Science & Technology Audiobooks

Tom Brown's Guide to Healing the Earth Audiobook

As a child he was taught to respect nature by an Apache elder he called Grandfather, now as a bestselling author and master tracker Tom Brown, Jr., shares his secrets for nurturing and saving our planet. Tom Brown, Jr., is America's most acclaimed outdoorsman, tracker, and teacher. When he was eight he met Stalking Wolf, an Apache elder who taught the young man how to survive in the wild, and more importantly, how to value our place in the natural order. For more than three decades, Tom Brown, Jr., has shared these insights with the world through teaching, writing, and film. Now, for the first time, he has detailed actions that each of us can take to help heal our ailing planet. Read by James Lurie, Fred Sanders, Stephen Graybill, and Hillary Huber

Jr. Tom Brown, Randy Walker, Randy Walker Jr., Tom Brown (Author), Fred Sanders, James Lurie, Various (Narrator)

Audiobook

Hop, Skip, Go: How the Transport Revolution Is Transforming Our Lives

Urban expert John Rossant and business journalist Stephen Baker look beyond the false promises of the past to examine the real future of transportation and the repercussions for the world's cities, the global economy, the environment, and our individual lives. Human mobility, dominated for a century by cars and trucks, is facing a dramatic transformation. Over the next decade, new networked devices, from electric bikes to fleets of autonomous cars, will change the way we move. They will also disrupt major industries, from energy to cars, give birth to new mobility giants, and lead to a redesign of our cities. For Rossant and Baker, this represents the advance of the Information Revolution into the physical world. This will raise troubling questions about surveillance, privacy, the dangers from hackers and the loss of jobs. But it also promises startling efficiencies, which could turn our cities green and, perhaps, save our planet. In an engaging, deeply reported book, the authors travel to mobility hotspots, from Helsinki to Shanghai, to scout out this future. And they visit the companies putting it together. One, Divergent3d, is devising a system to manufacture cars with robots and 3D printers. PonyAI, a Chinese-Silicon Valley startup, builds autonomous software that perceives potholes, oncoming trucks, and wayward pedestrians, and guides the vehicle around them. Voom, an Airbus subsidiary, is racing with dozens of others to operate fleets of air taxis that fly by themselves. Hop, Skip, Go is about us: billions of people on the move. Underlying each stage of mobility, from foot to horse to cars and jets, are the mathematics of three fundamental variables: time, space and money. We measure each trip we take, whether to Kuala Lumpur or the corner drugstore. As the authors make clear, the coming mobility revolution will be no different. As they unveil the future, the authors explore how these changes might revamp our conception of global geography, the hours in our days, and where in the world we might be able to go.

John Rossant, Stephen Baker (Author), John Moraitis (Narrator)

Audiobook

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design are Changing the Way We Live, Work & Play

Brought to you by Penguin. The audiobook edition of User Friendly by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant. USER FRIENDLY is a must-read for anyone who loves well-designed products-and for the innovators aspiring to make them. It seems like magic when some new gadget seems to know what we want before we know ourselves. But why does some design feel intrinsically good, and why do some designs last forever, while others disappear? User Friendly guides readers through the hidden rules governing how design shapes our behaviour, told through fascinating stories such as what the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island reveals about the logic of the smartphone; how the pressures of the Great Depression and World War II created our faith in social progress through better product design; and how a failed vision for Disney World yielded a new paradigm for designed experience.

