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Author: Tracy Sheen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781922391964
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Tracy Sheen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781922391964
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Daniel Dinello
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292709862
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
Techno-heaven or techno-hell? If you believe many scientists working in the emerging fields of twenty-first-century technology, the future is blissfully bright. Initially, human bodies will be perfected through genetic manipulation and the fusion of human and machine; later, human beings will completely shed the shackles of pain, disease, and even death, as human minds are downloaded into death-free robots whereby they can live forever in a heavenly "posthuman" existence. In this techno-utopian future, humanity will be saved by the godlike power of technology. If you believe the authors of science fiction, however, posthuman evolution marks the beginning of the end of human freedom, values, and identity. Our dark future will be dominated by mad scientists, rampaging robots, killer clones, and uncontrollable viruses. In this timely new book, Daniel Dinello examines "the dramatic conflict between the techno-utopia promised by real-world scientists and the techno-dystopia predicted by science fiction." Organized into chapters devoted to robotics, bionics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and other significant scientific advancements, this book summarizes the current state of each technology, while presenting corresponding reactions in science fiction. Dinello draws on a rich range of material, including films, television, books, and computer games, and argues that science fiction functions as a valuable corrective to technological domination, countering techno-hype and reflecting the "weaponized, religiously rationalized, profit-fueled" motives of such science. By imaging a disastrous future of posthuman techno-totalitarianism, science fiction encourages us to construct ways to contain new technology, and asks its audience perhaps the most important question of the twenty-first century: is technology out of control?
Author: Daniel Dinello
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292758464
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
Techno-heaven or techno-hell? If you believe many scientists working in the emerging fields of twenty-first-century technology, the future is blissfully bright. Initially, human bodies will be perfected through genetic manipulation and the fusion of human and machine; later, human beings will completely shed the shackles of pain, disease, and even death, as human minds are downloaded into death-free robots whereby they can live forever in a heavenly "posthuman" existence. In this techno-utopian future, humanity will be saved by the godlike power of technology. If you believe the authors of science fiction, however, posthuman evolution marks the beginning of the end of human freedom, values, and identity. Our dark future will be dominated by mad scientists, rampaging robots, killer clones, and uncontrollable viruses. In this timely new book, Daniel Dinello examines "the dramatic conflict between the techno-utopia promised by real-world scientists and the techno-dystopia predicted by science fiction." Organized into chapters devoted to robotics, bionics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and other significant scientific advancements, this book summarizes the current state of each technology, while presenting corresponding reactions in science fiction. Dinello draws on a rich range of material, including films, television, books, and computer games, and argues that science fiction functions as a valuable corrective to technological domination, countering techno-hype and reflecting the "weaponized, religiously rationalized, profit-fueled" motives of such science. By imaging a disastrous future of posthuman techno-totalitarianism, science fiction encourages us to construct ways to contain new technology, and asks its audience perhaps the most important question of the twenty-first century: is technology out of control?
Author: Charles F. Bowman
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000433870
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
It’s axiomatic to state that people fear what they do not understand, and this is especially true when it comes to technology. However, despite their prevalence, computers remain shrouded in mystery, and many users feel apprehensive when interacting with them. Smartphones have only exacerbated the issue. Indeed, most users of these devices leverage only a small fraction of the power they hold in their hands. How Things Work: The Computer Science Edition is a roadmap for readers who want to overcome their technophobia and harness the full power of everyday technology. Beginning with the basics, the book demystifies the mysterious world of computer science, explains its fundamental concepts in simple terms, and answers the questions many users feel too intimidated to ask. By the end of the book, readers will understand how computers and smart devices function and, more important, how they can make these devices work for them. To complete the picture, the book also introduces readers to the darker side of modern technology: security and privacy concerns, identity theft, and threats from the Dark Web.
