Author: Michael Chorost
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439141207
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
What if digital communication felt as real as being touched? This question led Michael Chorost to explore profound new ideas triggered by lab research around the world, and the result is the book you now hold. Marvelous and momentous, World Wide Mind takes mind-to-mind communication out of the realm of science fiction and reveals how we are on the verge of a radical new understanding of human interaction. Chorost himself has computers in his head that enable him to hear: two cochlear implants. Drawing on that experience, he proposes that our Paleolithic bodies and our Pentium chips could be physically merged, and he explores the technologies that could do it. He visits engineers building wearable computers that allow people to be online every waking moment, and scientists working on implanted chips that would let paralysis victims communicate. Entirely new neural interfaces are being developed that let computers read and alter neural activity in unprecedented detail. But we all know how addictive the Internet is. Chorost explains the addiction: he details the biochemistry of what makes you hunger to touch your iPhone and check your email. He proposes how we could design a mind-to-mind technology that would let us reconnect with our bodies and enhance our relationships. With such technologies, we could achieve a collective consciousness—a World Wide Mind. And it would be humankind’s next evolutionary step. With daring and sensitivity, Chorost writes about how he learned how to enhance his own relationships by attending workshops teaching the power of touch. He learned how to bring technology and communication together to find true love, and his story shows how we can master technology to make ourselves more human rather than less. World Wide Mind offers a new understanding of how we communicate, what we need to connect fully with one another, and how our addiction to email and texting can be countered with technologies that put us—literally—in each other’s minds.
World Wide Mind
Author: Michael Chorost
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439141207
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
What if digital communication felt as real as being touched? This question led Michael Chorost to explore profound new ideas triggered by lab research around the world, and the result is the book you now hold. Marvelous and momentous, World Wide Mind takes mind-to-mind communication out of the realm of science fiction and reveals how we are on the verge of a radical new understanding of human interaction. Chorost himself has computers in his head that enable him to hear: two cochlear implants. Drawing on that experience, he proposes that our Paleolithic bodies and our Pentium chips could be physically merged, and he explores the technologies that could do it. He visits engineers building wearable computers that allow people to be online every waking moment, and scientists working on implanted chips that would let paralysis victims communicate. Entirely new neural interfaces are being developed that let computers read and alter neural activity in unprecedented detail. But we all know how addictive the Internet is. Chorost explains the addiction: he details the biochemistry of what makes you hunger to touch your iPhone and check your email. He proposes how we could design a mind-to-mind technology that would let us reconnect with our bodies and enhance our relationships. With such technologies, we could achieve a collective consciousness—a World Wide Mind. And it would be humankind’s next evolutionary step. With daring and sensitivity, Chorost writes about how he learned how to enhance his own relationships by attending workshops teaching the power of touch. He learned how to bring technology and communication together to find true love, and his story shows how we can master technology to make ourselves more human rather than less. World Wide Mind offers a new understanding of how we communicate, what we need to connect fully with one another, and how our addiction to email and texting can be countered with technologies that put us—literally—in each other’s minds.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439141207
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
What if digital communication felt as real as being touched? This question led Michael Chorost to explore profound new ideas triggered by lab research around the world, and the result is the book you now hold. Marvelous and momentous, World Wide Mind takes mind-to-mind communication out of the realm of science fiction and reveals how we are on the verge of a radical new understanding of human interaction. Chorost himself has computers in his head that enable him to hear: two cochlear implants. Drawing on that experience, he proposes that our Paleolithic bodies and our Pentium chips could be physically merged, and he explores the technologies that could do it. He visits engineers building wearable computers that allow people to be online every waking moment, and scientists working on implanted chips that would let paralysis victims communicate. Entirely new neural interfaces are being developed that let computers read and alter neural activity in unprecedented detail. But we all know how addictive the Internet is. Chorost explains the addiction: he details the biochemistry of what makes you hunger to touch your iPhone and check your email. He proposes how we could design a mind-to-mind technology that would let us reconnect with our bodies and enhance our relationships. With such technologies, we could achieve a collective consciousness—a World Wide Mind. And it would be humankind’s next evolutionary step. With daring and sensitivity, Chorost writes about how he learned how to enhance his own relationships by attending workshops teaching the power of touch. He learned how to bring technology and communication together to find true love, and his story shows how we can master technology to make ourselves more human rather than less. World Wide Mind offers a new understanding of how we communicate, what we need to connect fully with one another, and how our addiction to email and texting can be countered with technologies that put us—literally—in each other’s minds.
Rebuilt
Author: Michael Chorost
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618378296
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Chorost chronicles his journey from deafness to hearing, from human to cyborg, and how it transformed him. Written with self-deprecating, dry wit this volume explores hearing, sound, and software that can now mend the senses.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618378296
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
Chorost chronicles his journey from deafness to hearing, from human to cyborg, and how it transformed him. Written with self-deprecating, dry wit this volume explores hearing, sound, and software that can now mend the senses.
Mind Wide Open
Author: Steven Johnson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743258797
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
BRILLIANTLY EXPLORING TODAY'S CUTTING-EDGE BRAIN RESEARCH, MIND WIDE OPEN IS AN UNPRECEDENTED JOURNEY INTO THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, ALLOWING READERS TO UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES AND THE PEOPLE IN THEIR LIVES AS NEVER BEFORE. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works -- its chemicals, structures, and subroutines -- and how these systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives. For a hundred years, he says, many of us have assumed that the most powerful route to self-knowledge took the form of lying on a couch, talking about our childhoods. The possibility entertained in this book is that you can follow another path, in which learning about the brain's mechanics can widen one's self-awareness as powerfully as any therapy or meditation or drug. In Mind Wide Open, Johnson embarks on this path as his own test subject, participating in a battery of attention tests, learning to control video games by altering his brain waves, scanning his own brain with a $2 million fMRI machine, all in search of a modern answer to the oldest of questions: who am I? Along the way, Johnson explores how we "read" other people, how the brain processes frightening events (and how we might rid ourselves of the scars those memories leave), what the neurochemistry is behind love and sex, what it means that our brains are teeming with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs, why music moves us to tears, and where our breakthrough ideas come from. Johnson's clear, engaging explanation of the physical functions of the brain reveals not only the broad strokes of our aptitudes and fears, our skills and weaknesses and desires, but also the momentary brain phenomena that a whole human life comprises. Why, when hearing a tale of woe, do we sometimes smile inappropriately, even if we don't want to? Why are some of us so bad at remembering phone numbers but brilliant at recognizing faces? Why does depression make us feel stupid? To read Mind Wide Open is to rethink family histories, individual fates, and the very nature of the self, and to see that brain science is now personally transformative -- a valuable tool for better relationships and better living.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743258797
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
BRILLIANTLY EXPLORING TODAY'S CUTTING-EDGE BRAIN RESEARCH, MIND WIDE OPEN IS AN UNPRECEDENTED JOURNEY INTO THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN PERSONALITY, ALLOWING READERS TO UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES AND THE PEOPLE IN THEIR LIVES AS NEVER BEFORE. Using a mix of experiential reportage, personal storytelling, and fresh scientific discovery, Steven Johnson describes how the brain works -- its chemicals, structures, and subroutines -- and how these systems connect to the day-to-day realities of individual lives. For a hundred years, he says, many of us have assumed that the most powerful route to self-knowledge took the form of lying on a couch, talking about our childhoods. The possibility entertained in this book is that you can follow another path, in which learning about the brain's mechanics can widen one's self-awareness as powerfully as any therapy or meditation or drug. In Mind Wide Open, Johnson embarks on this path as his own test subject, participating in a battery of attention tests, learning to control video games by altering his brain waves, scanning his own brain with a $2 million fMRI machine, all in search of a modern answer to the oldest of questions: who am I? Along the way, Johnson explores how we "read" other people, how the brain processes frightening events (and how we might rid ourselves of the scars those memories leave), what the neurochemistry is behind love and sex, what it means that our brains are teeming with powerful chemicals closely related to recreational drugs, why music moves us to tears, and where our breakthrough ideas come from. Johnson's clear, engaging explanation of the physical functions of the brain reveals not only the broad strokes of our aptitudes and fears, our skills and weaknesses and desires, but also the momentary brain phenomena that a whole human life comprises. Why, when hearing a tale of woe, do we sometimes smile inappropriately, even if we don't want to? Why are some of us so bad at remembering phone numbers but brilliant at recognizing faces? Why does depression make us feel stupid? To read Mind Wide Open is to rethink family histories, individual fates, and the very nature of the self, and to see that brain science is now personally transformative -- a valuable tool for better relationships and better living.
Big Mind
Author: Geoff Mulgan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691196168
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
"A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This "bigger mind"--human and machine capabilities working together--has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results? Gathering insights from diverse fields, including philosophy, computer science, and biology, Big Mind reveals how collective intelligence can guide corporations, governments, universities, and societies to make the most of human brains and digital technologies"--Amazon.com.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691196168
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
"A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This "bigger mind"--human and machine capabilities working together--has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results? Gathering insights from diverse fields, including philosophy, computer science, and biology, Big Mind reveals how collective intelligence can guide corporations, governments, universities, and societies to make the most of human brains and digital technologies"--Amazon.com.