Cliff Kuang, Robert Fabricant (Author), Jean Ann Douglass (Narrator)

Audiobook

Ecopiety: Green Media and the Dilemma of Environmental Virtue

Confident that your personal good deeds of environmental virtue will save the earth? The stories we encounter about the environment in popular culture too often promote an imagined moral economy, assuring us that tiny acts of voluntary personal piety, such as recycling a coffee cup, or purchasing green consumer items, can offset our destructive habits. No need to make any fundamental structural changes. The trick is simply for the consumer to buy the right things and shop our way to a greener future. It's time for a reality check. Ecopiety offers an absorbing examination of the intersections of environmental sensibilities, contemporary expressions of piety and devotion, and American popular culture. Ranging from portrayals of environmental sin and virtue such as the eco-pious depiction of Christian Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey, to the green capitalism found in the world of mobile-device 'carbon sin-tracking' software applications, to the socially conscious vegetarian vampires in True Blood, the volume illuminates the work pop culture performs as both a mirror and an engine for the greening of American spiritual and ethical commitments. Taylor makes the case that it is not through a framework of grim duty or obligation, but through one of play and delight, that we may move environmental ideals into substantive action.

Sarah Mcfarland Taylor (Author), Susan Hanfield (Narrator)

Audiobook

Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it

How will AI evolve and what major innovations are on the horizon? What will its impact be on the job market, economy, and society? What is the path toward human-level machine intelligence? What should we be concerned about as artificial intelligence advances? Architects of Intelligence contains a series of in-depth, one-to-one interviews where New York Times bestselling author Martin Ford uncovers the truth behind these questions from some of the brightest minds in the Artificial Intelligence community. Meet the minds behind the AI superpowers as they discuss the science, business, and ethics of modern artificial intelligence. Hear James Manyika's thoughts on AI analytics, Geoffrey Hinton's breakthroughs in AI programming and development, and Rana el Kaliouby's insights into AI marketing. This AI book collects the opinions of the luminaries of the AI business, such as Stuart Russell (coauthor of the leading AI textbook), Rodney Brooks (a leader in AI robotics), Demis Hassabis (chess prodigy and mind behind AlphaGo), and Yoshua Bengio (leader in deep learning) to complete your AI education and give you an AI advantage in 2019 and the future.

Martin Ford (Author), Mike Chamberlain (Narrator)

Audiobook

Handprints on Hubble: An Astronaut's Story of Invention

The first American woman to walk in space recounts her experience as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has, among many other achievements, revealed thousands of galaxies in what seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our knowledge of black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other stars; and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible. Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued, repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory ever built. Along the way, Sullivan chronicles her early life as a 'Sputnik Baby,' her path to NASA through oceanography, and her initiation into the space program as one of 'thirty-five new guys.' (She was also one of the first six women to join NASA's storied astronaut corps.) She describes in vivid detail what liftoff feels like inside a spacecraft (it's like 'being in an earthquake and a fighter jet at the same time'), shows us the view from a spacewalk, and recounts the temporary grounding of the shuttle program after the Challenger disaster. Sullivan explains that 'maintainability' was designed into Hubble, and she describes the work of inventing the tools and processes that made on-orbit maintenance possible. Because in-flight repair and upgrade was part of the plan, NASA was able to fix a serious defect in Hubble's mirrors?leaving literal and metaphorical 'handprints on Hubble.'

Kathryn D. Sullivan, Kathryn Sullivan (Author), Christina Moore (Narrator)

Audiobook

Daughters of Liverpool

Brought to you by Penguin. Liverpool 1868. Shrouded in secrecy Alice Sampson gives birth to a beautiful baby girl. But the former nurse's happiness is blighted by the knowledge that as a penniless, unwed mother, her future, and that of her child, can only be one of shame and disgrace. Then a knock at the door brings a miracle: she is invited to return to the Liverpool Royal Infirmary and her beloved ward. With the help of her friends and the welcome attentions of Reverend Seed, the hospital Chaplain, Alice slowly starts to rebuild her life. But her hopes are shattered when her baby's father unexpectedly shows up to claim the child he knew nothing about. Suddenly Alice is in danger of losing her baby, her position and her whole future . . .

Kate Eastham (Author), Dorothy Lawrence (Narrator)

Audiobook

Placebos for Pets?: The Truth About Alternative Medicine in Animals

Whether online or in the local pet store, there are a bewildering variety of pet healthcare products and services to choose from. Diets and supplements, ancient herbs and folk remedies, and even high-tech treatments like hyperbaric oxygen tanks and laser therapy. Everything promises to give your pet better health and a longer life, and isn't that what every pet owner wants? But how do you know if all of these products do what they claim? Are they safe? If they really are miraculous cures, why are so many offered only on the internet or by a few veterinarians specializing in 'alternative medicine?' Brennen McKenzie, a vet with twenty years of experience and the former president of the Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine Association, helps pet owners and veterinary professionals understand the claims and the evidence, allowing them to make better choices for their companions and patients.

Brennen Mckenzie, Brennen Mckenzie Vmd Msc, Brennen Mckenzie VMD MSc, Brennen Mckenzie Vmd Msc, Brennen Mckenzie, Vmd, Msc (Author), Jonathan Todd Ross (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Twittering Machine

In artist Paul Klee's The Twittering Machine, the bird-song of a machine acts as bait to lure humankind into a pit of damnation. Leading political writer Richard Seymour argues that this is a chilling metaphor for our relationship with social media. Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it responds by aggregating our fantasies, desires and frailties into data, and returning them to us as a commodity experience. Through journalism, psychoanalytic reflection and insights from users, developers, security experts and others, Seymour probes the human side of the machine, asking what we're getting out of it, and what we're getting into. "Richard Seymour has a brilliant mind and a compelling style." GUARDIAN "A brilliant, urgent, game-changing intervention." CHINA MIÉVILLE

Richard Seymour (Author), Adam Bromley (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Garden Jungle: or Gardening to Save the Planet

Brought to you by Penguin. **THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** The Garden Jungle is about the wildlife that lives right under our noses, in our gardens and parks, between the gaps in the pavement, and in the soil beneath our feet. Wherever you are right now, the chances are that there are worms, woodlice, centipedes, flies, silverfish, wasps, beetles, mice, shrews and much, much more, quietly living within just a few paces of you. Dave Goulson gives us an insight into the fascinating and sometimes weird lives of these creatures, taking us burrowing into the compost heap, digging under the lawn and diving into the garden pond. He explains how our lives and ultimately the fate of humankind are inextricably intertwined with that of earwigs, bees, lacewings and hoverflies, unappreciated heroes of the natural world. The Garden Jungle is at times an immensely serious book, exploring the environmental harm inadvertently done by gardeners who buy intensively reared plants in disposable plastic pots, sprayed with pesticides and grown in peat cut from the ground. Goulson argues that gardens could become places where we can reconnect with nature and rediscover where food comes from. With just a few small changes, our gardens could become a vast network of tiny nature reserves, where humans and wildlife can thrive together in harmony rather than conflict. For anyone who has a garden, and cares about our planet, this book is essential reading.

Dave Goulson (Author), Dave Goulson (Narrator)

Audiobook

How to Speak Machine: Laws of Design for a Digital Age

Brought to you by Penguin. John Maeda is one of the world's preeminent thinkers on technology and design, and in How to Speak Machine, he offers a set of simple laws that govern not only the computers of today, but the unimaginable machines of the future. Machines are already more powerful than we can comprehend, and getting more powerful at an exponential pace. Once set in motion, algorithms never tire. And when a program's size, speed and endlessness combine with its ability to learn and transform itself, the outcome can be unpredictable and dangerous. Take the seemingly instant transformation of Microsoft's chatbot into a hate-spewing racist, or how crime-predicting algorithms reinforce racial bias. How To Speak Machine provides a coherent framework for today's product designers, business leaders and policymakers to grasp this brave new world. Drawing on his wide-ranging experience from engineering to computer science to design, Maeda shows how businesses and individuals can identify opportunities afforded by technology to make world-changing and inclusive products while avoiding the pitfalls inherent to the medium.

John Maeda (Author), Dani Martineck (Narrator)

Audiobook

At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe's First Seconds

A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang?and how continuing research into these moments may transform cosmology and physics Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history. Taking readers into the remarkable world of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe's first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.

Dan Hooper (Author), Graham Winton (Narrator)

Audiobook