Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that Pluto was a planet. For decades, we were convinced that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing.   But it turns out there’s an order to the state of knowledge, an explanation for how we know what we know. Samuel Arbesman is an expert in the field of scientometrics—literally the science of science. Knowl­edge in most fields evolves systematically and predict­ably, and this evolution unfolds in a fascinating way that can have a powerful impact on our lives.   Doctors with a rough idea of when their knowl­edge is likely to expire can be better equipped to keep up with the latest research. Companies and govern­ments that understand how long new discoveries take to develop can improve decisions about allocating resources. And by tracing how and when language changes, each of us can better bridge gen­erational gaps in slang and dialect.   Just as we know that a chunk of uranium can break down in a measurable amount of time—a radioactive half-life—so too any given field’s change in knowledge can be measured concretely. We can know when facts in aggregate are obsolete, the rate at which new facts are created, and even how facts spread.   Arbesman takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries. He shows that much of what we know consists of “mesofacts”—facts that change at a middle timescale, often over a single human lifetime. Throughout, he of­fers intriguing examples about the face of knowledge: what English majors can learn from a statistical analysis of The Canterbury Tales, why it’s so hard to measure a mountain, and why so many parents still tell kids to eat their spinach because it’s rich in iron.   The Half-life of Facts is a riveting journey into the counterintuitive fabric of knowledge. It can help us find new ways to measure the world while accepting the limits of how much we can know with certainty.

    It:Incorporates the "Business Model Canvas" as the organizing principle for startup hypothesesProvides separate paths and advice for web/mobile products versus physical productsOffers a wealth of detailed instruction on how to get, keep, and grow customers recognizing the different techniques for web and physical channelsAnd teaches a "new math" for startups: "metrics that matter for fueling growth"The Startup Owner's Manual is a step-by-step, near-encyclopedic reference manual or "how to" for building a successful, scalable startup. Want to know what to do the first, week, month or year?What's the right distribution channel for your product?How to get traffic to your web site? …and how to activate customers or users on arrival?Who are the right "first customers," and why? …plus many more great tips in nearly 500 pages, complete with index, glossary, and Customer Development ChecklistsIt's the indispensible reference guide for any startup founder, entrepreneur, investor or educator.

    Explaining why the whole is sometimes smarter than the sum of its parts, Johnson presents surprising examples of feedback, self-organization, and adaptive learning. How does a lively neighborhood evolve out of a disconnected group of shopkeepers, bartenders, and real estate developers? How does a media event take on a life of its own? How will new software programs create an intelligent World Wide Web? In the coming years, the power of self-organization -- coupled with the connective technology of the Internet -- will usher in a revolution every bit as significant as the introduction of electricity. Provocative and engaging, Emergence puts you on the front lines of this exciting upheaval in science and thought.

    Hardcover published by Quadragle/The New York Times Book Co., third printing, August 1977, copyright 1975.

    Today's massively scaling startups - which rapidly grow to millions of users and billions in valuation - do not sell a product or service. Instead, they build a platform on which others can create and exchange value.The many manifestations of the platform business model - social media, the peer economy, cryptocurrencies, APIs and developer ecosystems, the Internet of things, crowdsourcing models, and many others - are becoming increasingly relevant.Yet, most new platform ideas fail because the business design and growth strategies involved in building platforms are not well understood.Platform Scale lays out a structured approach to designing and growing a platform business model and addresses the key factors leading to the success and failure of these businesses.Six core concepts for successful platform business model design1. Re-imagine your business for platform scaleThe mechanism by which these new business models scale so rapidly. Understand the shift in thinking needed to manage businesses with platform scale and the impact of network effects, virality, behavior design and data."We are not in the business of building software. We are in the business of enabling interactions."2. Leverage interaction-first designHow detailed consideration around designing the producer-consumer core interaction is critical for building business models that leverage platform scale."The design of the platform business model involves the design of a core interaction followed by the design of an open infrastructure that will enable and govern this interaction."3. Build cumulative value and minimize interaction failureKnow the key managerial decisions to focus on while managing platform scale businesses, all geared towards maximizing the ability of these businesses to enable interactions by scaling producer participation and minimizing interaction failure."Platform scale is achieved by maximizing the repeatability and efficiency of the platform's core interaction."4. Solve chicken and egg problemsPlatform business models face an all too familiar catch-22 chicken and egg problem on the way to scaling. This can be overcome by designing the conditions for sparking interactions."The solution to the chicken-and-egg problem requires a bait that can break the vicious cycle of no activity."5. Design viral enginesUnderstand the drivers of viral growth in a world of networks and apply the viral canvas design-first approach to viral growth."Virality is a business design problem, not a marketing or engineering effort. It requires design before optimization."6. Account for reverse network effectsConsider the counter view on platform scale and be on the lookout for conditions where scale can be detrimental to platform businesses."The goal of platform scale is to ensure the simultaneous scaling of quantity and quality, of interactions."Platform Scale is a maker's guide for entrepreneurs, innovators and educators looking to understand and implement the inner workings of highly scalable platform business models.

    Reveals how to run an online business profitably in spite of the Internet's inherently free culture, disseminating the principles of a ''priceless economy'' in six categories that pertain to advertising, labor exchange, and advanced-version fees.

