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A romance of the far future, in which humankind has relocated underground, where it is beset by monsters from another dimension—but love leads on.In the far future, humankind’s survivors huddle below Earth’s frozen surface in a pyramidal fortress-city that, for centuries now, has been under siege by loathsome “Ab-humans,” enormous slugs and spiders, and malevolent “Watching Things” from another dimension. When our unnamed protagonist receives a telepathic distress signal from a woman whom (in a previous incarnation) he’d once loved, he sallies forth on an ill-advised rescue mission—into the fiend-haunted Night Land!“Like certain rare dreams,” C. S. Lewis wrote of Hodgson’s masterpiece, The Night Land can give “sensations we never had before and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience.” H. P. Lovecraft agreed that this is “one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written.”William Hope Hodgson (1877–1918) was an English poet, sailor, bodybuilder, and weird fiction pioneer whose horror, fantastic, and proto-sf novels—in addition to The Night Land—include The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” (1907), The House on the Borderland (1908), and The Ghost Pirates (1909). He also wrote stories in the Sargasso Sea series, the Captain Gault series, and a series about the occult detective Carnacki.
A satire set in a future England, in which a neomedievalist contest among London neighborhoods takes a disastrous turn.When Auberon Quin, a prankster nostalgic for Merrie Olde England, becomes king of that country in 1984, he mandates that each of London’s neighborhoods become an independent state, complete with unique local costumes. Everyone goes along with the conceit until young Adam Wayne, a born military tactician, takes the game too seriously . . . and becomes the Napoleon of Notting Hill. War ensues throughout the city—fought with sword and halberd!G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English author, poet, critic, and newspaper columnist known for his brilliant, epigrammatic paradoxes. His best-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown, featured in over fifty stories published between 1910 and 1936, who solves mysteries and crimes thanks to his understanding of spiritual and philosophic truths; and his best-known novel is The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), a metaphysical thriller. In addition to The Napoleon of Notting Hill, his first novel, he wrote several other near-future satires of England.
A unique exploration of teleonomy—also known as “evolved purposiveness”—as a major influence in evolution by a broad range of specialists in biology and the philosophy of science.The evolved purposiveness of living systems, termed “teleonomy” by chronobiologist Colin Pittendrigh, has been both a major outcome and causal factor in the history of life on Earth. Many theorists have appreciated this over the years, going back to Lamarck and even Darwin in the nineteenth century. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the complex, dynamic process of evolution was simplified into the one-way, bottom-up, single gene-centered paradigm widely known as the modern synthesis. In Evolution “On Purpose,” edited by Peter A. Corning, Stuart A. Kauffman, Denis Noble, James A. Shapiro, Richard I. Vane-Wright, and Addy Pross, some twenty theorists attempt to modify this reductive approach by exploring in depth the different ways in which living systems have themselves shaped the course of evolution.Evolution “On Purpose” puts forward a more inclusive theoretical synthesis that goes far beyond the underlying principles and assumptions of the modern synthesis to accommodate work since the 1950s in molecular genetics, developmental biology, epigenetic inheritance, genomics, multilevel selection, niche construction, physiology, behavior, biosemiotics, chemical reaction theory, and other fields. In the view of the authors, active biological processes are responsible for the direction and the rate of evolution. Essays in this collection grapple with topics from the two-way “read-write” genome to cognition and decision-making in plants to the niche-construction activities of many organisms to the self-making evolution of humankind. As this collection compellingly shows, and as bacterial geneticist James Shapiro emphasizes, “The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable.”
A comprehensive history and examination of global infrastructures and the outsized role they play in our lives.Infrastructure is essential to defining how the public functions, yet there is little public knowledge regarding why and how it became today’s strongest global force over government and individual lives. Who should build and maintain infrastructures? How are they to be protected? And why are they all in such bad shape? In Lifelines of Our Society, Dirk van Laak offers broad audiences a history of global infrastructures—focused on Western societies, over the past two hundred years—that considers all their many paradoxes. He illustrates three aspects of infrastructure: their development, their influence on nation building and colonialism, and finally, how individuals internalize infrastructure and increasingly become not only its user but regulator.Beginning with public works, infrastructure in the nineteenth century carried the hope that it would facilitate world peace. Van Laak shows how, instead, it transformed to promote consumerism’s individual freedoms and our notions of work, leisure, and fulfillment. Lifelines of Our Society reveals how today’s infrastructure is both a source and a reflection of concentrated power and economic growth, which takes the form of cities under permanent construction. Symbols of power, van Laak describes, come with vulnerability, and this book illustrates the dual nature of infrastructure’s potential to hold nostalgia and inspire fear, to ease movement and govern ideas, and to bring independence to the nuclear family and control governments of the Global South.
