Download or read book The Age of Spiritual Machines written by Ray Kurzweil and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era, an international authority on artificial intelligence, and bestselling author of The Singularity is Nearer now offers a framework for envisioning the twenty-first century in The Age of Spiritual Machines--an age in which the marriage of human sensitivity and artificial intelligence fundamentally alters and improves the way we live. Kurzweil's prophetic blueprint for the future takes us through the advances that inexorably result in computers exceeding the memory capacity and computational ability of the human brain by the year 2020 (with human-level capabilities not far behind); in relationships with automated personalities who will be our teachers, companions, and lovers; and in information fed straight into our brains along direct neural pathways. Optimistic and challenging, thought-provoking and engaging, The Age of Spiritual Machines is the ultimate guide on our road into the next century.

Download or read book A Culture of Improvement written by Robert Friedel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-02-26 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How technological change in the West has been driven by the pursuit of improvement: a history of technology, from plows and printing presses to penicillin, the atomic bomb, and the computer. Why does technology change over time, how does it change, and what difference does it make? In this sweeping, ambitious look at a thousand years of Western experience, Robert Friedel argues that technological change comes largely through the pursuit of improvement—the deep-rooted belief that things could be done in a better way. What Friedel calls the "culture of improvement" is manifested every day in the ways people carry out their tasks in life—from tilling fields and raising children to waging war. Improvements can be ephemeral or lasting, and one person's improvement may not always be viewed as such by others. Friedel stresses the social processes by which we define what improvements are and decide which improvements will last and which will not. These processes, he emphasizes, have created both winners and losers in history. Friedel presents a series of narratives of Western technology that begin in the eleventh century and stretch into the twenty-first. Familiar figures from the history of invention are joined by others—the Italian preacher who described the first eyeglasses, the dairywomen displaced from their control over cheesemaking, and the little-known engineer who first suggested a grand tower to Gustav Eiffel. Friedel traces technology from the plow and the printing press to the internal combustion engine, the transistor, and the space shuttle. Friedel also reminds us that faith in improvement can sometimes have horrific consequences, as improved weaponry makes warfare ever more deadly and the drive for improving human beings can lead to eugenics and even genocide. The most comprehensive attempt to tell the story of Western technology in many years, engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, A Culture of Improvement documents the ways in which the drive for improvement has shaped our modern world.

Download or read book Between Making And Knowing Tools In The History Of Materials Research written by Joseph D Martin and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 621 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is indexed in Chemical Abstracts ServiceThis book offers a comprehensive sketch of the tools used in material research and the rich and diverse stories of how those tools came to be. We aim to give readers a sense of what tools materials researchers required in the late 20th century, and how those tools were developed and became accessible. The book is in a sense a collective biography of the components of what the philosopher of science, Ian Hacking, calls the 'instrumentarium' of materials research. Readers should gain an appreciation of the work materials researchers put into developing and using such tools, and of the tremendous variety of such tools. They should also gain some insight into the material (and hence financial) prerequisites for materials research. Materials research requires funding for the availability and maintenance of its tools; and the category of tools encompasses a broad range of substances, apparatus, institutions, and infrastructure.Between Nature and Society: Biographies of Materials (Part of A World Scientific Encyclopedia of the Development and History of Materials Science)

Download or read book The Age of Spiritual Machines written by Ray Kurzweil and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL 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.

Download or read book The machine and the ghost written by Sas Mays and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-16 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on our complex relationship with technology, The machine and the ghost explores our culture’s continued fascination with the spectral, the ghostly and the paranormal. Through a series of critical case studies and artists’ discussions, this lively new collection examines topics ranging from contemporary art to cultural theory. Produced with renowned specialists within the field, including the artist Susan Hiller and the writer Marina Warner, the book combines the historical with the contemporary in exploring how the visual culture of paranormal phenomena continues to haunt our imaginations. Informed by history and the visual tradition of spiritualism and psychical research, the collection is very much concerned to site that tradition within our contemporary concerns, such as landscape and environment, and recent technological developments. Aimed at a broad academic and cultural audience, the collection will appeal to all academic levels in addition to those interested in art and culture more widely.

