Search results for """ "Man A Machine""

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Book SynopsisA translation of the complete texts of La Mettrie's pioneering "L'Homme machine" and "L'Homme plante", first published in 1747 and 1748, respectively. It also includes translations of the advertisement and dedication to "L'Homme machine".

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Book SynopsisThe first modern translation of the complete texts of La Mettrie''s pioneering L''Homme machine and L''Homme plante, first published in 1747 and 1748, respectively, this volume also includes translations of the advertisement and dedication to L''Homme machine. Justin Leiber''s introduction illuminates the radical thinking and advocacy of the passionate La Mettrie and provides cogent analysis of La Mettrie''s relationship to such important philosophical figures as Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, and of his lasting influence on the development of materialism, cognitive studies, linguistics, and other areas of intellectual inquiry.

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Book SynopsisExplores the ideas of Turing, Lucas, Scriven, Putnam, and Searle, and presents the complex Godel-Church-Lucas argument. This title contains a section dealing with the problem of qualitative features of experience, such as color properties.

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Book SynopsisExplores the ideas of Turing, Lucas, Scriven, Putnam, and Searle, and presents the complex Godel-Church-Lucas argument. This title contains a section dealing with the problem of qualitative features of experience, such as color properties.

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Book SynopsisNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Bold futurist Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, offers a framework for envisioning the future of machine intelligence—“a book for anyone who wonders where human technology is going next” (The New York Times Book Review). “Kurzweil offers a thought-provoking analysis of human and artificial intelligence and a unique look at a future in which the capabilities of the computer and the species that invented it grow ever closer.”—BILL GATES Imagine a world where the difference between man and machine blurs, where the line between humanity and technology fades, and where the soul and the silicon chip unite. This is not science fiction. This is the twenty-first century according to Ray Kurzweil, the “restless genius” (The Wall Street Journal), “ultimate thinking machine” (Forbes), and inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era. In his inspired hands, life in the new millennium no longer seems daunting. Instead, it promises to be an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live. More than just a list of predictions, Kurzweil’s prophetic blueprint for the future guides us through the inexorable advances that will result in:• Computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain (with human-level capabilities not far behind)• Relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers• Information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways Eventually, the distinction between humans and computers will have become sufficiently blurred that when the machines claim to be conscious, we will believe them.

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Book SynopsisOver the past five centuries, advances in Western understanding of and control over the material world have strongly influenced European responses to non-Western peoples and cultures. In Machines as the Measure of Men, Michael Adas explores the ways in which European perceptions of their scientific and technological superiority shaped their...Trade ReviewProvocative and fascinating.... Adas's deft use of quotation gives the missionaries, travelers, explorers, administrators, and teachers their authentic voices. He provides a wealth of documentation. One learns things worth knowing on every page.... One leaves Machines as the Measure of Men persuaded by its essential analysis: that mastery of nature lay at the heart of Europe's comparison of itself to others. As an intellectual history of French and British assessments of Africa, China, and India, the book is wonderfully informative and nuanced. It will alter the debate about the history of Europe's relationship to the rest of the world. * New York Times Book Review *The terrain of Adas's magnificent book is vast. He starts with the first encounters of intrepid European explorers in the seventeenth century and ends with the seeds of doubt which the Great War in Europe sowed in the western civilizing process.... A vast range of sources are cited. Alternatives to the predominant ideology of western scientific and technological progress are explored, and the potential for diffusion of science and technology into different third world societies is also illuminated. * Times Higher Education Supplement *Remarkable' is an adjective that is most appropriate for this study. Broad in interpretation, rich in detail, and supported by a wealth of information, Michael Adas's work will command the attention of every scholar of modern imperialism, every student of the broad subject of 'technology.'... Adas offers an example of popular history at its very best, which is cultural history exquisitely constructed of detailed research, a well-designed overarching theme, and nicely polished prose.... It will long be pivotal in all discussions that revolve around the technology and culture of modern European expansion. In sum, this is a most compelling, splendid book. * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsPreface to the 2014 EditionIntroductionPart I. Before the Industrial RevolutionChapter 1. First Encounters: Impressions of Material Culture in an Age of ExplorationTechnology—Perceptions of Backwardness: Qualified Praise"Natural Philosophy"—Illiteracy and Faulty CalendarsScientific and Technological Convergence and the First Hierarchies of HumankindChapter 2. The Ascendancy of Science: Shifting Views of Non-Western Peoples in the Era of the EnlightenmentModel of Clay: The Rise and Decline of Sinophilism in Enlightenment ThoughtAncient Glories, Modern Ruins: The Orientalist Discover of Indian LearningAfrican Achievement and the Debate over the Abolition of the Slave TradeScientific Gauges and the Spirit of the TimesPart II. The Age of IndustrializationChapter 3. Global Hegemony and the Rise of Technology as the Main Measure of Human AchievementAfrica: Primitive Tools and the Savage MindIndia: The Retreat of Orienta1ismChina: Despotism and DeclineMateria1 Mastery as a Prerequisite of Civilized LifeChapter 4. Attributes of the Dominant: Scientific and Technological Foundations of the Civilizing MissionPerceptions of Man and Nature as Gauges of Western Uniqueness and SuperiorityThe Machine as CivilizerDisplacement and Revolution: Marx on the Impact of Machines in AsiaTime, Work, and DisciplineSpace, Accuracy, and UniformityWorlds Apart: The Case of Ye Ming-chenChapter 5. The Limits of Diffusion: Science and Technology in the Debate over the African and Asian Capacity for AcculturationThe First Generations of ImproversThe Search for Scientific and Technological Proofs of Racial InequalityQualifying the Civilizing Mission: Racists versus Improvers at the Tum of the CenturyMissing the Main Point: Science and Technology in Nineteenth-Century Racist ThoughtPart III. The Twentieth CenturyChapter 6. The Great War and the Assault on Scientific and Technological Measures of Human WorthThe Specter of Asia IndustrializedTrench Warfare and the Crisis of Western CivilizationChallenges to the Civilizing Mission and the Search for Alternative Measures of Human WorthEpilogue: Modernization Theory and the Revival of the Technological StandardIndex

