"A playbook for bridging business and data science worlds to effectively execute machine learning projects in business"--
What happened before the primordial fire of the Big Bang: a theory about the ultimate origin of the universe.In the beginning was the Big Bang: an unimaginably hot fire almost fourteen billion years ago in which the first elements were forged. The physical theory of the hot nascent universe—the Big Bang—was one of the most consequential developments in twentieth-century science. And yet it leaves many questions unanswered: Why is the universe so big? Why is it so old? What is the origin of structure in the cosmos? In An Infinity of Worlds, physicist Will Kinney explains a more recent theory that may hold the answers to these questions and even explain the ultimate origins of the universe: cosmic inflation, before the primordial fire of the Big Bang.Kinney argues that cosmic inflation is a transformational idea in cosmology, changing our picture of the basic structure of the cosmos and raising unavoidable questions about what we mean by a scientific theory. He explains that inflation is a remarkable unification of inner space and outer space, in which the physics of the very large (the cosmos) meets the physics of the very small (elementary particles and fields), closing in a full circle at the first moment of time. With quantum uncertainty its fundamental feature, this new picture of cosmic origins introduces the possibility that the origin of the universe was of a quantum nature. Kinney considers the consequences of eternal cosmic inflation. Can we come to terms with the possibility that our entire observable universe is one of infinitely many, forever hidden from our view?
"Originally published as Carnets d'un moine errant. Copyright Allary âEditions, 2021."--Title page verso
"This book debunks 10 myths about how hard it really is to design privacy-friendly systems" --
"Davis addresses the "screen time" debate by recognizing that children's experiences of technology and social relationships are qualitatively distinct at different stages of development"--
From the New York Times-bestselling author, a new volume on the history of human ingenuity-and its attendant breakthroughs and busts.The world is never finished catching up with Vaclav Smil. In his latest and perhaps most readable book, Invention and Innovation, the prolific author-a favorite of Bill Gates-pens an insightful and fact-filled jaunt through the history of human invention. Impatient with the hype that so often accompanies innovation, Smil offers in this book a clear-eyed corrective to the overpromises that accompany everything from new cures for diseases to AI. He reminds us that even after we go quite far along the invention-development-application trajectory, we may never get anything real to deploy. Or worse, even after we have succeeded by introducing an invention, its future may be marked by underperformance, disappointment, demise, or outright harm.Drawing on his vast breadth of scientific and historical knowledge, Smil explains the difference between invention and innovation, and looks not only at inventions that failed to dominate as promised (such as the airship, nuclear fission, and supersonic flight), but also at those that turned disastrous (leaded gasoline, DDT, and chlorofluorocarbons). And finally, most importantly, he offers a "e;wish list"e; of inventions that we most urgently need to confront the staggering challenges of the twenty-first century.Filled with engaging examples and pragmatic approaches, this book is a sobering account of the folly that so often attends human ingenuity-and how we can, and must, better align our expectations with reality.
The rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over the lives of entrepreneurs, users, and workers.The early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labor, and downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires? The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. In Cloud Empires, digital economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our lives and proposes a new way forward.Digital platforms create new marketplaces and prosperity on the Internet, Lehdonvirta explains, but they are ruled by Silicon Valley despots with little or no accountability. Neither workers nor users can "e;vote with their feet"e; and find another platform because in most cases there isn't one. And yet using antitrust law and decentralization to rein in the big tech companies has proven difficult. Lehdonvirta tells the stories of pioneers who helped create-or resist-the new social order established by digital platform companies. The protagonists include the usual suspects-Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Travis Kalanick of Uber, and Bitcoin's inventor Satoshi Nakamoto-as well as Kristy Milland, labor organizer of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform that has emerged as an ersatz stand-in for the welfare state. Only if we understand digital platforms for what they are-institutions as powerful as the state-can we begin the work of democratizing them.
