Dead on the Internet

Dead on the Internet

Author: Johnny Barnes

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2008-06-12

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 1468521144

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Dead on the Internet Its a case of murder and mystery at MIT. Intelligent thinking machines and cyberspace are investigated on the college campus at one of Americas most prestigious and illustrious institutes of higher learning. Cutting edge robotics labs attempt to blend artificial intelligence and micro-organisms with mans propensity for greed and lust. This third Jack Kelly mystery leads to the basic question of existence and survival. MIT graduate students are brutally murdered andex-Boston Police Homicide detective Jack Kelly is hired by the father of one. Themurdered students are part of a group that works at MITs Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The lab has recently developed a prototype for an all-purpose domestic robot that is expected to revolutionize modern society. Science fiction has become a reality. The Prototype Project has developed a moving intelligent machine that is wirelessly connected to the internet at all times. The robots think, adapt, research, network, andthey learn.Governments and their agencies, as well as the worlds major corporations are interested in manufacturing, developing, and servicing the domestic robots. The human-like robots will soon become essential to every modern home and business on the planet. These all-purpose domestic assistants are going to be very big business. And there are moral and philosophical questions to be answered. One AI Lab grad student, Tom Peters, has left the pack and with money supplied by Las Vegas card counters and methamphetamine sales has started an escort service which is a thinly veiled prostitution ring. With his cold cash and connections to a very rich and influential group he realizes the huge sums of money and power that can be derived from the control of The Prototype Project.


Hito Steyerl

Hito Steyerl

Author: Hito Steyerl

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 9783956790577

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Hito Steyerl is rightly considered one of the most exciting artists working today who speculates on the impact of the Internet and digitization on the fabric of our everyday lives. Her films and writings offer an astute, provocative, and often funny analysis of the dizzying speed with which images and data are reconfigured, altered, and dispersed, many times over, accelerating into infinity or crashing into oblivion. 0Published to accompany the artist’s survey exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, this book gathers a series of essays and close readings of Steyerl's films from the past ten years. Newly commissioned texts by Sven Lütticken, Karen Archey, Ana Teixeira Pinto, and Nick Aikens, alongside writings by Thomas Elsaesser, Pablo Lafuente, David Riff, and Steyerl, are spliced with over one hundred pages of color stills. This publication is a charged slideshow of the artist’s extraordinary investigations into the status, circulation, and materiality of images.


Perspectives on Digital Humanism

Perspectives on Digital Humanism

Author: Hannes Werthner

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-11-23

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 3030861449

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This open access book aims to set an agenda for research and action in the field of Digital Humanism through short essays written by selected thinkers from a variety of disciplines, including computer science, philosophy, education, law, economics, history, anthropology, political science, and sociology. This initiative emerged from the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism and the associated lecture series. Digital Humanism deals with the complex relationships between people and machines in digital times. It acknowledges the potential of information technology. At the same time, it points to societal threats such as privacy violations and ethical concerns around artificial intelligence, automation and loss of jobs, ongoing monopolization on the Web, and sovereignty. Digital Humanism aims to address these topics with a sense of urgency but with a constructive mindset. The book argues for a Digital Humanism that analyses and, most importantly, influences the complex interplay of technology and humankind toward a better society and life while fully respecting universal human rights. It is a call to shaping technologies in accordance with human values and needs.


