Fully Automated Luxury Communism
Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Author: Aaron Bastani

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2019-06-11

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1786632640

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The first decade of the twenty-first century marked the demise of the current world order. Despite widespread acknowledgement of these disruptive crises, the proposed response from the mainstream remains the same. Against the confines of this increasingly limited politics, a new paradigm has emerged. Fully Automated Luxury Communism claims that new technologies will liberate us from work, providing the opportunity to build a society beyond both capitalism and scarcity. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury and happiness. For everyone. In his first book, radical political commentator Aaron Bastani conjures a new politics: a vision of a world of unimaginable hope, highlighting how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of nine billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology and build meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society heralds the beginning of history. Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone.

The Huawei Story
The Huawei Story

Author: Tian Tao

Publisher: SAGE Publications Pvt. Limited

Published: 2016-09-16

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789386062000

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Huawei was founded in 1987 by ex-military officer Ren Zhengfei and formed as a private company owned by its employees. Its core missions are building telecommunications networks, providing operational and consulting services and equipment to enterprises inside and outside of China, and manufacturing communications devices for the consumer market. The book by Tian Tao and Wu Chunbo is an extraordinary research effort, to analyze and describe a very complex reality and a very special entrepreneur. Huawei is a prominent company among the most successful and most internationalized in China. This book offers insights to Western readers, allowing them to truly understand Huawei, its management philosophy and culture, and the special leadership approaches of Ren Zhengfei. It is a very valuable work to understand entrepreneurship in our complex world.

Technopoly
Technopoly

Author: Neil Postman

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 030779735X

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A witty, often terrifying that chronicles our transformation into a society that is shaped by technology—from the acclaimed author of Amusing Ourselves to Death. "A provocative book ... A tool for fighting back against the tools that run our lives." —Dallas Morning News The story of our society's transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it—with radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, education, intelligence, and truth.

Reason in Revolt
Reason in Revolt

Author: Alan Woods

Publisher: Wellred Books

Published: 2015-12-15

Total Pages: 557

ISBN-13: 1900007568

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The achievements of science and technology during the past century are unparalleled in history. They provide the potential for the solution to all the problems faced by the planet, and equally for its total destruction. Allegedly scientific theories are being used to "prove" that criminality is caused, not by social conditions, but by a "criminal gene". Black people are alleged to be disadvantaged, not because of discrimination, but because of their genetic make-up. Of course, such "science" is highly convenient to right-wing politicians intent on ruthlessly cutting welfare. In the field of theoretical physics and cosmology there is a growing tendency towards mysticism. The "Big Bang" theory of the origin of the universe is being used to justify the existence of a Creator, as in the book of Genesis . For the first time in centuries, science appears to lend credence to religious obscurantism. Yet this is only one side of the story.

Gaming the Iron Curtain
Gaming the Iron Curtain

Author: Jaroslav Svelch

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2023-09-19

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 026254928X

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How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc. Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.

Science and Technology in Post-Mao China
Science and Technology in Post-Mao China

Author: Denis Fred Simon

Publisher: Harvard Univ Asia Center

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780674794757

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Along with the political and economic reforms that have characterized the post-Mao era in China there has been a potentially revolutionary change in Chinese science and technology. Here sixteen scholars examine various facets of the current science and technology scene, comparing it with the past and speculating about future trends. Two chapters dealing with science under the Nationalists and under Mao are followed by a section of extensive analysis of reforms under Deng Xiaoping, focusing on the organizational system, the use of human resources, and the emerging response to market forces. Chapters dealing with changes in medical care, agriculture, and military research and development demonstrate how these reforms have affected specific areas during the Chinese shift away from Party orthodoxy and Maoist populism toward professional expertise as the guiding principle in science and technology. Three further chapters deal with China's interface with the world at large in the process of technology transfer. Both the introductory and concluding chapters describe the tension between the Chinese Communist Party structure, with its inclinations toward strict vertical control, and the scientific and technological community's need for a free flow of information across organizational, disciplinary, and national boundaries.

The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures
The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures

Author: Aga Skrodzka

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 799

ISBN-13: 019088553X

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Looking at monuments, murals, computer games, recycling campaigns, children's books, and other visual artifacts, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures reassesses communism's historical and cultural legacy.

The Technological Society
The Technological Society

Author: Jacques Ellul

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 0593315685

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As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology—which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind—threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. "A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process.”—Harper's “One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself—unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs.”—The Nation “A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance.”—Los Angeles Free Press

Science, Technology and Communism
Science, Technology and Communism

Author: I. G. Kurakov

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2017-05-04

Total Pages: 139

ISBN-13: 1483279456

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Science, Technology, and Communism: Some Questions of Development focuses on the relationship of science, technology, and communism, including indicator of incentives, formation of funds, technological processes, and production processes. The book first offers information on science as a direct productive force in society and material incentives for the development of science and technology. Discussions focus on basic indicator of incentives, formation of funds for the development of science and technology and material incentives, and system of collective and individual material incentives. The text then elaborates on the general tasks in the development of science and technology, including the development and improvement of existing technological processes, automation and mechanization of production processes, and improvement of methods for planning national economic development. The publication ponders on directions in the development of science and technology and planning the development of science and technology. Topics include mechanical energy, chemical products, distribution of productive forces in an economic district, choice of scientific and scientific-technical tasks to be included in plans for the development of science and technology, and perspective planning of the development of science and technology. The book is a vital source of data for readers interested in the relationship of science, technology, and communism.

Radical Technologies
Radical Technologies

Author: Adam Greenfield

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2017-06-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1784780464

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A field manual to the technologies that are transforming our lives Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. We already depend on the smartphone to navigate every aspect of our existence. We’re told that innovations—from augmented-reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars—will make life easier, more convenient and more productive. 3D printing promises unprecedented control over the form and distribution of matter, while the blockchain stands to revolutionize everything from the recording and exchange of value to the way we organize the mundane realities of the day to day. And, all the while, fiendishly complex algorithms are operating quietly in the background, reshaping the economy, transforming the fundamental terms of our politics and even redefining what it means to be human. Having successfully colonized everyday life, these radical technologies are now conditioning the choices available to us in the years to come. How do they work? What challenges do they present to us, as individuals and societies? Who benefits from their adoption? In answering these questions, Greenfield’s timely guide clarifies the scale and nature of the crisis we now confront —and offers ways to reclaim our stake in the future.