When the entire technological infrastructure of the 21st-century quits working, the privileged but clueless Altman family struggles to hold it together in the face of water shortages, paramilitary neighbors and well-mannered looting as they try to figure out what is going on. It's a normal Tuesday morning in Lincolnwood, New Jersey. All four members of the Altman family are busy ignoring each other en route to work and school ... until the world...

"The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the "Event": the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics,...

Explores the history of memory and human civilization, examining how human ideas, inventions, and transformations have been documented in venues ranging from cave drawings, and oral histories to libraries and the Internet.

In 1979 Elizabeth Eisenstein provided the first full-scale treatment of the fifteenth-century printing revolution in the West in her monumental two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. This abridged edition, after summarising the initial changes introduced by the establishment of printing shops, goes on to discuss how printing challenged traditional institutions and affected three major cultural movements: the Renaissance, the Reformation,...

The late 1960s saw the first widespread expression, in overt form, of the creed of anti-industrialism in America. The original edition of this book was published as a response - as an analysis and refutation of that deadly phenomenon. Among noted thinkers of the day, Ayn Rand alone stood firm against the tide of Kantian nihilism and in support of reason, individualism, and laissez-faire capitalism - the philosophic ideals that are the foundation of...

"Energy is humanity's single most important resource. In fact, as energy expert Michael E. Webber argues in Power Trip, the story of how societies rise can be told largely as the story of how they manage energy sources through time. In 2019, as we face down growing demand for and accumulating environmental impacts from energy, we are at a crossroads and the stakes are high. But history shows us that energy's great value is that it allows societies...

"It's no secret that AI is changing the way we live, work, love, and entertain ourselves. Dating apps are using AI to pick our potential partners. Retailers are using AI to predict our behavior and desires. Rogue actors are using AI to persuade us with Twitter bots and fake news. Companies are using AI to hire us-or not. This is just the beginning. As AI becomes smarter and more humanlike, our societies, our economies, and our humanity will undergo...

When rag doll 9 first comes to life, he finds himself in a post-apocalyptic world where all humans are gone. It is only by chance that he discovers a small community of others like him taking refuge from fearsome machines that roam the earth intent on their extinction. Despite being the newest member of the group, 9 convinces the others that hiding will do them no good. They must take the offensive if they are to survive and they will need to discover...

A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world—sand—and the crucial role it plays in our lives.
After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other—even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids...

People are living their lives remotely from the safety of their own homes via robotic surrogates - sexy, physically perfect mechanical representations of themselves. It's an ideal world where crime, pain, fear and consequences don't exist. When the first murder in years jolts this utopia, FBI agent Greer discovers a vast conspiracy behind the surrogate phenomenon and must abandon his own surrogate, risking his life to unravel the mystery.