Global Brain
Author: Howard Bloom
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 0470310391
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
"As someone who has spent forty years in psychology with a long-standing interest in evolution, I'll just assimilate Howard Bloom's accomplishment and my amazement."-DAVID SMILLIE, Visiting Professor of Zoology, Duke University In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom-one of today's preeminent thinkers-offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. He shows how plants and animals (including humans) have evolved together as components of a worldwide learning machine. He describes the network of life on Earth as one that is, in fact, a "complex adaptive system," a global brain in which each of us plays a sometimes conscious, sometimes unknowing role. and he reveals that the World Wide Web is just the latest step in the development of this brain. These are theories as important as they are radical. Informed by twenty years of interdisciplinary research, Bloom takes us on a spellbinding journey back to the big bang to let us see how its fires forged primordial sociality. As he brings us back via surprising routes, we see how our earliest bacterial ancestors built multitrillion-member research and development teams a full 3.5 billion years ago. We watch him unravel the previously unrecognized strands of interconnectedness woven by crowds of trilobites, hunting packs of dinosaurs, feathered flying lizards gathered in flocks, troops of baboons making communal decisions, and adventurous tribes of protohumans spreading across continents but still linked by primitive forms of information networking. We soon find ourselves reconsidering our place in the world. Along the way, Bloom offers us exhilarating insights into the strange tricks of body and mind that have organized a variety of life forms: spiny lobsters, which, during the Paleozoic age, participated in communal marching rituals; and bees, which, during the age of dinosaurs, conducted collective brainwork. This fascinating tour continues on to the sometimes brutal subculture wars that have spurred the growth of human civilization since the Stone Age. Bloom shows us how culture shapes our infant brains, immersing us in a matrix of truth and mass delusion that we think of as reality. Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution. It is a "grand vision," says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 0470310391
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388
Book Description
"As someone who has spent forty years in psychology with a long-standing interest in evolution, I'll just assimilate Howard Bloom's accomplishment and my amazement."-DAVID SMILLIE, Visiting Professor of Zoology, Duke University In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom-one of today's preeminent thinkers-offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. He shows how plants and animals (including humans) have evolved together as components of a worldwide learning machine. He describes the network of life on Earth as one that is, in fact, a "complex adaptive system," a global brain in which each of us plays a sometimes conscious, sometimes unknowing role. and he reveals that the World Wide Web is just the latest step in the development of this brain. These are theories as important as they are radical. Informed by twenty years of interdisciplinary research, Bloom takes us on a spellbinding journey back to the big bang to let us see how its fires forged primordial sociality. As he brings us back via surprising routes, we see how our earliest bacterial ancestors built multitrillion-member research and development teams a full 3.5 billion years ago. We watch him unravel the previously unrecognized strands of interconnectedness woven by crowds of trilobites, hunting packs of dinosaurs, feathered flying lizards gathered in flocks, troops of baboons making communal decisions, and adventurous tribes of protohumans spreading across continents but still linked by primitive forms of information networking. We soon find ourselves reconsidering our place in the world. Along the way, Bloom offers us exhilarating insights into the strange tricks of body and mind that have organized a variety of life forms: spiny lobsters, which, during the Paleozoic age, participated in communal marching rituals; and bees, which, during the age of dinosaurs, conducted collective brainwork. This fascinating tour continues on to the sometimes brutal subculture wars that have spurred the growth of human civilization since the Stone Age. Bloom shows us how culture shapes our infant brains, immersing us in a matrix of truth and mass delusion that we think of as reality. Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution. It is a "grand vision," says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.
World Wide Rave
Author: David Meerman Scott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470430451
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
A World Wide Rave! What the heck is that? A World Wide Rave is when people around the world are talking about you, your company, and your products. It's when communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It's when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. It's when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there. Rules of the Rave: Nobody cares about your products (except you). No coercion required. Lose control. Put down roots. Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep. You can trigger a World Wide Rave: Just create something valuable that people want to share and make it easy for them to do so. What happens when people can't stop talking online about you, your company, and your products? A World Wide Rave is born that can propel a brand or company to seemingly instant fame and fortune. How do you create one? By learning the secret to getting links, YouTube, Facebook, and blog buzz to drive eager buyers to your virtual doorstep. For free. In World Wide Rave, David Meerman Scott, author of the award-winning hit book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, reveals the most exciting and powerful ways to build a giant audience from scratch.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470430451
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
A World Wide Rave! What the heck is that? A World Wide Rave is when people around the world are talking about you, your company, and your products. It's when communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It's when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. It's when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there. Rules of the Rave: Nobody cares about your products (except you). No coercion required. Lose control. Put down roots. Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep. You can trigger a World Wide Rave: Just create something valuable that people want to share and make it easy for them to do so. What happens when people can't stop talking online about you, your company, and your products? A World Wide Rave is born that can propel a brand or company to seemingly instant fame and fortune. How do you create one? By learning the secret to getting links, YouTube, Facebook, and blog buzz to drive eager buyers to your virtual doorstep. For free. In World Wide Rave, David Meerman Scott, author of the award-winning hit book The New Rules of Marketing and PR, reveals the most exciting and powerful ways to build a giant audience from scratch.
