Technology & Engineering Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Who's Minding the Farm?: In this climate emergency

In an era of rapid climate change, this vital account of how agriculture can address major issues is an Australian story with global ramifications. Patrice is at the frontline of enormous challenges, from water scarcity and land stewardship to food security and the rural-urban divide. The devastation of drought and the crises created by industrial-scale chemically-dependent primary production are discussed and alternatives proposed - along with bold ideas for new sources of energy. Patrice has travelled the world exploring best practice and invested heavily in organic methods on her farm. She believes we can produce enough good food to feed the world without further environmental wreckage or loss of bio-diversity. With glimpses of the individuals who make working the farm so rewarding, Who's Minding the Farm? provides a window into the pains, pleasures and politics of life on the land, and promotes new ways of thinking, no matter where you live. Who's minding the farm? A shared responsibility for us all.

Patrice Newell (Author), Patrice Newell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together and Why It Might Drive Us Apart

If you can't trust those in charge, who can you trust? From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn't the age of distrust--far from it. In this revolutionary book, world-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history--with fundamental consequences for everyone. A new world order is emerging: we might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their home to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of "distributed trust", a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship. If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand the mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost and repaired in the digital age. In the first book to explain this new world, Botsman provides a detailed map of this uncharted landscape--and explores what's next for humanity.

Rachel Botsman (Author), Caroline Baum (Narrator)

Audiobook

Who Can You Trust?: How Technology Brought Us Together - and Why It Could Drive Us Apart

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Who Can You Trust? by Rachel Botsman, read by Caroline Baum. Nominated for the Business Book Awards 'Embracing Change' category If you can't trust those in charge, who can you trust? From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. Widespread corruption, elitism and economic disparity have led to a worldwide upsurge of anti-establishment movements. But this isn't the age of distrust - far from it. In this revolutionary book, world-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history. A new world order is emerging: we have lost faith in brands, leaders and systems, but millions of people every day rent their home to total strangers on AirBnB, exchange cryptocurrency online, or get in the car of an unknown Uber driver. This is the age of distributed trust; a paradigm shift driven by new technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship. If we are to benefit from this radical transformation, it is vital that we understand the new mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost and repaired. In Who Can You Trust?, Botsman provides a detailed map of this uncharted landscape - and explores what's next for humanity.

Rachel Botsman (Author), Caroline Baum (Narrator)

Audiobook

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future

Today, not only is everything digital getting faster, cheaper, and smaller at an exponential rate, we also have the Internet. When these two revolutions--one in technology and the other in communications--joined, an explosive force was unleashed that changed the very nature of innovation. And with any change, we have seen many strategic blunders and extraordinary learning curves along the way. At last, in Whiplash, Joi Ito and Jeff Howe have distilled nine organizing principles for navigating and surviving this tumultuous period. These principles give us a roadmap on how to thrive no matter what industry we're in.With Whiplash, two great thinkers tell us how to adapt and succeed in today's unpredictable marketplace.

Jeff Howe, Joi Ito (Author), James Foster (Narrator)

Audiobook

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

Steven Johnson (Author), Eric Singer, Erik Singer (Narrator)

Audiobook

When Giants Ruled the Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship

Nearly everything people know about airships is wrong. Few realize that prior to the Hindenburg disaster airships transported passengers without a single casualty for more than twenty years, a record unmatched by any other form of transportation. When Giants Ruled the Sky tells the true but little-known story of the USS Macon (ZRS-5), the world's largest, most expensive, and most technologically advanced airship of her day, and the four men responsible for conceiving, designing, building, and flying her. In doing so it reveals how the American airship came within a hair's breadth of replacing planes, trains, and ocean liners as the dominant form of long-distance transportation, and exactly what went wrong, a tale of physical courage, engineering acumen, ugly politicking and two egregious disasters.

Jeffrey Geoghegan, John J. Geoghegan (Author), Tom Perkins (Narrator)

Audiobook

What's It Like to Live in Space?

Thousands of people throughout history have applied to become astronauts while only a few have been selected; do you have what it takes to be one of them? Dive into the world of astronauts from their rigorous training to the effects space travel has on the human body in this curated collection from Seeker, available for the first time in audio.

Seeker (Author), Amy Shira Teitel, Ian O'neill, Jules Suzdaltsev, Julian Huguet, Lissette Padilla, Maren Hunsberger, Trace Dominguez (Narrator)

Audiobook

What to Expect When You're Expecting Robots: The Future of Human-Robot Collaboration

The next generation of robots will be truly social, but can we make sure that they play well in the sandbox? Most robots are just tools. They do limited sets of tasks subject to constant human control. But a new type of robot is coming. These machines will operate on their own in busy, unpredictable public spaces. They'll ferry deliveries, manage emergency rooms, even grocery shop. Such systems could be truly collaborative, accomplishing tasks we don't do well without our having to stop and direct them. This makes them social entities, so, as robot designers Laura Major and Julie Shah argue, whether they make our lives better or worse is a matter of whether they know how to behave. What to Expect When You're Expecting Robots offers a vision for how robots can survive in the real world and how they will change our relationship to technology. From teaching them manners, to robot-proofing public spaces, to planning for their mistakes, this audiobook answers every question you didn't know you needed to ask about the robots on the way.

