Technology & Engineering Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Mikela Tarlow (Author), Michael Toms (Narrator)

Audiobook

From the River to the Sea: The Untold Story of the Railroad War That Made the West

A sweeping and lively history of one of the most dramatic stories never told—of the greatest railroad war of all time, fought by the daring leaders of the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande to seize, control, and create the American West. It is difficult to imagine now, but for all of its cloudy peaks and gorgeous coastline, the American West might have been barren tundra as far as most Americans knew well into the 19th century. While gauzy advertising promotions of the West as a paradise on earth intrigued citizens in the East and Midwest, many believed the journey too hazardous to be worthwhile—until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad changed the face of transportation. Railroad companies soon became the rulers of western expansion, choosing routes, creating brand-new railroad towns, and building up remote settlements like Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Diego, and El Paso into proper cities. But thinning federal grants left the routes incomplete, an opportunity that two brash new railroad men, armed with private investments and determination to build an empire across the Southwest clear to the Pacific, soon seized, leading to the greatest railroad war in American history. In From the River to the Sea, bestselling author John Sedgwick recounts, in vivid and thrilling detail, the decade-long fight between General William J. Palmer, the Civil War hero leading the "little family" of his Rio Grande, coming down from Denver, hoping to showcase the majesty of the Rockies, and William Barstow Strong, the hard-nosed manager of the corporate-minded Santa Fe, venturing west from Kansas. What begins as an accidental rivalry when the two lines cross in Colorado soon evolves into an all-out battle as each man tries to outdo the other—claiming exclusive routes through mountains, narrow passes, and the richest silver mines in the world; enlisting private armies to protect their land and lawyers to find loopholes; dispatching spies to gain information; and even using the power of the press and incurring the wrath of the God-like Robber Baron Jay Gould—to emerge victorious. By the end of the century, one man will fade into anonymity and disgrace. The other will achieve unparalleled success—and in the process, transform a sleepy backwater of thirty thousand called "Los Angeles" into a booming metropolis that will forever change the United States. Filled with colorful characters and high drama, told at the speed of a locomotive, From the River to the Sea is an unforgettable piece of American history—and one of the last great untold tales of the Wild West.

John Sedgwick (Author), John Bedford Lloyd (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fueling the Planet: The Past, Present, and Future of Energy

Renowned professor Michael B. McElroy leads a comprehensive examination of energy, including its history, use in the world today, and environmental consequences. Whether discussing the 'oil shocks' of the 1970s, the current reliance on imported oil, or the growing buildup of carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere, it is clear that energy represents one of the world's most daunting challenges. In these informed, easy-to-follow lectures, Professor McElroy imparts a clear understanding of energy'in all its applications'and offers a vision for a clean, safe, and sustainable future.

Michael McElroy (Author), Michael McElroy (Narrator)

Audiobook

Full Steam Ahead

The Age of Railways was an era of extraordinary change which utterly transformed every aspect of British life - from trade and transportation to health and recreation. Full Steam Ahead will reveal how the world we live in today was entirely shaped by the rail network, charting the glorious evolution of rail transportation and how it left its mark on every aspect of life, landscape and culture. Peter Ginn and Ruth Goodman brilliantly bring this revolution to life in their trademark style which engages and captivates. They explore the everyday lives and the intangible ephemeral history that makes up the stories of the people who built, worked and were affected by the railways. From the very first steam railways to the infrastructure that is still used in part today, they look at the men, women and children who lived and sometimes died constructing Britain's railway heritage. Immersing themselves in the story of how the railways made us what we are today, the authors uncover compelling social history along the way, exploring the railway's impact on everything from food and medicine to warfare and the class system. They tell the stories of the historic characters whose lives were changed by this radical mode of transport, describing the wider social history and geography of each particular region of Britain. As they trace the emergence of the Industrial Revolution across the country, the authors discover a hidden layer of social history, using rail transportation as a backdrop to reveal Britain's radical change in social attitudes and culture across the 19th and early 20th centuries, including the rise of the working class, women's rights, industrial growth, economic decline, warfare and the birth of the great British holiday. Beautifully illustrated with photographs and artwork throughout, Full Steam Ahead is a passionate, charming and insightful look at Britain through the lens of one of its most momentous eras.

Peter Ginn, Ruth Goodman (Author), Peter Ginn, Ruth Goodman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

A different kind of politics for a new kind of society-beyond work, scarcity, and capitalism In the twenty-first century, new technologies should liberate us from work. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury, and happiness-for everyone. Technological advance will reduce the value of commodities-food, healthcare, and housing-towards zero. Improvements in renewable energies will make fossil fuels a thing of the past. Asteroids will be mined for essential minerals. Genetic editing and synthetic biology will prolong life, virtually eliminate disease, and provide meat without animals. New horizons beckon. In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of history.

