In his first book since the bestselling Fermat’s Enigma, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet… read more
bookshelf by year
Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines
April 9, 2009
- author |
- Robert A. Freitas Jr., Ralph C. Merkle
- year published |
- 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
- author |
- K. Eric Drexler
- year published |
- 1992
Devices enormously smaller than before will remodel engineering, chemistry, medicine, and computer technology. How can we understand machines that are so small? Nanosystems covers it all: power and strength, friction and wear, thermal noise and quantum uncertainty. This is the book for starting the next century of engineering.” — Marvin Minsky MIT.
Science magazine calls Eric Drexler “Mr. Nanotechnology.” For years, Drexler has stirred controversy by… read more
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
April 9, 2009
- author |
- Oliver Sacks
- year published |
- 2007
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does—humans are a musical… read more
FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop–From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication
April 9, 2009
- author |
- Neil Gershenfeld
- year published |
- 2007
Personal fabrication (PF) is the ability to design and produce your own products in your own home, with a machine that combines consumer electronics and industrial tools. This book describes how personal fabricators are about to revolutionize the world just as personal computers did a generation ago.
- author |
- Clay Shirky
- year published |
- 2009
An examination of how the rapid spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects–for good and for ill. Our age’s new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things… read more
- author |
- Harrison G. Echols
- year published |
- 2001
During the past four decades, molecular biology has dominated the life sciences. Curiously, no participant in this scientific revolution has previously attempted a book-length history of the development of this powerful science. Harrison (“Hatch”) Echols provides such an account in Operators and Promoters. A gifted molecular biologist and talented raconteur, Echols relates the intellectual history of the most influential discoveries in molecular biology from his own experiences.… read more
Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime
April 9, 2009
- author |
- Aubrey de Grey, Michael Rae
- year published |
- 2007
MUST WE AGE?
A long life in a healthy, vigorous, youthful body has always been one of humanity’s greatest dreams. Recent progress in genetic manipulations and calorie-restricted diets in laboratory animals hold forth the promise that someday science will enable us to exert total control over our own biological aging.
Nearly all scientists who study the biology of aging agree that we will someday be… read more
Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine
April 9, 2009
- author |
- J. Storrs Hall
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now advancing at such a rapid clip that it has the potential to transform our world in ways both exciting and disturbing. Computers have already been designed that are capable of driving cars, playing soccer, and finding and organizing information on the Web in ways that no human could. With each new gain in processing power, will scientists soon be able to create supercomputers that… read more
The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind
January 18, 2008
- author |
- Marvin Minsky
- year published |
- 2007
In this mind-expanding book, scientific pioneer Marvin Minsky continues his groundbreaking research, offering a fascinating new model for how our minds work. He argues persuasively that emotions, intuitions, and feelings are not distinct things, but different ways of thinking.
By examining these different forms of mind activity, Minsky says, we can explain why our thought sometimes takes the form of carefully reasoned analysis and at other times turns… read more
- author |
- Cynthia Breazeal
- year published |
- 2004
Cynthia Breazeal here presents her vision of the sociable robot of the future, a synthetic creature and not merely a sophisticated tool. A sociable robot will be able to understand us, to communicate and interact with us, to learn from us and grow with us. It will be socially intelligent in a humanlike way. Eventually sociable robots will assist us in our daily lives, as collaborators and companions. Because… read more
- author |
- Jay W. Richards, Ray Kurzweil, George Gilder
- year published |
- 2001
Computers are becoming more powerful at an ever-increasing rate, but will they ever become conscious? Artificial intelligence guru Ray Kurzweil thinks so and explains how we will “download” our software (our minds) and “upgrade” our hardware (our bodies) to become immortal — before the dawn of the 22nd century.
In this debate with his critics, including several Discovery Institute fellows, Kurzweil defends his views and sets the stage… read more
Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology
February 16, 2001
- author |
- Steven Levy
- year published |
- 1993
This enthralling book alerts us to nothing less than the existence of new varieties of life. Some of these species can move and eat, see, reproduce, and die. Some behave like birds or ants. One such life form may turn out to be our best weapon in the war against AIDS.
What these species have in common is that they exist inside computers, their DNA is digital, and… read more