Social Society

In Robot-Proof, Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover - to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot. A "robot-proof" education, Aoun argues, is not concerned solely with topping up students' minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society.

Un titre qui sonne comme une confidence, un murmure susurré dans le creux de l'oreille. Mais qu'on ne s'y trompe pas : nul secret ici qui ne doive être dissimulé et ne puisse être répété. Car ce qu'a à nous dire Emeric Lebreton dans ce nouvel ouvrage concerne le plus grand nombre c'est-à-dire le genre humain.

Nei momenti di crisi e trasformazione come quello che stiamo vivendo, la filosofia può aiutarci a rispondere alle domande più urgenti. Dobbiamo solo interrogarla. È ciò che fanno i filosofi e scrittori Andrea Colamedici e Maura Gancitano: mettendo in comunicazione il nostro presente con l'Atene del V secolo a.C., interrogano i pensatori dell'età classica, ma non solo, sui temi del dibattito contemporaneo.

Drawing on his sweeping and innovative research, philosopher and cognitive scientist J. D. Trout recruits the latest findings in psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience to answer the question: How can we make better personal decisions and design social policies that improve the lives of everyone?

Language, Society and Power is an accessible introduction to studying language in a variety of social contexts. This book examines the ways language functions, how it influences the way we view society and how it varies according to age, ethnicity, class, and gender. It considers whether representations of people and their language matter, explores how identity is constructed and performed, and considers the creative potential of language in the media, politics and everyday talk.

It seems that just about every new technology that we bring to bear on improving our lives brings with it some downside, side effect, or unintended consequence. These issues can pose very real and growing ethical problems for all of us. For example, automated facial recognition can make life easier and safer for us—but it also poses huge issues with regard to privacy, ownership of data, and even identity theft. Technology Is Not Neutral addresses one of today’s most pressing problems: How to create and use tools and technologies to maximize benefits and minimize harms.

Social media on the internet can be a nightmarish place. A primary shield against hateful language, violent videos, and online cruelty uploaded by users is not an algorithm. It is people. Mostly invisible by design, more than 100,000 commercial content moderators evaluate posts on mainstream social media platforms: enforcing internal policies, training artificial intelligence systems, and actively screening and removing offensive material. Roberts, an award-winning social media scholar, offers the first extensive ethnographic study of the commercial content moderation industry.

First published in 1792, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman tackles many of the punitive patriarchal attitudes that dominated 18th-century society. With warmth and passion, Mary Wollstonecraft urges women to prioritize reason over emotion - a necessary step in building the strength of character required to break free from male notions of female fragility and foolishness. Wollstonecraft bases much of her argument in the case for women's education.

When the Nazis came to power in Europe, the lives of homosexuals came to be ruled by fear as raids, arrests, prison sentences, and expulsions became the daily reality. When the concentration camps were built, homosexuals were imprisoned along with Jews. The pink triangle, sewn onto prison uniforms, became the symbol of their persecution. Branded by the Pink Triangle combines historical research with first-person accounts and individual stories to bring this history to life for listeners.

With the ongoing advancement of AI and other technologies, our world is becoming increasingly intelligent. From chatbots to innovations in brain-computer interfaces to the possibility of superintelligences leading to the Singularity later this century, our reality is being transformed before our eyes. This is commonly seen as the natural result of progress, but what if there's more to it than that? What if intelligence is an inevitability, an underlying property of the universe?

From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members.

What's Up with White Women? is a practical guide for White women who are interested in becoming more effective in their cross-cultural, anti-racist practices. Blending real-life stories, theory, and anti-racism practices from decades of on-the-ground work, the authors invite White women to understand their gendered role in systemic racism and their unique opportunity for action. White women are positioned in a power hierarchy between White men and BIPOC.

Join Biologist Ashley Ward as he takes listeners into the intimate worlds of social animals. Journeying from Aysgarth Falls to the Great Barrier Reef, it becomes clear that animals are not so far removed from us as we might imagine. In a time where humans are struggling to navigate cityscapes, isolation and a loneliness epidemic, Ward shows us that studying the social behaviour of animals offers insights valuable in their own right as well as a window into the evolutionary basis of our own species.

Every year, the world’s farmers produce a lot of food for people to eat. Yet every night, millions of people around the world go to bed hungry. Why are people going without food when the earth is able to produce so much? Max Axiom and the Society of Super Scientists go on a fact-finding mission to discover the reasons behind food scarcity. Young listeners can join the team to find out why many people deal with food insecurity and learn ways that they can help.

The world is ruled by a handful of super rich. These, in their short-sighted management of the planet, are leading humanity to its own self-destruction. The problem is that the same destructive dynamics, typical of the egoic mind that dominate the universal masters, also dwell in us common mortals, so on a smaller scale we are all co-responsible for the current situation.

No one has failed to notice that the current generation of youth is deeply - some would say totally - involved with digital media. Professors Howard Gardner and Katie Davis name today’s young people The App Generation, and in this spellbinding book they explore what it means to be “app-dependent” versus “app-enabled” and how life for this generation differs from life before the digital era.

This book offers first-person accounts of the experience of psychosis from the inside and the outside, through the eyes of two doctors, one of whom has experienced psychosis and both of whom have worked for decades in the field of psychiatry. Underpinned by rigorous academic analysis using an evocative duo-ethnographic approach, the book explores the cultural and subcultural influences from childhood onwards—both traumatic and resilience-building—that have shaped their lives.

Techno-nationalism holds that a nation's economic strength and its national security—even its social stability—are linked to the technological prowess of its institutions and enterprises. From artificial intelligence and biotechnology to semiconductors and quantum science, nations that fall behind in the technology race risk becoming permanent losers, with potentially catastrophic consequences. After decades of trade liberalization and free-flowing investment into China, a paradigm shift amongst a bloc of like-minded, mostly Western countries, has set in motion epic change.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, The New Queer Conscience, Voices4 Founder and LGBTQIA+ activist Adam Eli offers a candid and compassionate introduction to queer responsibility. Eli calls on his Jewish faith to underline how kindness and support within the queer community can lead to a stronger global consciousness. More importantly, he reassures us that we're not alone. In fact, we never were. Because if you mess with one queer, you mess with us all.

We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. The Fourth Age provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how - rather than what - we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, superintelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity.