Showing titles in History & Culture

Spaceflight is one of the greatest human achievements of the 20th century. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; less than 12 years later, the American Apollo astronauts landed on the moon.

A possible genius, a smidgen of madness, a twist of science, and an invention that very nearly changed the world - all collide in a giddy, unbelievably true mystery set in turn-of-the-century Paris.

It was early February 1912, and Franz Reichelt, a Paris tailor, and Rodman Law, a self-described “professional jackass” from New York, were poised, respectively, on the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, ready to deploy an experimental parachute. In bat wings and bundled linen, they were almost certain their contraptions would work. Here is the tale of their inspirations and their pluck - and what happened next.

What began as a modest start-up partnership only 25 years ago has already surpassed all the giants of contemporary capitalism. How did Microsoft achieve all of this in so short a time? Cheryl Tsang steps inside the famous culture of loyalty, the storied “maniacal work ethic”, and the hardcore world of reckless risk-taking to reveal, once and for all, exactly what makes Microsoft tick.

Taking listeners back to the days of TaB cola, dot matrix printers, and digging through the couch for just one more quarter, Alex Rubens combines his knowledge of the tech industry and experience as a gaming journalist to conjure the wild silicon frontier of the 8-bit ’80s. 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command offers the first in-depth, personal history of an era for which fans have a lot of nostalgia.

What do Wikipedia, Zip Car’s business model, Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and a small group of lobster fishermen have in common? They all show the power and promise of human cooperation in transforming our businesses, our government, and our society at large. Because today, when the...

A treatise of Black women’s transformative influence in media and society, placing them front and center in a new chapter of mainstream resistance and political engagement In Reclaiming Our Space, social worker, activist, and cultural commentator Feminista Jones explores how Black women are...

Our devices and data are woven into our lives. We can't simply reject them. Margaret Morris argues we need to adapt technology creatively to our needs and values. In Left to Our Own Devices, Morris offers examples of individuals applying technologies in unexpected ways - uses that go beyond those intended by developers and designers. Morris examines these kinds of personalized life hacks, chronicling the ways that people have adapted technology to strengthen social connection, enhance well-being, and affirm identity.

In recent decades, most innovation has come from a single sector (information technology) and a single place (Silicon Valley). Walter Isaacson's The Innovators and Peter Thiel's Zero to One shed light on how that happened and what drives innovation more generally.

Coming up: ant vomit, internet-fixing boats, virtual reality holidays and continuing struggles for wearables.

Coming up today: Facebook has rolled out Secret Conversations to all its Messenger users, we go inside Nasa, fish have accents, and Google announced a host of new products at its Pixel launch event.

Topics include: the UK's dirty air, BlackBerry's demise, and the end of one of the most ambitious space missions and the start of another.

In this book in praise of wait times, award-winning author Jason Farman passionately argues that the delay between call and answer has always been an important part of the message. Traveling backward from our current era of Twitter and texts, Farman describes how societies have worked to eliminate waiting in communication and how they have interpreted those times' meanings. And in a rebuttal to the demand for instant communication, Farman makes a powerful case for why good things can come to those who wait.

Former physicist Andrew Maynard threads together his love of science-fiction movies with his expertise on emerging technologies to engage, entertain, and make you think about the relationship between technology and society. Through the imagination and creativity of science-fiction movies, Maynard introduces listeners to the profound capabilities presented by new and emerging technologies, and the complex personal and societal challenges they present.

A penetrating examination of the insidious effects of the Internet on our personalities - online and off. Whether sharing photos or following financial markets, many of us spend a shocking amount of time online. While the Internet can enhance well-being, Elias Aboujaoude has spent years treating patients whose lives have been profoundly disturbed by it.

How did a small southwest town transform itself into a hotbed of research science, advanced technology, and money? Tracking key figures in Santa Fe's emerging industries, Ed Regis explains how entrepreneurial scientists are using complexity theory and powerful, experimental computer programs to create practical - and profitable - applications. Their efforts to convert vast, diverse data, whether chemical or biological or computational, into useful information is leading to new drugs and medical therapies, ultimately revolutionizing our understanding of effective business strategies.

In Connected, Hannah Waldram, Ed Walker and Marc Thomas explore examples from across the world which demonstrate that social media is a hugely powerful tool, but it is when it combines with physical communities - spurring action, amplifying a message, organizing movements - that it becomes truly transformative. It is a fascinating insight into how communities can be so much greater than the sum of their parts, and how the power of the internet has become seamlessly woven into community action.

Bogen er ikke imod ny teknologi. Det er en optimistisk bog om, at vi kan gøre det bedre. Den er kritisk over for den forretningsmodel, der styrer de sociale medier. Vi får det hele gratis, men til gengæld er vi blevet reduceret til produkter og verdens rigeste virksomheder lever af at høste vores data og vores kommunikation for bedre at kunne manipulere os. Det er muligt at gøre noget helt andet på nettet, men først må vi ud af det spindelvæv, som vi er blevet fanget i.

Collaborative democracy - government with the people - is a new vision of governance in the digital age. Wiki Government explains how to translate the vision into reality. Beth Simone Noveck draws on her experience in creating Peer-to-Patent, the federal government's first social networking initiative, to show how technology can connect the expertise of the many to the power of the few. In the process, she reveals what it takes to innovate in government.

On October 4, 1957, a time of Cold War paranoia, the Soviet Union secretly launched the Earth's first artificial moon. No bigger than a basketball, the tiny satellite was powered by a car battery. Yet, for all its simplicity, Sputnik stunned the world.