Aaron Bastani (Author), Shaun Grindell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

One of the world’s leading authorities on global security, Marc Goodman takes readers deep into the digital underground to expose the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using new and emerging technologies against you—and how this makes everyone more vulnerable than ever imagined. Technological advances have benefited our world in immeasurable ways, but there is an ominous flip side: our technology can be turned against us. Hackers can activate baby monitors to spy on families, thieves are analyzing social media posts to plot home invasions, and stalkers are exploiting the GPS on smart phones to track their victims’ every move. We all know today’s criminals can steal identities, drain online bank accounts, and wipe out computer servers, but that’s just the beginning. To date, no computer has been created that could not be hacked—a sobering fact given our radical dependence on these machines for everything from our nation’s power grid to air traffic control to financial services. Yet, as ubiquitous as technology seems today, just over the horizon is a tidal wave of scientific progress that will leave our heads spinning. If today’s Internet is the size of a golf ball, tomorrow’s will be the size of the sun. Welcome to the Internet of Things, a living, breathing, global information grid where every physical object will be online. But with greater connections come greater risks. Implantable medical devices such as pacemakers can be hacked to deliver a lethal jolt of electricity and a car’s brakes can be disabled at high speed from miles away. Meanwhile, 3-D printers can produce AK-47s, bioterrorists can download the recipe for Spanish flu, and cartels are using fleets of drones to ferry drugs across borders. With explosive insights based upon a career in law enforcement and counterterrorism, Marc Goodman takes readers on a vivid journey through the darkest recesses of the Internet. Reading like science fiction, but based in science fact, Future Crimes explores how bad actors are primed to hijack the technologies of tomorrow, including robotics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. These fields hold the power to create a world of unprecedented abundance and prosperity. But the technological bedrock upon which we are building our common future is deeply unstable and, like a house of cards, can come crashing down at any moment. Future Crimes provides a mind-blowing glimpse into the dark side of technological innovation and the unintended consequences of our connected world. Goodman offers a way out with clear steps we must take to survive the progress unfolding before us. Provocative, thrilling, and ultimately empowering, Future Crimes will serve as an urgent call to action that shows how we can take back control over our own devices and harness technology’s tremendous power for the betterment of humanity—before it’s too late.

Marc Goodman (Author), Marc Goodman, Robertson Dean (Narrator)

Audiobook

Future Presence: How Virtual Reality Is Changing Human Connection, Intimacy, and the Limits of Ordin

A Wired senior editor and virtual reality expert presents a captivating, candid glimpse into the future "realities" of this emerging technology: how we will use it to form previously impossible relationships, explore new frontiers of intimacy, and how it will forever change human connection. Heralded as the most significant technological innovation since the smartphone, virtual reality is poised to transform our very notions of life and humanity. Though this tech is still in its infancy, to those on the inside, it is the future. VR will change how we work, how we experience entertainment, how we feel pleasure and other emotions, how we see ourselves, and most importantly, how we relate to each other in the real world. And we will never be the same. Peter Rubin, senior culture editor for Wired and the industry's go-to authority on the subject, calls it an "intimacy engine." While once we needed another person to feel the sensations of closeness, trust, vulnerability, confidence, and titillation, VR will give us the ability to induce these sensations by ourselves for the first time in human history. This metamorphosis, Rubin argues, is going to have a powerful impact on relationships that will ripple throughout our society and our individual lives. A journey into this uncertain future and a glimpse at the cultural implications and promises of a new reality, Future Presence explores a host of complex questions about what makes us human, what connects us, and what is real. Offering a glimpse into the mind-blowing things happening in universities, labs, and tech companies around the world, Rubin leads readers on an entertaining tour of the weirdest, wildest corners of this fascinating new universe. Describing this book as "half travelogue and half crystal ball", Rubin will: Introduce readers to the creators and consumers of VR technology Show readers what an experience is like inside the current VR devices Explain how this technology will upend everything we know about human connection in the future At once the incredible, inevitable story of virtual reality's rise and a look towards the future of our fantasies, Future Presence is a deeply personal examination of what connects us, and an analysis of what relationships, empathy, and sex could look like-sooner than we think.

Peter Rubin (Author), Roger Wayne (Narrator)

Audiobook

Future War: Preparing for the New Global Battlefield

An urgent, prescient, and expert look at how future technology will change virtually every aspect of war as we know it and how we can respond to the serious national security challenges ahead. Future war is almost here: battles fought in cyberspace; biologically enhanced soldiers; autonomous systems that can process information and strike violently before a human being can blink. A leading expert on the place of technology in war and intelligence, Robert H. Latiff, now teaching at the University of Notre Dame, has spent a career in the military researching and developing new combat technologies, observing the cost of our unquestioning embrace of innovation. At its best, advanced technology acts faster than ever to save the lives of soldiers; at its worst, the deployment of insufficiently considered new technology can have devastating unintended or long-term consequences. The question of whether we can is followed, all too infrequently, by the question of whether we should. In Future War, Latiff maps out the changing ways of war and the weapons technologies we will use to fight them, seeking to describe the ramifications of those changes and what it will mean in the future to be a soldier. He also recognizes that the fortunes of a nation are inextricably linked with its national defense, and how its citizens understand the importance of when, how, and according to what rules we fight. What will war mean to the average American? Are our leaders sufficiently sensitized to the implications of the new ways of fighting? How are the attitudes of individuals and civilian institutions shaped by the wars we fight and the means we use to fight them? And, of key importance: How will soldiers themselves think about war and their roles within it? The evolving, complex world of conflict and technology demands that we pay more attention to the issues that will confront us, before it is too late to control them. Decrying what he describes as a "broken" relationship between the military and the public it serves, Latiff issues a bold wake-up call to military planners and weapons technologists, decision makers, and the nation as a whole as we prepare for a very different future.

