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Author: Sandy Hintz
Publisher: Franklin Watts
Published: 1983-01-01
Total Pages: 89
ISBN-13: 9780531046395
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDescribes the roles of computers, now and in the future, in the spheres of medicine, business and government, law enforcement, science and technology, entertainment, education, and the home. Includes a glossary of terms.
Author: James W. Cortada
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2020-03-11
Total Pages: 126
ISBN-13: 3030343626
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe computing technology on which we are now so dependent has risen to its position of ascendency so rapidly that few of us have had the opportunity to take a step back and wonder where we are headed. This book urges us to do so. Taking a big-picture perspective on digital technology, Living with Computers leads the reader on a whistle-stop tour of the history of information and information technology. This journey culminates in a deep exploration into the meaning and role of computers in our lives, and what this experience might possibly mean for the future of human society – and the very existence of humanity itself. In the face of the transformative power of computing, this book provokes us to ask big questions. If computers become integrated into our bodies, merging with the information processing of our very DNA, will computing help to shape the evolution of biological life? If artificial intelligence advances beyond the abilities of the human brain, will this overturn our anthropocentrism and lead to a new view of reality? Will we control the computers of the future, or will they control us? These questions can be discomforting, yet they cannot be ignored. This book argues that it is time to reshape our definition of our species in the context of our interaction with computing. For although such science-fiction scenarios are not likely to happen any time soon – and may, in fact, never happen – it is nevertheless vital to consider these issues now if we wish to have any influence over whatever is to come. So, humans, let’s confront our possible destiny! James W. Cortada is a Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota. He holds a Ph.D. in modern history and worked at IBM in various positions for 38 years, including in IBM’s management research institute, The IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV). He is the author of over a dozen books on management, and nearly two dozen books on the history of information technology. These include the Springer title From Urban Legends to Political Fact-Checking: Online Scrutiny in America, 1990-2015 (with William Aspray).
Author: Meredith Broussard
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2019-01-29
Total Pages: 247
ISBN-13: 026253701X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology and why we should never assume that computers always get it right. In Artificial Unintelligence, Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we can (and should) do with technology. With this book, she offers a guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology—and issues a warning that we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against technochauvinism—the belief that technology is always the solution—Broussard argues that it's just not true that social problems would inevitably retreat before a digitally enabled Utopia. To prove her point, she undertakes a series of adventures in computer programming. She goes for an alarming ride in a driverless car, concluding “the cyborg future is not coming any time soon”; uses artificial intelligence to investigate why students can't pass standardized tests; deploys machine learning to predict which passengers survived the Titanic disaster; and attempts to repair the U.S. campaign finance system by building AI software. If we understand the limits of what we can do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we should do with it to make the world better for everyone.
Author: Paul N. Edwards
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 468
ISBN-13: 9780262550284
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Closed World offers a radically new alternative to the canonical histories of computers and cognitive science. Arguing that we can make sense of computers as tools only when we simultaneously grasp their roles as metaphors and political icons, Paul Edwards shows how Cold War social and cultural contexts shaped emerging computer technology--and were transformed, in turn, by information machines. The Closed World explores three apparently disparate histories--the history of American global power, the history of computing machines, and the history of subjectivity in science and culture--through the lens of the American political imagination. In the process, it reveals intimate links between the military projects of the Cold War, the evolution of digital computers, and the origins of cybernetics, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence. Edwards begins by describing the emergence of a "closed-world discourse" of global surveillance and control through high-technology military power. The Cold War political goal of "containment" led to the SAGE continental air defense system, Rand Corporation studies of nuclear strategy, and the advanced technologies of the Vietnam War. These and other centralized, computerized military command and control projects--for containing world-scale conflicts--helped closed-world discourse dominate Cold War political decisions. Their apotheosis was the Reagan-era plan for a " Star Wars" space-based ballistic missile defense. Edwards then shows how these military projects helped computers become axial metaphors in psychological theory. Analyzing the Macy Conferences on cybernetics, the Harvard Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, and the early history of artificial intelligence, he describes the formation of a "cyborg discourse." By constructing both human minds and artificial intelligences as information machines, cyborg discourse assisted in integrating people into the hyper-complex technological systems of the closed world. Finally, Edwards explores the cyborg as political identity in science fiction--from the disembodied, panoptic AI of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to the mechanical robots of Star Wars and the engineered biological androids of Blade Runner--where Information Age culture and subjectivity were both reflected and constructed. Inside Technology series
Author:
Publisher:
Published: 1985-06-10
Total Pages: 172
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor more than 40 years, Computerworld has been the leading source of technology news and information for IT influencers worldwide. Computerworld's award-winning Web site (Computerworld.com), twice-monthly publication, focused conference series and custom research form the hub of the world's largest global IT media network.
