Download or read book Inventing Reality written by Michael Parenti and published by . This book was released on 2022-03-09 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study looks at the role of the print and electronic media in defining "respectable" political discourse in the United States. From a critical perpective, Parenti looks at the economics and politics of "presenting" the news and argues that the media systematically distort the news. This manufactured reality deprives the public of necessary information for effective participation in government. This edition has been updated throughout, and there is coverage of the media's treatment of the US invasion of Panama, the war against Iraq and the collapse of communism. Other titles by Michael Parenti include "Democracy for the Few", "Power and the Powerless", "The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race" and "Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment".
Download or read book The History of the Future written by Blake J. Harris and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic, larger-than-life true story behind the founding of Oculus and its quest for virtual reality, by the bestselling author of Console Wars. Drawing on over a hundred interviews with the key players driving this revolution, The History of the Future weaves together a rich, cinematic narrative that captures the breakthroughs, breakdowns and human drama of trying to change the world. The result is a super accessible and supremely entertaining look at the birth of a game-changing new industry. From iconic books like Neuromancer to blockbuster films like The Matrix, virtual reality has long been hailed as the ultimate technology. But outside of a few research labs and military training facilities, this tantalizing vision of the future was nothing but science fiction. Until 2012, when Oculus founder Palmer Luckey—then just a rebellious teenage dreamer living alone in a camper trailer—invents a device that has the potential to change everything. With the help of a videogame legend, a serial entrepreneur and many other colorful characters, Luckey’s scrappy startup kickstarts a revolution and sets out to bring VR to the masses. As with most underdog stories, things don’t quite go according to plan. But what happens next turns out to be the ultimate entrepreneurial journey: a tale of battles won and lost, lessons learned and neverending twists and turns—including an unlikely multi-billion-dollar acquisition by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, which shakes up the landscape in Silicon Valley and gives Oculus the chance to forever change our reality. Drawing on over a hundred interviews with the key players driving this revolution, The History of the Future weaves together a rich, cinematic narrative that captures the breakthroughs, breakdowns and human drama of trying to change the world. The result is a super accessible and supremely entertaining look at the birth of a game-changing new industry.
Download or read book The Invented Part written by Rodrigo Fresan and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sprawling epic about imagination, creation, and reality in the vein of Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow.
Download or read book My Invented Life written by Lauren Bjorkman and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Roz and Eva everything becomes a contest—who can snag the best role in the school play, have the cutest boyfriend, pull off the craziest prank. Still, they're as close as sisters can be. Until Eva deletes Roz from her life like so much junk e-mail for no reason that Roz understands. Now Eva hangs out with the annoyingly petite cheerleaders, and Roz fantasizes about slipping bovine growth hormone into their Gatorade. Roz has a suspicion about Eva. In turn, Eva taunts Roz with a dare, which leads to an act of total insanity. Drama geeks clamor for attention, Shakespearean insults fly, and Roz steals the show in Lauren Bjorkman's hilarious debut novel.
Download or read book The Magic of Reality written by Richard Dawkins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author addresses key scientific questions previously explained by rich mythologies, from the evolution of the first humans and the life cycle of stars to the principles of a rainbow and the origins of the universe.
Download or read book Reality Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy written by David J. Chalmers and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it. Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already. Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers’ mind-bending analysis. Studded with illustrations that bring philosophical issues to life, Reality+ is a major statement that will shape discussion of philosophy, science, and technology for years to come.
Download or read book The Creation of Reality written by Bernhard Poerksen and published by Andrews UK Limited. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Constructivism has been traded as a new paradigm by its advocates, and criticised by its opponents as legitimating deceit and lies, as justifying a trendy post-modern "Anything goes". In this book, Bernhard Poerksen draws up a new rationale for constructivist thinking and charts out directions for the imaginative examination of personal certainties and the certainties of others, of ideologies great and small. The focus of the debate is on the author's thesis that our understanding of journalism and, in particular, the education and training of journalists, would profit substantially from constructivist insights. These insights instigate, the claim is, an original kind of scepticism; they provide the underpinnings of a modern type of didactics oriented by the autonomy of learners; and they supply the sustaining arguments for a radical ethic of responsibility in journalism.
