An Appendix 253 Postscript 259 Notes 277 Works Cited 311 Index 337

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Book SynopsisThe vacuum is central to physicists'' best theories of subatomic particles, gravitation, and cosmology. Nothingness provides the reference point with which to compare new particle creation and annihilation. Cosmologists use empty universes to study the causal structure of spacetime. Paradoxically, our best physical theories of particles, gravity, and spacetime are theories of nothingness. Stranger still, the physicists'' vacuum is a hive of activity. Quantum fluctuations fill empty space with particles, and astronomers measure gravitational waves, the vibrations of empty spacetime itself.More than Nothing uses the history of the vacuum to show how technical concepts in physics are made real through everyday practice. It provides new insight into the development of twentieth-century theoretical physics through sustained analysis of understudied figures including John Wheeler''s geometrodynamics and Sidney Coleman''s false vacuum. It reveals the surprising influence on physicists from th

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Book SynopsisHenry Dicks explores the philosophical significance of biomimicry, the application and adaptation of strategies found in nature to the development of artificial products and systems. He argues that biomimicry can serve as the basis for a new environmental philosophy that radically alters how we understand and relate to the natural world.Trade Review[The Biomimicry Revolution] provides not only an understanding of the theory and practice of biomimicry, but also a detailed and in-depth analysis of philosophy, classification, and problematization. These features enable the reader to understand that biomimicry is a coherent new entity and philosophy. This book can be used as a quality addition to the literature on a comprehensive philosophical analysis of biomimicry. * Regional Science Policy & Practice *This is an exciting and intellectually invigorating study into the underlying philosophy of biomimicry. Building upon the three principles central to biomimicry—nature as model, nature as measure, nature as mentor—Dicks creates a new philosophical framework structured by technics, ethics, and epistemology. What follows is a lively and groundbreaking ontological inquiry into ‘the nature of nature’ and what we can learn from nature about sustainably inhabiting the earth. -- Adrian Parr, author of Earthlings: Imaginative Encounters with the Natural WorldThe book, rooted in the continental tradition of philosophy, takes a fairly liberal approach to semantics and association, but is written in a very clear manner, and is well structured and relatively easy to follow. * Quarterly Review of Biology *In many instances, Dicks demonstrates a remarkable ability to navigate unexplored conceptual terrains, which have not been thoroughly examined, guided primarily by his biomimetic principles. * Journal of Ecohumanism *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Biomimicry as a New Philosophy1. Nature as Physis: An Ontology for Biomimicry2. Nature as Model: Biomimetic Technics3. Nature as Measure: Biomimetic Ethics4. Nature as Mentor: Biomimetic EpistemologyConclusion: Toward a New EnlightenmentNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisFrom a renowned pioneer of the localization movement, an anthology of essays challenging the narrative that technological progress and an increasingly globalized economy will lead us to a better world This collection of essays has been selected from 30 years of published articles, book chapters and blog posts by the staff of Local Futures, internationally known as pioneers of the emerging localization movement. Some of these writings involve a fundamental rethinking of our most basic assumptions—about progress, poverty, and happiness—while others seek the root causes of our multiple crises, from climate change and income inequality to the erosion of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism. All of them point towards the most strategic steps we can take to confront these problems and bring a healthier, happier world into being. Several of these prescient essays were written decades ago, but they have become even more relevant today as our crises deepen, and the need for systemic change becomes more apparent.

