Mit press ltd aug 2024 (11 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising, a physicist and war veteran awakens 150 years lateron the eve of a new Dark Age!In The People of the Ruins, Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neomedieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Jeremy Tuft is a physics instructor and former artillery officer who is cryogenically frozen in his laboratory only to emerge after a century and a half to a disquieting new era. Though at first Tuft is disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, he eventually decides that he prefers the postcivilized life. But, when the northern English and Welsh tribes invade, Tuft must set about reinventing weapons of mass destruction.One of the most critically acclaimed and popular postwar stories of its day, The People of the Ruins captured a feeling that was common among those who had fought and survived the Great War: haunted by trauma and guilt, its protagonist feels out of time and out of place, unsure of what is real or unreal. Shanks implies in this seminal work, as Paul March-Russell explains in the book's introduction, that the political system was already corrupt before the story began, and that Bolshevism and anarchismand the resulting civil warsmerely accelerated the world's inevitable decline.A satire of Wellsian techno-utopian novels, The People of the Ruins is a bold, entertaining, and moving postapocalyptic novel contemporary readers won't soon forget.Edward Shanks (1892-1953) was an English author, poet, critic, and journalist. He was the editor of Granta just before serving in World War I and is perhaps best remembered today as a war poet. The People of the Ruins is his only science fiction novel.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Why catastrophic risks are more dangerous than you think, and how populism makes them worse.Did you know that you're more likely to die from a catastrophe than in a car crash The odds that a typical US resident will die from a catastrophic eventfor example, nuclear war, bioterrorism, or out-of-control artificial intelligencehave been estimated at 1 in 6. That's fifteen times more likely than a fatal car crash and thirty-one times more likely than being murdered. In What's the Worst That Could Happen , Andrew Leigh looks at catastrophic risks and how to mitigate them, arguing provocatively that the rise of populist politics makes catastrophe more likely. Leigh explains that pervasive short-term thinking leaves us unprepared for long-term risks. Politicians sweat the small stuffgranular policy details of legislation and regulationbut rarely devote much attention to reducing long-term risks. Populist movements thrive on short-termism because they focus on their followers' immediate grievances. Leigh argues that we should be long-termers: broaden our thinking and give big threats the attention and resources they need. Leigh outlines the biggest existential risks facing humanity and suggests remedies for them. He discusses pandemics, considering the possibility that the next virus will be more deadly than COVID-19; warns that unchecked climate change could render large swaths of the earth uninhabitable; describes the metamorphosis of the arms race from a fight into a chaotic brawl; and examines the dangers of runaway superintelligence. Moreover, Leigh points out, populism (and its crony, totalitarianism) not only exacerbates other dangers but is also a risk factor in itself, undermining the institutions of democracy as we watch. …

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A timely, practical guide to AIits strengths, weaknesses, and real-world applicationsfor business professionals and policymakers.Artificial intelligence, or AI, can recognize a pattern from any set of data it is given, which is what makes it such an extraordinarily powerful tool. But because not all patterns are authentic or reliable, AI's pattern-finding superpower can lead to spurious patternsand to disastrous results for business and government entities that rely on them. Hence the conundrum at the heart of AI: its greatest strength can also be its greatest weakness. Targeting the businessperson who needs to know how to use AI profitably and responsibly, Caleb Briggs and Rex Briggs offer in this book a foundational understanding of AI that is easy to grasp yet thorough enough to be used effectively. The AI Conundrum: Draws on the authors' diverse expertisein pure math, computer science, marketing, data science, and businessto make AI concepts and applications approachable for readers of all tech levels. Provides a framework for comparing AI to the next best alternative, and for gauging where AI is likely be successfulor to pose greater risk than benefits. Includes dozens of real-world case studies highlighting the successes and failures of AI applications across various industries. Offers actionable insights for responsible implementation and risk mitigation. Provides a worksheet for identifying potential problem areas, a cost-benefit analysis, and a companion website. The AI Conundrum is an invaluable resource for professionals and students seeking a full understanding of AIits applications, limitations, and ethical considerationsas we enter a brave new era.