Computers & Technology (50)

Cutting through the hype, a practical guide to using artificial intelligence for business benefits and competitive advantage.In The AI Advantage, Thomas Davenport offers a guide to using artificial intelligence in business. He describes what technologies are available and how companies can use them for business benefits and competitive advantage. He cuts through the hype of the AI craze—remember when it seemed plausible that IBM's Watson could cure cancer?—to explain how businesses can put artificial intelligence to work now, in the real world. His key recommendation: don't go for the “moonshot” (curing cancer, or synthesizing all investment knowledge); look for the “low-hanging fruit” to make your company more efficient.Davenport explains that the business value AI offers is solid rather than sexy or splashy. AI will improve products and processes and make decisions better informed—important but largely invisible tasks. AI technologies won't replace human workers but augment their capabilities, with smart machines to work alongside smart people. AI can automate structured and repetitive work; provide extensive analysis of data through machine learning (“analytics on steroids”), and engage with customers and employees via chatbots and intelligent agents. Companies should experiment with these technologies and develop their own expertise.Davenport describes the major AI technologies and explains how they are being used, reports on the AI work done by large commercial enterprises like Amazon and Google, and outlines strategies and steps to becoming a cognitive corporation. This book provides an invaluable guide to the real-world future of business AI.

Outnumbered is a journey to the dark side of mathematics, from how it dictates our social media activities to our travel routes. Algorithms are running our society, and as Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal has revealed, we don't even realize how our data has been used against us. David Sumpter investigates whether mathematics is crossing dangerous lines when it comes to what we can make decisions about.

A revelatory exploration of the hottest trend in technology and the dramatic impact it will have on the economy, science, and society at large.Which paint color is most likely to tell you that a used car is in good shape? How can officials identify the most dangerous New York City manholes before they explode? And how did Google searches predict the spread of the H1N1 flu outbreak?The key to answering these questions, and many more, is big data. Big data refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it. This emerging science can translate myriad phenomena - from the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of books - into searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before. A revolution on par with the Internet or perhaps even the printing press, big data will change the way we think about business, health, politics, education, and innovation in the years to come. It also poses fresh threats, from the inevitable end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven't even done yet, based on big data's ability to predict our future behavior.In this brilliantly clear, often surprising work, two leading experts explain what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards.

Adrian Daub’s What Tech Calls Thinking is a lively dismantling of the ideas that form the intellectual bedrock of Silicon Valley. Equally important to Silicon Valley’s world-altering innovation are the language and ideas it uses to explain and justify itself. And often, those fancy new ideas are simply old motifs playing dress-up in a hoodie. From the myth of dropping out to the war cry of “disruption,” Daub locates the Valley’s supposedly original, radical thinking in the ideas of Heidegger and Ayn Rand, the New Age Esalen Foundation in Big Sur, and American traditions from the tent revival to predestination. Written with verve and imagination, What Tech Calls Thinking is an intellectual refutation of Silicon Valley's ethos, pulling back the curtain on the self-aggrandizing myths the Valley tells about itself.FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

Kevin Mitnick was the most elusive computer break-in artist in history. He accessed computers and networks at the world's biggest companies - and however fast the authorities were, Mitnick was faster, sprinting through phone switches, computer systems, and cellular networks. He spent years skipping through cyberspace, always three steps ahead and labeled unstoppable. But for Kevin, hacking wasn't just about technological feats - it was an old fashioned confidence game that required guile and deception to trick the unwitting out of valuable information.Driven by a powerful urge to accomplish the impossible, Mitnick bypassed security systems and blazed into major organizations including Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and Pacific Bell. But as the FBI's net began to tighten, Kevin went on the run, engaging in an increasingly sophisticated cat and mouse game that led through false identities, a host of cities, plenty of close shaves, and an ultimate showdown with the Feds, who would stop at nothing to bring him down.Ghost in the Wires is a thrilling true story of intrigue, suspense, and unbelievable escape, and a portrait of a visionary whose creativity, skills, and persistence forced the authorities to rethink the way they pursued him, inspiring ripples that brought permanent changes in the way people and companies protect their most sensitive information.