Why games are still niche and not mainstream, and how journalism can help them gain cultural credibility.Mainstreaming and Game Journalism addresses both the history and current practice of game journalism, along with the roles writers and industry play in conveying that the medium is a “mainstream” form of entertainment. Through interviews with reporters, David B. Nieborg and Maxwell Foxman retrace how the game industry and journalists started a subcultural spiral in the 1980s that continues to this day. Digital play became increasingly exclusionary by appealing to niche audiences, relying on hardcore fans and favoring the male gamer stereotype. At the same time, this culture pushed journalists to the margins, leaving them toiling to find freelance gigs and deeply ambivalent about their profession.Mainstreaming and Game Journalism also examines the bumpy process of what we think of as “mainstreaming.” The authors argue that it encompasses three overlapping factors. First, for games to become mainstream, they need to become more ubiquitous through broader media coverage. Second, an increase in ludic literacy, or how-to play games, determines whether that greater visibility translates into accessibility. Third, the mainstreaming of games must gain cultural legitimacy. The fact that games are more visible does little if only a few people take them seriously or deem them worthy of attention. Ultimately, Mainstreaming and Game Journalism provocatively questions whether games ever will—or even should—gain widespread cultural acceptance.
A provocative look at the unconscious mind that challenges contemporary perceptions and exposes the indefensible science that fostered them.How much of a role does the unconscious play in our decision making? In Open Minded: Searching for Truth about the Unconscious Mind, authors Ben R. Newell and David R. Shanks would argue: not very much. Behavioral science and public discourse have placed an outsized emphasis on the unconscious mind when it comes to understanding human behavior. Pursuing trails of fraud, intrigue, and claims about the power of unconscious thought, Newell and Shanks scrutinize the science that has contributed to our conventional wisdom and offer an important counterpoint to the ever-stronger traction that the unconscious mind has gained in public debate, such as the now ubiquitous claim that unconscious bias plays a large role in people’s decisions and behavior.Open Minded is divided into two sections: the first examines the modern understanding of the conscious mind, and the second shifts the focus to how to reform current research. Focusing on the core processes of decision making, Newell and Shanks cut through many questionable claims about unconscious behavior. Then, they delve into the nuts-and-bolts of methodology, challenging not only psychology and the behavioral sciences but also medicine and science more broadly. In this against-the-grain approach, Newell and Shanks chart new possibilities for how we may be more open to understanding how our minds actually work.
An exploration of the Green Belt conservation project between the former East and West Germanies and its relationship to emergent ecosystems, trauma, and memorialization.The first book-length scholarly treatment of Germany’s largest conservation project, the Green Belt, Mnemonic Ecologies by Sonja Pieck presents a new interdisciplinary approach: that effective restoration and conservation of wounded land must merge ecology with memory. Since the Cold War’s end in 1989, German conservationists have transformed the once militarized border between East and West Germany into an extensive protected area. Yet as forests, meadows, and wetlands replace fences, minefields, and guard towers, ecological recovery must reckon with the pain of the borderlands’ brutal past. The lessons gained by conservationists here, Pieck argues, have profound practical and ethical implications far beyond Germany.Can conservation help heal both ecological and societal wounds? How might conservation honor difficult socioecological pasts? Deeply researched and evocatively written, this beautiful, interdisciplinary investigation into the legacy of war and nature’s resurgence blends environmental history, ethics, geography, and politics with ecology and memory studies. Amid our rampant biodiversity crisis, Mnemonic Ecologies shows why conservation must include humanized landscapes in its purview, thus helping to craft a new conservation ethos that is collaborative, empathetic, and more sensitive to the connections between humans and the places they inhabit.
A deep dive into practical game design through playful philosophy and philosophical play.What are video games made of? And what can that tell us about what they mean? In The Stuff Games Are Made Of, experimental game maker Pippin Barr explores the materials of video game design. Taking the reader on a deep dive into eight case studies of his own games, Barr illuminates the complex nature of video games and video game design and the possibilities both offer for exploring ideas big and small.Through a variety of engaging and approachable examples, Barr shows how every single aspect of a game—whether it is code, graphics, interface, or even time itself—can be designed with and related to the player experience. Barr’s experimental approach, with its emphasis on highly specific elements of games, will leave readers armed with intriguing design philosophy, conceptual rigor, and diverse insights into the inner life of video games. Upon finishing this book, readers will be ready to think deeply about the nature of games, to dive into expressive and experimental game design themselves, or simply to play with a new and expanded mindset.
The third edition of a leading text on the microeconomic foundations of banking, comprehensively updated with new coverage of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, fintech, and the latest research in banking theory.The banking industry has undergone seismic change in the twenty-first century, from the overhaul of regulation in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis to the digitalization of the economy and the disruption of traditional business models by ascendant tech giants. Now in a comprehensively updated third edition, this essential graduate-level text on the microeconomic foundations of banking provides the rigorous theoretical approach required to understand these new structures and norms, functioning as a user’s guide to recent academic literature. Microeconomics of Banking offers a comprehensive view of the evolution of banking theory and the rapidly changing realm of financial intermediation, examining the central issues and offering the necessary tools for understanding how they have been modeled. New edition highlights:Up-to-date coverage of the latest research in banking theory as well as the events of the global financial crisis and resultant Basel III regulatory frameworkNew chapters on liquidity and systemic riskNew material throughout on cryptocurrencies, fintech, and other facets of a digitalized economy
The fascinating story of glutamate, the neurotransmitter that controls the structure and function of the brain in health and neurological disorders.Sculptor and Destroyer tells the story of a simple, little-known molecule that became a master architect and commander of the human brain: glutamate. Upward of 90 percent of the neurons in the human brain deploy glutamate as their neurotransmitter. Other neurotransmitters can only exert their effects on brain function by subtly modifying the ongoing activity of glutamatergic neurons, but during brain development glutamate controls the growth of dendrites and the formation of synapses. In this eye-opening book, Mark Mattson explains how the neurotransmitter glutamate controls the structure and function of neuronal networks in the brain, thereby mediating the brain’s capabilities, including learning and memory, creativity, and imagination.Mattson also delves deeply into the dark side of glutamate, which he calls the “destroyer” side. He shows how relatively subtle aberrancies in the activity of neurons that deploy glutamate may result in behavioral disorders ranging from autism and schizophrenia to chronic anxiety and depression. More dramatically, he describes how glutamate can excite neurons to death, a process that occurs in epilepsy and stroke and, perhaps even more insidiously, in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, and Huntington’s disease. Sculptor and Destroyer concludes with a perspective on how knowledge of glutamate’s roles in neuroplasticity might be applied to the optimization of brain health throughout our lives.Written in engaging, approachable prose, Sculptor and Destroyer will be of interest to anyone in the fields of neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry, and psychology, as well as to anyone with a curiosity about the human brain.
An intellectual history of the social sciences that offers a library of 101 books that broke new ground for the field.What are the social sciences? What unifies them? This essay collection seeks to answer these and other important questions as it considers how the field has developed over the years, from post–World War II in France to the present day throughout the world. Edited by Cyril Lemieux, Laurent Berger, Marielle Macé, Gildas Salmon, and Cécile Vidal, A History of the Social Sciences in 101 Books brings together a diverse range of researchers in the social sciences to present short essays on 101 books—both renowned and lesser known—that have shaped the field, from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) to Michel Aglietta’s Money: 5000 Years of Debt and Power (2016).While there have been surveys and intellectual histories of particular disciplines within the social sciences (history, anthropology, sociology), until now there has been no intellectual history of the social sciences as a unified whole. Far from presenting a fixed and frozen canon, A History of the Social Sciences in 101 Books offers instead a moving, multiform landscape with no settled questions, only an ongoing series of new perspectives and challenges to previously established grounding.
