Mit Press
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A concise, accessible introduction to language endangerment and why it is one of the most urgent challenges of our times.
58% of the world's languages--or, approximately 4,000 languages--are endangered. When we break this figure down, we realize that roughly ten percent of languages have fewer than ten language keepers. And, if one language stops being used every three months, this means that in the next 100 years, if we do nothing, 400 more languages will become dormant. In -
A concise introduction to cyborg theory that examines the way in which technology is situated, political, and embodied.
This introduction to cyborg theory provides a critical vantage point for analyzing the claims around emerging technologies like automation, robots, and AI. -
A serious look at competition problems in tech markets and whether antitrust law can help address them.
In recent years, the astronomical rise of tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft has been criticized as anticompetitive, and many have wondered if antitrust law can help protect workers and consumers. In -
How to make AI capable of general intelligence, and what such technology would mean for society.
Artificial intelligence surrounds us. More and more of the systems and services you interact with every day are based on AI technology. Although some very recent AI systems are generalists to a degree, most AI is narrowly specific; that is, it can only do a single thing, in a single context. For example, your spellchecker can't do mathematics, and the world''s best chess-playing program can't play Tetris. Human intelligence is different. We can solve a variety of tasks, including those we have not seen before. In -
A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism.
Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In -
WHITE SIGHT - VISUAL POLITICS AND PRACTICES OF WHITENESS
Nicholas Mirzoeff
- Mit Press
- 14 Février 2023
- 9780262047678
From the author of White supremacy is not only perpetuated by laws and police but also by visual culture and distinctive ways of seeing. Nicholas Mirzoeff argues that this form of white sight has a history. By understanding that it was not always a common practice, we can devise better ways to dismantle it. Spanning centuries across this wide-ranging text, Mirzoeff connects Renaissance innovations--from the invention of perspective and the erection of Apollo statues as monuments to (white) beauty and power to the rise of racial capitalism dependent on slave labor--with the ever-expanding surveillance technologies of the twenty-first century to show that white sight creates an oppressively racializing world, in which subjects who do not appear as white are under constant threat of violence.
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Analyzing recent events like the George Floyd protests and the Central Park birdwatching incident, Mirzoeff suggests that we are experiencing a general crisis of white supremacy that presents both opportunities and threats to social justice. If we do not seize this moment to dismantle white sight, then white supremacy might surge back stronger than ever. To that end, he highlights activist interventions to strike the power of the white heteropatriarchal gaze. -
THE ELEMENTS OF COMPUTING SYSTEMS, SECOND EDITION - BUILDING A MODERN COMPUTER FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES
Noam Nisan
- Mit Press
- 15 Juin 2021
- 9780262539807
A new and extensively revised edition of a popular textbook used in universities, coding boot camps, hacker clubs, and online courses.The best way to understand how computers work is to build one from scratch, and this textbook leads learners through twelve chapters and projects that gradually build the hardware platform and software hierarchy for a simple but powerful computer system. In the process, learners gain hands-on knowledge of hardware, architecture, operating systems, programming languages, compilers, data structures and algorithms, and software engineering. Using this constructive approach, the book introduces learners to a significant body of computer science knowledge and demonstrates how theoretical and applied techniques taught in other computer science courses fit into the overall picture. The outcome of these efforts is known as Nand to Tetris: a journey that starts with the most elementary logic gate, called Nand, and ends, twelve projects later, with a general-purpose computer system capable of running Tetris.
The first edition of this popular textbook inspired Nand to Tetris classes in universities, coding boot camps, hacker clubs, and online course platforms. This second edition has been extensively revised. It has been restructured into two distinct parts--Part I, hardware, and Part II, software--with six projects in each part. All chapters and projects have been rewritten, with an emphasis on separating abstraction from implementation, and many new sections, figures, and examples have been added. Substantial new appendixes offer focused presentation on technical and theoretical topics. -
An accessible introduction to the simple (yet radical) premise that a small cash income, sufficient for basic needs, ought to be provided regularly and unconditionally to every citizen.
The growing movement for universal basic income (UBI) has been gaining attention from politics and the media with the audacious idea of a regular, unconditional cash grant for everyone as a right of citizenship. This volume in the Essential Knowledge series presents the first short, solid UBI introduction that is neither academic nor polemic. It takes a position in favor of UBI, but its primary goal remains the provision of essential knowledge by answering the fundamental questions about it: What is UBI? How does it work? What are the arguments for and against it? What is the evidence?
Karl Widerquist discusses how UBI functions, showing how it differs from other redistributional approaches. He summarizes the common arguments for and against UBI and presents the reasons for believing it is a tremendously important reform. The book briefly discusses the likely cost of UBI; options for paying for it; the existing evidence on the probable effects of UBI; and the history of UBI from its inception more than two hundred years ago through the two waves of support it received in the twentieth century to the third and largest wave of support it is experiencing now. Now more than ever, conditions in much of the world are ripe for such enthusiasm to keep growing, and there are good reasons to believe that this current wave of support will eventually lead to the adoption of UBI in several countries around the world--making this volume an especially timely and necessary read. -
CHATGPT AND THE FUTURE OF AI ; THE DEEP LANGUAGE REVOLUTION
Terrence J Sejnowski
- Mit Press
- 29 Octobre 2024
- 9780262049252
An insightful exploration of Chat GPT and other advanced AI systems--how we got here, where we're headed, and what it all means for how we interact with the world.
