It doesn't shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues--from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.

    In today’s economy, we have far too much dismay along with our amazement, and technology bears some of the blame. In this combination of memoir, business strategy guide, and call to action, Tim O'Reilly, Silicon Valley’s leading intellectual and the founder of O’Reilly Media, explores the upside and the potential downsides of today's WTF? technologies. What is the future when an increasing number of jobs can be performed by intelligent machines instead of people, or done only by people in partnership with those machines? What happens to our consumer based societies—to workers and to the companies that depend on their purchasing power? Is income inequality and unemployment an inevitable consequence of technological advancement, or are there paths to a better future? What will happen to business when technology-enabled networks and marketplaces are better at deploying talent than traditional companies? How should companies organize themselves to take advantage of these new tools? What’s the future of education when on-demand learning outperforms traditional institutions? How can individuals continue to adapt and retrain? Will the fundamental social safety nets of the developed world survive the transition, and if not, what will replace them? O'Reilly is "the man who can really can make a whole industry happen," according to Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Alphabet (Google.) His genius over the past four decades has been to identify and to help shape our response to emerging technologies with world shaking potential—the World Wide Web, Open Source Software, Web 2.0, Open Government data, the Maker Movement, Big Data, and now AI. O’Reilly shares the techniques he's used at O’Reilly Media  to make sense of and predict past innovation waves and applies those same techniques to provide a framework for thinking about how today’s world-spanning platforms and networks, on-demand services, and artificial intelligence are changing the nature of business, education, government, financial markets, and the economy as a whole. He provides tools for understanding how all the parts of modern digital businesses work together to create marketplace advantage and customer value, and why ultimately, they cannot succeed unless their ecosystem succeeds along with them.The core of the book's call to action is an exhortation to businesses to DO MORE with technology rather than just using it to cut costs and enrich their shareholders. Robots are going to take our jobs, they say. O'Reilly replies, “Only if that’s what we ask them to do! Technology is the solution to human problems, and we won’t run out of work till we run out of problems." Entrepreneurs need to set their sights on how they can use big data, sensors, and AI to create amazing human experiences and the economy of the future, making us all richer in the same way the tools of the first industrial revolution did. Yes, technology can eliminate labor and make things cheaper, but at its best, we use it to do things that were previously unimaginable! What is our poverty of imagination? What are the entrepreneurial leaps that will allow us to use the technology of today to build a better future, not just a more efficient one? Whether technology brings the WTF? of wonder or the WTF? of dismay isn't inevitable. It's up to us!

    By weaving together their own research, interviews with pioneering scientists and Zach's trademark comics, the Weinersmiths investigate why these innovations are needed, how they would work, and what is standing in their way.

    Stuck between global war and global finance, between identity and capital, we seem to be incapable of producing the radical change that is so desperately needed. Is there still a way to disentangle ourselves from a global order that shapes our politics as well as our imagination? In his most systematic book to date, renowned Italian theorist Franco Berardi tackles this question through a solid yet visionary analysis of the three fundamental concepts of Possibility, Potency, and Power. Characterizing Possibility as the content, Potency as the energy, and Power as the form, Berardi suggests that the road to emancipation unravels from the awareness that the field of the possible is only limited, and not created, by the power structures that implement it. Other futures and other worlds are always already inscribed within the present, despite power's attempt at keeping them invisible. Overcoming any temptation of giving in to despair or nostalgia, Berardi proposes the notion of Futurability as a way to remind us that even within the darkness of our current crisis lies dormant the horizon of possibility.

    The essays deal with a variety of subjects, including the abolition of suffering through biotechnology, negative utilitarianism, our obligations toward non-human animals, the nature of consciousness, and the future of intelligent life.

    By 2045 man had all but burnt down his own house. The threat of environmental annihilation loomed, and so a machine was built. Earth's hostile land spat Willsith into space, hung-over and broken. War had trained him to fight, but when his younger brother died, he denounced it. Now, five years later, he finds himself managing a team of five, maintaining section 229 of the great solution: Earth s Halo. This ring of carbon circles the globe in near space, acting as a giant solar panel, producing power for Earth s regeneration. It s also a jump-point to Mars, and a damned rock-magnet. But stray rocks are the least of Willsith s worries. When 229 uncover information about the ring administration, Control, they find themselves destined for lobotomised slavery on the new Mars city, Tacern. Willsith is left no option but to lead an escape. Battling through the biggest machine ever made, to escape into unknown space, Willsith struggles to overcome a lifetime of violence in order to free his friends, and to save the Earth from a new kind of terror.

    As our capacities for production and our aptitude for consumption have increased, so have their byproducts--chemical contamination from fertilizers and pesticides, diesel emissions, oil spills, a vast "plastic continent" found floating in the ocean. The Contamination of the Earth offers a social and political history of industrial pollution, mapping its trajectories over three centuries, from the toxic wastes of early tanneries to the fossil fuel energy regime of the twentieth century.The authors describe how, from 1750 onward, in contrast to the early modern period, polluted water and air came to be seen as inevitable side effects of industrialization, which was universally regarded as beneficial. By the nineteenth century, pollutants became constituent elements of modernity. The authors trace the evolution of these various pollutions, and describe the ways in which they were simultaneously denounced and permitted. The twentieth century saw new and massive scales of pollution: chemicals that resisted biodegradation, including napalm and other defoliants used as weapons of war; the ascendancy of oil; and a lifestyle defined by consumption. In the 1970s, pollution became a political issue, but efforts--local, national, and global--to regulate it often fell short. Viewing the history of pollution though a political lens, the authors also offer lessons for the future of the industrial world.

    Sleeplessness plagued the Union and Confederate armies, and dreams of war glided through the minds of Americans in both the North and South. Sometimes their nightly visions brought the horrors of the conflict vividly to life. But for others, nighttime was an escape from the hard realities of life and death in wartime. In this innovative new study, Jonathan W. White explores what dreams meant to Civil War era Americans and what their dreams reveal about their experiences during the war. He shows how Americans grappled with their fears, desires, and struggles while they slept, and how their dreams helped them make sense of the confusion, despair, and loneliness that engulfed them.White takes readers into the deepest, darkest, and most intimate places of the Civil War, connecting the emotional experiences of soldiers and civilians to the broader history of the conflict, confirming what poets have known for centuries: that there are some truths that are only revealed in the world of darkness. "

    And it’s not really about gold-medal Olympics performances. From regrowing damaged legs to using telepathy to assist those who can no longer speak, these new techniques are helping ordinary individuals everywhere build better bodies and better lives.

    First understand the Mindsets you need to be fully ready for disruption - what qualities do you need to have, how can you develop them and what should you do next?Next, discover the 12 Forces that are shaping our world: including the new technologies, how they are used and related, the potential Impact of the disruption and how you can to turn them into enablers for your business.For each of the Forces, you'll discover:• What is it and why is it disruptive?• What do you need to know now?• What do you need to do next?BE READY, BE FUTUREPROOF"The opposite of Future Shock is future proof. Either sit still or move! It’s the latter that Dial and Storkey have outlined for you here. Adapt or die!"Brian Solis, best-selling author, award-winning digital analyst, futurist and human"This is a book that challenged me and made me think at every turn. It disrupted my mind!"Mark Schaefer, consultant, speaker and author of KNOWN