Download or read book The Power of the Machine written by Alf Hornborg and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2001-10-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine—'industrial technomass'—as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at the Lund University, Sweden web site.
Download or read book The Power of the Machine written by Alf Hornborg and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2001 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hornborg argues that we are caught in a collective illusion about the nature of modern technology that prevents us from imagining solutions to our economic and environmental crises other than technocratic fixes. He demonstrates how the power of the machine generates increasingly asymmetrical exchanges and distribution of resources and risks between distant populations and ecosystems, and thus an increasingly polarized world order. The author challenges us to reconceptualize the machine--"industrial technomass"--as a species of power and a problem of culture. He shows how economic anthropology has the tools to deconstruct the concepts of production, money capital, and market exchange, and to analyze capital accumulation as a problem at the very interface of the natural and social sciences. His analysis provides an alternative understanding of economic growth and technological development. Hornborg's work is essential for researchers in anthropology, human ecology, economics, political economy, world-systems theory, environmental justice, and science and technology studies. Find out more about the author at the Lund University, Sweden web site.
Download or read book The Power of the Machine written by Robert Angus Buchanan and published by Penguin Group USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By far the most important single factor in world history has been the process of technological revolution whereby small-scale agricultural societies have been transformed into massive industrialized and urbanized communities. This development has occurred over a long period of time, but its greatest thrust has been concentrated over the last two centuries, beginning in the West, in Europe and North America, and then spreading through the rest of the world. The author systematically analyses this process, showing how increasing mastery over sources of power provided increased industrial and agricultural productivity, and created radically new methods of transport and communication. He then examines the impact of these technical achievements on society, paying special attention to the political and ecological consequences of a vastly increased world population, the facilities for rapid transport and instantaneous communication, and the possession of weapons of immense destructive force.
Download or read book Human Machine written by Paul R. Daugherty and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: AI is radically transforming business. Are you ready? Look around you. Artificial intelligence is no longer just a futuristic notion. It's here right now--in software that senses what we need, supply chains that "think" in real time, and robots that respond to changes in their environment. Twenty-first-century pioneer companies are already using AI to innovate and grow fast. The bottom line is this: Businesses that understand how to harness AI can surge ahead. Those that neglect it will fall behind. Which side are you on? In Human + Machine, Accenture leaders Paul R. Daugherty and H. James (Jim) Wilson show that the essence of the AI paradigm shift is the transformation of all business processes within an organization--whether related to breakthrough innovation, everyday customer service, or personal productivity habits. As humans and smart machines collaborate ever more closely, work processes become more fluid and adaptive, enabling companies to change them on the fly--or to completely reimagine them. AI is changing all the rules of how companies operate. Based on the authors' experience and research with 1,500 organizations, the book reveals how companies are using the new rules of AI to leap ahead on innovation and profitability, as well as what you can do to achieve similar results. It describes six entirely new types of hybrid human + machine roles that every company must develop, and it includes a "leader’s guide" with the five crucial principles required to become an AI-fueled business. Human + Machine provides the missing and much-needed management playbook for success in our new age of AI. BOOK PROCEEDS FOR THE AI GENERATION The authors' goal in publishing Human + Machine is to help executives, workers, students and others navigate the changes that AI is making to business and the economy. They believe AI will bring innovations that truly improve the way the world works and lives. However, AI will cause disruption, and many people will need education, training and support to prepare for the newly created jobs. To support this need, the authors are donating the royalties received from the sale of this book to fund education and retraining programs focused on developing fusion skills for the age of artificial intelligence.
Download or read book Blood in the Machine written by Brian Merchant and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most important book to read about the AI boom" (Wired): The "gripping" (New Yorker) true story of the first time machines came for human jobs—and how the Luddite uprising explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech and AI today Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, Wired, and the Financial Times • A Next Big Idea Book Club "Must-Read" The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods. The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines—on punishment of death—and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees. Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it? The answers lie in Blood in the Machine. Brian Merchant intertwines a lucid examination of our current age with the story of the Luddites, showing how automation changed our world—and is shaping our future.
Download or read book The Demon in the Machine written by Paul Davies and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A gripping new drama in science ... if you want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read this' Professor Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford When Darwin set out to explain the origin of species, he made no attempt to answer the deeper question: what is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question. Life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. And yet, huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. So can life be explained by known physics and chemistry, or do we need something fundamentally new? In this penetrating and wide-ranging new analysis, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name, a domain where computing, chemistry, quantum physics and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity with the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and even to illuminate the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe. From life's murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine is a breath-taking journey across the landscape of physics, biology, logic and computing. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window on the secret of life itself.