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Book SynopsisAn unparalleled how-to guide to citizen-sensing practices that monitor air pollution Modern environments are awash with pollutants churning through the air, from toxic gases and intensifying carbon to carcinogenic particles and novel viruses. The effects on our bodies and our planet are perilous. Citizens of Worlds is the first thorough study of the increasingly widespread use of digital technologies to monitor and respond to air pollution. It presents practice-based research on working with communities and making sensor toolkits to detect pollution while examining the political subjects, relations, and worlds these technologies generate. Drawing on data from the Citizen Sense research group, which worked with communities in the United States and the United Kingdom to develop digital-sensor toolkits, Jennifer Gabrys argues that citizen-oriented technologies promise positive change but then collide with entrenched and inequitable power structures. She asks: Who or what constitutes a “citizen” in citizen sensing? How do digital sensing technologies enable or constrain environmental citizenship? Spanning three project areas, this study describes collaborations to monitor air pollution from fracking infrastructure, to document emissions in urban environments, and to create air-quality gardens. As these projects show, how people respond to, care for, and struggle to transform environmental conditions informs the political subjects and collectives they become as they strive for more breathable worlds.Trade Review"The planet, the region, the community, the neighborhood, the block—these are all sensoria: sites of sense, sensation, and sensibility. Citizens of Worlds offers a powerful and instructive report on how to create everyday sensor infrastructures to register and combat the damage these social sensoria are suffering amidst today’s compromised atmospheres and environments. A critical handbook for theory and action."—Stefan Helmreich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology"In this timely and carefully crafted book, Jennifer Gabrys takes us on a fascinating journey to trace the multiple relations between citizens and their environments mediated though sensors. Throughout the book we encounter diverse sensing technologies, each making us reflect more deeply about how environments are made perceptible and how this allows us to act upon them in novel ways. The concept of ‘citizens of worlds’ sensitizes us to the multiple ways in which these novel experiences of the environment co-constitute political subjects. A mind-opening read inviting further explorations."—Ulrike Felt, University of Vienna

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Book SynopsisVaclav Smil is my favorite author… Numbers Don't Lie takes everything that makes his writing great and boils it down into an easy-to-read format. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning.--Bill Gates, GatesNotesFrom the author of How the World Really Works, an essential guide to understanding how numbers reveal the true state of our world--exploring a wide range of topics including energy, the environment, technology, transportation, and food production.Vaclav Smil's mission is to make facts matter. An environmental scientist, policy analyst, and a hugely prolific author, he is Bill Gates' go-to guy for making sense of our world. In Numbers Don't Lie, Smil answers questions such as: What's worse for the environment--your car or your phone? How much do the world's cows weigh (and what does it matter)? And what makes people happy? From data about our societies and populations, through measures of the

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Book SynopsisWhat the f*ck is 5G, and how does it even work?The world loves 4G phones, tablets and other gizmos and we take the tech for granted...but when that 4 grew up into the next-gen 5, it seems everyone perked up and started caring about phone networking tech. Journalists journaled, politicians, er, politicked, and tin-foil hat wearers reached for the extra-thick reinforced foil. Why all this fuss? Believe it or not, 5G could change the way you live. Because though it seems like smartphones are only good for tiktok and texting, 5G has the power to revolutionise how we interact with public spaces - from concerts and gigs to coffee shops, paving the way for foundational tech like virtual and augmented reality. This book will explain this missing radio link that will propel us into the future of self-driving cars and VR. Oh, and along the way we'll explore why 5G and coronavirus are very definitely and completely, utterly, not the same thing

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewAt once an incisive critique of new materialisms and a timely extension of Michel Foucault’s analytics of government, Thomas Lemke’s The Government of Things is indispensable for anyone concerned with emerging forms of environmentality and the missing politics of the 'material turn.' By revisiting key terms in Foucault's later writings—dispositive, technology, milieu—and aligning an analytics of government with key insights from feminist and postcolonial science and technology studies, Lemke gives us powerful tools to analyze and historicize the dynamic socio-techno-ecological arrangements that differentially and unequally materialize human and nonhuman life and to imagine how they might be composed otherwise. -- Bruce Braun, co-editor of Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public LifeThe Government of Things is an invaluable exploration and appraisal of new materialist approaches, advancing the argument that, while such approaches have much to offer, they also have distinctive weaknesses in handling questions of history and politics. Thomas Lemke proposes to remedy these shortcomings by drawing from Michel Foucault’s 'tool-box,' thus situating the book's analysis at the vital intersection between science and technology studies and the study of governmental rationality. Particularly for those of us who share Lemke’s ambivalence about new materialism, this book is an essential guide to the limits of this approach—and to avenues for productively combining it with other modes of inquiry. -- Stephen J. Collier, co-author of The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems, Expertise, and the Politics of Security

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Book SynopsisHannah Arendt's most important contribution to political thought may be her well-known and often-cited notion of the "right to have rights." This book explores the theoretical and social foundations of Arendt's philosophy on human rights. It considers Arendt's key philosophical works along with her literary writings.Trade ReviewPeg Birmingham explores the theoretical and social foundations of Arendt's philosophy on human rights. Devoting special consideration to questions and issues surrounding Arendt's ideas of common humanity, human responsibility, and natality, Birmingham explains how these basic concepts support Arendt's theory of human rights. -- Joseph Haberer * SHOFAR *A new reading of Hannah Arendt's philosophy of human rights Hannah Arendt and Human Rights is to demonstrate how closely Arendt's account of the human condition . . . can figure into demonstrating that the discourse on human rights is not wholly negative, not wholly an empirical upshot of the disasters of the twentieth century. The idea of human rights we now possess articlates what, plausibly, might be thought to be involved in recognizing all others as members of the human community, thereby underwriting the political structures necessary to hold the fragile framework of the conditions of humanity in place. Birmingham can thus be thought to have demonstrated, at the very least, that pursuing the goal of realizing human rights is one direct way of pursuing an Arendtian politics.38 2008 -- J.M. Bernstein * New School for Social Research *The achievement of Birmingham's book is that it situates Arendt's much cited discussion of the right to have rights within the broader context of her later work. She persuasively shows that the political predicament of stateless people exemplified the problematic of modern politics with which she was implicitly preoccupied in her later work on freedom and praxis. . .Vol. 18.2 2009 -- ANDREW SCHAAP * University of Exeter, UK *Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: The Problem of Human Rights1. The Event of Natality: The Ontological Foundation of Human Rights2. The Principle of Initium: Freedom, Power, and the Right to Have Rights3. The Principle of Givenness: Appearance, Singularity, and the Right to Have Rights4. The Predicament of Common ResponsibilityConclusion: The Political Institution of the Right to Have RightsNotesWorks CitedIndex

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Book SynopsisScience: A Four Thousand Year History rewrites science''s past. Instead of focussing on difficult experiments and abstract theories, Patricia Fara shows how science has always belonged to the practical world of war, politics, and business. Rather than glorifying scientists as idealized heroes, she tells true stories about real people - men (and some women) who needed to earn their living, who made mistakes, and who trampled down their rivals in their quest for success. Fara sweeps through the centuries, from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi-tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, illuminating the financial interests, imperial ambitions, and publishing enterprises that have made science the powerful global phenomenon that it is today. She also ranges internationally, illustrating the importance of scientific projects based around the world, from China to the Islamic empire, as well as the more familiar tale of science in Europe, from Copernicus to Charles Darwin and beyond. Above all, this four thousand year history challenges scientific supremacy, arguing controversially that science is successful not because it is always right - but because people have said that it is right.Trade Reviewa surprise and a subversive pleasure * Tim Radford, Guardian: Science Bookclub *Review from previous edition Fara's book could not be more wide-ranging, beginning [with] the quest to take the story of science as far back as she story of science as far back as she possibly can, and ending bang up to date. The content is ambitious. jusiciously and fairly handled...The narrative moves forward in an engaging way, while the enthusiasm and opinions of the author are never far from the surface. It is a book to provoke thought and argument. An impressive achievement. * Jim Bennett, BBC History Magazine *Epic history of science * Jo Marchant, New Scientist *Wide-ranging and provocative...Romps through history at a terrific rate. * The Economist *An impressive and commendable effort to square the circle, to tell science's history, from the beginning. * Martin D. Gordin, Science *An engaging book...Fara is to be commended for stepping back - way back - to assess the history of science in its entirety * Robert J Malone, excutive director of the History of Science Society *Table of ContentsPART I: ORIGINS; PART II: INTERACTIONS; PART III: EXPERIMENTS; PART IV: INSTITUTIONS; PART V: LAWS; PART VI: INVISIBLES; PART VII