    His rallying cry "Down with Cybercrud" is against the centralization of computers such as that performed by IBM at the time, as well as against what he sees as the intentional untruths that "computer people" tell to non-computer people to keep them from understanding computers. In Dream Machines, Nelson covers the flexible media potential of the computer, which was shockingly new at the time.

    It’s time we stand face-to-digital-face with the true powers and limitations of the algorithms that already automate important decisions in healthcare, transportation, crime, and commerce. Hello World is indispensable preparation for the moral quandaries of a world run by code, and with the unfailingly entertaining Hannah Fry as our guide, we’ll be discussing these issues long after the last page is turned.

    In this unique collection, you'll learn about the processes that led to specific design decisions, including the goals they had in mind, the trade-offs they had to make, and how their experiences have left an impact on programming today. Masterminds of Programming includes individual interviews with:Adin D. Falkoff: APL Thomas E. Kurtz: BASIC Charles H. Moore: FORTH Robin Milner: ML Donald D. Chamberlin: SQL Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan: AWK Charles Geschke and John Warnock: PostScript Bjarne Stroustrup: C++ Bertrand Meyer: Eiffel Brad Cox and Tom Love: Objective-C Larry Wall: Perl Simon Peyton Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, and John Hughes: Haskell Guido van Rossum: Python Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo and Roberto Ierusalimschy: Lua James Gosling: Java Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and James Rumbaugh: UML Anders Hejlsberg: Delphi inventor and lead developer of C# If you're interested in the people whose vision and hard work helped shape the computer industry, you'll find Masterminds of Programming fascinating.

    The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential video game console from both computational and cultural perspectives.Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms--the systems underlying computing. This book (the first in a series of Platform Studies) does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the boundless virtual spaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing the player to walk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early instance of interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCS--often considered merely a retro fetish object--is an essential part of the history of video games.

    Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs–including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger’s words, “Anything is possible: after all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.” For Smith–inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing–the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith’s signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.

    The world has become a law enforcer's nightmare and every criminal's dream. We bank online; shop online; date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world? Have we become complacent about our personal security--sharing our thoughts, beliefs and the details of our daily lives with anyone who might care to relieve us of them?In this fascinating and compelling book, Misha Glenny, author of the international best seller "McMafia," explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the twenty-first century: cybercrime, cyberwarfare and cyberindustrial espionage. Governments and the private sector are losing billions of dollars each year fighting an ever-morphing, often invisible and often supersmart new breed of criminal: the hacker. Glenny has traveled and trawled the world. By exploring the rise and fall of the criminal website DarkMarket he has uncovered the most vivid, alarming and illuminating stories. Whether JiLsi or Matrix, Iceman, Master Splynter or Lord Cyric; whether Detective Sergeant Chris Dawson in Scunthorpe, England, or Agent Keith Mularski in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Glenny has tracked down and interviewed all the players--the criminals, the geeks, the police, the security experts and the victims--and he places everyone and everything in a rich brew of politics, economics and history.The result is simply unputdownable. DarkMarket is authoritative and completely engrossing. It's a must-read for everyone who uses a computer: the essential crime book for our times.

    - Business is Fun, the book that goes behind the company that was synonymous with the popularization of 'video games.'Nearly 8 years in the making, Atari Inc. - Business is Fun is comprised of thousands of researched documents, hundreds of interviews, and access to materials never before available.An amazing 800 pages (including nearly 300 pages of rare, never before seen photos, memos and court documents), this book details Atari's genesis from an idea between an engineer and a visionary in 1969 to a nearly $2 billion dollar juggernaut, and ending with a $538 million death spiral during 1984. A testament to the people that worked at this beloved company, the book is full of their personal stories and insights. Learn about topics like:* All the behind the scenes stories surrounding the creation of the company's now iconic games and products.* The amazing story of Atari's very own "Xerox PARC" research facility up in the foothills of the Sierra Mountains* The full recounting of Steve Jobs's time at Atari, with comments from the people he worked with on projects and the detailed story of the creation of Atari Breakout, including input by Steve Wozniak on his development of the prototype, and how it couldn't be used and another Atari engineer would have to make the final production Breakout arcade game instead.* The creation of "Rick Rats Big Cheese Restaurants" which later became "Chuck E. Cheese's"* How Atari Inc. faltered and took down an entire industry with it before being put on the chopping block.If you've ever wanted to learn about the truth behind the creation of this iconic company told directly by the people who made FUN for a living, then this is the book for you!

    . . in which Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious series of adventures. Meet Victorian London’s most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron. When Lovelace translated a description of Babbage’s plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, she added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes contained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built. Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer a decade after publishing the paper, and Babbage never built any of his machines. But do not despair! The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crime—for the sake of both London and science. Complete with extensive footnotes that rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage’s mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible.(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)

    . . . have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."--Steve JobsFrom the start, his path was never predictable. Steve Jobs was given up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college after one semester, and at the age of twenty, created Apple in his parents' garage with his friend Steve Wozniack. Then came the core and hallmark of his genius--his exacting moderation for perfection, his counterculture life approach, and his level of taste and style that pushed all boundaries. A devoted husband, father, and Buddhist, he battled cancer for over a decade, became the ultimate CEO, and made the world want every product he touched.Critically acclaimed author Karen Blumenthal takes us to the core of this complicated and legendary man while simultaneously exploring the evolution of computers. Framed by Jobs' inspirational Stanford commencement speech and illustrated throughout with black and white photos, this is the story of the man who changed our world.