hittingthebooks
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Hitting the Books: Is the hunt for technological supremacy harming our collective humanity?
In his new book, Erik J Larson investigates the efforts to build computers that process information like we do and why we're much farther away from having human-equivalent AIs than most futurists would care to admit.
Hitting the Books: Why Travis Kalanick got Uber into the self-driving car game
Autonomous vehicle developers have faced myriad similar challenged over the past three decades but nothing, it seems, turns the wheels of innovation quite like a bit of good, old-fashioned competition — one which DARPA was only more than happy to provide. In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, Insider senior editor and former Wired Transportation editor, Alex Davies takes the reader on an immersive tour of DARPA’s “Grand Challenges” — the agency’s autonomous vehicle trials which drew top talents from across academia and the private sector in effort to spur on the state of autonomous vehicle technology — as well as profiles many of the elite engineers that took place in the competitions. In the excerpt below however Davies recalls how, back in 2014, then-CEO Travis Kalanick steered Uber into the murky waters of autonomous vehicle technology, setting off a flurry of acquihires, buyouts, furious R&D efforts, and one fatal accident — only to end up selling off the division this past December.
Hitting the Books: Kenya's digital divide is hampering its mobile money revolution
While mobile money apps have been slow to gain acceptance in the US, they’ve taken other nations like Sweden, China and especially Kenya by storm, enabling people for whom conventional banking has remained out of reach new ways to send, receive and invest their hard-earned cash. In Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution, author Sibel Kusimba examines how apps like M-Pesa have radically adjusted the ways in which everyday people throughout Africa manage their money. In the excerpt below, Kusima looks at the financial roadblocks that prevents a significant portion of the country’s population from participating in this emerging digital economy.
Hitting the Books: The continuing controversies surrounding e-cig safety
In Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them, Dr. Seema Yasmin examines controversies surrounding the tobacco replacement technology — as well as a host of other pieces of “common” medical knowledge. Excerpted from Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall For Them by Dr. Seema Yasmin, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. In the spring of 2019, young people, mostly young men in Illinois and Wisconsin, began to fall sick with a strange lung disease.
Hitting the Books: AI doctors and the dangers tiered medical care
Frank Pasquale’s 'New Laws of Robotics' shows how the promise of faster, more efficient medical diagnoses from AIs can also be a double-edged sword, cutting off access to the quality care provided by human doctors.
Hitting the Books: Smaller cameras and projectors helped the Allies win WWII
During the war, SMPE meetings regularly hosted participants active in the military who reported about military film use. Before and throughout the war, American captains, lieutenants, majors, and corporals alike presented to the SMPE on military film activities.
Hitting the Books: The racist underpinnings of incel ideology
In public view, the conversation was extreme, and saturated with racism. I feel despair and rage. that’s why I want to join—I am a truecel and I want to talk to others like me. I feel very alone and very angry and I want to talk to others. I was in.
Hitting the Books: What do we want our AI-powered future to look like?
For example, the artificial intelligence principles of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development emphasize the human ability to challenge AI-based outcomes. We desperately need an “off ” switch for all AI and robotics in my opinion.
Hitting the Books: How Bell Labs jump-started the multimedia art movement
Like [Frank J.] Malina and Klüver, Pierce’s interests extended far beyond engineering. Pierce proved remarkably tolerant of Klüver’s art-and-technology efforts, seeing these as activities that could benefit engineers as well as artists.
Hitting the Books: How autonomous EVs could help solve climate change
Climate change is far and away the greatest threat of the modern human era — a crisis that will only get worse the longer we dither — with American car culture as a major contributor to the nation’s greenhouse emissions. In his latest book, Our Livable World, science and technology analyst Marc Shaus, takes readers on a fascinating tour of the emerging tools — from “smart highways” to jet fuel made from trash — that will not only help curb climate change but perhaps even usher in a new, more sustainable, livable world. In terms of our worst areas for carbon emissions, transportation and electricity production easily top the list.
