Human Culture

For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. Technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered. When the pandemic hit, that future transformed into the present, almost overnight. And the reviews aren't great.

Few topics are more contested today than gender identity. Complex issues like gender dysphoria are reduced to slogans and sound bites. And while the war rages over language, institutions, and political allegiances, transgender individuals are the ones who end up being the casualties. Mark Yarhouse, an expert in sexual identity and therapy, challenges the church to rise above the political hostilities and listen to people's stories. Yarhouse offers a Christian perspective on transgender issues that eschews simplistic answers and appreciates the psychological and theological complexity.

We've all found ourselves checking email at the dinner table, holding our breath while waiting for Outlook to load, or sitting hunched in front of a screen for an hour longer than we intended. Mobile devices and the web have invaded our lives, and this is a big idea book that addresses one of the biggest questions of our age: Can we stay connected without diminishing our intelligence, attention spans, and ability to really live? Can we have it all?

Informed by more than 70 years of experience and expertise and propelled by extensive original SHRM research, Reset delivers a candid and forward-thinking vision for leaders to reimagine their company cultures in a time of global upheaval. Part call to action, part strategic road map, Reset challenges business leaders’ underlying assumptions about workers and the workplace, delivers practical strategies for finding and keeping the talent needed to make businesses successful, and introduces dynamic tools to sustain that success over the long haul.

If you listen to the news, robots are coming for your job. Full-time employment will soon be a thing of the past as organizations opt more to hire employees on a contract basis. With technological advances across email, video, project management, and instant messaging platforms, being tied to a desk working full time for one company is becoming obsolete. So, where does that leave you? The Human Cloud may be the most important book you hear to prepare for how work is done in the future.

A leading behavioral economist shows how businesses can improve consumer thinking and decision-making on screens. The typical American office worker now spends the majority of his or her waking hours staring at a screen. In the 21st century, every business is a digital business, which is why it's so critical to understand how we think and behave online. Acclaimed behavioral economist Shlomo Benartzi reveals a toolkit of interventions for the digital age. Using provocative case-studies and engaging exercises, Benartzi shows how businesses can update their nudges to help consumers make better decisions on screens.

The Big Ratchet is the story of the ratchets: the technologies and innovations, big and small, that propelled our species from hunters and gatherers on the savannahs of Africa to shoppers in the aisles of the supermarket. Our species long lived on the edge of starvation. Now we produce enough food for all 7 billion of us to eat nearly 3,000 calories every day. This is such an astonishing thing in the history of life as to verge on the miraculous. The Big Ratchet is the story of how it happened.

Our devices and data are woven into our lives. We can't simply reject them. Margaret Morris argues we need to adapt technology creatively to our needs and values. In Left to Our Own Devices, Morris offers examples of individuals applying technologies in unexpected ways - uses that go beyond those intended by developers and designers. Morris examines these kinds of personalized life hacks, chronicling the ways that people have adapted technology to strengthen social connection, enhance well-being, and affirm identity.

Conventional product development focuses on the solution. Empathy is a mindset that focuses on people, helping you to understand their thinking patterns and perspectives. Practical Empathy will show you how to gather and compare these patterns to make better decisions, improve your strategy, and collaborate successfully.

Shyima Hall was born in Egypt on September 29, 1989, the seventh child of desperately poor parents. When she was eight, her parents sold her into slavery. Shyima then moved two hours away to Egypt's capitol city of Cairo to live with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima's servitude - but her journey to true freedom was far from over.

Clifford Nass has developed a powerful theory: Our brains can’t fundamentally distinguish between interacting with people and interacting with devices. Nass’s discoveries push the boundaries of both psychology and technology and provide nothing less than a new blueprint for successful human relationships.

A web API is an efficient way to communicate with an application or service. However, this convenience opens your systems to new security risks. API Security in Action gives you the skills to build strong, safe APIs you can confidently expose to the world.

Hidden beneath the surface of the internet, a new, stark reality is looming - one that cuts to the very heart of our endless debates about the impact of AI. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri team up to unveil how services delivered by companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast, invisible human labor force. These people doing "ghost work" make the internet seem smart. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked at least once in this "ghost economy".

The Center for Talent Innovation's new study, Mission Critical: Unlocking the Value of Veterans in the Workforce, reveals how companies can ensure their veteran talent thrives in the corporate world.

The workplace is going through a large-scale transition with digitization, automation, and acceleration. Critical skills and expertise are imperative for companies and their employees to succeed in the future, and the most forward-thinking companies are being proactive in adapting to the shift in the workforce. Kelly Palmer, Silicon Valley thought leader from LinkedIn, Degreed, and Yahoo, and David Blake, cofounder of ed-tech pioneer Degreed, share their experiences and describe how some of the smartest companies in the world are making learning and expertise a major competitive advantage.

Many people today are so dazzled by the long-term potential for artificial intelligence that they overlook the much clearer and more immediate potential for a new form of "collective intelligence": the intelligence of groups of people and computers working together. In Superminds, Thomas Malone explains what we need to do to take advantage of this potential. Groundbreaking and utterly fascinating, Superminds will change the way you work - both with others and with computers - for the better.

Built at the end of the last ice age around 9600 BCE, Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey was designed to align with the constellation of the celestial swan, Cygnus - a fact confirmed by the discovery at the site of a tiny bone plaque carved with the three key stars of Cygnus. Remarkably, the three main pyramids at Giza in Egypt, including the Great Pyramid, align with the same three stars. But where did this ancient veneration of Cygnus come from?

As it absorbs data, gains agency, and intermediates between humans and reality, AI will help us to address enormous crises, from climate change to geopolitical conflicts to income inequality. It might well solve some of the greatest mysteries of our universe, revolutionize fields as diverse as medicine and architecture, and elevate the human spirit to unimaginable heights. But it will also pose challenges on a scale and of an intensity that we have never seen.

Ever feel like you don’t even own the hardware and software you paid dearly for? Ever get the impression that you have to ask for permission before installing or changing a program on your device? Ever feel like Facebook and Instagram are listening to your conversations to show you relevant ads? You’re not alone. Half-baked products and services that chip away at your sense of ownership, independence and privacy are a part of a global wave of corporate indifference that micromanages and spies on honest, uniformed customers.

In A Story of Us, they present this rich narrative and explain how the evolution of our genes relates to the evolution of our cultures. Newson and Richerson take listeners through seven stages of human evolution, beginning seven million years ago with the apes that were the ancestors of humans and today's chimps and bonobos. The story ends in the present day and offers a glimpse into the future.