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The bestselling author and recipient of the 2018 Holberg Prize, Cass R. Sunstein, explores how more information can make us happy or miserable, and why we sometimes avoid it--but sometimes seek it out.How much information is too much? Do we need to know how many calories are in the giant vat of popcorn that we bought on our way into the movie theater? Do we want to know if we are genetically predisposed to a certain disease? Can we do anything useful with next week's weather forecast for Paris if we are not in Paris? In Too Much Information, Cass Sunstein examines the effects of information on our lives. Policymakers emphasize “the right to know,” but Sunstein takes a different perspective, arguing that the focus should be on human well-being and what information contributes to it. Government should require companies, employers, hospitals, and others to disclose information not because of a general “right to know” but when the information in question would significantly improve people'

The new edition of a comprehensive and rigorous but concise introduction to symbolic logic.Logic Primer offers a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to symbolic logic, providing concise definitions of key concepts, illustrative examples, and exercises. After presenting the definitions of validity and soundness, the book goes on to introduce a formal language, proof theory, and formal semantics for sentential logic (chapters 1–3) and for first-order predicate logic (chapters 4–6) with identity (chapter 7). For this third edition, the material has been reorganized from four chapters into seven, increasing the modularity of the text and enabling teachers to choose alternative paths through the book. New exercises have been added, and all exercises are now arranged to support students moving from easier to harder problems. Its spare and elegant treatment makes Logic Primer unique among textbooks. It presents the material with minimal chattiness, allowing students to proceed more dire

How organizations can foster diversity, equity, and inclusion: taking action to address and prevent workplace bias while centering women of color. Few would disagree that inclusion is both the right thing to do and good for business. Then why are we so terrible at it? If we believe in the morality and the profitability of including people of diverse and underestimated backgrounds in the workplace, why don't we do it? Because, explains Ruchika Tulshyan in this eye-opening book, we don't realize that inclusion takes awareness, intention, and regular practice. Inclusion doesn't just happen; we have to work at it. Tulshyan presents inclusion best practices, showing how leaders and organizations can meaningfully promote inclusion and diversity. Tulshyan centers the workplace experience of women of color, who are subject to both gender and racial bias. It is at the intersection of gender and race, she shows, that we discover the kind of inclusion policies that benefit all. Tulshyan debunks t

A concise and accessible explanation of the science and technology behind the domestication of nuclear fusion energy.Nuclear fusion research tells us that the Sun uses one gram of hydrogen to make as much energy as can be obtained by burning eight tons of petroleum. If nuclear fusion―the process that makes the stars shine―could be domesticated for commercial energy production, the world would gain an inexhaustible source of energy that neither depletes natural resources nor produces greenhouse gases. In Star Power, Alan Bécoulet offers a concise and accessible primer on fusion energy, explaining the science and technology of nuclear fusion and describing the massive international scientific effort to achieve commercially viable fusion energy. Bécoulet draws on his work as Head of Engineering at ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) to explain how scientists are trying to “put the sun in a box.” He surveys the history of nuclear power, beginning with post–World War I

How multinational companies can use digital technology to compete in a world where business is driven by the forces of both globalization and deglobalization.Digital technology has put globalization on steroids; multinational companies now account for one-third of world GDP and one-fourth of world employment. And yet complicating this story of unchecked global capitalism are two contradictory forces. Even as advances in digital technology enable borderless markets, a new nationalism has emerged, reviving protectionism and railing against digital colonialism. In The Digital Multinational, management experts Satish Nambisan and Yadong Luo examine how companies can adopt a dual strategy to cope with this new normal: harnessing the power of digital technology while adapting to the geopolitical realities of particular markets. Key to success, Nambisan and Luo explain, is the notion of tight and loose coupling to characterize the relationship of the digital multinational to its global part

