According to them, “intelligent machines” and big data will free us from work, educate our children, transform our environment, and even make religion more user-friendly. This is the story they’re telling us: that we should stop worrying and love our robot future. But just because you tell a story over and over again doesn’t make it true. Curtis White, one of our most brilliant and perceptive social critics, knows all about the danger of a seductive story, and in We, Robots, he tangles with the so-called thinkers who are convinced that the future is rose-colored and robotically enhanced. With tremendous erudition and a punchy wit, White argues that we must be skeptical of anyone who tries to sell us on technological inevitability. And he gives us an alternative set of stories: taking inspiration from artists as disparate as Sufjan Stevens, Lars von Trier, and François Rabelais, White shows us that by looking to art, we can imagine a different kind of future. No robots required.From the Hardcover edition.

    

    Want to become an award-winning cartoonist and inventor? Follow your dreams, just like Rube Goldberg! From a young age, Rube Goldberg had a talent for art. But his father, a German immigrant, wanted Rube to have a secure job. So, Rube went to college and became an engineer.But Rube didn’t want to spend his life mapping sewer pipes. He wanted to follow his passion, so Rube got a low-level job at a newspaper, and from there, he worked his way up, creating cartoons that made people laugh and tickled the imagination. He became known for his fantastic Rube Goldberg machines—complicated contraptions with many parts that performed a simple task in an elaborate and farfetched way. Eventually, his cartoons earned him a Pulitzer Prize and his own adjective in the dictionary. This moving biography is sure to encourage young artists and inventors to pursue their passions.

    Assuming no prior knowledge of C, this introductory-level book demonstrates and explains how to write useful and marketable programs in Turbo C on the IBM PC, XT, AT, and PC/Z computers.

    It includes instructions on building a makeshift spaceship and parachute for your own “LEGO men.:Vibrant illustrations will make this a book that will inspire children to be interested in space, science, and reach for the stars!.

    This encouraging change not only has benefited veterans but also provides a blueprint for salvaging America's own deeply troubled healthcare system. "Best Care Anywhere" shows how a government bureaucracy, working with little notice, is setting the standard for best practices and cost reduction while the private sector is lagging in both areas. Author Phillip Longman challenges conventional wisdom by explaining exactly how market forces work to lower quality and raise prices in the healthcare sector, and how U.S. medical practices have a weak basis in science. The book, expanded from a widely praised article in the "Washington Monthly," mixes hard facts with author Philip Longmans' compelling human story of the loss of his wife to cancer. Part manifesto, part moving memoir, "Best Care Anywhere" offers new hope for addressing a major problem of contemporary society that affects all of us.

    Her parents separated when she was young, and her mother insisted on a logic-focused education, rejecting Byron’s “mad” love of poetry. But Ada remained fascinated with her father and considered mathematics “poetical science.” Via her friendship with inventor Charles Babbage, she became involved in “programming” his Analytical Engine, a precursor to the computer, thus becoming the world’s first computer programmer. This picture book biography of Ada Lovelace is a portrait of a woman who saw the potential for numbers to make art.

    This book teaches you how to conduct examinations by explaining what digital forensics is, the methodologies used, key technical concepts and the tools needed to perform examinations. Details on digital forensics for computers, networks, cell phones, GPS, the cloud, and Internet are discussed. Readers will also learn how to collect evidence, document the scene, and recover deleted data. This is the only resource your students need to get a jump-start into digital forensics investigations.This book is organized into 11 chapters. After an introduction to the basics of digital forensics, the book proceeds with a discussion of key technical concepts. Succeeding chapters cover labs and tools; collecting evidence; Windows system artifacts; anti-forensics; Internet and email; network forensics; and mobile device forensics. The book concludes by outlining challenges and concerns associated with digital forensics. PowerPoint lecture slides are also available.This book will be a valuable resource for entry-level digital forensics professionals as well as those in complimentary fields including law enforcement, legal, and general information security.

    If you're a business or IT professional, this short hands-on guide teaches you how to pull and transform data with SQL in significant ways. You will quickly master the fundamentals of SQL and learn how to create your own databases.Author Thomas Nield provides exercises throughout the book to help you practice your newfound SQL skills at home, without having to use a database server environment. Not only will you learn how to use key SQL statements to find and manipulate your data, but you'll also discover how to efficiently design and manage databases to meet your needs.You'll also learn how to:Explore relational databases, including lightweight and centralized modelsUse SQLite and SQLiteStudio to create lightweight databases in minutesQuery and transform data in meaningful ways by using SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY, and ORDER BYJoin tables to get a more complete view of your business dataBuild your own tables and centralized databases by using normalized design principlesManage data by learning how to INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE records

    Like her mother, she had a passion for science, math, and machines. It was a very good combination. Ada hoped that one day she could do something important with her creative and nimble mind.A hundred years before the dawn of the digital age, Ada Lovelace envisioned the computer-driven world we know today. And in demonstrating how the machine would be coded, she wrote the first computer program. She would go down in history as Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer.Diane Stanley’s lyrical writing and Jessie Hartland’s vibrant illustrations capture the spirit of Ada Lovelace and bring her fascinating story vividly to life.

    They like to look at pictures of different animals whether in books or just pictures by themselves. However, a book would be more beneficial than just looking at pictures of animals. One of the animals that seems to be very interesting to kids, is a wolf. The Wolves of North American book (kids edition) would be a great book for kids who are interested in learning more about wolves in North America. It would be a great educational tool and children of all ages would benefit from reading this kind of book.

    You'll learn how to install, configure, operate, manage, and secure the latest release.Covers all the new features and capabilities of the much-anticipated new release of VMware vSphere Discusses the planning, installation, operation, and management for the latest release Reviews migration to the latest vSphere software Offers hands-on instruction and clear explanations with real-world examples Mastering VMware vSphere is the strategic guide you need to maximize the opportunities of virtualization.

    Some of the objects are described by future historians; others through found materials, short stories, or dialogues. All come from a very real future.

    You know the Super Soaker. It’s one of top twenty toys of all time. And it was invented entirely by accident. Trying to create a new cooling system for refrigerators and air conditioners, impressive inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy. A love for rockets, robots, inventions, and a mind for creativity began early in Lonnie Johnson’s life. Growing up in a house full of brothers and sisters, persistence and a passion for problem solving became the cornerstone for a career as an engineer and his work with NASA. But it is his invention of the Super Soaker water gun that has made his most memorable splash with kids and adults.

    Robots can climb stairs, open doors, win Jeopardy, analyze stocks, work in factories, find parking spaces, advise oncologists. In the past, automation was considered a threat to low-skilled labor. Now, many high-skilled functions, including interpreting medical images, doing legal research, and analyzing data, are within the skill sets of machines. How can higher education prepare students for their professional lives when professions themselves are disappearing? In Robot-Proof, Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover--to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot.A "robot-proof" education, Aoun argues, is not concerned solely with topping up students' minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society--a scientific proof, a hip-hop recording, a web comic, a cure for cancer. Aoun lays out the framework for a new discipline, humanics, which builds on our innate strengths and prepares students to compete in a labor market in which smart machines work alongside human professionals. The new literacies of Aoun's humanics are data literacy, technological literacy, and human literacy. Students will need data literacy to manage the flow of big data, and technological literacy to know how their machines work, but human literacy--the humanities, communication, and design--to function as a human being. Life-long learning opportunities will support their ability to adapt to change.The only certainty about the future is change. Higher education based on the new literacies of humanics can equip students for living and working through change.