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Book SynopsisIt is a commonplace wisdom that from the authoritarian roots of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 grew the gulags and the police state of the Stalinist epoch. The Dictator, the Revolution, The Machine overturns that perspective once and for all by showing how October was inspired by a profound mass movement comprised of urban workers and rural poor -- a movement that went on to forge a state capable of channelling its political will in and through the most overwhelming form of grass-roots democracy history has ever known. It was a single, precarious experiment whose life was tragically brief. In a context of civil war and foreign invasion the fledgling democracy was eradicated and the Bolshevik party was denuded of its social basis -- the working classes. While the party survived, its centrist elements came to the fore as the power of the bureaucracy asserted itself. From the ashes of human freedom there arose a zombified, sclerotic administration in which state functionaries took precedence over elected representatives. One man came to embody the inverted logic of this bureaucratic machine, its remorseless brutality and its parasitic drive for power. Joseph Stalin was its highest expression, accruing to himself state powers as he made his murderous, heady rise to dictator. This book examines his historical profile, its roots in Georgian medievalism, and shows why Stalin was destined to play the role he did. In broader strokes Tony McKenna raises the conflict between the revolutionary movement and the bureaucracy to the level of a literary tragedy played out on the stage of world history, showing how Stalinism's victory would pave the way for the Midnight of the Century.

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Book SynopsisTogether in one indispensable volume, The Time Machine and The Invisible Man are masterpieces of irony and imaginative vision from H. G. Wells, the father of science fiction.The Time Machine conveys the Time Traveller into the distant future and an extraordinary world. There, stranded on a slowly dying Earth, he discovers two bizarre races: the effete Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks—a haunting portrayal of Darwin’s evolutionary theory carried to a terrible conclusion.The Invisible Man is the fascinating tale of a brash young scientist who, experimenting on himself, becomes invisible and then criminally insane, trapped in the terror of his own creation.Convincing and unforgettably real, these two classics are consummate representations of the stories that defined science fiction—and inspired generations of readers and writers.With an Introduction by John Calvin Batchelorand an Afterword by Paul Youngqui

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Book SynopsisGathered together in one hardcover volume: three timeless novels from the founding father of science fiction.The first great novel to imagine time travel, The Time Machine (1895) follows its scientist narrator on an incredible journey that takes him finally to Earth’s last moments—and perhaps his own. The scientist who discovers how to transform himself in The Invisible Man (1897) will also discover, too late, that he has become unmoored from society and from his own sanity. The War of the Worlds (1898)—the seminal masterpiece of alien invasion adapted by Orson Welles for his notorious 1938 radio drama, and subsequently by several filmmakers—imagines a fierce race of Martians who devastate Earth and feed on their human victims while their voracious vegetation, the red weed, spreads over the ruined planet.Here are three classic science fiction novels that, more than a century after their original publication, show no sign of l

