Computers & Technology (50)

Logic Primer presents a rigorous introduction to natural deduction systems of sentential and first-order logic. The text is designed to foster the student-instructor relationship. The key concepts are laid out in concise definitions and comments, with the expectation that the instructor will elaborate upon them. New to the second edition is the addition of material on the logic of identity in chapters 3 and 4. An innovative interactive Web site, consisting of a "Logic Daemon" and a "Quizmaster", encourages students to formulate their own proofs and links them to appropriate explanations in the book.

As cyber-attacks join terrorists on the list of global threats, and as top generals warn of a coming cyber war, Slate columnist Fred Kaplan's timely and enlightening Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War chronicles, in fascinating detail, an unknown past that shines an unsettling light on our future.

In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial--left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.

It's undeniable - technology is changing the way we think. But is it for the better? Amid a chorus of doomsayers, Clive Thompson delivers a resounding "yes." The Internet age has produced a radical new style of human intelligence, worthy of both celebration and analysis. We learn more and retain it longer, write and think with global audiences, and even gain an ESP-like awareness of the world around us. Modern technology is making us smarter, better connected, and often deeper - both as individuals and as a society. In Smarter Than You Think Thompson shows that every technological innovation - from the written word to the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt - learning to use the new and retaining what's good of the old. Thompson introduces us to a cast of extraordinary characters who augment their minds in inventive ways. There's the seventy-six-year old millionaire who digitally records his every waking moment - giving him instant recall of the events and ideas of his life, even going back decades. There's a group of courageous Chinese students who mounted an online movement that shut down a $1.6 billion toxic copper plant. There are experts and there are amateurs, including a global set of gamers who took a puzzle that had baffled HIV scientists for a decade - and solved it collaboratively in only one month. Smarter Than You Think isn't just about pioneers. It's about everyday users of technology and how our digital tools - from Google to Twitter to Facebook and smartphones - are giving us new ways to learn, talk, and share our ideas. Thompson harnesses the latest discoveries in social science to explore how digital technology taps into our long-standing habits of mind - pushing them in powerful new directions. Our thinking will continue to evolve as newer tools enter our lives. Smarter Than You Think embraces and extols this transformation, presenting an exciting vision of the present and the future.

Instagram is the fastest growing of all social media platforms, with 400 million monthly active users worldwide - half of whom are under the age of twenty-five. While some use the app as a personal networking tool, many also use it to build their creative business endeavours; whether in food and drink or fashion and lifestyle.Sara Tasker has done just that, and since setting up her account whilst on maternity leave in 2013, has become an Instagram coach, iPhoneographer and social media influencer. Her chronicle of authentic everyday life and her mindful Me and Orla blog has developed into a business in which she provides access to free social media tips and creative business advice, alongside some hugely popular paid for e-courses for independent creatives.Hashtag Authentic draws on the lessons Sara has learned over the past 5 years online to provide you with the essential tips, strategy and guidance on growing an online audience with heart. From the secrets of visual storytelling and crafting thumb-stopping Instagram photographs, to archiving your day-to-day life and remaining authentic to your true self, this book is both an inspiring manual and an interactive tool for finding your online voice, growing a tribe and using those skills to change your life, and - just possibly - the world.

Fun introduction to game development by well-known game designer using PuzzleScript, a free online tool for creating puzzles/platform games.PuzzleScript is a free, web-based tool you can use to create puzzle games. In a PuzzleScript game, you move objects around to solve problems and play through the levels.In Make Your Own PuzzleScript Games! you'll learn how to use PuzzleScript to create interactive games--no programming experience necessary! Learn the basics like how to make objects, create rules, and add levels. You'll also learn how to edit, test, and share your games online.Learn how to:• Decorate your game with fun backgrounds• Write rules that define how objects interact• Add obstacles like laser guns and guards• Herd cats and even pull off a robot heist!With colorful illustrations and plenty of examples for inspiration, Make Your Own PuzzleScript Games! will take you from puzzle solver to game designer in just a few clicks!

A penetrating guide to artificial intelligence: what it is, what it does, and how it will change our livesAt a breathtaking pace, artificial intelligence is getting better and faster at making complex decisions. AI can already identify malignant tumors on CT scans, give legal advice, out-bluff the best poker players in the world, and, with ever-increasing skill, drive our cars.In Who’s Afraid of AI?, award-winning author Thomas Ramge expertly explains how machines are learning to learn, and he questions what today’s explosion of AI capability could mean for tomorrow:• Is it ethical to allow robots - endlessly patient - to replace human caregivers in providing comfort and companionship to the elderly?• Since AI feeds on big data, can we prevent its misuse by corporations or the government?• Will AI ever be capable of runaway self-improvement? And if “the singularity” does arrive, with AI’s intelligence exponentially outpacing our own, what will become of us when, in many ways, we’re obsolete?

In Analogia, technology historian George Dyson presents a startling look back at the analog age and life before the digital revolution - and an unsettling vision of what comes next.

Edward Snowden touched off a global debate in 2013 when he gave Barton Gellman, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald each a vast and explosive archive of highly classified files revealing the extent of the American government’s access to our every communication. They shared the Pulitzer Prize that year for public service. For Gellman, who never stopped reporting, that was only the beginning. He jumped off from what Snowden gave him to track the reach and methodology of the U.S. surveillance state and bring it to light with astonishing new clarity. Along the way, he interrogated Snowden’s own history and found important ways in which myth and reality do not line up. Gellman treats Snowden with respect, but this is no hagiographic account, and Dark Mirror sets the record straight in ways that are both fascinating and important.Dark Mirror is the story that Gellman could not tell before, a gripping inside narrative of investigative reporting as it happened and a deep dive into the machinery of the surveillance state. Gellman recounts the puzzles, dilemmas and tumultuous events behind the scenes of his work – in top secret intelligence facilities, in Moscow hotel rooms, in huddles with Post lawyers and editors, in Silicon Valley executive suites, and in encrypted messages from anonymous accounts. Within the book is a compelling portrait of national security journalism under pressure from legal threats, government investigations, and foreign intelligence agencies intent on stealing Gellman’s files. Throughout Dark Mirror, Gellman wages an escalating battle against unknown adversaries who force him to mimic their tradecraft in self-defense.With the vivid and insightful style that is the author’s trademark, Dark Mirror is a true-life spy tale about the surveillance-industrial revolution and its discontents.

An expert on China’s global infrastructure expansion provides an urgent look at the battle to connect and control tomorrow’s networks.From the ocean floor to outer space, China’s Digital Silk Road aims to wire the world and rewrite the global order. Taking readers on a journey inside China’s surveillance state, rural America, and Africa’s megacities, Jonathan Hillman reveals what China’s expanding digital footprint looks like on the ground and explores the economic and strategic consequences of a future in which all routers lead to Beijing.If China becomes the world’s chief network operator, it could reap a commercial and strategic windfall, including many advantages currently enjoyed by the United States.It could reshape global flows of data, finance, and communications to reflect its interests. It could possess an unrivaled understanding of market movements, the deliberations of foreign competitors, and the lives of countless individuals enmeshed in its networks.However, China’s digital dominance is not yet assured. Beijing remains vulnerable in several key dimensions, the United States and its allies have an opportunity to offer better alternatives, and the rest of the world has a voice. But winning the battle for tomorrow’s networks will require the United States to innovate and take greater risks in emerging markets. Networks create large winners, and this is a contest America cannot afford to lose.

