Showing titles in Technology & Society

We are now standing at the precipice of the next transformative development: The Internet of Things. Soon, connected technology will be embedded in hundreds of everyday objects we already use: our cars, wallets, watches, umbrellas, even our trash cans. These objects will respond to our needs, come to know us, and learn to think on our behalf. David Rose calls these devices - which are just beginning to creep into the marketplace - Enchanted Objects.

Amazon Web Services in Action introduces you to computing, storing, and networking in the AWS cloud. The audiobook will teach you about the most important services on AWS. You will also learn about best practices regarding security, high availability, and scalability.

Welcome to "2024 Technology Inventions and Ideas", a microlearning book that will keep you up to date with tech innovation. Whether you need to for work or are simply curious, understanding how technology is changing has become increasingly interesting and important to many of us. This book can be your guide to understanding the most exciting and engaging technologies of 2024. We’ve presented it in a way that’s easy to digest and apply to your everyday life.

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.

Few of us give much thought to computer code or how it comes to be. The very word “code” makes it sound immutable or even inevitable. “You Are Not Expected to Understand This” demonstrates that, far from being preordained, computer code is the result of very human decisions, ones we all live with when we use social media, take photos, drive our cars, and engage in a host of other activities.

Regardless of whether you work in an office, remotely, or hybrid, we are all virtual communicators. Andrew Brodsky is here to explain that, yes, that meeting could have been an email. And that email? Maybe it should have been a voice memo. Your camera? It’s okay to turn it off, sometimes even better. Many of us give far too little thought to our virtual communication, and end up feeling isolated, overlooked and burnt out. Ping distils Brodsky’s cutting-edge social science research on remote communication tools.

We live in an incredible period in history. The computer revolution may be even more life-changing than the Industrial Revolution. We can do things with computers that could never be done before, and computers can do things for us that could never be done before. But our love of computers should not cloud our thinking about their limitations. The AI Delusion explains why we should not be intimidated into thinking that computers are infallible, that data-mining is knowledge discovery, and that black boxes should be trusted.

In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected - a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness. Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders, having taken Google from a small startup to one of the world’s most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

'Low Tech Life' underscores the significance of regular reassessment and adjustment of your digital habits. It promotes an iterative approach to digital minimalism, encouraging listeners to embrace trial and error as they work backwards from their desired lifestyle to set achievable digital usage goals. Whether you're feeling the strain of constant connectivity or seeking strategies to manage your screen time better, 'Low Tech Life' will guide you towards a more mindful, fulfilling relationship with technology.

Humans are hard-wired for collaboration, and new technologies of communication act as a super-amplifier of our natural collaborative mindset. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the emergence of a new kind of social collaboration enabled by networked technologies. This new collaborative society might be characterized as a series of services and startups that enable peer-to-peer exchanges and interactions though technology.

Not so long ago, we embraced social media as a life-changing opportunity to connect with friends and family all across the globe. Today, the pendulum of public opinion is swinging in the opposite direction as Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube, and similar sites are being accused of corrupting our democracy, spreading disinformation, and fanning the flames of hatred. Here, with insightful analysis and in-depth research, Robby Soave explores some of the biggest issues animating both the right and the left: bias, censorship, disinformation, privacy, screen addiction, crime, and more.

Technology rules us as much as laws do. It shapes the legal, social, and ethical environments in which we act. Every time we cross a street, drive a car, or go to the doctor, we submit to the silent power of technology. Yet, much of the time, the influence of technology on our lives goes unchallenged by citizens and our elected representatives. Our embrace of novel technological pathways, Sheila Jasanoff shows, leads to a complex interplay among technology, ethics, and human rights.

We may imagine the digital cloud as placeless, mute, ethereal, and unmediated. Yet the reality of the cloud is embodied in thousands of massive data centers, any one of which can use as much electricity as a midsized town. Even all these data centers are only one small part of the cloud. Behind that cloud-shaped icon on our screens is a whole universe of technologies and cultural norms, all working to keep us from noticing their existence.

Our preferences and opinions are constantly being shaped by countless forces–especially in the digital age with its nonstop procession of “thumbs up” and “likes” and “stars.” Tom Vanderbilt, bestselling author of Traffic, explains why we like the things we like, why we hate the things we hate, and what all this tell us about ourselves.

The Authority Gap provides a startling perspective on the unseen bias at work in our everyday lives, to reveal the scale of the gap that still persists between men and women. Marshalling a wealth of data with precision and insight, and including interviews with pioneering women such as Baroness Hale, Mary Beard and Bernadine Evaristo, this is a fresh feminist take on how to address and counteract systemic sexism in ways that benefit us all.

No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeply - some would say totally - involved with digital media. Professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name today’s young people The App Generation, and in this spellbinding book they explore what it means to be “app-dependent” versus “app-enabled” and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era.

How to be a great online searcher, demonstrated with step-by-step searches for answers to a series of intriguing questions (for example, "Is that plant poisonous?"). We all know how to look up something online by typing words into a search engine. We do this so often that we have made the most famous search engine a verb: We Google it - "Japan population" or "Nobel Peace Prize" or "poison ivy" or whatever we want to know. But knowing how to Google something doesn't make us search experts; there's much more we can do to access the massive collective knowledge available online.

This audiobook explains why AI is unique, what legal and ethical problems it could cause, and how we can address them. It argues that AI is unlike any other previous technology, owing to its ability to take decisions independently and unpredictably. This gives rise to three issues: responsibility - who is liable if AI causes harm; rights - the disputed moral and pragmatic grounds for granting AI legal personality; and the ethics surrounding the decision-making of AI.

John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid show us how to look beyond mere information to the social context that creates and gives meaning to it. Arguing elegantly for the important role that human sociability plays, even - perhaps especially - in the digital world, The Social Life of Information gives us an optimistic look beyond the simplicities of information and individuals.

"The AI Revolution is Here: Preparing the Workforce for Change" by award-winning attorney, Christopher K. Boucher, Esq., provides a comprehensive guide on the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the workforce, focusing on legal and employment issues. It examines the transformative impact of AI across various industries, highlighting its potential to enhance efficiency, productivity, and personalization in the workplace.