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Book SynopsisFrank Machianno is the guy, a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. That''s when he''s not juggling any of his other three part-time jobs or trying to get a quick set in on his long board. He''s a beloved fixture of the community, a stand-up businessman, a devoted father to his daughter. Frank''s also a hit man. Well, a retired hit man. Back in the day, when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast mob, he was known as Frankie Machine. Years ago, Frank consigned his mob ties to the past, which is where he wants them to stay. But a favour called in by the local boss is one Frank simply can''t refuse, and before he knows it he''s sucked back into the treacherous currents of his former life. Someone from his past wants him dead, and he has to figure out who, and why, and he has to do it fast. The problem is that the list of candidates is about the size of his local phone book and Frank''s rapidly running out of time...Trade ReviewPraise for The Power of the Dog:No one since James Ellroy has conveyed the morally troubled heart of the American dream with such savage aim... A future classic. * The Guardian *Don Winslow is the kind of cult writer who is so good you almost want to keep him to yourself -- Ian RankinThe first great dope novel since Dog Soldiers thirty years ago. It's frightening and sad, with a superbly sustained intensity. A beautifully compressed vision of hell, with all its attendant moral madness -- James EllroyA damn good read. If you've never read Don Winslow, start now -- Val McDermidIt is impossible in a few words to do [it] justice... It's a huge book, both in size and scope * Sunday Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisIn The Time Machine an inventor travels to the remote future where he finds both love and terror. The protagonist of The Invisible Man struggles to come to terms with his condition in a narrative which is by turns comic and tragic. The War of the Worlds imagines planetary conflict from an individual point of view. If these themes reveal the originality of Wells as a thinker, each story displays his skill as a novelist by the ways in which he anchors astonishing events in vivid everyday details of character and place.All three have spawned countless adaptations and imitations but Wells remains the greatest poet of science we have, an inexhaustible source for speculation about the nature of the future and the meaning of the present.

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Book Synopsis''Proper galaxy-spanning space opera'' Iain M. Banks on Seeds of EarthThe Warcage is a feat of unprecedented stellar engineering: two hundred worlds harnessed to an artificial sun. Built to travel through space as a monument to peace between alien species, its voracious rulers have turned it into a nightmarish wasteland, capturing new planets for slaves and resources, then discarding the old.Now, when a verdant agri-world is pulled out of its orbit and a deal goes bad, it is up to the captain of a smuggling ship to journey into the Warcage and rescue his crew.Science fiction on an epic scale - Ancestral Machines is a stand-alone science fiction adventure set in Michael Cobley''s bestselling Humanity''s Fire universe. Perfect for fans of Iain M. Banks or James S. A. Corey''s Expanse series.For more epic space opera action from Michael Cobley, check out:Trade ReviewProper galaxy-spanning space opera - Iain M. Banks on SEEDS OF EARTHA convincing portrayal of political machinations and the plight of individuals caught up in events beyond their comprehension - GUARDIAN on SEEDS OF EARTHA very entertaining read . . . the series as a whole possesses tremendous potential - FANTASY BOOK CRITIC on SEEDS OF EARTHThe sort of thing that space opera readers love. We've got spaceships and a broad history, shown through the viewpoints of multi-person perspectives, linked together in a way that Heinlein would've been proud of - SFFWORLD on SEEDS OF EARTH

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2018 Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2017 A stunning new non-fiction voice tackles an urgent question... what next for mankind? 'Troubling and humorous, this is one of my current give-it-to-everyone books - I buy six copies at a time' Jeanette Winterson

