High-Tech Heretic

High-Tech Heretic PDF Author: Clifford Stoll
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385489765
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The cry for and against computers in the classroom is a topic of concern to parents, educators, and communities everywhere. Now, from a Silicon Valley hero and bestselling technology writer comes a pointed critique of the hype surrounding computers and their real benefits, especially in education. In High-Tech Heretic, Clifford Stoll questions the relentless drumbeat for "computer literacy" by educators and the computer industry, particularly since most people just use computers for word processing and games--and computers become outmoded or obsolete much sooner than new textbooks or a good teacher. As one who loves computers as much as he disdains the inflated promises made on their behalf, Stoll offers a commonsense look at how we can make a technological world better suited for people, instead of making people better suited to using machines.

High-Tech Heretic

High-Tech Heretic PDF Author: Clifford Stoll
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385489765
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book Here

Book Description
The cry for and against computers in the classroom is a topic of concern to parents, educators, and communities everywhere. Now, from a Silicon Valley hero and bestselling technology writer comes a pointed critique of the hype surrounding computers and their real benefits, especially in education. In High-Tech Heretic, Clifford Stoll questions the relentless drumbeat for "computer literacy" by educators and the computer industry, particularly since most people just use computers for word processing and games--and computers become outmoded or obsolete much sooner than new textbooks or a good teacher. As one who loves computers as much as he disdains the inflated promises made on their behalf, Stoll offers a commonsense look at how we can make a technological world better suited for people, instead of making people better suited to using machines.

Silicon Snake Oil

Silicon Snake Oil PDF Author: Clifford Stoll
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385419945
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll, the best-selling author of The Cuckoo's Egg and one of the pioneers of the Internet, turns his attention to the much-heralded information highway, revealing that it is not all it's cracked up to be. Yes, the Internet provides access to plenty of services, but useful information is virtually impossible to find and difficult to access. Is being on-line truly useful? "Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life. A cautionary tale about today's media darling, Silicon Snake Oil has sparked intense debate across the country about the merits--and foibles--of what's been touted as the entranceway to our future.

The Heretic's Guide to Best Practices

The Heretic's Guide to Best Practices PDF Author: Paul Culmsee
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1938908414
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
When it comes to solving complex problems, we often perform elaborate rituals in the guise of best practices that promise a world of order, certainty, and control. But reality paints a far different picture, which practitioners are often reluctant to discuss. A witty yet rigorous journey through the seedy underbelly of organisational problem solving, The Heretics Guide to Best Practices pinpoints the reasons why best practices dont work as advertised and what can be done about it. Hugely enjoyable, deeply reflective, and intensely practical. This book is about weaving human artistry and improvisation, with appropriate methods and technologies, in order to pool collective intelligence and wisdom under pressure. Simon Buckingham Shum, Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK This is a terrific piece of work: important, insightful, and very entertaining. Culmsee and Awati have produced a refreshing take on the problems that plague organisations... If youre trying to deal with wicked problems in your organisation, then drop everything and read this book. Tim Van Gelder, Principal Consultant, Austhink Consulting

Geek Heresy

Geek Heresy PDF Author: Kentaro Toyama
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610395298
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
After a decade designing technologies meant to address education, health, and global poverty, award-winning computer scientist Kentaro Toyama came to a difficult conclusion: Even in an age of amazing technology, social progress depends on human changes that gadgets can't deliver. Computers in Bangalore are locked away in dusty cabinets because teachers don't know what to do with them. Mobile phone apps meant to spread hygiene practices in Africa fail to improve health. Executives in Silicon Valley evangelize novel technologies at work even as they send their children to Waldorf schools that ban electronics. And four decades of incredible innovation in America have done nothing to turn the tide of rising poverty and inequality. Why then do we keep hoping that technology will solve our greatest social ills? In this incisive book, Toyama cures us of the manic rhetoric of digital utopians and reinvigorates us with a deeply people-centric view of social change. Contrasting the outlandish claims of tech zealots with stories of people like Patrick Awuah, a Microsoft millionaire who left his engineering job to open Ghana's first liberal arts university, and Tara Sreenivasa, a graduate of a remarkable South Indian school that takes impoverished children into the high-tech offices of Goldman Sachs and Mercedes-Benz, Geek Heresy is a heartwarming reminder that it's human wisdom, not machines, that move our world forward.

The Heretic

The Heretic PDF Author: Pascal Finette
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781534669284
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Let's get real. Being an entrepreneur comes with its ups and downs. To achieve success in the business world, one must dive deeper and realize what it really takes to be an entrepreneur. All the struggles, disappointments, and frustrations are what will help you grow and achieve what it is you really want. The Heretic is a place where we can truly get real about entrepreneurship. Right down to the nitty gritty of it all. Through humor, practical tips and my own personal stories within the crazy and exhilarating world of entrepreneurship you'll discover: - Ways to deal with failure - Giving yourself credit - What's meaningful to you - And most importantly, finding inspiration and motivation There are so many books out there trying to tell you how to be a successful entrepreneur. Truth is there is no one way to achieve greatness. Everyone has their own struggles and their own experiences that will lead to their own unique way of how they became successful. Sharing our insights and what we have learned along the way is the best way to give advice. Simply telling someone how to do be an entrepreneur will never work, you will only be making them a replica of yourself and the whole idea behind being a successful entrepreneur is doing something different. There are no entrepreneurs out there that are exactly the same. If that were true the business world would be a boring and unthrilling career choice. It's about taking risks, failing, succeeding, being different and enjoying every minute of it! In this book we're going to get raw, unfiltered and opinionated. Prepare to get real!

CUCKOO'S EGG

CUCKOO'S EGG PDF Author: Clifford Stoll
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN: 0307819426
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Before the Internet became widely known as a global tool for terrorists, one perceptive U.S. citizen recognized its ominous potential. Armed with clear evidence of computer espionage, he began a highly personal quest to expose a hidden network of spies that threatened national security. But would the authorities back him up? Cliff Stoll's dramatic firsthand account is "a computer-age detective story, instantly fascinating [and] astonishingly gripping" (Smithsonian). Cliff Stoll was an astronomer turned systems manager at Lawrence Berkeley Lab when a 75-cent accounting error alerted him to the presence of an unauthorized user on his system. The hacker's code name was "Hunter"—a mysterious invader who managed to break into U.S. computer systems and steal sensitive military and security information. Stoll began a one-man hunt of his own: spying on the spy. It was a dangerous game of deception, broken codes, satellites, and missile bases—a one-man sting operation that finally gained the attention of the CIA . . . and ultimately trapped an international spy ring fueled by cash, cocaine, and the KGB.

The English Heretic Collection

The English Heretic Collection PDF Author: Andy Sharp
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1913462102
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
From its inaugural Black Plaque in honour of Witchfinder General director Michael Reeves, this unique collection follows a veridical trajectory to the frontiers of belief. Reeves' film becomes a conspiratorial cauldron drawing in a host of tragic players in the end game of the Sixties. The Cornwall of Du Maurier's The Birds is ploughed to reveal the hidden psychic codes of our Blitz spirit. In a powerfully relevant occult rendering of a bruised Island, the myth of Churchill is dissected and re-animalised. New maps of hell are drawn by colliding the forensic vision of JG Ballard and Lovecraftian magic. Actors, witches and psychopaths maraud across a nightmare terrain of murderous henges and abandoned military bases; conflating creative research into a surreal documentary, history as hallucination. Geography becomes an alchemical alembic, a vale of soul-making distilled by the lysergic psychobiology of Stanislav Grof, the alcoholic lyricism of Malcolm Lowry, and the convulsive travelogues of the Marquis de Sade. If history is revealed as paranoid ritual, how do we escape its time traps to wild new imaginative geographies? The English Heretic collection is a darkly comical, urgently lyrical, mental escape hatch from the hells of our own making.

Shaman, Healer, Heretic

Shaman, Healer, Heretic PDF Author: M. Terry Green
Publisher: M. Terry Green
ISBN: 9780983292500
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Even for a techno-shaman, a kachina in the bedroom isn't exactly part of the drill. When Olivia Lawson wakes to find one towering over her, she panics. A Hopi god visiting the real world isn't just wrong-it's impossible. Or is it? Soon Olivia learns that the kachina is the least of her worries. As she struggles to save her clients, clashes with other shamans, and fends off the attacks of real-world vigilantes, Olivia finds herself in the destructive path of a malevolent ancient force intent on leaving the spiritual realm to conquer this one. Left with few options, Olivia is forced to defy centuries of shaman prohibitions. As she and her allies risk everything in their bid for survival, Olivia ultimately learns that the rules are there for a reason and that breaking them has a terrible cost.

The Friendly Orange Glow

The Friendly Orange Glow PDF Author: Brian Dear
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101973633
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers—some of them only high school students—in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers. Not only did PLATO engineers make significant hardware breakthroughs with plasma displays and touch screens but PLATO programmers also came up with a long list of software innovations: chat rooms, instant messaging, message boards, screen savers, multiplayer games, online newspapers, interactive fiction, and emoticons. Together, the PLATO community pioneered what we now collectively engage in as cyberculture. They were among the first to identify and also realize the potential and scope of the social interconnectivity of computers, well before the creation of the internet. PLATO was the foundational model for every online community that was to follow in its footsteps. The Friendly Orange Glow is the first history to recount in fascinating detail the remarkable accomplishments and inspiring personal stories of the PLATO community. The addictive nature of PLATO both ruined many a college career and launched pathbreaking multimillion-dollar software products. Its development, impact, and eventual disappearance provides an instructive case study of technological innovation and disruption, project management, and missed opportunities. Above all, The Friendly Orange Glow at last reveals new perspectives on the origins of social computing and our internet-infatuated world.

The Nearest Thing to Life

The Nearest Thing to Life PDF Author: James Wood
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 1611687438
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description
In this remarkable blend of memoir and criticism, James Wood, noted contributor to the New Yorker, has written a master class on the connections between fiction and life. He argues that, of all the arts, fiction has a unique ability to describe the shape of our lives and to rescue the texture of those lives from death and historical oblivion. The act of reading is understood here as the most sacred and personal of activities, and there are brilliant discussions of individual works - among others, Chekhov's story "The Kiss," W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants, and Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower. Wood reveals his own intimate relationship with the written word: we see the development of a provincial boy growing up in a charged Christian environment, the secret joy of his childhood reading, the links he makes between reading and blasphemy, or between literature and music. The final section discusses fiction in the context of exile and homelessness. The Nearest Thing to LifeÊis not simply a brief, tightly argued book by a man commonly regarded as our finest living critic - it is also an exhilarating personal account that reflects on, and embodies, the fruitful conspiracy between reader and writer (and critic), and asks us to reconsider everything that is at stake when we read and write fiction.