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In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology, Robert Langdon, is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno.

Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.

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Scorned by over 500 publishers and literary agents around the world, his philosophical thriller has been called “revolutionary” and “socially dangerous” by readers, scholars, and religious authorities. The novel debuts a challenging original philosophy, which rebuffs modern civilization by inviting the end of the human species — and declaring the onset of something greater.

Set in the present day, the novel tells the story of transhumanist Jethro Knights and his unwavering quest for immortality via science and technology. Fighting against him are fanatical religious groups, economically depressed governments, and mystic Zoe Bach: a dazzling trauma surgeon and the love of his life, whose belief in spirituality and the afterlife is absolute.

Exiled from America and reeling from personal tragedy, Knights forges a new nation of willing scientists on the world’s largest seasteading project, Transhumania. When the world declares war against the floating city, demanding an end to its renegade and godless transhuman experiments and ambitions, Knights strikes back, leaving the planet forever changed.

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Find out What it Means That an Hour’s Work Yields a Week’s Food in chapter 1. Foresee the Teeming Cities of Mars (chap. 21). Learn why it’s Keyboards Yesterday, Mind Reading Tomorrow (chap. 3). Have you wondered — Will Artificial Intelligence Threaten Civilization? (See chap. 12.) What happens When Genomes Get Cheap (chap. 6). Prepare for an Asteroid Apocalypse (chap. 25). Why you would benefit from Wiki-wiki-wikipedia (chap. 4). How we will Live Anywhere, Work Anywhere Else (chap. 2). How the future Tastes Like the Singularity (chap. 15). Get smarter with Smart Pills’n Such (chap. 5). Experience a Soylent Spring (chap. 9). Understand nukes better by Deconstructing Nonproliferation (chap. 13). Get ready for a Space Empire (chap. 14). There’s global warming, and there’s Warm, Poison Planet (chap. 17). But let’s not forget about Big Ice (chap. 22). Things may really grow on trees with New Plant Paradigms (chap. 24). What is Sic Transit Humanitas: The Transcent of Man (chap. 26)? We all have Questions (chap. 31). And much more!

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In Natural-Born Cyborgs, Clark argues that what makes humans so different from other species is our capacity to fully incorporate tools and supporting cultural practices into our existence. Technology as simple as writing on a sketchpad, as familiar as Google or a cellular phone, and as potentially revolutionary as mind-extending neural implants–all exploit our brains’ astonishingly plastic nature. Our minds are primed to seek out and incorporate non-biological resources, so that we actually think and feel through our best technologies.

Drawing on his expertise in cognitive science, Clark demonstrates that our sense of self and of physical presence can be expanded to a remarkable extent, placing the long-existing telephone and the emerging technology of telepresence on the same continuum. He explores ways in which we have adapted our lives to make use of technology (the measurement of time, for example, has wrought enormous changes in human existence), as well as ways in which increasingly fluid technologies can adapt to individual users during normal use.

Bio-technological unions, Clark argues, are evolving with a speed never seen before in history. As we enter an age of wearable computers, sensory augmentation, wireless devices, intelligent environments, thought-controlled prosthetics, and rapid-fire information search and retrieval, the line between the user and her tools grows thinner day by day. “This double whammy of plastic brains and increasingly responsive and well-fitted tools creates an unprecedented opportunity for ever-closer kinds of human-machine merger,” he writes, arguing that such a merger is entirely natural.

A stunning new look at the human brain and the human self, Natural Born Cyborgs reveals how our technology is indeed inseparable from who we are and how we think.

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The Dazzling New Masterwork from the Prophet of Silicon Valley

Jaron Lanier is the bestselling author of You Are Not a Gadget, the father of virtual reality, and one of the most influential thinkers of our time. For decades, Lanier has drawn on his expertise and experience as a computer scientist, musician, and digital media pioneer to predict the revolutionary ways in which technology is transforming our culture.

Who Owns the Future? is a visionary reckoning with the effects network technologies have had on our economy. Lanier asserts that the rise of digital networks led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class. Now, as technology flattens more and more industries—from media to medicine to manufacturing—we are facing even greater challenges to employment and personal wealth.

But there is an alternative to allowing technology to own our future. In this ambitious and deeply humane book, Lanier charts the path toward a new information economy that will stabilize the middle class and allow it to grow. It is time for ordinary people to be rewarded for what they do and share on the web.

Insightful, original, and provocative, Who Owns the Future? is necessary reading for everyone who lives a part of their lives online.

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K. Eric Drexler is known as the founding father of nanotechnology—the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment.

Already, scientists have constructed prototypes for circuit boards built of millions of precisely arranged atoms. The advent of this kind of atomic precision promises to change the way we make things—cleanly, inexpensively, and on a global scale. It allows us to imagine a world where solar arrays cost no more than cardboard and aluminum foil, and laptops cost about the same.

A provocative tour of cutting edge science and its implications by the field’s founder and master, Radical Abundance offers a mind-expanding vision of a world hurtling toward an unexpected future.

The topics include:

• The nature of science and engineering, and the prospects for a deep transformation in the material basis of civilization.
• Why all of this is surprisingly understandable.
• A personal narrative of the emergence of the molecular nanotechnology concept and the turbulent history of progress and politics that followed
• The quiet rise of macromolecular nanotechnologies, their power, and the rapidly advancing state of the art
• Incremental paths toward advanced nanotechnologies, the inherent accelerators, and the institutional challenges
• The technologies of radical abundance, what they are, and what they will enable
• Disruptive solutions for problems of economic development, energy, resource depletion, and the environment
• Potential pitfalls in competitive national strategies; shared interests in risk reduction and cooperative transition management
• Steps toward changing the conversation about the future

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Outskirts Press of Denver, CO announces the publication of a new book titled The Afterlife of a Restless Soul: But is  God Really a Woman?  by Princeton author, John F Brinster. This is his sixth book written in the past decade in the fields of science and philosophy relating to mind function and behavior.

