Jason Brownlee: Clever Algorithms: Nature-Inspired Programming Recipes (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · algorithm, artificial intelligence, biology, code, genetics, mathematics, nature, programming, software
“This book provides a handbook of algorithmic recipes from the fields of Metaheuristics, Biologically Inspired Computation and Computational Intelligence that have been described in a complete, consistent, and centralized manner. These standardized descriptions were carefully designed to be accessible, usable, and understandable. Most of the algorithms described in this book were originally inspired by biological and natural systems, such as the adaptive capabilities of genetic evolution and the acquired immune system, and the foraging behaviors of birds, bees, ants and bacteria. An encyclopedic algorithm reference, this book is intended for research scientists, engineers, students, and interested amateurs. Each algorithm description provides a working code example in the Ruby Programming Language.”
First Edition. LuLu. January 2011
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License
ISBN 9781446785065
436 pages
Author (incl. source code and additional resources)
lulu.com
PDF (updated on 2013-3-24)
HTML
Slavoj Žižek: Living in the End Times (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · apartheid, biotechnology, capitalism, communism, ecology, financial crisis, genetics, intellectual property, philosophy, political economy
There should no longer be any doubt: global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis. Slavoj Zizek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. But, he asks, if the end of capitalism seems to many like the end of the world, how is it possible for Western society to face up to the end times? In a major new analysis of our global situation, Slavok Zizek argues that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the stages of grief: ideological denial, explosions of anger and attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and withdrawal.
After passing through this zero-point, we can begin to perceive the crisis as a chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong put it, “There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.” Slavoj Zizek shows the cultural and political forms of these stages of ideological avoidance and political protest, from New Age obscurantism to violent religious fundamentalism. Concluding with a compelling argument for the return of a Marxian critique of political economy, Zizek also divines the wellsprings of a potentially communist culture—from literary utopias like Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.
Publisher Verso, 2010
ISBN 184467598X, 9781844675982
Length 416 pages
PDF (no OCR; updated on 2012-4-15)
Comment (0)Langdon Winner: The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (1986)
Filed under book | Tags: · critique of technology, deep ecology, ecology, environment, genetics, history of technology, philosophy of technology, technē, technology
“This collection of ten essays explores the social, political, and philosophical ramifications of the information technologies. While Winner looks at computer networking, nuclear reactors, genetic engineering, the so-called appropriate-technology movement and a variety of other specific issues, his main focus is on the way we think about technology.”
Publisher University of Chicago Press
ISBN 0226902110, 9780226902111
xiv+200 pages
Reviews: Craig Calhoun (Science, 1986), David Dickson (New York Times, 1986), James R. Temples (American Political Science Review, 1987), Stanley R. Carpenter (J Business Ethics, 1987), Slawomir Magala (Organization Studies, 1989), Scott London (1995), Heather Wiltse (2008).
PDF (updated on 2012-7-17)
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