Bücher veröffentlicht von MIT Press Ltd

In a novel written on the eve of World War I, H. G. Wells imagines a war “to end all wars” that begins in atomic apocalypse but ends in an enlightened utopia.Writing in 1913, on the eve of World War I’s mass slaughter and long before World War II’s mushroom cloud finale, H. G. Wells imagined a war that begins in atomic apocalypse but ends in a utopia of enlightened world government. Set in the 1950s, Wells’s neglected novel The World Set Free describes a conflict so horrific that it actually is the war that ends war.  Wells—the first to imagine a “uranium-based bomb”—offers a prescient description of atomic warfare that renders cities unlivable for years: “Whole blocks of buildings were alight and burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged flames looking pale and ghastly and attenuated in comparison with the full-bodied crimson glare beyond.” Drawing on discoveries by physicists and chemists of the time, Wells foresees both a world powered by clean, plentiful atomic energy—and the destructive force of the neutron chain reaction. With a cast of characters including Marcus Karenin, the moral center of the narrative; Firmin, a proto-Brexiteer; and Egbert, the visionary young British monarch, Wells dramatizes a world struggling for sanity. Wells’s supposedly happy ending—a planetary government presided over by European men—may not appeal to contemporary readers, but his anguish at the world’s self-destructive tendencies will strike a chord. Sarah Cole is the author of Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and The Twentieth Century (2019). The Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Dean of Humanities at Columbia University, she is the cofounder of the NYNJ Modernism Seminar and founder of the Humanities War and Peace Initiative at Columbia. She is also the author of Modernism, Male Friendship, and the First World War (2003) and At the Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland (2012). Joshua Glenn, who was the first to describe the years 1900–1935 as science fiction’s “Radium Age,” has helped popularize stories from the era for over a decade now. A former Boston Globe staffer and publisher of the indie intellectual journal Hermenaut, he is coauthor of The Idler’s Glossary (2008), Significant Objects (2012), and the family activities guide UNBORED (2012). He is also cofounder of the brand consultancy Semiovox; and he publishes the blogHiLobrow. 

"Eichhorn's EKS book will unpack the idea of content, whose emergence reflects a major shift in the way cultural products are produced and consumed, with far-reaching implications for society"--

Experts translate the latest findings on embodied cognition from neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science to inform teaching and learning pedagogy.Embodied cognition represents a radical shift in conceptualizing cognitive processes, in which cognition develops through mind-body environmental interaction. If this supposition is correct, then the conventional style of instruction—in which students sit at desks, passively receiving information—needs rethinking. Movement Matters considers the educational implications of an embodied account of cognition, describing the latest research applications from neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science and demonstrating their relevance for teaching and learning pedagogy. The contributors cover a range of content areas, explaining how the principles of embodied cognition can be applied in classroom settings. After a discussion of the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of embodied cognition, contributors describe its applications in language, including the areas of handwriting, vocabulary, language development, and reading comprehension; STEM areas, emphasizing finger counting and the importance of hand and body gestures in understanding physical forces; and digital learning technologies, including games and augmented reality. Finally, they explore embodied learning in the social-emotional realm, including how emotional granularity, empathy, and mindfulness benefit classroom learning. Movement Matters introduces a new model, translational learning sciences research, for interpreting and disseminating the latest empirical findings in the burgeoning field of embodied cognition. The book provides an up-to-date, inclusive, and essential resource for those involved in educational planning, design, and pedagogical approaches.  ContributorsDor Abrahamson, Martha W. Alibali, Petra A. Arndt, Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, Jo Boaler, Christiana Butera, Rachel S. Y. Chen,Charles P. Davis, Andrea Marquardt Donovan, Inge-Marie Eigsti, Virginia J. Flood, Jennifer M. B. Fugate, Arthur M. Glenberg, Ligia E. Gómez, Daniel D. Hutto, Karin H. James, Mina C. Johnson-Glenberg, Michael P. Kaschak, Markus Kiefer, Christina Krause, Sheila L. Macrine, Anne Mangen, Carmen Mayer, Amanda L. McGraw, Colleen Megowan-Romanowicz, Mitchell J. Nathan, Antti Pirhonen, Kelsey E. Schenck, Lawrence Shapiro, Anna Shvarts, Yue-Ting Siu,Sofia Tancredi, Chrystian Vieyra, Rebecca Vieyra, Candace Walkington, Christine Wilson-Mendenhall, Eiling Yee