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Book Synopsis* Gives an up--to--date analysis of the relations between gender and technology * Deals with popular themes such as Donna Harraway's work on cyborgs * Provides a continuation to the arguments that Wajcman made in her previous Polity book Feminism Confronts Technology.Trade Review'Draws on a range of feminist perspectives, including the liberal and radical perspectives, to aid the analysis and to suggest fruitful ways forward for feminism.' Gender, Work & OrganizationTable of ContentsIntroduction: Feminist Utopia or Dystopia?. 1. Male Designs on Technology. From Access to Equity. Science as Ideology. Technology as Patriarchal. Sex, Class and Technology. 2. Technoscience Reconfigured. Beyond Technological Determinism. From Gender-Blind to Gender Aware. Combining Feminist and Technology Studies. 3. Virtual Gender. Networked Community. Cyberfeminism: ‘The clitoris is a direct line to the matrtix’. Performing Gender in Cyberspace. Technology as Freedom. 4. The Cyborg Solution. Embracing Science and Technology. From Man of Science to FemaleMan©. OncoMouseTM: Technologising Life and Reprogramming Nature. Send in the Cyborgs. 5. Metaphor and Materiality. Changing Technologies, Changing Subjectivities. Towards Technofeminism. Sociotechincal Practices: Expertise and Agency

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Book SynopsisAn accessible, practical and ultimately inspiring book that not only serves as a much-needed call to arms to end the plastic pandemic, but gives useful tools on how to make meaningful change in our everyday lives and advice on how to demand long-lasting action.Trade Review'Lucy is one of the true plastic-pollution pioneers' HUGO TAGHOLM, CEO Surfers Against Sewage'It is a great gift to be able to take a difficult and technical subject and turn it into a conversation with a friend that really stimulates you. Congratulations then to Lucy Siegle ...where most books on the environment blend the whiff of cordite with the style of Old Testament prophet. This book is special because it genuinely addresses the genius and threat of plastic and suggests solutions along the way. Most of all it is written in such a way as makes you want to read it rather than suffer through it. Intelligent, witty, passionate and serious of intent. This is a gem of a book- a primer and a call to action that will genuinely drive change.' SIR TIM SMIT, co-founder of the Eden Project'Feisty, excellent journalism, as you'd expect from Lucy Siegle, but also great practical ways we can all kick the plastic habit and start turning the tide. A must-buy, must-read book' KATE HUMBLE'Lucy Siegle turned the tide on the fashion pandemic in her last book. Now she turns her attention and brings her authority to bear on plastic, the environmental struggle of our age'. LIVIA FIRTH, UN Leader of Change and Founder of Eco Age Ltd.'Turning the Tide on Plastic is great, providing not just a cracking analysis of how we've let the plastics monster trash our planet, but a step-by-step guide on what we can do to start putting things right.' JONATHON PORRITT, Founder, Forum for the Future'Long before plastic pollution rose to the top of the public's consciousness, Lucy was a constant voice asking difficult questions and demanding answers on behalf of all of us. This excellent book tells the heartbreaking truth about the scale of the problem. It is a heroic wake-up call for everyone to take action, for the sake of future generations. I hope it will be part of the sea change our planet needs.' RICHARD WALKER, CEO Iceland'Turning The Tide on Plastic suggests simple and practical ways in which each one of us can help to reduce the use of plastic. I urge everyone to read it and take action.' DR JANE GOODALL DBE, world-leading primatologist and anthropologistAn impassioned and highly practical account of how to reduce our plastic consumption. -- Hannah Beckerman * OBSERVER *Informative -- Ella Walker * PRESS ASSOCIATION *[An] eye-opening manifesto...This is THE guide on how to turn the tide on plastic. * SUNDAY TIMES STYLE Instagram *A clear-sighted and immensely useful overview of the problems caused by plastic and the potential solutions. -- Ian Critchley * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE *

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Book SynopsisAt a time of existential global challenges we need our best brainpower to solve them. We can no longer rely on the myth of the lone genius to create a breakthrough.As neuroscientist and bestselling author of The Science of Fate Hannah Critchlow shows, two heads have always been better than one. Almost everything we've ever achieved has been done by groups of people working together, sometimes across time and space. Like a hive of bees, or a flock of birds, our naturally social, interconnected brains are designed to function best collectively.New technology is helping us share our wisdom and knowledge much more diversely across race, class, gender and borders. And AI is sparking a revolution in our approach to intelligent thinking -linking us into fast-working brainnets for problem solving.Hannah Critchlow brings us an enlightening, invaluable guide to our future through the evolving new science of collective intelligence. She reveals what it says about us as human beings, shares compelling examples and stories, and shows us how best we can work collectively at work, in families, in any team situation to improve our outcomes, our wellbeing, and our prospects.Trade ReviewA lively examination of communal endeavour... important and correct -- Steven Poole * The Guardian *For tens of thousands of years we have tried to work out how we can best think. At last this genius work explains the past, the present and the future of our minds. Read - to be amazed. -- Bettany HughesHannah Critchlow has written a timely and engaging book about human intelligence and the challenges our brains face in the twenty-first century. It will make you think. It might even change for the better the way you think. -- Ian RankinA powerful manifesto for the strength of "we" thinking -- Marcus du SautoyHannah Critchlow's research into collective intelligence, team work, communication, performance, resilience, ethics etc from a neuroscience perspective is absolutely fascinating. -- Tatjana MarinkoFrom startling futuristic speculation to practical exercises in getting in touch with your own routine mental processes, Hannah Critchlow steers us with a sure hand and an unfailingly clear and engaging voice. This is a treasure of a book, exploding some damaging myths and encouraging us to re-imagine the values of relationality and receptivity in our thinking. -- Rowan WilliamsThis is absolutely wonderful, uplifting and soulful. I can't tell you how much we need joined-up thinking - this book and the thing itself. The future of humanity very much depends on how well we embrace these ground-breaking provocative ideas, to focus on the collective 'we' more than the individual 'me'. -- Daniel M. Davis

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Book Synopsis____________________What is AIQ? How does it work? Most importantly, how can it help us? Two leading data scientists offer an up-close and user-friendly look at artificial intelligence and how to harness its power for a better world. 'A positive and entertaining look at the great potential unlocked by marrying human creativity with powerful machines.' Steven D. Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics____________________Dozens of times per day, we all interact with intelligent machines that are constantly learning from the wealth of data now available to them. These machines, from smart phones to talking robots to self-driving cars, are remaking the world in the twenty first century in the same way that the Industrial Revolution remade the world in the nineteenth.AIQ is based on a simple premise: if you want to understand the modern world, then you have to know a little bit of the mathematical language spoken by intelligent machines. AIQ will teach you that language but in an unconventional way, anchored in stories rather than equations.Trade ReviewThere comes a time in the life of a subject when someone steps up and writes the book about it. AIQ explores the fascinating history of the ideas that drive this technology of the future and demystifies the core concepts behind it; the result is a positive and entertaining look at the great potential unlocked by marrying human creativity with powerful machines. -- Steven Levitt, bestselling co-author of FreakonomicsEntertaining and persuasive. The book’s goal is to explain how artificial intelligence delivers its incredible results, and Polson and Scott are like a pair of excitable mechanics lifting up the bonnet of a sports car. This is a passionate book, and it is a model of how to make data science accessible and exciting. -- James McConnachie * The Sunday Times *Grounding AI in tried-and-true methods makes it seem less alien: Computers are simply faster ways to solve familiar problems. Hence the book’s title, a portmanteau of AI and IQ—the point being that we need both. -- Sam Kean * Wall Street Journal *In an entertaining primer, two academic data scientists put the case for the defence on artificial intelligence, and show how we can harness its power for a better world. * The Times *At last, a book on the ideas behind AI and data science by people who really understand data. Cutting through the usual journalistic puff and myths, they clearly explain the underlying ideas behind the way that troughloads of data are being harnessed to build the algorithms that can carry out such extraordinary feats. But they are also clear about the limitations and potential risks of these algorithms, and the need for society to scrutinise and even regulate their use. A real page-turner, with fine stories and just enough detail: I learned a lot. -- David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge

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Book SynopsisRead this if you want to understand how to shape our technological future and reinvigorate democracy along the way.Reed Hastings, cofounder and CEO of NetflixA triumph: an analysis of the critical challenges facing our digital society that is as accessible as it is sophisticated. Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New AmericaA forward-thinking manifesto from three Stanford professorsexperts who have worked at ground zero of the tech revolution for decadesthat reveals how big techs obsession with optimization and efficiency has sacrificed fundamental human values and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.In no more than the blink of an eye, a nave optimism about technologys liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. Yet too few of us see any alternative to accepting the onward marc

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Book SynopsisRobert Kirkman received his Ph.D. in philosophy from SUNY, Stony Brook. He is currently Assistant Professor of Science and Technology at the Lyman Briggs School at Michigan State University. His research interests encompass environmental philosophy, the history and philosophy of science, the history of philosophy, and suburban environments.

