Social Technology

On July 22, 2009, a special meeting was held with 24 leading scientists at the National Institutes of Health to discuss early findings that a newly discovered retrovirus was linked to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), prostate cancer, lymphoma, and eventually neurodevelopmental disorders in children. When Dr. Judy Mikovits finished her presentation the room was silent for a moment, then one of the scientists said, "Oh my God!" The resulting investigation would be like no other in science.

Once upon a time there was an online social network called Facebook, and it brought together people from all over the globe, helping them to reignite romances, launch careers, and even find organ donors. Facebook Fairytales brings to light inspirational "happy endings" stemming from the increasingly popular social-networking site. Author Emily Liebert crafts captivating narratives of real-life stories from interviews with Facebook users who have used the site's applications to find biological parents, relay messages to loved ones during the Mumbai terrorist attacks, donate to Chinese orphanages, and hunt down a hit-and-run criminal.

Paul Kennedy, award-winning author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and one of today’s most renowned historians, now provides a new and unique look at how World War II was won. Engineers of Victory is a fascinating nuts-and-bolts account of the strategic factors that led to Allied victory. Kennedy reveals how the leaders’ grand strategy was carried out by the ordinary soldiers, scientists, engineers, and businessmen responsible for realizing their commanders’ visions of success.

Madam C.J. Walker wasn't just an inventor. She was also a political activist and businesswoman. Young listeners will discover that she was not only fought for civil rights, but became one of the most successful African-American business owners ever.

Airplanes that soared through ancient skies? An underwater city? Could these unbelievable things ever have existed? Learn about the top 10 ancient mysteries and investigate for yourself.

In Simply Hegel, Robert L. Wicks presents Hegel’s revolutionary philosophy in clear and simple language, illuminating not only his basic ideas, but also the deeper meanings hidden within the book. Wicks’s analysis also contextualizes Hegel’s thought by providing a vivid chronology of his times, which included such earth-shaking events as the French Revolution and Napoleon’s invasion of Prussia.

This book predicts the decline of today's professions and describes the people and systems that will replace them. In an Internet society, according to Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others to work as they did in the 20th century.

The Guide to Going Viral is like a director’s manual for social media. It provides a step-by-step approach to crafting content with the impact of a classic film. Brendan Kane leverages his expertise in social media, entrepreneurship, and the film industry to blend the art of filmmaking with strategies for viral content creation.

The Headache Godfather traces the life of Seymour Diamond, MD, who was born in 1925, the son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine and Slovakia, in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Diamond revolutionized the practice of headache as a medical specialty when he opened the United States' first private headache practice, the Diamond Headache Clinic, in 1974. It quickly became a headache haven for sufferers from around the world.

A must-read action plan to reclaim your focus, direct your attention, and save your mind in an era of endless distraction. Our brains are wired for focus. We are designed for it, we crave it, and yet in our current age of overload, we often feel like our minds are bolting from one distraction to...

Access more than 2 Billion customers. Learn how with Facebook ads. Facebook is one of the most popular social media sites to advertise one’s business, and for a good reason: it has more than two billion active users, a wealth of user data, and numerous ad formats. In the age of social media where nine in ten people check their phones an hour after waking up in the morning, Facebook advertising is the perfect complement to your advertising strategy. In The Complete Guide to Facebook Advertising, Brian Meert teaches you how to advertise on Facebook.

Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche.

Have you ever wondered why, despite all the new updates on Facebook, people often forget the simple foundations that made it powerful in the first place? Today, everyone talks about the latest features, algorithm changes, and new trends. But the truth is, Facebook was created many years ago, and its core foundations — the ones that built communities, businesses, and global connections — are often overlooked. This book is not about the newest hacks or the latest shiny tools. Instead, it takes you back to what mattered years ago and shows you how those same basics are still relevant today.

From leading geopolitical expert and technology futurist Jamie Metzl comes a groundbreaking exploration of the many ways genetic engineering is shaking the core foundations of our lives-sex, war, love, and death. At the dawn of the genetics revolution, our DNA is becoming as readable, writable, and hackable as our information technology. But as humanity starts retooling our own genetic code, the choices we make today will be the difference between realizing breathtaking advances in human well-being and descending into a dangerous and potentially deadly genetic arms race.

Most referee and umpire training materials stink. They spend so much time focused on rules and signals, they miss the simple communication ideas that will help you survive those scary first few games, and become a better sports league official. Whether it's flag football, softball, little league baseball, basketball, or even kickball and dodgeball, this guide will help you become a better referee, umpire and communicator for your league and teams, and just maybe in your life.

If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put it on the shelf, lend it to a friend, or sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the eBooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that you don't own those purchases, you merely license them. That means your eBook vendor can delete the book from your device without warning or explanation - as Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of surprised readers.

Every Screen on the Planet is the first major book on one of the most dramatic business stories of our time. Touching on politics, finance, data, and technology, the struggle over TikTok has enormous implications for our information landscape and the technological cold war between the United States and China.

Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Through the weaponization of social media, the Internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the Internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones.

As the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. Underlying this trend is a single idea: The belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In reality, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Author James Bridle surveys the history of art, technology, and information systems and reveals the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.

Today's most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future. But humanity's story has always been on a global scale. Sachs takes listeners through a series of seven distinct waves of technological and institutional change, starting with the original settling of the planet by early modern humans through long-distance migration and ending with reflections on today's globalization.