History Computer Technology

Planning the invasion of Normandy, the Allies knew that decoding the communications of the Nazi high command was imperative for its success. But standing in their way was an encryption machine they called Tunny (British English for “tuna”), which was vastly more difficult to crack than the infamous Enigma cipher.

One of Michiko Kakutani's (New York Times) top 10 books of 2016. A funny thing happened on the way to the digital utopia. We've begun to fall back in love with the very analog goods and ideas the tech gurus insisted that we no longer needed. Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life. Notebooks, records, and stationery have become cool again.

The digital age is in the business of commodifying our attention. The technologies of our day are determined to keep us scrolling and swiping at all costs, plugged into a feedback loop of impatience, comparison, outrage, and contempt. Blind to the dangers, we enjoy its temporary pleasures, unaware of the damage to our souls. Jay Kim's Analog Church explored the ways the digital age and its values affect the life of the church. In Analog Christian, he asks the same question of Christian discipleship.

Outposts on the Frontier reveals how the Soviets and the Americans combined strengths to build space stations over the past 50 years. At the heart of these scientific advances are people of both greatness and modesty. Jay Chladek documents the historical tapestry of the people, the early attempts at space station programs, and how astronauts and engineers have contributed to and shaped the ISS in surprising ways.

Think creatively like a human. Analyze and solve problems efficiently like a computer. Our everyday lives are filled with inefficient and ineffective decisions and solutions. Being overwhelmed by the magnitude of our problems makes it hard to think clearly. We procrastinate and overthink. Our thoughts are tainted with biases. If only there was a way to simplify our decision-making and problem-solving process and get satisfying, consistent results! The good news is, there is! Apply computer algorithms to your everyday problems.

In Analogia, technology historian George Dyson presents a startling look back at the analog age and life before the digital revolution - and an unsettling vision of what comes next.

As Audrey Kurth Cronin explains in Power to the People, what we are seeing now is an exacerbation of an age-old trend. Over the centuries, the most surprising developments in warfare have occurred because of advances in technologies combined with changes in who can use them. Indeed, accessible innovations in destructive force have long driven new patterns of political violence. When Nobel invented dynamite and Kalashnikov designed the AK-47, each inadvertently spurred terrorist and insurgent movements that killed millions and upended the international system.

As both individuals and communities, we have a choice. We can struggle through the onslaught of information and play an eternal game of catch-up. Or we can choose to live in the present: favor eye contact over texting; quality over speed; and human quirks over digital perfection. Rushkoff offers hope for anyone seeking to transcend the false now.

Engineering is everywhere, from the Large Hadron Collider to invisibly small circuits on silicon chips. The 50 Greatest Engineers celebrates the great achievements that have been made through the ages, containing profiles of the best-known and most innovative engineers of all time.

Demystify Artificial Intelligence and see its impact in your life, effortlessly, with no technical background required! Do you find it challenging to comprehend AI without feeling overwhelmed by technical jargon? Are you eager to understand the ethical implications of AI and its effect on your daily life? Are you curious about how AI algorithms can reinforce societal biases and want clear, reliable answers? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you're not alone. Many adults like you seek to grasp the basics of AI and its relevance but struggle with complex information overload.

This engaging and accessible guide unpacks the essentials of AI, from its fascinating origins to its cutting-edge applications in healthcare, education, and beyond. Discover how AI impacts your life today—and what it means for your future. In this book, we explore the ethical challenges, real-world applications, and practical insights to thrive in an AI-driven world. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, professional, or curious reader, this book offers the clarity and tools to embrace AI as a force for innovation and growth.

The long-awaited audio version of the seminal book by legendary space pioneer, Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, credited with inspiring the likes of Jeff Bezos, Peter Diamandis, and Dylan Taylor.

Les histoires nous ont réunis. Les livres ont diffusé nos idées et nos mythologies. Internet nous a promis le savoir infini. Les algorithmes ont découvert nos secrets – et nous ont divisés. Quel monde nous promet l’IA ? Depuis cent mille ans, nous, les Sapiens, avons acquis un gigantesque pouvoir. Mais malgré nos découvertes, inventions et conquêtes, nous sommes aujourd’hui confrontés à une crise existentielle inédite. Le monde est au bord de l’effondrement écologique. Les tensions politiques se multiplient. La désinformation abonde.

Humanity is racing to create machine intelligence vastly smarter than the human brain. We will succeed. Blending accessible philosophy with the latest in AI developments, Mind Crime: The Moral Frontier of Artificial Intelligence forces listeners to grapple with the moral questions we can no longer afford to ignore. Are we prepared for the consequences of artificial superintelligence? Will humanity's survival be threatened, perhaps within years? Is digital consciousness possible? Are we sleepwalking into horrific moral catastrophe?

Worm: The First Digital World War tells the story of the Conficker worm, a potentially devastating piece of malware that has baffled experts and infected more than twelve million computers worldwide. When Conficker was unleashed in November 2008, cybersecurity experts did not know what to make of it. Exploiting security flaws in Microsoft Windows, it grew at an astonishingly rapid rate, infecting millions of computers around the world within weeks.

What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of platform capitalism. This book critically examines these new business forms.

What really distinguishes the people who literally change the world - those creative geniuses who give us one breakthrough after another? What differentiates Marie Curie or Elon Musk from the merely creative, the many one-hit wonders among us? Melissa Schilling, one of the world's leading experts on innovation, invites us into the lives of eight people - Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Dean Kamen, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Steve Jobs - to identify the traits and experiences that drove them to make spectacular breakthroughs, over and over again.

We are in the midst of one of the greatest status revolutions ever, and it's a brave new world indeed. Who better to guide us through it than Michael Lewis, whose subversive, trenchant humor is the perfect match to his subject matter. Here is an audiobook as fresh as tomorrow's headlines, and as entertaining as its best selling predecessors.

From one of the world’s leading data scientists, a landmark tour ofthe new science of idea flow, offering revolutionary insights into the mysteries of collective intelligence and social influence.

We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we get a loan, how much we pay for insurance—are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: everyone is judged according to the same rules and bias is eliminated. And yet, as Cathy O'Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated and incontestable, even when they're wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination.