Gin & Cologne in the Wearable Tech Apocalypse


Book Description

Outrageous and wickedly fun! If Douglas Adams and Jane Austen had a robot love child... Ronny Cologne IV will do anything to keep the trust fund. Attend “bored” meetings. Kiss a**. Even flush away twenty years Earth-time on Father’s interstellar cruise. But a drink on the spaceliner with Allison Gin, genius programmer, leaves a weight on his chest. She’s as much a Company slave as he is. Drinks lead to confessions, confessions to love—now Ronny’s gotta rescue them both from Father’s clutches...except the cutthroat billionaire has set a dastardly trap for Ronny on Earth. Allison’s no fool. Her pure untested AI just might save her career and the rest of humanity, too, assuming she can stop Ronny from screwing the future first. Author RT Swindoll presents Gin & Cologne: ...a big, binge-able comedy adventure in three acts ...a technological farce, driven by relatable characters (and their neuroses) ...a cheeky space opera, dripping with heart, and accessible to adult readers of all stripes Is serial entrepreneur Ronal Cologne a thinly veiled metaphor for another space tech billionaire? You decide. Meet Argyle the Barbot, an AI disaster-artist just self-aware enough to know when to drug you, pop a switchblade, or kick your nihilism about the future in the cajones. Flavor notes: hints of disaster capitalism, salty sardonic bite, silly romantic body, unabashed aftertaste of hope. Sip or toss down—sits well, either way. About RT Swindoll: Wonder for the Modern Mind. Anxious are the wonder-starved. So many wonders cross vast distances to touch our lives, only to fall unseen and unheard, and we moderns are restless in the absence. I write to pierce the veils that shroud our senses and reveal the wonder in our midst. Come settle into a story of cosmic significance.




No Logo


Book Description

"What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.




Reality Is Broken


Book Description

“McGonigal is a clear, methodical writer, and her ideas are well argued. Assertions are backed by countless psychological studies.” —The Boston Globe “Powerful and provocative . . . McGonigal makes a persuasive case that games have a lot to teach us about how to make our lives, and the world, better.” —San Jose Mercury News “Jane McGonigal's insights have the elegant, compact, deadly simplicity of plutonium, and the same explosive force.” —Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother A visionary game designer reveals how we can harness the power of games to boost global happiness. With 174 million gamers in the United States alone, we now live in a world where every generation will be a gamer generation. But why, Jane McGonigal asks, should games be used for escapist entertainment alone? In this groundbreaking book, she shows how we can leverage the power of games to fix what is wrong with the real world-from social problems like depression and obesity to global issues like poverty and climate change-and introduces us to cutting-edge games that are already changing the business, education, and nonprofit worlds. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, Reality Is Broken shows that the future will belong to those who can understand, design, and play games. Jane McGonigal is also the author of SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger, Happier, Braver and More Resilient.




Accelerando


Book Description

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day. Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber’s son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity. For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...




Things Are What You Make of Them


Book Description

Insights and inspiration for anyone who makes art (or anything else) The Ultimate BuzzFeed Books Gift Guide - Official Selection From the creative mind and heart of designer Adam J. Kurtz comes this upbeat rallying cry for creators of all stripes. Expanding on a series of popular essays, this handwritten and heartfelt book shares wisdom and empathy from one working artist to others. Perforated tear-and-share pages make it easy to display the most crucial reminders or to pass a bit of advice on to someone who needs it. As wry and cheeky as it is empathic and empowering, this deceptively simple, vibrantly full-color book will be a touchstone for writers, artists, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who wants to be more creative--even when it would be easier to give up and act normal.




Critical Terms for Media Studies


Book Description

Communications, philosophy, film and video, digital culture: media studies straddles an astounding array of fields and disciplines and produces a vocabulary that is in equal parts rigorous and intuitive. Critical Terms for Media Studies defines, and at times, redefines, what this new and hybrid area aims to do, illuminating the key concepts behind its liveliest debates and most dynamic topics. Part of a larger conversation that engages culture, technology, and politics, this exciting collection of essays explores our most critical language for dealing with the qualities and modes of contemporary media. Edited by two outstanding scholars in the field, W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, the volume features works by a team of distinguished contributors. These essays, commissioned expressly for this volume, are organized into three interrelated groups: “Aesthetics” engages with terms that describe sensory experiences and judgments, “Technology” offers entry into a broad array of technological concepts, and “Society” opens up language describing the systems that allow a medium to function. A compelling reference work for the twenty-first century and the media that form our experience within it, Critical Terms for Media Studies will engage and deepen any reader’s knowledge of one of our most important new fields.




Against Fashion


Book Description

The late 19th century invention of 'fashion' as we understand it inspired avant-garde artists of the period to create an art form to counter commercial fashion. This is the history of the modern relationship between artists and this 'anti fashion'.




Scream


Book Description

Shiver-inducing science not for the faint of heart. No one studies fear quite like Margee Kerr. A sociologist who moonlights at one of America's scariest and most popular haunted houses, she has seen grown men laugh, cry, and push their loved ones aside as they run away in terror. And she's kept careful notes on what triggers these responses and why. Fear is a universal human experience, but do we really understand it? If we're so terrified of monsters and serial killers, why do we flock to the theaters to see them? Why do people avoid thinking about death, but jump out of planes and swim with sharks? For Kerr, there was only one way to find out. In this eye-opening, adventurous book, she takes us on a tour of the world's scariest experiences: into an abandoned prison long after dark, hanging by a cord from the highest tower in the Western hemisphere, and deep into Japan's mysterious "suicide forest." She even goes on a ghost hunt with a group of paranormal adventurers. Along the way, Kerr shows us the surprising science from the newest studies of fear -- what it means, how it works, and what it can do for us. Full of entertaining science and the thrills of a good ghost story, this book will make you think, laugh -- and scream.




Co-experience


Book Description




Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture


Book Description

Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture presents an overview of the digital turn in Ancient Jewish and Christian manuscripts visualisation, data mining and communication. Edited by David Hamidović, Claire Clivaz and Sarah Bowen Savant, it gathers together the contributions of seventeen scholars involved in Biblical, Early Jewish and Christian studies. The volume attests to the spreading of digital humanities in these fields and presents fundamental analysis of the rise of visual culture as well as specific test-cases concerning ancient manuscripts. Sophisticated visualisation tools, stylometric analysis, teaching and visual data, epigraphy and visualisation belong notably to the varied overview presented in the volume.