Download or read book Invented Truth written by Josephine Woll and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the "years of stagnation" before glasnost changed the cultural map of the Soviet Union, Iurii Trifonov (1926-1981) defied the rules of censorship. In Invented Truth, Josphine Woll examines how, within the repressive artistic and political constraints of the Soviet publishing world, Trifonov managed not only to write on controversial tropics such as Soviet history but even to achieve and maintain popular status in doing so. Woll analyzes the aesthetic strategies Trifonov deployed to transmit his ideas and opinions to Soviet readers and elucidates the major themes of his late fiction: the moral climate that permitted the triumph of Stalinist immorality, the relationship between the Bolshevik revolutionary past and present-day Soviet amorality, and, finally, art's prismatic interpretation of reality. Drawing on both Western and Soviet scholarship, as well as interviews with many Soviet and emigre writers, literary critics, and personal acquaintances of Trifonov, Woll provides detailed background on the Soviet literary milieu and the rules governing literary production.
Download or read book Our Mathematical Universe written by Max Tegmark and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist. Fascinating from first to last—this is a book that has already prompted the attention and admiration of some of the most prominent scientists and mathematicians.
Download or read book Invent It Sell It Bank It written by Lori Greiner and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2014-03-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From one of the stars of ABC’s Shark Tank and QVC’s Clever & Unique Creations by Lori Greiner comes a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts guide to getting a new product or company off the ground and making it a success. Turn your idea into a reality. Become your own boss. Make your first million. Achieve financial freedom. Lori Greiner shows you how. Invent It, Sell It, Bank It! is a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts guide to getting a new product or company off the ground and making it profitable. Sharing her own secret formula and personal stories along the way, Lori provides vital information and advice on topics that can often intimidate, frustrate, and stump aspiring entrepreneurs. Offering behind-the-scenes insights into her experiences on ABC’s Shark Tank and QVC-TV’s Clever & Unique Creations by Lori Greiner, as well as valuable lessons learned from the mistakes and triumphs of her early career, Lori proves that, with hard work and the right idea, anyone can turn themselves into the next overnight success. Lori covers such topic as . . . • Market research: Is your idea a hero or a zero? Don’t be so fixated on the end result that you forget to make something that people actually want to buy. • Product design: I have an idea, now what’s next? From concept to prototype to final product: How do I make it and where do I start? • Funding: Although loans, investments, and crowd-sourcing are great ways to access cash, first tap into your own resources as wisely as possible. • Manufacturing: Seeing your final product roll off the assembly line is a magical moment, but there are things to watch out for so you get there in a cost-effective way. • Protecting your idea: To patent or not to patent, and other things you can do to safeguard your idea. • The secrets to selling successfully: You got the product made, now learn how to get people to buy it!
Download or read book The Crayon Man written by Natascha Biebow and published by Clarion Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating the inventor of the Crayola crayon This gloriously illustrated picture book biography tells the inspiring story of Edwin Binney, the inventor of one of the world's most beloved toys. A perfect fit among favorites like The Day the Crayons Quit and Balloons Over Broadway. purple mountains' majesty, mauvelous, jungle green, razzmatazz... What child doesn't love to hold a crayon in their hands? But children didn't always have such magical boxes of crayons. Before Edwin Binney set out to change things, children couldn't really even draw in color. Here's the true story of an inventor who so loved nature's vibrant colors that he found a way to bring the outside world to children - in a bright green box for only a nickel With experimentation, and a special knack for listening, Edwin Binney and his dynamic team at Crayola created one of the world's most enduring, best-loved childhood toys - empowering children to dream in COLOR
Download or read book The Road to Reality written by Roger Penrose and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-06-09 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **WINNER OF THE 2020 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS** The Road to Reality is the most important and ambitious work of science for a generation. It provides nothing less than a comprehensive account of the physical universe and the essentials of its underlying mathematical theory. It assumes no particular specialist knowledge on the part of the reader, so that, for example, the early chapters give us the vital mathematical background to the physical theories explored later in the book. Roger Penrose's purpose is to describe as clearly as possible our present understanding of the universe and to convey a feeling for its deep beauty and philosophical implications, as well as its intricate logical interconnections. The Road to Reality is rarely less than challenging, but the book is leavened by vivid descriptive passages, as well as hundreds of hand-drawn diagrams. In a single work of colossal scope one of the world's greatest scientists has given us a complete and unrivalled guide to the glories of the universe that we all inhabit. 'Roger Penrose is the most important physicist to work in relativity theory except for Einstein. He is one of the very few people I've met in my life who, without reservation, I call a genius' Lee Smolin
Download or read book Inventing the Future written by Nick Srnicek and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major new manifesto offers a “clear and compelling vision of a postcapitalist society” and shows how left-wing politics can be rebuilt for the 21st century (Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism) Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite. Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms. This new edition includes a new chapter where they respond to their various critics.
