Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World

Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World

Christopher Steiner · 252 pages

The interaction of man and machine can make our lives easier. But what will the world look like when algorithms control our hospitals, our roads, our culture, and our national security? It used to be that to diagnose an illness, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, or write a newspaper article you needed a human being with specific skills--and maybe an advanced degree or two. These d

The Formula: How Algorithms Solve all our Problems … and Create More

Luke Dormehl · 296 pages

In The Formula, Luke Dormehl takes readers inside the world of numbers, asking how we came to believe in the all-conquering power of algorithms; introducing the mathematicians, artificial intelligence experts and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are shaping this brave new world, and ultimately asking how we survive in an era where numbers can sometimes seem to create as many problems as they solve

Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software

Steven Johnson · 288 pages

"Emergence is what happens when an interconnected system of relatively simple elements self-organizes to form more intelligent, more adaptive higher-level behavior. It's a bottom-up model, rather than being engineered by a general or a master planner; emergence begins at the ground level. Systems that at first glance seem vastly different - ant colonies, human brains, cities, immune systems - all

Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything

James Gleick · 325 pages

"In Faster, James Gleick explores nothing less than the human condition at the turn of the millennium. He shines a light of enterprising and analytical reporting - as well as sly wit - on the newest paradoxes of time. His journey takes us through the bunkers and trenches of a war we barely knew we were fighting: to the atomic clocks of the Directorate of Time, to the waiting rooms that focus our

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Yuval Noah Harari · 544 pages

From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world. For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing head

Quantum Supremacy

Michio Kaku · 352 pages

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr · 300 pages

Examines the influences computer-delivered information may have on human cognition using Marshall McLuhan as the hook, the history of communication as the trajectory, and brain science as the tool.

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

R. Buckminster Fuller · 143 pages

Edited and re-released by Fuller's grandson, Jamie Snyder, this edition is true to the original manuscript but adds helpful footnotes providing a modern context to some of the figures and predictions throughout the book.

The Age of Spiritual Machines

Ray Kurzweil

Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human

Joel Garreau · 392 pages

Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy

Robert Scoble, Shel Israel · 248 pages

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

Paul Graham

This seems to be a duplicate entry of https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2973119W/Hackers_painters

Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents

Ellen Ullman · 189 pages

Here is a candid account of the life of a software engineer who runs her own computer consulting business out of a live-work loft in San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch. Immersed in the abstract world of information, algorithms, and networks, she would like to give in to the seductions of the programmer's world, where "weird logic dreamers" like herself live "close to the machine." Still, she is kee

Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing

Neal Stephenson · 336 pages

"A collection of essays from #1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson"--

I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why Your World, Work & Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted

Nick Bilton · 298 pages

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

P.W. Singer · 516 pages

A military expert reveals how science fiction is fast becoming reality on the battlefield, changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itselfP. W. Singer's previous two books foretold the rise of private military contractors and the advent of child soldiers— predictions that proved all too accurate. Now, he explores the greatest revol

The Design of Future Things

Donald A. Norman · 240 pages

In The Design of Future Things, best-selling author Donald A. Norman presents a revealing examination of smart technology, from smooth-talking GPS units to cantankerous refrigerators. Exploring the links between design and human psychology, he offers a consumer-oriented theory of natural human-machine interaction that can be put into practice by the engineers and industrial designers of tomorrow's

This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

Marilyn Johnson · 280 pages

Buried in info? Cross-eyed over technology? From the bottom of a pile of paper and discs, books, e-books, and scattered thumb drives comes a cry of hope: Make way for the librarians! They want to help. They're not selling a thing. And librarians know best how to beat a path through the googolplex sources of information available to us, writes Marilyn Johnson, whose previous book, The Dead Beat, br

The Agi Chronicles

Kevin Roose

A co-host of the “Machine Gods” podcast describes the race to create artificial general intelligence.

Connected: How Your Friends' Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do

Nicholas A. Christakis, James H. Fowler · 368 pages

You Are Not a Gadget

Jaron Lanier · 224 pages

A computer-age visionary argues that the Internet has failed to live up to its early promises, sharing cautionary perspectives on the Web 2.0 design concept while optimistically evaluating the Internet as a positive cultural vehicle.

The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

Lawrence Lessig · 360 pages

In The future of ideas, Lawrence Lessig explains how the Internet revolution has produced a counterrevolution of potentially devastating power and effect. Creativity once flourished because the Net protected a commons on which innovators could experiment. But now, manipulating the law for their own purposes, corporations have established themselves as virtual gatekeepers of the Net while Congress,

Future Shock

Alvin Toffler · 561 pages

Describes some of the problems our technology has created for society and suggests some strategies for coping in the future.

This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information

Andy Greenberg · 384 pages

Who Are The Cypherpunks? This is the unauthorized telling of the revolutionary cryptography story behind the motion picture The Fifth Estate in theatres this October, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, a documentary out now. WikiLeaks brought to light a new form of whistleblowing, using powerful cryptographic code to hide leakers’ identities while they spill the private data of