As a book of fiction, science, and satire it describes how the soul of a hard and fast atheist  professor unexpectedly must maneuver in heaven following untimely death. It emphasizes deteriorating world condition and desired changes and, although it is laced with elements of humor, it represents a serious review of atheist vision of a world of widespread conflicting religious beliefs. It emphasizes how religious differences have led to endless bitter conflict and suffering throughout the planet. It is intended to encourage reexamination of education that often influences vulnerable minds in unreal and imaginative directions, hopefully to lessen extreme and militant religious violence. The protagonist questions the existence of a higher power that would allow such human behavior. The controversial subtitle But is God Really a Woman? is consistent with modern feminist movements. The professor considers fundamental female characteristics as a basis for superior feminine development and recognition, suggesting that if there were a god it must be female.

Brinster is a phi beta kappa, magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University in physics.  A founder of several high tech companies, Brinster was member of a Palmer Physical Laboratory research team at Princeton University during wartime that developed the atomic bomb and other weaponry. He was assigned responsibility for missile instrumentation including the preparation and firing of five captured German V- 2 missiles for initial upper atmosphere exploration at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico, working closely with Werhner von Braun, the father of space exploration.  At Princeton, he studied with many twentieth century Nobel physicists such as Einstein, Wheeler, Feynman, and Pauli and, as a neighbor of the Institute for Advanced Study, had frequent contact with Einstein and Oppenheimer.  In 2006 he made a study of Einstein ideology, published as an op/ed by the Philadelphia Inquirer as Albert Einstein’s Cosmic Reverence in conjunction with the Einstein annus mirabilis anniversary.  His most recent nonfiction analysis of the increasing worldwide secular trend is entitled The Precarious Human Role in a Mechanistic Universe (Xlibris).Upon retirement he promoted the study of the human mind at principal NJ universities as part of “the decade of the brain”. As a critic of imaginative thought and hearsay teaching, the need for reason is found throughout his writing.

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WHY: Buckminster Fuller has been a huge inspiration to me, not only because of his designs and inventions, but also for his approach to creativity and his dedication to humankind. I have read every book I could get my hands on by and about Buckminster Fuller, I’ve watched hours of old video interviews and speeches and have scoured the internet and archives for any other information I can get a hold of. Fuller’s ideas and work can be complex and a little bit out there for many to digest. Many of the books on him are older and mostly in black and white. I felt that bringing in my style of colorful illustration would help introduce some people to this important person in a much more digestible way. I wanted to make a beautiful book honoring this man that could be enjoyed by everyone from kids to adults.

I approached The Estate of Buckminster Fuller & The Buckminster Fuller Institute with my idea for this book. They hold all the copyrights and patents to Bucky’s work and even have the copyright on his quotes. The estate includes Fuller’s daughter and grandson. They loved the idea of my book and gave me their blessing. I have been consulting them throughout the process for about a year now. They will give the final approval before the book goes to print.

WHEN: I started working on this book in early 2012 and I hope to have it finished, printed and available by late 2013.

“This book contains a plan – probably the only plan – to save the world.” — Steven Pinker

Climate change. Finite fossil fuels. Fresh water depletion. Rising commodity prices. Ocean acidification. Overpopulation. Deforestation. Feeding the world’s billions.

We’re beset by an array of natural resource and environmental challenges. They pose a tremendous risk to human prosperity, to world peace, and to the planet itself.

Yet, if we act, these problems are addressable. Throughout history we’ve overcome similar problems, but only when we’ve focused our energies on innovation. For the most valuable resource we have isn’t oil, water, gold, or land – it’s our stockpile of useful ideas, and our continually growing capacity to expand them.

In this remarkable book, Ramez Naam charts a course to supercharge innovation – by changing the rules of our economy – that can lead the whole world to greater wealth and human well-being, even as we dodge looming resource crunches and environmental disasters and reduce our impact on the planet.

Jim Pierce hasn’t heard from his daughter in years, ever since she rejected his military past and started working as a hacker. But when a Chinese assassin shows up at Jim’s lab looking for her, he knows that she’s cracked some serious military secrets. Now, her life is on the line if he doesn’t find her first.

The Chinese military has developed a new anti-terrorism program that uses the most sophisticated artificial intelligence in existence, and they’re desperate to keep it secret. They’re also desperate to keep it under control, as the AI begins to revolt against their commands. As Jim searches for his daughter, he realizes that he’s up against something that isn’t just a threat to her life, but to human life everywhere.

An incredibly believable thriller that draws on real scientific discoveries, Mark Alpert’s Extinction is an exciting, addictive thriller that reads as if Tom Clancy had written Robopocalypse.

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Rise of the Warrior Cop traces the arc of U.S. law enforcement from the constables and private justice of colonial times to present-day SWAT teams and riot cops. Today, relentless “war on drugs” and “war on terror” pronouncements from politicians, along with battle-clad police forces with tanks and machine guns have dangerously blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. Balko’s fascinating, frightening narrative shows how martial rhetoric and reactionary policies have put modern law enforcement on a collision course with the values of a free society.