"Argues that what makes AI socially relevant and useful is not intelligence at all but something even more human: communication. If machines are going to improve their ability to address ever more important human issues, it will not be because they have learned to think like people, but because we have learned to communicate with them"--

"Four Shades of Gray analyses the Kindle's impact from a technological, bibliographical and social perspective to ask why Amazon succeeded when many previous ebook manufacturers had failed"--

The first comprehensive treatment of active inference, an integrative perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior used across multiple disciplines. Active inference is a way of understanding sentient behavior—a theory that characterizes perception, planning, and action in terms of probabilistic inference. Developed by theoretical neuroscientist Karl Friston over years of groundbreaking research, active inference provides an integrated perspective on brain, cognition, and behavior that is increasingly used across multiple disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. Active inference puts the action into perception. This book offers the first comprehensive treatment of active inference, covering theory, applications, and cognitive domains.  Active inference is a “first principles” approach to understanding behavior and the brain, framed in terms of a single imperative to minimize free energy. The book emphasizes the implications of the free energy principle for understanding how the brain works. It first introduces active inference both conceptually and formally, contextualizing it within current theories of cognition. It then provides specific examples of computational models that use active inference to explain such cognitive phenomena as perception, attention, memory, and planning.

A primer on nuclear weapons, from the science of fission and fusion to the pursuit of mutually assured destruction, the SALT treaties, and the Bomb in pop culture.Although the world's attention has shifted to drone-controlled bombing and cyberwarfare, the threat of nuclear war still exists. There are now 14,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of the nine declared nuclear powers. Even though the world survived the Cold War, we need to understand what it means to live with nuclear weapons. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Mark Wolverton offers a primer on nuclear weapons, from the science of fission and fusion to the pursuit of mutually assured destruction, the SALT and START agreements, and the Bomb in pop culture. Wolverton explains the basic scientific facts, offers historical perspective, and provides a nuanced view of the the unique political, social, and moral dilemmas posed by nuclear weapons. He describes the birth of the Bomb in 1945 and its use against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; explains how a nuclear bomb works; recounts episodes when the world came close to waging nuclear war, including the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; discusses nuclear policy and nuclear treaties; and traces the influence of such films as On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove, and The Day After.

The power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity: lessons from a Black professional’s journey through corporate America.Design offers so much more than an aesthetically pleasing logo or banner, a beautification add-on after the heavy lifting. In Reimagining Design, Kevin Bethune shows how design provides a unique angle on problem-solving—how it can be leveraged strategically to cultivate innovation and anchor multidisciplinary teamwork. As he does so, he describes his journey as a Black professional through corporate America, revealing the power of transformative design, multidisciplinary leaps, and diversity. Bethune, who began as an engineer at Westinghouse, moved on to Nike (where he designed Air Jordans), and now works as a sought-after consultant on design and innovation, shows how design can transform both individual lives and organizations. In Bethune’s account, diversity, equity, and inclusion emerge as a recurring theme. He shows how, as we leverage design for innovation, we also need to consider the broader ecological implications of our decisions and acknowledge the threads of systemic injustice in order to realize positive change. His book is for anyone who has felt like the “other”—and also for allies who want to encourage anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-ageist behaviors in the workplace. Design transformation takes leadership—leaders who do not act as gatekeepers but, with agility and nimbleness, build teams that mirror the marketplace. Design in harmony with other disciplines can be incredibly powerful; multidisciplinary team collaboration is the foundation of future innovation. With insight and compassion, Bethune provides a framework for bringing this about.

