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Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

March 15, 2013

Present Shock

Author:
Douglas Rushkoff
Publisher:
Current Hardcover (2013)

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… read more

Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World

October 15, 2012

Singularity Rising: Surviving and Thriving in a Smarter, Richer, and More Dangerous World

Author:
James D. Miller
Publisher:
BenBella Books (2012)

Where will you be in a singular world?

In Ray Kurzweil’s New York Times bestseller The Singularity is Near, the futurist and entrepreneur describes the singularity, a likely future utterly different than anything we can imagine. The singularity is triggered by the tremendous growth of human and computing intelligence that is an almost inevitable outcome of Moore’s Law.

Since the book’s publication, the coming of singularity is now eagerly anticipated… read more

The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must

March 15, 2013

The Case for Mars

Author:
Robert Zubrin, Richard Wagner
Publisher:
Free Press (2011)

Since the beginning of human history, Mars has been an alluring dream—the stuff of legends, gods, and mystery. The planet most like ours, it has still been thought impossible to reach, let alone explore and inhabit. But all that changed when leading space exploration authority Robert Zubrin crafted a daring new blueprint, Mars Direct. When it was first published in 1996, The Case for Mars became an instant classic, lauded widely… read more

Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family

May 24, 2011

Disconnect book cover

Author:
Devra Davis
Publisher:
Dutton Adult (2010)

Amazon | The much-anticipated, explosive expose of how cell phone use damages brain cells, especially in children, by one of the world’s foremost scientific experts in the field.

Devra Davis presents an array of recent and long suppressed research in this timely bombshell. Cell phone radiation is a national emergency. Stunningly, the most popular gadget of our age has now been shown to damage DNA, break… read more

Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy

October 24, 2011

machinejump3-popup

Author:
Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee
Publisher:
Digital Frontier Press (2011)

Amazon | Why has median income stopped rising in the US? Why is the share of population that is working falling so rapidly? Why are our economy and society are becoming more unequal?

A popular explanation right now is that the root cause underlying these symptoms is technological stagnation — a slowdown in the kinds of ideas and inventions that bring progress and prosperity.

In Race Against theread more

The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business

February 4, 2013

The New Digital Age

Author:
Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen
Publisher:
Knopf (2013)

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… read more

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True

October 4, 2011

Dawkins Final

Author:
Richard Dawkins
Publisher:
Free Press (2011)

Amazon | Magic takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used in order to explain the world before they developed the scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods’ bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its back… read more

The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet

April 18, 2013

Infinite_Resource_Cover

Author:
Ramez Naam
Publisher:
UPNE (2013)

“Brilliant” — Ray Kurzweil

“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… read more

The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good

July 19, 2011

The Compass of Pleasure book cover

Author:
David J. Linden
Publisher:
Viking Adult (2011)

Amazon | A leading brain scientist’s look at the neurobiology of pleasure-and how pleasures can become addictions.

Whether eating, taking drugs, engaging in sex, or doing good deeds, the pursuit of pleasure is a central drive of the human animal. In The Compass of Pleasure Johns Hopkins neuroscientist David J. Linden explains how pleasure affects us at the most fundamental level: in our brain.

As he… read more

Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems

October 26, 2012

Surpassing Shanghai

Author:
Marc S. Tucker, Linda Darling-Hammond
Publisher:
Harvard Education Press (2011)

This book answers a simple question: How would one redesign the American education system if the aim was to take advantage of everything that has been learned by countries with the world’s best education systems?

With a growing number of countries outperforming the United States on the most respected comparisons of student achievement—and spending less on education per student—this question is critical.

Surpassing Shanghai looks in depth at… read more

The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World

January 28, 2013

The Particle at the End of the Universe

Author:
Sean Carroll
Publisher:
Dutton Adult (2012)

Scientists have just announced an historic discovery on a par with the splitting of the atom: the Higgs boson, the key to understanding why mass exists has been found. In The Particle at the End of the Universe, Caltech physicist and acclaimed writer Sean Carroll takes readers behind the scenes of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to meet the scientists and explain this landmark event.

The Higgs boson… read more

Thinking, Fast and Slow

December 14, 2011

thinkingfastandslow

Author:
Daniel Kahneman
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2011)

Amazon | Drawing on decades of research in psychology that resulted in a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Daniel Kahneman takes readers on an exploration of what influences thought example by example, sometimes with unlikely word pairs like “vomit and banana.” System 1 and System 2, the fast and slow types of thinking, become characters that illustrate the psychology behind things we think we understand but really don’t,… read more

Civilization: The West and the Rest

February 13, 2013
Author:
Niall Ferguson
Publisher:
Penguin Books (2012)

Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries

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… read more

The Artilect War: Cosmists Vs. Terrans

December 15, 2010

Theartilectwar

Author:
Hugo de Garis
Publisher:
ETC Publications (2005)

Amazon |  This book’s main idea is that this century’s global politics will be dominated by the “species dominance” issue.  21st century technologies will enable the building of artilects (artificial intellects, artificial intelligences, massively intelligent machines) with 1040 components, using reversible, heatless, 3D, molecular scale, self assembling, one bit per atom, nano-teched, quantum computers, which may dwarf human intelligence levels by a factor of trillions of trillions… read more

Strategic Relocation – North American Guide to Safe Places

October 30, 2012

Strategic Relocation

Author:
Joel Skousen
Publisher:
Swift Printing (2010)

What if: a labor crisis halts the inflow of food and business goods? Will your community provide the basic necessities of life? an economic crisis that threatens your pensions, investments and other so-called “guaranteed” income? a major earthquake or other natural disaster suddenly upsets the natural social order for months at a time? Could you get out of harm’s way if massive social unrest erupts in the wake of… read more

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