A concise illustrated introduction to the history and physics of supernovae, the brilliant explosions of stars; with striking color illustrations. Supernovae are the explosions of stars. They are some of the most energetic phenomena in the Universe, rivaling the combined light of billions of stars. Supernovae have been studied for centuries, and they have also made appearances in popular culture: a glimpse of a supernova in a painting provides Sherlock Holmes with a crucial clue, for example. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, astrophysicist Or Graur offers a concise and accessible introduction to these awe-inspiring astronomical phenomena. Graur explains that a deep observational understanding of supernovae―why and how they shine and how their brightness changes over time―allows us to use them as tools for experiments in astrophysics and physics. A certain type of supernova, for example, brightens and fades in such a predictable manner that we can measure

How Amazon combined branding and relationship marketing with massive distribution infrastructure to become the ultimate service brand in the digital economy.Amazon is ubiquitous in our daily lives―we stream movies and television on Amazon Prime Video, converse with Alexa, receive messages on our smartphone about the progress of our latest orders. In Buy Now, Emily West examines Amazon’s consumer-facing services to investigate how Amazon as a brand grew so quickly and inserted itself into so many aspects of our lives even as it faded into the background, becoming a sort of infrastructure that can be taken for granted. Amazon promotes the comfort and care of its customers (but not its workers) to become the ultimate service brand in the digital economy. West shows how Amazon has cultivated personalized, intimate relationships with consumers that normalize its outsized influence on our selves and our communities. She describes the brand’s focus on speedy and seamless ecommerce delivery

Through practices of collaborative imagination and making, or "doing design otherwise,” design experiments can contribute to keeping local democracies vibrant.In this counterpoint to the grand narratives of design punditry, Carl DiSalvo presents what he calls “doing design otherwise.” Arguing that democracy requires constant renewal and care, he shows how designers can supply novel contributions to local democracy by drawing together theory and practice, making and reflection. The relentless pursuit of innovation, uncritical embrace of the new and novel, and treatment of all things as design problems, says DiSalvo, can lead to cultural imperialism. In Design as Democratic Inquiry, he recounts a series of projects that exemplify engaged design in practice. These experiments in practice-based research are grounded in collaborations with communities and institutions. The projects DiSalvo describes took place from 2014 to 2019 in Atlanta. Rather than presume that government, industry―or

How East German artists made their country’s experimental art scene a form of (counter) public life.Experimental artists in the final years of the German Democratic Republic did not practice their art in the shadows, on the margins, hiding away from the Stasi’s prying eyes. In fact, as Sara Blaylock shows, many cultivated a critical influence over the very bureaucracies meant to keep them in line, undermining state authority through forthright rather than covert projects. In Parallel Public, Blaylock describes how some East German artists made their country’s experimental art scene a form of (counter) public life, creating an alternative to the crumbling collective underpinnings of the state. Blaylock examines the work of artists who used body-based practices―including performance, film, and photography―to create new vocabularies of representation, sharing their projects through independent networks of dissemination and display. From the collective films and fashion shows

A new, biologically driven model of human behavior in which reason is tethered to the evolutionarily older autonomic, instinctive, and associative systems. In Reason and Less, Vinod Goel explains the workings of the tethered mind. Reason does not float on top of our biology but is tethered to evolutionarily older autonomic, instinctive, and associative systems. After describing the conceptual and neuroanatomical basis of each system, Goel shows how they interact to generate a blended response. Goel’s commonsense account drives human behavior back into the biology, where it belongs, and provides a richer set of tools for understanding how we pursue food, sex, and politics. Goel takes the reader on a journey through psychology (cognitive, behavioral, developmental, and evolutionary), neuroscience, philosophy, ethology, economics, and political science to explain the workings of the tethered mind. One key insight that holds everything together is that feelings―generated in old, widely

