Technology is the most distinctive characteristic of a knowledge society; however, technology is not stable, and it is defined by change and speed. Furthermore, the complexity of the sociotechnical systems that generate technology is not accessible to the average citizen. For this reason, the goal of this book is to assess changes in technology and present this analysis using language that helps an interested reader understand the direction in which technologies are progressing as well as ...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A former Wall Street quant sounds the alarm on Big Data and the mathematical models that threaten to rip apart our social fabric—with a new afterword“A manual for the twenty-first-century citizen . . . relevant and urgent.”—Financial TimesNATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Boston Glo...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERUSA TODAY BESTSELLERAmazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are the four most influential companies on the planet. Just about everyone thinks they know how they got there. Just about everyone is wrong.**For all that’s been written about the Four over the last two decades, no one has captured their power and staggering success as insightfully as Scott Galloway.Instead of buying the myths these companies broadcast, Gallo...

Real-world advice on how to be invisible online from "the FBI's most wanted hacker" (Wired).Be online without leaving a trace. Your every step online is being tracked and stored, and your identity literally stolen. Big companies and big governments want to know and exploit what you do, and privacy is a luxury few can afford or understand.In this explosive yet practical book, Kevin Mitnick uses true-life stories to show exactly what is happening wit...

After giving up the Internet for a month, a writer shares how we can all learn from her experience and rethink our relationship with the digital world.There's no doubt that technology has overrun our lives. Over the past few decades, the world has embraced "progress" and we're living with the resultant clicking, beeping, anxiety-inducing frenzy. But a creative backlash is gathering steam, helping us cope with the avalanche of data that threatens to overwhelm us dail...

Essays by the author of Solaris: "Lem's delightful sense of humor accentuates his essential seriousness about humanity's possible fate" ( Publishers Weekly).In One Human Minute, Stanislaw Lem takes a hard look at our world and technology—what it means now and what dire implications it could have for the future—in satirical, wise, and biting prose.With this collection of three essays, Lem targets some of the most pressing issues hum...

The Maker City Playbook is a comprehensive case studies and how-to information useful for city leaders, civic innovators, nonprofits, and others engaged in urban economic development. The Maker City Playbook is committed to going beyond stories to find patterns and discern promising practices to help city leaders make even more informed decisions.Maker City PlaybookChapter 1: Introduction and a Call to ActionChapter 2: The Maker movement an...

Illustrated guide to the controversial sociologist Jean Baudrillard, who died in 2007. Did the Gulf War take place? Is it possible to fake a bank robbery? Was sexual liberation a disaster? Jean Baudrillard has been hailed as one of France's most subtle and powerful theorists. But his provocative style and assaults on sociology, feminism and Marxism have exposed him to accusations of promoting a dangerous new orthodoxy - of being the 'pimp' of postmodernism. Introducing Baudrillard cuts ben...

This volume gives language teachers, software designers, and researchers who wish to use technology in second or foreign language education the information they need to absorb what has been achieved so far and to make sense of it. It is designed to enable the kind of critical reading of a substantial literature that leads to a balanced and detailed knowledge of the field.Chapter by chapter, the book builds, through description, analysis, examples, and discussion, a detailed picture of mode...

Whether we are checking emails, following friends on Facebook and Twitter, catching up on gossip from TMZ, planning holidays on TripAdvisor, arranging dates on Match.com, watching videos on Youtube, or simply browsing for deals on Amazon, the Internet pervades our professional and personal environments. The Internet has revolutionized our lives, but at what cost?In The Internet Trap, Ashesh Mukherjee uses the latest research in consumer psychology to highlight five hidden ...

In a classic indictment of American individualism and isolationism, Philip Slater analyzes the great ills of modern society-violence, competitiveness, inequality, and the national 'addiction' to technology.

What is technology? Why does it have such power in our lives? Why does it seemingly progress of its own accord, and without regard to social or environmental well-being? The quest for the essence of technology is an old one, with roots in the pre-Socratic philosophy of ancient Greece. It was then that certain thinkers first joined the ideas of technê and logos into a single worldview. The Greeks saw it as a kind of world-force, present in both the works of men and in nature itself. It was ...