An essay collection exploring the board game’s relationship to the built environment, revealing the unexpected ways that play reflects perceptions of space.Board games harness the creation of entirely new worlds. From the medieval warlord to the modern urban planner, players are permitted to inhabit a staggering variety of roles, and are prompted to incorporate preexisting notions of placemaking into their decisions. To what extent do board games represent the social context of their production? How might they reinforce or subvert normative ideas of community and fulfillment? In Playing Place, Chad Randl and D. Medina Lasansky have curated a collection of 37 fascinating essays, supplemented by a rich trove of photo illustrations, that unpack these questions with breadth and care.Although board games are often recreational objects, their mythologies and infrastructure do not exist in a vacuum—rather, they echo and reproduce prevalent cultural landscapes. This thesis forms the throughline of pieces reflecting on subjects as diverse as the rigidly gendered fantasies of classic mass-market games; the imperial convictions embedded in games that position player-protagonists as conquerors establishing dominion over their “discoveries”; and even the uncanny prescience of games that have players responding to a global pandemic. Representing a thrilling convergence of historiography, architectural history, and media studies scholarship, Playing Place suggests not only that tabletop games should be taken seriously but also that the medium itself is uniquely capable of facilitating our critical consideration of structures that are often taken for granted.
The first English translation of the French cult classic that lampoons France’s most popular intellectuals of the post-1968 period and their ideas, which became forces of counterrevolution.Eric-John Russell’s translation of Jaime Semprún’s brutal takedown of France’s best-known intellectuals of the post-1968 period, A Gallery of Recuperation, is one of the first full English versions of any of Semprún’s books. Originally titled Précis de recuperation, the book is a scathing critique of ten major thinkers, including Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, and Cornelius Castoriadis. Semprún uses this catalog of careerism to reflect on the concept of recuperation—capitalism’s uncanny ability to coopt anticapitalist critiques and subvert subversion. His central question: What happens to revolutionary ideas, including Marxism itself, in the hands of professional intellectuals?Semprún’s idiosyncratic and playful style of polemics takes existentialism, humanism, structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis to task, casting new light on the figures who have become dominant staples of modern Anglophone academia, and proving the necessity of critiquing intellectuals’ roles within contemporary capitalism. A cult classic among the French radical left and scholars of the Situationist International and May 1968, A Gallery of Recuperation never made the impact it should have. Russell’s translation marks a major step in recognizing Semprún’s work beyond its French context.
A fundamental critique of the current property regime, calling for radical social and political change.In The Abuse of Property, Daniel Loick offers a multifaceted philosophical critique of the concept of property, broadly understood. He argues that property should not be the dominant framework in which human beings regulate the use of things, that property is not the same as use. Property rights, in his view, are not conditions of freedom or justice, but deficient, dysfunctional, and harmful ways of interacting with other people and the natural environment. He dissects not only the classic justifications of property (from John Locke's justification of property as a natural right based on individual freedom to Hegel's justification of property as a form of mutual recognition) but also the classic critiques of property, from Proudhon and Marx up to Adorno and Agamben.Through an innovative critical approach to legal studies, Loick demonstrates how the concept of property, historically applied to things and people and still a linchpin of our distorted relation with the world, forms a direct line from the Occupy movement to Black Lives Matter and beyond.
An exploration of historical memory and networks of meaning in the context of today’s crises of extremism and polarization.As authoritarianism continues to rise around the world, the stories we tell ourselves about what has happened and what is happening become ever more relevant. In Memory, Edited, Abby Smith Rumsey examines collective memory, how it binds us, and how it can be used by bad actors to manipulate us. Bringing forward the voices of a rich cast of Eastern European artists from the past two hundred years—from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Gerhard Richter—Rumsey shows how their work and lives illustrate the devastation wrought by regimes dependent on entrenched lies to survive. Not only does this hijacking of the narrative polarize communities, but it also hijacks our future.Through an interdisciplinary lens that includes the best thinking from history, the arts, cognitive science, psychology, and political philosophy, Rumsey lays bare our narratives, showing how they are constructed and how they have changed over time. Ever-aware of resisting the false promise of utopia, Rumsey argues that only by confronting the past and reckoning with the crimes that were committed can we ever hope to heal and gain self-knowledge. Memory, Edited is an indispensable text for anyone who cares about democracy, equality, and freedom in our current age of crisis.