Author: Vernor Vinge
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 1429991895
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
Four time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge has taken readers to the depths of space and into the far future in his bestselling novels A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. Now, he has written a science-fiction thriller set in a place and time as exciting and strange as any far-future world: San Diego, California, 2025. Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it. He was a world-renowned poet. Now he is seventy-five years old, though by a medical miracle he looks much younger, and he's starting over, for the first time unsure of his poetic gifts. Living with his son's family, he has no choice but to learn how to cope with a new information age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions, depending on your choice. But the consensus reality of the digital world is available only if, like his thirteen-year-old granddaughter Miri, you know how to wear your wireless access—through nodes designed into smart clothes—and to see the digital context—through smart contact lenses. With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont High, learning with other older people what is second nature to Miri and other teens at school, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination. In a world where every computer chip has Homeland Security built-in, this conspiracy is something that baffles even the most sophisticated security analysts, including Robert's son and daughter-in law, two top people in the U.S. military. And even Miri, in her attempts to protect her grandfather, may be entangled in the plot. As Robert becomes more deeply involved in conspiracy, he is shocked to learn of a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all the books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist. He and his fellow re-trainees feel compelled to join protests against the change. With forces around the world converging on San Diego, both the conspiracy and the protest climax in a spectacular moment as unique and satisfying as it is unexpected. This is science fiction at its very best, by a master storyteller at his peak. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Author: Evgeny Morozov
Publisher:
ISBN: 1610391381
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
The award-winning author of The Net Delusion shows how the radical transparency we've become accustomed to online may threaten the spirit of real-life democracy
Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610910923
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
At a time when scientific and technological breakthroughs keep our eyes focused on the latest software upgrades or the newest cell-phone wizardry, a group of today's most innovative thinkers are looking beyond the horizon to explore both the promise and the peril of our technological future. Human ingenuity has granted us a world of unprecedented personal power -- enabling us to communicate instantaneously with anyone anywhere on the globe, to transport ourselves in both real and virtual worlds to distant places with ease, to fill our bellies with engineered commodities once available to only a privileged elite. Through our technologies, we have sought to free ourselves from the shackles of nature and become its master. Yet science and technology continually transform our experience and society in ways that often seem to be beyond our control. Today, different areas of research and innovation are advancing synergistically, multiplying the rate and magnitude of technological and societal change, with consequences that no one can predict. Living with the Genie explores the origins, nature, and meaning of such change, and our capacity to govern it. As the power of technology continues to accelerate, who, this book asks, will be the master of whom? In Living with the Genie, leading writers and thinkers come together to confront this question from many perspectives, including: Richard Powers's whimsical investigation of the limits of artificial intelligence; Philip Kitcher's confrontation of the moral implications of science; Richard Rhodes's exploration of the role of technology in reducing violence; Shiv Visvanathan's analysis of technology's genocidal potential; Lori Andrews's insights into the quest for human genetic enhancement; Alan Lightman's reflections on how technology changes the experience of our humanness. These and ten other provocative essays open the door to a new dialogue on how, in the quest for human mastery, technology may be changing what it means to be human, in ways we scarcely comprehend.
Author: Jacques Ellul
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593315685
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 531
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Book Description
As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology—which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind—threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. "A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process.”—Harper's “One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself—unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs.”—The Nation “A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance.”—Los Angeles Free Press
Author: Mark J. Brosnan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134778368
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
Technology is taking over all aspects of life. Yet studies have shown that up to one half the population is 'technophobic'. This means having negative opinions or being anxious about information technology like personal computers. This book examines the origins of technophobia - what it is, who has it and what causes it. The impact of gender is examined and the social and cognitive psychological factors underlying technophobia are reviewed and combined into an overall psychological model. Techniques for reducing technophobia are discussed, and the effect of technophobia on everyone from school children to teenagers is analysed. Technophobia will be useful both for academic study of the area, and for those devising IT policy in schools, business and government.
Author: Sharan Newman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101186607
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
From the author of The Real History Behind the Templars--the origins and stories behind end-of-the-world predictions throughout history, from Revelations to 2012. In entertaining and sharp prose, historian Sharan Newman explores theories of world destruction from ancient times up to the present day- theories which reveal as much about human nature as they do about the predominant historical, scientific, and religious beliefs of the time. Readers will find answers to the following end-of-times questions: ?Did the Mayans really say the world will end in December 2012? ?How have the signs in the New Testament Book of Revelations been interpreted over the years? ?How did ancient Egyptians, Norse, and Chinese think the world would end? ?When did Nostradamus predict that the last days would come? ?Does the I Ching reference 2012? ?Why didn't the world end in Y2K? ?Are meteors, global warming, super-volcanoes, and the threat of nuclear war signs that the end is near?
