Social Society

La collapsologie n'est pas une prédiction messianique mais " L'exercice transdisciplinaire d'étude de l'effondrement de notre civilisation thermo-industrielle, et de ce qui pourrait lui succéder, en s'appuyant sur les deux modes cognitifs que sont la raison et l'intuition, et sur les travaux scientifiques connus. " dixit Raphael Stevens et Pablo Servigne. Comment tout peut s'effondrer, démontre la vulnérabilité de nos sociétés et le risque systémique de leur effondrement possible. Car aujourd'hui, l'utopie a changé de camp.

High-tech innovations are created at a dazzling speed, and it all points to a world that is getting faster at a dizzying pace. Azeem Azhar knows this better than most. Over the last three decades, he has founded companies bought by Amazon and Microsoft, served as the Economist’s first ever internet correspondent, and created a leading international tech newsletter and podcast, the Exponential View. Now, Azhar offers a revelatory new model for understanding how technology is changing the world.

En este libro se cuenta la historia de una pequeña ciudad, con una terminal de autobuses en la que desaparecen los pasajeros. La mayoría son hombres jóvenes que viajan a Estados Unidos en busca de un mejor futuro. Van ligeros de equipaje y de dinero. Cada amanecer, cuando un camión llega a la parada, son bajados por la fuerza, llevados a brechas y asesinados. Por error, por capricho, porquesí. Porque los asesinos tienen permiso. Luego son arrojados a fosas clandestinas. Cuando en 2011 se descubrieron las tumbas, el gobierno reconoció los restos de 193 personas.

In his million-copy best seller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now in this brilliant companion volume, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: what caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies had become deeply embedded in children’s lives, despite a growing body of research detailing the harms of excessive immersion in the unregulated, powerfully seductive, profit-driven world of the “kid-tech” industry. In Who’s Raising the Kids? Linn—one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of Big Tech and big business on children—explores the roots and consequences of this monumental shift toward a digitized, commercialized childhood, focusing on kids’ values, relationships, and learning.

The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing - how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis.

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.

The men involved in secret societies use their special knowledge for the benefit of all mankind. At least, that is what they claim. How are we to know, since their knowledge and actions have been secret? Fortunately, some of it has become public knowledge.

How to Disappear is a unique and exhilarating accomplishment, overturning the dangerous modern assumption that somehow fame and visibility equate to success and happiness. Busch presents a field guide to invisibility, reacquainting us with the merits of remaining inconspicuousness, and finding genuine alternatives to a life of perpetual exposure. Accessing timeless truths in order to speak to our most urgent contemporary problems, she inspires us to develop a deeper appreciation for personal privacy in a vast and intrusive world.

It comes as no surprise that, as a kid, Jeopardy! legend Ken Jennings slept with a bulky Hammond world atlas by his pillow every night. Maphead recounts his lifelong love affair with geography and explores why maps have always been so fascinating to him and to fellow enthusiasts everywhere.

In a world with an endless hunger for innovation, why is it so hard to create audacious change? According to thought leader Seth Goldenberg, the answer to this question stems from how we, as a society, view questions themselves. In Radical Curiosity, Goldenberg argues that because we value knowing above learning and prioritize doing over thinking, curiosity has become an endangered species.

Ces 14 entretiens entre Edgar Morin et l’éditeur et ami Marc de Smedt éclairent l’histoire récente, les mutations de notre société et abordent des sujets intemporels – le désir, l’approche de la mort, la création.

Unfounded beliefs and hateful political and social divisions that can cascade into violence are threatening to pull the world apart. Responding to fear and aggression strategically and with compassion is vital if we are to push back against the politics of hate and live in greater safety and harmony.

Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery - in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms - continue to define the Black experience? And why is anti-Black violence such a predominant feature not only in the United States but around the world? These are just some of the compelling questions that animate Afropessimism, Frank B. Wilderson III’s seminal work on the philosophy of Blackness.

Why is the genome of a salamander 40 times larger than that of a human? Why does the avocado tree produce a million flowers and only a hundred fruits? Why, in short, is there so much waste in nature? In this lively and wide-ranging meditation on the curious accidents and unexpected detours on the path of life, Daniel Milo argues that we ask these questions because we’ve embraced a faulty conception of how evolution - and human society - really works.

What is love? Aside from being the title of many a popular love song, this is one of life's perennial questions. In What Love Is, philosopher Carrie Jenkins offers a bold new theory on the nature of romantic love that reconciles its humanistic and scientific components.

Since she can remember, Katarina's relatives have been grooming her for the family business - thieving. But when Kat tries to go straight and leave the Life for a normal life, she's promptly kicked out of her new school for stealing the headmaster's car and mounting it on the school fountain. Although she could have done it without breaking a sweat, ironically, this time, she's innocent.

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the modern world. It is ubiquitous-in our homes and offices, in the present and most certainly in the future. Today, we encounter AI as our distant ancestors once encountered fire. If we manage AI well, it will become a force for good, lighting the way to many transformative inventions. If we deploy it thoughtlessly, it will advance beyond our control. As AI policy experts Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie show in The New Fire, few choices are more urgent—or more fascinating—than how we harness this technology and for what purpose.

Leading innovation expert Alec Ross explains what's next for the world, mapping out the advances and stumbling blocks that will emerge in the next 10 years - for businesses, governments, and the global community - and how we can navigate them.

Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flip side: our technology can be turned against us. Hackers can activate baby monitors to spy on families, thieves are analyzing social media posts to plot home invasions, and stalkers are exploiting the GPS on smart phones to track their victims’ every move. We all know today’s criminals can steal identities, drain online bank accounts, and wipe out computer servers, but that’s just the beginning.