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Book SynopsisInvestigating the concepts and material realities of energy coursing through the arts: a foundational text.This book investigates energies—in the plural, the energies embedded and embodied in everything under the sun— as they are expressed in the arts. With contributions from scholars and critics from the visual arts, art history, anthropology, music, literature, and the history of science, it offers the first multidisciplinary investigation of the concepts and material realities of energy coursing through the arts. Just as Douglas Kahn's earlier books helped introduce sound as a category for study in the arts, this new volume will be a foundational volume for future explorers in a largely uncharted domain. The modern concept of energy is only two hundred years old—an abstraction grounded in extraction—but this book takes a more expansive view. It opens with a clap: the sonic energies in a ceremony of the indigenous Goolarabooloo people of Austr

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Book SynopsisA Google researcher offers accessible tips, tricks, and interesting stories on maximizing the power of search engines like Google and Wikipedia—proving you don’t have to be a computer whiz to master the art of online searching.We all know how to look up something online by typing words into a search engine. We do this so often that we have made the most famous search engine a verb: we Google it—“Japan population” or “Nobel Peace Prize” or “poison ivy” or whatever we want to know. But knowing how to Google something doesn't make us search experts; there’s much more we can do to access the massive collective knowledge available online.In The Joy of Search, Daniel Russell shows us how to be great online researchers. We don’t have to be computer geeks or a scholar searching out obscure facts; we just need to know some basic methods. Russell demonstrates these methods with step-by-step searches f

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Book SynopsisExperts offer strategies for managing people in technocentric times.In these technocentric times, it is more important than ever to manage people well. Companies—employees and managers—may feel overwhelmed by the never-ending disruptions caused by new technologies. This volume in the Digital Future of Management series shows why we should step back, take stock, and seize just a bit more control over how our world is evolving. In Why Humans Matter More Than Ever, management experts from both industry and academia offer strategies for managing people in our brave new digital world.The contributors explain how new technologies, even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agents, depend on human collaboration. Companies need to develop rules, principles, and clear ethical guidelines that structure smart object-human interactions. Moreover, in a world filled with technology distractions, we must learn to how to manage our most valuable personal re

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Book SynopsisA clear-eyed look at how AI can complement (rather than eliminate) human jobs, with real-world examples from companies that range from Netflix to Walmart.Descriptions of AI's possible effects on businesses and their employees cycle between utopian hype and alarmist doomsaying. This book from MIT Sloan Management Review avoids both these extremes, providing instead a clear-eyed look at how AI can complement (rather than eliminate) human jobs, with real-world examples from companies that range from Netflix to Walmart. The contributors show that organizations can create business value with AI by cooperating with it rather than relinquishing control to it. The smartest companies know that they don't need AI that mimics humans because they already have access to resources with human capability—actual humans.The book acknowledges the prominent role of such leading technology companies as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google in applying AI to their busine

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Book SynopsisHow digital technology—from Facebook tributes to QR codes on headstones—is changing our relationship to death.Facebook is the biggest cemetery in the world, with countless acres of cyberspace occupied by snapshots, videos, thoughts, and memories of people who have shared their last status updates. Modern society usually hides death from sight, as if it were a character flaw and not an ineluctable fact. But on Facebook and elsewhere on the internet, we can't avoid death; digital ghosts—electronic traces of the dead—appear at our click or touch. On the Internet at least, death has once again become a topic for public discourse. In Online Afterlives, Davide Sisto considers how digital technology is changing our relationship to death.Sisto describes the various modes of digital survival after biological death—including Facebook tributes, chatbots programmed to speak in the voice of a dead person, and QR codes on headstones—and dis

