Download or read book You Are Not a Gadget written by Jaron Lanier and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-01-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NATIONAL BESTSELLER A programmer, musician, and father of virtual reality technology, Jaron Lanier was a pioneer in digital media, and among the first to predict the revolutionary changes it would bring to our commerce and culture. Now, with the Web influencing virtually every aspect of our lives, he offers this provocative critique of how digital design is shaping society, for better and for worse. Informed by Lanier’s experience and expertise as a computer scientist, You Are Not a Gadget discusses the technical and cultural problems that have unwittingly risen from programming choices—such as the nature of user identity—that were “locked-in” at the birth of digital media and considers what a future based on current design philosophies will bring. With the proliferation of social networks, cloud-based data storage systems, and Web 2.0 designs that elevate the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and wisdom of individuals, his message has never been more urgent.
Download or read book Dawn of the New Everything written by Jaron Lanier and published by Henry Holt & Company. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The guru of virtual reality looks back at the unique experiences that formed his vision for the future of technology With a singular voice and perspective, Lanier who The New York Times calls "daringly original . . . a major wizard in the futurist circus. He is the father of virtual reality in the gaudy, reputation-burnishing way that Michael Jackson was the king of pop" considers the future of virtual technology in a book that blends memoir with ideas. He tells the wild story of his own relationship with technology by starting from the beginning. The son of Jewish immigrants and concentration camp survivors, raised in the UFO territory of New Mexico, he lost his mother at a young age and built a geodesic dome with his father in the desert. He worked as a goatherd and midwife, attended college before graduating high school, transferred to and failed out of a tony northeast liberal arts college, played music for money on the streets of New York, and eventually landed in Silicon Valley at the dawn of the first tech boom where he suddenly became rich. This crazy course to becoming a world renowned technology guru informs Lanier's optimism about virtual reality--the technology he has been immersed in from its very start. While he has been very critical of social media and other manifestations of technology, he believes that virtual reality can actually make our lives richer and fuller.Dawn of the New Everything is ultimately a look at what it means to be human in the dawn of unprecedented technological possibility.
Download or read book What Technology Wants written by Kevin Kelly and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Inevitable— a sweeping vision of technology as a living force that can expand our individual potential In this provocative book, one of today's most respected thinkers turns the conversation about technology on its head by viewing technology as a natural system, an extension of biological evolution. By mapping the behavior of life, we paradoxically get a glimpse at where technology is headed-or "what it wants." Kevin Kelly offers a dozen trajectories in the coming decades for this near-living system. And as we align ourselves with technology's agenda, we can capture its colossal potential. This visionary and optimistic book explores how technology gives our lives greater meaning and is a must-read for anyone curious about the future.
Download or read book Who Owns the Future written by Jaron Lanier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evaluates the negative impact of digital network technologies on the economy and particularly the middle class, citing challenges to employment and personal wealth while exploring the potential of a new information economy.
Download or read book When Gadgets Betray Us written by Robert Vamosi and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the important issues that are often overlooked in the race to find the best, fastest, and most cutting-edge technological wonders.
Download or read book The Awesome Impossible Unstoppable Gadget written by Kevin Kelly and published by Imprint. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Awesome, Impossible, Unstoppable Gadget is an inspiring picture book from Kevin Kelly and Rebecca Kelly about incredible inventions going haywire illustrates that with persistence, anyone can be awesome, impossible, and unstoppable. Trixie O’Toole is super-excited to be at Camp Create, where she can invent whatever she likes. But when a boy nicknamed “Professor” von Junk gets all the attention, Trixie feels left out. Still, she persists in following her own inspiration. When von Junk’s Invention Inventor goes out of control, everyone is horrified. Is Trixie’s own invention sufficiently awesome, impossible, and unstoppable to save the day? Trixie’s triumph will inspire future inventors and mad scientists to believe in themselves, and show that all good ideas deserve a chance. An Imprint Book “Bold animation-style illustrations bring Camp C.R.E.A.T.E. and its Gadgets Galore Competition to life ... An action-packed story.” —Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now written by Jaron Lanier and published by Henry Holt. This book was released on 2018-05-29 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "You might have trouble imagining life without your social media accounts, but virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier insists that we're better off without them. In Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, Lanier, who participates in no social media, offers powerful and personal reasons for all of us to leave these dangerous online platforms"--
Download or read book Gadget written by Nicolas Freeling and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an Edgar award winner, this thriller about a physicist forced to make an A-bomb is “a splendid account of the excesses of science and bureaucracy” (The New York Times). An American physicist working in Hamburg, Jim Hawkins is on his way home from his job at a German nuclear institute when he is rammed off the road and abducted by terrorists. Drugged and taken to a secret location, he wakes to find himself being held hostage alongside his terrified wife and daughters. With nothing else to do but comply with the terrorists’ demands, Jim begins to build a weapon powerful enough to destroy the world. The target: a conference in Lake Geneva, where heads of state are meeting, even as news of his abduction has reached the ears of the American president, only to be dismissed as rumor. Will anyone be able to convince the world leaders of the threat in time? “Freeling moves from straight suspense to a science thriller and keeps his kinkiness intact. . . . Brilliant.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Download or read book Gadget Nation written by Steve Greenberg and published by Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether you're a would-be entrepreneur, a hard-core geek, or just a gadget lover, it is hard to imagine a bigger thrill than inventing something and sharing your creation with the world--and maybe even making a profit somewhere along the way. Gadget Nation celebrates that spirit through the irresistible, often quirky stories of more than 100 amateur inventors and their gizmos, from lighted slippers to an alarm clock that rolls away from you when you reach for the snooze button.