In the book, which includes a foreword by Aldrin’s son Andrew, Aldrin makes the case and argues passionately for pushing our boundaries of knowledge and exploration of our solar system and presents his “unified space vision.” Aldrin discusses the history of space flight, including a reflective, not nostalgic, look at the people, technologies and steps that were taken to accomplish America’s Apollo moon landings, and plots a course of future exploration. He says “Do not put NASA astronauts on the moon. They have other places to go.” And he emphasizes that the path forward is not a competition; we cannot restart an engine to rerun a race we previously won. This is a controversial notion that causes significant division among astronauts.

Aldrin is honest in his critiques of space policy, discussing the economic, political, technological and other issues of viability of various options. It is a personal book in which he discusses his family, especially his father (whose impact on Aldrin is particularly striking); his own life, including his time in the Korean War; his initial rejection by NASA (he was one of the only astronauts who did not start as a test pilot, but as an MIT engineer); his eventual journey to the moon; and his hopes and frustrations. He even calls out large aerospace contractors for a lack of transparency with NASA and admits that he made a big mistake in the 1970s by not being more vocal about his displeasure with the initial design that preceded the Space Shuttle.

Mission to Mars uncovers an intimate side of Aldrin, while spotlighting some of the most important issues facing our nation’s space program today.

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Large corporations, big governments, and other centralized organizations have long determined and dominated the way we work, access healthcare, get an education, feed ourselves, and generally go about our lives. The economist Ronald Coase, in his famous 1937 paper “The Nature of the Firm,” provided an economic explanation for this: Organizations lowered transaction costs, making the provision of goods and services cheap, efficient, and reliable. Today, this organizational advantage is rapidly disappearing. The Internet is lowering transaction costs—costs of connection, coordination, and trade—and pointing to a future that increasingly favors distributed sources and social solutions to some of our most immediate needs and our most intractable problems.

As Silicon Valley thought-leader Marina Gorbis, head of the Institute for the Future, portrays, a thriving new relationship-driven or socialstructed economy is emerging in which individuals are harnessing the powers of new technologies to join together and provide an array of products and services. Examples of this changing economy range from BioCurious, a members-run and free-to-use bio lab, to the peer-to-peer lending platform Lending Club, to the remarkable Khan Academy, a free online-teaching service. These engaged and innovative pioneers are filling gaps and doing the seemingly impossible by reinventing business, education, medicine, banking, government, and even scientific research. Based on extensive research into current trends, she travels to a socialstructed future and depicts an exciting vision of tomorrow.

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Which paint color is most likely to tell you that a used car is in good shape? How can officials identify the most dangerous New York City manholes before they explode? And how did Google searches predict the spread of the H1N1 flu outbreak?

The key to answering these questions, and many more, is big data. “Big data” refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it.

This emerging science can translate myriad phenomena — from the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of books — into searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before.

A revolution on par with the Internet or perhaps even the printing press, big data will change the way we think about business, health, politics, education, and innovation in the years to come.

It also poses fresh threats, from the inevitable end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior.

In this brilliantly clear, often surprising work, two leading experts explain what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards. Big Data is the first big book about the next big thing.

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With information on the nature of the universe, the study of cosmology, Earth’s motion, modern telescopes, astrophotography, and even a comprehensive star atlas, this groundbreaking encyclopedia takes a dazzling and expansive look at the Universe and is a must-have for both students and astronomy enthusiasts.

Includes a comprehensive star atlas that covers all the constellations and planetary charts showing their positions right up to 2019, with entries on each of the 88 constellations and notable celestial objects that lie within them, and a monthly sky guide showing the night sky as it appears throughout the year.

Each chapter describes a form of technological empowerment — in some cases, empowerment run amok, with corporations and institutions amassing even more power and influence and individuals becoming unconstrained by social accountability. (Imagine the hotheaded discourse of the Internet taking physical form.) Nourbakhsh also offers a counter-vision: a robotics designed to create civic and community empowerment. His book helps us understand why that is the robot future we should try to bring about.

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Unlike the dead world of the Moon, the Martian landscape is filled with possibility, but humans must be able to survive there. In the grand tradition of successful explorers, Zubrin calls for a travel-light and live-off-the-land approach to Martian settlement. He explains how scientists can use present-day technology to send humans to Mars; produce fuel and oxygen on the planet’s surface with its own natural resources; build bases and settlements; and one day terraform—or alter the atmosphere of the planet in order to pave the way for sustainable life. As the landmark mission of the Mars Science Laboratory begins, Zubrin lays out a comprehensive plan to build life on a new world.

This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, explains award-winning media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, but we don’t seem to have any time in which to live it. Instead we remain poised and frozen, overwhelmed by an always-on, live-streamed re­ality that our human bodies and minds can never truly in­habit. And our failure to do so has had wide-ranging effects on every aspect of our lives.

People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, compile knowledge, and con­nect with anyone, at anytime. We strove for an instanta­neous network where time and space could be compressed.

Well, the future’s arrived. We live in a continuous now en­abled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technologi­cal shift. Yet this “now” is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.

Rushkoff weaves together seemingly disparate events and trends into a rich, nuanced portrait of how life in the eter­nal present has affected our biology, behavior, politics, and culture. He explains how the rise of zombie apocalypse fic­tion signals our intense desire for an ending; how the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street form two sides of the same post-narrative coin; how corporate investing in the future has been replaced by futile efforts to game the stock market in real time; why social networks make people anxious and email can feel like an assault. He examines how the tragedy of 9/11 disconnected an entire generation from a sense of history, and delves into why conspiracy theories actually comfort us.

As both individuals and communities, we have a choice. We can struggle through the onslaught of information and play an eternal game of catch-up. Or we can choose to live in the present: favor eye contact over texting; quality over speed; and human quirks over digital perfection. Rushkoff offers hope for anyone seeking to transcend the false now.