Download or read book Reality Is Broken written by Jane McGonigal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “McGonigal is a clear, methodical writer, and her ideas are well argued. Assertions are backed by countless psychological studies.” —The Boston Globe “Powerful and provocative . . . McGonigal makes a persuasive case that games have a lot to teach us about how to make our lives, and the world, better.” —San Jose Mercury News “Jane McGonigal's insights have the elegant, compact, deadly simplicity of plutonium, and the same explosive force.” —Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother A visionary game designer reveals how we can harness the power of games to boost global happiness. With 174 million gamers in the United States alone, we now live in a world where every generation will be a gamer generation. But why, Jane McGonigal asks, should games be used for escapist entertainment alone? In this groundbreaking book, she shows how we can leverage the power of games to fix what is wrong with the real world-from social problems like depression and obesity to global issues like poverty and climate change-and introduces us to cutting-edge games that are already changing the business, education, and nonprofit worlds. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, Reality Is Broken shows that the future will belong to those who can understand, design, and play games. Jane McGonigal is also the author of SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient.
Download or read book The Production of Reality written by Jodi O′Brien and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This popular text/reader for the social psychology courses in sociology departments is distinguished by the author′s engaging framing essays that open each part, and an eclectic set of edited readings that introduce students to major thinkers and perspectives in this field. Through the combination of essays and original works, the book demonstrates how we make and remake our social worlds through our everyday interactions with one another. The Seventh Edition features 10 new readings from the contemporary social psychology literature, a streamlined organization, and the option of either e-book or print versions.
Download or read book We Built Reality written by Jason Blakely and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last fifty years, pseudoscience has crept into nearly every facet of our lives. Popular sciences of everything from dating and economics, to voting and artificial intelligence, radically changed the world today. The abuse of popular scientific authority has catastrophic consequences, contributing to the 2008 financial crisis; the failure to predict the rise of Donald Trump; increased tensions between poor communities and the police; and the sidelining of nonscientific forms of knowledge and wisdom. In We Built Reality, Jason Blakely explains how recent social science theories have not simply described political realities but also helped create them. But he also offers readers a way out of the culture of scientism: hermeneutics, or the art of interpretation. Hermeneutics urges sensitivity to the historical and cultural contexts of human behavior. It gives ordinary people a way to appreciate the insights of the humanities in guiding decisions. As Blakely contends, we need insights from the humanities to see how social science theories never simply neutrally describe reality, they also help build it.
Download or read book The Greatest Invention written by Silvia Ferrara and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exhilarating celebration of human ingenuity and perseverance—published all around the world—a trailblazing Italian scholar sifts through our cultural and social behavior in search of the origins of our greatest invention: writing. The L where a tabletop meets the legs, the T between double doors, the D of an armchair’s oval backrest—all around us is an alphabet in things. But how did these shapes make it onto the page, never mind form complex structures such as this sentence? In The Greatest Invention, Silvia Ferrara takes a profound look at how—and how many times—human beings have managed to produce the miracle of written language, traveling back and forth in time and all across the globe to Mesopotamia, Crete, China, Egypt, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond. With Ferrara as our guide, we examine the enigmas of undeciphered scripts, including famous cases like the Phaistos Disk and the Voynich Manuscript; we touch the knotted, colored strings of the Inca quipu; we study the turtle shells and ox scapulae that bear the earliest Chinese inscriptions; we watch in awe as Sequoyah single-handedly invents a script for the Cherokee language; and we venture to the cutting edge of decipherment, in which high-powered laser scanners bring tears to an engineer’s eye. A code-cracking tour around the globe, The Greatest Invention chronicles a previously uncharted journey, one filled with past flashes of brilliance, present-day scientific research, and a faint, fleeting glimpse of writing’s future.