Julie Shah, Laura Major (Author), Kate Marcin (Narrator)

Audiobook

What Technology Wants

Kevin Kelly, cofounder of Wired magazine, presents a refreshing view of technology as a living force in the world. This provocative book introduces a brand-new view of technology. It suggests that technology as a whole is not a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies. Kevin Kelly looks out through the eyes of this global technological system to discover "what it wants." He uses vivid examples from the past to trace technology's long course and then follows a dozen trajectories of technology into the near future to project where technology is headed. This new theory of technology offers three practical lessons: By listening to what technology wants we can better prepare ourselves and our children for the inevitable technologies to come. By adopting the principles of proaction and engagement, we can steer technologies into their best roles. And by aligning ourselves with the long-term imperatives of this near-living system, we can capture its full gifts. Written in intelligent and accessible language, this is a fascinating, innovative, and optimistic look at how humanity and technology join to produce increasing opportunities in the world and how technology can give our lives greater meaning.

Kevin Kelly (Author), Paul Boehmer (Narrator)

Audiobook

What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Frontier

Here's some of what just happened: Millions of ordinary, sensible people came into possession of computers. These machines had wondrous powers, yet made unexpected demands on their owners. Telephones broke free of the chains that had shackled them to bedside tables and office desks. No one was out of touch, or wanted to be out of touch. Instant communication became a birthright. A new world, located no one knew exactly where, came into being, called "virtual" or "online," named "cyberspace" or "the Internet" or just "the network." Manners and markets took on new shapes and guises. As all this was happening, James Gleick, author of the groundbreaking Chaos, columnist for The New York Times Magazine, and-very briefly-an Internet entrepreneur, emerged as one of our most astute guides to this new world. His dispatches-by turns passionate, bewildered, angry, and amazed-form an extraordinary chronicle. Gleick loves what the network makes possible, and he hates it. Software makers developed a strangely tolerant view of an ancient devil, the product defect. One company, at first a feisty upstart, seized control of the hidden gears and levers of the new economy. We wrestled with novel issues of privacy, anonymity, and disguise. We found that if the human species is evolving a sort of global brain, it's susceptible to new forms of hysteria and multiple-personality disorder. What Just Happened is at once a remarkable portrait of a world in the throes of transformation and a prescient guide to the transformation still to come.

James Gleick (Author), Dan Cashman (Narrator)

Audiobook

What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World

A fascinating and provocative new way of looking at the things we use and the spaces we inhabit, and a call to imagine a better-designed world for us all. Furniture and tools, kitchens and campuses and city streets-nearly everything human beings make and use is assistive technology, meant to bridge the gap between body and world. Yet unless, or until, a misfit between our own body and the world is acute enough to be understood as disability, we may never stop to consider-or reconsider-the hidden assumptions on which our everyday environment is built. In a series of vivid stories drawn from the lived experience of disability and the ideas and innovations that have emerged from it-from cyborg arms to customizable cardboard chairs to deaf architecture -Sara Hendren invites us to rethink the things and settings we live with. What might assistance based on the body's stunning capacity for adaptation-rather than a rigid insistence on "normalcy"-look like? Can we foster interdependent, not just independent, living? How do we creatively engineer public spaces that allow us all to navigate our common terrain? By rendering familiar objects and environments newly strange and wondrous, What Can a Body Do? helps us imagine a future that will better meet the extraordinary range of our collective needs and desires.

Sara Hendren (Author), Sara Hendren (Narrator)

Audiobook

Wenn Maschinen Meinung machen: Journalismuskrise, Social Bots und der Angriff auf die Demokratie

Wie Big Data unsere Gesellschaft verAndert Big Data, die digitale Transformation, kUnstliche Intelligenz - wir wissen mittlerweile, dass sich unsere Gesellschaft rasant verAndert. Welche Begriffe auch immer durch die Debatte geistern, deutlich wird: Neue Technologien schaffen auch neue Probleme, die wir bisher noch nicht mal ansatzweise verstanden haben. Social Bots manipulieren die Meinungsbildung. Fake News beeinflussen Wahlen und Abstimmungen. Filterblasen und Algorithmen definieren, welche Informationen uns das Internet bereitstellt. Wie weit geht diese VerAnderung unserer Gesellschaft? Ist sie ein Angriff auf die Demokratie? Was will das Silicon Valley, von dem so viele VerAnderungen ausgehen, wirklich? ErfAhrt der Journalismus eine Renaissance oder macht der Letzte das Licht aus?

Gunther Rager, Günther Rager, Michael Steinbrecher (Author), Armand Presser (Narrator)

Audiobook

Technology & Engineering Audiobooks in Science & Technology