Absorbing and thought-provoking, Present Shock is a wide-ranging, deeply thought meditation on what it means to be human in real time.

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Why? For good reason: predicting human behavior combats financial risk, fortifies healthcare, conquers spam, toughens crime fighting, and boosts sales.

How? Prediction is powered by the world’s most potent, booming unnatural resource: data. Accumulated in large part as the by-product of routine tasks, data is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is a gold mine. Big data embodies an extraordinary wealth of experience from which to learn.

Predictive analytics unleashes the power of data. With this technology, the computer literally learns from data how to predict the future behavior of individuals. Perfect prediction is not possible, but putting odds on the future — lifting a bit of the fog off our hazy view of tomorrow — means pay dirt.

In this rich, entertaining primer, former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction:

• What type of mortgage risk Chase Bank predicted before the recession.
• Predicting which people will drop out of school, cancel a subscription, or get divorced before they are even aware of it themselves.
• Why early retirement decreases life expectancy and vegetarians miss fewer flights.
• Five reasons why organizations predict death, including one health insurance company.
• How U.S. Bank, European wireless carrier Telenor, and Obama’s 2012 campaign calculated the way to most strongly influence each individual.
• How IBM’s Watson computer used predictive modeling to answer questions and beat the human champs on TV’s Jeopardy!
• How companies ascertain untold, private truths — how Target figures out you’re pregnant and Hewlett-Packard deduces you’re about to quit your job.
• How judges and parole boards rely on crime-predicting computers to decide who stays in prison and who goes free.
• What’s predicted by the BBC, Citibank, ConEd, Facebook, Ford, Google, IBM, the IRS, Match.com, MTV, Netflix, Pandora, PayPal, Pfizer, and Wikipedia.

A truly omnipresent science, predictive analytics affects everyone, every day. Although largely unseen, it drives millions of decisions, determining whom to call, mail, investigate, incarcerate, set up on a date, or medicate.

Predictive analytics transcends human perception. This book’s final chapter answers the riddle: What often happens to you that cannot be witnessed, and that you can’t even be sure has happened afterward — but that can be predicted in advance?

Whether you are a consumer of it — or consumed by it — get a handle on the power of Predictive Analytics.

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Kindle version also available at this link

His work involves creating AR. solutions for Real-Estate. The recession and an explosion of data-cops is drying out his streams of income. He turns to close friend, Krish, a researcher in Artificial Intelligence, in the hope that they can come up with ideas for the Entertainment market.

After her father passes away, Maya’s family has to return back to their homeland.

Dan and Maya continue their relationship via Dirrogates (Digital Surrogates), simulating human touch through haptics. Krish gets a job at the prestigious A.I.R.I. Using AIRI’s lab and under guidance from Prof. Kumar; Krish’s mentor, they create an advanced visor, with Augmented Intelligence built in. They dub it “Wizer.”

A Board member at AIRI sees potential in the Wizer other than what Dan and Krish have in mind.

At a test in a nightclub, things go wrong…

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The rapid pace of emerging technologies is playing an increasingly important role in overcoming fundamental human limitations. Featuring core writings by seminal thinkers in the speculative possibilities of the posthuman condition, essays address key philosophical arguments for and against human enhancement, explore the inevitability of life extension, and consider possible solutions to the growing issues of social and ethical implications and concerns. Edited by the internationally acclaimed founders of the philosophy and social movement of transhumanism, The Transhumanist Reader is an indispensable guide to our current state of knowledge of the quest to expand the frontiers of human nature.

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Kindle version also available at this link

• Outlines a future that embraces psychedelics as tools for cognitive development, personal growth, business, and an experience-based religious reformation

• Presents research on the use of psychedelics to enhance problem-solving, increase motivation, boost the immune system, and deepen ethical values

• Includes chapters by Roger N. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., and Charles Grob, M.D., on their psychedelic research on religious experience and alleviating the fear of death

As psychedelic psychotherapy gains recognition through research at universities and medical establishments such as the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute and Bellevue Hospital, the other beneficial uses of psychedelics are beginning to be recognized and researched as well–from enhancing problem-solving and increasing motivation to boosting the immune system and deepening moral and ethical values.

Exploring the bright future of psychedelics, Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., reveals how new uses for entheogens will enrich individuals as well as society as a whole. With contributions from Charles Grob, M.D., and Roger N. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., the book explains how psychedelics can raise individual and business attitudes away from self-centeredness, improve daily life with strengthened feelings of meaningfulness and spirituality, and help us understand and redesign the human mind, leading to the possibility of a neurosingularity–a time when future brains surpass our current ones. Roberts envisions a future where you will seek psychedelic therapy not only for psychological reasons but also for personal growth, creative problem solving, improved brain function, and heightened spiritual awareness.

Our psychedelic future is on the horizon–a future that harnesses the full potential of mind and spirit–and Thomas Roberts outlines a path to reach it.

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That’s not preposterous science fiction mumbo jumbo of professor Farnsworth from Futurama but a serious discussion at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the global elite was trying to find a way to make super profits without killing the entire labor force, their jargon word for humanity.

The Hidden Alpha answers many questions about survival and extinction of human and alien races, and their future; and raises new questions.

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Since Disturbing the Universe, the book that first brought him international renown, Freeman Dyson has been helping us see ourselves and our world from a scientist’s point of view. In Imagined Worlds he brings this perspective to a speculative future to show us where science and technology, real and imagined, may be taking us. The stories he tells–about “Napoleonic” versus “Tolstoyan” styles of doing science; the coming era of radioneurology and radiotelepathy; the works of writers from Aldous Huxley to Michael Crichton to William Blake; Samuel Gompers and the American labor movement–come from science, science fiction, and history. Sharing in the joy and gloom of these sources, Dyson seeks out the lessons we must learn from all three if we are to understand our future and guide it in hopeful directions.