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Book SynopsisIt is almost universally agreed that consciousness and possession of a conscience are essential characteristics of human intelligence. While some believe it to be impossible to create artificial beings possessing these traits, and conclude that ultimate major goal of Artificial Intelligence is hopeless, this book demonstrates that not only is it possible to create entities with capabilities in both areas, but that they demonstrate them in ways different from our own, thereby showing a new kind of consciousness. This latter characteristic affords such entities performance beyond the reach of humans, not for lack of intelligence, but because human intelligence depends on networks of neurons which impose processing restrictions which do not apply to computers. At the beginning of the investigation of the creation of an artificial being, the main goal was not to study the possibility of whether a conscious machine would possess a conscience. However, experimental data indicate that many characteristics implemented to improve efficiency in such systems are linked to these capacities. This implies that when they are present it is because they are essential to the desired performance improvement. Moreover, since the goal is not to imitate human behavior, some of these structural characteristics are different from those displayed by the neurons of the human brain - suggesting that we are at the threshold of a new scientific field, artificial cognition, which formalizes methods for giving cognitive capabilities to artificial entities through the full use of the computational power of machines.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ix Note on the Terminology xi Chapter 1. Presenting the Actors 1 1.1. The book 1 1.2. Human and artificial beings 4 1.3. The computer 7 1.4. The author 9 1.5. CAIA, an artificial AI scientist 11 1.6. The research domains of CAIA 15 1.7. Further reading 19 Chapter 2. Consciousness and Conscience 21 2.1. Several meanings of “consciousness” 22 2.2. Extending the meaning of “conscience” for artificial beings 25 2.3. Why is it useful to build conscious artificial beings with a conscience? 29 2.4. Towards an artificial cognition 31 2.4.1. A new kind of consciousness 32 2.4.2. A new kind of conscience 33 Chapter 3. What Does “Itself” Mean for an Artificial Being? 35 3.1. Various versions of an individual 36 3.1.1. The concept of an individual for human beings 36 3.1.2. The boundaries of an artificial being 39 3.1.3. Passive and active versions of an individual 41 3.1.4. Reflexivity 47 3.2. Variants of an individual 49 3.2.1. An individual changes with time 50 3.2.2. Learning by comparing two variants 50 3.2.3. Genetic algorithms 52 3.2.4. The bootstrap 54 3.3. Cloning artificial beings 57 3.3.1. Cloning an artificial being is easy 57 3.3.2. Cloning artificial beings is useful 58 3.4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 61 3.5. The Society of Mind 63 3.6. More on the subject 65 Chapter 4. Some Aspects of Consciousness 67 4.1. Six aspects of consciousness 68 4.1.1. One is in an active state 68 4.1.2. One knows what one is doing 72 4.1.3. One examines his/its internal state 80 4.1.4. One knows what one knows 84 4.1.5. One has a model of oneself 87 4.1.6. One knows that one is different from the other individuals 90 4.2. Some limits of consciousness 92 4.2.1. Some limits of consciousness for man 93 4.2.2. Some limits of consciousness for artificial beings 100 Chapter 5. Why is Auto-observation Useful? 105 5.1. Auto-observation while carrying out a task 105 5.1.1. To guide toward the solution 106 5.1.2. To avoid dangerous situations 111 5.1.3. To detect mistakes 121 5.1.4. To find where one has been clumsy 125 5.1.5. To generate a trace 126 5.2. Auto-observation after the completion of a task 129 5.2.1. Creation of an explanation 130 5.2.2. Using an explanation 133 5.2.3. Finding anomalies 138 Chapter 6. How to Observe Oneself 143 6.1. Interpreting 146 6.2. Adding supplementary orders 150 6.3. Using timed interruptions 154 6.4. Using the interruptions made by the operating system 158 6.5. Knowing its own state 159 6.6. Examining its own knowledge 160 6.7. The agents of the Society of Mind. 165 6.8. The attention 166 6.9. What is “I” 169 Chapter 7. The Conscience 173 7.1. The conscience of human beings 174 7.2. The conscience of an artificial being 179 7.3. Laws for artificial beings 183 7.3.1. Asimov’s laws of robotics 183 7.3.1. How can moral laws be implemented? 184 7.3.3. The present situation 191 Chapter 8. Implementing a Conscience 195 8.1. Why is a conscience helpful? 197 8.1.1. The conscience helps to solve problems 197 8.1.2. The conscience helps to manage its life 198 8.1.3. Two ways to define moral knowledge 199 8.1.4. Who benefits from the conscience of an artificial being? 200 8.2. The conscience of CAIA. 201 8.3. Implicit principles 202 8.4. Explicit principles 206 8.5. The consciences in a society of individuals 215 8.5.1. The Society of Mind. 216 8.5.2. Genetic algorithms 217 Chapter 9. Around the Conscience 219 9.1. Emotions 220 9.2. Changing its conscience 223 9.3. A new human conscience for our relationships with artificial beings 228 Chapter 10. What is the Future for CAIA? 237 Appendices 239 1. Constraint Satisfaction Problems 239 2. How to implement some aspects of consciousness 253 Bibliography 263 Index 269

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Book SynopsisThis book supports and deepens the existing interfaces between art, science, and technology - transgressing traditional principles and styles of research, and selectively overcoming the side-by-side coexistence in favour of an integrated "laboratory of the future". Instead of relying on traditional dualisms like nature-culture, subject-object, as well as man and machine, heterogeneous networks with humans and non-humans (Latour) are opened in shared contexts of agency. New momentary propositions are developed, meeting the complexity of discovering, exploring, and inventing - things: things which do not exist just as given beings. The artists and theoreticians can pursue using the tools and techniques of science actively - not only to comment them but also to fathom their possibilities, and employ them in their artistic and scientific projects. Machines as Agency is an artistic perspective.

