How Things Are Science Tool Kit For The Mind

How Things Are:Science Tool Kit For The Mind

How Things are

This is a collection of essays from some of the world's leading scientists, together forming an intellectual tool-kit for the intellectually curious to use in extending their reading in scientific areas. The pieces are arranged in thematic groups: thinking about science; origins; evolution; mind; cosmos; and the future. Each essay is short and self-contained, requiring no prior knowledge.

The Computer Culture Reader

The Computer Culture Reader brings together a multi-disciplinary group of scholars to probe the underlying structures and overarching implications of the ways in which people and computers collaborate in the production of meaning. The contributors navigate the heady and sometimes terrifying atmosphere surrounding the digital revolution in an attempt to take its measure through examinations of community and modes of communication, representation, information-production, learning, work, and play. The authors address questions of art, reality, literacy, history, heroism, commerce, crime, and death, as well as specific technologies ranging from corporate web portals and computer games to social networking applications and virtual museums. In all, the essayists work around and through the notion that the desire to communicate is at the heart of the digital age, and that the opportunity for private and public expression has taken a commanding hold on the modern imagination. The contributors argue, ultimately, that the reference field for the technological and cultural changes at the root of the digital revolution extends well beyond any specific locality, nationality, discourse, or discipline. Consequently, this volume advocates for an adaptable perspective that delivers new insights about the robust and fragile relationships between computers and people.