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!

    The human mind has many different ways to think, says Marvin Minsky, the leading figure in artificial intelligence and computer science. We use these different ways of thinking in different circumstances, and some of them we don't even associate with thinking. For example, emotions, intuitions, and feelings are just other forms of thinking, according to Minsky. In his groundbreaking new work, "The Emotion Machine," Minsky shows why we should expand our ideas about thinking and how thinking itself might change in the future."The Emotion Machine" explains how our minds work, how they progress from simple kinds of thought to more complex forms that enable us to reflect on ourselves -- what most people refer to as consciousness, or self-awareness. Unlike other broad theories of the mind, this book proceeds in a step-by-step fashion that draws on detailed and specific examples. It shows that thinking -- even higher-level thinking -- can be broken down into a series of specific actions. From emotional states to goals and attachments and on to consciousness and awareness of self, we can understand the process of thinking in all its intricacy. And once we understand thinking, we can build machines -- artificial intelligences -- that can assist with our thinking, machines that can follow the same thinking patterns that we follow and that can think as we do. These humanlike thinking machines would also be emotion machines -- just as we are.This is a brilliant book that challenges many ideas about thinking and the mind. It is as insightful and provocative as it is original, the fruit of a lifetime spentthinking about thinking.

    As you read this, we are engineering the next stage of human evolution. Through advances in genetic, robotic, information and nanotechnologies, we are altering our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny - and perhaps our very souls.Taking us behind the scenes with today's foremost researchers and pioneers, Garreau reveals that the super powers of our comic-book heroes already exist, or are in development in hospitals, labs, and research facilities around the country -- from the revved up reflexes and speed of Spider-Man and Superman, to the enhanced mental acuity and memory capabilities of an advanced species. Over the next fifteen years, Garreau makes clear, these enhancements will become part of our everyday lives. Where will they lead us? To heaven - where technology's promise to make us smarter, vanquish illness and extend our lives is the answer to our prayers? Or will they lead us, as some argue, to hell - where unrestrained technology brings about the ultimate destruction of our entire species? With the help and insights of the gifted thinkers and scientists who are making what has previously been thought of as science fiction a reality, Garreau explores how these developments, in our lifetime, will affect everything from the way we date to the way we work, from how we think and act to how we fall in love. It is a book about what our world is becoming today, not fifty years out. As Garreau cautions, it is only by anticipating the future that we can hope to shape it.

    Soon, few of us will own our own automobiles and instead will get around in driverless electric vehicles that we summon with the touch of an app. We will be liberated from driving, prevent over 90% of car crashes, provide freedom of mobility to the elderly and disabled, and decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. Autonomy is the story of the maverick engineers and computer nerds who are creating the revolution. Longtime advisor to the Google Self-Driving Car team and former GM research and development chief Lawrence D. Burns provides the perfectly-timed history of how we arrived at this point, in a character-driven and heavily reported account of the unlikely thinkers who accomplished what billion-dollar automakers never dared.Beginning with the way 9/11 spurred the U.S. government to set a million-dollar prize for a series of off-road robot races in the Mojave Desert up to the early 2016 stampede to develop driverless technology, Autonomy is a page-turner that represents a chronicle of the past, diagnosis of the present, and prediction of the future—the ultimate guide to understanding the driverless car and navigating the revolution it sparks.

    In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends—flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning—and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly’s bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading—what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place—as this new world emerges.

    Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection--a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success.Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science--from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stuart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley--Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide.At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They're monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.

    Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human.Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials.The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.

    it is required reading as we seriously engage one of the most important debates of our time."--Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age From drones to Mars rovers--an exploration of the most innovative use of robots today and a provocative argument for the crucial role of humans in our increasingly technological future.In Our Robots, Ourselves, David Mindell offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of robotics today, debunking commonly held myths and exploring the rapidly changing relationships between humans and machines.Drawing on firsthand experience, extensive interviews, and the latest research from MIT and elsewhere, Mindell takes us to extreme environments--high atmosphere, deep ocean, and outer space--to reveal where the most advanced robotics already exist. In these environments, scientists use robots to discover new information about ancient civilizations, to map some of the world's largest geological features, and even to "commute" to Mars to conduct daily experiments. But these tools of air, sea, and space also forecast the dangers, ethical quandaries, and unintended consequences of a future in which robotics and automation suffuse our everyday lives.Mindell argues that the stark lines we've drawn between human and not human, manual and automated, aren't helpful for understanding our relationship with robotics. Brilliantly researched and accessibly written, Our Robots, Ourselves clarifies misconceptions about the autonomous robot, offering instead a hopeful message about what he calls "rich human presence" at the center of the technological landscape we are now creating.

    . . But in fact, your data is your best defense against coercive marketing and intrusive government practices. Your data is nothing less than a superpower waiting to be harnessed.” —FROM THE INTRODUCTION In the past, the future was opaque—the territory of fortune-tellers, gurus, and dubious local TV weathermen. But thanks to recent advances in computing and the reams of data we create through smartphone and Internet use, prediction models for individual behavior grow smarter and more sophisticated by the day. Whom you should marry, whether you’ll commit a crime or fall victim to one, if you’ll contract a specific strain of flu—even your precise location at any given moment years into the future—are becoming easily accessible facts. The naked future is upon us, and the implications are staggering.Patrick Tucker draws on stories from health care to urban planning to online dating to reveal the shape of a future that’s ever more certain. In these pages you’ll meet scientists and inventors who can predict your behavior based on your friends’ Twitter updates. They are also hacking the New York City sewer system to predict environmental conditions, anticipating how much the weather a year from now will cost an individual farmer, figuring out the time of day you’re most likely to slip back into a bad habit, and guessing how well you’ll do on a test before you take it. You’ll learn how social networks like Facebook are using your data to turn you into an advertisement and why the winning formula for a blockbuster movie is more predictable than ever.The rise of big data and predictive analytics means that governments and corporations are becoming much more effective at accomplishing their goals and at much less cost. Tucker knows that’s not always a good thing. But he also shows how we’ve gained tremendous benefits that we have yet to fully realize.Thanks to the increased power of predictive science, we’ll be better able to stay healthy, invest our savings more wisely, learn faster and more efficiently, buy a house in the right neighborhood at the right time, avoid crime, thwart terrorists, and mitigate the consequences of natural disasters. What happens in a future that anticipates your every move? The surprising answer: we’ll live better as a result.