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Book SynopsisIn the fortieth century, technology has become limited to biplanes and wind trains, but an ancient, forgotten device threatens the world with a new ice age unless the one man who knows how to stop it can be found.

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Book SynopsisExamines the role that machines play in the struggle between “spiritual man” and “mechanical man” throughout the ages• Explores how we naturally project consciousness onto machines and how this is reflected in human culture, science, artificial intelligence, and literature • Demonstrates a direct connection between consciousness and the history of machines in American history • Looks at the contributions and influence of Grace Hopper, Richard Feynman, Philip K. Dick, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk, David Bohm, Norbert Wiener, and Steve Jobs as well as the Nag Hammadi Gnostic gospels Humans invented and constructed machines to aid them as far back as the Stone Age. As the machines became more complex, they became extensions of the body and mind, and we naturally began projecting consciousness onto them. As Luke Lafitte shows in detail, although machines complicate the already complicated issue of identity, because they are “ours” and “of us,” they are part of our spiritual development. In this sweeping exploration of the history of the machine as a tool, as a transpersonal object to assist human activity, and as a transitional artifact between spirits and the humans who interact with them, Lafitte examines the role that machines play in the struggle between “spiritual man” and “mechanical-man” throughout history. He interprets the messages, archetypes, and language of the unconscious in the first popular stories related to mechanical-men, and he demonstrates a direct connection between consciousness and the history of machines in American history, specifically between the inventors of these machines and the awakening of our imaginations and our powers of manifestation. He examines the influence of Philip K. Dick, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Grace Hopper, Richard Feynman, Elon Musk, David Bohm, and others and shows how the Nag Hammadi gospels explain how we can take back our myth and spirit from the machine. Although the term mechanical-man is a catch-all phrase, Lafitte shows that the term is also a meeting ground where extra-dimensional communications between different forms of matter occur. Every machine, android, robot, and cyborg arose from consciousness, and these mechanical-men, whether real or fictive, offer us an opportunity to free ourselves from enslavement to materialism and awaken our imaginations to create our own realities.Trade Review"The ambition of Lafitte’s Machine Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm is massive, provocative, and essential. It is a book that traces the emergence of the American character and mythos reflected in the form of the ever-evolving mechanical man. From the steam engine and the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz to the Darth Vader and the Matrix, the book is a whirlwind blending of scholarship and pop culture portraying a vortex of ideas, influences, and expressions that portend an epochal shift in how we live, perceive reality, spirituality, and self. We are immersed in a wide array of challenges, complexity, and opportunities, and Lafitte is our navigator." * Thomas Riccio, former Creative Director at Hanson Robotics and Professor at University of Texas at D *“Machine Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm is a tour de force of mythological thinking on a reimagined hero’s journey. A brilliant insight into the potential of humanity and new mythic directions toward the ever-changing frontiers of discovery, innovation, and actualization.” * Judd H. Burton, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Biblical Anthropology *Table of ContentsFOREWORD What Science and Invention Might Yet Become JEFFREY J. KRIPAL Prologue INTRODUCTIONThe Call to Remember 1 Origins of the Mechanical-Man 2 Accepting the Challenge--The Departure 3 The Sorcerer and the Wizard 4 Knowing Thyself--The Initiation 5 The Great Mother6 The Prophet 7 The Final Odyssey--The Return8 The Trickster 9 The Cave 10 The Fourth Dimension Is Calling Us 11 The Savior CONCLUSION The First and Final Boon: Human Imagination Notes BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe Repair Shop''s Dominic Chinea takes you on an exploration of 100 essential machines found in the workshops and studios of the world''s finest artisans and heritage craftspeople. Filled with stunning illustrations and lively, engaging text, The Repair Shop''s Dom Chinea guides readers through this celebration of the history and uses of 100 machines that have allowed artisans to create beautiful items for centuries.Fans of prime-time TV series The Repair Shop and Make It at Market will not want to miss Dom's insightful and complete appraisal of history's most game-changing mechanisms, with commentary that allows readers to get under the hood of inventions that have defined modern life as we know it.Immerse yourself in the visual history of the world's most remarkable machines: The sequel to 2022's Tools: A Visual History. Explores inventions from the potter''s wheel and grain mill to the sewing machine, printing press, wheel maker and plenty more. Each machine is creatively profiled and deconstructed in pinpoint detail, with Dom Chinea's trademark insight and commentary. Striking illustrations by award-winning artist Lee John Philips highlight the beauty of each tool. A beautiful gift book with a vintage design. Each machine has a fascinating history and story to tell that highlights its contribution to artisanal crafts. And with every machine accompanied by beautifully ornate illustrations by Lee John Philips, Machines: A Visual History is certain to be a treasured volume for all creators, craftspeople and those who like to delve into how things work.

