Download or read book Rebooting Humanity written by E. A. Kennedy and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Last Message to Mankind written by Harry Yap and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2005 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where there is a beginning there is always an end. "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End..." says the Lord (Bible, Revelation 21:6). "...for Allah is the Beginning and the End" (Qu'ran, Surah 53.25). If there is an end, is there an escape as well? Take a glimpse of how the mysteries of our reality can be unraveled for our own escape of the ending by merely arranging together the earliest beliefs, our traditional faiths, the allegorical myths and legends, the contemporary scientific knowledge and the mutual views of the modern generation. Can God handle the 21st century? Yet, can we handle God for the 21st century? Beginning: Does God exist or not? Or: Is God overrated or underrated? Middle: How will God react if mankind will eliminate this crazy little thing called "sin" through science, and in so doing, disapprove the need for God to drown and burn men of the past and of the near future? Ending: Are the Armageddon and the "transformation" the only remaining unfulfilled prophecies? If yes, what is the controversial "666" all about then? Escape: Does the "Judgment Day" merely connote a "Decision Day"? Journey: Does the wheel-of-life [creation and destruction, beginning and end, birth and death, etc.] have something to do with the universe-energy management or entertainment that we ourselves devised and will soon wake up from?
Download or read book In AI We Trust written by Helga Nowotny and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI – and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience of time and the future and challenges our identities, yet we are blinded by its efficiency and fail to understand how it affects us. At the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase our control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future. This happens when we forget that that we humans have created the digital technologies to which we attribute agency. These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care. As we try to adjust to a world in which algorithms, robots and avatars play an ever-increasing role, we need to understand better the limitations of AI and how their predictions affect our agency, while at the same time having the courage to embrace the uncertainty of the future.
Download or read book The Knowledge written by Lewis Dartnell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest—or even the most basic—technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, or even how to produce food for yourself? Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can’t hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn’t just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all—the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world.
Download or read book Reboot written by Jerry Colonna and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the start-up world’s most in-demand executive coaches—hailed as the “CEO Whisperer” (Gimlet Media)—reveals why radical self-inquiry is critical to professional success and healthy relationships in all realms of life. Jerry Colonna helps start-up CEOs make peace with their demons, the psychological habits and behavioral patterns that have helped them to succeed—molding them into highly accomplished individuals—yet have been detrimental to their relationships and ultimate well-being. Now, this venture capitalist turned executive coach shares his unusual yet highly effective blend of Buddhism, Jungian therapy, and entrepreneurial straight talk to help leaders overcome their own psychological traumas. Reboot is a journey of radical self-inquiry, helping you to reset your life by sorting through the emotional baggage that is holding you back professionally, and even more important, in your relationships. Jerry has taught CEOs and their top teams to realize their potential by using the raw material of their lives to find meaning, to build healthy interpersonal bonds, and to become more compassionate and bold leaders. In Reboot, he inspires everyone to hold themselves responsible for their choices and for the possibility of truly achieving their dreams. Work does not have to destroy us. Work can be the way in which we achieve our fullest self, Jerry firmly believes. What we need, sometimes, is a chance to reset our goals and to reconnect with our deepest selves and with each other. Reboot moves and empowers us to begin this journey.
Download or read book Friends For Robots written by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor and published by Robot Dinosaur Press. This book was released on 2021-12-21 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this upbeat, positive collection of SFF short stories from Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, author of So You Want to Be A Robot, you'll find hope, humor, friendship—and of course, robots. Have you heard the one about... ...a neural network who wants humans to drink more water? ...a person stranded on Mars with only an obsolete robotic toy? ...a cyborg caught in a time loop with a frightened ship? ...a self-aware mech who doesn't want to be a weapon anymore? ...an AI sent into the deepest part of the ocean—and finds a god? You'll also meet entrepreneurial barbarians, an astronaut making first contact, a boy who might have (accidentally) started Armageddon, magical birds, a bot who wants to tell jokes, and more. Whether you're a robot or not, come make some new friends. :)
Download or read book Rebooting AI written by Gary Marcus and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two leaders in the field offer a compelling analysis of the current state of the art and reveal the steps we must take to achieve a truly robust artificial intelligence. Despite the hype surrounding AI, creating an intelligence that rivals or exceeds human levels is far more complicated than we have been led to believe. Professors Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis have spent their careers at the forefront of AI research and have witnessed some of the greatest milestones in the field, but they argue that a computer beating a human in Jeopardy! does not signal that we are on the doorstep of fully autonomous cars or superintelligent machines. The achievements in the field thus far have occurred in closed systems with fixed sets of rules, and these approaches are too narrow to achieve genuine intelligence. The real world, in contrast, is wildly complex and open-ended. How can we bridge this gap? What will the consequences be when we do? Taking inspiration from the human mind, Marcus and Davis explain what we need to advance AI to the next level, and suggest that if we are wise along the way, we won't need to worry about a future of machine overlords. If we focus on endowing machines with common sense and deep understanding, rather than simply focusing on statistical analysis and gatherine ever larger collections of data, we will be able to create an AI we can trust—in our homes, our cars, and our doctors' offices. Rebooting AI provides a lucid, clear-eyed assessment of the current science and offers an inspiring vision of how a new generation of AI can make our lives better.
Download or read book Born to Wonder written by Alister McGrath and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Born to Wonder, Alister McGrath, a prolific Oxford scholar, scientist, and theologian, explores the deepest mystery at the heart of life itself. Life is a gift. We never asked to be born. Yet here we are, living in this strange world of space and time, trying to work out what it’s all about before the darkness closes in and extinguishes us. We are adrift on a misty, grey sea of ignorance, seeking a sun-kissed island of certainty, on which we might hope to find clear answers to our deepest and most poignant questions. What is the point of life? Why are we here? And what is it about us that makes us want to ask these questions? As far as we know, we’re the only species on earth that asks these questions, and dares to hope that we might find an answer. It seems that we are born to wonder, not merely to exist. From time to time, all of us find ourselves overwhelmed by a sense of awe or mystery, often when confronted with the beauty of nature, whether it is a mountain stream or the vast expanse of ocean waters. That is when we see a flicker of a grander vision of reality, perhaps lying beyond the horizons of our experience. It is as if, for only a moment, a veil is removed, and we catch a half-glimpsed sight of a promised land, waiting to be mapped and explored. This sense of wonder fuels much of humanity’s creativity and its search for understanding.
Download or read book The Great Mystery written by Alister E McGrath and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is currently huge interest in the question of human nature and identity, and what the human future might look like. Who are we? Why are we here? What is our future? Are we alone? And what can religion bring, alongside biology and anthropology, to these important and exciting questions? The Great Mystery focuses on this fascinating field of study. Alister McGrath, bestselling author and Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University, explores the question of human nature from both scientific and religious perspectives, and weaves together the results to open up and explore some of the deepest and most important questions about who we are, why we matter, and what our future might be. A follow-up to his critically acclaimed Inventing the Universe, in The Great Mystery Alister McGrath once again brings together science with religion to yield an enriched vision of reality, along with rigorous and thoroughly up-to-date scholarship and intellectual accessibility.
Download or read book The Monday Collection written by Robert Michael and published by Infinite Word Press. This book was released on with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Character Wars America s Failing Character written by Joe Dixon and published by Magus Books. This book was released on with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is having a nervous breakdown. Its national character has fragmented. Americans no longer stand united, and they never will again. They are at each other's throats. What happened? What went wrong? This is the strange tale of how America is being destroyed by its conflicting character types. Even worse, this is a problem that cannot be resolved. There is no "one-size-fits-all" set of policies that can accommodate character types that seek radically different things. This makes consensual government impossible. Oswald Spengler, in his apocalyptic masterpiece "The Decline of the West", wrote, "2000-2200: Formation of Caesarism. Victory of force politics over money. Increasing primitiveness of political forms. Inward decline of the nations into a formless population, and Constitution thereof as an imperium of gradually increasing crudity of despotism." America, with the advent of Donald Trump, has entered its Caesarian period. Things will never be the same again.
Download or read book Competence Based Education and Training CBET and the End of Human Learning written by John Preston and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book radically counters the optimism sparked by Competence Based Education and Training, an educational philosophy that has re-emerged in Schooling, Vocational and Higher Education in the last decade. CBET supposedly offers a new type of learning that will lead to skilled employment; here, Preston instead presents the competency movement as one which makes the concept of human learning redundant. Starting with its origins in Taylorism, the slaughterhouse and radical behaviourism, the book charts the history of competency education to its position as a global phenomenon today, arguing that competency is opposed to ideas of process, causality and analog human movement that are fundamental to human learning.
Download or read book Suicide and Contemporary Science Fiction written by Carl Gutiérrez-Jones and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-16 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suicide and Contemporary Science Fiction examines the fascination with suicidal crises evident in a range of science fiction. Specifically, this study explores a seemingly counterintuitive proposition: in moments of dramatic scientific and technological change, the authors of these works frequently cast self-destructive episodes as catalysts for beneficial change. Carlos Gutierrez-Jones argues that this creative self-destruction mechanism is invoked by H. G. Wells as a means of negotiating Victorian anxieties regarding evolutionary theory, by Stanislaw Lem as he wrestles with the prospect of nuclear self-destruction at the dawn of the space age, by William Gibson as he considers the development of artificial intelligence, by Christopher Nolan as he explores the cybernetic colonization of the unconscious, by Rian Johnson as he links aspects of video gaming to the neoliberal militarization of institutions, and by Margaret Atwood as she considers impending ecological disaster and the rise of bioterrorism. These authors often depict such scientific and technological changes in a fashion that requires the central characters to transform themselves in hopes of remaining relevant in a radically altered environment.
Download or read book Digital Dialogues and Community 2 0 written by Tara Brabazon and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2012-04-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital Dialogue and Community 2.0: After avatars, trolls and puppets explores the communities that use digital platforms, portals, and applications from daily life to build relationships beyond geographical locality and family links. The book provides detailed analyses of how technology realigns the boundaries between connection, consciousness and community. This book reveals that alongside every engaged, nurturing and supportive group are those who are excluded, marginalised, ridiculed, or forgotten. It explores the argument that community is not an inevitable result of communication. Following an introduction from the Editor, the book is then divided into four sections exploring communities and resistance, structures of sharing, professional communication and fandom and consumption. Digital Dialogues and Community 2.0 combines ethnographic methods and professional expertise to open new spaces for thinking about language, identity, and social connections. - Provides innovative interdisciplinary research, incorporating Library and Information Management, Internet Studies, Cultural Studies, Media Studies, Disability Studies and Community Management - Offers a balanced approach between the 'bottom up' and 'top down' development of online communities - Demonstrates the consequences on the configuration of a community when consumers become producers and their lives and experiences are commodified
Download or read book Humanity on a Tightrope written by Paul R. Ehrlich and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than ever, the world finds itself faced with common problems that affect most of the planet's population in some way: climate change, poverty, escalating violence, international conflicts, illness. And while an 'us v. them' mentality persists, a growing sense of empathy, of connection, with those in remote parts of the world has caught hold and is spreading. The authors argue that empathy and feelings of kinship with others are necessary to preventing the collapse of civilization. Through a careful examination of how humans must learn to relate to one another to avoid global calamity, they show how empathy can help to create a sustainable society of many billions of individuals.
Download or read book Umbilicans of Babylon written by Richard Leviton and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2024-03-13 with total page 1047 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you ever think about solid ground? The author of this book does, a lot. Providing solid ground for consciousness is the umbilican function, he says. On January 1, 2020, the long-awaited Golden Age began. So did intense opposition to it from the shadows. It was like a thousand iron heels trying to stamp out spring blossoms. The dark forces exerted their manipulations in the outer world. The angelic contingent counterpointed in the subtle realm. The Earth wobbled. This is an insider’s report from three men who worked alongside the “good guys” to adjust the planet’s Light grid to better support the flowering of human consciousness that had been intended for this date and to resist, even undermine, the infernal opposition. These “good guy” benefactors included angels, archangels, the Great White Brotherhood, even some of the friendly Dead. Ronald, our narrator, with Joe and Mike, his dependable pals, call themselves geomantic engineers. They work on the Light grid, the subtle energy infrastructure of the Earth that supports the material world. They’re like electric utility pole linemen, up there in their extendable buckets, but their main tools are clairvoyance and knowledge of the mechanics of the planet’s many Light temples and systems. Ronald provides a vivid field account of an astonishing array of geomantic interventions and “adjustments” made in the last several years to shore up that potentially fabulous Golden Age, despite the dark forces’ protracted attempts to derail and smash it. The struggle reveals an Earth like you’ve never seen before. Our planet was designed to keep consciousness aligned with the spiritual world, galaxy, and beyond. People were supposed to feel firmly anchored in their bodies and planet. The Earth was meant to be the “gate of the gods,” the original pure meaning of Babylon. In recent centuries, that smooth reciprocal relationship has been upset. Light forces are trying to uplift awareness, dark forces to suppress it. Jump into Ronald’s riveting account to see how it all plays out.
Download or read book Rainy Days and Monday written by Robert Michael and published by Infinite Word Press. This book was released on with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the President dead, the world faces the threat of not just one organization bent on global dominance, but two. Torn between doing his duty and protecting his family, Jake is faced with new dangers and the ever-present realization that he is playing a role written by someone else. Meanwhile, Andronicus must make amends for his errors against the Consortium by coordinating efforts to bring their enemy to its knees. Lars continues to play a freelance role, and discovers the depth of his son's treachery. On top of all this, Giselle may just be the key to world peace. Rainy Days and Monday begins a new cycle of fast-paced action and intrigue set in a world threatened by centuries-old regimes vying for preeminence, government corruption, and corporate greed. Only one man can stop it all and restore peace. FROM THE AUTHOR Rainy Days and Monday is the fourth installment of a 7-part series of novellas. The Jake Monday Chronicles will also be included in two volumes of collected works: The Monday Collection, Volumes One and Volume Two. So, whether you enjoy your series one installment at a time, or you like to read a longer work, we have you covered. The Monday Collection, Volume One contains Manic Monday, A Month of Mondays, and Thank God it's Monday. All these installments are also available to purchase separately if you wish. The Monday Collection, Volume Two will be released in the fourth quarter of 2014 and will include the final four parts of the Jake Monday saga: Rainy Days and Monday (March 2014), Can't Wait for Monday (May 2014), Mad Mad Monday (July 2014), and Monday Bloody Monday (September 2014). I get the question from time-to-time: what inspired you to write this story? With Jake Monday, my inspiration came from a multitude of sources. Authors like Ludlum, LeCarre, Fleming, and Follet come to mind. Also, I enjoy watching series on television: "Alias," "Heroes," "Lost," "Supernatural," "The X-Files," and "Hannibal." All of these have elements that influenced my writing. The Jake Monday Chronicles began in 2003 when I wrote a short story about an assassin named Jake Monday. I had no plans, really, but I had a sentence running through my head. The sentence that launched this series began: "Jake Monday hated Mondays more than any other day of the week." The idea that a high-profile assassin would be unhappy, unsatisfied, and struggling with his past and future, is not unique. I wanted to explore new areas of this theme. I thought of family, of a past hidden, of the moral challenge of an individual that finds himself caught in a massive global conspiracy while grappling with the choices he has made, willingly or not. So, Jake Monday is my Jason Bourne. Hallie is my Sidney Bristow (from Alias). My villains...well, they are all my own. I love to draw villains who are deep, believable, and scary. Not because they always represent the antithesis of the hero, but just the opposite: my villains are not much different than all of us. I do not believe in "grey areas," but I do believe the line between good and evil can be narrow. One wrong move and even someone like Jake Monday can be heading in the wrong direction.
