Showing titles in History & Culture

In 1966, John Barker, a British psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, established the Premonitions Bureau to investigate this very idea. He would find a network of curious correspondents, and among them two highly gifted 'percipients'. Together, they predicted calamities and international incidents with uncanny accuracy. And then, they gave Barker their most disturbing warning: that he was about to die.

New technologies are offering companies, politicians, and others unprecedented opportunity to manipulate us. Sometimes we are given the illusion of power—of freedom—through choice, yet the game is rigged, pushing us in specific directions that lead to less wealth, worse health, and weaker democracy.

Building on his national bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation, and how we need to change our thinking on the subject. Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and...

On the 40th anniversary of Neil Postman's prophetic book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Scrolling Ourselves to Death gathers today's most incisive writers to think critically about the shaping power of contemporary technology. This book explores Postman's insights, connects them to the challenges facing Christians today, and turns difficult challenges into life-giving opportunities for the church. Stepping back from their screens, listeners will be equipped to live faithfully, and grow spiritually, in a "scrolling ourselves to death" world.

'The rigor, research, and depth of Tobias's book is unparalleled, and yet it is refreshingly accessible. I recommend this book to everyone, not just those interested in technology' Esther Perel, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author 'Tobias is a master of intuition and metaphor...

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY WIRED In this brilliant smart-thinking book about the power and influence of social media, Professor Sinan Aral shows how ‘hyper-socialization’ has profoundly changed us. Why does fake news spread faster than the truth? Do products and ideas become...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful general-purpose technology that is reshaping the modern economy, but misperceptions about AI stand in the way of harnessing it for the betterment of humanity. In Thrive, Ravi Bapna and Anindya Ghose counter the backlash by showcasing how AI is positively influencing the aspects of our daily lives that we care about most: our health and wellness, relationships, education, the workplace, and domestic life.

Over a million copies of this networking classic have been sold worldwide! Now Susan Roane's invaluable advice is available in audio You enter a crowded room. For a moment every eye is on you. And a little voice inside you cries, "HELP!" If this has ever happened to you, you're not alone!...

On balance, will AI help humanity or harm it? AI could revolutionize science, medicine, and technology, and deliver us a world of abundance and better health. Or it could be a disaster, leading to the downfall of democracy, or even our extinction. In Taming Silicon Valley, Gary Marcus, one of the most trusted voices in AI, explains that we still have a choice. And that the decisions we make now about AI will shape our next century.

THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER A FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST AND MAIL ON SUNDAY BOOK OF THE YEAR An enthralling 6,000-year journey through the history of books and reading Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world...

Have iPads replaced conversation at the dinner table? What do infants observe when their parents are on their smartphones? Should you be your child's Facebook friend? As the focus of family has turned to the glow of the screen—children constantly texting their friends, parents working online...

Foreword by Steven Pinker Blending the informed analysis of The Signal and the Noise with the instructive iconoclasm of Think Like a Freak, a fascinating, illuminating, and witty look at what the vast amounts of information now instantly available to us reveals about ourselves and our...

Internationally renowned privacy expert Daniel J. Solove draws from a range of fields, from law to philosophy to the humanities, to illustrate the profound changes technology is wreaking upon our privacy, why they matter, and what can be done about them. Solove provides incisive examinations of key concepts in the digital sphere, including control, manipulation, harm, automation, reputation, consent, prediction, inference, and many others.

Are there innovation truisms that hold from one initiative to the next? Are there strategies that appear again and again in the success stories of businesses as varied as gaming and cloud infrastructure? Are there behaviors common to creative leadership in every role, from research to sales? And if these patterns exist, could they be distilled into teachable practices? These are the questions Dean Carignan and JoAnn Garbin, two senior innovation leaders at Microsoft, set out to answer.

Skip the iPhone, the iPod, and the Macintosh. If you want to understand how Apple Inc. became an industry behemoth, look no further than the 1977 Apple II. The Apple II was a versatile piece of hardware, but its most compelling story isn't found in the feat of its engineering, the personalities of Apple's founders, or the way it set the stage for the company's multibillion-dollar future. Instead, historian Laine Nooney shows, what made the Apple II iconic was its software.

Brought to you by Penguin. Ever wondered what goes through other people’s minds – their silly questions, their inner anxieties, hopes and dreams? In What We Ask Google, the company's Data Editor Simon Rogers explores insights from the world's biggest dataset: an epic snapshot, two decades...

This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century.

The metaverse is no longer a distant idea—it's unfolding now, powered by AI, big data, and immersive digital ecosystems. It's changing how we work, interact, and create value, offering unparalleled opportunities but also competitive pressures. In Building a Thriving Future, Harvard researcher...

Our fascination with AI stems from the perceived uniqueness of human intelligence. We believe it's what differentiates us. Fears of AI not only concern how it invades our digital lives, but also the implied threat of an intelligence that displaces us from our position at the centre of the world. Neil D. Lawrence's visionary book shows why these fears may be misplaced. By contrasting our own intelligence with the capabilities of machine intelligence through history, The Atomic Human reveals the technical origins, capabilities and limitations of AI systems, and how they should be wielded.

From facial recognition—capable of checking us onto flights or identifying undocumented residents—to automated decision systems that inform everything from who gets loans to who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn't just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the census enshrined in the US Constitution to the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search.