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - We don't need more artificial intelligencewe need better programming languages to tell computers what we actually want them to do.Decades ago, we believed that robots and computers would take over all the boring jobs and drudgery, leaving humans to a life of leisure. This hasn't happened. Instead, humans are still doing boring jobs, and even worse, AI researchers have built technology that is creative, self-aware, and emotionaldoing the tasks humans were supposed to enjoy. How did we get here In Moral Codes, Alan Blackwell argues that there is a fundamental flaw in the research agenda of artificial intelligence What humanity needs, Blackwell argues, is better ways to tell computers what we want them to do, with new and better programming languages: More Open Representations, Access to Learning, and Control Over Digital ExpressionIn other words, MORAL CODE.Blackwell draws on his deep experiences as a programming language designerwhich he has been doing since 1983to unpack fundamental principles of interaction design and explain their technical relationship to ideas of creativity and fairness. Taking aim at software that constrains our conversations with strict word counts or infantilizes human interaction with likes and emojis, Blackwell shows how to design software that is betternot more efficient or more profitable, but better for society and better for all people. Covering recent research and the latest smart tools, Blackwell offers rich design principles for a better kind of softwareand a better kind of world.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising, a physicist and war veteran awakens 150 years lateron the eve of a new Dark Age!In The People of the Ruins, Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neomedieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Jeremy Tuft is a physics instructor and former artillery officer who is cryogenically frozen in his laboratory only to emerge after a century and a half to a disquieting new era. Though at first Tuft is disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, he eventually decides that he prefers the postcivilized life. But, when the northern English and Welsh tribes invade, Tuft must set about reinventing weapons of mass destruction.One of the most critically acclaimed and popular postwar stories of its day, The People of the Ruins captured a feeling that was common among those who had fought and survived the Great War: haunted by trauma and guilt, its protagonist feels out of time and out of place, unsure of what is real or unreal. Shanks implies in this seminal work, as Paul March-Russell explains in the book's introduction, that the political system was already corrupt before the story began, and that Bolshevism and anarchismand the resulting civil warsmerely accelerated the world's inevitable decline.A satire of Wellsian techno-utopian novels, The People of the Ruins is a bold, entertaining, and moving postapocalyptic novel contemporary readers won't soon forget.Edward Shanks (1892-1953) was an English author, poet, critic, and journalist. He was the editor of Granta just before serving in World War I and is perhaps best remembered today as a war poet. The People of the Ruins is his only science fiction novel.Libri GmbH, Europaallee 1, 36244 Bad Hersfeld 360 pp. Englisch.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A theory of biopolitical power that updates Foucault, illustrating the moral implications of modern evolutionary theory.In our day, the individual has become "a life," the singular of the plural noun "population." From this new understanding of what it means to be human comes a new form of biopolitical power with a new set of moral rules. In The Morals of Life, moral philosopher Davide Tarizzo presents a theoretical framework for understanding this transformation of the old-fashioned "government of living beings," as Michel Foucault characterized biopolitics, into a new government of modular living beings, as well as a template for making sense of biopolitical power that operates on the scale of populations rather than individuals.Tarizzo traces population thinking, the notion of modular optimization, and other conceptual keystones of the current biopolitical regime (an "ethopolitical regime," in the author's terms) to their origins in twentieth-century biological thoughtmore precisely, and critically, evolutionary theory. Neo-Darwinism, Tarizzo argues, should be seen not only as a scientific paradigm but also as a philosophy per se, because it is evolutionary theory that today provides an answer to the old philosophical question: What is man This new kind of philosophy, his book suggests, largely determines the way in which people look at themselves and society. Not only does it contribute to designing new technologies of power, but it also fosters subjection to the new ethopolitical regime.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure.Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the groundthe width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative"sustainable," "livable," "resilient"often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens.Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities' development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this "urban planners' dream" created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities' productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - How archives obscure recorded mediaand the case in favor of discovering them.Silence is not absence. It may be perceived as meaningless, or it may not be perceived at all, but it takes up space. In Dissonant Records, Tanya Clement makes the case for spoken word audio recordings within the archives. She explains why we tend to not use these audio recordings in research, what silences exist in the cultural record, and what difference it makes when we start to listen. From recordings of the survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre to Anne Sexton's recorded therapy sessions, Clement illustrates the myriad ways in which our current use of archives precludes the use of invaluable recorded texts.Whom, what, and how are we not studying in our cultural histories Why, Clement asks, do audio recordings typically garner little interest This book dissects the institutional and disciplinary blockades that discourage the use of spoken word audio recordings in research and teaching while interrogating how institutions and researchers can be selectively biased in favor of print and against the seemingly more ephemeral, time-based objects of our archives. History-making is a messy, sociotechnical process, the author explains, and our understanding of culture can only be made better when we listen more closely to the noise.