Download or read book The Silicon Man written by Charles Platt and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can human intelligence thrive in computer hardware? The Silicon Man tells an intensely human, suspenseful story showing how it may be done, sooner rather than later. Five renegade scientists are pursuing secret research to achieve immortality by uploading themselves into silicon. When one relentless investigator threatens everything they have tried to achieve, the outcome will change the world. William Gibson praised this novel as "a plausible, well-crafted narrative exploring cyberspace in a wholly new and very refeshing way." The Washington Post described it as "a well-plotted, fast-paced, and imaginative look into the future." Science Fiction Review said that it ranks "right up there with Michaelmas and The Demolished Man." And Gregory Benford commented, "In fascinating detail, Platt shows us what it would really be like to live (and breathe!) in cyberspace." Nominated for the John W. Campbell award and the Philip K. Dick award.
Download or read book Silicon Man written by William Massa and published by . This book was released on 2014-02-20 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A global pandemic has cut the human population in half. An android workforce fills the void left by the devastation. But some of the AIs have grown tired of being slaves. Some want freedom. An underground movement of runaways has sprung up and wages a shadow war with a simple objective -- equal rights for artificial people.Enter Commander Cole Marsalis, head of the AI-TAC first response team trained to deal with the rogue robots. Now he has been tasked with the ultimate undercover mission - infiltrate the android underground. But to do so, he will have to become that which he hates the most... A machine!
Download or read book Silicon Dreams written by R. W. Lucky and published by New York : St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silicon Dreams is a highly informed discussion of the new information age, from the Executive Director of Research at Bell Labs. Robert Lucky addresses such questions as what information is, how it is generated, captured, stored, and communicated, and goes on to explain information theory, cryptology, speech synthesis and recognition, and much more. Charts, diagrams, photographs.
Download or read book The Man Behind the Microchip written by Leslie Berlin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-11-13 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the life of a giant of the high-tech industry - co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel - and inventor of the integrated circuit, which is used in every modern computer, microwave, telephone and car.
Download or read book Silicon Values written by Jillian C. York and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle for online rights and for the future of democracy Who decides what is permissible on the internet: Politicians? Mark Zuckerberg? Users? Who determines when political debate becomes hate speech? How does this impact our identity or our ability to create communities and to protest? Silicon Values reports on the war for digital rights and how major corporations—Facebook, Twitter, Google and Tiktok—threaten democracy as they harvest our personal data in the pursuit of profit.
Download or read book Abolish Silicon Valley written by Wendy Liu and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. "Lucid, probing and urgent. Wendy Liu manages to be both optimistic about the emancipatory potential of tech and scathing about the industry that has harnessed it for bleak and self-serving ends." -- Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal "An inspiring memoir manifesto...Technologists all over the world are realizing that no amount of code can substitute for political engagement. Liu's memoir is a road map for that journey of realization." -- Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized and Little Brother Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it's hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It's becoming clear that the tech industry's promised "innovation" is neither sustainable nor always desirable. Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo. Going beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual founders and companies that characterise the industry today, Wendy Liu delves into the structural factors of the economy that gave rise to Silicon Valley as we know it. Ultimately, she proposes a more radical way of developing technology, where innovation is conducted for the benefit of society at large, and not just to enrich a select few.
Download or read book Silicon From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness written by Federico Faggin and published by Waterside Productions. This book was released on 2021-02-08 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As soon as she heard me enter, Elvia awoke from a light sleep that had overcome her as she anxiously waited: 'How did it go?' Excited, I exclaimed: 'It works!' We embraced, almost overwhelmed with feelings of euphoria and happiness, aware that something epochal had happened. On that cold January night of 1971, the world's first microprocessor was born!" The creation of the microprocessor launched the digital age. The key technology allowing unprecedented integration, and the design of the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, were the achievement of Federico Faggin. Shrinking an entire computer onto a tiny and inexpensive piece of silicon would come to define our daily lives, imbuing myriad devices and everyday objects with computational intelligence. In Silicon, internationally recognized inventor and entrepreneur Federico Faggin chronicles his "four lives" his formative years in war-torn Northern Italy; his pioneering work in American microelectronics; his successful career as a high-tech entrepreneur; and his more recent explorations into the mysteries of consciousness. In this heartfelt memoir, Faggin paints vivid anecdotes, steps readers through society-changing technological breakthroughs, and shares personal insights, as each of his lives propels the next.
Download or read book The New New Thing A Silicon Valley Story written by Michael M. Lewis and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the unlikely story of Silicon Valley through the life of one of its great achievers--Jim Clark, who founded Silicon Graphics and Netscape and may be on the verge of another trillion-dollar company.
Download or read book Silicon Snake Oil written by Clifford Stoll and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1996-03-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll, the best-selling author of The Cuckoo's Egg and one of the pioneers of the Internet, turns his attention to the much-heralded information highway, revealing that it is not all it's cracked up to be. Yes, the Internet provides access to plenty of services, but useful information is virtually impossible to find and difficult to access. Is being on-line truly useful? "Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life. A cautionary tale about today's media darling, Silicon Snake Oil has sparked intense debate across the country about the merits--and foibles--of what's been touted as the entranceway to our future.
Download or read book The Silicon Mage written by Barbara Hambly and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIVComputer programmer Joanna Sheraton must rescue an imprisoned wizard to save the universe from destruction/divDIV /divDIVThere was a time when Joanna Sheraton knew nothing of the Void. She was an ordinary computer programmer, toiling in a cubicle in air-conditioned Southern California comfort, unaware that sinister forces had penetrated her universe. But from across the interdimensional divide, an evil mage had put in motion a scheme for eternal life, by transferring himself into a computer that feeds on Earth’s life force. Called upon to help by the wizard Antryg, Joanna could do nothing more than delay. At the end of her first sojourn across the Void, Antryg was imprisoned and their task seemed hopeless./divDIV /divDIVNow she must depart from Earth once more, to rescue Antryg and save humanity. She is friendless, and the dark mage’s forces hound her every step. But a good hacker is not easily deterred./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Barbara Hambly, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection./divDIV /div /div
Download or read book Troublemakers written by Leslie Berlin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed historian Leslie Berlin’s “deeply researched and dramatic narrative of Silicon Valley’s early years…is a meticulously told…compelling history” (The New York Times) of the men and women who chased innovation, and ended up changing the world. Troublemakers is the gripping tale of seven exceptional men and women, pioneers of Silicon Valley in the 1970s and early 1980s. Together, they worked across generations, industries, and companies to bring technology from Pentagon offices and university laboratories to the rest of us. In doing so, they changed the world. “In this vigorous account…a sturdy, skillfully constructed work” (Kirkus Reviews), historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor, as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, ASK, and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In the space of only seven years, five major industries—personal computing, video games, biotechnology, modern venture capital, and advanced semiconductor logic—were born. “There is much to learn from Berlin’s account, particularly that Silicon Valley has long provided the backdrop where technology, elite education, institutional capital, and entrepreneurship collide with incredible force” (The Christian Science Monitor). Featured among well-known Silicon Valley innovators are Mike Markkula, the underappreciated chairman of Apple who owned one-third of the company; Bob Taylor, who masterminded the personal computer; software entrepreneur Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public; Bob Swanson, the cofounder of Genentech; Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer behind the first successful video game; Fawn Alvarez, who rose from the factory line to the executive suite; and Niels Reimers, the Stanford administrator who changed how university innovations reach the public. Together, these troublemakers rewrote the rules and invented the future.
Download or read book Wise Guy written by Guy Kawasaki and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silicon Valley icon and bestselling author Guy Kawasaki shares the unlikely stories of his life and the lessons we can draw from them. Guy Kawasaki has been a fixture in the tech world since he was part of Apple's original Macintosh team in the 1980s. He's widely respected as a source of wisdom about entrepreneurship, venture capital, marketing, and business evangelism, which he's shared in bestselling books such as The Art of the Start and Enchantment. But before all that, he was just a middle-class kid in Hawaii, a grandson of Japanese immigrants, who loved football and got a C+ in 9th grade English. Wise Guy, his most personal book, is about his surprising journey. It's not a traditional memoir but a series of vignettes. He toyed with calling it Miso Soup for the Soul, because these stories (like those in the Chicken Soup series) reflect a wide range of experiences that have enlightened and inspired him. For instance, you'll follow Guy as he . . . Gets his first real job in the jewelry business--which turned out to be surprisingly useful training for the tech world. Disparages one of Apple's potential partners in front of that company's CEO, at the sneaky instigation of Steve Jobs. Blows up his Apple career with a single sentence, after Jobs withholds a pre-release copy of the Think Different ad campaign: "That's okay, Steve, I don't trust you either." Reevaluates his self-importance after being mistaken for Jackie Chan by four young women. Takes up surfing at age 62--which teaches him that you can discover a new passion at any age, but younger is easier! Guy covers everything from moral values to business skills to parenting. As he writes, "I hope my stories help you live a more joyous, productive, and meaningful life. If Wise Guy succeeds at this, then that's the best story of all."
Download or read book Silicon Follies written by Thomas Scoville and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-08-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to Silicon Valley -- where fortunes are fast, dating's dysfunctional, and computer geeks rule. Meet Paul Armstrong, a late-twenties computer "consultant" who sits in his cubicle at TeraMemory wondering where it all went horribly wrong. "Well, I wasn't always a nerd. I started out as a liberal-arts type in college -- though I aggressively concealed this on my resume. Hiring managers don't like it. Non-technical outside interests. Bad sign." Watch him order a latte from the ofÞce coffee cart and poke at his Chinese lunch special while his longtime pal Steve Hall, hacker extraordinaire, accuses him of selling out to The Man. "When the money dries up, this place will be just like anywhere else. It was never the place, anyway -- that's what The Man will never understand." Meet The Man himself: Barry Dominic, the þamboyant, lecherous, millionaire founder of TeraMemory. He insists they're poised to revolutionize networking with a cutting-edge technology, appropriately called WHIP. "Nobody fucks with Barry Dominic." That's where Liz Toulouse comes in. A Stanford English Lit grad and TeraMemory marketing associate, she accidentally cc's the entire company a snide e-mail about The Man's bad grammar on her very Þrst day.... "If only I'd had any idea. I'd have stayed in school. I'd have changed majors. Gotten a master's. Anything." Welcome to Silicon Follies, a hilarious dot.comedy of ambition and disillusionment in a land of luck, loss, and sometimes even love.
Download or read book Silicon City San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley written by Cary McClelland and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Stanford University Three Books Selection for 2019 “Essential.… A conflicted and complex portrait of a city starving for solutions.” —Brandon Yu, San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco is changing at warp speed. Famously home to artists and activists, and known as the birthplace of the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ movement, the Bay Area has been reshaped by Silicon Valley. The richer the region gets, the more unequal and less diverse it becomes, and cracks in the city’s facade—rapid gentrification, an epidemic of evictions, rising crime, atrophied public institutions—are growing wider. Inspired by Studs Terkel’s classic works of oral history, Cary McClelland spent years interviewing people at the epicenter of recent change, from venture capitalists and coders to politicians and protesters, capturing San Francisco as never before.
Download or read book The Code written by Margaret O'Mara and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of New York Magazine's best books on Silicon Valley! The true, behind-the-scenes history of the people who built Silicon Valley and shaped Big Tech in America Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government--and always had been--and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was. Now, after almost five years of pioneering research, O'Mara has produced the definitive history of Silicon Valley for our time, the story of mavericks and visionaries, but also of powerful institutions creating the framework for innovation, from the Pentagon to Stanford University. It is also a story of a community that started off remarkably homogeneous and tight-knit and stayed that way, and whose belief in its own mythology has deepened into a collective hubris that has led to astonishing triumphs as well as devastating second-order effects. Deploying a wonderfully rich and diverse cast of protagonists, from the justly famous to the unjustly obscure, across four generations of explosive growth in the Valley, from the forties to the present, O'Mara has wrestled one of the most fateful developments in modern American history into magnificent narrative form. She is on the ground with all of the key tech companies, chronicling the evolution in their offerings through each successive era, and she has a profound fingertip feel for the politics of the sector and its relation to the larger cultural narrative about tech as it has evolved over the years. Perhaps most impressive, O'Mara has penetrated the inner kingdom of tech venture capital firms, the insular and still remarkably old-boy world that became the cockpit of American capitalism and the crucible for bringing technological innovation to market, or not. The transformation of big tech into the engine room of the American economy and the nexus of so many of our hopes and dreams--and, increasingly, our nightmares--can be understood, in Margaret O'Mara's masterful hands, as the story of one California valley. As her majestic history makes clear, its fate is the fate of us all.
Download or read book Stealing Fire written by Steven Kotler and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller CNBC and Strategy + Business Best Business Book of the Year It’s the biggest revolution you’ve never heard of, and it’s hiding in plain sight. Over the past decade, Silicon Valley executives like Eric Schmidt and Elon Musk, Special Operators like the Navy SEALs and the Green Berets, and maverick scientists like Sasha Shulgin and Amy Cuddy have turned everything we thought we knew about high performance upside down. Instead of grit, better habits, or 10,000 hours, these trailblazers have found a surprising short cut. They're harnessing rare and controversial states of consciousness to solve critical challenges and outperform the competition. New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler and high performance expert Jamie Wheal spent four years investigating the leading edges of this revolution—from the home of SEAL Team Six to the Googleplex, the Burning Man festival, Richard Branson’s Necker Island, Red Bull’s training center, Nike’s innovation team, and the United Nations’ Headquarters. And what they learned was stunning: In their own ways, with differing languages, techniques, and applications, every one of these groups has been quietly seeking the same thing: the boost in information and inspiration that altered states provide. Today, this revolution is spreading to the mainstream, fueling a trillion dollar underground economy and forcing us to rethink how we can all lead richer, more productive, more satisfying lives. Driven by four accelerating forces—psychology, neurobiology, technology and pharmacology—we are gaining access to and insights about some of the most contested and misunderstood terrain in history. Stealing Fire is a provocative examination of what’s actually possible; a guidebook for anyone who wants to radically upgrade their life.
Download or read book Secrets of Silicon Valley written by Deborah Perry Piscione and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the global economy languishes, one place just keeps growing despite failing banks, uncertain markets, and high unemployment: Silicon Valley. In the last two years, more than 100 incubators have popped up there, and the number of angel investors has skyrocketed. Today, 40 percent of all venture capital investments in the United States come from Silicon Valley firms, compared to 10 percent from New York. In Secrets of Silicon Valley, entrepreneur and media commentator Deborah Perry Piscione takes us inside this vibrant ecosystem where meritocracy rules the day. She explores Silicon Valley's exceptionally risk-tolerant culture, and why it thrives despite the many laws that make California one of the worst states in the union for business. Drawing on interviews with investors, entrepreneurs, and community leaders, as well as a host of case studies from Google to Paypal, Piscione argues that Silicon Valley's unique culture is the best hope for the future of American prosperity and the global business community and offers lessons from the Valley to inspire reform in other communities and industries, from Washington, DC to Wall Street.