How intermittent fasting can enhance resilience, improve mental and physical performance, and protect against aging and disease.Most of us eat three meals a day with a smattering of snacks because we think that’s the normal, healthy way to eat. This book shows why that’s not the case. The human body and brain evolved to function well in environments where food could be obtained only intermittently. When we look at the eating patterns of our distant ancestors, we can see that an intermittent fasting eating pattern is normal―and eating three meals a day is not. In The Intermittent Fasting Revolution, prominent neuroscientist Mark Mattson shows that intermittent fasting is not only normal but also good for us; it can enhance our ability to cope with stress by making cells more resilient. It also improves mental and physical performance and protects against aging and disease. Intermittent fasting is not the latest fad diet; it doesn’t dictate food choice or quantity. It doesn’t make mone

A psychologist explores love, belongingness, and fulfillment, focusing on how modern technology can both help and hinder our need to connect. Millions of people around the world are not getting the physical, emotional, and intellectual intimacy they crave. Through the wonders of modern technology, we are connecting with more people more often than ever before; but are these connections what we long for? Pandemic isolation has made us even more alone. In Out of Touch, psychologist Michelle Drouin investigates what she calls our intimacy famine, exploring love, belongingness, and fulfillment and considering why relationships carried out on technological platforms may leave us starving for physical connection. Drouin puts it this way: when most of our interactions are through social media, we are taking tiny hits of dopamine rather than the huge shots of oxytocin that an intimate in-person relationship would provide. Drouin explains that intimacy is not just sex―although of course sex i

Charting the exploration of an unknown world―our own―with a new cartography of living things rather than space available for conquest or colonization.This book charts the exploration of an unknown world: our own. Just as Renaissance travelers set out to map the terra incognito of the New World, the mapmakers of Terra Forma have set out to rediscover the world that we think we know. They do this with a new kind of cartography that maps living things rather than space emptied of life and available to be conquered or colonized. The maps in Terra Forma lead us inward, not off into the distance, moving from the horizon line of conventional cartography to the thickness of the ground, from the global to the local. Each map in Terra Forma is based on a specific territory or territories, and each tool, or model, creates a new focal point through which the territory is redrawn. The maps are “living maps,” always under construction, spaces where stories and situations unfold. They may map the E

A philosopher refutes our culturally embedded acceptance of death, arguing instead for the desirability of anti-aging science and radical life extension. Ingemar Patrick Linden’s central claim is that death is evil. In this first comprehensive refutation of the most common arguments in favor of human mortality, he writes passionately in favor of antiaging science and radical life extension. We may be on the cusp of a new human condition where scientists seek to break through the arbitrarily set age limit of human existence to address aging as an illness that can be cured. The book, however, is not about the science and technology of life extension but whether we should want more life. For Linden, the answer is a loud and clear “yes.” The acceptance of death is deeply embedded in our culture. Linden examines the views of major philosophical voices of the past, whom he calls “death’s ardent advocates.” These include the Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Lucretius, and Montaigne. All have taug

Contributors explore common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture resulting from convergent evolution.During the past 12,000 years, agriculture originated in humans as many as twenty-three times, and during the past 65 million years, agriculture also originated in nonhuman animals at least twenty times and in insects at least fifteen times. It is much more likely that these independent origins represent similar solutions to the challenge of growing food than that they are due purely to chance. This volume seeks to identify common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture that are the results of convergent evolution. The goal is to create a new, synthetic field that characterizes, quantifies, and empirically documents the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that drive both human and nonhuman agriculture. The contributors report on the results of quantitative analyses comparing human and nonhuman agriculture; d

Best practices for addressing the bias and inequality that may result from the automated collection, analysis, and distribution of large datasets.Human-centered data science is a new interdisciplinary field that draws from human-computer interaction, social science, statistics, and computational techniques. This book, written by founders of the field, introduces best practices for addressing the bias and inequality that may result from the automated collection, analysis, and distribution of very large datasets. It offers a brief and accessible overview of many common statistical and algorithmic data science techniques, explains human-centered approaches to data science problems, and presents practical guidelines and real-world case studies to help readers apply these methods. The authors explain how data scientists’ choices are involved at every stage of the data science workflow―and show how a human-centered approach can enhance each one, by making the process more transparent, aski

