Information technology is at the center of modern life. It supports most day-to-day activities: talking on the phone, getting money from an ATM, or working in the office. Whether for work, commerce, or fun, we interact with computers, networks, and databases -- all sorts of information technology. How does it work? Certainly, technological advances helped create this world. But what keeps it running? The answer is people. These people -- computer system administrators -- are the unsung heroes of the modern age. This book, ten years in the making, is the result. It tells the story of system administration through the narratives of real system administrators. It documents dynamic systems of people and machines, of specialists working together to tame hugely complex information technology infrastructures, developing and adapting their own tools and practices over time to create productive work environments. The authors hope Taming Information Technology will lead the way to a future in which the important work of these IT workers is better appreciated, better understood, and better supported.
Information technology is at the center of modern life. It supports most day-to-day activities: talking on the phone, getting money from an ATM, or working in the office. Whether for work, commerce, or fun, we interact with computers, networks, and databases — all sorts of information technology. How does it work? Certainly, technological advances helped create this world. But what keeps it running? The answer is people. These people — computer system administrators — are the unsung heroes of the modern age. This book, ten years in the making, is the result. It tells the story of system administration through the narratives of real system administrators. It documents dynamic systems of people and machines, of specialists working together to tame hugely complex information technology infrastructures, developing and adapting their own tools and practices over time to create productive work environments. The authors hope Taming Information Technology will lead the way to a future in which the important work of these IT workers is better appreciated, better understood, and better supported.
Summary Taming Text, winner of the 2013 Jolt Awards for Productivity, is a hands-on, example-driven guide to working with unstructured text in the context of real-world applications. This book explores how to automatically organize text using approaches such as full-text search, proper name recognition, clustering, tagging, information extraction, and summarization. The book guides you through examples illustrating each of these topics, as well as the foundations upon which they are built. About this Book There is so much text in our lives, we are practically drowningin it. Fortunately, there are innovative tools and techniquesfor managing unstructured information that can throw thesmart developer a much-needed lifeline. You'll find them in thisbook. Taming Text is a practical, example-driven guide to working withtext in real applications. This book introduces you to useful techniques like full-text search, proper name recognition,clustering, tagging, information extraction, and summarization.You'll explore real use cases as you systematically absorb thefoundations upon which they are built.Written in a clear and concise style, this book avoids jargon, explainingthe subject in terms you can understand without a backgroundin statistics or natural language processing. Examples arein Java, but the concepts can be applied in any language. Written for Java developers, the book requires no prior knowledge of GWT. Purchase of the print book comes with an offer of a free PDF, ePub, and Kindle eBook from Manning. Also available is all code from the book. Winner of 2013 Jolt Awards: The Best Books—one of five notable books every serious programmer should read. What's Inside When to use text-taming techniques Important open-source libraries like Solr and Mahout How to build text-processing applications About the Authors Grant Ingersoll is an engineer, speaker, and trainer, a Lucenecommitter, and a cofounder of the Mahout machine-learning project. Thomas Morton is the primary developer of OpenNLP and Maximum Entropy. Drew Farris is a technology consultant, software developer, and contributor to Mahout,Lucene, and Solr. "Takes the mystery out of verycomplex processes."—From the Foreword by Liz Liddy, Dean, iSchool, Syracuse University Table of Contents Getting started taming text Foundations of taming text Searching Fuzzy string matching Identifying people, places, and things Clustering text Classification, categorization, and tagging Building an example question answering system Untamed text: exploring the next frontier
An examination of the cognitive tools that the mind uses to grapple with uncertainty in the real world. How do humans navigate uncertainty, continuously making near-effortless decisions and predictions even under conditions of imperfect knowledge, high complexity, and extreme time pressure? Taming Uncertainty argues that the human mind has developed tools to grapple with uncertainty. Unlike much previous scholarship in psychology and economics, this approach is rooted in what is known about what real minds can do. Rather than reducing the human response to uncertainty to an act of juggling probabilities, the authors propose that the human cognitive system has specific tools for dealing with different forms of uncertainty. They identify three types of tools: simple heuristics, tools for information search, and tools for harnessing the wisdom of others. This set of strategies for making predictions, inferences, and decisions constitute the mind's adaptive toolbox. The authors show how these three dimensions of human decision making are integrated and they argue that the toolbox, its cognitive foundation, and the environment are in constant flux and subject to developmental change. They demonstrate that each cognitive tool can be analyzed through the concept of ecological rationality—that is, the fit between specific tools and specific environments. Chapters deal with such specific instances of decision making as food choice architecture, intertemporal choice, financial uncertainty, pedestrian navigation, and adolescent behavior.
How solar could spark a clean-energy transition through transformative innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems. Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless—every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim. Innovation can brighten those prospects, Sivaram explains, drawing on firsthand experience and original research spanning science, business, and government. Financial innovation is already enticing deep-pocketed investors to fund solar projects around the world, from the sunniest deserts to the poorest villages. Technological innovation could replace today's solar panels with coatings as cheap as paint and employ artificial photosynthesis to store intermittent sunshine as convenient fuels. And systemic innovation could add flexibility to the world's power grids and other energy systems so they can dependably channel the sun's unreliable energy. Unleashing all this innovation will require visionary public policy: funding researchers developing next-generation solar technologies, refashioning energy systems and economic markets, and putting together a diverse clean energy portfolio. Although solar can't power the planet by itself, it can be the centerpiece of a global clean energy revolution. A Council on Foreign Relations Book
This text argues that companies must start with an understanding of people in relation to the development of products: user needs first, technology last - the opposite of how things are done now.
This professional resource equips K-12 students with the skills they need to be critical readers in the 21st century. Today's reader is reading across multiple genres, on phones and tablets, with text in hand, and also online, and this helpful book provides educators with techniques on how to teach students to read on every platform and in every genre, to struggle with text, and to break through to new ideas when reading text. It focuses on the habits that students must form in order to gain the confidence to access all texts across all platforms. Each chapter is devoted to developing the five habits for successful reading: reading closely, widely, critically, deeply, and purposefully. Grounded in the latest research, the easy-to-implement strategies and instructional methods will help students cultivate strong reading skills in the 21st century classroom.
We live in a world increasingly governed by technology—but to what end? Technology rules us as much as laws do. It shapes the legal, social, and ethical environments in which we act. Every time we cross a street, drive a car, or go to the doctor, we submit to the silent power of technology. Yet, much of the time, the influence of technology on our lives goes unchallenged by citizens and our elected representatives. In The Ethics of Invention, renowned scholar Sheila Jasanoff dissects the ways in which we delegate power to technological systems and asks how we might regain control. Our embrace of novel technological pathways, Jasanoff shows, leads to a complex interplay among technology, ethics, and human rights. Inventions like pesticides or GMOs can reduce hunger but can also cause unexpected harm to people and the environment. Often, as in the case of CFCs creating a hole in the ozone layer, it takes decades before we even realize that any damage has been done. Advances in biotechnology, from GMOs to gene editing, have given us tools to tinker with life itself, leading some to worry that human dignity and even human nature are under threat. But despite many reasons for caution, we continue to march heedlessly into ethically troubled waters. As Jasanoff ranges across these and other themes, she challenges the common assumption that technology is an apolitical and amoral force. Technology, she masterfully demonstrates, can warp the meaning of democracy and citizenship unless we carefully consider how to direct its power rather than let ourselves be shaped by it. The Ethics of Invention makes a bold argument for a future in which societies work together—in open, democratic dialogue—to debate not only the perils but even more the promises of technology.