"State-of-the-art collection on how neuroscience and philosophy can mutually illuminate each other on core psychological concepts. An interdisciplinary collection in the best sense"--

The trajectories of pollution in global capitalism, from the toxic waste of early tanneries to the poisonous effects of pesticides in the twentieth century.Through the centuries, the march of economic progress has been accompanied by the spread of industrial pollution. As our capacities for production and our aptitude for consumption have increased, so have their byproducts—chemical contamination from fertilizers and pesticides, diesel emissions, oil spills, a vast “plastic continent” found floating in the ocean. The Contamination of the Earth offers a social and political history of industrial pollution, mapping its trajectories over three centuries, from the toxic wastes of early tanneries to the fossil fuel energy regime of the twentieth century.The authors describe how, from 1750 onward, in contrast to the early modern period, polluted water and air came to be seen as inevitable side effects of industrialization, which was universally regarded as beneficial. By the nineteenth century, pollutants became constituent elements of modernity. The authors trace the evolution of these various pollutions, and describe the ways in which they were simultaneously denounced and permitted. The twentieth century saw new and massive scales of pollution: chemicals that resisted biodegradation, including napalm and other defoliants used as weapons of war; the ascendancy of oil; and a lifestyle defined by consumption. In the 1970s, pollution became a political issue, but efforts—local, national, and global—to regulate it often fell short. Viewing the history of pollution though a political lens, the authors also offer lessons for the future of the industrial world.

How Big Data and machine learning encode discrimination and create agitated clusters of comforting rage.In Discriminating Data, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun reveals how polarization is a goal-not an error-within Big Data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Correlation, which grounds Big Data's predictive potential, stems from twentieth-century eugenic attempts to "breed" a better future. Recommender systems foster angry clusters of sameness through homophily. Users are "trained" to become authentically predictable via a politics and technology of recognition. Machine learning and data analytics thus seek to disrupt the future by making disruption impossible. Chun, who has a background in systems design engineering as well as media studies and cultural theory, explains that although machine learning algorithms may not officially include race as a category, they embed whiteness as a default. Facial recognition technology, for example, relies on the faces of Hollywood celebrities and university undergraduates-groups not famous for their diversity. Homophily emerged as a concept to describe white U.S. resident attitudes to living in biracial yet segregated public housing. Predictive policing technology deploys models trained on studies of predominantly underserved neighborhoods. Trained on selected and often discriminatory or dirty data, these algorithms are only validated if they mirror this data. How can we release ourselves from the vice-like grip of discriminatory data? Chun calls for alternative algorithms, defaults, and interdisciplinary coalitions in order to desegregate networks and foster a more democratic Big Data.

The story of the arcane table-top game that became a pop culture phenomenon and the long-running legal battle waged by its cocreators.When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success--and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. As the game''s fiftieth anniversary approaches, Peterson--a noted authority on role-playing games--explains how D&D and its creators navigated their successes, setbacks, and controversies.Peterson describes Gygax and Arneson''s first meeting and their work toward the 1974 release of the game; the founding of TSR and its growth as a company; and Arneson''s acrimonious departure and subsequent challenges to TSR. He recounts the "Satanic Panic" accusations that D&D was sacrilegious and dangerous, and how they made the game famous. And he chronicles TSR''s reckless expansion and near-fatal corporate infighting, which culminated with the company in debt and overextended and the end of Gygax''s losing battle to retain control over TSR and D&D.With Game Wizards, Peterson restores historical particulars long obscured by competing narratives spun by the one-time partners. That record amply demonstrates how the turbulent experience of creating something as momentous as Dungeons & Dragons can make people remember things a bit differently from the way they actually happened.

