Machine Wars

Machine Wars PDF Author: Michael Pryor
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0857982761
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The Bourne Identity meets The Terminator in this fast-paced technothriller for boys aged 10 to 14. Unknown to the world, a superintelligence has emerged and it wants to eliminate fifteen-year-old Bram Argent ...The superintelligence can control any machine connected to the net, and it uses them as its unstoppable agents to achieve its ends. And the superintelligence is paranoid. Controlling the entire world is its only way to ensure its own existence. Bram's mother is a high-level computer scientist. She's been investigating the possibility of the emergence of a superintelligence and she has evidence copies of which she has given to her son and husband for safekeeping. But the superintelligence has become aware of her and decided she needs to be eliminated. Bram's mother escapes, warning her son and husband to do the same. Now Bram must flee and find his parents while being hunted by every machine on the planet. His friend Stella is caught up in the pursuit and becomes a target because of their friendship. Together, they must survive in an interconnected world where any machine might instantly become a lethal predator ...

Machine Wars

Machine Wars PDF Author: Michael Pryor
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0857982761
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Bourne Identity meets The Terminator in this fast-paced technothriller for boys aged 10 to 14. Unknown to the world, a superintelligence has emerged and it wants to eliminate fifteen-year-old Bram Argent ...The superintelligence can control any machine connected to the net, and it uses them as its unstoppable agents to achieve its ends. And the superintelligence is paranoid. Controlling the entire world is its only way to ensure its own existence. Bram's mother is a high-level computer scientist. She's been investigating the possibility of the emergence of a superintelligence and she has evidence copies of which she has given to her son and husband for safekeeping. But the superintelligence has become aware of her and decided she needs to be eliminated. Bram's mother escapes, warning her son and husband to do the same. Now Bram must flee and find his parents while being hunted by every machine on the planet. His friend Stella is caught up in the pursuit and becomes a target because of their friendship. Together, they must survive in an interconnected world where any machine might instantly become a lethal predator ...

Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows

Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows PDF Author: Tom DeLonge
Publisher: To The Stars
ISBN: 1943272166
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
For those who know... that something is going on... The witnesses are legion, scattered across the world and dotted through history, people who looked up and saw something impossible lighting up the night sky. What those objects were, where they came from, and who—or what—might be inside them is the subject of fierce debate and equally fierce mockery, so that most who glimpsed them came to wish they hadn’t. Most, but not everyone. Among those who know what they’ve seen, and—like the toll of a bell that can’t be unrung—are forever changed by it, are a pilot, an heiress, a journalist, and a prisoner of war. From the waning days of the 20th century’s final great war to the fraught fields of Afghanistan to the otherworldly secrets hidden amid Nevada’s dusty neverlands—the truth that is out there will propel each of them into a labyrinth of otherworldly technology and the competing aims of those who might seek to prevent—or harness—these beings of unfathomable power. Because, as it turns out, we are not the only ones who can invent and build...and destroy. Featuring actual events and other truths drawn from sources within the military and intelligence community, Tom DeLonge and A.J. Hartley offer a tale at once terrifying, fantastical, and perhaps all too real. Though it is, of course, a work of... fiction?

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines PDF Author: Manuel De Landa
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Artificial intelligence
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
The author aims to show how the emergence of intelligent and autonomous bombs and missiles equipped with artificial perception and decision-making capabilities represents a profound historical shift in the relation of human beings both to machines and to information.

The Doomsday Machine

The Doomsday Machine PDF Author: Daniel Ellsberg
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608196747
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for The California Book Award in Nonfiction The San Francisco Chronicle's Best of the Year List Foreign Affairs Best Books of the Year In These Times “Best Books of the Year" Huffington Post's Ten Excellent December Books List LitHub's “Five Books Making News This Week” From the legendary whistle-blower who revealed the Pentagon Papers, an eyewitness exposé of the dangers of America's Top Secret, seventy-year-long nuclear policy that continues to this day. Here, for the first time, former high-level defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg reveals his shocking firsthand account of America's nuclear program in the 1960s. From the remotest air bases in the Pacific Command, where he discovered that the authority to initiate use of nuclear weapons was widely delegated, to the secret plans for general nuclear war under Eisenhower, which, if executed, would cause the near-extinction of humanity, Ellsberg shows that the legacy of this most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization--and its proposed renewal under the Trump administration--threatens our very survival. No other insider with high-level access has written so candidly of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, and nothing has fundamentally changed since that era. Framed as a memoir--a chronicle of madness in which Ellsberg acknowledges participating--this gripping exposé reads like a thriller and offers feasible steps we can take to dismantle the existing "doomsday machine" and avoid nuclear catastrophe, returning Ellsberg to his role as whistle-blower. The Doomsday Machine is thus a real-life Dr. Strangelove story and an ultimately hopeful--and powerfully important--book about not just our country, but the future of the world.

