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Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual (Human-Computer Interaction Series)

July 18, 2010

Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual (Human-Computer Interaction Series)

Author:
William Sims Bainbridge
Publisher:
Springer (2009)

Amazon | Virtual worlds are persistent online computer-generated environments where people can interact, whether for work or play, in a manner comparable to the real world. The most popular current example is World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online game with eleven million subscribers. However, other virtual worlds, notably Second Life, are not games at all but internet-based collaboration contexts in which people can create virtual objects, simulated architecture,… read more

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Entertainment/New Media | Internet/Telecom | Social Networking/Web/Education | Social/Ethical/Legal | VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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Permutation City

August 6, 2010

Permutation City

Author:
Greg Egan
Publisher:
Eos (1995)

Amazon | The good news is that you have just awakened into Eternal Life. You are going to live forever. Immortality is a reality. A medical miracle? Not exactly.

The bad news is that you are a scrap of electronic code. The world you see around you, the you that is seeing it, has been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. You are a Copy… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Biomed/Longevity | Computers/Infotech/UI | Human Enhancement | Singularity/Futures | VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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The Immortality Edge: Realize the Secrets of Your Telomeres for a Longer, Healthier Life

December 29, 2010

immortalityedge

Author:
Michael Fossel, Greta Blackburn, Dave Woynarowski
Publisher:
Wiley (2010)

Amazon | Based on Nobel Prize–winning genetic research — a simple plan to keep your telomeres healthy for better health and longevity

Telomeres play an important role in protecting our chromosomes from critical damage. The shortening of the telomere disrupts vital cellular function and promotes the previously seemingly inevitable onset of aging and various diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s. Drawing from the groundbreaking discoveries about telomeres… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information

May 18, 2011

Visual Complexity book cover

Author:
Manuel Lima
Publisher:
Princeton Architectural Press (2011)

Amazon | Our ability to generate information now far exceeds our capacity to understand it. Finding patterns and making meaningful connections inside complex data networks has emerged as one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century.

In recent years, designers, researchers, and scientists have begun employing an innovative mix of colors, symbols, graphics, algorithms, and interactivity to clarify, and often beautify, the clutter.

From… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Computers/Infotech/UI

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How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like

July 6, 2011

How Pleasure Works book cover

Author:
Paul Bloom
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company (2011)

Amazon | “Engaging, evocative. . . . [Bloom] is a supple, clear writer, and his parade of counterintuitive claims about pleasure is beguiling.” — NPR

Why is an artistic masterpiece worth millions more than a convincing forgery? Pleasure works in mysterious ways, as Paul Bloom reveals in this investigation of what we desire and why. Drawing on a wealth of surprising studies, Bloom investigates pleasures noble and… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Entertainment/New Media

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The Instant Physicist: An Illustrated Guide

October 5, 2011

instantphysicist

Author:
Richard A. Muller
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company (2010)

Amazon | Wine is radioactive? Organic foods have more poison in them than those grown with pesticides? Best-selling author Richard A. Muller enlightens us.

Richard A. Muller demonstrated in his recent bestseller, Physics for Future Presidents, that he has a unique talent for delivering the “aha” moment — making difficult topics accessible. In The Instant Physicist he shows his ability to entertain, too, by presenting the best of the scientific… read more

Topics: Physics/Cosmology

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Theo Gray’s Mad Science: Experiments You Can do At Home – But Probably Shouldn’t

March 1, 2012

MadScience

Author:
Theodore Gray
Publisher:
Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (2011)

Amazon | In Mad Science, Theodore Gray launches a toy rocket using the energy released from an Oreo cookie, ignites a phosphorus sun by suspending half a gram of white phosphorus in a globe filled with pure oxygen and creates a homemade hot tub by adding 500 pounds of quicklime to water. These are just a few of the 54 experiments included in this astonishing book that demonstrates essential scientific principles… read more

Topics: Entertainment/New Media | Physics/Cosmology

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Amped: A Novel

June 4, 2012

amped

Author:
Daniel H. Wilson
Publisher:
Doubleday (2012)

Technology makes them superhuman. But mere mortals want them kept in their place. The New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse creates a stunning, near-future world where technology and humanity clash in surprising ways. The result? The perfect summer blockbuster.