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Book SynopsisAfter he dies in a traffic accident, a middle-aged man is reborn as what he admired most in life: a vending machine! However, his new lease on life happens in the worst place possible--a monster-infested dungeon!geon!

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisA vivid and unforgettable novelistic portrait of rural Italy, exploring the nature of reality and the human condition. A small-time farmer living in central Italy in the 1960s is the keeper of a great truth: that people are machines built by other beings who are machines themselves. Our true destiny is to build ever better machines so that society can become a techno-utopia in which friendship can be established among all people on earth. These ideas bring him into conflict with everyone, especially his wife, against whom he is accused of ill-treatment. His quest takes him to Rome, where he presents his truth, hoping it will bring him worldwide recognition. Behind his poetical reveries and unfathomable scientific notions lies the disturbing fragility of a lone, paranoid, and deluded man in conflict with everyone, including himself. Paolo Volponi's unique novel The World Machine examines the relationship between rural life and the modern city, as well as the subversive idealism

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Book SynopsisFrom the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, the first insider exposé of the dangers of America's hidden, seventy-year-long nuclear policy.When former presidential advisor Daniel Ellsberg famously took the Pentagon Papers, he also took with him a cache of top-secret documents related to the United States'' nuclear program in the 1960s. Here, for the first time, he reveals the contents of those now-declassified documents and makes clear their shocking relevance for today.The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's account of the most dangerous arms build-up in the history of civilisation, the legacy of which threatens the very survival of humanity.Trade ReviewDaniel Ellsberg is an exceptionally informed doomster … The Doomsday Machine describes how nuclear-war planning, some of it unknown to presidents, brought the world closer to incineration than most people understand -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times *This long-awaited chronicle from the father of American whistle-blowing is both an urgent warning and a call to arms to a public that has grown dangerously habituated to the idea that the means of our extinction will forever be on hair-trigger alert -- Edward SnowdenNobody could have told this horrifying story better than Daniel Ellsberg. He introduces us to the men who have coldly and with a God-like sense of righteous entitlement, put in place a plan that can, on a whim - not virtually, but literally - annihilate life on Earth. What a book -- Arundhati Roy, anti-nuclear activist and author of THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS and the Pulitzer Prize-winner THE GOD OF SMALL THINGSThe Doomsday Machine is not simply a work of history. It was not written to remind us of catastrophes narrowly averted. It is partly a memoir of Ellsberg’s years at Rand when he was working on nuclear strategy, but more a warning, delivered by an 86-year-old man who understands the urgency of the present. His memories provide a timely lesson precisely because the crisis he witnessed more than 50 years ago remains painfully relevant -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *Ellsberg’s effort to make vivid the genuine madness of the “doomsday machine”, and the foolishness of betting our survival on mutually assured destruction, is both commendable and important … Especially for young readers, by making earlier generations’ failures clear, The Doomsday Machine challenges them to rise to a grand and urgent opportunity -- Graham Allison * International New York Times *Gripping and unnerving ... A must-read of the highest order, Ellsberg's profoundly awakening chronicle is essential to our future -- Donna Seaman * Booklist (starred review) *Ellsberg’s brilliant and unnerving account makes a convincing case for disarmament and shows that the mere existence of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to humanity * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *Noted gadfly Ellsberg returns with a sobering look at our nuclear capabilities . . . When the author hurriedly copied the contents of his RAND Corporation safe to reveal, in time, what would become known as the Pentagon Papers, that was just the start of it. He had other documents, even more jarring . . . Especially timely given the recent saber-rattling not from Russia but North Korea and given the apparent proliferation of nuclear abilities among other small powers. * Kirkus Reviews *An absolutely imperative read in this day and age of Trump, Putin, Kim Jong Un, and global instability. -- Helen Caldicott, Founding President, Physicians for Social ResponsibilityA fascinating and terrifying account of nuclear war planning by a consultant from the RAND Corporation at the highest levels of government in the Kennedy administration. Ellsberg tells us of the close calls with nuclear war and of the policies developed then that still threaten the planet with annihilation. I couldn't put the book down. -- Frances FitzGerald, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of FIRE IN THE LAKEA powerful testament for future students of a war that the United States should never have fought. * The Washington Post on SECRETS *An invaluable contribution to understanding one of our nation's darkest hours. * San Francisco Chronicle on SECRETS *Daniel Ellsberg risked everything to help end the Vietnam War . . . A real-life political thriller. * USA Today on SECRETS *

