Showing results for "Digital Culture" in Science & Technology Leaders

In little more than half a decade, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide. As Facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects, even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran.

Before there was Steve Jobs, there was Norman Bel Geddes. A ninth-grade dropout who found himself at the center of the worlds of industry, advertising, theater, and even gaming, Bel Geddes designed everything from the first all-weather stadium to Manhattan's most exclusive nightclub to Futurama, the prescient 1939 exhibit that envisioned how America would look in the not-too-distant 1960s.

“We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” These are the opening lines that radical thinker, environmentalist, and technologist Stewart Brand wrote for The Whole Earth Catalog. His thesis—that humans should use our god-like powers to build a better way to live—is at the core of his extraordinary life. At key historical moments in the 20th century, Stewart Brand was behind the scenes shaping things. As founding editor of Wired Magazine Kevin Kelly says, “Stewart has a Forest Gump-like superpower—he can sense where the future is and be there.”

The MacArthur Foundation awards the "Genius Grant" every year to the most compelling scientists, educators and artists in the country. But who are these "geniuses," really? Host Bob Garfield sits down with fellows, including writer and producer David Simon, radio producer Jad Abumrad, and inventor Amy Smith, to learn what events shaped their life, how they became leaders in their fields, and what they imagine our shared future looks like.

There’s no doubt that technology has made it easier to communicate. It’s also easier to shut someone out when we are confronted with online discourse. Why bother to understand strangers - or even acquaintances - when you can troll them, block them, or just click “Unfriend” and never look back? However briefly satisfying that might be, it’s also potentially eroding one of our most human traits: empathy.

The Gamesmaster is a narrative memoir chronicling the life and career of Flint Dille. And while he isn't exactly a household name, you almost certainly know his work - which includes credits from some of the most important and successful entertainment franchises throughout the world across the cartoon, film, video game, and comic book industries and beyond.  

Boolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use - from our computers and cars, to our kitchen gadgets and home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later?

The cell phone changed the world. It revolutionized how people communicate, freed them to get in touch with one another at any time, in any place, without the constraints of the wired network. The cell phone led to the creation and growth of new industries. Yet the true story of its creation has not been told. This book tells that story. It centers on a battle for control of how people communicate, involving government regulators, lobbyists, police, technology breakthroughs, failures, quartz, and a horse. At the center of that story was Martin Cooper.

Johannes Gutenberg was our first geek, the original technology entrepreneur, who had to grapple with all the challenges a Silicon Valley startup faces today. Jeff Jarvis tells Gutenberg's story from an entrepreneurial perspective, examining how he overcame technology hurdles, how he operated with the secrecy of a Steve Jobs, but then shifted to openness, how he raised capital and mitigated risk, and how, in the end, his cash flow and equity structure did him in.