We live in an age of connection, one that is accelerated by the Internet. This increasingly ubiquitous, immensely powerful technology often leads us to assume that as the number of people online grows, it inevitably leads to a smaller, more cosmopolitan world. We’ll understand more, we think. We’ll know more. We’ll engage more and share more with people from other cultures. In reality, it is easier to ship bottles of water from Fiji to Atlanta than it is to get news from Tokyo to New York.

In Rewire, media scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman explains why the technological ability to communicate with someone does not inevitably lead to increased human connection. At the most basic level, our human tendency to “flock together” means that most of our interactions, online or off, are with a small set of people with whom we have much in common. In examining this fundamental tendency, Zuckerman draws on his own work as well as the latest research in psychology and sociology to consider technology’s role in disconnecting ourselves from the rest of the world.

For those who seek a wider picture—a picture now critical for survival in an age of global economic crises and pandemics—Zuckerman highlights the challenges, and the headway already made, in truly connecting people across cultures. From voracious xenophiles eager to explore other countries to bridge figures who are able to connect one culture to another, people are at the center of his vision for a true kind of cosmopolitanism. And it is people who will shape a new approach to existing technologies, and perhaps invent some new ones, that embrace translation, cross-cultural inspiration, and the search for new, serendipitous experiences.

Rich with Zuckerman’s personal experience and wisdom, Rewire offers a map of the social, technical, and policy innovations needed to more tightly connect the world.

Kindle edition also available at this link

NEW YORK TIMES 

From the former vice president and #1 New York Times bestselling author comes An Inconvenient Truth for everything—a frank and clear-eyed assessment of six critical drivers of global change in the decades to come.

Ours is a time of revolutionary change that has no precedent in history. With the same passion he brought to the challenge of climate change, and with his decades of experience on the front lines of global policy, Al Gore surveys our planet’s beclouded horizon and offers a sober, learned, and ultimately hopeful forecast in the visionary tradition of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and John Naisbitt’s Megatrends. In The Future, Gore identifies the emerging forces that are reshaping our world:

• Ever-increasing economic globalization has led to the emergence of what he labels “Earth Inc.”—an integrated holistic entity with a new and different relationship to capital, labor, consumer markets, and national governments than in the past.
• The worldwide digital communications, Internet, and computer revolutions have led to the emergence of “the Global Mind,” which links the thoughts and feelings of billions of people and connects intelligent machines, robots, ubiquitous sensors, and databases.
• The balance of global political, economic, and military power is shifting more profoundly than at any time in the last five hundred years—from a U.S.-centered system to one with multiple emerging centers of power, from nation-states to private actors, and from political systems to markets.
• A deeply flawed economic compass is leading us to unsustainable growth in consumption, pollution flows, and depletion of the planet’s strategic resources of topsoil, freshwater, and living species.
• Genomic, biotechnology, neuroscience, and life sciences revolutions are radically transforming the fields of medicine, agriculture, and molecular science—and are putting control of evolution in human hands.
• There has been a radical disruption of the relationship between human beings and the earth’s ecosystems, along with the beginning of a revolutionary transformation of energy systems, agriculture, transportation, and construction worldwide.

From his earliest days in public life, Al Gore has been warning us of the promise and peril of emergent truths—no matter how “inconvenient” they may seem to be. As absorbing as it is visionary, The Future is a map of the world to come, from a man who has looked ahead before and been proven all too right.

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Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death

Dr. Sam Parnia, Director of the AWARE Study (AWAreness during REsuscitation) and one of the world’s leading experts on the scientific study of death and near-death experiences (NDE), presents cutting-edge research from the front lines of critical care and resuscitation medicine while also shedding light on the ultimate mystery: What happens to human consciousness during and after death? Dr. Parnia reveals how some form of “afterlife” may be uniquely ours, as evidenced by the continuation of the human mind and psyche after the brain stops functioning.

With physicians such as Dr. Parnia at the forefront, we are on the verge of discovering a new universal science of consciousness that reveals the nature of mind and a future where death is not the final defeat, but is, in fact, reversible.

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Ben, a nature friendly virtual artist (world-weaver) and dream researcher follows a trail of darkness on an odyssey through different worlds of cyberspace to find a virtual art thief. Gordon, an MRI researcher, technophile and part time AI hunter seeks a cure for a mysterious web based sleeping sickness spreading throughout the population. Daniel, a recluse poet and Luddite struggles with having to use medical nanotechnology to cure his cancer but what he finds in the unconscious foundations of his biology is nothing less than a revelation that will change everything.