There''s more to Banksy than the painting on the wall: the first in-depth investigation into the mysteries of the world''s most famous living artist.Banksy is the world''s most famous living artist, yet no one knows who he is. For more than twenty years, his wryly political and darkly humorous spray paintings have appeared mysteriously on urban walls around the globe, generating headlines and controversy. Art critics disdain him, but the public (and the art market) love him. With this generously illustrated book, artist and critic Carol Diehl is the first author to probe the depths of the Banksy mystery. Through her exploration of his paintings, installations, writings, and Academy Award-nominated film, Exit through the Gift Shop, Diehl proves unequivocally that there''s more to Banksy than the painting on the wall.Seeing Banksy as the ultimate provocateur, Diehl investigates the dramas that unfold after his works are discovered, with all of their social, economic, and political implications. She reveals how this trickster rattles the system, whether during his month-long 2013 self-styled New York "residency" or his notorious Dismaland of 2015, a full-scale dystopian "family theme park unsuitable for children" dedicated to the failure of capitalism. Banksy''s work, Diehl shows, is a synthesis of conceptual art, social commentary, and political protest, played out not in museums but where it can have the most effect--on the street, in the real world. The questions Banksy raises about the uses of public and private property, the role of the global corporatocracy, the never-ending wars, and the gap between artworks as luxury goods and as vehicles of social expression, have never been more relevant.

An accessible guide to cybersecurity for the everyday user, covering cryptography and public key infrastructure, malware, blockchain, and other topics.It seems that everything we touch is connected to the internet, from mobile phones and wearable technology to home appliances and cyber assistants. The more connected our computer systems, the more exposed they are to cyber attacks--attempts to steal data, corrupt software, disrupt operations, and even physically damage hardware and network infrastructures. In this volume of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, cybersecurity expert Duane Wilson offers an accessible guide to cybersecurity issues for everyday users, describing risks associated with internet use, modern methods of defense against cyber attacks, and general principles for safer internet use.Wilson describes the principles that underlie all cybersecurity defense: confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization, and non-repudiation (validating the source of information). He explains that confidentiality is accomplished by cryptography; examines the different layers of defense; analyzes cyber risks, threats, and vulnerabilities; and breaks down the cyber kill chain and the many forms of malware. He reviews some online applications of cybersecurity, including end-to-end security protection, secure ecommerce transactions, smart devices with built-in protections, and blockchain technology. Finally, Wilson considers the future of cybersecurity, discussing the continuing evolution of cyber defenses as well as research that may alter the overall threat landscape.

"This book helps us to better understand how learning in decision-making processes impacts policy change and the integration of climate change objectives into other policy areas in the European Union"--

An anthropological study based on ethnographic work in Israel and Qatar explores the relationship between science, particularly genetics, and national identity.Based on ethnographic work in Israel and Qatar, two small Middle Eastern ethnonations with significant biomedical resources, Genomic Citizenship explores the relationship between science and identity. Ian McGonigle, originally trained as a biochemist, draws on anthropological theory, STS, intellectual history, critical theory, Middle Eastern studies, cultural studies, and critical legal studies. He connects biomedical research on ethnic populations to the political, economic, legal, and historical context of the state; to global trends in genetic medicine; and to the politics of identity in the context of global biomedical research. Genomic Citizenship is more an anthropology of scientific objects than an anthropology of scientists or an ethnography of the laboratory. McGonigle bases his untraditional project on traditional anthropological methods, including participant observation. Some of the most persuasive data in the book are from public records, legal and historical sources, published scientific papers, institutional reports, websites, and brochures. McGonigle discusses biological understandings of Jewishness, especially in relation to the intellectual history of Zionism and Jewish political thought, and considers the possibility of a novel application of genetics in assigning Israeli citizenship. He also describes developments in genetic medicine in Qatar and analyzes the Qatari Biobank in the context of Qatari nationalism and state-building projects. Considering possible consequences of findings on the diverse origins of the Qatari population for tribal identities, he argues that the nation cannot be defined as either a purely natural or biological entity. Rather, it is reified, reinscribed, and refracted through genomic research and discourse.

