2019, ISBN: 9780521878241

Doubleday. Very Good. 6.5 x 1 x 9.75 inches. Hardcover. 2017. 256 pages. <br>This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians' pursuit of escaping mort… More...

Doubleday. Very Good. 6.5 x 1 x 9.75 inches. Hardcover. 2017. 256 pages. <br>This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians' pursuit of escaping mortality is a breez y romp full of colorful characters. --New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our bodies--our capabilities, intelligence, and lifespans--in the hopes that, through technology, we can become something bett er than ourselves. It has found support among Silicon Valley bill ionaires and some of the world's biggest businesses. In To Be a Machine, journalist Mark O'Connell explores the staggering possi bilities and moral quandaries that present themselves when you of think of your body as a device. He visits the world's foremost c ryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall dea th. He discovers an underground collective of biohackers, implant ing electronics under their skin to enhance their senses. He meet s a team of scientists urgently investigating how to protect mank ind from artificial superintelligence. Where is our obsession wi th technology leading us? What does the rise of AI mean not just for our offices and homes, but for our humanity? Could the techno logies we create to help us eventually bring us to harm? Addressi ng these questions, O'Connell presents a profound, provocative, o ften laugh-out-loud-funny look at an influential movement. In inv estigating what it means to be a machine, he offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human. Editorial Reviews Revi ew **Winner of the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize** **Shortlisted for t he 2017 Baillie-Gifford Prize for Nonfiction** **Finalist for the 2017 Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize** Trou bling and humorous, this is one of my current give-it-to-everyone books--I buy six copies at a time. Did you know our future belon gs to a few asocial geeks for whom being human has always been a problem? Now they can solve it! --Jeanette Winterson, Vulture O' Connell... dissects the practices and beliefs of trans-humanism w ith extraordinary exuberance and wit... To Be a Machine is someti mes hilarious (triggering several bursts of uncontrollable giggle s while I read it on the Tube) but even as O'Connell mocks the mo re absurd manifestations of trans-humanism he shows sympathy and understanding for its adherents. --Financial Times Wryly humoro us, cogently insightful.... To Be a Machine is a lucid, soulful p ilgrimage into the heart of what humanity means to us now--and ho w science may redefine it tomorrow, for better and for worse. --N PR.org Open-minded... With a practiced journalist's sense of eng agement and empathy leavened by healthy skepticism, O'Connell des cribes the peculiar constellation of scientists, seekers, grifter s, and con artists orbiting techno-optimist communities over the past half century.... Offer[s] much-needed critical analysis that never veers into condescension. --LA Review of Books O'Connell unleashes his prodigious researching and writing skills on what could be your future. --Philadelphia Inquirer O'Connell is a wri ter of elegant precision and winning facetiousness... His ear and eye for detail are prodigious... O'Connell's writing--full of hi gh-low swerves and personal asides--is a constant reminder of the bathetic reality of being human. --4Columns [O'Connell] reveal s a bounty of beguiling ingenuity and genuine absurdity, elicitin g laughs and empathy, because we are our most human while trying to become something more than human. --Playboy O'Connell, a colu mnist for Slate, is a charming, funny tour guide. Writing on tran shumanism often gets swept away by the inherent drama of its adhe rents' promises, but O'Connell's eye for small human details...ke eps the narrative grounded in a way that rigorous scientific debu nking wouldn't. --Vice The game-changing technology being devel oped in Silicon Valley is often hard to wrap one's head around, a nd Mark O'Connell takes readers on a wild ride through this world in a way that makes one feel that anything is possible and every thing is happening right now. --Newsweek In this thoughtful and readable book, [O'Connell] aims to understand the motivations of those who are guided by the belief that technology will enable hu mans to transcend the human condition. In an attempt to explore w hat it means to think of ourselves as machines, O'Connell takes r eaders on an all-encompassing tour...He writes in an agreeable, c onversational tone, offering his opinions, doubts, and fears alon g the way. --Undark O'Connell decides to dive into the transhuma nist culture in the best way possible: by traveling the world in search of key figures in the movement... The result is a fast-pac ed travel-log-cum-existential inquiry into the science and the re ligious significance of this age-old human desire to live forever : To become, in effect, a god. --NPR's 13.7 blog O'Connell, a j ournalist, makes his own prejudices clear: 'I am not now, nor hav e I ever been, a transhumanist,' he writes. However, this does no t stop him from thoughtfully surveying the movement. --Science O'Connell's book is skeptical but not cynical, and it functions a s a witty overview of transhumanism. --The Ringer O'Connell's s ensibility--his humanity, if you will--and his subject matter are a match made in heaven. It's an absolutely wonderful book. --The Millions O'Connell has devised an indispensable GPS for negotia ting today's tomorrow-land. --Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star Com edic, unsettling, ambivalent, and intriguing...O'Connell's book i s a worthwhile read for all audiences. --LitHub To Be a Machine is flat-out fascinating. O'Connell's journey is a layman's adven ture through the technological looking glass, an opportunity to m eet with a subculture existing on the fringes of the tech scene a nd a compelling peek at one possible future. Sharply-written and thought-provoking, To Be a Machine is a book that will undoubtedl y set your mind to racing and your gears to turning. --The Maine Edge O'Connell writes with an intellectual curiosity that makes his esoteric subject matter accessible to lay readers...a stimula ting overview of modern scientific realities once thought to be t he exclusive purview of science fiction. --Publishers Weekly An enlightening tour of transhumanism... packed with eccentric chara cters...An unsettling but informative and sometimes-optimistic vi ew of mostly legitimate efforts at life extension. --Kirkus Revie ws Readers will appreciate O'Connell's sense of humor and his fa st-paced writing, and will at times feel like they're having a di alogue with the author as he ponders the ethics, consequences, an d dilemmas of these transhumanist activities embedded in society today. Those who are interested in artificial intelligence, bioen gineering, technology, and human development will find this book to be deeply engrossing and informative on the topic of transhuma nism and what it means to be a human today and in the future. --B ooklist A very lively book about transhumanism. --Sebastian Bar ry, The Guardian A voyage into the dark heart of transhumanism, where dwell many hopeful mind-uploaders, robo-warfighters, subder mal implanters, doomed immortalists, and sundry aging Singularita rians. A funny, wise, and oddly moving book. --Nicholson Baker, a uthor of House of Holes and Human Smoke Hilarious and moving.... To Be a Machine is super-detailed and cosmic and minute and high -stakes and funny and sad, all at the same time. --Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed O'Connell, like some dream combination o f Jon Ronson and Don Delillo, switches effortlessly from profound to poignant to laugh-out-loud funny. A brilliant illumination of the techno-future, To Be A Machine is also, and more importantly , a joyful summation of what it is to be human. --Paul Murray, au thor of Skippy Dies and The Mark and the Void O'Connell's forens ic investigation of the unnervingly fluid border between the huma n and the machine is elegant and gripping: at once a hilarious an thropological survey of the people who believe technology will gi ve us eternal life and a terrifying account of how technology is changing the cardinal features of human existence. --Olivia Laing , author of The Lonely City and The Trip to Echo Spring Provocat ive, funny and not a little gonzo, it's a great one to recommend to devotees of Jon Ronson --Bookseller (UK) Mark O'Connell, in f unny, reflective prose, finds in the transhumanists a desire to e xceed these very limits - of the capacity for thought, of death, of the body. --Globe and Mail (Canada) [A] beautifully written b ook... Ultimately, To Be A Machine is both an insight into transh umanist thought and O'Connell's very relatable fears and anxietie s about morality and the future. --Irish Times To Be a Machine is an attempt to understand the transhumanist movement on its own terms... It's O'Connell's lack of stridency, as well as his ofte n splendid writing, that makes him such a companionable guide. -- The Guardian (UK) By exposing the ludicrous yet terrifyingly ser ious ideologies behind transhumanism, To Be a Machine is an impor tant book, as well as a seriously funny one. --Sunday Times (UK) O'Connell invokes the twin spectres of death and child-bearing in an attempt to make sense of his subject--but he also manages t o be staggeringly funny. --New Scientist (UK) [A] Homer's Odyss ey for the digital age.... A gentle, humorous and lovingly writte n book. --The Times (UK) About the Author MARK O'CONNELL is Slat e's books columnist, a staff writer at The Millions, and a regula r contributor to The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog; his work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Observer, and The Independent. Excerpt. ® Repr inted by permission. All rights reserved. System Crash All stori es begin in our endings: we invent them because we die. As long a s we have been telling stories, we have been telling them about t he desire to escape our human bodies, to become something other t han the animals we are. In our oldest written narrative, we find the Sumerian king Gilgamesh, who, distraught by the death of a fr iend and unwilling to accept that the same fate lies in store for him, travels to the far edge of the world in search of a cure fo r mortality. Long story short: no dice. Later, we find Achilles' mother dipping him in the Styx in an effort to render him invulne rable. This, too, famously, does not pan out. See also: Daedalus , improvised wings. See also: Prometheus, stolen divine fire. W e exist, we humans, in the wreckage of an imagined splendor. It w as not supposed to be this way: we weren't supposed to be weak, t o be ashamed, to suffer, to die. We have always had higher notion s of ourselves. The whole setup--garden, serpent, fruit, banishme nt--was a fatal error, a system crash. We came to be what we are by way of a Fall, a retribution. This, at