Download or read book Specter of the Past Star Wars Legends The Hand of Thrawn written by Timothy Zahn and published by Random House Worlds. This book was released on 1998-09-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn makes his triumphant return to the Star Wars(r) universe in this first of an epic new two-volume series in which the New Republic must face its most dangerous enemy yet--a dead Imperial warlord. The Empire stands at the brink of total collapse. But they have saved their most heinous plan for last. First a plot is hatched that could destroy the New Republic in a bloodbath of genocide and civil war. Then comes the shocking news that Grand Admiral Thrawn--the most cunning and ruthless warlord in history--has apparently returned from the dead to lead the Empire to a long-prophesied victory. Facing incredible odds, Han and Leia begin a desperate race against time to prevent the New Republic from unraveling in the face of two inexplicable threats--one from within and one from without. Meanwhile, Luke teams up with Mara Jade, using the Force to track down a mysterious pirate ship with a crew of clones. Yet, perhaps most dangerous of all, are those who lurk in the shadows, orchestrating a dark plan that will turn the New Republic and the Empire into their playthings.

Download or read book Yesterday s Tomorrows written by Joseph J. Corn and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1996-05-15 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Jules Verne to the Jetsons, from a 500-passenger flying wing to an anti-aircraft flying buzz-saw, the vision of the future as seen through the eyes of the past demonstrates the play of the American imagination on the canvas of the future.

Download or read book Visions of the Future written by Robert Heilbroner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-25 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is an exceedingly long short book, stretching at least fifty thousand years into the past and who knows how many into the future." So begins Visions of the Future, the prophetic new book by eminent economist Robert Heilbroner. Heilbroner's basic premise is stunning in its elegant simplicity. He contends that throughout all of human history, despite the huge gulf in social organization, technological development, and cultural achievement that divides us from the earliest known traces of homo sapiens, there have really only been three distinct ways of looking at the future. During a period Heilbroner refers to simply as the Distant Past, stretching from prehistory to the appearance of modern nation-states in seventeenth century Europe, there was no notion of a future measurably and materially different from the present or the past. From the Stone Age to the Bronze, Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece and Rome, and throughout the Middle Ages, a continuum of cultures and civilizations shared one defining expectation--the absence of any expectation of material progress for the great masses of people. Heilbroner maintains that it was not until the first stirrings of the period he refers to as Yesterday, spanning from roughly 1700 to 1950, that the future entered into human consciousness as a great beckoning force. Capitalism, continually reinvigorated by the seemingly endless forward march of science and an evolving sense of democracy, appeared to promise all levels of society some expectation of a future at least somewhat better than the past. It was this unwavering faith in the superiority of the future that separated Yesterday from the age we have now entered, that of Today. While we are still driven towards tomorrow by the same forces that determined the recent past, the lessons of Hiroshima and Chernobyl, the chaos in the former Soviet Union, the stagnation of the West, and the anarchic rage unleashed in our inner cities and in hot spots around the globe have brought on a palpable anxiety that is quite apart from both the resignation of the Distant Past or the bright optimism of Yesterday. In a brilliant conclusion drawing together the threat of nuclear blackmail, global warming and the growing commodification of life represented by video games, voice mail, and VCRs, Visions of the Future issues a call to face the challenges of the twenty-first century with a new resolve strengthened by the inspiration of our collective past.

Download or read book Where Is My Flying Car written by J. Storrs Hall and published by Stripe Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an engineer and futurist, an impassioned account of technological stagnation since the 1970s and an imaginative blueprint for a richer, more abundant future The science fiction of the 1960s promised us a future remade by technological innovation: we’d vacation in geodesic domes on Mars, have meaningful conversations with computers, and drop our children off at school in flying cars. Fast-forward 60 years, and we’re still stuck in traffic in gas-guzzling sedans and boarding the same types of planes we flew in over half a century ago. What happened to the future we were promised? In Where Is My Flying Car?, J. Storrs Hall sets out to answer this deceptively simple question. What starts as an examination of the technical limitations of building flying cars evolves into an investigation of the scientific, technological, and social roots of the economic stagnation that started in the 1970s. From the failure to adopt nuclear energy and the suppression of cold fusion technology to the rise of a counterculture hostile to progress, Hall recounts how our collective ambitions for the future were derailed, with devastating consequences for global wealth creation and distribution. Hall then outlines a framework for a future powered by exponential progress—one in which we build as much in the world of atoms as we do in the world of bits, one rich in abundance and wonder. Drawing on years of original research and personal engineering experience, Where Is My Flying Car?, originally published in 2018, is an urgent, timely analysis of technological progress over the last 50 years and a bold vision for a better future.