"Exploration of the largely unknown history of Chinese-language computing systems, accessible to an audience unfamiliar with the Chinese language or the technical workings of personal computers"--
"Exit Interview offers insight into the intellectual foundations and motivations of two of art history's most important critical voices, Hal Foster, Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archeology at Princeton, and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, recently retired Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Harvard University. Over three conversations, Foster engages Buchloh on his childhood influences and aspirations; his time in Berlin communes, where he was close with Gudrun Ensslin and other members of the Red Army Faction; his experiences in London as an aspiring fiction writer; and his return to Germany in 1971 to work at art galleries, publish the short-lived but influential magazine Interfunktionen, and teach at the Dusseldorf Academy. Together they chart Buchloh's path from Europe to North America--first to Nova Scotia, then Los Angeles, and finally New York--and they discuss the important role of other art historians and critics like Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michelson. Foster and Buchloh delve into their successes and critical significance, as well as their oversights and omissions. Building on years of collaboration and friendship, Foster and Buchloh's compelling conversations have been edited, framed, and sequenced by the authors, building from biography and anecdote to important reflection on one's critical life as a whole"--
"An honest attempt to compare and analyze the intelligence of humans, animals, and computers by an eminent cognitive scientist and long-time Press author"--
Why catastrophic risks are more dangerous than you think, and how populism makes them worse.Did you know that you’re more likely to die from a catastrophe than in a car crash? The odds that a typical US resident will die from a catastrophic event—for example, nuclear war, bioterrorism, or out-of-control artificial intelligence—have been estimated at 1 in 6. That’s fifteen times more likely than a fatal car crash and thirty-one times more likely than being murdered. In What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, Andrew Leigh looks at catastrophic risks and how to mitigate them, arguing provocatively that the rise of populist politics makes catastrophe more likely. Leigh explains that pervasive short-term thinking leaves us unprepared for long-term risks. Politicians sweat the small stuff—granular policy details of legislation and regulation—but rarely devote much attention to reducing long-term risks. Populist movements thrive on short-termism because they focus on their followers’ immediate grievances. Leigh argues that we should be long-termers: broaden our thinking and give big threats the attention and resources they need. Leigh outlines the biggest existential risks facing humanity and suggests remedies for them. He discusses pandemics, considering the possibility that the next virus will be more deadly than COVID-19; warns that unchecked climate change could render large swaths of the earth uninhabitable; describes the metamorphosis of the arms race from a fight into a chaotic brawl; and examines the dangers of runaway superintelligence. Moreover, Leigh points out, populism (and its crony, totalitarianism) not only exacerbates other dangers but is also a risk factor in itself, undermining the institutions of democracy as we watch.
"Costandi explains the neuroscience behind how we view our selves and our bodies, drawing from neurological studies on our sense of agency and free will, the neural correlates of mental representations, mirror neurons, and how the brain perceives timing and sensory consequences. He explores case studies of amputees with phantom limb syndrome, people with Body Integrity Identity Disorder (who have a desire to amputate healthy limbs they feel don't belong to them) and post-op transsexuals"--
"Interest in psychedelics has grown considerably in recent years -- one might even say psychedelics are experiencing a renaissance. But these mind-altering plants have always been with us. They have a rich and controversial history, in fact: plumbed from the depths of ancient Greek culture, infused with Christian symbols of sacrament, enriched by Buddhist philosophies, protected through Indigenous ceremonies, and, by the latter part of the twentieth century, catapulted into cultural consciousness through science, music, posters, blotter art, and fashion. In Psychedelics: A Visual Odyssey, Erika Dyck takes readers on an epic visual trip through some of the diverse ways that our fascination with psychedelics have been imagined throughout history. Blending academic rigor with rich imagery from around the globe, Psychedelics goes beyond the expected terrain of describing hallucinations. It reveals not only how psychedelic plants have been illustrated and understood, but also how these plants and chemical synthetics have inspired visual representations of health, fear, peace, colonial resistance, creativity, and more. A stunningly beautiful and comprehensive deep dive into the world of psychedelics, Psychedelics: A Visual Odyssey will inspire everyone from the curious general reader to the seasoned psychonaut."--
"Originally published as Biologia della gentilezza"--Title page verso.
How our sense of smell engages with philosophy, psychoanalysis, and political economy—and how it can help enrich our understanding of the nature of truth, language, economy, and sexuality.Why is it that, in Indo-European languages at least, we have no language to describe smells, leaving us (and famously Juliet) no choice but to call the scent of a rose simply “sweet”? In What's That Smell?, a groundbreaking exploration of the intersection between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the oft-neglected sense of smell, Simon Hajdini sets out to answer this complex question. Through new readings of traditional and modern philosophical texts, Hajdini places smell at the very center of a philosophical critique of the traditional notion of truth, challenging the idea that smell is the antiphilosophical sense par excellence.Through fresh engagements with fundamental philosophical issues, original analyses of modern literature and film, and the novel use of scientific research into smell within a humanities context, Hajdini situates problems of olfaction at the very point of inception of cultural life. He proposes that ontology, civilization, and capitalist economy alike can be said to amount to "shit management." And only by following the philosophically most deplorable of the senses, the book argues, can we better understand the central philosophical, psychoanalytical, and political issues of truth, sex, and exploitation.