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The future is present : Art, technology, and the work of mobile image
Philip Glahn, Cary Levine
- Mit Press
- 18 Juin 2024
- 9780262548076
A critical history of the pioneering art and technology group Mobile Image and their prescient work in communications, networking, and information systems.
In The Future Is Present, Philip Glahn and Cary Levine tell the fascinating history of the visionary art group Mobile Image-founded by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz in 1977-which appropriated emerging technologies, from satellites to electronic message platforms. Based in Los Angeles, this under-studied collective worked amid urban crisis, a techno-boom, consolidating media power, and ascendant neoliberal politics. Mobile Image challenged fundamental conventions of the public sphere, democracy, communication, and political participation, as well as notions of power, representation, and identity.
Glahn and Levine argue not only for the historical importance of Mobile Image, but also for a critical artistic process that is at once analytic and transformative. They weave themes such as embodiment and its mediation, public/private dialectics, and techno-utopian vision throughout the book, binding these projects to discourses around race, gender, and class, as well as margin and center, the local and the global. In today's world of ubiquitous digital re/production, networking, and social media, The Future Is Present shows how the work of Mobile Image continues to have profound implications for art, technology, and the politics of public and private experience. -
BLOCKCHAIN GOVERNANCE
Primavera De Filippi, Wessel Reijers, Mo Mannan
- Mit Press
- 20 Août 2024
- 9780262549059
An engaging and comprehensive exploration of how fundamental ideas in political and legal thought shape the governance of blockchain communities, and are, in turn, shaped by blockchain technology.
How can digital cash truly be "trustless"? What does it mean that blockchain offers a new paradigm of the "rule of code"? How are decisions made when a blockchain system faces an emergency, and who gets to make those decisions? In -
The "mapness of maps"--how maps live in interaction with their users, and what this tells us about what they are and how they work.
In a sense, maps are temporarily alive for those who design, draw, and use them. They have, for the moment, a cognitive life. To grapple with what this means--to ask how maps can be alive, and what kind of life they have--is to explore the core question of what maps are. And this is what Roberto Casati does in -
A broad introduction to cryptography--what it is, how it really works, what its future holds, and why every informed citizen should understand its basics.
We all keep secrets--from our gym locker codes to our email passwords to our online interactions. And we choose to share those secrets only with those whom we trust. So, too, do organizations, businesses, governments, and armies. In this fascinating book -
The first English-language translation of an essential, early work key to understanding the French philosopher''s later thought.
In the decade prior to the publication of -
An eminently readable overview of the history and physics of galaxies.
In -
From the bestselling author of
How many times have we looked for something and found something else? A partner, a job, an object? The same thing happens often to scientists: they design an experiment and discover the unexpected, which usually turns out to be very important. This fascinating phenomenon is called serendipity, which takes its name from the mythical Serendib, a place from which, according to a Persian fable, three princes set off to explore the world, making chance discoveries along the way. In -
ATTENTION IS DISCOVERY ; THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF ASTRONOMER HENRIETTA LEAVITT
Anna Von Mertens
- Mit Press
- 17 Septembre 2024
- 9780262049382
A portrait of trailblazing astronomer Henrietta Leavitt and an illustrated exploration of the power of attention in scientific observation, artistic creation, and the making of meaning.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has a diameter of about 100,000 light years--a figure we can calculate because of the work of Henrietta Leavitt (1868-1921), who spent decades studying glass plate photographs of the night sky. Visual artist and researcher Anna Von Mertens's< Attention Is Discovery< is a fascinating portrait of this remarkable woman who laid the foundation for modern cosmology, as well as an exploration of the power of looking and its revelatory role at the center of scientific discovery. Ushering us into the scientific community of women who worked alongside Leavitt, now known as the Harvard Computers, Von Mertens describes the inventive methodologies Leavitt devised to negotiate the era's emerging photographic technology.
Interspersed with Von Mertens's meticulously researched and lyrically written essays are collaborations with art historian Jennifer Roberts, cosmologist Wendy Freedman, astrophysicist João Alves, and novelist Rebecca Dinerstein Knight. Alongside Leavitt's process, evident in her astronomical logbooks and ink notations on the glass plates, Von Mertens includes details of the hand-stitched quilts and graphite drawings that she made in response to Leavitt's legacy. This interweaving of text and image engages and rewards the reader's own close attention. Highlighting ways that subtle, repeated actions build meaning--whether skilled, technical observation, the crafting of an object, or the mundane tasks that construct our exquisite lives--Von Mertens's pairing of close looking with close reading creates a layered portrait of Henrietta Leavitt that acknowledges the significance of her discovery and the richness of its inheritance. -
THE AI PLAYBOOK ; MASTERING THE RARE ART OF MACHINE LEARNING DEPLOYMENT
Eric Siegel
- Mit Press
- 6 Février 2024
- 9780262048903
In his bestselling first book, Eric Siegel explained how machine learning works. Now, in
The greatest tool is the hardest to use. Machine learning is the world's most important general-purpose technology--but it's notoriously difficult to launch. Outside Big Tech and a handful of other leading companies, machine learning initiatives routinely fail to deploy, never realizing value. What's missing? A specialized business practice suitable for wide adoption. In -
TAMING SILICON VALLEY ; HOW WE CAN ENSURE THAT AI WORKS FOR US
Gary F Marcus
- Mit Press
- 17 Septembre 2024
- 9780262551069
How Big Tech is taking advantage of us, how AI is making it;worse, and how we can create a thriving, AI-positive world.