How academics and researchers can influence education policy: putting research in a policy context, finding unexpected allies, interacting with politicians, and more. Scholarly books and journal articles routinely close with policy recommendations. Yet these recommendations rarely reach politicians. How can academics engage more effectively in the policy process? In Teach Truth to Power, David Garcia offers a how-to guide for scholars and researchers who want to influence education policy, explaining strategies for putting research in a policy context, getting “in the room” where policy happens, finding unexpected allies, interacting with politicians, and more. Countering conventional wisdom about research utilization (also referred to as knowledge mobilization), Garcia explains that engaging in education policy is not a science, it is a craft―a combination of acquired knowledge and intuition that must be learned through practice. Engaging in policy is an interpersonal process; ac

A primer on nuclear weapons, from the science of fission and fusion to the pursuit of mutual assured destruction, the SALT treaties, and the Bomb in pop culture.Although the world’s attention has shifted to drone-controlled bombing and cyberwarfare, the threat of nuclear war still exists. There are now fourteen thousand nuclear weapons in the hands of the nine declared nuclear powers. Even though the world survived the Cold War, we need to understand what it means to live with nuclear weapons. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Mark Wolverton offers a primer on nuclear weapons, from the science of fission and fusion to the pursuit of mutual assured destruction, the SALT and START agreements, and the Bomb in pop culture. Wolverton explains the basic scientific facts, offers historical perspective, and provides a nuanced view of the unique political, social, and moral dilemmas posed by nuclear weapons. He describes the birth of the Bomb in 1945 and its use agai

How interventions based on objects―including chemicals, financial products, and consumer goods―offer a path to rethink European integration.Interventions based on objects, Brice Laurent claims, have become a dominant path for European policy-making. In European Objects, Laurent analyzes the political consequences of these interventions and their democratization. He uses the term “European objects” to describe technical entities that are regulated―and thereby transformed―by European policies. To uncover the bureaucratic and regulatory intricacies of European governance, Laurent focuses on a series of these objects, including food products, chemicals, financial products, consumer goods, drinking water, and occupational environments. Laurent argues that taking European objects seriously offers a way to rephrase the dreams of harmonization and, eventually, rethink the constitutional strength of European integration. Laurent doesn’t just clarify how European regulation works, but also exp

How Brazilian favela residents engage with and appropriate technologies, both to fight the oppression in their lives and to represent themselves in the world. Brazilian favelas are impoverished settlements usually located on hillsides or the outskirts of a city. In Technology of the Oppressed, David Nemer draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork to provide a rich account of how favela residents engage with technology in community technology centers and in their everyday lives. Their stories reveal the structural violence of the information age. But they also show how those oppressed by technology don’t just reject it, but consciously resist and appropriate it, and how their experiences with digital technologies enable them to navigate both digital and nondigital sources of oppression―and even, at times, to flourish. Nemer uses a decolonial and intersectional framework called Mundane Technology as an analytical tool to understand how digital technologies can simultaneously be sites

How genomics reveals deep histories of inequality, going back many thousands of years. Inequality is an urgent global concern, with pundits, politicians, academics, and best-selling books all taking up its causes and consequences. In Inequality, Carles Lalueza-Fox offers an entirely new perspective on the subject, examining the genetic marks left by inequality on humans throughout history. Lalueza-Fox describes genetic studies, made possible by novel DNA sequencing technologies, that reveal layers of inequality in past societies, manifested in patterns of migration, social structures, and funerary practices. Through their DNA, ancient skeletons have much to tell us, yielding anonymous stories of inequality, bias, and suffering. Lalueza-Fox, a leader in paleogenomics, offers the deep history of inequality. He explores the ancestral shifts associated with migration and describes the gender bias unearthed in these migrations―the brutal sexual asymmetries, for example, between male Euro