Download or read book Machine Learning and Data Science in the Power Generation Industry written by Patrick Bangert and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Machine Learning and Data Science in the Power Generation Industry explores current best practices and quantifies the value-add in developing data-oriented computational programs in the power industry, with a particular focus on thoughtfully chosen real-world case studies. It provides a set of realistic pathways for organizations seeking to develop machine learning methods, with a discussion on data selection and curation as well as organizational implementation in terms of staffing and continuing operationalization. It articulates a body of case study–driven best practices, including renewable energy sources, the smart grid, and the finances around spot markets, and forecasting. - Provides best practices on how to design and set up ML projects in power systems, including all nontechnological aspects necessary to be successful - Explores implementation pathways, explaining key ML algorithms and approaches as well as the choices that must be made, how to make them, what outcomes may be expected, and how the data must be prepared for them - Determines the specific data needs for the collection, processing, and operationalization of data within machine learning algorithms for power systems - Accompanied by numerous supporting real-world case studies, providing practical evidence of both best practices and potential pitfalls
Download or read book The Perpetual Motion Machine written by Brittany Ackerman and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by a brother's high school science project--a perpetual motion machine that could save the world-- The Perpetual Motion Machine is a memoir in essays that attempts to save a sibling by depicting the visceral pain that accompanies longing for some past impossibility. The collection has been a science project in its study of memory, in the calculation and plotting of the moments that make up a childhood. The preparation has been "in the field" in that it is built upon the gathering of lived experience; the evidence is photo albums, family interviews, and anecdotes from friends. The project has been one giant experiment--to see if they can all make it out alive.
Download or read book Mind Over Machine written by Hubert Dreyfus and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1986 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human intuition and perception are basic and essential phenomena of consciousness. As such, they will never be replicated by computers. This is the challenging notion of Hubert Dreyfus, Ph. D., archcritic of the artificial intelligence establishment. It's important to emphasize that he doesn't believe that AI is fundamentally impossible, only that the current research program is fatally flawed. Instead, he argues that to get a device (or devices) with human-like intelligence would require them to have a human-like being in the world, which would require them to have bodies more or less like ours, and social acculturation (i.e. a society) more or less like ours. This helps to explain the practical problems in implementing artificial intelligence algorithms.
Download or read book Your Brain Is a Time Machine The Neuroscience and Physics of Time written by Dean Buonomano and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beautifully written, eloquently reasoned…Mr. Buonomano takes us off and running on an edifying scientific journey." —Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal In Your Brain Is a Time Machine, leading neuroscientist Dean Buonomano embarks on an "immensely engaging" exploration of how time works inside the brain (Barbara Kiser, Nature). The human brain, he argues, is a complex system that not only tells time, but creates it; it constructs our sense of chronological movement and enables "mental time travel"—simulations of future and past events. These functions are essential not only to our daily lives but to the evolution of the human race: without the ability to anticipate the future, mankind would never have crafted tools or invented agriculture. This virtuosic work of popular science will lead you to a revelation as strange as it is true: your brain is, at its core, a time machine.
Download or read book The Charisma Machine written by Morgan G. Ames and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating examination of technological utopianism and its complicated consequences. In The Charisma Machine, Morgan Ames chronicles the life and legacy of the One Laptop per Child project and explains why—despite its failures—the same utopian visions that inspired OLPC still motivate other projects trying to use technology to “disrupt” education and development. Announced in 2005 by MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte, One Laptop per Child promised to transform the lives of children across the Global South with a small, sturdy, and cheap laptop computer, powered by a hand crank. In reality, the project fell short in many ways—starting with the hand crank, which never materialized. Yet the project remained charismatic to many who were captivated by its claims of access to educational opportunities previously out of reach. Behind its promises, OLPC, like many technology projects that make similarly grand claims, had a fundamentally flawed vision of who the computer was made for and what role technology should play in learning. Drawing on fifty years of history and a seven-month study of a model OLPC project in Paraguay, Ames reveals that the laptops were not only frustrating to use, easy to break, and hard to repair, they were designed for “technically precocious boys”—idealized younger versions of the developers themselves—rather than the children who were actually using them. The Charisma Machine offers a cautionary tale about the allure of technology hype and the problems that result when utopian dreams drive technology development.
Download or read book The Machine written by Lee Fang and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Machine sheds light on all the dark corners of the resurgent right, laying out its modus operandi in short, accessible chapters.
Download or read book Money Machine written by Gary V. Smith and published by AMACOM. This book was released on 2017-06-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at Wall Street wonders Warren Buffet, Benjamin Graham, and other legends and shares how you can utilize their secrets to unimaginable success! It’s time to put your money to work the smart way and stop chasing quick payoffs that never turn out. That seductive stock tip you just overheard? That’s your ticket to flushing your savings down the toilet. The story you saw on a promising new product? Only those who invested before the story came out have any chance of a solid payout. If you want to succeed in the market, you need to learn how to invest based on value, selecting stocks that will continue to enrich you for years to come. By learning the keys to value investing, Money Machine will teach you how to: Judge a stock by the cash it generates Determine the stock’s intrinsic value Use key investment benchmarks such as price-earnings ratio and dividend-price ratio Recognize stock market bubbles and profit from panics Avoid psychological traps that can trip you up Investing in the market doesn’t have to be reckless speculation. Invest in value, not ventures, and find the financial success all those gamblers are still looking for!