Kindle edition also available at this link

By the end of Glenn Beck’s #1 bestselling political thriller The Overton Window, a young rebel named Molly Ross had torn aside the curtain to reveal a shadow war being waged for the future of America. In the six months since then, her fight for freedom hasn’t gone well. Marked as traitors and hunted by ruthless government-sanctioned mercenaries using the most advanced surveillance technologies ever created, Ross and her “Founders’ Keepers” find themselves cornered and standing alone. but the fight is far from over.

The battle lines in this bitter rivalry are as old as civilization itself: On one side, an unlikely band of ordinary Americans ready to make their last stand in defense of self-rule, freedom, and liberty—and on the other, an elite cabal of self-styled tyrants who believe that unlimited power should be wielded only by the chosen few. That group, led by an aging, trillionaire puppet-master named Aaron Doyle, will stop at nothing to destroy the myth that man is capable of ruling himself.

As Doyle prepares to make his final move toward a dark, global vision for humanity’s future, new allies join the fight and old enemies change sides. In the midst of it all, Molly draws together a small but devoted group willing to risk their lives to infiltrate one of the most secure locations on earth—a place holding long-standing secrets that, if revealed, would forever change the way Americans view their rare, extraordinary place in history. Exposing these truths, and the real-life game of chess being played for mankind’s freedom, is their last chance to save the country they love.

Kindle edition also available at this link

There are indications that this deep state is crumbling. Necessary secrets are often impossible to keep, while frivolous secrets are kept forever. The entire system has fallen prey to political manipulation, with leaks carefully timed to advance agendas, and over-classification given to indefensible government activities.

Deep State, written by two of the country’s most respected national security journalists, disassembles the secrecy apparatus of the United States and examines real-world trends that ought to trouble everyone from the most aggressive hawk to the fiercest civil libertarian. The book:

- Provides the fullest account to date of the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance program first spun up in the dark days after 9/11.

- Examines President Obama’s attempt to reconcile his instincts as a liberal with the realities of executive power, and his use of the state secrets doctrine.

- Exposes how the public’s ubiquitous access to information has been the secrecy industry’s toughest opponent to date, and provides a full account of how WikiLeaks and other “sunlight” organizations are changing the government’s approach to handling sensitive information, for better and worse.

- Explains how the increased exposure of secrets affects everything from Congressional budgets to Area 51, from SEAL Team Six and Delta Force to the FBI, CIA, and NSA.

- Assesses whether the formal and informal mechanisms put in place to protect citizens from abuses by the American deep state work, and how they might be reformed.

Deep State is based on the authors’ insatiable curiosity for the ground truth and layered on a foundation of original and historical research as well as unprecedented access to lawmakers, intelligence agency heads, White House officials, and secret program managers. It draws on thousands of recently declassified documents and candid interviews with more than 100 military, industry, and government officials.

By the bestselling authors of The Command: Deep Inside the President’s Secret Army: Marc Ambinder, editor at large at The Week, contributing editor at GQ and the Atlantic, who has covered Washington for CBS News and ABC News; and D.B. Grady, a correspondent for the Atlantic, national security columnist for The Week, and former U.S. Army paratrooper and Afghanistan veteran.

Kindle edition also available at this link.

Maxwell J. Mehlman considers the promises and perils of using genetic engineering in an effort to direct the future course of human evolution. He addresses scientific and ethical issues without choosing sides in the dispute between transhumanists and their challengers. However, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares reveals that radical forms of genetic engineering could become a reality much sooner than many people think, and that we need to encourage risk-management efforts.

Whether scientists are dubious or optimistic about the prospects for directed evolution, they tend to agree on two things. First, however long it takes to perfect the necessary technology, it is inevitable that humans will attempt to control their evolutionary future, and second, in the process of learning how to direct evolution, we are bound to make mistakes. Our responsibility is to learn how to balance innovation with caution.

Kindle version also available at this link

The key to improving education lies in understanding how the brain works: that is where learning takes place, after all. The book focuses in particular on “working memory”–our ability to concentrate and to keep relevant information in our head while ignoring distractions (a topic the author covered in The Overflowing Brain).

Research shows enormous variation in working memory among children, with some ten-year-olds performing at the level of a fourteen-year old, others at that of a six-year old. More important, children with high working memory have better math and reading skills, while children with poor working memory consistently underperform. Interestingly, teachers tend to perceive children with poor working memory as dreamy or unfocused, not recognizing that these children have a memory problem.

But what can we do for these children? For one, we can train working memory. The Learning Brain provides a variety of different techniques and scientific insights that may just teach us how to improve our children’s working memory. Klingberg also discusses how stress can impair working memory (skydivers tested just before a jump showed a 30% drop in working memory) and how aerobic exercise can actually modify the brain’s nerve cells and improve classroom performance.

Torkel Klingberg is one of the world’s leading cognitive neuroscientists, but in this book he wears his erudition lightly, writing with simplicity and good humor as he shows us how to give our children the best chance to learn and grow.

