Author: Ian McEwan Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0385545126 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 291
Book Description
From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—”a sharply intelligent novel of ideas” (The New York Times) that asks whether a machine can understand the human heart, or whether we are the ones who lack understanding. Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London—where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence—Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he codesigns Adam's personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart—and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan's subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human—our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control. Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, coming in September!
Author: Gary Lee Downey Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136679138 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
Gary Lee Downey investigates the body/machine interface in his remarkable ethnography of computer engineers. Drawing on interviews, observations and personal interaction with engineers, he documents the everyday power of technology's dominant image in our society, a force widely regarded as monolithically progressive. The Machine in Me will lead the reader to understand how deeply connected we are to The Machine and how beneficial it would be for us to really understand ourselves and machines as partially configured of the other--we as part machine, machines as part human. In this way, we can begin to see both the power and limitations of technology.
Author: Lora Beth Johnson Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1984835939 Category : Young Adult Fiction Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
Andra wakes up from a cryogenic sleep 1,000 years later than she was supposed to, forcing her to team up with an exiled prince to navigate an unfamiliar planet in this smart, thrilling sci-fi adventure, perfect for fans of Renegades and Aurora Rising. When Andra wakes up, she's drowning. Not only that, but she's in a hot, dirty cave, it's the year 3102, and everyone keeps calling her Goddess. When Andra went into a cryonic sleep for a trip across the galaxy, she expected to wake up in a hundred years, not a thousand. Worst of all, the rest of the colonists--including her family and friends--are dead. They died centuries ago, and for some reason, their descendants think Andra's a deity. She knows she's nothing special, but she'll play along if it means she can figure out why she was left in stasis and how to get back to Earth. Zhade, the exiled bastard prince of Eerensed, has other plans. Four years ago, the sleeping Goddess's glass coffin disappeared from the palace, and Zhade devoted himself to finding it. Now he's hoping the Goddess will be the key to taking his rightful place on the throne--if he can get her to play her part, that is. Because if his people realize she doesn't actually have the power to save their dying planet, they'll kill her. With a vicious monarch on the throne and a city tearing apart at the seams, Zhade and Andra might never be able to unlock the mystery of her fate, let alone find a way to unseat the king, especially since Zhade hasn't exactly been forthcoming with Andra. And a thousand years from home, is there any way of knowing that Earth is better than the planet she's woken to?
Author: Katie Williams Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0525533133 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
FINALIST FOR 2018 KIRKUS PRIZE NAMED ONE OF THE "BEST LITERARY FICTION OF 2018' BY KIRKUS REVIEWS "Sci-fi in its most perfect expression…Reading it is like having a lucid dream of six years from next week, filled with people you don't know, but will." —NPR "[Williams’s] wit is sharp, but her touch is light, and her novel is a winner." – San Francisco Chronicle "Between seasons of Black Mirror, look to Katie Williams' debut novel." —Refinery29 Smart and inventive, a page-turner that considers the elusive definition of happiness. Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either. Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.
Author: Kate Haxell Publisher: C&T Publishing Inc ISBN: 1607052342 Category : Crafts & Hobbies Languages : en Pages : 133
Book Description
This jargon-free, fully illustrated guide to using your sewing machine explains essential techniques and offers easy projects for getting started. Straightforward and accessible, Me and My Sewing Machine contains everything you need to know to get the most out of your sewing machine. There are no intimidating specialty techniques, painstaking procedures, or complicated methods. Instead you will find easy-to-understand, practical and decorative techniques that make sewing simple, even if you have never used a machine before. Author and professional crafter Kate Haxell shares clever tips and shortcuts, as well as advice on when you can use these speedy methods and when it really is better to do something the traditional way. Everything is illustrated with step-by-step photography and finished samples. Haxell also includes easy sewing projects that are simple without skimping on style.
Author: Gery Greer Publisher: Turtleback Books ISBN: 9780833519757 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Steve buys a time machine at a garage sale and takes his friend Max to the year 1250, where they land in the middle of a jousting match, with the fierce Sir Bevis as an enemy.
Author: Alec Russell Publisher: PublicAffairs ISBN: 0786741473 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
Award-winning journalist Alec Russell was in South Africa to witness the fall of apartheid and the remarkable reconciliation of Nelson Mandela's rule; and returned in 2007-2008 to see Mandela's successor, Thabo Mbeki, fritter away the country's reputation. South Africa is now perched on a precipice, as it prepares to elect Jacob Zuma as president -- signaling a potential slide back to the bad old days of post-colonial African leadership, and disaster for a country that was once the beacon of the continent. Drawing on his long relationships with all the key senior figures including Mandela, Mbeki, Desmond Tutu, and Zuma, and a host of South Africans he has known over the years -- including former activists turned billionaires and reactionary Boers -- Alec Russell's Bring Me My Machine Gun is a beautifully told and expertly researched account of South Africa's great tragedy: the tragedy of hope unfulfilled.
Author: Ellen Ullman Publisher: Picador ISBN: 1250024587 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 209
Book Description
With a New Introduction by Jaron Lanier A Salon Best Book of the Year In 1997, the computer was still a relatively new tool---a sleek and unforgiving machine that was beyond the grasp of most users. With intimate and unflinching detail, software engineer Ellen Ullman examines the strange ecstasy of being at the forefront of the predominantly male technological revolution, and the difficulty of translating the inherent messiness of human life into artful and efficient code. Close to the Machine is an elegant and revelatory mediation on the dawn of the digital era.
Author: Arthur I. Miller Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262042851 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 429
Book Description
An authority on creativity introduces us to AI-powered computers that are creating art, literature, and music that may well surpass the creations of humans. Today's computers are composing music that sounds “more Bach than Bach,” turning photographs into paintings in the style of Van Gogh's Starry Night, and even writing screenplays. But are computers truly creative—or are they merely tools to be used by musicians, artists, and writers? In this book, Arthur I. Miller takes us on a tour of creativity in the age of machines. Miller, an authority on creativity, identifies the key factors essential to the creative process, from “the need for introspection” to “the ability to discover the key problem.” He talks to people on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence, encountering computers that mimic the brain and machines that have defeated champions in chess, Jeopardy!, and Go. In the central part of the book, Miller explores the riches of computer-created art, introducing us to artists and computer scientists who have, among much else, unleashed an artificial neural network to create a nightmarish, multi-eyed dog-cat; taught AI to imagine; developed a robot that paints; created algorithms for poetry; and produced the world's first computer-composed musical, Beyond the Fence, staged by Android Lloyd Webber and friends. But, Miller writes, in order to be truly creative, machines will need to step into the world. He probes the nature of consciousness and speaks to researchers trying to develop emotions and consciousness in computers. Miller argues that computers can already be as creative as humans—and someday will surpass us. But this is not a dystopian account; Miller celebrates the creative possibilities of artificial intelligence in art, music, and literature.
Author: Ian McEwan
Author: Gary Lee Downey
Author: Lora Beth Johnson
Author: Katie Williams
Author: Kate Haxell
Author: Marianna Mayer
Author: Gery Greer
Author: Alec Russell
Author: Ellen Ullman
Author: Arthur I. Miller