Robert H. Latiff (Author), Johnathan McClain (Narrator)

Audiobook

Futureproof: 9 reglas para los humanos en la era de la automatizacion

¿Qué significa ser humano en un mundo construido cada vez más por y para máquinas? Las máquinas ya están aquí; la automatización está sustituyendo los trabajos de las personas, la inteligencia artificial se ha colocado en el centro de los negocios y de nuestras vidas, y los algoritmos dan forma a todo lo que nos rodea. EnFutureproof: 9 reglas para los humanos en la era de la automatización, Kevin Roose rechaza la creencia popular de que paracompetir con las máquinas tenemos que parecernos a ellas: hipereficientes, basadas en datos, caballos de batalla al servicio del código. En su lugar, sostiene que debemos dejar a las máquinas ser máquinas y enfocarnos en hacer las actividades creativas, inspiradoras y con sentido que nos distinguen como seres humanos. Para lograrlo, nos comparte nueve lecciones para reflexionar, sobrevivir al cambio tecnológico y proteger nuestro futuro: Regla 1. Sé sorprendente, sociable y excepcional. Regla 2. Resiste el embate de las máquinas. Regla 3. Haz a un lado tus dispositivos. Regla 4. Deja huella. Regla 5. No seas un punto de conexión. Regla 6. Trata la IA como si fuera un ejército de chimpancés. Regla 7. Construye redes grandes y pequeñas. Regla 8. Aprende humanidades para la era de las máquinas. Regla 9. Arma a los rebeldes. Una visión pragmática y esperanzadora sobre cómo podemos defendernos del paso arrasador de la automatización y cómo alcanzar el éxito en la era de las máquinas al convertirnos en humanos irremplazables.

Kevin Roose (Author), Sergio Mejía (Narrator)

Audiobook

Gardening Primer Bundle, 2 in 1 Bundle: Beginner's Guide to Organic Gardening and Greenhouse Gardeni

Gardening Primer Bundle, 2 in 1 Bundle: Beginner's Guide to Organic Gardening and Greenhouse Gardening Hacks For some people, gardening is a passion. Some people garden just as a hobby but for some others, it’s a way to also feed their families. Gardening is a great way to provide healthy food for you and your loved ones. When you buy produce from the store, it just isn’t the same as presenting a salad to your family that came exclusively from your garden worked by your own two hands. This is also a way to have control over what type of food you and your family eat without fear of chemicals or preservatives. Some grow their plants in greenhouses. Most greenhouse owners are familiar with the advantages of growing their own plants and flowers, prolonging the growing season and the possibility of heating their home. This bundle will teach you everything you need to know about organic gardening. You will learn the benefits of organic gardening and how to prepare your own organic garden. You will learn ideas about mulching, weed control, and composting. Plus you will get some ideas on all-natural pest controls and ways to make sure your garden thrives – without chemicals. You will also learn how to grow your own food through greenhouse gardening. Learn some guides and tips on how to grow your own organic foods. This 2 in 1 bundle includes the following audiobooks: - Beginner's Guide to Organic Gardening: The Step-by-Step Guide on How to Plant Your Own Organic Garden - Greenhouse Gardening Hacks: The Essential Guide on How to Grow Your Own Plans and Food Through Greenhouse Gardening Get your copy of this Gardening Primer 2 in 1 Bundle today!

Erik Spitz, Ron Oaklyn (Author), Marcus Mulenga, Todd Studder, Tracy Pearson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Generation Robot: A Century of Science Fiction, Fact, and Speculation

A history of robotics and technology told from Terri Favro's experiences growing up with robots on TV to today's technological realityFor fans of Mary Roach and Jon Ronson, written from the point of view of the late-boomer generation known as Generation Jones (born 1954 to 1962)Covers a century of science fiction, fact, and speculation-from the 1950 publication of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, to the release of Tesla's self driving car, to the 2050 Singularity when artificial and human intelligence is predicted to mergeGeneration Robot addresses hard science, technological innovation, and pop-culture in a fun and accessible voice that will appeal to a wider readership, not just for serious scientific readersTerri Favro has published several works of science fiction in Canada, this is her non-fiction debut

Terri Favro (Author), Teri Schnaubelt (Narrator)

Audiobook

Getting Started With ChatGPT

The future is here - Artificial Intelligence has arrived, available to anyone from almost anywhere. The first book of the series will guide the user through how to use AI via ChatGPT using a variety of interactive examples. You'll learn tips and tricks for getting the most out of ChatGPT's interface and personalizing it for your use. Listen in for an adventure into the practical realm of applied artificial intelligence.

Neural Quill (Author), Frank Gerard (Narrator)

Audiobook

Technology & Engineering Audiobooks in Science & Technology