Archives de catégorie : Computers

PREDICTED FUTURES de Jackie Snow

With the urgency of Naomi Klein and the expert on-the-ground reporting of Elizabeth Kolbert, Jackie Snow’s PREDICTED FUTURES dives into the world of climate change and technology and emerges with a rare find: hope.

PREDICTED FUTURES
How Artificial Intelligence Could Save the Natural World
by Jackie Snow
TBD
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Using case studies that range from AI assisted reforestation in Australia to coral mapping in Belize, PREDICTED FUTURES is a cohesive, imagery-rich narrative arguing for AI’s uniquely qualified ability to help us protect our planet. Written with elegance and authority, this galvanizing proposal is free of hysteria but clear-eyed about what it will take—and more importantly, what is already being done—to save our cherished world.

Jackie Snow is a multimedia journalist published by National Geographic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and others. She reported a 10-part series for PBS called “AI for Good,” and received the Harvard Medical School Media Fellowship in 2019.

SUPREMACY de Parmy Olson

SUPREMACY will reveal the truths behind Big Tech’s exploitation of the greatest invention in history, who those players are, and why their work deserves far more scrutiny. We are entering an age where the world’s biggest monopolies are amassing even more power through tools that threaten our economies and culture. It is time to push back..

SUPREMACY
AI, ChatGPT, and the Race that Changed the World
by Parmy Olson
St. Martin’s Press, July 2024

In November of 2022, a webpage was posted online with a simple text box. It was a chatbot called ChatGPT. OpenAI launched it quietly, letting anyone who registered experiment with the new tool. The word spread. ChatGPT was unlike anything people had experienced before. It was more human than a customer service agent, more convenient than a Google search. It could tell you where snowy owls lived or give you a recipe for French onion soup in plain language, as if a real person was writing the answer. It could give health advice and write letters of condolence. ChatGPT’s sister tool, called DALL-E 2, creates images from any text prompt. OpenAI wanted to combine those tools to make an even more powerful system that would create all kinds of content, like magic. In Supremacy, Parmy Olson, tech writer at Bloomberg, sharply alerts readers to the real threat of artificial intelligence: the silent, profit-driven spread of flawed-technology into industries, education and medicine. OpenAI and soon Google are selling their language models to law firms and consulting firms across the globe to help implement them into businesses. Despite the rush, nobody seems to know what the misinformation rate is for these tools or how many employees are behind the modeling.

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of We Are Anonymous.

READ. WRITE. OWN. de Chris Dixon

A passionate call for a new internet – one that wrests control from big tech and puts it back in the hands of the people, through the use of blockchain technology.

READ. WRITE. OWN. :
Building the Next Era of the Internet
by Chris Dixon
Random House, January 2024
(via The Gernert Company)

Though few outside a passionate subset of the tech world seem to realize it, the internet has arrived at an inflection point, in two respects. The first regards the history of the internet itself; the second, the technology that will power its future.
Evidence of the first inflection point is all around us. The top 1% of internet services, mostly run by an oligopoly of tech giants, account for 95% of web traffic. Content creators and small businesses depend upon algorithms over which they have no control, and that are subject to change at any time. A tiny handful of people make unilateral decisions with profound consequences for public discourse and who can participate in it, and increasingly for democracy itself. An even tinier handful has become unprecedentedly wealthy off our data, which–unless we want to opt out entirely–we have no choice but to turn over for free.
Chris Dixon remembers the halcyon days of the early internet–Web 1.0, as it’s known–when it was an open, egalitarian, and decentralized place, before it was intermediated by Big Tech. The next era, Web 2.0, brought transformative technologies like social media that connected billions of people–but it also centralized power in the hands of the companies that run them, with increasingly negative consequences for society as a whole.
For over five years, Chris has been advocating for a new kind of internet, which would combine the ethos of the early web while maintaining and innovating upon the benefits of corporate networks. Web3 (a term Chris has done more than anyone else to popularize) would be powered by blockchains, a new kind of computing that does everything corporate networks can do, and much more. They would return power and ownership to users, and foster innovation, precisely because their architecture makes it impossible for one person or company to seize control.
That brings us to the second inflection point. For many people, the past year has turned crypto into a dirty word–even a risible one. But that’s because cryptocurrency, which is but one use case of blockchains, has become in the public mind the province of speculators and grifters. The average person fails to understand that the true power and potential of crypto lies in blockchains themselves, not in the market for their tokens. It’s easy to forget that when the tech bubble burst in 2000, and the speculative frenzy that fueled the spectacular failure of companies like Pets.com and Webvan had subsided, many people thought it was the internet itself that had been overhyped. And yet that same era, and its immediate aftermath, gave us Amazon, Google, and Facebook–three of the most valuable companies in the world, which have fundamentally changed the way we live and work, but whose success has brought us to this crossroads.
There is a battle underway over the soul of crypto: “the computer v. the casino,” as Chris puts it. Sam Bankman-Fried was the figurehead for the latter camp. Chris is the unquestioned thought leader of the former. While the casino gets all the mainstream attention, the future of the internet is quietly being built. READ. WRITE. OWN. is its ZERO TO ONE–and having represented both, that’s not a comparison I make lightly.

