Showing titles in History & Culture

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.

For the past 20+ years, everyone has been waiting for the story to be told. What really happened at Apple when Jobs returned and Gassee was out? In this first-ever comprehensive memoir, Gassee doesn’t hold anything back. From his stellar career to his deepest moments of doubt to his new calling as a grandfather, Gassee dispenses his legendarily witty advice and shares some very important moments of the tech world.

Brought to you by Penguin. A bold, optimistic exploration of the relationship between robots and humans based on our history with animals, from a renowned MIT researcher The robots are here. They make our cars, they deliver fast food, they mine the sea floor. And in the near-future their...

From Adam Steltzner, who led the Entry, Descent, and Landing team in landing the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars, comes a profound book about breakthrough innovation in the face of the impossible The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is home to some of history’s most jaw-dropping feats of...

Do you feel like you are wasting too much time on your smartphone? Do you feel like your digital technology use is becoming too habitual? Don’t worry. You’re not alone. If you feel like your gadgets are stealing a lot of your time, focus, and energy, then this book, Digital Minimalism in Everyday Life, may have the solution for you. If you get lost in a maze of gadgets, apps, and digital technology, then the concepts, tools, and tips you will learn from this book, Digital Minimalism in Everyday Life, will help you set things straight.

The inside story of Lean, a computer program that answers the age-old question: How do you know if something is true? It began as an obscure bug-checking program at Microsoft Research developed by a lone computer engineer named Leo de Moura. Then an unlikely crew of mathematical misfits caught...

In this digital age, many people are surrounded by modern technologies. They have access to a world with a device as small as their palm. A few hundred years back, it would be considered to be witchcraft when one was able to talk to someone halfway across the globe, see the Great Wall of China while still being in the United States, or participate in a meeting from the living room.

On the 40th anniversary of Neil Postman's prophetic book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Scrolling Ourselves to Death gathers today's most incisive writers to think critically about the shaping power of contemporary technology. This book explores Postman's insights, connects them to the challenges facing Christians today, and turns difficult challenges into life-giving opportunities for the church. Stepping back from their screens, listeners will be equipped to live faithfully, and grow spiritually, in a "scrolling ourselves to death" world.

“A compelling new biography… [The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived] spins the Watsons into near-Shakespearean figures, as if ‘Succession’ were set in the era of ‘Mad Men’.”​ ―The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The enduring story of Thomas Watson Jr.—a figure...

The history of computing could be told as the story of hardware and software or the story of the Internet or the story of "smart" handheld devices, with subplots involving IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter. In this concise and accessible account of the invention and development of digital technology, computer historian Paul Ceruzzi offers a broader and more useful perspective. He identifies four major threads that run throughout all of computing's technological development.

This is the first reference book on intelligent automation (IA). Also called hyperautomation, it is one of the most recent trends in the field of artificial intelligence. IA is a cutting-edge combination of methods and technologies involving people, organizations, machine learning, low-code platforms, robotic process automation (RPA), and more. This book is for everyone - whether you are an experienced practitioner, new to the topic, or simply interested in what the future holds for enterprises, work, life, and society as a whole.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work has never been more uncertain, and even jobs requiring high levels of human interaction are no longer safe. The Last Human Job explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other in these settings is valuable and worth preserving.

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.

Are robots going to take my job? How are smartphones affecting my kids? Do I need to worry about privacy when I get online or ask Siri for directions? Whatever questions you have about AI, The Age of AI gives you insights on how to navigate this brand-new world as you apply God's ageless truths...

No city can survive without water, and lots of it. Today we take the stuff for granted: turn a tap and it gushes out. But it wasn't always so. For centuries London, one of the largest and richest cities in the world, struggled to supply its citizens with reliable, clean water. The Mercenary River tells the story of that struggle from the Middle Ages to the present day. Based on new research, it tells a tale of remarkable technological, scientific and organisational breakthroughs, but also a story of greed and complacency, high finance and low politics. 

What happens when intelligent machines aren’t just in our pockets but are also driving our cars, making our decisions, folding our laundry, and educating our kids? You’ve heard the hype: AI will make us healthier, give every child a personalized tutor, run our businesses more efficiently...

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this "attention economy", we need to recognize the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to take back control.

Nobody meant for this to happen. Facebook didn't mean to facilitate a genocide. Twitter didn't want to be used to harass women. YouTube never planned to radicalise young men. But with billions of users, these platforms need only tweak their algorithms to generate more 'engagement'. In so doing, they bring unrest to previously settled communities and erode our relationships. Social warming has happened gradually - as a by-product of our preposterously convenient digital existence.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY WIRED In this brilliant smart-thinking book about the power and influence of social media, Professor Sinan Aral shows how ‘hyper-socialization’ has profoundly changed us. Why does fake news spread faster than the truth? Do products and ideas become...

If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put it on the shelf, lend it to a friend, or sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the eBooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that you don't own those purchases, you merely license them. That means your eBook vendor can delete the book from your device without warning or explanation - as Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of surprised readers.