An exploration of the way videogames mount arguments and make expressive statements about the world that analyzes their unique persuasive power in terms of their computational properties.Videogames are an expressive medium, and a persuasive medium; they represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, Ian Bogost examines the way videogames mount arguments and influence players. Drawing on the 2,500-year history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive expression, Bogost analyzes rhetoric's unique function in software in general and videogames in particular. The field of media studies already analyzes visual rhetoric, the art of using imagery and visual representation persuasively. Bogost argues that videogames, thanks to their basic representational mode of procedurality (rule-based representations and interactions), open a new domain for persuasion; they realize a new form of rhetoric. Bogost calls this new form procedural rhetoric, a type of rhetoric tied to the core affordances of computers: running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation. He argues further that videogames have a unique persuasive power that goes beyond other forms of computational persuasion. Not only can videogames support existing social and cultural positions, but they can also disrupt and change these positions themselves, leading to potentially significant long-term social change. Bogost looks at three areas in which videogame persuasion has already taken form and shows considerable potential: politics, advertising, and learning.

Gain Instagram followers, grow your personal brand, and influence others with your authentic personality, beautiful photography, and stunningly curated grid.Instagram is the place where trends break, tastes are made, and brands are launched. Plus it's packed with insightful analytics and handy business tools to help you elevate your social media presence to the next level.Create, connect with others, and share the way you see the world! Whether your passion is fitness, fashion, food, or anything in between, you can turn that passion into a business, inspire others, and meet amazing people. Learn from Tezza (@tezza) and her friends how to tell compelling visual stories on the fastest-growing social media platform, with topics including photography tips, brand engagement strategies, and advice for finding management.InstaStyle is a must-have guide for a booming industry, full of beautiful imagery and easily understood guides to help you achieve your Instagram goals. Fans of Tezza will love seeing her photographs in beautiful book format while gaining a behind-the-scenes look at how she curates her brand. You'll learn how you can create an immediately recognizable grid aesthetic and showcase your life while remaining true to your personal brand.

In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels. That source turned out to be the twenty-nine-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency's widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security and information privacy.Now Greenwald fits all the pieces together, recounting his high-intensity eleven-day trip to Hong Kong, examining the broader implications of the surveillance detailed in his reporting for The Guardian, and revealing fresh information on the NSA's unprecedented abuse of power with documents from the Snowden archive.Fearless and incisive, No Place to Hide has already sparked outrage around the globe and been hailed by voices across the political spectrum as an essential contribution to our understanding of the U.S. surveillance state.

Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest, most respected, and most famous American hacking group of all time. Though until now it has remained mostly anonymous, its members invented the concept of hacktivism, released the top tool for testing password security, and created what was for years the best technique for controlling computers from afar, forcing giant companies to work harder to protect customers. They contributed to the development of Tor, the most important privacy tool on the net, and helped build cyberweapons that advanced US security without injuring anyone.With its origins in the earliest days of the Internet, the cDc is full of oddball characters -- activists, artists, even future politicians. Many of these hackers have become top executives and advisors walking the corridors of power in Washington and Silicon Valley. The most famous is former Texas Congressman and current presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, whose time in the cDc set him up to found a tech business, launch an alternative publication in El Paso, and make long-shot bets on unconventional campaigns.Today, the group and its followers are battling electoral misinformation, making personal data safer, and battling to keep technology a force for good instead of for surveillance and oppression. Cult of the Dead Cow shows how governments, corporations, and criminals came to hold immense power over individuals and how we can fight back against them.

Clear and easy-to follow instructions for using coding and scripting tools to create new, more advanced Roblox games.Take your game design to the next level, with this complete guide to Roblox coding and scripting!Learn how to code using the programing language Lua to create new objects and games in the Roblox world: from teleporting objects (or PCs/NPCs!), to adding and applying power ups, to creating a leaderboard, and allowing players to save their games. This book walks you through the basics of the studio tool, provides tutorials for specific actions and creations, then explains how to use all of that knowledge to create your own unique game world! With detailed instructions, example screenshots, and simple explanations of what code to use and how to use it, this book is a must-have guide for any Roblox game designer—from beginners to expert coders!