"An updated version of Greengard's The Internet of Things (2015), which offers a more holistic look at the Internet of Things: tracing the origins of connected devices, examining the current state of research and development, offering examples and case studies of devices, and examining how the IoT will play out in the months and years ahead"--

A novel approach to STEAM learning that engages students from historically marginalized communities in culturally relevant and inclusive maker education.The growing maker movement in education has become an integral part of both STEM and STEAM learning, tapping into the natural DIY inclinations of creative people as well as the educational power of inventing or making things. And yet African American, Latino/a American, and Indigenous people are underrepresented in maker culture and education. In this book, Nettrice Gaskins proposes a novel approach to STEAM learning that engages students from historically marginalized communities in culturally relevant and inclusive maker education. Techno-vernacular creativity (TVC) connects technical literacy, equity, and culture, encompassing creative innovations produced by ethnic groups that are often overlooked.TVC uses three main modes of activity: reappropriation, remixing, and improvisation. Gaskins looks at each of the three modes in turn, guiding readers from research into practice. Drawing on real-world examples, she shows how TVC creates dynamic learning environments where underrepresented ethnic students feel that they belong. Students who remix computationally, for instance, have larger toolkits of computational skills with which to connect cultural practices to STEAM subjects; reappropriation offers a way to navigate cultural repertoires; improvisation is firmly rooted in cultural and creative practices. Finally, Gaskins explores an equity-oriented approach that makes a distinction between conventional or dominant pedagogical approaches and culturally relevant or responsive making methods and practices. She describes TVC habits of mind and suggests methods of instructions and projects.

"An original examination of the relevance of behavioral economics for the practice of medical ethics"--

"An updated introduction for generalists to this powerful technology, its applications and possible future directions"--

The pixel as the organizing principle of all pictures, from cave paintings to Toy Story.The Great Digital Convergence of all media types into one universal digital medium occurred, with little fanfare, at the recent turn of the millennium. The bit became the universal medium, and the pixel--a particular packaging of bits--conquered the world. Henceforward, nearly every picture in the world would be composed of pixels--cell phone pictures, app interfaces, Mars Rover transmissions, book illustrations, videogames. In A Biography of the Pixel, Pixar cofounder Alvy Ray Smith argues that the pixel is the organizing principle of most modern media, and he presents a few simple but profound ideas that unify the dazzling varieties of digital image making. Smith's story of the pixel's development begins with Fourier waves, proceeds through Turing machines, and ends with the first digital movies from Pixar, DreamWorks, and Blue Sky. Today, almost all the pictures we encounter are digital--mediated by the pixel and irretrievably separated from their media; museums and kindergartens are two of the last outposts of the analog. Smith explains, engagingly and accessibly, how pictures composed of invisible stuff become visible--that is, how digital pixels convert to analog display elements. Taking the special case of digital movies to represent all of Digital Light (his term for pictures constructed of pixels), and drawing on his decades of work in the field, Smith approaches his subject from multiple angles--art, technology, entertainment, business, and history. A Biography of the Pixel is essential reading for anyone who has watched a video on a cell phone, played a videogame, or seen a movie.

"An edited collection of prominent scholars in the field of language acquisition and development, focusing primarily on syntax and morphosyntax from formalist generative perspective"--

Examining the work of contemporary Black artists who are dismantling the white gaze and demanding that we see--and see Blackness in particular--anew.In A Black Gaze, Tina Campt examines Black contemporary artists who are shifting the very nature of our interactions with the visual through their creation and curation of a distinctively Black gaze. Their work--from Deana Lawson's disarmingly intimate portraits to Arthur Jafa's videos of the everyday beauty and grit of the Black experience, from Kahlil Joseph's films and Dawoud Bey's photographs to the embodied and multimedia artistic practice of Okwui Okpokwasili, Simone Leigh, and Luke Willis Thompson--requires viewers to do more than simply look; it solicits visceral responses to the visualization of Black precarity. Campt shows that this new way of seeing shifts viewers from the passive optics of looking at to the active struggle of looking with, through, and alongside the suffering--and joy--of Black life in the present. The artists whose work Campt explores challenge the fundamental disparity that defines the dominant viewing practice: the notion that Blackness is the elsewhere (or nowhere) of whiteness. These artists create images that flow, that resuscitate and revalue the historical and contemporary archive of Black life in radical ways. Writing with rigor and passion, Campt describes the creativity, ingenuity, cunning, and courage that is the modus operandi of a Black gaze.