A breathtaking history of America’s trail-blazing female science journalists—and the timely lessons they can teach us about equity, access, collaboration, and persistence.Writing for Their Lives tells the stories of women who pioneered the nascent profession of science journalism from the 1920s through the 1950s. Like the “hidden figures” of science, such as Dorothy Vaughan and Katherine Johnson, these women journalists, Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette writes, were also overlooked in traditional histories of science and journalism. But, at a time when science, medicine, and the mass media were expanding dramatically, Emma Reh, Jane Stafford, Marjorie Van de Water, and many others were explaining theories, discoveries, and medical advances to millions of readers via syndicated news stories, weekly columns, weekend features, and books—and they deserve the recognition they have long been denied.Grounded in extensive archival research and enlivened by passages of original correspondence, Writing for Their Lives addresses topics such as censorship, peer review, and news embargoes, while also providing intimate glimpses into the personal lives and adventures of mid-twentieth-century career women. They were single, married, or divorced; mothers with child-care responsibilities; daughters supporting widowed mothers; urban dwellers who lived through, and wrote about, the Great Depression, World War II, and the dawn of the Atomic Age—all the while, daring to challenge the arrogance and misogyny of the male scientific community in pursuit of information that could serve the public.Written at a time when trust in science is at a premium, Writing for Their Lives is an inspiring untold history that underscores just how crucial dedicated, conscientious journalists are to the public understanding and acceptance of scientific guidance and expertise.
The first historical examination of working parenthood in the late twentieth century—and how the concepts of “family-friendly” work culture and “work–life balance” came to be.Since the 1980s, families across the developed West have lived through a revolution on a scale unprecedented since industrialization. With more mothers than ever before in paid work and the rise of the middle-class, dual-income household, we have entered a new era in the history of everyday life: the era of the working parent. In Inventing the Working Parent, Sarah E. Stoller charts the politics that shaped the creation of the phenomenon of working parenthood in Britain as it arose out of a new culture of work.Stoller begins with the first sustained efforts by feminists to mobilize politically on behalf of working parents in the late 1970s and concludes in the context of an emerging national political agenda for working families with the rise of New Labour in the 1990s. She explores how and why the notion of working parenthood emerged as a powerful new political claim and identity category and addresses how feminists used the concept of working parenthood to advocate for new organizational policies and practices. Lastly, Stoller shows how neoliberal capitalism under Margaret Thatcher and subsequent New Labour governments made a family’s ability to survive on one income nearly impossible—with significant consequences for individual experience, the gendered division of labor, and intimate life.
A comprehensive and cutting-edge introduction to quantitative methods of causal analysis, including new trends in machine learning.Reasoning about cause and effect—the consequence of doing one thing versus another—is an integral part of our lives as human beings. In an increasingly digital and data-driven economy, the importance of sophisticated causal analysis only deepens. Presenting the most important quantitative methods for evaluating causal effects, this textbook provides graduate students and researchers with a clear and comprehensive introduction to the causal analysis of empirical data. Martin Huber’s accessible approach highlights the intuition and motivation behind various methods while also providing formal discussions of key concepts using statistical notation. Causal Analysis covers several methodological developments not covered in other texts, including new trends in machine learning, the evaluation of interaction or interference effects, and recent research designs such as bunching or kink designs.Most complete and cutting-edge introduction to causal analysis, including causal machine learning Clean presentation of rigorous material avoids extraneous detail and emphasizes conceptual analogies over statistical notationSupplies a range of applications and practical examples using R
An ethnographic study of diverse children on the autism spectrum and the role of media and technology in their everyday lives.In spite of widespread assumptions that young people on the autism spectrum have a “natural” attraction to technology—a premise that leads to significant speculation about how media helps or harms them—relatively little research actually exists about their everyday tech use. In Kids Across the Spectrums, Meryl Alper fills this gap with the first book-length ethnography of the digital lives of autistic young people. Based on research with more than sixty neurodivergent children from an array of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, Kids Across the Spectrums delves into three overlapping areas of their media usage: cultural belonging, social relationships, and physical embodiment. Alper’s work demonstrates that what autistic youth do with technology is not radically different from their non-autistic peers. However, significant social and health inequalities—including limited recreational programs, unsafe neighborhoods, and challenges obtaining appropriate therapeutic services—spill over into their media habits. With an emphasis on what autistic children bring to media as opposed to what they supposedly lack socially, Alper argues that their relationships do not exist outside of how communication technologies affect sociality, nor beyond the boundaries of stigmatization and society writ large. Finally, she offers practical suggestions for the education, healthcare, and technology sectors to promote equity, inclusion, access, and justice for autistic kids at home, at school, and in their communities.