Hitting the Books: How NYC's iconic subway system shaped the city
New York’s subway system is an intrinsic aspect of the city’s identity, as much so as the Brooklyn Bridge or Empire State Building. New York simply wouldn’t be New York without its trains, a critical connective infrastructure that moved approximately 5.5 million people every single day in 2019. In his new book, Subway: The Curiosities, Secrets, and Unofficial History of the New York City Transit System, author John Morris takes readers on a fascinating trip through the history of the iconic urban rail system, from its founding through its explosive mid-century expansion, to its decline in the 1970s and rebirth in the modern era.
Hitting the Books: What really goes into your artisanal cheese
In American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World, author Joe Berkowitz takes readers on an incredible journey through the heart of the modern cheese-making/cheese-enjoying industry. In the excerpt below, Berkowitz visits an artisanal cheese facility in Northern California, bonds with “the girls” who make the milk, and learns how green making orange can be. Just as I’m about ready to give up, I find a sloping gravel path riven through a grassy hill that leads to Point Reyes Farmstead Creamery.
Hitting the Books: How one of our first 'smart' weapons helped stop the Nazis
The ship had never faced a raid of such intensity. The Lexington’s antiaircraft guns could not protect the ship. When it was over, the Lexington’s gunners had shot down only six of the fifty-four Japanese aircraft in the assault group. The ship’s insides were as alien to Roberts as its cluttered skin.
Hitting the Books: Widespread DNA testing could intensify American racism
Every time we log on, our personal data including where we go, what we search for, who we interact with and what we buy is scraped, siphoned, collected, analyzed, categorized and monetized in the everlasting effort to design and distribute more effective, more personalized advertising. In her latest book, Cyber Privacy: Who Has Your Data and Why You Should Care cybersecurity expert April Falcon Doss examines what sorts of data are being collected, how they’re being used (to both our benefit and detriment) and what can be done to keep your digital life history from being leaked across the internet. In the excerpt below, Doss takes a terrifying look at how our infatuation with Ancestry.com and other genealogical testing services has metastasized into a means for the Border Patrol and ICE to further harass and discriminate against black and brown people in America.
Hitting the Books: The latest 'Little Brother' is a stark cybersecurity thriller
Back in 2008, New York Times best-selling author and Boing Boing alum, Cory Doctorow introduced Markus “w1n5t0n” Yallow to the world in the original Little Brother (which you can still read for free right here). It follows Yallow’s archrival, Masha Maximow, an equally talented hacker who finds herself working as a counterterrorism expert for a multinational security firm.
Hitting the Books: How to fight gerrymandering with math
Math is more than a bevy of equations that you learned in school and promptly forgot upon graduation — it is the language of our universe. Mathematics helps explain everything from the manner in which viruses spread to the speeds at which galaxies rotate. In Supermath: The Power of Numbers for Good and Bad, math teacher and author Anna Weltman delves into how mathematics’ impact can be felt throughout science, politics, history, education, and art.
Hitting the Books: How colonialism unified the Western world's clocks
Four ships — Shovell’s flagship Association, the Eagle, the Romney, and the Firebrand — ran aground on the rocks and quickly sank. This is, after all, the more usual means by which scientific knowledge creeps forward.
Hitting the Books: The invisible threat that every ISS astronaut fears
“Station, Houston, execute ammonia leak emergency response, I say again, execute emergency response, ammonia leak, this is not a drill!”
Hitting the Books: How social media keeps us clicking
What then happens to our brains on social media?
Hitting the books: How China uses AI to influence its 1.4 billion citizens
Today, states and their actors are waging a digital cold war with artificial intelligence systems at the heart of the fight. In T-Minus AI, the US Air Force’s first Chairperson for Artificial Intelligence, Michael Kanaan examines the emergence of AI as a tool for maintaining and expanding State power. Russia, for example, is pushing for AI in every aspect of its military complex, while China, as you can see in the excerpt below, has taken a more holistic approach, with the technology infiltrating virtually all strata of Chinese society.