A detailed and up-to-date introduction to machine learning, presented through the unifying lens of probabilistic modeling and Bayesian decision theory.This book offers a detailed and up-to-date introduction to machine learning (including deep learning) through the unifying lens of probabilistic modeling and Bayesian decision theory. The book covers mathematical background (including linear algebra and optimization), basic supervised learning (including linear and logistic regression and deep neural networks), as well as more advanced topics (including transfer learning and unsupervised learning). End-of-chapter exercises allow students to apply what they have learned, and an appendix covers notation. Probabilistic Machine Learning grew out of the author’s 2012 book, Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective. More than just a simple update, this is a completely new book that reflects the dramatic developments in the field since 2012, most notably deep learning. In addition, the ne

Philosophers and neuroscientists address central issues in both fields, including morality, action, mental illness, consciousness, perception, and memory. Philosophers and neuroscientists grapple with the same profound questions involving consciousness, perception, behavior, and moral judgment, but only recently have the two disciplines begun to work together. This volume offers fourteen original chapters that address these issues, each written by a team that includes at least one philosopher and one neuroscientist who integrate disciplinary perspectives and reflect the latest research in both fields. Topics include morality, empathy, agency, the self, mental illness, neuroprediction, optogenetics, pain, vision, consciousness, memory, concepts, mind wandering, and the neural basis of psychological categories. The chapters first address basic issues about our social and moral lives: how we decide to act and ought to act toward each other, how we understand each other’s mental states

The proposal of a semantics for quotations using explanatory notions drawn from philosophical theories of pictures. In Quotations as Pictures, Josef Stern develops a semantics for quotations using explanatory notions drawn from philosophical theories of pictures. He offers the first sustained analysis of the practice of quotation proper, as opposed to mentioning. Unlike other accounts that treat quotation as mentioning, Quotations as Pictures argues that the two practices have independent histories, that they behave differently semantically, that the inverted commas employed in both mentioning and quotation are homonymous, that so-called mixed quotation is nothing but subsentential quotation, and that the major problem of quotation is to explain its dual reference or meaning―its ordinary meaning and its metalinguistic reference to the quoted phrase attributed to the quoted subject. Stern argues that the key to understanding quotation is the idea that quotations are pictures or have

An introduction to computational modeling for cognitive neuroscientists, covering both foundational work and recent developments. Cognitive neuroscientists need sophisticated conceptual tools to make sense of their field’s proliferation of novel theories, methods, and data. Computational modeling is such a tool, enabling researchers to turn theories into precise formulations. This book offers a mathematically gentle and theoretically unified introduction to modeling cognitive processes. Theoretical exercises of varying degrees of difficulty throughout help readers develop their modeling skills. After a general introduction to cognitive modeling and optimization, the book covers models of decision making; supervised learning algorithms, including Hebbian learning, delta rule, and backpropagation; the statistical model analysis methods of model parameter estimation and model evaluation; the three recent cognitive modeling approaches of reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, and

There's more to Banksy than the painting on the wall: the first in-depth investigation into the mysteries of the world's most famous living artist.Banksy is the world's most famous living artist, yet no one knows who he is. For more than twenty years, his wryly political and darkly humorous spray paintings have appeared mysteriously on urban walls around the globe, generating headlines and controversy. Art critics disdain him, but the public (and the art market) love him. With this generously illustrated book, artist and critic Carol Diehl is the first author to probe the depths of the Banksy mystery. Through her exploration of his paintings, installations, writings, and Academy Award-nominated film, Exit through the Gift Shop, Diehl proves unequivocally that there's more to Banksy than the painting on the wall. Seeing Banksy as the ultimate provocateur, Diehl investigates the dramas that unfold after his works are discovered, with all of their social, economic, and political implicati