Download or read book The Gadget written by Paul Zindel and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 2003-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Army ambulance sped by. No siren, only a dome on its roof flashing red. It halted in front of the high-security Tech Area, where several men wearing silver coveralls and carrying glistening instruments rushed out. Dr. Orr and Oppenheimer walked quickly toward a rolling gurney that held a man half wrapped in an aluminum body bag. The man was shaking. Something bad had happened. Very bad. For a moment Stephen believed he was back in London. He was on the roof again, and there were bombs falling... Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book This Book Isn t Safe written by Colin Furze and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Colin Furze, five-time Guinness World Record Holder and YouTube's undisputed king of crazy inventions, instructs fans and curious young inventors on how to build ten brand new wacky inventions at home with an affordable tool kit. Colin Furze's bonkers and brilliant inventions such as a homemade hoverbike, DIY Wolverine Claws, an alarm clock ejector bed, and Hoover shoes have earned him 4.5 million YouTube subscribers and more than 450 million video views. Now Colin is on a mission to inspire a new generation of budding inventors with This Book Isn't Safe! This Book Isn't Safe contains instructions on how to make ten brand new inventions with a basic at-home toolkit, alongside behind-the-scenes stories about some of Colin's greatest inventions and top secret tips and tricks straight from his invention bunker (aka a shed in his backyard in Stamford Lincolnshire).
Download or read book Hello Avatar written by B. Coleman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of our many modes of online identity and how we live on the continuum between the virtual and the real. Hello Avatar! Or, {llSay(0, "Hello, Avatar!"); is a tiny piece of user-friendly code that allows us to program our virtual selves. In Hello Avatar, B. Coleman examines a crucial aspect of our cultural shift from analog to digital: the continuum between online and off-, what she calls the “x-reality” that crosses between the virtual and the real. She looks at the emergence of a world that is neither virtual nor real but encompasses a multiplicity of network combinations. And she argues that it is the role of the avatar to help us express our new agency—our new power to customize our networked life. By avatar, Coleman means not just the animated figures that populate our screens but the gestalt of images, text, and multimedia that make up our online identities—in virtual worlds like Second Life and in the form of email, video chat, and other digital artifacts. Exploring such network activities as embodiment, extreme (virtual) violence, and the work in virtual reality labs, and offering sidebar interviews with designers and practitioners, she argues that what is new is real-time collaboration and copresence, the way we make connections using networked media and the cultures we have created around this. The star of this drama of expanded horizons is the networked subject—all of us who represent aspects of ourselves and our work across the mediascape.
Download or read book Cognitive Gadgets written by Cecilia Heyes and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did human minds become so different from those of other animals? What accounts for our capacity to understand the way the physical world works, to think ourselves into the minds of others, to gossip, read, tell stories about the past, and imagine the future? These questions are not new: they have been debated by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionists, and neurobiologists over the course of centuries. One explanation widely accepted today is that humans have special cognitive instincts. Unlike other living animal species, we are born with complicated mechanisms for reasoning about causation, reading the minds of others, copying behaviors, and using language. Cecilia Heyes agrees that adult humans have impressive pieces of cognitive equipment. In her framing, however, these cognitive gadgets are not instincts programmed in the genes but are constructed in the course of childhood through social interaction. Cognitive gadgets are products of cultural evolution, rather than genetic evolution. At birth, the minds of human babies are only subtly different from the minds of newborn chimpanzees. We are friendlier, our attention is drawn to different things, and we have a capacity to learn and remember that outstrips the abilities of newborn chimpanzees. Yet when these subtle differences are exposed to culture-soaked human environments, they have enormous effects. They enable us to upload distinctively human ways of thinking from the social world around us. As Cognitive Gadgets makes clear, from birth our malleable human minds can learn through culture not only what to think but how to think it.