As he did in Robopocalypse, Daniel Wilson masterfully envisions a frightening near-future world. In Amped, people are implanted with a device that makes them capable of… read more

Topics: Human Enhancement | Social Networking/Web/Education

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Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology

October 3, 2012

Trillions: Thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology

Author:
Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, Mickey McManus
Publisher:
Wiley (2012)

We are facing a future of unbounded complexity.  Whether that complexity is harnessed to build a world that is safe, pleasant, humane and profitable, or whether it causes us to careen off a cliff into an abyss of mind-numbing junk is an open question. The challenges and opportunities–technical, business, and human–that this technological sea change will bring are without precedent. Entire industries will be born and others will be… read more

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Internet/Telecom | Singularity/Futures

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Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age

January 29, 2013

Future Perfect

Author:
Steven Johnson
Publisher:
Riverhead Hardcover (2012)

Combining the deft social analysis of Where Good Ideas Come From with the optimistic arguments of Everything Bad Is Good For You, New York Times bestselling author Steven Johnson’s Future Perfect makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from local governments to classrooms, from protest movements to health care. Johnson paints a compelling portrait of this new political worldview — influenced by the success and interconnectedness of… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Singularity/Futures | Social/Ethical/Legal

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Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines

April 9, 2009
Author:
Robert A. Freitas Jr., Ralph C. Merkle
Publisher:
Landes Bioscience (2004)

This book offers a general review of the voluminous theoretical and experimental literature pertaining to physical self-replicating systems and self-replication. The principal focus here is on self-replicating machine systems. Most importantly, we are concerned with kinematic self-replicating machines: systems in which actual physical objects, not mere patterns of information, undertake their own replication.

Following a brief burst of activity in the 1950s and 1980s, the field… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

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The Greatest Science Stories Never Told: 100 tales of invention and discovery to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy

April 3, 2010

the greatest science stories

Author:
Rick Beyer
Publisher:
Harper (2009)

Amazon | Rick Beyer is a lifelong history enthusiast and an award-winning documentary producer whose work for The History Channel® includes Godspeed to Jamestown, The Wright Challenge, and the Timelab 2000 series of history minutes.

100 tales of invention and discovery:

  • Meet the angry undertaker who gave us the push-button phone.
  • Discover how modesty led to the invention of the stethoscope.
  • Find out why

… read more

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More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement

July 16, 2010

More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement

Author:
Ramez Naam
Publisher:
Broadway (2005)

Amazon | Imagine a person severely disabled by a stroke who, with electrodes implanted in his brain, can type on a computer just by thinking of the letters. Or a man, blind for 20 years, driving a car around a parking lot via a camera hard-wired into his brain. Plots for science fiction? No, it’s already happened, according to future technologies expert Naam. In an excellent and comprehensive survey,… read more

Topics: Biotech | Computers/Infotech/UI | Human Enhancement | Synthetic Biology

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An Optimist’s Tour of the Future

January 7, 2011

An Optimist's Tour of the Future book cover

Author:
Mark Stevenson
Publisher:
Profile (2011)

Amazon | Mark Stevenson has been to the future a few years ahead of the rest of us — and reckons it has a lot going for it. His voyage of discovery takes him to Oxford to meet Transhumanists (they intend to live forever), to Boston where he confronts a robot with mood swings, to an underwater cabinet meeting in the Indian Ocean, and Australia to question the… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Biomed/Longevity | Biotech | Singularity/Futures

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Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality

February 23, 2011

virtually you

Author:
Elias Aboujaoude
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company (2011)

 

Amazon | A penetrating examination of the insidious effects of the Internet on our personalities — online and off. Whether sharing photos or following financial markets, many of us spend a shocking amount of time online. While the Internet can enhance well-being, Elias Aboujaoude has spent years treating patients whose lives have been profoundly disturbed by it.

Part of the danger lies in how the Internet allows us… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Computers/Infotech/UI | Internet/Telecom | Social Networking/Web/Education | Social/Ethical/Legal

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