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Book SynopsisUnmanning studies the conditions that create unmanned platforms in the United States through a genealogy of experimental, pilotless planes flown between 1936 and 1992. Characteristics often attributed to the drone—including machine-like control, enmity and remoteness—are achieved by displacements between humans and machines that shape a mediated theater of war. Rather than primarily treating the drone as a result of the war on terror, this book examines contemporary targeted killing through a series of failed experiments to develop unmanned flight in the twentieth century. The human, machine and media parts of drone aircraft are organized to make an ostensibly not human framework for war that disavows its political underpinnings as technological advance. These experiments are tied to histories of global control, cybernetics, racism and colonialism. Drone crashes and failures call attention to the significance of human action in making technopolitics that comes to be opposed to “man” and the paradoxes at their basis. Trade Review"This book makes a much-needed intervention into the popular discourses that surround drone warfare today. Drawing on extensive archival research, Unmanning offers detailed histories that deconstruct the most persistent mythologies of air war in general and automated and distance weaponry in particular to offer completely new perspectives on one of the most significant technological trends in contemporary warfare." -- Caren Kaplan * author of Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above *"In Unmanning, Katherine Chandler offers a compelling history of the drone that complicates and deepens our understanding of what is at stake in the performative rhetoric that fuels the automation of US military air power. This book is an invaluable resource for everyone concerned with the erasures of human agencies that enable claims for technical autonomy in contemporary warfighting." -- Lucy Suchman * author of Human-Machine Reconfigurations *"Drone theory tends to replicate the god’s eye view enjoyed by its object. Katherine Fehr Chandler bucks this trend, grounding her new theory of 'unmanned' aerial vehicles in their wayward and failure-ridden history as human–machine–media assemblages. The effacement of that history, Chandler argues, is what allowed drones to assume their current role: as sleek, agential means for disavowing both the responsibility of their wielders and the humanity of their targets. Unmanning is a timely and fascinating book." -- Paul K. Saint-Amour * author of Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form *"As the iconographic technologies of drone warfare become history and more secretive, varied, and autonomous technologies take their place, critically examining the long history of failure that led to the unmanning of war is an urgent task that Chandler’s book meets head-on and with an accuracy and efficacy that her objects of analysis fell far short of achieving." * Cultural Studies *"While focused primarily on drone warfare, Chandler’s book – in its investigations into failure, human/machine relations, and threat production – points perhaps also to ways of thinking about how politics is denied and disavowed in other techniques of state violence like policing." * Security and Dialogue *"Unmanning makes a useful contribution by dispelling the illusion of unmanned warfare. Central to this illusion are the 'politics of disavowal.' The very term 'unmanned' is a disavowal, or an attempted negation, that separates the human, machine, and media components of drone technology. Moreover, it disconnects machine action from political accountability to create a veneer of deniability and non-attribution." * Technology and Culture *"[I]f there is a lesson to be learnt from Chandler’s brilliant book it is that the arc of the drone bends not toward justice, but failure, and contemporary experiments in drone warfare that fail do not so much crash, go haywire, or plummet into the sea. Instead, they maim, kill, and destroy, and disavow these acts as techno-mechanical progress." * Antipode Online *"Chandler’s book both invites the wider geographical deployment of this approach and reminds us that while contemporary drone development and discourse so often appear future-orientated, much can be learned from the platform’s plural histories." * Law, Culture and the Humanities *"This book makes a much-needed intervention into the popular discourses that surround drone warfare today. Drawing on extensive archival research, Unmanning offers detailed histories that deconstruct the most persistent mythologies of air war in general and automated and distance weaponry in particular to offer completely new perspectives on one of the most significant technological trends in contemporary warfare." -- Caren Kaplan * author of Aerial Aftermaths: Wartime from Above *"In Unmanning, Katherine Chandler offers a compelling history of the drone that complicates and deepens our understanding of what is at stake in the performative rhetoric that fuels the automation of US military air power. This book is an invaluable resource for everyone concerned with the erasures of human agencies that enable claims for technical autonomy in contemporary warfighting." -- Lucy Suchman * author of Human-Machine Reconfigurations *"Drone theory tends to replicate the god’s eye view enjoyed by its object. Katherine Fehr Chandler bucks this trend, grounding her new theory of 'unmanned' aerial vehicles in their wayward and failure-ridden history as human–machine–media assemblages. The effacement of that history, Chandler argues, is what allowed drones to assume their current role: as sleek, agential means for disavowing both the responsibility of their wielders and the humanity of their targets. Unmanning is a timely and fascinating book." -- Paul K. Saint-Amour * author of Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form *"As the iconographic technologies of drone warfare become history and more secretive, varied, and autonomous technologies take their place, critically examining the long history of failure that led to the unmanning of war is an urgent task that Chandler’s book meets head-on and with an accuracy and efficacy that her objects of analysis fell far short of achieving." * Cultural Studies *"While focused primarily on drone warfare, Chandler’s book – in its investigations into failure, human/machine relations, and threat production – points perhaps also to ways of thinking about how politics is denied and disavowed in other techniques of state violence like policing." * Security and Dialogue *"Unmanning makes a useful contribution by dispelling the illusion of unmanned warfare. Central to this illusion are the 'politics of disavowal.' The very term 'unmanned' is a disavowal, or an attempted negation, that separates the human, machine, and media components of drone technology. Moreover, it disconnects machine action from political accountability to create a veneer of deniability and non-attribution." * Technology and Culture *"[I]f there is a lesson to be learnt from Chandler’s brilliant book it is that the arc of the drone bends not toward justice, but failure, and contemporary experiments in drone warfare that fail do not so much crash, go haywire, or plummet into the sea. Instead, they maim, kill, and destroy, and disavow these acts as techno-mechanical progress." * Antipode Online *"Chandler’s book both invites the wider geographical deployment of this approach and reminds us that while contemporary drone development and discourse so often appear future-orientated, much can be learned from the platform’s plural histories." * Law, Culture and the Humanities *Table of ContentsContents Introduction 1 DRONE 2 American Kamikaze 3 Unmanning 4 Buffalo Hunter 5 Pioneer Conclusion Nobody’s Perfect Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAs a classic of the French Enlightenment, L'Homme Machine has in the past been of equal interest to students of philosophy, science, and literature. The present edition offers the first established text, with extensive notes. In his introduction, Dr. Vartanian discusses La Mettrie's thesis, its sources, the place of the man-machine idea in the deveTable of Contents*Frontmatter, pg. i*CONTENTS, pg. v*I. Biographical Sketch of La Mettrie, pg. 1*II. Interpretation of l'Homme machine, pg. 13*III. The Development of La Mettrie's Thought, pg. 40*IV. The Historical Background of l'Homme machine, pg. 57*V. The Critical Reaction of La Mettrie's Contemporaries, pg. 95*VI. L'Homme machine since 1748, pg. 114*A Note on the Text, pg. 137*L'Homme machine, pg. 139*Notes, pg. 199*Bibliography, pg. 251*Index, pg. 259