The cultural ramifications of online live streaming, including its effects on identity and power in digital spaces.Some consider live streaming—the broadcasting of video and/or audio footage live online—simply an internet fad or source of entertainment, yet it is at the center of the digital mediation of our lives. In this edited volume, Johanna Brewer, Bo Ruberg, Amanda L. L. Cullen, and Christopher J. Persaud present a broad range of essays that explore the cultural implications of live streaming, paying special attention to how it is shifting notions of identity and power in digital spaces. The diverse set of international authors included represent a variety of perspectives, from digital media studies to queer studies, from human-computer interaction to anthropology, and more.While important foundational work has been carried out by game studies scholars, many other elements of streaming practices remain to be explored. To deepen engagement with diversity and social justice, the editors have included a variety of voices on such topics as access, gender, sexuality, race, disability, harassment, activism, and the cultural implications of design aesthetics. Live streaming affects a wide array of behaviors, norms, and patterns of communication. But above all, it lets participants observe and engage with real life as it unfolds in real time. Ultimately, these essays challenge us to look at both the possibilities for harm and the potential for radical change that live streaming presents.
A clearer view of entrepreneurship, based on new comprehensive data, that upends what we know about job creation and survival among US startups.Startups create jobs and power economic growth. That’s an article of faith in the United States—but, as The Promise and Peril of Entrepreneurship reveals, our faith may be built on shaky ground. Economists Robert Fairlie, Zachary Kroff, Javier Miranda, and Nikolas Zolas—working with Census Bureau microdata—have developed a new data set, the Comprehensive Startup Panel, that tracks job creation and the survival of every startup in the country. In doing so, they recalibrate our understanding of how startups behave in the US economy. Specifically, their work seeks to answer three critical questions: How many jobs does each entrepreneur create? Do those jobs disappear quickly? And how long do entrepreneurial enterprises survive?Job creation and survival rates are, the authors conclude, much lower than those reported by official federal sources. Such discrepancies emerge from the more comprehensive picture drawn from this new data set—a picture that, for instance, highlights the important but understudied differences between employer firms (startups that hire people) and nonemployer firms (startups that do not initially hire people but may do so in later years as they grow). This reframing captures the vast number of businesses that start with no employees, a number largely missing from the statistics underpinning the mythos of the riskiness of entrepreneurship. The book also explores who owns startups—focusing on differences by race and ethnicity.With its new, wider view of the realities of job creation and survival among startups, The Promise and Peril of Entrepreneurship has significant implications for economic policymaking and research, and for the billions of dollars that the government and the private sector invest in promoting entrepreneurship.
A critical edition of a classic work by the renowned philosopher George Santayana evaluating key movements in American intellectual history.Winds of Doctrine presents six essays by the internationally recognized critic and philosopher George Santayana. The essays, edited by David E. Spiech, Martin A. Coleman, and Faedra Lazar Weiss, and introduced by Paul Forster, address the broad sweep of intellectual trends—or, as the title suggests, the ever-changing winds of thought—of the Spanish-born American thinker’s time. The topics range from the secularization of American culture to the rise of religious modernism to the “genteel tradition” in American philosophy, the subject of Santayana’s final lecture in America and perhaps his best known essay. The original Winds of Doctrine, published in 1913, was the first book published after Santayana’s 1912 departure for Europe. Santayana had felt stifled at Harvard for some time, and his long-contemplated resignation from academia released him from previous obligations and allowed him a new freedom to think and write. Much later, Santayana remarked on the significance of that choice to step away: “In Winds of Doctrine and my subsequent books, a reader of my earlier writings may notice a certain change of climate. . . . It was not my technical philosophy that was principally affected, but rather the meaning and status of philosophy for my inner man.”An insightful document of American intellectual history, supplemented with annotations and rich textual commentary, Winds of Doctrine is a vital and engaging survey of the religious, political, philosophical, and literary trends of the twentieth century.