On balance, will AI help humanity or harm it? AI could revolutionize science, medicine, and technology, and deliver us a world of abundance and better health. Or it could be a disaster, leading to the downfall of democracy, or even our extinction. In -
THE CITY IN THE CITY ; ARCHITECTURE AND CHANGE IN LONDON'S FINANCIAL DISTRICT
Amy Thomas
- Mit Press
- 26 Décembre 2023
- 9780262048415
An exploration of the dramatic transformation of London's financial district after 1945, viewed at four spatial scales: city, street, facade, interior.
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THE DEMAND REVOLUTION ; HOW CONSUMERS ARE REDEFINING SUSTAINABILITY AND TRANSFORMING THE
Andreas Von Der Gathen, Nicolai Broby Eckert, Ka
- Mit Press
- 8 Octobre 2024
- 9780262049320
How consumer desire for sustainability is powering the first demand-driven, transformative megatrend--and how business leaders can make the most of this important moment.
Sustainability is rocking the business world as profoundly as global trends of the past have, from electrification to digitalization. But unlike previous revolutions, this one is being driven by consumers, for whom environmentally sound practices matter as much as price, quality, and brand. In -
The art of the mix creates a new language of creativity."Once you get into the flow of things, you''re always haunted by the way that things could have turned out. This outcome, that conclusion. You get my drift. The uncertainty is what holds the story together, and that''s what I''m going to talk about."--Rhythm ScienceThe conceptual artist Paul Miller, also known as Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid, delivers a manifesto for rhythm science--the creation of art from the flow of patterns in sound and culture, "the changing same." Taking the Dj''s mix as template, he describes how the artist, navigating the innumerable ways to arrange the mix of cultural ideas and objects that bombard us, uses technology and art to create something new and expressive and endlessly variable. Technology provides the method and model; information on the web, like the elements of a mix, doesn''t stay in one place. And technology is the medium, bridging the artist''s consciousness and the outside world.Miller constructed his Dj Spooky persona ("spooky" from the eerie sounds of hip-hop, techno, ambient, and the other music that he plays) as a conceptual art project, but then came to see it as the opportunity for "coding a generative syntax for new languages of creativity." For example: "Start with the inspiration of George Herriman''s Krazy Kat comic strip. Make a track invoking his absurd landscapes...What do tons and tons of air pressure moving in the atmosphere sound like? Make music that acts a metaphor for that kind of immersion or density." Or, for an online "remix" of two works by Marcel Duchamp: "I took a lot of his material written on music and flipped it into a DJ mix of his visual material--with him rhyming!" Tracing the genealogy of rhythm science, Miller cites sources and influences as varied as Ralph Waldo Emerson ("all minds quote"), Grandmaster Flash, W. E. B Dubois, James Joyce, and Eminem. "The story unfolds while the fragments coalesce," he writes. Miller''s textual provocations are designed for maximum visual and tactile seduction by the international studio COMA (Cornelia Blatter and Marcel Hermans). They sustain the book''s motifs of recontextualizing and relayering, texts and images bleed through from page to page, creating what amount to 2.5 dimensional vectors. From its remarkable velvet flesh cover, to the die cut hole through the center of the book, which reveals the colored nub holding in place the included audio CD, Rhythm Science: Excerpts and Allegories from the Sub Rosa Archives, this pamphlet truly lives up to Editorial Director Peter Lunenfeld''s claim that the Mediawork Pamphlets are "theoretical fetish objects...''zines for grown-ups."
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Nouv.
A richly illustrated exploration of humanity's drive to shape life as a spatial project, from Plato's time to the digital era.
Place is something real, but space is generally conceived as abstract and immaterial. In
Expertly connecting ideas with clear examples from lived experiences, Bardt's revolutionary framework will appeal to a broad readership, particularly those who are interested in the theoretical and philosophical aspects of spaces. In an age where digital media has dissolved, instead of increased, our sense of connection, -
INVENTION AND INNOVATION ; A BRIEF HISTORY OF HYPE AND FAILURE
Vaclav Smil
- Mit Press
- 3 Septembre 2024
- 9780262551014
From the
Included in BILL GATES''s 2023 Holiday Reading List
Included in Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2023
Included in The Next Big Idea Club's February 2023 Must-Read Books
"Every Smil book that I own is marked up with lots of notes that I take while reading.