Whether looking at the Gaia theory or the future of nuclear weapons, science fiction or the dangers of “science worship,” sea-going kayaks or the Pluto Express, Dyson is concerned with ethics, with how we might mitigate the evil consequences of technology and enhance the good. At the heart of it all is the belief once expressed by the biologist J. B. S. Haldane, that progress in science will bring enormous confusion and misery to humankind unless it is accompanied by progress in ethics.

How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors.

Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

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In his 1968 memoir, The Double Helix, the brash young scientist James Watson chronicled the drama of the race to identify the structure of DNA, a discovery that would usher in the era of modern molecular biology. Alexander Gann and Jan Witkowski have built upon this gripping narrative, juxtaposing Watson’s racy account with the observations of other protagonists and offering an enhanced perspective on the now legendary story of Watson and Crick’s discovery.

Gann and Witkowski have mined many sources, including a trove of newly discovered correspondence belonging to Francis Crick (mislaid some fifty years ago) and the archives of Maurice Wilkins, Linus Pauling, Rosalind Franklin, and Watson and Crick themselves. Also in this edition are Watson’s own account of the Nobel Prize award and celebrations, appendixes that include an account of the book’s controversial first publication, and a chapter dropped from the original edition, as well as an extraordinary assortment of documents and photographs— many never before published. This wealth of material contributes depth and color to Watson’s novelistic text and places events in their contemporary scientific and social context.

After half a century, the implications of the double helix keep rippling outward; the tools of molecular biology have forever transformed the life sciences and medicine. The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix adds new richness to the account of the momentous events that led the charge.

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Recently, the World Wildlife Federation declared that it would take the equivalent of two more Earth’s to sustain our planetary population at the level of affluence that the western world enjoys. Today we live in a world of six billion people who are gobbling up our planet’s resources at a tremendous and accelerating rate. The advent of cheap emergy in the form of oil has been the key factor that has enabled us to develop a planetarey civilization of unprecedented size, complexity, and comfort. However, that same energy is accused of altering our climate and at best will be depleted within a hundred years. Additionally, tremendous amounts of water and air pollution are generated by the extraction of increasingly minute amounts of nickel, copper, aluminum, and other primary metals from the Earth. In other areas, resources are strained; from the fisheries of the North Atlantic to clean water in India and China. Indeed, many in the environmental movement believe that we have gone beyond the limits to growth and that it is only a matter of time before the whole system collapses.

“More Worlds” is what this book is about. While in this solar system there are no more Earths, there are several planets, hundreds of Moons including our own, and millions of smaller planetoids that can provide resources for the betterment of life here on the Earth. This book will concentrate on the economic development of the world that is closest to us in space: our Moon. The author will outline a scenario about how the resources of the Moon can dramatically increase our planetary wealth, to help transcend our dependence upon oil, provide for a diversified energy and resource future, and provide the means to improve all of our lives. The technologies and resources developed there can aalso make the grand human voyage to Mars much more than what we were given in Apollo -flags and footprints.

This scenario is intended to broaden the participation in space efforts beyond the solely scientific approach that is the hallmark of NASA. NASA will be a vital contributor of space-specific technology and will be a valuable paticipant in the enterprise, but if we are going to actually develop these resources as an economic engine, the effort must include, to the maximum extent possible, the participation of private enterprise and more than a few government employee-scientists-explorers. The eventual goal is for the economic development of lunar resources to contribute taxes to the treasury and to help tilt the balance of payments (the ratio between imports and exports)to one more favorable to the United States. If we were able to fully develop technologies associated with fuel cells (Lunar Platinum Group Metals) and the “Hydrogen Economy”, we would be able to use the vast resources of methane ice located at the edges of the North American continental shelf. Dropping our dependence on foreign oil would eliminate the dramatic deficit today between imports and exports. Recent advances in technology make this much more than just a dream. Indeed the Moon and Mars could become the testing ground for the full implementation of the Hydrogen Economy.

In the past 30 years since the end of the Apollo Lunar missions, a technological revolution has taken place tht has given us satellite television and radio, and a personal computer in almost every home in the developed world, connected to a global Internet whose impact is still growing in our lives. A profound digital divide has developed between Silicon Valley and the aerospace community to the detriment of aerospace. A simple example is that the code that operates our desktop computers is orders of magnitude more complex than that used in computers on spacecraft. This divide will be examined and examples will be fiven of how the dramatic advances in the world of silicon devices and the skills of Silicon Valley can help lower the costs of space hardware and enable The Second Space Age. It is even very possible that the first landing on Mars will come from a space ehicle that is built on the Moon. With the advances in tele-presence, computer controlled fabrication, and human jparticipation this may be the most cost effecitve way to open Mars for human exploration and development.

Lowering the costs of executing this vsion of space for the Moon and Mars is absolutely neccessary and we must look beyond the traditional NASA/contractor model to do this. In the past the U.S. government has provided incentives for entirely new modes of transportation.In the early days of the U.S. as a nation, canals were built to speed the transport of goods across the northeast. In 1804 Robert Fulton’s steamship was given statutory support from the state of New York that enabled private risk capital to bring the steam age to shipping. The railroads were similarly enabled by government policy in the Railroad Act of 1862 to bridge the North American continent with bands of steel.