Games of Empire

Games of Empire PDF Author: Nick Dyer-Witheford
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452942706
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, video games are an integral part of global media culture, rivaling Hollywood in revenue and influence. No longer confined to a subculture of adolescent males, video games today are played by adults around the world. At the same time, video games have become major sites of corporate exploitation and military recruitment. In Games of Empire, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter offer a radical political critique of such video games and virtual environments as Second Life, World of Warcraft, and Grand Theft Auto, analyzing them as the exemplary media of Empire, the twenty-first-century hypercapitalist complex theorized by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The authors trace the ascent of virtual gaming, assess its impact on creators and players alike, and delineate the relationships between games and reality, body and avatar, screen and street. Games of Empire forcefully connects video games to real-world concerns about globalization, militarism, and exploitation, from the horrors of African mines and Indian e-waste sites that underlie the entire industry, the role of labor in commercial game development, and the synergy between military simulation software and the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan exemplified by Full Spectrum Warrior to the substantial virtual economies surrounding World of Warcraft, the urban neoliberalism made playable in Grand Theft Auto, and the emergence of an alternative game culture through activist games and open-source game development. Rejecting both moral panic and glib enthusiasm, Games of Empire demonstrates how virtual games crystallize the cultural, political, and economic forces of global capital, while also providing a means of resisting them.

The Forum

The Forum PDF Author: Lorettus Sutton Metcalf
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description


Forum

Forum PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 774

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Book Description


America the Ingenious

America the Ingenious PDF Author: Kevin Baker
Publisher: Artisan
ISBN: 157965729X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
“Among the many rewards of America the Ingenious, Kevin Baker’s survey of Yankee know-how, is stumbling on its buried nuggets. . . . Baker examines a wide range of the achievements that have made, and still make, America great again—and again.” —The Wall Street Journal All made in America: The skyscraper and subway car. The telephone and telegraph. The safety elevator and safety pin. Plus the microprocessor, amusement park, MRI, supermarket, Pennsylvania rifle, and Tennessee Valley Authority. Not to mention the city of Chicago or jazz or that magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. What is it about America that makes it a nation of inventors, tinkerers, researchers, and adventurers—obsessive pursuers of the never-before-created? And, equally, what is it that makes America such a fertile place to explore, discover, and launch the next big thing? In America the Ingenious, bestselling author Kevin Baker brings his gift of storytelling and eye for historical detail to the grand, and grandly entertaining, tale of American innovation. Here are the Edisons and Bells and Carnegies, and the stories of how they followed their passions and changed our world. And also the less celebrated, like Jacob Youphes and Loeb Strauss, two Jewish immigrants from Germany who transformed the way at least half the world now dresses (hint: Levi Strauss). And Leo Fender, who couldn’t play a note of music, midwifing rock ’n’ roll through his solid-body electric guitar and amplifier. And the many women who weren’t legally recognized as inventors, but who created things to make their lives easier that we use every day—like Josephine Cochran, inventor of the dishwasher, or Marion O’Brien Donovan, who invented a waterproof diaper cover. Or a guy with the improbable name of Philo Farnsworth, who, with his invention of television, upended communication as significantly as Gutenberg did. At a time when America struggles with different visions of what it wants to be, America the Ingenious shows the extraordinary power of what works: how immigration leads to innovation, what a strong government and strong public education mean to a climate of positive practical change, and why taking the long view instead of looking for short-term gain pays off many times over, not only for investors and inventors, but for the rest of us whose lives are made better by the new. America and its nation of immigrants have excelled at taking ideas from anywhere and transforming them into the startling, often unexpectedly beautiful creations that have shaped our world. This is that story.

Forum and Column Review

Forum and Column Review PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 758

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Book Description


Big Wars

Big Wars PDF Author: John Storey
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers
ISBN: 1925736695
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 653

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Book Description
World War II was the biggest and most destructive war in history. For two centuries wars had grown ever larger, with the use of more terrible weapons and rising casualties, culminating in the cataclysmic global events of 1939–45. And then, quite suddenly, large international wars have all but disappeared. What caused wars to grow in size to such an extent and then shrink so precipitously? Is this a permanent state of affairs or could big wars make a comeback? Lawyer and historian John P Storey explores these questions by looking at the evolution of military technology and tactics over the long history of warfare. From ancient bronze spears and chariots to World War II tanks and warplanes, from the nuclear weapons of the Cold War to the drones and robotics of the future, the changes in our methods of waging war has had, and will continue to have, a major impact on their size and destructiveness. The sobering conclusion Storey makes is that, based on past trends and the weapons in the pipeline for the future, there is a much higher risk of there being much bigger wars in the coming decades.