Social Technology

The story of humanity is the story of textiles - as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world.

Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.

Astrophysicist J. Craig Wheeler, former president of the American Astronomical Society, takes a critical look at the technological advances shaping our future. From artificial intelligence to genetic engineering, Wheeler explores how these innovations are interconnected and the potential they hold for humanity's evolution. With thought-provoking insights into the ethical dilemmas we face, Wheeler stresses the importance of staying informed and proactive.

In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters, Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so.

Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets and astronauts into space. Among these problem solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation.

Harness the power of social media to attract new customers and transform your business! More than three billion people are now on social media. If you're not in the social media marketing game, you're not in the game at all. From one of the world's leading figures in the world of social media marketing, Likeable Social Media reveals everything you need to know about building your brand and attracting and retaining loyal customers through smart, savvy social media engagement.

Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen, hard to summon into existence to order, yet inevitable and inexorable when it does happen.

In Real Estate Prospecting: Create a Million-Dollar Life Through Relationships, Online Leads, Technology, and Social Media, founder, consultant, and real estate team leader Tristan Ahumada delivers a comprehensive discussion of the resources and strategies available to rookie and experienced agents who wish to succeed at the highest levels of the industry.

The Republic poses questions that endure: What is justice? What form of community fosters the best possible life for human beings? What is the nature and destiny of the soul? What form of education provides the best leaders for a good republic? What are the various forms of poetry and the other arts, and which ones should be fostered and which ones should be discouraged? How does knowing differ from believing?

In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. "The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions," say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion, and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a "curiously complicit" alliance.

30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary quickly became a bestseller in its category back in 2015. Now, in this updated and revised edition—which now contains the 700 most important words you need to master—you'll quickly learn why this title has been such a positive impact in the personal and professional lives of tens of thousands in the English-speaking world.

People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything and all voices demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.

A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America.

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.

We are entering a new technological age in which artificial intelligence and immersive media will transform society at all levels, mediating our lives by altering what we see, hear, and experience. If managed well, this could unleash a new age of abundance. If managed poorly, this technological revolution could easily go astray, compromising our privacy, autonomy, agency, and humanity. Two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we're creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and give guidance on how to aim for the best future we can.

Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console, to entertain. Some of our beliefs we call theories, and we are extraordinarily creative at constructing them. Theories of quantum mechanics, evolution, and relativity are examples.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Artificial intelligence is smarter than humans. It can process information at lightning speed and remain focused on specific tasks without distraction. AI can see into the future, predicting outcomes and even use sensors to see around physical and virtual corners. So why does Intelligence frequently get it so wrong? The answer is us. Humans design the algorithms that define the way that AI works and the processed information reflects an imperfect world.

One reporter takes an immersive dive into white supremacy's explosive online presence, exploring the undercurrents of propaganda, racism, misogyny, and history that led us to where we are now. Shocking, humorous, and merciless in equal measure, Culture Warlords explores some of the vilest subcultures on the web - and shows us how we can fight back.

In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen. They culminated in the summer of 2017, when the malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, penetrating, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest businesses—from drug manufacturers to software developers to shipping companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. Hospitals went dark.