Computer Science Technology

Papyrus rolls and Twitter have much in common, as each was their generation's signature means of "instant" communication. Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new audiobook, social media is anything but a new phenomenon. From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used to exchange news across the Empire to the advent of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly sophisticated ways people shared information with each other....

Under the aegis of machine learning in our data-driven machine age, computers are programming themselves and learning about - and solving - an extraordinary range of problems, from the mundane to the most daunting. Today it is machine learning programs that enable Amazon and Netflix to predict what users will like, Apple to power Siri's ability to understand voices, and Google to pilot cars.

James Gleick, the author of the best sellers Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: A revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era’s defining quality - the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world. The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born.

Just months ago, millions of people were stunned by ChatGPT's amazing abilities–and its bizarre hallucinations. But that was 2022. GPT-4 is now here, with smarter, more accurate, and deeper technical knowledge. GPT-4 and its competitors and followers are on the verge of transforming medicine. But with lives on the line, you need to understand these technologies–stat.

Edward Ashford Lee explores the ways that engineers use models and abstraction to build inventive artificial worlds and to give us things that we never dreamed of - for example, the ability to carry in our pockets everything humans have ever published. But he also attempts to counter the runaway enthusiasm of some technology boosters who claim everything in the physical world is a computation - that even such complex phenomena as human cognition are software operating on digital data.

The United States military currently views cyberspace as the "fifth domain" of warfare - alongside land, sea, air, and space - and the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and CIA all field teams of hackers who can - and do - launch computer virus strikes against enemy targets. In fact, as @War shows, US hackers were crucial to our victory in Iraq.

We are living through a revolution in machine learning-powered AI that shows no signs of slowing down. This technology is based on relatively simple mathematical ideas, some of which go back centuries, including linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mathematics. It took the birth and advancement of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see today. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental math behind machine learning.

Audie Award, History/Biography, 2016. On the night of July 20, 1969, our world changed forever when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Based on in-depth interviews with 23 of the 24 moon voyagers, as well as those who struggled to get the program moving, A Man on the Moon conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail.

For decades, technology encouraged people to squander their time and intellect as passive consumers. Today, technology has finally caught up with human potential. In Cognitive Surplus, Internet guru Clay Shirky forecasts the thrilling changes we will all enjoy as new digital technology puts our untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last.

If you want to avoid getting hacked, having your information spread, and risking financial loss, then pay attention.... Do you create tons of accounts you will never again visit? Does your password contain a sequence of numbers, such as “123456”? Do you automatically click all links and download all email attachments coming from your friends? This audiobook will show you just how incredibly lucky you are that nobody's hacked you before.

Our media environment is in crisis. Polarization is rampant. Polluted information floods social media. Even our best efforts to help clean up can backfire, sending toxins roaring across the landscape. In You Are Here, Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner offer strategies for navigating increasingly treacherous information flows. Using ecological metaphors, they emphasize how our individual me is entwined within a much larger we, and how everyone fits within an ever-shifting network map.

Technology surrounds us every day: a phone alarm wakes us up, an electronic calendar tracks assignment deadlines, GPS directs us to the new dentist’s office, social media keeps us connected to friends and family, and streaming platforms make sure we’re never without something new to binge-watch. Our devices and apps can make life much more convenient and entertaining. But for years, scientists have warned that too much screen time may have negative effects on our health.

In 1714, England's Parliament offered a huge reward to anyone whose method of measuring longitude could be proven successful. The scientific establishment--from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton--had mapped the heavens in its certainty of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution--a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had been able to do on land. And the race was on....

In November 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was ChatGPT, and was unlike any app people had used before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. Behind the scenes, battles for control and prestige between the world’s two leading AI firms, OpenAI and DeepMind, who now steers Google's AI efforts, has remained elusive—until now.

In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges, brain-computer interfaces, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence to address the world’s problems.

Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself.

If you read (or listen to) nothing else on artificial intelligence and machine learning, listen to these ten articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you understand the future direction of AI, bring your AI initiatives to scale, and use AI to transform your organization.

Computer science is a field that deals with the study of computers and computational systems. It encompasses both the theoretical and practical aspects of computing, including algorithms, data structures, programming languages, software engineering, and more. It's about understanding how computers work, how they can solve problems, and how they interact with humans and other systems.

Author Rashed Haq is a subject matter expert on AI, having developed AI and data science strategies, platforms, and applications for Publicis Sapient's clients for more than 10 years. He shares that expertise in the new audiobook Enterprise Artificial Intelligence Transformation. The first of its kind, this audiobook grants technology leaders the insight to create and scale their AI capabilities and bring their companies into the new generation of technology.

Three of the world’s most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the way it is transforming human society - and what this technology means for us all.