least, is one version o f the story: the Christian story, the Western story. The point of which, on some level, is to explain ourselves to ourselves, to a ccount for why it's such a raw deal, this unnatural nature of our s. A man, wrote Emerson, is a god in ruins. Religion, more or l ess, arises out of this divine wreckage. And science, too--religi on's estranged half sibling--addresses itself to such animal diss atisfactions. In The Human Condition, writing in the wake of the Soviet launch of the first space satellite, Hannah Arendt reflect ed on the resulting sense of euphoria about escaping what one new s­paper report called men's imprisonment to the earth. This same yearning for escape, she wrote, manifested itself in the attempt to create superior humans from laboratory manipulations of germ p lasm, to extend natural life spans far beyond their current limit s. This future man, she wrote, whom the scientists tell us they w ill produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possesse d by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to e xchange, as it were, for something he has made himself. A rebell ion against human existence as it has been given: this is as good a way as any of attempting to encapsulate what follows, to chara cterize what motivates the people I came to know in the writing o f this book. These people, by and large, identify with a movement known as transhumanism, a movement predicated on the conviction that we can and should use technology to control the future evolu tion of our species. It is their belief that we can and should er adicate aging as a cause of death; that we can and should use tec hnology to augment our bodies and our minds; that we can and shou ld merge with machines, remaking ourselves, finally, in the image of our own higher ideals. They wish to exchange the gift, these people, for something better, something man-­made. Will it pan ou t? That remains to be seen. I am not a transhumanist. That much is probably apparent, even at this early stage of the proceedings . But my fascination with the movement, with its ideas and its ai ms, arises out of a basic sympathy with its premise: that human e xistence, as it has been given, is a suboptimal system. In an ab stract sort of way, this is something I had always believed to be the case, but in the immediate aftermath of the birth of my son, I came to feel it on a visceral level. The first time I held him , three years ago now, I was overcome by a sense of the fragility of his little body--a body that had just emerged, howling and tr embling and darkly smeared with blood, out of the trembling body of his mother, from whom many hours of fanatical suffering and ex ertion had been required to deliver him into the world. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. I couldn't help but think that there ought to be a better system. I couldn't help but think that , at this late stage, we should be beyond all this. Here's a thi ng you should not do as a new father, as you perch uneasily on a leatherette maternity ward chair beside your sleeping infant and his sleeping mother: you should not read a newspaper. I did this, and I regretted it. I sat in the postnatal ward of the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, turning the pages of The Irish Time s in gradually mounting horror, browsing through a catalog of hum an perversity--of massacres and rapes, of cruelties casual and sy stemic: splintered, Doubleday, 2017, 3, New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996. 578 pages, illustrations; 25 cm. Firm binding, clean text. Light handling soil. Stated First Edition. Fine DJ. "British-born Charlie Chaplin was not only the world's first international movie star but one of the most loved, hated, and gossiped-about figures in film history. In her colorful and absorbing biography of the mercurial Chaplin, Joyce Milton takes us from his childhood in the London slums and his early days as a music hall entertainer through his meteoric rise and the full flowering of his artistic genius in the American film world to his exile in Europe during the 1950s, the heyday of McCarthyism and Red-baiting. The Keystone comedies era and Chaplin's emergence as a star and director make a fascinating story, peopled by the likes of Mack Sennett, Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Wallace Beery, and Edna Purviance. His founding of United Artists in 1919, with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, was seminal, giving him a control over his own films that no other writer, actor, or director could hope for under the studio system at the time. Hollywood in the twenties and thirties makes today's film community seem puritanical by comparison, and Chaplin was a key figure in many of the gamier scandals. Successful, handsome, and a mega-star, he developed a reputation as a seducer of very young women - his second wife, Lita Grey, was fifteen when they became involved, and he married Oona O'Neill, his fourth, when she was eighteen. Fighting a paternity suit and accusations of plagiarism, communism, pacifism, libertinism, and anti-Americanism, Chaplin nevertheless managed to make seventy-one films by the time he was thirty-three years old - with some of his finest work still ahead of him (The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator). To date only sanitized versions of Chaplin's life have been told, and no biography has yet placed Chaplin in an American context. A strong, determined artist - at once charming and vulnerable but also vain, arrogant, and egotistical - Chaplin fought hard to overcome early hardships, and suffered greatly when the character he created - the Tramp, the Little Fellow - was rendered obsolete by age, changing audience tastes, and the advent of talkies. Joyce Milton's probing and revelatory biography explores the psychological and social roots of Chaplin's art, politics, love life, and friendships through the course of a tumultuous life, at once rich and confounding." - Publisher. . 