We are living in algorithmic times.From machine learning and artificial intelligence to blockchain or simpler newsfeed filtering, automated systems can transform the social world in ways that are just starting to be imagined.Redefining these emergent technologies as the new systems of knowing, pioneering scholar David Beer examines the acute tensions they create and how they are changing what is known and what is knowable. Drawing on cases ranging from the art market and th...

This book examines the powerful and intensifying role that metrics play in ordering and shaping our everyday lives. Focusing upon the interconnections between measurement, circulation and possibility, the author explores the interwoven relations between power and metrics. He draws upon a wide-range of interdisciplinary resources to place these metrics within their broader historical, political and social contexts. More specifically, he illuminates the various ways that metrics implicate ou...

The culture we consume is increasingly delivered to us via various digital on-demand platforms. The last decade has seen platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Google and the like become massive players in shaping cultural consumption. But how can we understand culture once it moves on to big tech platforms? How can we make sense of the changes this brings to our lives? These platforms have the power to shape our cultural landscape and to use data, algorithms and other technolo...

A significant new way of understanding contemporary capitalism is to understand the intensification and spread of data analytics. This text is about the powerful promises and visions that have led to the expansion of data analytics and data-led forms of social ordering.It is centrally concerned with examining the types of knowledge associated with data analytics and shows that how these analytics are envisioned is central to the emergence and prominence of data at various scales of...

This book draws upon the work of Georg Simmel to explore the limits, tensions and dynamism of social life through a close analysis of the works produced in the final years of his life and reveals what they might still offer some 100 years later. Focusing on the relationships between worlds, lives and fragments in these works, David Beer opens up a conceptual toolkit for understanding life as both an individual experience and as a deeply social phenomenon. Taking the reader through artistic...

The games are over.The war is here.Does humanity have a chance against the gods?Five men and women venture to another universe to find beings whose power gives them abilities they can’t imagine.Their leader? The greatest warrior produced since Prometheus: Achilles.Young, untested, but with unbridled potential, will his raw talent be enough?Can Achilles fight gods and turn back the tide of fate for the entire universe?Or will he be crus...

In Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America’s Fall from Grace, award-winner David Beers offers a powerful, personal vision of the rise and fall of the American middle class. Here is a dazzling literary chronicle of a family, a people, and a nation: the “blue sky tribe” of ever-optimistic middle-class Americans who believed in something called the American Dream, then woke up one day to discover it was gone. Blue Sky Dream is a book incredibly rich in ideas, in ways of...

Quinn’s study brings together the results of his nearly fifty years of research on the voyages outfitted by Sir Walter Raleigh and the efforts to colonize Roanoke Island. It is a fascinating book, rich in details of the colonists' experiences in the New World. Quinn “solves” the mystery of the Lost Colony with the controversial conclusion that many of the colonists lived with the Powhatans until the first decade of the seventeenth century when they were massacred.

An alien race decides humanity’s fate: Eradication.They didn’t count on someone rising to challenge their decree.Constantine had forsaken his family name and birthright. At 28 years old, he’d escaped Earth to help terraform Mars.An empire’s heir went missing just as the universe’s greatest threat announces itself.War Games will decide who represents humanity in this extinction level struggle.Constantine is summoned.With little training but ab...

Prometheus is missing. …… Yet the insurrection cannot stop.Can it survive without him?Finally, Alistair’s insurrection returns to our solar system, intent on destroying the Commonwealth.There’s only one problem: After his battle with Hector, Alistair disappeared.Now, Thoreaux faces an impossible decision with ramifications stretching out centuries. Should he invade Neptune without their incredible leader?If he does, will anyone live? If Alistair’s sti...

Battle lines have been drawn. Only one species will survive.The Primordials are crossing into our universe. Their mission is simple:Burn every planet to ashes.The only hope for all life is the culmination of the Kane bloodline.Prometheus finds his back against the wall. Can he hold off the horde long enough for his grandson to face a god? Or will defending his home require the ultimate sacrifice?Constantine and his warriors are out of options. They mu...

"Three men want one empire……but only one can have it.Prometheus returned to his solar system, and de Finita’s forces prepare to defend what’s theirs.The AllSeer’s return threatens to conquer both militaries in one genius move. He’ll obliterate Mars and force Prometheus to make an impossible choice:Save his friend or save his insurrection.Will de Finita bend the knee or watch billions burn alive beneath the AllSeer’s magnificent power?Will Pro...