Kindle version also available at this link

Recent years have seen a plethora of forecasts about the profound, disruptive impact that is likely to result from further progress in these areas. Many commentators however doubt the scientific rigor of these forecasts, rejecting them as speculative and unfounded. We therefore invited prominent computer scientists, physicists, philosophers, biologists, economists and other thinkers to assess the singularity hypotheses. Their contributions go beyond speculation, providing deep insights into the main issues and a balanced picture of the debate.

The book includes original essays and commentaries by Eric Chaisson (Harvard), Ray Kurzweil (Author), Dennis Bray (Cambridge), Vernor Vinge (San Diego), Selmer Bringsjord (RPI), Aaron Sloman (Birmingham), Illah R. Nourbakhsh (Carnegie-Mellon), Itamar Arel (Tennessee ), Eric Horvitz (AAAI & Microsoft), Luke Muehlhauser (SIAI), Bill Rapaport (SUNY Buffalo), Juergen Schmidhuber (Lugano), Robin Hanson (George Mason), Peter Bishop (Houston), Dave Pearce (BLTC) and many others.

Kindle version also available at this link

Though primitive today, ‘intelligent’ computer systems double in speed and power each year. In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI’s Holy Grail — human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine.

Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, James Barrat’s Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with computers whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And more to the point: will they allow us to?

Available for pre-order (Kindle edition also available at this link).

Your inner Chimp can be your best friend or your worst enemy…this is the Chimp Paradox

Do you sabotage your own happiness and success? Are you struggling to make sense of yourself? Do your emotions sometimes dictate your life?

Dr. Steve Peters explains that we all have a being within our minds that can wreak havoc on every aspect of our lives—be it business or personal. He calls this being “the chimp,” and it can work either for you or against you. The challenge comes when we try to tame the chimp, and persuade it to do our bidding.The Chimp Paradox contains an incredibly powerful mind management model that can help you be happier and healthier, increase your confidence, and become a more successful person. This book will help you to:

—Recognize how your mind is working
—Understand and manage your emotions and thoughts
—Manage yourself and become the person you would like to be

Dr. Peters explains the struggle that takes place within your mind and then shows you how to apply this understanding. Once you’re armed with this new knowledge, you will be able to utilize your chimp for good, rather than letting your chimp run rampant with its own agenda.

Kindle edition also available at this link

Unmanned weaponized drones already exist–they’re widely used by America in our war efforts in the Middle East. In Kill Decision, bestselling author Daniel Suarez takes that fact and the real science behind it one step further, with frightening results.

Linda McKinney is a myrmecologist, a scientist who studies the social structure of ants. Her academic career has left her entirely unprepared for the day her sophisticated research is conscripted by unknown forces to help run an unmanned–and thanks to her research, automated–drone army. Odin is the secretive Special Ops soldier with a unique insight into the faceless enemy who has begun to attack the American homeland with drones programmed to seek, identify, and execute targets without human intervention.

Together, McKinney and Odin must slow this advance long enough for the world to recognize its destructive power, because for thousands of years the “kill decision” during battle has remained in the hands of humans–and off-loading that responsibility to machines will bring unintended, possibly irreversible, consequences. But as forces even McKinney and Odin don’t understand begin to gather, and death rains down from above, it may already be too late to save humankind from destruction at the hands of our own technology.

Hardcover and Kindle editions also available

The trillions of dollars that make up the flow of international finance—money that is often steered away from the people who deserve it the most—have not just undermined the lives of working and middle class Americans. It is a world-wide phenomenon that is changing the culture of Argentina; destroying the factory system in Northern Mexico, enabling drug cartels to recruit thousands of young men into their gangs; that has taken down the economies of Iceland, Ireland, Spain, Greece, and possibly Italy; and is driving American companies such as a 60-year-old family owned manufacturer of printed circuit boards to shutter all but one of its factories.

Veteran journalist Michael Casey has traveled the world—from China to Iceland, Spain to Argentina, Indonesia to Australia—recounting extraordinary stories about ordinary people from one continent to another whose lives are inextricably linked.  By tracing the flow of money and goods across the world, he illustrates how an American homeowner’s life is shaped by the same economic and social policies that determine those of a low wage migrant worker on an assembly line in China. This combination of financial acumen, narrative-driven reporting, and compelling story-telling gives The Unfair Trade a unique human angle.

Casey shows that our economic problems are largely caused by political agendas that prevent the free market from encouraging fair competition and impeding the allocation of resources. Until governments work together to make this global system more efficient—until China removes incentives for its citizens to save excessively, for example, or the U.S. ends the de facto subsidies enjoyed by politically powerful banks—the global playing field will remain lopsided, job creation will lag, and our economies will be vulnerable to new crises.

