Showing titles in History & Culture

Starting with hands, abacus, and slide rule, humans have always reached for tools to simplify math. Pocket-sized calculators ushered in modern mathematics, helped build the atomic bomb, took us to the bottom of the ocean, and accompanied us to the moon. The pocket calculator changed our world, until it was supplanted by more modern devices that, in a cruel twist of irony, it helped to create. Keith Houston transports listeners from the nascent economies of the ancient world to World War II, and into the technological arms race that led to the first affordable electronic pocket calculators.

This smart, “riveting” (Los Angeles Times) history of the Internet free culture movement and its larger effects on society—and the life and shocking suicide of Aaron Swartz, a founding developer of Reddit and Creative Commons—written by Slate correspondent Justin Peters “captures...

Generative AI: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the potential of these new technologies, pick the right Gen AI projects, and reinvent your business for the new age of AI.

Highlighting men and women across the globe who have dedicated themselves to pushing the limits of space exploration, this book surveys the programs, technological advancements, medical equipment, and automated systems that have made space travel possible. Beginning with the invention of balloons that lifted early explorers into the stratosphere, Ted Spitzmiller describes how humans first came to employ lifting gasses such as hydrogen and helium.

GitOps and Kubernetes introduces a radical idea - managing your infrastructure with the same Git pull requests you use to manage your codebase. In this in-depth tutorial, you’ll learn to operate infrastructures based on powerful-but-complex technologies such as Kubernetes with the same Git version control tools most developers use daily. With these GitOps techniques and best practices, you’ll accelerate application development without compromising on security, easily roll back infrastructure changes, and seamlessly introduce new team members to your automation process.

Robotics is slowly creeping into our lives, and soon, robots will be everywhere. Do you know everything there is to know about robotics? Do you want to know more about robotics? Do you want to discover the advantages of robotics? If so, then you've come to the right place.

We stand on the edge of a new era that will bring change to our world on a par with the Industrial Revolution. Automation, artificial intelligence and robotics are changing our lives quickly - but digital disruption goes much further than we realize. Richard Baldwin, one of the world's leading globalization experts, argues that the inhuman speed of this transformation threatens to overwhelm our capacity to adapt. 

ChatGPT changed the conversation for us all. Suddenly a tool could write reports, analyse data, generate strategies and produce ideas in seconds — work that once took professionals years to master. Which raises an uncomfortable question. If a machine can produce in seconds what took you decades to learn… what exactly is your expertise worth?

For decades, IBM shaped the way the world did business. IBM products were in every large organization, and IBM corporate culture established a management style that was imitated by companies around the globe. It was “Big Blue”—an icon. And yet over the years, IBM has gone through both failure and success. The company almost went out of business in the early 1990s, then came back strong with new business strategies and an emphasis on artificial intelligence. In this authoritative history, James Cortada tells the story of one of the most influential American companies of the last century.

A groundbreaking endeavor to explore human spirituality through the evolving technology of artificial...

Today’s technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT’s influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging listeners to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of “tech,” this book argues for tech agnosticism—not worship—as a way of life.

The fascinating story of how NASA sent humans to explore outer space, told through a treasure trove of historical documents--publishing in celebration of NASA's 60th anniversary and with a foreword by Bill Nye "An extremely useful and thought provoking documentary journey through the maze of...

In an age where connectivity has reached unprecedented heights, humanity paradoxically experiences intensified solitude. The Internet, social media, and digital communication tools promise constant interaction, yet beneath the veneer of perpetual engagement lies a profound sense of detachment. We have woven an expansive digital web, intricately threading through every dimension of our lives. Yet, far from binding us together in deeper and more meaningful ways, this net has fragmented our relationships, distorted our sense of self, and left us lonelier than ever.

In a culture fraught with misinformation, Mastering AI pierces through the thicket of exaggerated claims, explaining how we arrived at this moment and mapping the likely long-term impacts on business, economics, culture and society this potent technology will have. This book will serve as a guide to those dangers — as well as highlighting the technology's transformative potential — and will pinpoint concrete steps that should be taken to regulate generative AI.

AI is changing how businesses operate. But it is also exposing a deeper problem. Most leaders are running an outdated operating system. Decisions are faster. Complexity is higher. And under pressure, even experienced leaders begin to lose clarity. Not because they lack strategy, but because their internal system cannot keep pace with the environment's speed. At the same time, leadership itself is being decentralized. Today, anyone who asks AI a question, interprets the response, and makes a decision is acting as a leader. This shift is happening across every level of every organization.

Empire of the Air tells the story of three American visionaries - Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff - whose imagination and dreams turned a hobbyist's toy into radio, launching the modern communications age. Tom Lewis weaves the story of these men and their achievements into a richly detailed and moving narrative that spans the first half of the 20th century, a time when the American romance with science and technology was at its peak. 

Democratic Delusions explores the potential of our media and tech systems to be democratic and contribute to a just and transformative democracy. This is only possible, Natalie Fenton argues, by first situating our political systems and mediated worlds within global capitalism. By interrogating different media and their relationship to seven key elements of democracy—power, participation, freedom, equality, public good, trust, and hope—the book asks: What is the response of society when the ability of news media to speak truth to power has been restricted by corporate logic?

“Riveting...A great read, full of colorful characters and outrageous confrontations back when the west was still wild.” —George R.R. Martin A propulsive and panoramic history of one of the most dramatic stories never told—the greatest railroad war of all time, fought by the daring...

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.

From the New York Times bestselling author, a thrilling history of the telephone and how we fell in and out of love with a technology that changed not just the world, but changed us. 'Charts our distance-compressing, time-shifting telephonic adventure with exceptional brio and subtlety' –...