Download or read book A Future That s Bigger Than The Past written by Samuel Wells and published by Canterbury Press. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Future that’s Bigger than the Past sets out a vision for renewing the local church that is energising, realistic and practical for small and large congregations alike. In response to prevailing narratives of decline, it reimagines how the church can live its vocation of receiving the abundance God gives us, and sharing that abundance far and wide. It recognises the surprising, exuberant and plentiful things that the Holy Spirit is doing in the world and calls the church to celebrate creation, enjoy culture and share in their flourishing. With a rich theological foundation and borne out in the practical experience of a growing number of local church communities, this groundbreaking book will enable churches to discover fresh ways in which they can become a blessing to the communities they serve.

Download or read book The Primacy of Vision in Virgil s Aeneid written by Riggs Alden Smith and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the masterpieces of Latin and, indeed, world literature, Virgil's Aeneid was written during the Augustan "renaissance" of architecture, art, and literature that redefined the Roman world in the early years of the empire. This period was marked by a transition from the use of rhetoric as a means of public persuasion to the use of images to display imperial power. Taking a fresh approach to Virgil's epic poem, Riggs Alden Smith argues that the Aeneid fundamentally participates in the Augustan shift from rhetoric to imagery because it gives primacy to vision over speech as the principal means of gathering and conveying information as it recounts the heroic adventures of Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome. Working from the theories of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Smith characterizes Aeneas as a voyant-visible, a person who both sees and is seen and who approaches the world through the faculty of vision. Engaging in close readings of key episodes throughout the poem, Smith shows how Aeneas repeatedly acts on what he sees rather than what he hears. Smith views Aeneas' final act of slaying Turnus, a character associated with the power of oratory, as the victory of vision over rhetoric, a triumph that reflects the ascendancy of visual symbols within Augustan society. Smith's new interpretation of the predominance of vision in the Aeneid makes it plain that Virgil's epic contributes to a new visual culture and a new mythology of Imperial Rome.

Download or read book The Order of Time written by Carlo Rovelli and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade "Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.

Download or read book Seeing the Past with Computers written by Kevin Kee and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments in computer technology are providing historians with new ways to see—and seek to hear, touch, or smell—traces of the past. Place-based augmented reality applications are an increasingly common feature at heritage sites and museums, allowing historians to create immersive, multifaceted learning experiences. Now that computer vision can be directed at the past, research involving thousands of images can recreate lost or destroyed objects or environments, and discern patterns in vast datasets that could not be perceived by the naked eye. Seeing the Past with Computers is a collection of twelve thought-pieces on the current and potential uses of augmented reality and computer vision in historical research, teaching, and presentation. The experts gathered here reflect upon their experiences working with new technologies, share their ideas for best practices, and assess the implications of—and imagine future possibilities for—new methods of historical study. Among the experimental topics they explore are the use of augmented reality that empowers students to challenge the presentation of historical material in their textbooks; the application of seeing computers to unlock unusual cultural knowledge, such as the secrets of vaudevillian stage magic; hacking facial recognition technology to reveal victims of racism in a century-old Australian archive; and rebuilding the soundscape of an Iron Age village with aural augmented reality. This volume is a valuable resource for scholars and students of history and the digital humanities more broadly. It will inspire them to apply innovative methods to open new paths for conducting and sharing their own research.

Download or read book A Vision of the Future written by Stephen Edward Poe and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-04 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enjoy the incredible adventure that is the creation of UPN's "Voyager" series--which began long before the first scene was shot. Lavishly illustrated with exclusive behind-the-scenes photos, this is the must-have book for all "Star Trek" followers. Two 16-page color inserts.