An optimistic--but realistic and feasible--action plan for fighting climate change while creating new jobs and a healthier environment: electrify everything.Climate change is a planetary emergency. We have to do something now―but what? Saul Griffith has a plan. In Electrify, Griffith lays out a detailed blueprint―optimistic but feasible―for fighting climate change while creating millions of new jobs and a healthier environment. Griffith’s plan can be summed up simply: electrify everything. He explains exactly what it would take to transform our infrastructure, update our grid, and adapt our households to make this possible. Billionaires may contemplate escaping our worn-out planet on a private rocket ship to Mars, but the rest of us, Griffith says, will stay and fight for the future. Griffith, an engineer and inventor, calls for grid neutrality, ensuring that households, businesses, and utilities operate as equals; we will have to rewrite regulations that were created for a fossil-f

The story of the arcane table-top game that became a pop culture phenomenon and the long-running legal battle waged by its cocreators.When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success--and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Dragons from hobbyist pastime to mass market sensation, from the initial collaboration to the later feud of its creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. As the game's fiftieth anniversary approaches, Peterson--a noted authority on role-playing games--explains how D&D and its creators navigated their successes, setbacks, and controversies. Peterson describes Gygax and Arneson's first meeting and their work toward the 1974 release of the game; the founding of TSR and its growth as a company; and Arneson's acrimonious departure and subsequent challenges to TSR. He recounts the "Satanic Pan

The first English translation of a nonfiction work by Stanisław Lem, which was "conceived under the spell of cybernetics" in 1957 and updated in 1971.In 1957, Stanisław Lem published Dialogues, a book "conceived under the spell of cybernetics," as he wrote in the preface to the second edition. Mimicking the form of Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Lem's original dialogue was an attempt to unravel the then-novel field of cybernetics. It was a testimony, Lem wrote later, to "the almost limitless cognitive optimism" he felt upon his discovery of cybernetics. This is the first English translation of Lem's Dialogues, including the text of the first edition and the later essays added to the second edition in 1971. For the second edition, Lem chose not to revise the original. Recognizing the naivete of his hopes for cybernetics, he constructed a supplement to the first dialogue, which consists of two critical essays, the first a summary of the evolution of cybernetics,

How companies can adapt in an era of continuous disruption: a guide to responding to such acute crises as COVID-19.When COVID-19 hit, businesses had to respond almost instantaneously--shifting employees to remote work, repairing broken supply chains, keeping pace with dramatically fluctuating customer demand. They were forced to adapt to a confluence of multiple disruptions inextricably linked to a longer-term, ongoing digital disruption. This book shows that companies that use disruption as an opportunity for innovation emerge from it stronger. Companies that merely attempt to "weather the storm" until things go back to normal (or the next normal), on the other hand, miss an opportunity to thrive. The authors, all experts on business and technology strategy, show that transformation is not a one-and-done event, but a continuous process of adapting to a volatile and uncertain environment. Drawing on five years of research into digital disruption--including a series of interviews with b

The truth about robots: two experts look beyond the hype, offering a lively and accessible guide to what robots can (and can't) do.There’s a lot of hype about robots; some of it is scary and some of i

How engineered materials and machines powered by living biological cells can tackle technological challenges in medicine, agriculture, and global security.You are a biological machine whose movement is powered by skeletal muscle, just as a car is a machine whose movement is powered by an engine. If you can be built from the bottom up with biological materials, other machines can be as well. This is the conceptual starting point for biofabrication, the act of building with living cells--building with biology in the same way we build with synthetic materials. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Ritu Raman offers an accessible introduction to biofabrication, arguing that it can address some of our greatest technological challenges. After presenting the background information needed to understand the emergence and evolution of biofabrication and describing the fundamental technology that enables building with biology, Raman takes deep dives into four biofabrication