Just say "no" to piles of sticky notes and scraps of paper with your passwords and logins! Keep track of them in this elegant, yet inconspicuous, alphabetically tabbed black leatherette notebook.

Pro gaming's award-winning broadcaster Paul "Redeye" Chaloner brings us the definitive book on esports, the fastest growing entertainment phenomenon in the world today.

A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book of 2012A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012In this revealing account of how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II, George Dyson illuminates the nature of digital computers, the lives of those who brought them into existence, and how code took over the world.nbsp;In the 1940s and '50s, a small group of men and women--led by John von Neumann--gathered in Princeton, New Jersey, to begin building one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing's vision of a Universal Machine. The codes unleashed within this embryonic, 5-kilobyte universe--less memory than is allocated to displaying a single icon on a computer screen today--broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things, and our universe would never be the same. Turing's Cathedral is the story of how the most constructive and most destructive of twentieth-century inventions--the digital computer and the hydrogen bomb--emerged at the same time.

Master builders present thirty-six amazing Minecraft projects, ranging from the contemporary metropolis to past civilizations, and from fantasy kingdoms to futuristic zones. They offer advice about planning and design, as well as step-by-step tutorials for a range of structures at different levels of difficulty, including buildings, vehicles, streets, and more. Whether you're a seasoned mega builder or are considering putting together the smallest hut, prepare to be inspired!

From FSGO x Logic: a revealing examination of digital advertising and the internet's precarious foundationIn Subprime Attention Crisis, Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising - the beating heart of the internet?is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008.From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars, to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers’ attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself - much like subprime mortgages - is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet - and its free services - will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it.Deeply researched, convincing, and alarming, Subprime Attention Crisis will change the way you look at the internet, and its precarious future.FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

Get ready for the online adventures of one man who just wants to make friendsAnd one very annoyed worldBased on the ingenious Sir Michael Twitter account, How to (Almost) Make Friends on the Internet is the funniest book you'll read this year.Whether it's offering his services as a Karate Lawyer or Funeral DJ, devising the world's worst plan to get a free haircut, or trying to buy a blue bucket that may or may not be for sale, Michael just wants to connect with people.The only problem is that people are slightly less enthusiastic about connecting with him and the results are utterly hilarious.Warning: you'll never think about adding someone called Michael to a group chat the same way ever again.

By owning a smartphone, or using social media or a credit card, we hand over private data to corporations and the government. Attorney and data--privacy expert Heidi Boghosian dispels twenty-one myths related to surveillance so readers understand what data is being collected, who is gathering it, and how - and why - it matters.

Learn just enough design to complement your career or bring your ideas to life. Hello Web Design lays out all the style principles, handy shortcuts, and real-world examples you need to feel confident and motivated to do your own web design.

30-Second Data Scienceis the quickest way to discover how data is a driving force not just in the big issues, such as climate change and healthcare, but in our daily lives.  Data science is an entirely new discipline that encompasses a new era of information, from finding criminals to predicting epidemics. But there’s more to it than the vast quantities of information gathered by our computers, smartphones, and credit cards.  Carefully compiled by experts in the field, 30-Second Data Science covers the basic statistical principles that drive the algorithms, how data affects us in every way—science, society, business, pleasure—along with the ethical quandaries and its future promise of a better world. Each 30-Second entry details a different facet of data science in just 300 words and one picture, showing how the concept of bringing together different types of data, and using powerful computer programs to find patterns no human eye could spot, is already transforming our world. Exploring key ideas and featuring biographies of the people behind them, 30-Second Data Science explains clearly and concisely all you need to know about data science, from basics to ethics.

Stand out in the blogosphere! Blogging for Creatives teaches you everything you need to know about how to design and profit from a beautiful blog that people will want to return to again and again. Complete with hundreds of tips, tricks, and motivational stories from artistic bloggers who have started from scratch, Blogging for Creatives covers how to publish and host a blog, as well as keeping it fresh, staying motivated, and forging connections.Whether you're looking to create a platform for your creative trade, an inspirational journal, or a hub for people with similar tastes and interests, learn how to benefit from being part of the blogosphere in this accessible, non-techie guide.