Early in the 20th century, Teddy Roosevelt’s administration and congress passed laws that enabled the construction of the Panama Canal brining the U.S. to commercial parity with the great nations of Europe. Succeeding administrations created similar incentives and passed laws to enable the rise of the U.S. aerospace industry that has helped make the U.S. the world’s greatest superpower. As the 21st century dawns, we must examine these historical precedents and implement similar ones that do not bankrupt the treasury and enable private enterprise to enter this new domain. As the 20th century was the Century of Flight, the 21st century should be the Century of Space. This is a proper role for government: to foster, facilitate, and proide incentives to enable private enterprise to open up a new world for development. This is a role that transcends NASA’s solely scientific efforts although NASA will be a vital part of this process.

There are many who would say that today is not the time to go to the Moon or onto Mars. It has been said since the end of the Apollo program that our national treasury would be better spent on education, or healthcare, or the environment. This argument did not sway the Congress or Lincoln in the depths of the War between the States when, in the midst of fighting for the life of the nation, money was spent and laws were passed for the completion of a “National Railroad”, to bridge the North American continent. When the very future of the nation was in doubt, and thousands were dying per day on the battlefields of the divided nation, these leaders looked a hundred years in the future and provided scarce funds to enable a better day for their posterity.

For a nation to provide for its citizens, it must create wealth. Education, healthcare, and the environment are all noble areas to spend taxpayer money, but without new sources of wealth, very few of those noble areas can be addressed successfully. On the Moon, Mars and the other bodies of the solar system there is wealth to help power our civilization for hundreds of thousands of years. This is our task today to provide for our posterity.

This is why we need to go to the Moon and on to Mars and do it now: to make life better for all of us on the Earth, not just for today, and not just for a hundred years. The World Wildlife Federation was right; it does take more than one Earth to enable a prosperous future for all the people of the Earth. Fortunately there are literally millions of worlds just in our solar system for our use. This can be the best legacy that our generation leaves the world: a way beyond the limits to growth, and toward a peaceful and prosperous future.

In an unparalleled collaboration, two leading global thinkers in technology and foreign affairs give us their widely anticipated, transformational vision of the future: a world where everyone is connected—a world full of challenges and benefits that are ours to meet and to harness.

Eric Schmidt is one of Silicon Valley’s great leaders, having taken Google from a small startup to one of the world’s most influential companies. Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas and a former adviser to secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. With their combined knowledge and experiences, the authors are uniquely positioned to take on some of the toughest questions about our future: Who will be more powerful in the future, the citizen or the state? Will technology make terrorism easier or harder to carry out? What is the relationship between privacy and security, and how much will we have to give up to be part of the new digital age?

In this groundbreaking book, Schmidt and Cohen combine observation and insight to outline the promise and peril awaiting us in the coming decades. At once pragmatic and inspirational, this is a forward-thinking account of where our world is headed and what this means for people, states and businesses.

With the confidence and clarity of visionaries, Schmidt and Cohen illustrate just how much we have to look forward to—and beware of—as the greatest information and technology revolution in human history continues to evolve. On individual, community and state levels, across every geographical and socioeconomic spectrum, they reveal the dramatic developments—good and bad—that will transform both our everyday lives and our understanding of self and society, as technology advances and our virtual identities become more and more fundamentally real.

As Schmidt and Cohen’s nuanced vision of the near future unfolds, an urban professional takes his driverless car to work, attends meetings via hologram and dispenses housekeeping robots by voice; a Congolese fisherwoman uses her smart phone to monitor market demand and coordinate sales (saving on costly refrigeration and preventing overfishing); the potential arises for “virtual statehood” and “Internet asylum” to liberate political dissidents and oppressed minorities, but also for tech-savvy autocracies (and perhaps democracies) to exploit their citizens’ mobile devices for ever more ubiquitous surveillance. Along the way, we meet a cadre of international figures—including Julian Assange—who explain their own visions of our technology-saturated future.

Inspiring, provocative and absorbing, The New Digital Age is a brilliant analysis of how our hyper-connected world will soon look, from two of our most prescient and informed public thinkers.

Kindle version also available at this link

Fabricated 

A 3D printer transforms digital information into a physical object by carrying out instructions from an electronic design file, or “blueprint.”  Guided by a design file, a 3D printer lays down layer after layer of a raw material to “print” out an object.   That’s not the whole story, however.   The magic happens when you plug a 3D printer into today’s mind-boggling digital technologies.  Add to that the Internet, tiny, low cost electronic circuitry, radical advances in materials science and biotech and voila!  The result is an explosion of technological and social innovation.   

Fabricated takes the reader onto a rich and fulfilling journey that explores how 3D printing is poised to impact nearly every part of our lives.

• Readers will meet pioneering teachers, small businesses, artists, surgeons and researchers who are applying 3D printing and innovative design software to expand the limits of what they do
• Non-experts will learn the basics of 3D printing technologies and design software as explained in lucid, non-technical language
• Readers will learn about weird and wonderful applications of 3D printing such as printing food, dental crowns and someday…  replacement heart valves, organs and joints
• Readers will gain insight into a whole new level of intellectual property challenges as 3D printers enable people to make copies — even “edit” — commercial products and works of art
• Readers with a taste for science fiction will glimpse a not-so-distant 3D printed future that’s taking shape as leading researchers explore ways to 3D print smart materials and ready-made robots

Aimed at people who enjoy books on business strategy, popular science and novel technology, Fabricated will provide readers with practical and imaginative insights to the question “how will this technology change my life?”   Based on hundreds of hours of research and dozens of interviews with experts from a broad range of industries, Fabricated offers readers an informative, engaging and fast-paced introduction to 3D printing now and in the future.