Online Afterlives

Online Afterlives

Author: Davide Sisto

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 026253939X

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How digital technology—from Facebook tributes to QR codes on headstones—is changing our relationship to death. Facebook is the biggest cemetery in the world, with countless acres of cyberspace occupied by snapshots, videos, thoughts, and memories of people who have shared their last status updates. Modern society usually hides death from sight, as if it were a character flaw and not an ineluctable fact. But on Facebook and elsewhere on the internet, we can't avoid death; digital ghosts—electronic traces of the dead—appear at our click or touch. On the Internet at least, death has once again become a topic for public discourse. In Online Afterlives, Davide Sisto considers how digital technology is changing our relationship to death. Sisto describes the various modes of digital survival after biological death—including Facebook tributes, chatbots programmed to speak in the voice of a dead person, and QR codes on headstones—and discusses their philosophical ramifications. Sisto reports on such phenomena as the Tweet Hereafter, a website that collects people's last tweets; the intimacy of sending a WhatsApp message to someone who has died; and digital cremation, the deactivation of a dead person's account. Because we can mingle with the dead online almost as we mingle with the living, he warns, we may find it difficult to distinguish communication at a distance from communication with the dead. The digital afterlife has restored the communal dimension of death, rescuing both mourners and the mourned from social isolation. A society willing to engage with death and mortality, Sisto argues, is a more balanced and mature society.


The Rapture of the Nerds

The Rapture of the Nerds

Author: Cory Doctorow

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2012-09-04

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0765329107

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From the two defining personalities of post-cyberpunk SF, a brilliant collaboration to rival 1987's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling


Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Author: Bronnie Ware

Publisher: Hay House, Inc

Published: 2019-08-13

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1401956009

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Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.


Art is Dead

Art is Dead

Author: Thomas Ridgewell

Publisher: Sphere

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 075156303X

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In 2008, Thomas "TomSka" Ridgewell uploaded a short animated film to YouTube; he called it asdfmovie. It has since been viewed more than 50 million times and has spawned eight sequels and many, many dedicated fans. Now, for the first time, the weird and wonderful world of asdf has exploded onto the page in ART IS DEAD, a book conceived and written by Tom and illustrated by Matt Ley. Featuring much-loved characters from the films, as well as brand-new, never-before-seen comics and bonus material - including the asdf origin story and Tom's own sketches - ART IS DEAD is a comic book like no other. Expect trains, potatoes, suicidal muffins and jokes about "death, destruction and things talking that don't normally talk", all wrapped up in book so awkwardly shaped it will make your shelves look weird. (Sorry about that.)


The Internet Does Not Exist

The Internet Does Not Exist

Author: E-Flux Journal

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2015-04-03

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 3956791304

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The internet does not exist. Maybe it did exist only a short time ago, but now it only remains as a blur, a cloud, a friend, a deadline, a redirect, or a 404. If it ever existed, we couldn't see it. Because it has no shape. It has no face, just this name that describes everything and nothing at the same time. Yet we are still trying to climb onboard, to get inside, to be part of the network, to get in on the language game, to show up on searches, to appear to exist. But we will never get inside of something that isn't there. All this time we've been bemoaning the death of any critical outside position, we should have taken a good look at information networks. Just try to get in. You can't. Networks are all edges, as Bruno Latour points out. We thought there were windows but actually they're mirrors. And in the meantime we are being faced with more and more—not just information, but the world itself. Contributors Julian Assange, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Benjamin Bratton, Diedrich Diederichsen, Keller Easterling, Rasmus Fleischer, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Ursula K. Heise, Brian Kuan Wood, Bruno Latour, Geert Lovink, Patricia MacCormack, Metahaven, Gean Moreno, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jon Rich, Hito Steyerl e-flux journal Series edited by Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle


Privacy is Power

Privacy is Power

Author: Carissa Veliz

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 161219916X

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An Economist Book of the Year Every minute of every day, our data is harvested and exploited… It is time to pull the plug on the surveillance economy. Governments and hundreds of corporations are spying on you, and everyone you know. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you and decide for you. Even when you've explicitly asked them not to. Reclaiming privacy is the only way we can regain control of our lives and our societies. These governments and corporations have too much power, and their power stems from us--from our data. Privacy is as collective as it is personal, and it's time to take back control. Privacy Is Power tells you how to do exactly that. It calls for the end of the data economy and proposes concrete measures to bring that end about, offering practical solutions, both for policymakers and ordinary citizens.