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Book Synopsis* How is science represented by the media?* Who defines what counts as a risk, threat or hazard, and why?* In what ways do media images of science shape public perceptions?* What can cultural and media studies tell us about current scientific controversies?Media, Risk and Science is an exciting exploration into an array of important issues, providing a much needed framework for understanding key debates on how the media represent science and risk. In a highly effective way, Stuart Allan weaves together insights from multiple strands of research across diverse disciplines. Among the themes he examines are: the role of science in science fiction, such as Star Trek; the problem of 'pseudo-science' in The X-Files; and how science is displayed in science museums. Science journalism receives particular attention, with the processes by which science is made 'newsworthy' unravelled for careful scrutiny. The book also includes individual chapters devoted to how the media porTable of ContentsSeries editor's forewordIntroductionmedia, risk and scienceScience fictionsScience in popular cultureScience journalismMedia, risk and the environmentBodies at risknews coverage of AIDSFood scaresmad cows and GM foodsFigures of the humanrobots, androids, cyborgs and clonesGlossaryReferencesIndex.

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Book Synopsis* This is a remarkable study of the impact on online technologies on professional workers. * Gregg introduces the notion of work's intimacy to describe the way technology exacerbates the expectations of professional jobs as they come to invade spaces and times that were once less susceptible to work's presence.Trade Review"Is your working life afflicted by an increasing taskload, the 'coercive dimensions' of teamwork, longer hours, job insecurity and the intrusion of labour into personal life? Then Gregg's brilliant book, based on athropological research in Brisbane but of global significance, will show you that you are not alone. Writing of organisations that continue to demand unidirectional 'loyalty' from their workers, and of a woman whose office contacted her on every single day of her maternity leave, Gregg conveys a coolly controlled anger while coining powerful descriptions such as 'function creep' and 'binge work'. Her interviewees, baffled but trying, elicit our empathy, even those who have internalised the brutalist jargon of the modern office. If I ever use 'progress' or 'action' as a transitive verb, please shoot me." Steven Poole, The Guardian "Author Melissa Gregg has put flesh on the bones of what many suspected. Under the pretence of giving us the freedom to work at our own pace and wherever we choose, mobile phones, laptops and 'tablet' computers have shackled us to our bosses' will in a way that nothing has done since the treadmill." Irish Times "An engaging read that will chime with the experiences of academics and many other professional workers." Times Higher Education "A timely and important book, which raises essential questions about work, lifestyle, emotions and intimacy in the era of online technologies … All interested in this book will not only find important scholarly discussion, but will also be made to rethink their own labour practices, priorities, and 'lives and loves'. This mobilisation of achievement and accomplishment for rethinking our own world, in which discourses of achievement and accomplishment monopolised all spheres of life, and in which the imperative to love one's wok implies a troubling freedom is the effect of this book, which is at least equally important as the scholarly discussions it will trigger." Anthropological Notebooks "An important book that will transform the way we think about both work and intimacy. Rich, moving, and scholarly, Work's Intimacy looks set to become a new classic in the fields of cultural studies, gender studies and the sociology of labour." Rosalind Gill, King's College London "Gregg's remarkable analysis of the dispersed workplace could not be more relevant. It is a precious gift to scholars of modern work, and it will also be invaluable to anyone struggling to meet too many deadlines and balance too many obligations in pursuit of a livelihood today." Andrew Ross, author of Nice Work If You Can Get It "Based on a rich body of empirical research, Work's Intimacy provides us with a troubling, insightful and timely analysis of the partnership between online technologies and the changing mythologies of work - and its impact on our everyday lives. Melissa Gregg has written an important book, carefully unpicking so much of what we have come to take for granted in our experience of the ever-expanding boundaries of the working life." Graeme Turner, The University of QueenslandTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroductionWork's intimacy: Performing professionalism online and on the job PART ONETHE CONNECTIVITY IMPERATIVE: BUSINESS RESPONSES TO NEW MEDIA1. Selling the flexible workplace: The creative economy and new media fetishism2. Working from home: The mobile office and the seduction of convenience3. Part-time precarity: Discount labour and contract careers PART TWOGETTING INTIMATE: ONLINE CULTURE AND THE RISE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING4. To CC: or not to CC: Teamwork in office culture5. Facebook friends: Security blankets and career mobility6. Know your product: Online branding and the evacuation of friendship PART THREELOOKING FOR LOVE IN THE NETWORKED HOUSEHOLD7. Home offices and remote parents: Family dynamics in online households8. Long hours, high bandwidth: Domesticity at a distance9. On call ConclusionLabour politics in an online workplace: The lovers vs. the loveless

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