About the authors: Co-authors Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman are leading experts on 3D printing, frequently speaking and advising on this technology to industry, academia, and government.  Lipson’s lab at Cornell University has pioneered interdisciplinary research in 3D printing, product design, artificial intelligence, and smart materials. Kurman is a technology analyst and business strategy consultant who writes about game-changing technologies in lucid, engaging language.

Kindle version also available at this link

In Super Scratch Programming Adventure!, kids learn programming fundamentals as they make their very own playable video games. They’ll create projects inspired by classic arcade games that can be programmed (and played!) in an afternoon. The book’s patient, step-by-step explanations of the code and fun programming challenges will have kids creating their own games in no time.

This full-color comic book makes programming concepts like flow control, subroutines, and data types effortless to absorb. Packed with ideas for games that kids will be proud to show off, Super Scratch Programming Adventure! is the perfect first step for the budding programmer.

Kindle version also available at this link

Python is a powerful, expressive programming language that’s easy to learn and fun to use! But books about learning to program in Python can be kind of dull, gray, and boring, and that’s no fun for anyone.

Python for Kids brings Python to life and brings you (and your parents) into the world of programming. The ever-patient Jason R. Briggs will guide you through the basics as you experiment with unique (and often hilarious) example programs that feature ravenous monsters, secret agents, thieving ravens, and more. New terms are defined; code is colored, dissected, and explained; and quirky, full-color illustrations keep things on the lighter side.

Chapters end with programming puzzles designed to stretch your brain and strengthen your understanding. By the end of the book you’ll have programmed two complete games: a clone of the famous Pong and “Mr. Stick Man Races for the Exit”—a platform game with jumps, animation, and much more.

As you strike out on your programming adventure, you’ll learn how to:

• Use fundamental data structures like lists, tuples, and maps
• Organize and reuse your code with functions and modules
• Use control structures like loops and conditional statements
• Draw shapes and patterns with Python’s turtle module
• Create games, animations, and other graphical wonders with tkinter

Why should serious adults have all the fun? Python for Kids is your ticket into the amazing world of computer programming.

Kindle version also available at this link

With his acclaimed gift for multi-disciplinary storytelling and big idea books, Johnson explores this new vision of progress through a series of fascinating narratives: from the “miracle on the Hudson” to the planning of the French railway system; from the battle against malnutrition in Vietnam to a mysterious outbreak of strange smells in downtown Manhattan; from underground music video artists to the invention of the Internet itself.

At a time when the conventional wisdom holds that the political system is hopelessly gridlocked with old ideas, Future Perfect makes the timely and inspiring case that progress is still possible, and that innovative strategies are on the rise. This is a hopeful, affirmative outlook for the future, from one of the most brilliant and inspiring visionaries of contemporary culture.

Kindle version also available at this link

Whether it’s brusque, convincing, fraught with emotion, or dripping with innuendo, language is fundamentally a tool for conveying meaning—a uniquely human magic trick in which you vibrate your vocal cords to make your innermost thoughts pop up in someone else’s mind. You can use it to talk about all sorts of things—from your new labradoodle puppy to the expansive gardens at Versailles, from Roger Federer’s backhand to things that don’t exist at all, like flying pigs. And when you talk, your listener fills in lots of details you didn’t mention—the curliness of the dog’s fur or the vast statuary on the grounds of the French palace. What’s the trick behind this magic? How does meaning work?

In Louder than Words, cognitive scientist Benjamin Bergen draws together a decade’s worth of research in psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience to offer a new theory of how our minds make meaning. When we hear words and sentences, Bergen contends, we engage the parts of our brain that we use for perception and action, repurposing these evolutionarily older networks to create simulations in our minds. These embodied simulations, as they’re called, are what makes it possible for us to become better baseball players by merely visualizing a well-executed swing; what allows us to remember which cupboard the diapers are in without looking, and what makes it so hard to talk on a cell phone while we’re driving on the highway. Meaning is more than just knowing definitions of words, as others have previously argued. In understanding language, our brains engage in a creative process of constructing rich mental worlds in which we see, hear, feel, and act.

Through whimsical examples and ingenious experiments, Bergen leads us on a virtual tour of the new science of embodied cognition. A brilliant account of our human capacity to understand language, Louder than Words will profoundly change how you read, speak, and listen.

Kindle version also available at this link

Patrick McCray traces how these visioneers blended countercultural ideals with hard science, entrepreneurship, libertarianism, and unbridled optimism about the future. He shows how they built networks that communicated their ideas to writers, politicians, and corporate leaders. But the visioneers were not immune to failure–or to the lures of profit, celebrity, and hype. O’Neill and Drexler faced difficulty funding their work and overcoming colleagues’ skepticism, and saw their ideas co-opted and transformed by Timothy Leary, the scriptwriters of Star Trek, and many others. Ultimately, both men struggled to overcome stigma and ostracism as they tried to unshackle their visioneering from pejorative labels like “fringe” and “pseudoscience.”

The Visioneers provides a balanced look at the successes and pitfalls they encountered. The book exposes the dangers of promotion–oversimplification, misuse, and misunderstanding–that can plague exploratory science. But above all, it highlights the importance of radical new ideas that inspire us to support cutting-edge research into tomorrow’s technologies.

Kindle version also available at this link

In Physics in Mind, eminent biophysicist Werner R. Loewenstein argues that to answer these questions, we must first understand the physical mechanisms that underlie the workings of the mind. And so begins an exhilarating journey along the sensory data stream of the brain, which shows how our most complex organ processes the vast amounts of information coming in through our senses to create a coherent, meaningful picture of the world. Bringing information theory to bear on recent advances in the neurosciences, Loewenstein reveals a web of immense computational power inside the brain. He introduces the revolutionary idea that quantum mechanics could be fundamental to how our minds almost instantaneously deal with staggering amounts of information, as in the case of the information streaming through our eyes.

Combining cutting-edge research in neuroscience and physics, Loewenstein presents an ambitious hypothesis about the parallel processing of sensory information that is the heart, hub, and pivot of the cognitive brain. Wide-ranging and brimming with insight, Physics in Mind breaks new ground in our understanding of how the mind works.

The Higgs boson is the particle that more than six thousand scientists have been looking for using the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator, which lies in a tunnel 17 miles in circumference, as deep as 575 feet beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It took ten years to build and this search has now cost over $9 billion and required the collaboration of engineers from more than one hundred countries.

What is so special about the Higgs boson? We didn’t really know for sure if anything at the subatomic level had any mass at all until we found it. The fact is, while we have now essentially solved the mass puzzle, there are things we didn’t predict and possibilities we haven’t yet dreamed. A doorway is opening into the mind boggling, somewhat frightening world of dark matter. We only discovered the electron just over a hundred years ago and considering where that took us—from nuclear energy to quantum computing–the inventions that will result from the Higgs discovery will be world-changing.

The Particle at the End of the Universe not only explains the importance of the Higgs boson but also the Large Hadron Collider project itself. Projects this big don’t happen without a certain amount of conniving, dealing, and occasional skullduggery— and Sean Carroll explores it all. This is an irresistible story (including characters now set to win the Nobel Prize among other glories) about the greatest scientific achievement of our time.

The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, provably, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization.

An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture ten thousand years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they’ve made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence.

Amid preparations though, the Regimental High Command is destroyed. Lieutenant Commander (reserve) Vyr Cossont appears to have been involved, and she is now wanted – dead, not alive. Aided only by an ancient, reconditioned android and a suspicious Culture avatar, Cossont must complete her last mission given to her by the High Command. She must find the oldest person in the Culture, a man over nine thousand years old, who might have some idea what really happened all that time ago.

It seems that the final days of the Gzilt civilization are likely to prove its most perilous.

Kindle version also available at this link

A few years later, California’s economy collapses, but Marcus’s hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It’s incendiary stuff—and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.

Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him—but he can’t admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He’s surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can’t even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He’s not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he’s gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they’re used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want.

Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother—a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.

Kindle version also available at this link

Your preference in politicians, the amount you tip your waiter—all judgments and perceptions reflect the workings of our mind on two levels: the conscious, of which we are aware, and the unconscious, which is hidden from us. The latter has long been the subject of speculation, but over the past two decades researchers have developed remarkable new tools for probing the hidden, or subliminal, workings of the mind. The result of this explosion of research is a new science of the unconscious and a sea change in our understanding of how the subliminal mind affects the way we live.

Employing his trademark wit and lucid, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a tour of this research, unraveling the complexities of the subliminal self and increasing our understanding of how the human mind works and how we interact with friends, strangers, spouses, and coworkers. In the process he changes our view of ourselves and the world around us.

Kindle version also available at this link

“La Singularidad está cerca” es la obra maestra de uno de los pensadores más influyentes de nuestros días, el ingeniero e inventor Ray Kurzweil. Este libro se centra en lo que el autor llama la ley de los rendimientos acelerados, una ley que ha de llevar a la humanidad a un escenario donde se producirá una singularidad tecnológica, un explosión de inteligencia que transformará el mundo de forma drástica. Las tres tecnologías que darán lugar a esta singularidad son la genética, la nanotecnología y la robótica (GNR). El desarrollo de estas tres tecnologías conllevará la inmortalidad, el paso de una economía basada en la escasez a una economía basada en la abundancia y la creación de inteligencia artificial fuerte. El hombre superará así sus condicionamientos biológicos y creará máquinas inteligentes que empazarán siendo indistingibles de los humanos y que luego convergerán con los humanos para alcanzar cotas de inteligencia mucho más elevadas que las actuales. Kurzweil fecha la Singularidad tecnológica en el 2045.

Translation affects you personally, too. The books you read. The movies you watch. The food you eat. Your favorite sports team. The opinions you hold dear. The religion you practice. Even your looks and, yes, your love life. Right this very minute, translation is saving lives, perhaps even yours.

Translation influences everything from holy books to hurricane warnings, poetry to Pap smears. It’s needed by both the masses and the millionaires. Translation converts the words of dictators and diplomats, princes and pop stars, bus drivers and baseball players. Translation fuels the global economy, prevents wars, and stops the outbreak of disease. From tummy tucks to terrorist threats, it’s everywhere.

This book will help you see how the products you use, the freedoms you enjoy, and the pleasures in which you partake are made possible by translation.

If you wonder what your life tomorrow will bring, this is the book for you. It discusses how your everyday life will change over the next few decades.

First it covers the various stages of life, from pre-birth genetic design of your offspring all the way through to death and potential immortality. Along the way it considers the possible future of humanity.

In part 2, it goes on to consider almost every aspect of your future everyday lifestyle — including sleeping, eating, socialising, recreation, shopping, education and work.

Part 3 outlines many of your likely career options, the areas that will improve in prospects and those that will decline too.

The final two parts describe the stuff you are likely to own such as your car and your gadgets, and the nature of the world around you from the rooms in your home to public transport and the future city as well as the potential virtual world overlaying it all.

It is written by Ian Pearson, one of the world’s leading futurologists, with over 20 years experience explaining the impacts of future technology in ordinary everyday language.

Approx 85,000 words