An accessible guide to cybersecurity for the everyday user, covering cryptography and public key infrastructure, malware, blockchain, and other topics.It seems that everything we touch is connected to the internet, from mobile phones and wearable technology to home appliances and cyber assistants. The more connected our computer systems, the more exposed they are to cyber attacks--attempts to steal data, corrupt software, disrupt operations, and even physically damage hardware and network infrastructures. In this volume of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, cybersecurity expert Duane Wilson offers an accessible guide to cybersecurity issues for everyday users, describing risks associated with internet use, modern methods of defense against cyber attacks, and general principles for safer internet use. Wilson describes the principles that underlie all cybesecurity defense: confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, authorization, and non-repudiation (validating the

How we became so burdened by red tape and unnecessary paperwork, and why we must do better.We've all had to fight our way through administrative sludge--filling out complicated online forms, mailing i

An accessible introduction to a concept often considered impossibly abstruse, demonstrating its power as a conceptual tool in the twenty-first century.This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a clear and concise introduction to a topic often considered difficult and abstruse: deconstruction. David Gunkel sorts out the concept, terminology, and practices of deconstruction, not to defend academic orthodoxy, or to disseminate the thought of Jacques Derrida--the fabricator of the neologism and progenitor of the concept--but to provide readers with a powerful conceptual tool for the twenty-first century. Gunkel explains that deconstruction is not simply the opposite of construction--the "deconstructed" jacket hanging in your closet is not, strictly speaking, accurately named--or synonymous with destruction. It is a way to think beyond the construction/destruction dichotomy and all other conceptual dichotomies and logical oppositions. After describing what deconstructio

An accessible explanation of the technologies that enable such popular voice-interactive applications as Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant.Have you talked to a machine lately? Asked Alexa to play a song, asked Siri to call a friend, asked Google Assistant to make a shopping list? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a nontechnical and accessible explanation of the technologies that enable these popular devices. Roberto Pieraccini, drawing on more than thirty years of experience at companies including Bell Labs, IBM, and Google, describes the developments in such fields as artificial intelligence, machine learning, speech recognition, and natural language understanding that allow us to outsource tasks to our ubiquitous virtual assistants. Pieraccini describes the software components that enable spoken communication between humans and computers, and explains why it's so difficult to build machines that understand humans. He explains speech recognition technology

More than eighty designs--iconic, archaic, quotidian, and taboo--that have defined arc of human reproduction.While birth often brings great joy, making babies is a knotty enterprise. The designed obje

The story of the most abundant substance on Earth, from its origins in the birth of stars billions of years ago to its importance in the living world.Water is so ubiquitous in our lives that it is easy to take for granted. The average American uses ninety gallons of water a day; nearly every liquid we encounter is mostly water--milk, for example, is 87 percent water. Clouds and ice--water in other forms--affect our climate. Water is the most abundant substance on Earth, and the third-most abundant molecule in the universe. In this lavishly illustrated volume, science writer Jack Challoner tells the story of water, from its origins in the birth of stars to its importance in the living world. Water is perhaps the most studied compound in the universe--although mysteries about it remain--and Challoner describes how thinkers from ancient times have approached the subject. He offers a detailed and fascinating look at the structure and behavior of water molecules, explores the physics of wat

Why gender is strange, even when it's played straight, and how race and money are two of its most dramatic ingredients.In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kathryn Bond Stockton explores the fascinating, fraught, intimate, morphing matter of gender. Stockton argues for gender's strangeness, no matter how "normal" the concept seems; gender is queer for everyone, she claims, even when it's played quite straight. And she explains how race and money dramatically shape everybody's gender, even in sometimes surprising ways. Playful but serious, erudite and witty, Stockton marshals an impressive array of exhibits to consider, including dolls and their new gendering, the thrust of Jane Austen and Lil Nas X, gender identities according to women's colleges, gay and transgender ballroom scenes, and much more. Stockton also examines gender in light of biology's own strange ways, its out-of-syncness with "male" and "female," explaining attempts to fortify gender with clothing

Writings by thinkers ranging from Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain to Bruno Latour that focus on the interconnections of technology, society, and values.Technological change does not happen in a vacuum; decisi