The Genesis Machine
The Genesis Machine

Author: Amy Webb

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2022-02-15

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1541797930

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Named one of The New Yorker's BEST BOOKS OF 2022 SO FAR The next frontier in technology is inside our own bodies. Synthetic biology will revolutionize how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves. This fast-growing field—which uses computers to modify or rewrite genetic code—has created revolutionary, groundbreaking solutions such as the mRNA COVID vaccines, IVF, and lab-grown hamburger that tastes like the real thing. It gives us options to deal with existential threats: climate change, food insecurity, and access to fuel. But there are significant risks. Who should decide how to engineer living organisms? Whether engineered organisms should be planted, farmed, and released into the wild? Should there be limits to human enhancements? What cyber-biological risks are looming? Could a future biological war, using engineered organisms, cause a mass extinction event? Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel’s riveting examination of synthetic biology and the bioeconomy provide the background for thinking through the upcoming risks and moral dilemmas posed by redesigning life, as well as the vast opportunities waiting for us on the horizon.

The Genesis Machine
The Genesis Machine

Author: James P. Hogan

Publisher: Baen Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 0743435974

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Defying the political authorities, a physicist joins forces with a fellow maverick scientist. Together they build the machine that makes the theory of unifying all fields and forces possible--a creation that will either save the world or destroy it.

The Big Nine
The Big Nine

Author: Amy Webb

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2019-03-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1541773748

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we -- the everyday people whose data powers AI -- aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into -- one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI -- the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself -- is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.

The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution
The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution

Author: Susan Hockfield

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 0393634752

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Entertaining and prescient…Hockfield demonstrates how nature’s molecular riches may be leveraged to provide potential solutions to some of humanity’s existential challenges." —Adrian Woolfson, Science A century ago, discoveries in physics came together with engineering to produce an array of astonishing new technologies that radically reshaped the world: radios, televisions, aircraft, computers, and a host of still-evolving digital tools. Today, a new technological convergence—of biology and engineering—promises to create the tools necessary to tackle the threats we now face, including climate change, drought, famine, and disease World-renowned neuroscientist and academic leader Susan Hockfield describes the most exciting new developments and the scientists and engineers who helped to create them. Virus-built batteries. Cancer-detecting nanoparticles. Computer-engineered crops. Together, they highlight the promise of the technology revolution of the twenty-first century to overcome some of the greatest humanitarian, medical, and environmental challenges of our time.

Regenesis
Regenesis

Author: George M Church

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0465038654

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A Harvard biologist and master inventor explores how new biotechnologies will enable us to bring species back from the dead, unlock vast supplies of renewable energy, and extend human life. In Regenesis, George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. These technologies-far from the out-of-control nightmare depicted in science fiction-have the power to improve human and animal health, increase our intelligence, enhance our memory, and even extend our life span. A breathtaking look at the potential of this world-changing technology, Regenesis is nothing less than a guide to the future of life.

The Signals Are Talking
The Signals Are Talking

Author: Amy Webb

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2016-12-06

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1610396677

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Amy Webb is a noted futurist who combines curiosity, skepticism, colorful storytelling, and deeply reported, real-world analysis in this essential book for understanding the future. The Signals Are Talking reveals a systemic way of evaluating new ideas bubbling up on the horizon-distinguishing what is a real trend from the merely trendy. This book helps us hear which signals are talking sense, and which are simply nonsense, so that we might know today what developments-especially those seemingly random ideas at the fringe as they converge and begin to move toward the mainstream-that have long-term consequence for tomorrow. With the methodology developed in The Signals Are Talking, we learn how to think like a futurist and answer vitally important questions: How will a technology-like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things-affect us personally? How will it impact our businesses and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think-and how should we prepare for it now? Most importantly, Webb persuasively shows that the future isn't something that happens to us passively. Instead, she allows us to see ahead so that we may forecast what's to come-challenging us to create our own preferred futures.

Gene Machine
Gene Machine

Author: Venki Ramakrishnan

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 046509337X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A Nobel Prize-winning biologist tells the riveting story of his race to discover the inner workings of biology's most important molecule "Ramakrishnan's writing is so honest, lucid and engaging that I could not put this book down until I had read to the very end." -- Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome -- an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms -- that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases. But this is also a human story of Ramakrishnan's unlikely journey, from his first fumbling experiments in a biology lab to being the dark horse in a fierce competition with some of the world's best scientists. In the end, Gene Machine is a frank insider's account of the pursuit of high-stakes science.

American Genesis
American Genesis

Author: Thomas Parke Hughes

Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 9780140097412

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

American Genesis is the story of America's love affair-and inextricable entaglement-with technology from 1870-1970, the greatest period of productivity the world has ever known.

The Incredible Freedom Machines
The Incredible Freedom Machines

Author: Kirli Saunders

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781760275235

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

She was small when she heard about them ... the incredible freedom machines. A poetic and visual feast from multi-award-winning creators Kirli Saunders and Matt Ottley.

Digital Genesis
Digital Genesis

Author: Christopher Barnatt

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-09-19

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9781976098062

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Digital Genesis charts the evolution of computing and the rise of artificial intelligence. From cloud AI services and autonomous robots, to 3D printers and quantum processors, the book details the latest digital technologies and predicts their future development and implications. Late last century the human race learnt how to enter cyberspace. But in the 2020s the reverse will happen, with computers, robots and AI set to transform the physical world. Soon driverless vehicles will rule our highways, while many products will be manufactured in 'dark factories' by smart machines. Some of tomorrow's most sophisticated technologies may even be organically grown using the latest digital science of synthetic biology. Digital Genesis is written by futurist Christopher Barnatt, who in his 1995 book Cyber Business predicted the arrival of e-business and online social networks. Over 20 years later, he looks ahead to the Cognitive Computing Age, and beyond that to the era of 'cyborg fusion' in which the future of computing will become the future of ourselves.