    So are we on the edge of an AI-pocalypse, with super-intelligent devices superseding humanity, as predicted by Stephen Hawking? Or will this herald a kind of Utopia, with machines doing a far better job at complex tasks than us? You might not realise it, but you interact with AIs every day. They route your phone calls, approve your credit card transactions and help your doctor interpret results. Driverless cars will soon be on the roads with a decision-making computer in charge. But how do machines actually think and learn? In Machines That Think, AI experts and New Scientist explore how artificial ingence helps us understand human intelligence, machines that compose music and write stories - and ask if AI is really a threat.--

    "The past is a foreign country," writes Stevenson. "By my analysis it's a bit like France-in that I've been to parts of it and eaten some nice food there. But the future? The future is an unknown territory-and there isn't a guidebook." Thus, his ambition was born. Stevenson set out simply, asking, "What's next?" and then traveled the globe in pursuit of the answers. Along the way, he visited the Australian outback to visit the farmers who can save us from climate change, met a robot with mood swings, and talked to the Spaniard who's putting a hotel in space. While some might be overwhelmed, or even dismayed by the looming realities of genome sequencing, synthetic biology, a nuclear renaissance, and carbon scrubbing, Stevenson remains, well, optimistic. Drawing on his singular humor and storytelling to break down these sometimes complicated discoveries, "An Optimist's Tour of the Future" paints a wonderfully readable, and completely enthralling portrait of where we'll be when we grow up- and why it's not so scary. Watch a Video

    Included in this collection are* William McEwan, a virologist, discussing his research into the biology of antiviral immunity* Naomi Eisenberger, a neuroscientist, wondering how social rejection affects us physically* Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist, showing what massive datasets can teach us about society and ourselves* Anthony Aguirre, a physicist, who gives readers a tantalizing glimpse of infinity"Future Science shares with the world a delightful secret that we academics have been keeping--that despite all the hysteria about how electronic media are dumbing down the next generation, a tidal wave of talent has been flooding into science, making their elders feel like the dumb ones. . . . It has a wealth of new and exciting ideas, and will help shake up our notions regarding the age, sex, color, and topic clich�s of the current public perception of science."--Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought

    It’s already happening in impressive ways. But as we’ve witnessed over the past 20 years, new technology also inevitably raises complex questions and broad societal concerns.” – Brad Smith and Harry Shum on The Future Computed. “As we look to a future powered by a partnership between computers and humans, it’s important that we address these challenges head on. How do we ensure that AI is designed and used responsibly? How do we establish ethical principles to protect people? How should we govern its use? And how will AI impact employment and jobs?” – Brad Smith and Harry Shum on The Future Computed. As Artificial Intelligence shows up in every aspect of our lives, Microsoft's top minds provide a guide discussing how we should prepare for the future. Whether you're a government leader crafting new laws, an entrepreneur looking to incorporate AI into your business, or a parent contemplating the future of education, this book explains the trends driving the AI revolution, identifies the complex ethics and workforce issues we all need to think about and suggests a path forward. Read more: The Future Computed: Artificial Intelligence and its role in society provides Microsoft’s perspective on where AI technology is going and the new societal issues it is raising – ensuring AI is designed and used responsibly, establishing ethical principles to protect people, and how AI will impact employment and jobs. The principles of fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability are critical to addressing the societal impacts of AI and building trust as AI becomes more and more a part of the products and services that people use at work and at home every day. A central theme in The Future Computed is that for AI to deliver on its potential drive widespread economic and social progress, the technology needs to be human-centered – combining the capabilities of computers with human capabilities to enable people to achieve more. But a human-centered approach can only be realized if researchers, policymakers, and leaders from government, business and civil society come together to develop a shared ethical framework for AI. This in turn will help foster responsible development of AI systems that will engender trust. Because in an increasingly AI-driven world the question is not what computers can do, it is what computers should do. The Future Computed also draws a few conclusions as we chart our path forward. First, the companies and countries that will fare best in the AI era will be those that embrace these changes rapidly and effectively. Second, while AI will help solve big societal problems, we must look to this future with a critical eye as there will be challenges as well as opportunities. Third, we need to act with a sense of shared responsibility because AI won’t be created by the tech sector alone. Finally, skilling-up for an AI-powered world involves more than science, technology, engineering and math. As computers behave more like humans, the social sciences and humanities will become grow in importance.

    Now they’ve written a guide to help readers make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.

    Join them to explore a brave new world of brain-computer interfaces, vat-grown cruelty-free meat, knitted cars and guided bullets.The writers predict the vast changes that technology will bring to everything from food production to health care, energy output, manufacturing and the military balance. They also consider the impact on jobs, and how we can prepare for the opportunities, as well as the dangers, that await.Thought-provoking, engaging and full of insight from the forefront of tech innovation, Megatech is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand tomorrow's world.