"This book unpacks the organizing metaphor of the "decisionscape," examining how psychological distance alters our decisions by dictating what we foreground and what we diminish, how our personal worldview influences how we interpret information, how the overall "composition" of the decisions we are faced with has an effect on how we react to them, and how our decisions are bounded and framed by the invisible forces of culture and context"--
"This book explores how tools of the Digital Age might be mobilized to solve our most pressing environmental challenges, from climate change to biodiversity loss. It argues that digital technology might accelerate environmental sustainability and that engaging with environmental issues may transform Big Tech for the better, if the sector successfully addresses spiraling energy use, pollution, privacy and surveillance issues"--
"A guide for organizations to improve their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, focusing specifically on the experiences of women of color"--
"How the new science of the heart is using biology, engineering, and mathematics to help prevent and cure heart disease"--
"A history of and a hymn to the diversities of living beings, to understand that imperfection is promise of change and fuel of creativity"--
"This book tells the story of how scientific ocean drilling, a crowning achievement of science and engineering in the 20th century, transformed our understanding of Earth's history"--
The stirring speech given by Peter Sloterdijk in Lucerne in October 2022.From time immemorial, humanity has had to organize their “metabolism with nature.” For Marx, the most important factor in this process was labor. When Prometheus, according to the myth, brought fire to earth, another crucial input was added. Fire has been used to cook food and harden tools for hundreds of thousands of years. In this sense, it can be said that all history implies the history of the uses of fire.But whereas trees could only be burnt once, labor and fire shifted with the discovery of underground deposits of coal and oil. Modern humanity, according to Peter Sloterdijk, can be considered a collective of arsonists who set fire to the underground forests and moors. If Prometheus were to return to earth today, he might regret his gift; after all, what looms is nothing less than Ekpyrosis, the demise of the world in fire. And only a new, energetic pacifism can prevent this catastrophe.
Science fiction as a vital bridge between technoscience and culture, an early warning system, a method for imagining differently.In the new millennium, science fiction has moved from the margins to the mainstream. At the same time, it has undergone massive transformations. No longer can it be derided as indigestible technobabble or escapist trash or a white man’s playground—not that it ever really was. Sf is rich and diverse, serious, and fun. A vital bridge between technoscience and culture, it is an early warning system, a method for imagining differently, and a way of experiencing our increasingly science-fictional world. It is the vernacular of the 21st century. This Is Not A Science Fiction Textbook brings together leading sf scholars, including some of the most exciting new critical voices, to introduce the genre for the general reader. Its first part outlines some key ideas used to think about sf, such as Estrangement, Extrapolation, and Alterity. Its second part maps some of the genre’s global history, from the Enlightenment and European colonialism to Indigenous and African Futurisms. Its third part surveys sf at the turn of the 2020s, organised by concepts, movements and new academic disciplines, from Afrofuturism and Animal Studies to Queer Theory and the Weird—and each chapter, whether it is on Climate Fiction or Neurodiversity, is accompanied by an introduction to a major contemporary novel and film.
"An EKS book describing the arguments for and against a universal basic income, drawing on research from around the world, with a particular focus on likelihood of adoption within the United States"--
Gestures often convey meanings that transcend borders, but sometimes they bear vastly different meanings from one continent to another. This illustrated dictionary of gestures from around the world explains the way we go about joining words to gestures throughout the world in our everyday lives, with a side interest in the fact that there are no universals in the realm of the gesture. Entries are illustrated in drawings utilizing men, women, and children from all cultures, with illustrations from other sources showing gestures being performed in various cultural contexts throughout history. Entries are organized by body parts and body regions, with an index for intention and interpretation of the different gestures that makes for a different means of taxonomy. -- adapted from publisher info
"Using the non-human construct of the cyborg, this book address the problems inherent in difference and oppression, like gender, race, class, disability, sexuality, human exceptionalism and global borders"--
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