From Animals to Animats 8
Author: Stefan Schaal
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262693417
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 554
Book Description
New research on the adaptive behavior of natural and synthetic agents.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262693417
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 554
Book Description
New research on the adaptive behavior of natural and synthetic agents.
Capital of the Mind
Author: James Buchan
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 085790485X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500
Book Description
This “elegant portrait of Edinburgh in the age of Enlightenment” reveals a thriving city of artists, architects, scientists, and other pioneers (Times Literary Supplement). In the early eighteenth century, Edinburgh, Scotland, was a filthy backwater town synonymous with poverty and disease. Yet by century’s end, it had become the marvel of modern Europe, home to the finest minds of the day and their breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, science, the arts, and economics—all of which continues to echo loudly today. Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations. James Boswell produced The Life of Samuel Johnson. Alongside them, pioneers such as David Hume, Robert Burns, James Hutton, and Sir Walter Scott transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence. In Capital of the Mind, James Buchan beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of a historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and those whose vision brought it into being. “As Buchan says in this marvelous book, ‘there is no city like Edinburgh in all the world’.” —Sunday Times
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 085790485X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500
Book Description
This “elegant portrait of Edinburgh in the age of Enlightenment” reveals a thriving city of artists, architects, scientists, and other pioneers (Times Literary Supplement). In the early eighteenth century, Edinburgh, Scotland, was a filthy backwater town synonymous with poverty and disease. Yet by century’s end, it had become the marvel of modern Europe, home to the finest minds of the day and their breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, science, the arts, and economics—all of which continues to echo loudly today. Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations. James Boswell produced The Life of Samuel Johnson. Alongside them, pioneers such as David Hume, Robert Burns, James Hutton, and Sir Walter Scott transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence. In Capital of the Mind, James Buchan beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of a historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and those whose vision brought it into being. “As Buchan says in this marvelous book, ‘there is no city like Edinburgh in all the world’.” —Sunday Times
Materials of the Mind
Author: James Poskett
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226820645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Book Description
Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters stretching around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world--and how the world changed phrenology. This is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. Drawing on far-flung museum and archival collections, and addressing sources in six different languages, Materials of the Mind is the first substantial account of science in the nineteenth century as part of global history. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history could help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226820645
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Book Description
Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters stretching around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world--and how the world changed phrenology. This is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. Drawing on far-flung museum and archival collections, and addressing sources in six different languages, Materials of the Mind is the first substantial account of science in the nineteenth century as part of global history. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history could help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.
Advances in Artificial Life
Author: Jozef Kelemen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 354044811X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 744
Book Description
Why is the question of the di?erence between living and non-living matter - tellectually so attractive to the man of the West? Where are our dreams about our own ability to understand this di?erence and to overcome it using the ?rmly established technologies rooted? Where are, for instance, the cultural roots of the enterprises covered nowadays by the discipline of Arti?cial Life? Cont- plating such questions, one of us has recognized [6] the existence of the eternal dream of the man of the West expressed, for example, in the Old Testament as follows: . . . the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis, 2. 7). This is the dream about the workmanlike act of the creation of Adam from clay, about the creation of life from something non-living, and the con?dence in the magic power of technologies. How has this dream developed and been converted into a reality, and how does it determine our present-day activities in science and technology? What is this con?dence rooted in? Then God said: “Let us make man in our image. . . ” (Genesis, 1. 26). Man believes in his own ability to repeat the Creator’s acts, to change ideas into real things, because he believes he is godlike. This con?dence is – using the trendy Dawkins’ term – perhaps the most important cultural meme of the West.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 354044811X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 744
Book Description
Why is the question of the di?erence between living and non-living matter - tellectually so attractive to the man of the West? Where are our dreams about our own ability to understand this di?erence and to overcome it using the ?rmly established technologies rooted? Where are, for instance, the cultural roots of the enterprises covered nowadays by the discipline of Arti?cial Life? Cont- plating such questions, one of us has recognized [6] the existence of the eternal dream of the man of the West expressed, for example, in the Old Testament as follows: . . . the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Genesis, 2. 7). This is the dream about the workmanlike act of the creation of Adam from clay, about the creation of life from something non-living, and the con?dence in the magic power of technologies. How has this dream developed and been converted into a reality, and how does it determine our present-day activities in science and technology? What is this con?dence rooted in? Then God said: “Let us make man in our image. . . ” (Genesis, 1. 26). Man believes in his own ability to repeat the Creator’s acts, to change ideas into real things, because he believes he is godlike. This con?dence is – using the trendy Dawkins’ term – perhaps the most important cultural meme of the West.