Download or read book The Reality Game written by Samuel Woolley and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fake news posts and Twitter trolls were just the beginning. What will happen when misinformation moves from our social media feeds into our everyday lives? Online disinformation stormed our political process in 2016 and has only worsened since. Yet as Samuel Woolley shows in this urgent book, it may pale in comparison to what's to come: humanlike automated voice systems, machine learning, "deepfake" AI-edited videos and images, interactive memes, virtual reality, and more. These technologies have the power not just to manipulate our politics, but to make us doubt our eyes and ears and even feelings. Deeply researched and compellingly written, The Reality Game describes the profound impact these technologies will have on our lives. Each new invention built without regard for its consequences edges us further into this digital dystopia. Yet Woolley does not despair. Instead, he argues pointedly for a new culture of innovation, one built around accountability and especially transparency. With social media dragging us into a never-ending culture war, we must learn to stop fighting and instead prevent future manipulation. This book shows how we can use our new tools not to control people but to empower them.

Download or read book The Exhibitionist written by Charlotte Mendelson and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2023-07-04 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE TIMES (UK) NOVEL OF THE YEAR Named A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Sunday Times (UK) Charlotte Mendelson's The Exhibitionist is a "furiously funny" novel (Sunday Express, UK) about a marriage between two artists, Lucia and Ray, which begins to unravel over the course of one weekend. Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art–the first in many decades–and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good. His three children will be there: eldest daughter Leah, always her father’s biggest champion; son Patrick, who has finally decided to strike out on his own; and daughter Jess, the youngest, who has her own momentous decision to make. And what of Lucia, Ray’s steadfast and selfless wife? She is an artist, too, but has always had to put her roles as wife and mother first. What will happen if she decides to change? For Lucia is hiding secrets of her own, and as the weekend unfolds and the exhibition approaches, she must finally make a choice about which desires to follow. The Exhibitionist is the latest, extraordinary novel from Charlotte Mendelson, a dazzling exploration of art, sacrifice, toxic family politics, queer desire, and personal freedom.

Download or read book The Cyber Effect written by Mary Aiken and published by Spiegel & Grau. This book was released on 2016 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From one of the world's leading experts in cyberpsychology--a discipline that combines psychology, forensics, and technology--comes a groundbreaking exploration of the impact of technology on human behavior. In the first book of its kind, Mary Aiken applies her expertise in cyber-behavioral analysis to a range of subjects, including criminal activity on the Deep Web and Darknet; deviant behavior; Internet addictions; the impact of technology on the developing child; teenagers and the Web; cyber-romance and cyber-friendships; cyberchondria; the future of artificial intelligence; and the positive effects on our digital selves, such as online altruism"--

Download or read book Google Leaks written by Zach Vorhies and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Story of Big Tech Censorship and Bias and the Fight to Save Our Country The madness of Google's attempt to mold our reality into a version dictated by their corporate values has never been portrayed better than in this chilling account by Google whistleblower, Zach Vorhies. As a senior engineer at Zach watched in horror from the inside as the 2016 election of Donald Trump drove Google into a frenzy of censorship and political manipulation. The American ideal of an honest, hard-fought battle of ideas—when the contest is over, shaking hands and working together to solve problems—was replaced by a different, darker ethic alien to this country's history as wave after of censorship destroyed free speech and entire market sectors. Working with New York Times bestselling author Kent Heckenlively (Plague of Corruption), Vorhies and Heckenlively weave a tale of a tech industry once beloved by its central figure for its innovation and original thinking, turned into a terrifying “woke-church” of censorship and political intolerance. For Zach, an intuitive counter-thinker, brought up on the dystopian futures of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Ray Bradbury, it was clear that Google was attempting nothing less than a seamless rewriting of the operating code of reality in which many would not be allowed to participate. Using Google's own internal search engine, Zach discovered their real "AI-Censorship" system called “Machine Learning Fairness,” which he claims is a merging of critical race theory and AI that was secretly released on their users of search, news and YouTube. He collected and released 950 pages of these documents to the Department of Justice and to the public in the summer of 2019 through Project Veritas with James O'Keefe, which quickly became their most popular whistleblower story, which started a trend of big whistleblowing. From Google re-writing their news algorithms to target Trump to using human tragedy emergencies to inject permanent blacklists, Zach and Kent provide a “you are there” perspective on how Google turned to the dark side to seize power. They finish by laying out a solution to fight censorship. Read this book if you care to know how Google tries to manipulate, censor, and downrank the voice of its users.

Download or read book System1 written by John Kearon and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Human beings make decisions in two ways. One is slow, deliberate and calculating. The other is fast, instinctive and emotional. And the fast one is in the driving seat. Psychologists call it System 1. This book shows how businesses can achieve profitable growth by devising their marketing for System 1 decision-making. It reveals how designing for System 1 can unlock success across innovation, advertising, brand building and shopper marketing. It brings together years of work on how people buy, and how to get them buying you."--

Download or read book Mama s Last Hug Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves written by Frans de Waal and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller and winner of the PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award "Game-changing." —Sy Montgomery, New York Times Book Review Mama’s Last Hug is a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals, beginning with Mama, a chimpanzee matriarch who formed a deep bond with biologist Jan van Hooff. Her story and others like it—from dogs “adopting” the injuries of their companions, to rats helping fellow rats in distress, to elephants revisiting the bones of their loved ones—show that humans are not the only species with the capacity for love, hate, fear, shame, guilt, joy, disgust, and empathy. Frans de Waal opens our hearts and minds to the many ways in which humans and other animals are connected.

Download or read book The Simplicity Principle written by Julia Hobsbawm and published by Kogan Page. This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn how to develop a clear and calm way to be more creative, gain greater focus and reclaim productivity.

Download or read book Masala Lab written by Krish Ashok and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever wondered why your grandmother threw a teabag into the pressure cooker while boiling chickpeas, or why she measured using the knuckle of her index finger? Why does a counter-intuitive pinch of salt make your kheer more intensely flavourful? What is the Maillard reaction and what does it have to do with fenugreek? What does your high-school chemistry knowledge, or what you remember of it, have to do with perfectly browning your onions? Masala Lab by Krish Ashok is a science nerd's exploration of Indian cooking with the ultimate aim of making the reader a better cook and turning the kitchen into a joyful, creative playground for culinary experimentation. Just like memorizing an equation might have helped you pass an exam but not become a chemist, following a recipe without knowing its rationale can be a sub-optimal way of learning how to cook. Exhaustively tested and researched, and with a curious and engaging approach to food, Krish Ashok puts together the one book the Indian kitchen definitely needs, proving along the way that your grandmother was right all along.

Download or read book Data Science for Business written by Foster Provost and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2013-07-27 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by renowned data science experts Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett, Data Science for Business introduces the fundamental principles of data science, and walks you through the "data-analytic thinking" necessary for extracting useful knowledge and business value from the data you collect. This guide also helps you understand the many data-mining techniques in use today. Based on an MBA course Provost has taught at New York University over the past ten years, Data Science for Business provides examples of real-world business problems to illustrate these principles. You’ll not only learn how to improve communication between business stakeholders and data scientists, but also how participate intelligently in your company’s data science projects. You’ll also discover how to think data-analytically, and fully appreciate how data science methods can support business decision-making. Understand how data science fits in your organization—and how you can use it for competitive advantage Treat data as a business asset that requires careful investment if you’re to gain real value Approach business problems data-analytically, using the data-mining process to gather good data in the most appropriate way Learn general concepts for actually extracting knowledge from data Apply data science principles when interviewing data science job candidates

Download or read book Summary of Seth Stephens Davidowitz s Everybody Lies by Milkyway Media written by Milkyway Media and published by Milkyway Media. This book was released on 2018-08-31 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (2017) is a study of human behavior and psychology that uses internet search data as its source material. Unlike other work in the social sciences, which has had to rely on self-reporting or surveys, Everybody Lies primarily draws its conclusions from a far more honest and reliable source: Google search data… Purchase this in-depth summary to learn more.

Download or read book Why We re Wrong About Nearly Everything written by Bobby Duffy and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading social researcher explains why humans so consistently misunderstand the outside world How often are women harassed? What percentage of the population are immigrants? How bad is unemployment? These questions are important, but most of us get the answers wrong. Research shows that people often wildly misunderstand the state of the world, regardless of age, sex, or education. And though the internet brings us unprecedented access to information, there's little evidence we're any better informed because of it. We may blame cognitive bias or fake news, but neither tells the complete story. In Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything, Bobby Duffy draws on his research into public perception across more than forty countries, offering a sweeping account of the stubborn problem of human delusion: how society breeds it, why it will never go away, and what our misperceptions say about what we really believe. We won't always know the facts, but they still matter. Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything is mandatory reading for anyone interested making humankind a little bit smarter.

Download or read book The Parent Trap written by Nate G. Hilger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How parents have been set up to fail, and why helping them succeed is the key to achieving a fair and prosperous society. Few people realize that raising children is the single largest industry in the United States. Yet this vital work receives little political support, and its primary workers—parents—labor in isolation. If they ask for help, they are made to feel inadequate; there is no centralized organization to represent their interests; and there is virtually nothing spent on research and development to help them achieve their goals. It’s almost as if parents are set up to fail—and the result is lost opportunities that limit children’s success and make us all worse off. In The Parent Trap, Nate Hilger combines cutting-edge social science research, revealing historical case studies, and on-the-ground investigation to recast parenting as the hidden crucible of inequality. Parents are expected not only to care for their children but to help them develop the skills they will need to thrive in today’s socioeconomic reality—but most parents, including even the most caring parents on the planet, are not trained in skill development and lack the resources to get help. How do we fix this? The solution, Hilger argues, is to ask less of parents, not more. America should consider child development a public investment with a monumental payoff. We need a program like Medicare—call it Familycare—to drive this investment. To make it happen, parents need to organize to wield their political power on behalf of children—who will always be the largest bloc of disenfranchised people in this country. The Parent Trap exposes the true costs of our society’s unrealistic expectations around parenting and lays out a profoundly hopeful blueprint for reform.

Download or read book Dataclysm written by Christian Rudder and published by Crown. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller An audacious, irreverent investigation of human behavior—and a first look at a revolution in the making Our personal data has been used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us stuff we don’t need. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder uses it to show us who we truly are. For centuries, we’ve relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Today, a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers, and without filters. Data scientists have become the new demographers. In this daring and original book, Rudder explains how Facebook "likes" can predict, with surprising accuracy, a person’s sexual orientation and even intelligence; how attractive women receive exponentially more interview requests; and why you must have haters to be hot. He charts the rise and fall of America’s most reviled word through Google Search and examines the new dynamics of collaborative rage on Twitter. He shows how people express themselves, both privately and publicly. What is the least Asian thing you can say? Do people bathe more in Vermont or New Jersey? What do black women think about Simon & Garfunkel? (Hint: they don’t think about Simon & Garfunkel.) Rudder also traces human migration over time, showing how groups of people move from certain small towns to the same big cities across the globe. And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy in a world where these explorations are possible. Visually arresting and full of wit and insight, Dataclysm is a new way of seeing ourselves—a brilliant alchemy, in which math is made human and numbers become the narrative of our time.

Download or read book Why Trust Matters written by Benjamin Ho and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have economists neglected trust? The economy is fundamentally a network of relationships built on mutual expectations. More than that, trust is the glue that holds civilization together. Every time we interact with another person—to make a purchase, work on a project, or share a living space—we rely on trust. Institutions and relationships function because people place confidence in them. Retailers seek to become trusted brands; employers put their trust in their employees; and democracy works only when we trust our government. Benjamin Ho reveals the surprising importance of trust to how we understand our day-to-day economic lives. Starting with the earliest societies and proceeding through the evolution of the modern economy, he explores its role across an astonishing range of institutions and practices. From contracts and banking to blockchain and the sharing economy to health care and climate change, Ho shows how trust shapes the workings of the world. He provides an accessible account of how economists have applied the mathematical tools of game theory and the experimental methods of behavioral economics to bring rigor to understanding trust. Bringing together insights from decades of research in an approachable format, Why Trust Matters shows how a concept that we rarely associate with the discipline of economics is central to the social systems that govern our lives.

Download or read book Black Ops Advertising written by Mara Einstein and published by OR Books. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Facebook to Talking Points Memo to the New York Times, often what looks like fact-based journalism is not. It’s advertising. Not only are ads indistinguishable from reporting, the Internet we rely on for news, opinions and even impartial sales content is now the ultimate corporate tool. Reader beware: content without a corporate sponsor lurking behind it is rare indeed. Black Ops Advertising dissects this rapid rise of “sponsored content,” a strategy whereby advertisers have become publishers and publishers create advertising—all under the guise of unbiased information. Covert selling, mostly in the form of native advertising and content marketing, has so blurred the lines between editorial content and marketing message that it is next to impossible to tell real news from paid endorsements. In the 21st century, instead of telling us to buy, buy, BUY, marketers “engage” with us so that we share, share, SHARE—the ultimate subtle sell. Why should this concern us? Because personal data, personal relationships, and our very identities are being repackaged in pursuit of corporate profits. Because tracking and manipulation of data make “likes” and tweets and followers the currency of importance, rather than scientific achievement or artistic talent or information the electorate needs to fully function in a democracy. And because we are being manipulated to spend time with technology, to interact with “friends,” to always be on, even when it is to our physical and mental detriment.

Download or read book Possessed written by Bruce Hood and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ownership is on most people's lips these days, or at least the lack of ownership. Everywhere people seem to be fighting over what is theirs. They want to take back their property, their lands, their liberty, their bodies, their identity, and their right to do what they want. These demands arequite remarkable when you consider that ownership is not an observable property but rather an abstract concept. And yet this abstract concept controls just about everything we do, and rarely do we stop to consider how it rules our lives. Ownership even explains the anger and political turmoil thatis currently sweeping over Western democracies: people feel they have had something taken away, something they used to own in the past and want back.Possessed is the first accessible book to consider the psychological origins and future of ownership in a rapidly changing world. It reveals how we are compelled to accumulate possessions in a relentless drive to seek status and approval by signalling our values to others by what we own. It tracesthe history of ownership but looks to the future as our drive to own will need to adapt to environmental and technological change.

Download or read book The Signal and the Noise written by Nate Silver and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-27 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the more momentous books of the decade." —The New York Times Book Review Nate Silver built an innovative system for predicting baseball performance, predicted the 2008 election within a hair’s breadth, and became a national sensation as a blogger—all by the time he was thirty. He solidified his standing as the nation's foremost political forecaster with his near perfect prediction of the 2012 election. Silver is the founder and editor in chief of the website FiveThirtyEight. Drawing on his own groundbreaking work, Silver examines the world of prediction, investigating how we can distinguish a true signal from a universe of noisy data. Most predictions fail, often at great cost to society, because most of us have a poor understanding of probability and uncertainty. Both experts and laypeople mistake more confident predictions for more accurate ones. But overconfidence is often the reason for failure. If our appreciation of uncertainty improves, our predictions can get better too. This is the “prediction paradox”: The more humility we have about our ability to make predictions, the more successful we can be in planning for the future. In keeping with his own aim to seek truth from data, Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball to global pandemics, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA. He explains and evaluates how these forecasters think and what bonds they share. What lies behind their success? Are they good—or just lucky? What patterns have they unraveled? And are their forecasts really right? He explores unanticipated commonalities and exposes unexpected juxtapositions. And sometimes, it is not so much how good a prediction is in an absolute sense that matters but how good it is relative to the competition. In other cases, prediction is still a very rudimentary—and dangerous—science. Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth. Because of their appreciation of probability, they can distinguish the signal from the noise. With everything from the health of the global economy to our ability to fight terrorism dependent on the quality of our predictions, Nate Silver’s insights are an essential read.