1st. Hardcover. Very Good/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall., HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996, 4, London England: Hutchingson, 1987. Natalie Harris, charming, well-meaning and well dressed, woke up one morning to discover her husband had eloped with the local carnival queen, Miss Eddon Gurney 1978. And it was left to Sonia, long-abandoned wife, to take up arms on Natalie's behalf, against an army of welfare officers, bank managers, policement and D.H.S.S. officials. But what could Sonia do in the face of Natalie's own nature, and the procession of men all too ready to take advantage of her tender vulnerability. Events naturally take unexpected turns, sometimes joyful, sometimes tragic, and by the end of the novel Natalie has undergone a decidedly unsentimental education, which is not necessarily at all to her disadvantage. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. Academic, Scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.) . First Edition. Boards. Fine/Near Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Hardback., Hutchingson, 1987, 4.5, London England: Hutchingson, 1987. Natalie Harris, charming, well-meaning and well dressed, woke up one morning to discover her husband had eloped with the local carnival queen, Miss Eddon Gurney 1978. And it was left to Sonia, long-abandoned wife, to take up arms on Natalie's behalf, against an army of welfare officers, bank managers, policement and D.H.S.S. officials. But what could Sonia do in the face of Natalie's own nature, and the procession of men all too ready to take advantage of her tender vulnerability. Events naturally take unexpected turns, sometimes joyful, sometimes tragic, and by the end of the novel Natalie has undergone a decidedly unsentimental education, which is not necessarily at all to her disadvantage. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. Academic, Scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.) . First Edition. Boards. Fine/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Hardback., Hutchingson, 1987, 4, LID Publishing, LID Publishing. 2019, 135pp. Illustrated. Hardcover. 18x12cm. In very good condition. Coaching is an art, but it's far easier said than done. It takes courage to ask a question rather than offer up advice, provide an answer or unleash a solution. Giving another person the opportunity to find their own way, make their own mistakes, and create their own wisdom is both brave and vulnerable. Emotional intelligence can help leaders and coaches recognize how attitudes -- both their own and those of the people they coach -- prevent individuals from reaching their potential. In this practical and inspiring book, EQ qualified trainer and coach Nicole Soames teaches you how to develop a coaching mind-set, recognize who and when you should coach, adopt a disciplines approach to coaching, learn how to manage the coaching conversation and give and receive feedback so that you can embed new ways of working. This is a fresh and innovative take on the traditional, how-to coaching manual. ISBN: 9781912555536, LID Publishing, LID Publishing, 0, New York: Penguin Press, 2009. xv, 327 pages; 25 cm. Firm binding, clean inside copy. Remainder mark/tail edge. Dust jacket protected in a mylar book cover. A profile of John Drewe and artist John Myatt. "A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries--many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today. Povenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a great con man and unforgettable villain, John Drewe, and his sometimes unwitting accomplices. Chief among those was the struggling artist John Myatt, a vulnerable single father who was manipulated by Drewe into becoming a prolific art forger. Once Myatt had painted the pieces, the real fraud began. Drewe managed to infiltrate the archives of the upper echelons of the British art world in order to fake the provenance of Myatt's forged pieces, hoping to irrevocably legitimize the fakes while effectively rewriting art history. The story stretches from London to Paris to New York, from tony Manhattan art galleries to the esteemed Giacometti and Dubuffet associations, to the archives at the Tate Gallery. This enormous swindle resulted in the introduction of at least two hundred forged paintings, some of them breathtakingly good and most of them selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of these fakes are still out in the world, considered genuine and hung prominently in private houses, large galleries, and prestigious museums. And the sacred archives, undermined by John Drewe, remain tainted to this day. Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller, filled with unforgettable characters and told at a breakneck pace. But this is most certainly not fiction; Provenance is the meticulously researched and captivating account of one of the greatest cons in the history of art forgery. / Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo are a husband-and- wife team of investigative reporters. Salisbury is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and has worked for Reuters and the Associated Press. She is the coauthor of the critically acclaimed The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic, which was translated into eleven languages. Sujo grew up in the art world and has been a journalist for the past twenty years, covering arts and entertainment for Reuters, the Associated Press, and The New York Daily News." - Publisher. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 1st.. Hardcover. Very Good/Fine., Penguin Press, 2009, 4, UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.[Complete number line 1-10.] FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price-clip (£18.99) to dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean, glossy laminated,colour photographic illustrated dw/dj,with black+red lettering; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Top edges very lightly - almost imperceptibly dust-soiled with minimal sporadic spotting/foxing and very little ageing/toning,fore-edges brighter and cleaner with a few foxing spots; contents bright,tight,clean - pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,would appear unread apart from my own collation.Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,publisher's original plain red cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked gilt letters to spine/ backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,1-326pp [paginated] includes 16 chapters; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,a dedication and an epigram and 2pp blanks at rear. When Roma Ligocka went with other holocaust survivors to the premiere of Spielberg's Schindler's List,she was shocked to find herself confronted with her past.There on the screen,picked out in red against the black and white film,Roma recognised herself - the girl in the red coat.As the scenes rolled by,echoing the horror of her troubled memories,she realised the extent to which she had failed to come to terms with her childhood anguish. Born in 1938,Roma spent her childhood in the Krakow ghetto,where her family suffered appallingly in the harrowing conditions.With Jews shot indiscriminately,she soon learned that her own life was worthless. Managing to escape in 1943,she and her mother were sheltered by a Polish family,who were moved by the sight of the vulnerable little girl in her red coat.But whenever danger threatened,they were forced to move on - never in safety - narrowly escaping death at the hands of the Germans.Roma was one of a minority of 'hidden children' to survive the Holocaust. After the extreme conditions of the war,her new life was exciting,if unusual.Living through Stalinist rule,finding her place in the bohemian Krakow art scene with cousin Roman Polanski, travelling in Europe, becoming a wife and mother - Roma achieved great success in all that came her way.But memories of childhood trauma are deep-seated and despite her successful life,the resonating effects of her past eventually took their toll. Now,after 50 years,Roma has finally been able to lay to rest the traumatic events of her past.Revisiting the misery of her early years, this powerful and moving memoir examines its encroaching effects on her life,as she writes honestly about rising above the sorrow,while still acknowledging the past. Please contact seller,because of the weight of this item,for correct shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page! ** N.B. ALL buyers please note,stocks' actual shipping/P+p costs are adjusted and any difference is refunded,after order's receipt and before the order's despatch, especially if the item(s) are offered either P+p included/FREE. ** N.B. US/Canada customers please be aware: Standard AIRMAIL postage from UK to these destinations can now cost more than the price of the book! If speed is not of the essence,then Economy rate is recommended - at approx. anything from a 1/3rd to 1/2 of the standard AIR quote/rate - sometimes arriving sooner than the 42 days - but not always., LONDON.HODDER & STOUGHTON,2002., 5, ISBN: 9780521878241CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS | 31 March 2008Hardback | 194 pages Ensuring secure transmission and good quality of service (QoS) in ad hoc wireless networks are key commercial concerns. Focusing on practical potential solutions, this text covers security and QoS in these networks. Starting with a review of the basic principles of ad hoc wireless networking, coverage progresses to vulnerabilities, and the requirements and solutions necessary to tackle them. QoS in relation to ad hoc networks is covered in detail, with specific attention to routing, QoS support in unicast communication, and recent developments in the area. Secure routing, intrusion detection, security in WiMax networks and trust management are also covered, the latter being based on principles and practice of key management and authentication in distributed networks. Representing the state-of-the-art in ad hoc wireless network security, this book is a valuable resource for researchers in electrical and computer engineering, as well as practitioners in the wireless communications industry., 0<

2008, ISBN: 0521878241

[EAN: 9780521878241], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [PU: Cambridge University Press 2008-03-17], Item is in like new condition with minor shelf wear. Might have a remainder mark or slight wea… More...

[EAN: 9780521878241], Gebraucht, guter Zustand, [PU: Cambridge University Press 2008-03-17], Item is in like new condition with minor shelf wear. Might have a remainder mark or slight wear from sitting on the shelf., Books<