Download or read book Are We Spiritual Machines written by Ray Kurzweil and published by Discovery Institute. This book was released on 2002 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Life on Ice written by Joanna Radin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the atomic bombing at the end of World War II, anxieties about survival in the nuclear age led scientists to begin stockpiling and freezing hundreds of thousands of blood samples from indigenous communities around the world. These samples were believed to embody potentially invaluable biological information about genetic ancestry, evolution, microbes, and much more. Today, they persist in freezers as part of a global tissue-based infrastructure. In Life on Ice, Joanna Radin examines how and why these frozen blood samples shaped the practice known as biobanking. The Cold War projects Radin tracks were meant to form an enduring total archive of indigenous blood before it was altered by the polluting forces of modernity. Freezing allowed that blood to act as a time-traveling resource. Radin explores the unique cultural and technical circumstances that created and gave momentum to the phenomenon of life on ice and shows how these preserved blood samples served as the building blocks for biomedicine at the dawn of the genomic age. In an era of vigorous ethical, legal, and cultural debates about genetic privacy and identity, Life on Ice reveals the larger picture—how we got here and the promises and problems involved with finding new uses for cold human blood samples.

Download or read book The Routledge History of Food written by Carol Helstosky and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of food is one of the fastest growing areas of historical investigation, incorporating methods and theories from cultural, social, and women’s history while forging a unique perspective on the past. The Routledge History of Food takes a global approach to this topic, focusing on the period from 1500 to the present day. Arranged chronologically, this title contains 17 originally commissioned chapters by experts in food history or related topics. Each chapter focuses on a particular theme, idea or issue in the history of food. The case studies discussed in these essays illuminate the more general trends of the period, providing the reader with insight into the large-scale and dramatic changes in food history through an understanding of how these developments sprang from a specific geographic and historical context. Examining the history of economic, technological, and cultural interactions between cultures and charting the corresponding developments in food history, The Routledge History of Food challenges readers' assumptions about what and how people have eaten, bringing fresh perspectives to well-known historical developments. It is the perfect guide for all students of social and cultural history.

Download or read book The Girl with the Ghost Machine written by Lauren DeStefano and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Emmaline Beaumont's father started building the ghost machine, she didn't expect it to bring her mother back from the dead. But by locking himself in the basement to toil away at his hopes, Monsieur Beaumont has become obsessed with the contraption and neglected the living, and Emmaline is tired of feeling forgotten. Nothing good has come from building the ghost machine, and Emmaline decides that the only way to bring her father back will be to make the ghost machine work...or destroy it forever.

Download or read book Schedule B Statistical Classification of Domestic and Foreign Commodities Exported from the United States written by United States. Bureau of the Census and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Schedule B written by United States. Bureau of the Census and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes changes entitled Public bulletin.

Download or read book Halloween Machine 2015 Omnibus written by Hallow Harvest and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2015 HALLOWEEN MACHINE OMNIBUS, collecting the five issues of the 2015 season as well as new content by Kurtis Primm and more! 202 creepy pages filled with Halloween goodness...that means home haunts, pro haunts, interviews, movie reviews and previews, artwork, weird places and tons of other spooky cool stuff. With tributes to Wes Craven and Sir Christopher Lee!

Download or read book The Monthly Microscopical Journal written by and published by . This book was released on 1873 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Monthly Microscopical Journal written by Anonymous and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-07-22 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1873. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

Download or read book The Mental Health of Gifted Intelligent Machines written by John Senior and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-02-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mental Health of Gifted Intelligent Machines explores the increasingly sophisticated behaviours of developing AI and how we can ensure it will have emotional resilience, ethical strength and an ability to think in a new and enhanced way. Its primary aim is to change how we understand the world by investigating humanity as an intelligent being, examining and contrasting human and artificial intelligence. The book considers what we can learn from the likely mental health issues that will occur with increasingly sophisticated aspects of machine intelligence and how they will reflect the human condition. It asks questions about our identity in a deeply uncertain and disruptive ever-changing world; how we will improve and enhance our psychological intelligence to meet the increasing complications and demands of the future; and what we need to do, now, to be psychologically intelligent enough to live a full meaningful life in a new world evolving around us. The book argues that changes in our understanding of mental health, psychology and our view of intelligence will challenge huge aspects of our fundamental beliefs and assumptions and that it is essential we explore new arenas to further understand both our own human psychological issues and mental health as we develop gifted intelligent machines. It is a must read for all students, researchers and professionals involved with AI, gifted education, consciousness and mental health.

Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 1432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress. Cataloging Policy and Support Office and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 1588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: