'Blown to Bits' is about how the digital explosion is changing everything. The text explains the technology, why it creates so many surprises and why things often don't work the way we expect them to. It is also about things the information explosion is destroying: old assumptions about who is really in control of our lives.
Can a Christmas romance mend a life that's broken to pieces? Eileen Makenna is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer who has traveled the world for over two decades, chasing the next big story. She returns home for the holidays shattered by a life-altering event and facing the terrifying prospect she'll never be able to work again. When Eileen meets Naomi Weaver, a small-town girl who dedicates her free time to helping those in need, Eileen is entranced by Naomi's zest for life. Can Eileen overcome her inner demons and troubled family relationships to let Naomi in? Best-selling lesbian romance authors Harper Bliss & T.B. Markinson have teamed up to bring this touching age-gap love story to life.
This collection is constructed as an ongoing dialogue among a group of scholars. It engages key questions about new technologies of bio-engineering, reproduction, imaging, communication, and the redefinition of life. The contributors pursue a technophilic, yet critical, path while articulating appraised ethical standards.
This is a book of recollections and reflections of the authors experiences over a long period from Warsaw, Poland where she was born, through WW11 and the Warsaw Uprising. Arrival in England after the war as a refugee, School and College subsequent marriage enjoying a career as dancer, teacher and choreographer in six countries including New York where she received a MA degree in Theatre Arts form Hunter College. She now lives in London where she still pursues her career as an actor.
The wife of Australian pianist David Helfgott discusses the pianist's life story, from child musical prodigy, through his mental breakdown, and to a triumphant recovery
“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Your information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we’ve failed to ask exactly why we’re expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create—all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it’s an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn’t just something we produce; it’s the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.
Intimately personal memoir, reflections on life and observations on modern society from Australian national treasure, Dr Colleen McCullough. 'Written with heart and humour, (McCullough) takes us on a bumpy ride full of surprises, laughs, tears and the odd lecture. She shines as a bright unquenchable spark that poverty, familial cruelty and tragedy could not extinguish, A little ripper.' Woman's Day World-famous writer and national treasure Colleen McCullough has always resisted the idea of writing an autobiography. But her mind has a life of its own. Here, finally, is its portrait. Among the personal reminiscences and thought-provoking musings lie clues as to the shaping of this extraordinary mind: the confused, impulsive, thoughtlessly cruel mother; the miserly absentee father; the far-reaching effects bureaucrats can have on the lives of strangers; the riddle of Time ...If Colleen McCullough has any lesson to teach in Life Without the Boring Bits, it is that nothing above, below, or on the surface of the Earth can keep a good mind down, let alone break it.
Blown to Bits, Second Edition is the brilliant, plain-English guide to digital technology, how it's changing the world, and what you need to know to survive in tomorrow's digital world. A best-seller when it was first published in 2010, the issues it addresses are more crucial than ever. Now, its expert authors have thoroughly updated Blown to Bits to demystify the social, political, and personal issues everyone is talking about: from social media and big data to fake news, cyberattacks, and privacy. Both authoritative and accessible, this guide doesn't just reveal the workings of the technologies that are central to your life: it also illuminates the policy decisions citizens need to make about these technologies... because you can try to ignore them, but they won't ignore you Blown to Bits, Second Edition answers questions like: Who owns all that data about you? What (if anything) do they owe you? How private is your medical information? Is it possible to send a truly secure message? How close can you come? How do you figure out who to trust for accurate news these days? What should you know about free speech on the Internet? Who's watching you, what do they know about you, and what can they do with that knowledge? Do you have to say goodbye forever to privacy -- and even to your personal identity? How can you protect yourself against out-of-control technologies -- and the powerful organizations that wield them?