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Book SynopsisContemporary life is so deeply reliant upon digital technology that the computer has come to dominate almost every aspect of our culture. What is the philosophical and spiritual significance of this dependence on electronic technology, both for our relationship to nature and for the future of humanity? And, what processes in human perception and awareness have produced the situation we find ourselves in? As Jeremy Naydler elucidates in this penetrating study, we cannot understand the emergence of the computer without seeing it within the wider context of the evolution of human consciousness, which has taken place over millennia. Modern consciousness, he shows, has evolved in conjunction with the development of machines and under their intensifying shadow. The computer was the product of a long historical development, culminating in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. It was during this period that the first mechanical calculators were invented and the project to create more complex `thinking machines’ began in earnest. But the seeds were sown many hundreds of years earlier, deep in antiquity. Naydler paints a vast panorama depicting human development and the emergence of electronic technology. His painstaking research illuminates an urgent question that concerns every living person today: What does it mean to be human and what, if anything, distinguishes us from machines?Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements PART ONE: THE ANCIENT WORLD – CHAPTER ONE Participative Consciousness in Deep Antiquity; CHAPTER TWO The Gods and Technological Consciousness in the Ancient Near East; CHAPTER THREE Poets, Visionaries and the Rise of the Clever Man; CHAPTER FOUR Harnessing Logic to the Pursuit of Wisdom; CHAPTER FIVE Technology in the Greco-Roman Age; CHAPTER SIX The Eclipse of the Mystery Knowledge of Electricity; PART TWO: THE MIDDLE AGES – CHAPTER SEVEN Grammar and Logic in the Middle Ages; CHAPTER EIGHT The Logic Machine and the Cam Logical Devices; CHAPTER NINE The Mechanical Clock and Human Consciousness; CHAPTER TEN The Quantification of the World The Denial of Ideas in Nature; CHAPTER ELEVEN The Renunciation of the Upper Border; Notes, Index

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Book Synopsis

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