Philip E. Agre: Computation and Human Experience (1997)
Filed under book | Tags: · artificial intelligence, computing, technology
“This book offers a critical reconstruction of the fundamental ideas and methods of artificial intelligence research. Through close attention to the metaphors of artificial intelligence and their consequences for the field’s patterns of success and failure, it argues for a reorientation of the field away from thought in the head and towards activity in the world. By considering computational ideas in a large, philosophical framework, the author eases critical dialogue between technology and the social sciences. AI can benefit from an understanding of the field in relation to human nature, and in return, it offers a powerful mode of investigation into the practicalities of physical realization.”
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1997
ISBN 0521386039, 9780521386036
Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives series
392 pages
David E. Nye: When the Lights Went Out: A History of Blackouts in America (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · electricity, fail, light, technology, united states
Where were you when the lights went out? At home during a thunderstorm? Preparing for air attack in World War II? In the Northeast in 1965, when the power failed from Toronto to the East coast? In New York City during a similar but more frightening blackout in 1977? In California when rolling blackouts hit in 2000? In 2003, when a cascading power failure left fifty million people in Canada and in the northeastern United States without electricity? We often remember vividly our time in the dark. In When the Lights Went Out, David Nye views power outages in America from 1935 to the present not simply as technical failures but variously as military tactic, social disruption, crisis in the networked city, outcome of political and economic decisions, sudden encounter with sublimity, and memories enshrined in photographs. Our electrically lit-up life is so natural to us that when the lights go off, the darkness seems abnormal.
Nye looks at America’s development of its electrical grid, which made large-scale power failures possible; military blackouts before and during the Second World War (“The silence was the big surprise of the blackout, the darkness discounted,” wrote Harold Ross in the New Yorker in 1942); New York City’s contrasting 1965 and 1977 blackout experiences (the first characterized by cooperation, the second by looting and disorder); the growth in consumer demand that led to rolling blackouts made worse by energy traders’ market manipulations; blackouts caused by terrorist attacks and sabotage; and, finally, the “greenout” (exemplified by the new tradition of “Earth Hour”), the voluntary reduction organized by environmental organizations.
Blackouts, writes Nye, are breaks in the flow of social time that reveal much about the trajectory of American history. Each time one occurs, Americans confront their essential condition–not as isolated individuals, but as a community that increasingly binds itself together with electrical wires and signals.
Publisher MIT Press, 2010
ISBN 0262013746, 9780262013741
304 pages
Stephen Baker: The Numerati (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · advertising, algorithm, blogging, computing, data, data mining, internet, mathematics, privacy, psychology, social media, surveillance, technology
An urgent look at how a global math elite is predicting and altering our behavior — at work, at the mall, and in bed.
Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior — what we buy, how we vote — without our even realizing it.
In this tour de force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we’re all entering — and to the people controlling that world. The Numerati have infiltrated every realm of human affairs, profiling us as workers, shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists — and lovers. The implications are vast. Our privacy evaporates. Our bosses can monitor and measure our every move (then reward or punish us). Politicians can find the swing voters among us, by plunking us all into new political groupings with names like “Hearth Keepers” and “Crossing Guards.” It can sound scary. But the Numerati can also work on our behalf, diagnosing an illness before we’re aware of the symptoms, or even helping us find our soul mate. Surprising, enlightening, and deeply relevant, The Numerati shows how a powerful new endeavor — the mathematical modeling of humanity — will transform every aspect of our lives.
Publisher Mariner Books, Boston/New York, 2008
ISBN 0618784608, 9780618784608
256 pages
review (Marcus du Sautoy, The Guardian)
review (Rob Walker, The New York Times)
review (Tim Walker, The Independent)