Download or read book The Genesis Machine written by Amy Webb and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A breakthrough investigation of synthetic biology: the promising and controversial technology platform that combines biology and artificial intelligence and has the potential to program biological systems like we program computers. Synthetic biology is the technique that enables us not just to read and edit but also write DNA to program living biological structures as though they were tiny computers. Unlike cloning Dolly the sheep-which cut and copied existing genetic material-the future of synthetic biology might be something like an app store, where you could download and add new capabilities into any cell, microbe, plant, or animal. This breakthrough science has the potential to mitigate, perhaps solve, humanity's immediate and longer-term existential challenges: climate change; the feeding, clothing, housing, and caring for billions of humans; fighting the next viral outbreak before it becomes a global pandemic; old age as a treatable pathology; bringing back extinct animals. It could also be anarchic and socially destructive. With our governing structures created in an era before startling advances in technology, we are not prepared for a future in which life could be manipulated or programmed. As futurist Amy Webb and synthetic biologist Andrew Hessel show in this book, within the next decade, we will need to make important decisions: whether to program novel viruses to fight diseases, what genetic privacy will look like, who will "own" living organisms, how companies should earn revenue from engineered cells, and how to contain a synthetic organism in a lab. The Genesis Machine provides the background for us to understand and grapple with these issues, and think through the religious, philosophical, and ethical implications for the future.
Download or read book The Genesis Machine written by James P. Hogan and published by Baen Books. This book was released on 2003 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defying the political authorities, a physicist joins forces with a fellow maverick scientist. Together they build the machine that makes the theory of unifying all fields and forces possible--a creation that will either save the world or destroy it.
Download or read book Regenesis written by George M Church and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Harvard biologist and master inventor explores how new biotechnologies will enable us to bring species back from the dead, unlock vast supplies of renewable energy, and extend human life. In Regenesis, George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. These technologies-far from the out-of-control nightmare depicted in science fiction-have the power to improve human and animal health, increase our intelligence, enhance our memory, and even extend our life span. A breathtaking look at the potential of this world-changing technology, Regenesis is nothing less than a guide to the future of life.
Download or read book The Big Nine written by Amy Webb and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we -- the everyday people whose data powers AI -- aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into -- one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI -- the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself -- is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.
Download or read book The Signals Are Talking written by Amy Webb and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Fast Company best book of the yearA Washington Post bestsellerWinner of the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award in Business Technology How do you tell a real trend from the merely trendy? How, for example, will a technology--like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things--affect us, our businesses, and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think--and how should we prepare for it now? In The Signals Are Talking, noted futurist Amy Webb shows us how to analyze the "true signals"--those patterns that will coalesce into a trend with the potential to change everything-and land on the right side of disruption. The future, Webb shows, isn't something that happens to us passively. Using a proven, tested methodology, she enables us to see ahead and forecast what's to come--challenging us to create our own preferred futures.
Download or read book Reading Genesis written by Beth Kissileff and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deuteronomy 32:47 says the Pentateuch should not be 'an empty matter.' This new anthology from Beth Kissileff fills Genesis with meaning, gathering intellectuals and thinkers who use their professional knowledge to illuminate the Biblical text. These writers use insights from psychology, law, political science, literature, and other scholarly fields, to create an original constellation of modern Biblical readings, and receptions of Genesis: A scientist of appetite on Eve's eating behavior; law professors on contracts in Genesis, and on collective punishment; an anthropologist on the nature of human strife in the Cain and Abel story; political scientists on the nature of Biblical games, Abraham's resistance, and collective action. The highly distinguished contributors include Alan Dershowitz and Ruth Westheimer, the novelists Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and Dara Horn, critics Ilan Stavans and Sander Gilman, historian Russell Jacoby, poets Alicia Suskin Ostriker and Jacqueline Osherow, and food writer Joan Nathan.
Download or read book American Genesis written by Thomas Parke Hughes and published by Penguin (Non-Classics). This book was released on 1990 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Genesis is the story of America's love affair-and inextricable entaglement-with technology from 1870-1970, the greatest period of productivity the world has ever known.
Download or read book The Infinity Courts written by Akemi Dawn Bowman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes an excerpt from The Genesis War.
Download or read book Gene Machine written by Venki Ramakrishnan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Nobel Prize-winning biologist tells the riveting story of his race to discover the inner workings of biology's most important molecule "Ramakrishnan's writing is so honest, lucid and engaging that I could not put this book down until I had read to the very end." -- Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome -- an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms -- that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases. But this is also a human story of Ramakrishnan's unlikely journey, from his first fumbling experiments in a biology lab to being the dark horse in a fierce competition with some of the world's best scientists. In the end, Gene Machine is a frank insider's account of the pursuit of high-stakes science.
Download or read book Genesis Redux written by Jessica Riskin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since antiquity, philosophers and engineers have tried to take life’s measure by reproducing it. Aiming to reenact Creation, at least in part, these experimenters have hoped to understand the links between body and spirit, matter and mind, mechanism and consciousness. Genesis Redux examines moments from this centuries-long experimental tradition: efforts to simulate life in machinery, to synthesize life out of material parts, and to understand living beings by comparison with inanimate mechanisms. Jessica Riskin collects seventeen essays from distinguished scholars in several fields. These studies offer an unexpected and far-reaching result: attempts to create artificial life have rarely been driven by an impulse to reduce life and mind to machinery. On the contrary, designers of synthetic creatures have generally assumed a role for something nonmechanical. The history of artificial life is thus also a history of theories of soul and intellect. Taking a historical approach to a modern quandary, Genesis Redux is essential reading for historians and philosophers of science and technology, scientists and engineers working in artificial life and intelligence, and anyone engaged in evaluating these world-changing projects.
Download or read book The Genesis Machine written by Amy Webb and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named one of The New Yorker's BEST BOOKS OF 2022 SO FAR The next frontier in technology is inside our own bodies. Synthetic biology will revolutionize how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves. This fast-growing field—which uses computers to modify or rewrite genetic code—has created revolutionary, groundbreaking solutions such as the mRNA COVID vaccines, IVF, and lab-grown hamburger that tastes like the real thing. It gives us options to deal with existential threats: climate change, food insecurity, and access to fuel. But there are significant risks. Who should decide how to engineer living organisms? Whether engineered organisms should be planted, farmed, and released into the wild? Should there be limits to human enhancements? What cyber-biological risks are looming? Could a future biological war, using engineered organisms, cause a mass extinction event? Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel’s riveting examination of synthetic biology and the bioeconomy provide the background for thinking through the upcoming risks and moral dilemmas posed by redesigning life, as well as the vast opportunities waiting for us on the horizon.
Download or read book Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe written by Jorge Cham and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Delightful, funny, and yet rigorous and intelligent: only Jorge and Daniel can reach this exquisite balance." —Carlo Rovelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Helgoland You’ve got questions: about space, time, gravity, and the odds of meeting your older self inside a wormhole. All the answers you need are right here. As a species, we may not agree on much, but one thing brings us all together: a need to know. We all wonder, and deep down we all have the same big questions. Why can’t I travel back in time? Where did the universe come from? What’s inside a black hole? Can I rearrange the particles in my cat and turn it into a dog? Researcher-turned-cartoonist Jorge Cham and physics professor Daniel Whiteson are experts at explaining science in ways we can all understand, in their books and on their popular podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. With their signature blend of humor and oh-now-I-get-it clarity, Jorge and Daniel offer short, accessible, and lighthearted answers to some of the most common, most outrageous, and most profound questions about the universe they’ve received. This witty, entertaining, and fully illustrated book is an essential troubleshooting guide for the perplexing aspects of reality, big and small, from the invisible particles that make up your body to the identical version of you currently reading this exact sentence in the corner of some other galaxy. If the universe came with an FAQ, this would be it.
Download or read book Genesis Alpha written by Rune Michaels and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Josh worships his older brother, Max. They look alike, they talk alike, and they both have the same interests, including their favorite massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Genesis Alpha. But Josh and Max have an even deeper connection. Because Josh was born for a reason. It was Josh's stem cells, harvested when Josh was newly born, that saved his dying older brother's life. Now that same beloved older brother is arrested, accused of the brutal murder of a teenage girl. Josh is bewildered. Is Max really a monster, or is all of this a terrible mistake? And if the worst is true and Max is guilty, does that mean Josh is guilty too? After all, Max wouldn't exist without him. But this is only the beginning. Before long, Josh will come to a number of searing revelations -- revelations that have dire implications not only for Max's future, but for Josh's as well. Rune Michaels explodes onto the teen literature scene with this gripping, chilling debut -- a compelling picture of the intersection where science, family, and morality collide.
Download or read book Digital Genesis written by Christopher Barnatt and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital Genesis charts the evolution of computing and the rise of artificial intelligence. From cloud AI services and autonomous robots, to 3D printers and quantum processors, the book details the latest digital technologies and predicts their future development and implications. Late last century the human race learnt how to enter cyberspace. But in the 2020s the reverse will happen, with computers, robots and AI set to transform the physical world. Soon driverless vehicles will rule our highways, while many products will be manufactured in 'dark factories' by smart machines. Some of tomorrow's most sophisticated technologies may even be organically grown using the latest digital science of synthetic biology. Digital Genesis is written by futurist Christopher Barnatt, who in his 1995 book Cyber Business predicted the arrival of e-business and online social networks. Over 20 years later, he looks ahead to the Cognitive Computing Age, and beyond that to the era of 'cyborg fusion' in which the future of computing will become the future of ourselves.
Download or read book The Incredible Freedom Machines written by Kirli Saunders and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She was small when she heard about them ... the incredible freedom machines. A poetic and visual feast from multi-award-winning creators Kirli Saunders and Matt Ottley.
Download or read book Neo Life written by Jane Metcalfe and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are a lot of smart scientists working on ways to improve our species. Some are working within medical communities, trying to cure cancers and prevent inheritable diseases. Others are working in academic environments, doing research on how to make us smarter, live longer, or be better adapted for space travel. Still others are hacking away in secretive government labs far from the public eye. Right in plain sight are hundreds of community biolabs operating all around the world.Where will all these changes take us? Some may think or hope that the scientific elite in Boston or London will be making hard choices on behalf of the planet. But the future of Homo sapiens will be determined by billions of individuals whose reproductive and medical choices may already be altering our species more than any policy recommendations ever could.What is it we are becoming? Or to get to the heart of this book, what is it that we want Homo sapiens to become? We've been asking smart people wherever we go who are thinking about these topics. Scientists, of course. But also sociologists, anthropologists, bioethicists, visual artists, and Buddhist monks. The result is Neo.Life: 25 Visions for the Future of Our Species.
Download or read book The Genesis Machine written by James Patrick Hogan and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