Download or read book The Digital Diet written by Daniel Sieberg and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2011-05-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all know someone who needs a digital diet. Technology has overwhelmed our daily lives to the point of constant distraction. Many of us can no longer focus on a single task or face-to-face conversation without wanting to reach out—or retreat—to the virtual world every few minutes. Science and technology reporter and recovering digital addict Daniel Sieberg has devised a foolproof 4-step plan to help you regain control, focus, and true connection in your life. Step 1//Re: Think: Consider how technology has overwhelmed our society and the effect it’s had on your physical, mental, and emotional health. Step 2//Re: Boot: Take stock of your digital intake using Sieberg’s Virtual Weight Index and step back from the device. Step 3//Re: Connect: Focus on restoring the relationships that have been harmed by the technology in your life. Step 4//Re: Vitalize: Learn how to live with technology—the healthy way, by optimizing your time spent e-mailing, texting, on Facebook, and web surfing. This program will enable families to communicate better, employees to be more productive, and friends to stay in touch. Sieberg teaches us how to manage and use the technology in our lives to our advantage, without letting it control us.
Download or read book Mind is your Business and Body the Greatest Gadget 2 Books in 1 written by Sadhguru and published by Jaico Publishing House. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mind is your Business For most people, the mind seems to be an unruly cacophony, attempting to grasp and shape everything which falls in its purview. In mind is your business, Sadhguru explains that only if we make it “our business” to transform this uncoordinated mess into a well – coordinated symphony, will we able to use the mind, rather than be used by it. Body the Greatest Gadget BODY, THE GREATEST GADGET, is an introduction to the most sophisticated and incredible device on the planet. In the course of this book, Sadhguru explores the yogic physiology and the many subtle dimensions of the body. It is a first step on an intriguing and exciting journey that culminates in total mastery of the system, allowing us to stay rooted in the physical, and yet taste the beyond. Above all, the book is a glimpse of a possibility to live and function in a way that most human beings would consider superhuman. Sadhguru is a yogi and profound mystic of our times. An absolute clarity of perception places him in a unique space in not only matters spiritual but in business, environmental and international affairs, and opens a new door on all that he touches.
Download or read book The Gadget Show the Big Book of Cool Stuff written by and published by . This book was released on 2021-10 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perfect gift for anyone interested in tech and gadgetry, this book provides fans of the long-running TV show with an insight into the minds of Craig Charles and the team, while offering tech-heads young and old the lowdown on the coolest gear and gizmos out there - and what to look out for in the not-too-distant future.
Download or read book Muse Sick written by Ian Brennan and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grammy-winning music producer, Ian Brennan’s seventh book, Muse-Sick: a music manifesto in fifty-nine notes, acts as a primer on how mass production and commercialization have corrupted the arts. Broken down into a series of core points and actions plans, Muse-Sick is a concise and affordable pocket primer follow-up to Brennan’s two previous music missives, How Music Dies (or Lives): Field Recording and the Battle for Democracy in the arts and Silenced by Sound: The Music Meritocracy Myth. Popular culture has woven itself into the social fabric of our lives, penetrating people’s homes and haunting their psyche through images and earworm hooks. Justice, at most levels, is something that the average citizen might have little influence upon leaving us feeling helpless and complacent. But pop music is a neglected arena where some change can concretely occur—by exercising active and thoughtful choices to reject the low-hanging, omnipresent commercialized and pre-packaged fruit, we begin to re-balance the world, one engaged listener at a time. In fifty-nine concise and clear points, Brennan reveals how corporate media has constricted local culture and individual creativity, leading to a lack of diversity within “diversity.” Muse-Sick’s narrative portions are driven and made corporeal via the author’s ongoing field-recording chronicles with widely disparate groups, such as the Sheltered Workshop Singers. Marilena Umuhoza Delli’s striking photographs accompany and bring to life each tale. As John Waters says: “I didn’t think it was possible to write a shocking book about music anymore. But Brennan has.”
