Social Technology

In The Scientific Sherlock Holmes, James O'Brien provides an in-depth look at Sherlock Holmes's use of science in his investigations. Indeed, one reason for Holmes's appeal is his frequent use of the scientific method and the vast scientific knowledge which he drew upon to solve mysteries. For instance, in heart of the audiobook, the author reveals that Holmes was a pioneer of forensic science, making use of fingerprinting well before Scotland Yard itself had adopted the method.

Science history is chock full of world-changing innovations that initially faced skepticism and ridicule for being too unconventional: light bulbs, cars, and home computers are just a few examples. In this audiobook, we take a look at the latest out-of-the-box ideas to tackle today’s biggest challenges, including so-called sponge cities designed to combat flooding, technology that mimics photosynthesis to produce fuel, modifying bacteria’s genetic circuits to treat genetic diseases, and much more.

Shadowy groups are increasingly capable of collective action. Using military-grade encryption, rerouting software, and cryptocurrencies, anonymous and pseudonymous actors can now communicate, solve problems, recruit members, and manage resources across multiple public and semipublic spaces. This swirling mix of secrecy and openness enables people to move through cyberspace like nomads with verifiable personas, which makes them impossible to stop.

In Euthyphro, Socrates is on his way to the court, where he must defend himself against serious charges brought by religious and political authorities. On the way he meets Euthyphro, an expert on religious matters who has come to prosecute his own father. Socrates questions Euthyphro's claim that religion serves as the basis for ethics. Euthyphro is not able to provide satisfactory answers to Socrates' questions, but their dialogue leaves us with the challenge of making a reasonable connection between ethics and religion.

Thomas Hargrove's Long March to Freedom is a record of his 11 months as a hostage of Colombian guerillas and was the basis for the recent movie hit Proof of Life that starred Meg Ryan, Russell Crowe, and David Morse.

Taking listeners back to the days of TaB cola, dot matrix printers, and digging through the couch for just one more quarter, Alex Rubens combines his knowledge of the tech industry and experience as a gaming journalist to conjure the wild silicon frontier of the 8-bit ’80s. 8-Bit Apocalypse: The Untold Story of Atari's Missile Command offers the first in-depth, personal history of an era for which fans have a lot of nostalgia.

Chinese society has been shaped by the interplay of the EAST—exams, autocracy, stability, and technology—from ancient times through the present. Beginning with the Sui dynasty's introduction of the civil service exam, known as Keju, in 587 CE—and continuing through the personnel management system used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—Chinese autocracies have developed exceptional tools for homogenizing ideas, norms, and practices. But this uniformity came with a huge downside: stifled creativity.

In this accessible introduction to AI, Sean O'Callaghan and Paul Hoffman explore its social and ethical impacts for ministry and teaching. The authors shed light on the biblical vision for human flourishing—and on how AI can help or hinder that flourishing. Avoiding both alarmism and uncritical acceptance, O'Callaghan and Hoffman offer resources and practical tools for using AI in our classrooms and congregations.

“Read this if you want to understand how to shape our technological future and reinvigorate democracy along the way.”—Reed Hastings, cofounder and CEO of Netflix ""A triumph: an analysis of the critical challenges facing our digital society that is as accessible as it is sophisticated.""...

The US Army entered World War II unprepared. Lacking Germany's blitzkrieg approach of coordinated armor and air power, the army was organized to fight two wars: one on the ground and one in the air. Previous commentators have blamed Congressional funding and public apathy for the army's unprepared state. David E. Johnson believes instead that the principal causes were internal: army culture and bureaucracy, and their combined impact on the development of weapons and doctrine.

Authors Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell tap their experiences with the MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research for this extraordinary book. What if you could remember everything? With today’s technology, that notion becomes more realistic each day. Bell and Gemmell explain what it could all mean.

April 28, 2015, West Baltimore, Maryland: ground zero in America's Opiate Wars. In this crime-plagued section of the city, the death of Freddie Gray has triggered the worst domestic rioting since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and created a terrifying new breed of criminal entrepreneur.

Customer Data and Privacy: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the tangled interdependencies and complexities and develop strategies that allow your company to be good stewards, collecting, using, and storing customer data responsibly.

This book doesn’t focus on the latest tricks or fleeting updates. Instead, it revisits the early practices and ideas that shaped YouTube in its beginning, bringing back what creators once relied on. If you’re looking for cutting-edge news or the newest algorithm hack, this book is not for you. But if you want to rediscover the timeless foundations that still apply today, you’re in the right place.

The slippery online ecosystem is the perfect breeding ground for identities: true, false, and in between. The Internet shorthand IRL - "in real life" - now seems naïve. We no longer question the reality of online experiences but the reality of selfhood in the digital age. In The Secret Life, the essayist and novelist Andrew O'Hagan issues three bulletins from the porous border between cyberspace and IRL.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and author of the classic The First Three Minutes, Weinberg shares his views on some of the most fundamental and fascinating aspects of physics and the universe. But he does not seclude science behind disciplinary walls or shy away from politics, taking on what he sees as the folly of manned spaceflight, the harms of inequality, and the importance of public goods. His point of view is rationalist, realist, reductionist, and devoutly secularist.

In 2012, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance was just a handful of geeks working out of a scrappy four-bedroom apartment in Beijing. Today, it is the world’s fastest-growing tech behemoth worth in excess of $100 billion, unrecognizable from its humble beginnings.

Swallow the Ghost traces the impact of a violent event on three different lives, each interconnected story further complicating the truth. Things are going well for Jane Murphy, or so it seems. She’s making it in New York, a sort of wunderkind at the social media marketing startup where she...

Sleep is the most important part of anyone’s journey to a healthy and happy life, and with this book you can learn how to fix your sleep schedule and recover precious hours of relaxation. If you're like most people, odds are you aren't getting enough sleep. Thanks to shifts in our culture...

When we make decisions, our thinking is informed by societal norms, “guardrails” guiding our decisions, like the laws and rules that govern us. But what are good guardrails in today’s world of overwhelming information flows and increasingly powerful technologies, such as artificial intelligence? Based on the latest insights from the cognitive sciences, economics, and public policy, Guardrails offers a novel approach to shaping decisions by embracing human agency in its social context.