Download or read book The Imagination Machine written by Martin Reeves and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide for mining the imagination to find powerful new ways to succeed. We need imagination now more than ever—to find new opportunities, rethink our businesses, and discover paths to growth. Yet too many companies have lost their ability to imagine. What is this mysterious capacity? How does imagination work? And how can organizations keep it alive and harness it in a systematic way? The Imagination Machine answers these questions and more. Drawing on the experience and insights of CEOs across several industries, as well as lessons from neuroscience, computer science, psychology, and philosophy, Martin Reeves of Boston Consulting Group's Henderson Institute and Jack Fuller, an expert in neuroscience, provide a fascinating look into the mechanics of imagination and lay out a process for creating ideas and bringing them to life: The Seduction: How to open yourself up to surprises The Idea: How to generate new ideas The Collision: How to rethink your idea based on real-world feedback The Epidemic: How to spread an evolving idea to others The New Ordinary: How to turn your novel idea into an accepted reality The Encore: How to repeat the process—again and again. Imagination is one of the least understood but most crucial ingredients of success. It's what makes the difference between an incremental change and the kinds of pivots and paradigm shifts that are essential to transformation—especially during a crisis. The Imagination Machine is the guide you need to demystify and operationalize this powerful human capacity, to inject new life into your company, and to head into unknown territory with the right tools at your disposal.
Download or read book THE ART OF INTELLIGENT MACHINES UNLEASHING THE POWER OF MACHINE LEARNING written by Mr. Om Prakash Singh and published by Xoffencerpublication. This book was released on 2023-08-14 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent machines, also known as artificial intelligence (AI) systems, are a fascinating area of study and development that integrates computer science, mathematics, and cognitive science to create machines that can simulate human-like intellect and conduct. This field of study and development aims to produce machines that can create intelligent machines that can simulate human-like intelligence and behavior. These computers are programmed to perceive, learn, reason, and make judgments in a manner that is either comparable to or superior to the cognitive powers of humans. Machine learning is a subsection of artificial intelligence that focuses on the development of algorithms and models that enable computers to learn from and make predictions or judgments based on data. Intelligent machines are constructed on top of this foundation, which is the basis of machine learning. Intelligent machines are able to analyze huge amounts of data, recognize patterns in that data, and make decisions based on that analysis through the use of machine learning techniques such as neural networks, decision trees, and reinforcement learning. The capacity to learn new things and advance themselves over time is one of the most distinguishing features of intelligent machines. They are able to gain knowledge from their experiences and modify either their behavior or their models in order to get better results. This skill is frequently referred regarded as "artificial intelligence" since these machines can demonstrate features that we generally associate with human intellect, such as problem-solving, the ability to grasp plain language, and visual perception. The applications for intelligent machines are quite diverse and can be found in a variety of domains. They are used in a variety of industries, including the healthcare sector, the financial sector, the transportation sector, and the manufacturing sector, to automate processes, improve decision-making, and increase efficiency. In the field of medicine, for instance, intelligent robots can be of assistance in the process of disease diagnosis, the analysis of medical imaging, and the development of individualized treatment regimens.
Download or read book Tell the Machine Goodnight written by Katie Williams and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR 2018 KIRKUS PRIZE NAMED ONE OF THE "BEST LITERARY FICTION OF 2018' BY KIRKUS REVIEWS "Sci-fi in its most perfect expression…Reading it is like having a lucid dream of six years from next week, filled with people you don't know, but will." —NPR "[Williams’s] wit is sharp, but her touch is light, and her novel is a winner." – San Francisco Chronicle "Between seasons of Black Mirror, look to Katie Williams' debut novel." —Refinery29 Smart and inventive, a page-turner that considers the elusive definition of happiness. Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either. Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.
Download or read book The Story Machine written by Tom McLaughlin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elliott is a boy who likes to find things and, one day, he stumbles across a machine. At first, he can't work out what the machine is for – it doesn't beep or buzz like all his other machines and it doesn't have an ON/OFF button. Then, quite by accident, Elliott makes the machine work. The machine makes letters! Elliott thinks it must be a story machine but, sadly, Elliott isn't very good at letters and words. How can he make magical stories without them? But, wait, some of the letters look like pictures. Elliott is good at pictures and, as he discovers, pictures make stories. An inspiring, uplifting picture book about the simple joys of a typewriter in a world of hi-tech machines. Perfect for fans of Oliver Jeffers.