Kindle edition also available at this link

Los Angeles | 2035 Reg, an organ thief, and Nina, a dominatrix, struggle to survive in the ghettos of Los Angeles and in virtual worlds where outcasts seek refuge. Their world has become an overpopulated nightmare where forced abortions and sterilizations are the norm. Unknown to them, a super artificial intelligence named Quin works for a trans-national conspiracy – “Operation Black Delta”- to produce the DNA for a race of people so advanced they will make the rest of us obsolete. After a vicious attack by Kiko, a Korean cybernetic mafioso controlled by Quin, Nina becomes one of 1,000 women in the world impregnated with this new genetic code. But she is the only one to survive. Hired by Quin under false pretenses, Reg tracks Nina down in the sprawling ghetto of Angel City, unaware that an even more dangerous plot threatens them and the rest of humanity.

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The Polish writer Stanisław Lem is best known to English-speaking readers as the author of the 1961 science fiction novel 

Throughout his writings, comprising dozens of science fiction novels and short stories, Lem offered deeply philosophical and bitingly satirical reflections on the limitations of both science and humanity.

In Summa Technologiae—his major work of nonfiction, first published in 1964 and now available in English for the first time—Lem produced an engaging and caustically logical philosophical treatise about human and nonhuman life in its past, present, and future forms.

After five decades Summa Technologiae has lost none of its intellectual or critical significance. Indeed, many of Lem’s conjectures about future technologies have now come true: from artificial intelligence, bionics, and nanotechnology to the dangers of information overload, the concept underlying Internet search engines, and the idea of virtual reality. More important for its continued relevance, however, is Lem’s rigorous investigation into the parallel development of biological and technical evolution and his conclusion that technology will outlive humanity.

Preceding Richard Dawkins’s understanding of evolution as a blind watchmaker by more than two decades, Lem posits evolution as opportunistic, shortsighted, extravagant, and illogical. Strikingly original and still timely, Summa Technologiae resonates with a wide range of contemporary debates about information and new media, the life sciences, and the emerging relationship between technology and humanity.

Kindle edition not available

Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived by acclaimed science journalist Chip Walter tells the intriguing tale of how against all odds and despite nature’s brutal and capricious ways we stand here today, the only surviving humans, and the planet’s most dominant species.

Drawing on a wide variety of scientific disciplines, Walter reveals how a rare evolutionary phenomenon led to the uniquely long childhoods that make us so resourceful and emotionally complex. He looks at why we developed a new kind of mind and how our highly social nature has shaped our moral (and immoral) behavior. And in exploring the traits that enabled our success, he plumbs the roots of our creativity and investigates why we became self-aware in ways that no other animal is. Along the way, Last Ape Standing profiles other human species who evolved with us and who have also shaped our kind in startling ways – the Neanderthals of Europe, the “Hobbits” of Indonesia, the Denisovans of Siberia, and the recently discovered Red Deer Cave people of China, who died off just as we stood at the brink of civilizations eleven thousand years ago.

Last Ape Standing is an engaging and accessible story that explores the forces that molded us into the peculiar and astonishing creature that we are.

Kindle edition also available at this link

When Temple Grandin was born in 1947, autism had only just been named. Today it is more prevalent than ever, with one in 88 children diagnosed on the spectrum. And our thinking about it has undergone a transformation in her lifetime: Autism studies have moved from the realm of psychology to neurology and genetics, and there is far more hope today than ever before thanks to groundbreaking new research into causes and treatments. Now Temple Grandin reports from the forefront of autism science, bringing her singular perspective to a thrilling journey into the heart of the autism revolution.

Weaving her own experience with remarkable new discoveries, Grandin introduces the neuroimaging advances and genetic research that link brain science to behavior, even sharing her own brain scan to show us which anomalies might explain common symptoms. We meet the scientists and self-advocates who are exploring innovative theories of what causes autism and how we can diagnose and best treat it. Grandin also highlights long-ignored sensory problems and the transformative effects we can have by treating autism symptom by symptom, rather than with an umbrella diagnosis. Most exciting, she argues that raising and educating kids on the spectrum isn’t just a matter of focusing on their weaknesses; in the science that reveals their long-overlooked strengths she shows us new ways to foster their unique contributions.

From the “aspies” in Silicon Valley to the five-year-old without language, Grandin understands the true meaning of the word spectrum. The Autistic Brain is essential reading from the most respected and beloved voices in the field.

Kindle edition also available at this link

Kindle version also available at this link

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.

Kindle version also available here.

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!

Kindle edition also available here

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.

Kindle version also available at this link

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

Kindle version also available at this link

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.

Kindle version also available at this link

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.

Kindle version also available at this link

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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