Showing titles in History & Culture

Brought to you by Penguin. Explore how speed influences every aspect of life on Earth, from the slow grind of geological processes and the fleeting lifespans of organisms to the astonishing speed of light and the remarkable adaptations of creatures like the swift antelope and the soaring...

A New York Times Bestseller From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the twelve technological imperatives that will shape the next thirty years and transform our lives Much of what will happen in the next thirty years is inevitable, driven by technological trends...

“It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study...

Brought to you by Penguin. What’s the most useful thing you could know about your own life? In this era-defining book, developed from her groundbreaking Radio 4 essay series, Naomi Alderman turns her boundless curiosity and incisive thinking to a question that affects us all: how do we...

Communication has always been at the heart of human progress. From smoke signals on mountaintops to the invisible Wi-Fi networks that surround us today, every leap forward has reshaped how we share ideas, stay safe, build relationships, and understand the world. From Morse Code to Wi-Fi is a clear, captivating journey through the ten biggest breakthroughs that transformed human connection forever.

In How Progress Ends, Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world's largest, most advanced economies—the United States and China—have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead — or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

Welcome to Essentials of AI for Beginners, your go-to guide for exploring AI technologies like Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Generative AI, and ChatGPT.

Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

Brought to you by Penguin. Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy? From earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet...

A “meticulously researched” (The New York Times Book Review) examination of energy transitions over time and an exploration of the current challenges presented by global warming, a surging world population, and renewable energy—from Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author...

Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You're not alone. AI is everywhere—and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn't, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil—products that don't work, and probably never will.

Brought to you by Penguin. Over the past two centuries, economic growth has freed billions from poverty and made our lives far healthier and longer. As a result, the unfettered pursuit of growth defines economic life around the world. Yet this prosperity has come at an enormous price: deepening...

In this witty, often terrifying work of cultural criticism, Postman chronicles our transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it. According to Postman, technology is rapidly gaining sovereignty over social institutions and national life to become self-justifying, self-perpetuating, and omnipresent. He warns that this will have radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, religion, family, education, and more.

Brought to you by Penguin. The Sunday Times and #1 New York Times Bestseller Silicon Valley’s brightest minds once collaborated with governments to advance technologies, securing the West’s dominance on the global stage. But that relationship has corroded – with perilous repercussions for...

From a New York Times bestselling author and investigative journalist comes The Social Network for the video game industry: a riveting examination of Blizzard Entertainment's rise and shocking downfall—"A fast paced thrill ride, perfect for anyone who has ever played a video game" (Ben...

Brought to you by Penguin. Creating superior intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, according to the world's pre-eminent AI expert, it could also be the last. In this groundbreaking book on the biggest question facing humanity, Stuart Russell explains why he has...

To be human in today’s world means that you engage in constant linguistic interactions with some form of technology, from your smart phone to your refrigerator. That’s not as new a trend as you might think. Language has shaped - and been shaped by - some of our world’s most significant communication technologies. Our current language bears the marks of millennia of interaction between humans and our technologies, beginning with the very first primitive writing systems and moving into the age of the printing press, the telegraph, and the typewriter.

On a cold January morning in 1986, NASA launched the Space Shuttle Challenger, despite warnings against doing so by many individuals including Allan McDonald. The fiery destruction of Challenger on live television moments after launch remains an indelible image in the nation's collective memory. In Truth, Lies, and O-Rings, McDonald, a skilled engineer and executive, relives the tragedy from where he stood at Launch Control Center. 

Brought to you by Penguin. A pyrotechnic examination of Elon Musk as a symptom and avatar of our postliberal age Who on earth is Elon Musk and what is he doing? Is he a hero, a villain, or does he swing constantly between those two poles? According to the constant media gush driven by his every...