Chris Dixon is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he has been since 2012. He founded and leads a16z crypto, which invests in web3 technologies through four dedicated funds with more than $7 billion under management. In 2022, he was ranked #1 on Forbes’ Midas List of the top venture capitalists. Previously, he founded and was CEO of two internet companies, SiteAdvisor and Hunch, which were acquired by McAfee and eBay, respectively. A programmer by training, he has a BA and MA in Philosophy from Columbia, and an MBA from Harvard. He tweets at @cdixon and blogs at Mirror.

THE PARA METHOD de Tiago Forte

Productivity expert and bestselling author of Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte shows you how to re-organise, streamline and simplify your inbox, filing system, notes app and more – so that you have more time to do the things that really matter.

THE PARA METHOD
by Tiago Forte
Atria/Simon & Schuster, November 2023
(via Writers House)

Imagine the perfect organizational system.
A system that told you exactly where to put every piece of information in your life – every document, file, note, agenda, outline, and bit of research – and exactly where to find it when you needed it. Such a system would need to be incredibly easy to set up, and even easier to maintain. After all, only the simplest, most effortless habits endure long term.
It would need to be both flexible, adapting to your needs in different seasons of your life, but also comprehensive, so you can use it in every one of the many places where you store information, such as your computer’s file system, a cloud storage platform (e.g., Dropbox or Google Drive), or a digital notetaking app. But most of all, the ideal organizational system would be one that leads directly to tangible benefits in your career and life. It would dramatically accelerate you toward completing the projects and achieving the goals that are most important to you.
In other words, the ultimate system for organizing your life is one that is actionable. Instead of putting more obstacles in your way, postponing the actions that will make a difference, it would pull those actions closer and make them easier to start and finish.
Developed by Tiago Forte after more than a decade of personal experimentation, teaching thousands of students, and coaching world-class professionals, THE PARA METHOD is a simple, comprehensive, yet extremely flexible system for organizing any type of digital information across any platform.

Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity and has taught thousands of people around the world how timeless principles and the latest technology can revolutionize their productivity, creativity, and personal effectiveness. He has worked with organizations such as Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank and appeared in a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review.

THE DESTINY GRIMOIRES & COMIC COLLECTION de Bungie Inc.

Two different format of companion books for fans of the Destiny video game by Bungie, a game development studio that created some of the most celebrated video game franchises, including Marathon, Myth, Halo, and Destiny.

THE DESTINY GRIMOIRES & COMIC COLLECTION
by Bungie Inc.
Bungie/Abrams, 2018 – 2021

DESTINY GRIMOIRES VOLUMES I-IV (published 2018 – 2021):
Bungie presents the Destiny Grimoire Anthology, a must-have collectible lore compendium designed and assembled for Destiny’s devoted and enlightened scholars and lore lovers, as well as fans of fantasy and science fiction storytelling. The DESTINY GRIMOIRE ANTHOLOGY weaves tales from multiple sources together for the first time, casting new light on Destiny’s most legendary heroes, infamous villains, and their greatest moments of triumph and tragedy. Until now, the myths, mysteries, and machinations of the Destiny universe were found hidden throughout the worlds – enticing threads that hinted at a greater tapestry.
Each unique volume intends to illuminate a facet of the world, and the complete anthology will confirm and challenge players’ thoughts and assumptions on what it means to be a Guardian (players), offering new and differing perspectives on the cosmic war that rages between the Traveler and its ancient enemies.

THE DESTINY COMIC COLLECTION VOL. ONE (July 2019):
An essential collection of comic stories for Destiny fans. This 144-page volume includes Bungie’s comic collection plus never before seen stories, behind the scenes galleries, and exclusive content from featured artists! From Osiris’s exile to Ana Bray’s homecoming on Mars, uncover the legends behind Destiny 2’s iconic characters. Featuring stories written and illustrated in collaboration with Bungie by Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics, Marvel’s The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl), Kris Anka (Marvel’s X-Men and Star-Lord), Mark Waid (DC Comics’ The Flash and Marvel’s Captain America) plus a special introduction by Gerry Duggan (Marvel’s Deadpool). Includes one of two collectible bookmarks printed with the Destiny 2 « Heroes of the Light » emblem code inserted inside the book.

Bungie, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Bellevue, Washington. Established in 1991, they have developed the hit games, Destiny, Halo, Myth, and Destiny.