Author: Peter J. Bentley
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2012-03-22
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13: 0191633682
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThere's a hidden science that affects every part of your life. You are fluent in its terminology of email, WiFi, social networking, and encryption. You use its results when you make a telephone call, access the Internet, use any factory-produced product, or travel in any modern car. The discipline is so new that some prefer to call it a branch of engineering or mathematics. But it is so powerful and world-changing that you would be hard-pressed to find a single human being on the planet unaffected by its achievements. The science of computers enables the supply and creation of power, food, water, medicine, transport, money, communication, entertainment, and most goods in shops. It has transformed societies with the Internet, the digitization of information, mobile phone networks and GPS technologies. Here, Peter J. Bentley explores how this young discipline grew from its theoretical conception by pioneers such as Turing, through its growth spurts in the Internet, its difficult adolescent stage where the promises of AI were never achieved and dot-com bubble burst, to its current stage as a (semi)mature field, now capable of remarkable achievements. Charting the successes and failures of computer science through the years, Bentley discusses what innovations may change our world in the future.
Author: Kaitlyn Duling
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
Published: 2018-12-15
Total Pages: 66
ISBN-13: 1502641119
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIt may be difficult to imagine a world before the internet, especially in our increasingly connected and data-driven society. This book takes readers on a trip back in time, into the earliest days of computer technology, when the internet wasn't much more than a curious idea that evolved from ARPANET. This book explores challenges faced in the internet's early years, the invention of the World Wide Web by computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, impacts both positive and negative on society, and the internet's effect on humanity today. Through colorful pictures, graphs, and real-world examples and stories, this book traces the timeline of the internet from its first conception to the present, where it pervades our everyday lives.
Author: Phil Watlington
Publisher: Infinity Publishing
Published: 2006-08
Total Pages: 293
ISBN-13: 0741434083
DOWNLOAD EBOOKUnderstanding and responding to globalization's intoxicating economic, political, and social challenges (and opportunities) -- with creativity, imagination and "new-age innovation"
Author: Bob Johansen
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2020-03-20
Total Pages: 223
ISBN-13: 1523087528
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLeading futurist Bob Johansen shows how a new way of thinking, enhanced by new technologies, will help leaders break free of limiting labels and see new gradients of possibility in a chaotic world. The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and we are not ready. The dilemma is that we're restricted by rigid categorical thinking that freezes people and organizations in neatly defined boxes that often are inaccurate or obsolete. Categories lead us toward certainty but away from clarity, and categorical thinking moves us away from understanding the bigger picture. Sticking with this old way of thinking and seeing isn't just foolish, it's dangerous. Full-spectrum thinking is the ability to seek patterns and clarity outside, across, beyond, or maybe even without any boxes or categories while resisting false certainty and simplistic binary choices. It reveals our commonalities that are hidden in plain view. Bob Johansen lays out the core concepts of full-spectrum thinking and reveals the role that digital media—including gameful engagement, big-data analytics, visualization, blockchain, and machine learning—will play in facilitating and enhancing it. He offers examples of broader spectrums and new applications in a wide range of areas that will become possible first, then mandatory. This visionary book provides powerful ways to make sense of new opportunities and see the world as it really is.
