Genes, Technology, and Apocalypse PDF Download

Author: Yochai Ataria
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031591976
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Author: Bryan Walsh
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316449601
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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In this history of extinction and existential risk, a Newsweek and Bloomberg popular science and investigative journalist examines our most dangerous mistakes -- and explores how we can protect and future-proof our civilization. End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable -- and inevitable -- end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race. In End Times, Walsh examines threats that emerge from nature and those of our own making: asteroids, supervolcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, disease pandemics, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial intelligence. Walsh details the true probability of these world-ending catastrophes, the impact on our lives were they to happen, and the best strategies for saving ourselves, all pulled from his rigorous and deeply thoughtful reporting and research. Walsh goes into the room with the men and women whose job it is to imagine the unimaginable. He includes interviews with those on the front lines of prevention, actively working to head off existential threats in biotechnology labs and government hubs. Guided by Walsh's evocative, page-turning prose, we follow scientific stars like the asteroid hunters at NASA and the disease detectives on the trail of the next killer virus. Walsh explores the danger of apocalypse in all forms. In the end, it will be the depth of our knowledge, the height of our imagination, and our sheer will to survive that will decide the future.

Author: William V. Crockett
Publisher: Hudson Publishing
ISBN: 9780692784495
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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The Apocalypse Gene is a novel set at Yale University. It is a work of fiction but could easily be a chilling future reality, with recent advances in gene therapy. Ryan and Nicole are students at Yale who, despite their opposite upbringings, find common ground when they discover that a brilliant genetics professor has silently altered the DNA of almost everyone. At first they refuse to believe it. How could a stunning alteration of this magnitude happen without anyone knowing? But as they probe deeper, spying on the professor, sifting through his files, they make an incredible discovery, one that terrifies them. Desperate, they try to find help, but everywhere they turn-Ryan's coach, the police, even Nicole's influential family-they find great danger. Powerful factions not only want the devastation to occur, but want control of the professor's research for their own private gain, and to them, Ryan and Nicole are simply obstacles in the way. The Apocalypse Gene is a story of the secret world of genetics, of tiny, invisible particles that might one day devastate the lives of all humans. It's a story of family bonds broken, and young love tested, a story that will occupy your thoughts long after you put it down.

Author: Billy Crone
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1948766477
Category : Animal breeding
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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"What if I were to tell you that virtually every plant species known to mankind is on the verge of going out of existence? Then what if I were to inform you that all the animals on planet earth as we know them today are being genetically altered in ways that will have dreadful irreversible side effects?"--Back cover

Author: Billy Crone
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1948766485
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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What if I were to tell you that virtually every plant and animal species known to mankind is on the verge of going out of existence? Add to that the shocking news that mankind himself is being permanently modified to where the actual scientists performing these experiments upon humanity even admit that if we keep this up, "There will be no true humans left." All three nightmarish scenarios are not only happening around the world as we speak, but there is virtually little to no oversight to stop them, which means our planet is being thrust headlong into a horrible apocalyptic ending of Biblical proportions. Therefore, this book, Hybrids, Super Soldiers & the Coming Genetic Apocalypse Vol.2 seeks to equip you the reader with the hardcore scientific evidence and Biblical warnings from God concerning this modern day annihilation of virtually all life forms on the planet. Here you will see such shocking behaviors as: Human Enhancements, Human Animal Hybrids, Super Soldiers & Transhumanism.

Author: Ray Kurzweil
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101218886
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 992

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development. “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times “Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.

Author: John Troyer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262542315
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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“One of our greatest thinkers” on death presents a radical new approach to thinking about dying and the human corpse (Caitlin Doughty, mortician and bestselling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes). A fascinating exploration of the relationship between technology and the human corpse throughout history—from 19th-century embalming machines to 21st-century death-prevention technologies. Death and the dead body have never been more alive in the public imagination—not least because of current debates over modern medical technology that is deployed, it seems, expressly to keep human bodies from dying, blurring the boundary between alive and dead. In this book, John Troyer examines the relationship of the dead body with technology, both material and conceptual: the physical machines, political concepts, and sovereign institutions that humans use to classify, organize, repurpose, and transform the human corpse. Doing so, he asks readers to think about death, dying, and dead bodies in radically different ways. Troyer explains, for example, how technologies of the nineteenth century including embalming and photography, created our image of a dead body as quasi-atemporal, existing outside biological limits formerly enforced by decomposition. He describes the “Happy Death Movement” of the 1970s; the politics of HIV/AIDS corpse and the productive potential of the dead body; the provocations of the Body Worlds exhibits and their use of preserved dead bodies; the black market in human body parts; and the transformation of historic technologies of the human corpse into “death prevention technologies.” The consequences of total control over death and the dead body, Troyer argues, are not liberation but the abandonment of Homo sapiens as a concept and a species. In this unique work, Troyer forces us to consider the increasing overlap between politics, dying, and the dead body in both general and specifically personal terms.

Author: Lee Quinby
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816622795
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Anti-Apocalypse was first published in 1994. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. As the year 2000 looms, heralding a new millennium, apocalyptic thought abounds-and not merely among religious radicals. In politics, science, philosophy, popular culture, and feminist discourse, apprehensions of the End appear in images of cultural decline and urban chaos, forecasts of the end of history and ecological devastation, and visions of a new age of triumphant technology or a gender-free utopia. There is, Lee Quinby contends, a threatening "regime of truth" prevailing in the United States-and this regime, with its enforcement of absolute truth and morality, imperils democracy. In Anti-Apocalypse, Quinby offers a powerful critique of the millenarian rhetoric that pervades American culture. In doing so, she develops strategies for resisting its tyrannies. Drawing on feminist and Foucauldian theory, Quinby explores the complex relationship between power, truth, ethics, and apocalypse. She exposes the ramifications of this relationship in areas as diverse as jeanswear magazine advertising, the Human Genome project, contemporary feminism and philosophy, texts by Henry Adams and Zora Neale Hurston, and radical democratic activism. By bringing together such a wide range of topics, Quinby shows how apocalypse weaves its way through a vast network of seemingly unrelated discourses and practices. Tracing the deployment of power through systems of alliance, sexuality, and technology, Quinby reveals how these power relationships produce conflicting modes of subjectivity that create possibilities for resistance. She promotes a variety of critical stances—genealogical feminism, an ethics of the flesh, and "pissed criticism"—as challenges to apocalyptic claims for absolute truth and universal morality. Far-reaching in its implications for social and cultural theory as well as for political activism, Anti-Apocalypse will engage readers across the cultural spectrum and challenge them to confront one of the most subtle and insidious orthodoxies of our day. Lee Quinby is associate professor of English and American studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She is the author of Freedom, Foucault, and the Subject of America (1991) and coeditor (with Irene Diamond) of Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance (1988).

Author: Lewis Dartnell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143127047
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest—or even the most basic—technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, or even how to produce food for yourself? Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can’t hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn’t just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all—the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world.

Author: Sheila Jasanoff
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509522743
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the birth of the genetic age, a powerful vocabulary has emerged to express science’s growing command over the matter of life. Armed with knowledge of the code that governs all living things, biology and biotechnology are poised to edit, even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature’s mistakes. Yet, how far should the capacity to manipulate what life is at the molecular level authorize science to define what life is for? This book looks at flash points in law, politics, ethics, and culture to argue that science’s promises of perfectibility have gone too far. Science may have editorial control over the material elements of life, but it does not supersede the languages of sense-making that have helped define human values across millennia: the meanings of autonomy, integrity, and privacy; the bonds of kinship, family, and society; and the place of humans in nature.