A clear, comprehensive, and rigorous introduction to the theory of computation.What is computable? What leads to efficiency in computation? Computability and Complexity offers a clear, comprehensive, and rigorous introduction to the mathematical study of the capabilities and limitations of computation. Hubie Chen covers the core notions, techniques, methods, and questions of the theory of computation before turning to several advanced topics. Emphasizing intuitive learning and conceptual discussion, this textbook’s accessible approach offers a robust foundation for understanding both the reach and restrictions of algorithms and computers.Extensive exercises and diagrams enhance streamlined, student-friendly presentation of mathematically rigorous materialIncludes thorough treatment of automata theory, computability theory, and complexity theory—including the P versus NP question and the theory of NP-completenessSuitable for undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and professionals
From a former Chief Economist of the World Bank, a brief, balanced, and sobering discussion of globalization trends, their drivers, and effects on inequality.The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increased inequality within countries. Is this phenomenon a small hiccup in the overall wave of globalization, or are we at the beginning of a new era of deglobalization? Former Chief Economist of the World Bank Group Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg tells us that the answer depends on the policy choices we make, and in this book The Unequal Effects of Globalization, she calls for exploring alternative policy approaches including place-based policies, while sustaining international cooperation.At this critical moment of shifting attitudes toward globalization, The Unequal Effects of Globalization enters the debate while also taking a step back. Goldberg investigates globalization’s many dimensions, disruptions, and complex interactions, from the late twentieth century’s wave of trade liberalizations to the rise of China, the decline of manufacturing in advanced economies, and the recent effects of trade on global poverty, inequality, labor markets, and firm dynamics. From there, Goldberg explores the significance of the recent backlash against and potential retreat from globalization, and considers the key policy implications of these trends and emerging dynamics.As comprehensive as it is well-balanced, The Unequal Effects of Globalization is an essential read on trade and cooperation between nations that will appeal as much to academics and policymakers as it will to general readers who are interested in learning more about this timely subject.
A creative and comprehensive exploration of the institutional forces undermining the management of environments critical to public health.For almost two decades, the citizens of Western Mexico have called for a cleanup of the Santiago River, a water source so polluted it emanates an overwhelming acidic stench. Toxic clouds of foam lift off the river in a strong wind. In Sewer of Progress, Cindy McCulligh examines why industrial dumping continues in the Santiago despite the corporate embrace of social responsibility and regulatory frameworks intended to mitigate environmental damage. The fault, she finds, lies in a disingenuous discourse of progress and development that privileges capitalist growth over the health and well-being of ecosystems. Rooted in research on institutional behavior and corporate business practices, Sewer of Progress exposes a type of regulatory greenwashing that allows authorities to deflect accusations of environmental dumping while “regulated” dumping continues in an environment of legal certainty. For transnational corporations, this type of simulation allows companies to take advantage of double standards in environmental regulations, while presenting themselves as socially responsible and green global actors. Through this inversion, the Santiago and other rivers in Mexico have become sewers for urban and industrial waste. Institutionalized corruption, a concept McCulligh introduces in the book, is the main culprit, a system that permits and normalizes environmental degradation, specifically in the creation and enforcement of a regulatory framework for wastewater discharge that prioritizes private interests over the common good.Through a research paradigm based in institutional ethnography and political ecology, Sewer of Progress provides a critical, in-depth look at the power relations subverting the role of the state in environmental regulation and the maintenance of public health.
An innovative, wide-ranging consideration of the global ecological crisis and its deep philosophical and theological roots.Global crises, from melting Arctic ice to ecosystem collapse and the sixth mass extinction, challenge our age-old belief in nature as a phoenix with an infinite ability to regenerate itself from the ashes of destruction. Moving from antiquity to the present and back, Michael Marder provides an integrated examination of philosophies of nature drawn from traditions around the world to illuminate the theological, mythical, and philosophical origins of the contemporary environmental emergency. From there, he probes the contradictions and deadlocks of our current predicament to propose a philosophy of nature for the twenty-first century.As Marder analyzes our reliance on the image and idea of the phoenix to organize our thoughts about the natural world, he outlines the obstacles in the path of formulating a revitalized philosophy of nature. His critical exposition of the phoenix complex draws on Chinese, Indian, Russian, European, and North African traditions. Throughout, Marder lets the figure of the phoenix guide readers through theories of immortality, intergenerational and interspecies relations, infinity compatible with finitude, resurrection, reincarnation, and a possibility of liberation from cycles of rebirth. His concluding remarks on a phoenix-suffused philosophy of nature and political thought extend from the Roman era to the writings of Hannah Arendt.
An insightful investigation into the mechanisms underlying the predictive functions of neural networks—and their ability to chart a new path for AI.Prediction is a cognitive advantage like few others, inherently linked to our ability to survive and thrive. Our brains are awash in signals that embody prediction. Can we extend this capability more explicitly into synthetic neural networks to improve the function of AI and enhance its place in our world? Gradient Expectations is a bold effort by Keith L. Downing to map the origins and anatomy of natural and artificial neural networks to explore how, when designed as predictive modules, their components might serve as the basis for the simulated evolution of advanced neural network systems.Downing delves into the known neural architecture of the mammalian brain to illuminate the structure of predictive networks and determine more precisely how the ability to predict might have evolved from more primitive neural circuits. He then surveys past and present computational neural models that leverage predictive mechanisms with biological plausibility, identifying elements, such as gradients, that natural and artificial networks share. Behind well-founded predictions lie gradients, Downing finds, but of a different scope than those that belong to today’s deep learning. Digging into the connections between predictions and gradients, and their manifestation in the brain and neural networks, is one compelling example of how Downing enriches both our understanding of such relationships and their role in strengthening AI tools. Synthesizing critical research in neuroscience, cognitive science, and connectionism, Gradient Expectations offers unique depth and breadth of perspective on predictive neural-network models, including a grasp of predictive neural circuits that enables the integration of computational models of prediction with evolutionary algorithms.
A framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society.Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge property as something that concerns mainly words and intellectual history, or science and law, Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, and Marius Buning propose technology as a central heuristic for studying the many implications of knowledge ownership. Toward this end, they focus on the notions of knowledge and ownership in courtrooms, workshops, policy, and research practices, while also shedding light on scholarship itself as a powerful tool for making explicit the politics inherent in knowledge practices and social order. The book presents case studies showing how diverse knowledge economies are created and how inequalities arise from them. Unlike scholars who have fragmented this discourse across the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history, the editors highlight recent developments in the emerging field of the global history of knowledge—as science, as economy, and as culture. The case studies reveal how notions of knowing and owning emerge because they reciprocally produce and determine each other’s limits and possibilities; that is, how we know inevitably affects how we can own what we know; and how we own always impacts how and what we are able to know.Contributors (Listed in Order of Appearance)Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, Cynthia Brokaw, Marius Buning, Viren Murthy, Marjolijn Bol, Amy E. Slaton, James Leach, Myles W. Jackson, Lissant Bolton, Vivek S. Oak, Jörn Oeder
A new way to teach media studies that centers students’ lived experiences and diverse perspectives from around the world.From the intimate to the mundane, most aspects of our lives—how we learn, love, work, and play—take place in media. Taking an expansive, global perspective, this introductory textbook covers what it means to live in, rather than with, media. Mark Deuze focuses on the lived experience—how people who use smartphones, the internet, and television sets make sense of their digital environment—to investigate the broader role of media in society and everyday life. Life in Media uses relatable examples and case studies from around the world to illustrate the foundational theories, concepts, and methods of media studies. The book is structured around six core themes: how media inform and inspire our daily activities; how we live our lives in the public eye; how we make distinctions between real and fake; how we seek and express love; how we use media to effect change; how we create media and shared narratives; and how we seek to create well-being within media. By deliberately including diverse voices and radically embracing the everyday and mundane aspects of media life, this book innovates ways to teach and talk about media.Highlights diverse international voices, images, and casesUses accessible examples from everyday life to contextualize theory Offers a comprehensive, student-centered introduction to media studiesExtensively annotated bibliography offers dynamic sources for further study, including readings and documentary films
How marketers learned to dream of optimization and speak in the idiom of management science well before the widespread use of the Internet.Algorithms, data extraction, digital marketers monetizing "eyeballs": these all seem like such recent features of our lives. And yet, Lee McGuigan tells us in this eye-opening book, digital advertising was well underway before the widespread use of the Internet. Explaining how marketers have brandished the tools of automation and management science to exploit new profit opportunities, Selling the American People traces data-driven surveillance all the way back to the 1950s, when the computerization of the advertising business began to blend science, technology, and calculative cultures in an ideology of optimization. With that ideology came adtech, a major infrastructure of digital capitalism.To help make sense of today's attention merchants and choice architects, McGuigan explores a few key questions: How did technical experts working at the intersection of data processing and management sciences come to command the center of gravity in the advertising and media industries? How did their ambition to remake marketing through mathematical optimization shape and reflect developments in digital technology? In short, where did adtech come from, and how did data-driven marketing come to mediate the daily encounters of people, products, and public spheres? His answers show how the advertising industry's efforts to bend information technologies toward its dream of efficiency and rational management helped to make "surveillance capitalism" one of the defining experiences of public life.
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