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A new theory of perception that posits that conscious perception consists not of a single kind of awareness, but of two radically different kinds deployed in concert.Most contemporary theories of perception, including leading forms of representationalism and naive realism, are monistic: they assume that to consciously perceive is to deploy only one kind of sensory awareness. In A Pluralist Theory of Perception, Neil Mehta instead argues for pluralism, which says that to consciously perceive is to deploy two very different kinds of sensory awareness in concert. Mehta argues that pluralism can simultaneously explain what is common to all forms of consciousness and what is distinctive about conscious perception.Mehta's preferred version of pluralism, which he calls rich pluralism, says that conscious perception is constituted by successful sensory representation and deep awareness. Successful sensory representation is a representational form of awareness whose targets include particulars. It is found in perceptions, whether conscious or unconscious, but not in hallucinations. By contrast, deep awareness is a nonrepresentational form of sensory awareness whose targets are certain universalsthe sensory qualities. Deep awareness constitutes one kind of consciousness, it is common to conscious perceptions and hallucinations, and it reveals part of the essences of its targets. Mehta argues that although rich pluralism appears to be less parsimonious than monism, it is not. All monistic theories that are explanatorily adequate end up being even more complex than rich pluralism. Thus, rich pluralism is the most spartan theory that can shoulder the explanatory load.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The nature of olfaction; its importance for understanding perennial issues of philosophy of mind, perception, and consciousness; and its implications for cognitive neuroscience.What are smells Despite the best efforts of philosophy and the chemosciences, the question remains vexingbut no more perplexing than the historical lapse of the past centuries to seriously consider a sense that has a key place in philosophy of mind and perception. Stinking Philosophy! is Benjamin Young's answer to this critical lapse. Drawing together more than a decade's research on olfactory philosophy, the book offers a clear, comprehensive look at the nature of odorshow we perceive smells, how we cognitively represent odors, how we communicate about them as categories, and what they can tell us about consciousness.In Stinking Philosophy! Young presents a methodology for addressing the philosophical and conceptual issues raised by the sense of smell. Then, in an exacting and coherent fashion, he explores how the philosophy of smell contributes toand advancesa wide range of debates within philosophy of mind, perception, and cognitive neuroscience. Ultimately, his work demonstrates how empirically informed philosophy can have a significant impact on interdisciplinary research on smell across philosophy, the chemosciences, and neuroscience.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware -Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising, a physicist and war veteran awakens 150 years lateron the eve of a new Dark Age!In The People of the Ruins, Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neomedieval society whose inhabitants have forgotten how to build or operate machinery. Jeremy Tuft is a physics instructor and former artillery officer who is cryogenically frozen in his laboratory only to emerge after a century and a half to a disquieting new era. Though at first Tuft is disconcerted by the failure of his own era's smug doctrine of Progress, he eventually decides that he prefers the postcivilized life. But, when the northern English and Welsh tribes invade, Tuft must set about reinventing weapons of mass destruction.One of the most critically acclaimed and popular postwar stories of its day, The People of the Ruins captured a feeling that was common among those who had fought and survived the Great War: haunted by trauma and guilt, its protagonist feels out of time and out of place, unsure of what is real or unreal. Shanks implies in this seminal work, as Paul March-Russell explains in the book's introduction, that the political system was already corrupt before the story began, and that Bolshevism and anarchismand the resulting civil warsmerely accelerated the world's inevitable decline.A satire of Wellsian techno-utopian novels, The People of the Ruins is a bold, entertaining, and moving postapocalyptic novel contemporary readers won't soon forget.Edward Shanks (1892-1953) was an English author, poet, critic, and journalist. He was the editor of Granta just before serving in World War I and is perhaps best remembered today as a war poet. The People of the Ruins is his only science fiction novel. 360 pp. Englisch.…