Download or read book Future Vision Your Working Life written by Anne Jirsch and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anne Jirsch is the creator of Future Visioning, an innovative new business tool rooted in her unique Future Life Progression system. With a focus on business, career and our working lives, Future Visioning will help anyone to get ahead in their chosen line of work. Change is going to come whether you are a hairdresser or the CEO of a huge international company, an IT consultant, a nurse, cafe owner or therapist and if you do not anticipate that change you will inevitably slip backwards. Just imagine if you had something that gave you the edge, that steered you in the right direction, filtering out erroneous information, leaving you to focus fully on exactly what you need to know. Future Visioning is a unique tool that will allow you to anticipate the way forward in your career or business, but also help you to thrive and enjoy the journey. It will help you navigate the best path to your future. Fusing clinical hypnosis, visualization and intuition work Future Visioning will help you tread your future work path. Using the 10 Future Visioning strategies in this book you will learn how to: Be guided by your intuition Tap into your creative genius Use every part of your brain Understand your unique way of processing information Stretch time Become your own futurist Find your tribe Understand your purpose Network & connect Allow flexibility and flow Each chapter contains both scientific and personal case studies alongside exercises for you to work through so that you can be the master of your future.

Download or read book Futuredays written by Isaac Asimov and published by Owl Books. This book was released on 1986 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrations created in France to celebrate the turn of the century, show scenes depicting the future of air travel, helicopters, undersea colonies, agriculture and the radio

Download or read book Vision of the Future Star Wars Legends The Hand of Thrawn written by Timothy Zahn and published by Random House Worlds. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hugo Award-winning author Timothy Zahn brings his epic two-volume series The Hand of Thrawn to an explosive conclusion with a discovery that rocks the New Republic to its foundations--and threatens to resurrect the Empire. The Empire's master plan is under way. The New Republic is on the verge of civil war and the rumor that the legendary Admiral Thrawn has returned from the dead is rallying the Imperial forces. Now Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and their allies face the challenge of their lives. They must infiltrate a hidden fortress filled with Imperial fanatics, rendezvous with a double-dealing Imperial commander, and journey into enemy territory to learn the identity of those responsible for an act of unthinkable genocide. But most important of all is the truth about Thrawn. In his hands--alive or dead--rests the fate of the New Republic. Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years! © 1998 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM All rights reserved. Used under authorization.

Download or read book Government for the Future written by Mark A. Abramson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recognition of its 20th anniversary, The IBM Center for the Business of Government offers a retrospective of the most significant changes in government management during that period and looks forward over the next 20 years to offer alternative scenarios as to what government management might look like by the year 2040. Part I will discuss significant management improvements in the federal government over the past 20 years, based in part on a crowdsourced survey of knowledgeable government officials and public administration experts in the field. It will draw on themes and topics examined in the 350 IBM Center reports published over the past two decades. Part II will outline alternative scenarios of how government might change over the coming 20 years. The scenarios will be developed based on a series of envisioning sessions which are bringing together practitioners and academics to examine the future. The scenarios will be supplemented with short essays on various topics. Part II will also include essays by winners of the Center’s Challenge Grant competition. Challenge Grant winners will be awarded grants to identify futuristic visions of government in 2040. Contributions by Mark A. Abramson, David A. Bray, Daniel J. Chenok, Lee Feldman, Lora Frecks, Hollie Russon Gilman, Lori Gordon, John M. Kamensky, Michael J. Keegan, W. Henry Lambright, Tad McGalliard, Shelley H. Metzenbaum, Marc Ott, Sukumar Rao, and Darrell M. West.

Download or read book The Once and Future Worker written by Oren Cass and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Cass’s] core principle—a culture of respect for work of all kinds—can help close the gap dividing the two Americas....” – William A. Galston, The Brookings Institution The American worker is in crisis. Wages have stagnated for more than a generation. Reliance on welfare programs has surged. Life expectancy is falling as substance abuse and obesity rates climb. These woes are not the inevitable result of irresistible global and technological forces. They are the direct consequence of a decades-long economic consensus that prioritized increasing consumption—regardless of the costs to American workers, their families, and their communities. Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency focused attention on the depth of the nation’s challenges, yet while everyone agrees something must change, the Left’s insistence on still more government spending and the Right’s faith in still more economic growth are recipes for repeating the mistakes of the past. In this groundbreaking re-evaluation of American society, economics, and public policy, Oren Cass challenges our basic assumptions about what prosperity means and where it comes from to reveal how we lost our way. The good news is that we can still turn things around—if the nation’s proverbial elites are willing to put the American worker’s interests first. Which is more important, pristine air quality, or well-paying jobs that support families? Unfettered access to the cheapest labor in the world, or renewed investment in the employment of Americans? Smoothing the path through college for the best students, or ensuring that every student acquires the skills to succeed in the modern economy? Cutting taxes, expanding the safety net, or adding money to low-wage paychecks? The renewal of work in America demands new answers to these questions. If we reinforce their vital role, workers supporting strong families and communities can provide the foundation for a thriving, self-sufficient society that offers opportunity to all.

Download or read book Homo Prospectus written by Martin E. P. Seligman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our species is misnamed. Though sapiens defines human beings as "wise" what humans do especially well is to prospect the future. We are homo prospectus. In this book, Martin E. P. Seligman, Peter Railton, Roy F. Baumeister, and Chandra Sripada argue it is anticipating and evaluating future possibilities for the guidance of thought and action that is the cornerstone of human success. Much of the history of psychology has been dominated by a framework in which people's behavior is driven by past history (memory) and present circumstances (perception and motivation). Homo Prospectus reassesses this idea, pushing focus to the future front and center and opening discussion of a new field of Psychology and Neuroscience. The authors delve into four modes in which prospection operates: the implicit mind, deliberate thought, mind-wandering, and collective (social) imagination. They then explore prospection's role in some of life's most enduring questions: Why do people think about the future? Do we have free will? What is the nature of intuition, and how might it function in ethics? How does emotion function in human psychology? Is there a common causal process in different psychopathologies? Does our creativity change with age? In this remarkable convergence of research in philosophy, statistics, decision theory, psychology, and neuroscience, Homo Prospectus shows how human prospection fundamentally reshapes our understanding of key cognitive processes, thereby improving individual and social functioning. It aims to galvanize interest in this new science from scholars in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, as well as an educated public curious about what makes humanity what it is.

Download or read book Becoming Kin written by Patty Krawec and published by Broadleaf Books . This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We find our way forward by going back. The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won't just send them all "home." Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and disappearance, Krawec helps readers see settler colonialism through the eyes of an Indigenous writer. Settler colonialism tried to force us into one particular way of living, but the old ways of kinship can help us imagine a different future. Krawec asks, What would it look like to remember that we are all related? How might we become better relatives to the land, to one another, and to Indigenous movements for solidarity? Braiding together historical, scientific, and cultural analysis, Indigenous ways of knowing, and the vivid threads of communal memory, Krawec crafts a stunning, forceful call to "unforget" our history. This remarkable sojourn through Native and settler history, myth, identity, and spirituality helps us retrace our steps and pick up what was lost along the way: chances to honor rather than violate treaties, to see the land as a relative rather than a resource, and to unravel the history we have been taught.

Download or read book Star Wars Thrawn Alliances Book 2 written by Timothy Zahn and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-07-26 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Grand Admiral Thrawn and Darth Vader team up against a threat to the Empire in this thrilling novel from bestselling author Timothy Zahn. “I have sensed a disturbance in the Force.” Ominous words under any circumstances, but all the more so when uttered by Emperor Palpatine. On Batuu, at the edges of the Unknown Regions, a threat to the Empire is taking root—its existence little more than a glimmer, its consequences as yet unknowable. But it is troubling enough to the Imperial leader to warrant investigation by his most powerful agents: ruthless enforcer Lord Darth Vader and brilliant strategist Grand Admiral Thrawn. Fierce rivals for the emperor’s favor, and outspoken adversaries on Imperial affairs—including the Death Star project—the formidable pair seem unlikely partners for such a crucial mission. But the Emperor knows it’s not the first time Vader and Thrawn have joined forces. And there’s more behind his royal command than either man suspects. In what seems like a lifetime ago, General Anakin Skywalker of the Galactic Republic, and Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo, officer of the Chiss Ascendancy, crossed paths for the first time. One on a desperate personal quest, the other with motives unknown . . . and undisclosed. But facing a gauntlet of dangers on a far-flung world, they forged an uneasy alliance—neither remotely aware of what their futures held in store. Now, thrust together once more, they find themselves bound again for the planet where they once fought side by side. There they will be doubly challenged—by a test of their allegiance to the Empire . . . and an enemy that threatens even their combined might.