Libros de Divulgación científica, página 38 de 157

Our systems are failing Old models for education healthcare and government food production energy supply are creaking under the weight of modern challenges As the world s population heads towards 10 billion it s clear we need new approaches Futurologist Mark Stevenson sets out to find them across four continents From Brazilian favelas to high tech Boston from rural India to a shed inventor in England s home counties We Do Things Differently travels the world to find the advance guard re imagining our future At each stop he meets innovators who have already succeeded in challenging the status quo pioneering new ways to make our world more sustainable equitable and humane Populated by extraordinary characters We Do Things Differently paints an enthralling picture of what can be done to address the world s most pressing dilemmas offering a much needed dose of down to earth optimism It is a window on and a roadmap to a different and better future

WINNER OF THE 800 CEO READ BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2015 In the vein of Susan Cain s QUIET and Malcolm Gladwell s DAVID AND GOLIATH HOW TO FLY A HORSE is a smart empowering book that dispels the myths around genius and creativity There is a myth about how something new comes to be that geniuses have dramatic moments of insight where great things and thoughts are born whole Symphonies are composed complete Science is accomplished with eureka shrieks Businesses are built by magic touch The myth is wrong Anyone can create Acclaimed technology pioneer Kevin Ashton takes us behind the scenes of creation to reveal the true process of discovery and how new comes to be From Archimedes to Apple from Kandinsky to the Coke can from the Wright brothers who set out to fly a horse to Woody Allen he exposes the seemingly unremarkable individuals gradual steps multiple failures and countless ordinary and often uncredited acts that led to our most astounding breakthroughs

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation multispecies feminist theorist Donna J Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices The Chthulucene Haraway explains requires sym poiesis or making with rather than auto poiesis or self making Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF string figures science fact science fiction speculative feminism speculative fabulation so far Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway s reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time

Husserl s Missing Technologies looks at the early twentieth century classical phenomenology of Edmund Husserl both in the light of the philosophy of science of his time and retrospectively at his philosophy from a contemporary postphenomenology Of central interest are his infrequent comments upon technologies and especially scientific instruments such as the telescope and microscope Together with his analysis of Husserl Don Ihde ventures through the recent history of technologies of science reading and writing and science praxis calling for modifications to phenomenology by converging it with pragmatism This fruitful hybridization emphasizes human technology interrelationships the role of embodiment and bodily skills and the inherent multistability of technologies In a radical argument Ihde contends that philosophies in the same way that various technologies contain an ever shortening obsolescence ought to have contingent use lives

Peter Russell argues that global communications and the internet are helping to link the minds of humanity together to form a single global brain and consciousness with remarkable potential

While the working lives of tech entrepreneurs and delivery platform workers seem far removed both are engaged in digital labor What unites their experience and allows us to speak of their work under the same umbrella Is it even possible to talk about digital labor as if it were a single form of work Digital Labor explores these questions and critically examines the economics politics and experiences of workers in these new modes of employment Using a novel definition of the term digital labor Kylie Jarrett explores unpaid user activity platform mediated gig work and formal employment within the digital media industries mapping the common features of these varied practices Applying a critical Marxian lens the book interrogates the structures of exploitation in this sector the organisation of the labor process the dynamics of alienation associated with this work and the commodification of workers lives It also documents the struggle of digital laborers to resist the iniquities and inequalities of their working environments Ultimately the book identifies what is specific about this form of labor and in doing so offers insight into the nature of work as it is being reconstituted in digital capitalism Synthesising an extensive range of studies and s

How science has changed our perceptions of God from the age of Newton to the era of quantum mechanics

Is the automobility regime experiencing a transition towards sustainability To answer that question this book investigates stability and change in contemporary transport systems It makes a socio technical analysis of transport systems exploring the strategies and beliefs of crucial actors such as car manufacturers local and national governments citizens car drivers transport planners and civil society Two guiding questions are Will we see a greening of cars based on technological innovations that sustain the existing car based system Or is something more radical desirable and likely such as the development of travel regimes in which car use is less dominant

Powerful profound and completely engrossing a meditation on not only technology but also history culture ideas ethics psychology and above all what it means to be human Michael Bhaskar co author of The Coming Wave Wise Animals explores the history of our relationship with technology and our deep involvement with our creations from the first use of tools and the taming of fire via the invention of reading and printing to the development of the computer the creation of the internet and the emergence of AI Human children know no more of modern technology than their ancestors did of older technologies thousands of years ago and develop in relation to the technologies of their time We co evolve with technology as individuals as we have as a species over thousands of years Rather than see technology as a threat this deeply humanist contribution to the debate proposes that we are neither masters nor victims of our technologies They are part of who we are and our future and theirs is in our hands

The revolution is here In breakthrough after breakthrough pioneering physicists are unlocking a new quantum universe which provides a better representation of reality than our everyday experiences and common sense ever could The birth of quantum computers which like Schrodinger s famous dead and alive cat rely on entities like electrons existing in a mixture of states is starting to turn the computing world on its head In his fascinating study of this cutting edge technology first published as Computing with Quantum Cats and now featuring a new foreword John Gribbin updates his previous views on the nature of quantum reality arguing for a universe of many parallel worlds where everything is real Looking back to Alan Turing s work on the Enigma machine and the first electronic computer Gribbin explains how quantum theory developed to make quantum computers work in practice as well as in principle He takes us beyond the arena of theoretical physics to explore their practical applications from machines which learn through intuition and trial and error to unhackable laptops and smartphones And he investigates the potential for this extraordinary science to allow communication faster than light and even teleportation as we step into a world of

In The Glass Cage Pulitzer Prize nominee and bestselling author Nicholas Carr shows how the most important decisions of our lives are now being made by machines and the radical effect this is having on our ability to learn and solve problems In May 2009 an Airbus A330 passenger jet equipped with the latest glass cockpit controls plummeted 30 000 feet into the Atlantic The reason for the crash the autopilot had routinely switched itself off In fact automation is everywhere from the thermostat in our homes and the GPS in our phones to the algorithms of High Frequency Trading and self driving cars We now use it to diagnose patients educate children evaluate criminal evidence and fight wars But psychological studies show that we perform best when fully involved in a task while the principle of automation that humans are inefficient is self fulfilling The glass cockpit is becoming a glass cage In this utterly engrossing expose bestselling writer Nicholas Carr reveals how automation is affecting our ability to solve problems forge memories and acquire skills Rather than rejecting technology Carr argues that we must urgently rethink its role in our lives using it to enhance rather than diminish the extraordinary abilities that make us human

An innovative view of the role of fitness concepts in evolutionary theory Natural selection is one of the factors responsible for changes in biological populations Some traits or organisms are fitter than others and natural selection occurs when there are changes in the distribution of traits in populations because of fitness differences Many philosophers of biology insist that a trait s fitness should be defined as an average of the fitnesses of individual members of the population that have the trait Marshall Abrams argues convincingly against this widespread approach As he shows it conflicts with the roles that fitness is supposed to play in evolutionary theory and with the ways that evolutionary biologists use fitness concepts in empirical research The assumption that a causal kind of fitness is fundamentally a property of actual individuals has resulted in unnecessary philosophical puzzles and years of debate Abrams came to see that the fitnesses of traits that are the basis of natural selection cannot be defined in terms of the fitnesses of actual members of populations as philosophers of biology often claim Rather it is an overall population environment system not actual particular organisms living in particular environmental conditions that is the

A bold defense of the internet arguing attempts to fix and regulate it are often misguided essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of the internet Taylor Lorenz author of Extremely Online The internet stands accused of dividing us spying on us making us stupid and addicting our children In response the press and panicked politicians seek greater regulation and control which could ruin the web before we are finished building it Jeff Jarvis is convinced we can have a saner conversation about the internet Examining the web s past present and future he shows that many of the problems the media lays at the internet s door are the result of our own failings The internet did not make us hate we brought our bias bigotry and prejudice with us online That s why even well intentioned regulation will fail to fix hate speech and misinformation and may instead imperil the freedom of speech the internet affords to all Once we understand the internet for what it is a human network we can reclaim it from the nerds pundits and pols who are in charge now and turn our attention where it belongs to fostering community conversation and creativity online The Web We Weave offers an antidote to today s pessimism about the internet outlining a bol

Machine Readable Me considers how and why data that is gathered about us is increasingly limiting what we can and can t do in our lives and crucially what the alternatives are

In recent decades we have witnessed an explosion in the number of visual images we encounter as our lives have become increasingly saturated with screens From Google Images to Instagram video games to installation art this transformation is confusing liberating and worrying all at once since observing the new visuality of culture is not the same as understanding it Nicholas Mirzoeff is a leading figure in the field of visual culture which aims to make sense of this extraordinary explosion of visual experiences As Mirzoeff reminds us this is not the first visual revolution the 19th century saw the invention of film photography and x rays and the development of maps microscopes and telescopes made the 17th century an era of visual discovery But the sheer quantity of images produced on the internet today has no parallels In the first book to define visual culture for the general reader Mirzoeff draws on art history theory and everyday experience to provide an engaging and accessible overview of how visual materials shape and define our lives

This text revolves around a new and unusual view on the most fundamental puzzle of physics It focusses on the key aspect that makes the role of the time dimension fundamentally different causality It deals on the one hand with general relativity and on the other hand with quantum theory The implicit and intuitive way by which causality is usually taken for granted is just made explicit and less self evident shedding a new light on the gravity quantum conflict The case is made that gravity is a necessary condition for a causal universe But upon turning to the pure unitary quantum physics explaining the nature of matter one is dealing with the strictly a causal time expressed through the thermal quantum field theory machinery When this a causal microscopic and causal macroscopic world meet one encounters the wavefunction collapse that itself may be rooted in the quantum gravity conflict Modern ideas are discussed resting on eigenstate thermalization showing how this may lie eventually at the origin of irreversible thermodynamics with its famous second law setting also a direction of time The case is anchored in the sophisticated modern mathematical machinery of both general relativity and quantum physics which is normally barely disseminated beyond the th

Lucinda Douglas Menzies Photo Researchers

Exploring one of the greatest potential contributors to climate change thawing permafrost and the anxiety of extinction on an increasingly hostile planet Climate scientists point to permafrost as a ticking time bomb for the planet and from the Arctic apocalyptic narratives proliferate on the devastating effects permafrost thaw poses to human survival In Earth Ice Bone Blood Charlotte Wrigley considers how permafrost and its disappearance redefines extinction to be a lack of continuity both material and social and something that affects not only life on earth but nonlife too Earth Ice Bone Blood approaches the topic of thawing permafrost and the wild new economies and mitigation strategies forming in the far north through a study of the Sakha Republic Russia s largest region and its capital city Yakutsk which is the coldest city in the world and built on permafrost Wrigley examines people who are creating commerce out of thawing permafrost including scientists wishing to recreate the prehistoric Mammoth steppe ecosystem by eventually rewilding resurrected woolly mammoths Indigenous people who forage the tundra for exposed mammoth bodies to sell their tusks and government officials hoping to keep their city standing as the ground collapses under

It may be surprising to focus on and praise imperfection but in reality perfection is a fiction Every aspect of our technologies is based on understanding and exploiting imperfections in the materials we use Imperfections are key to our use of metals glass electronics computers optical fibres and building materials Catalysis as used throughout chemical industries is dependent on imperfections as are a wide range of modern advances in biology and medicine This book provides examples in each area that are readily understandable to non scientists but also aim to offer a far deeper insight into how the technologies and disciplines advance and operate However once we change our focus from idealised perfection to reality the implications can extend far beyond the realm of the sciences The second part of the book examines the importance of our ability to recognise and adapt to imperfections in such wide ranging areas as cookery successful career development love life and the survival of humanity Using a broad range of accessible examples this book aims to give readers the tools to recognize technological imperfections and apply those lessons to improving several key aspects of our lives crucially enabling them to define a world that will survive curre

We live in the suburban era Well over half of all Americans and two thirds of Canadians live in suburbs Tracts of suburban bungalows ring Sydney and Melbourne Suburban apartments rise on the outskirts of Paris Prague Singapore and Beijing Nearly everyone has a strong opinion about suburbs Folks who love dense cities scorn suburbia while people who like big yards dislike bustling sidewalks and subways Social scientists argue whether contemporary suburbs are losing their luster or if a supposed back to the city trend is a mirage a debate that has been exacerbated by uncertainty over the effects of COVID 19 Suburbs A Very Short Introduction tackles two central questions What is the history behind a suburbanizing world What does the suburban trend mean for society politics and culture Two chapters describe the ways that the new technologies of streetcars trains automobiles and internet have allowed the compact cities of Britain and the United States to grow into sprawling metropolitan regions The following chapters explore the vertical suburbs of Europe and East Asia improvised or do it yourself suburbs in both North America Latin America and suburbs as places of employment The book concludes by exploring criticism and praise of suburbs in popular

Our systems are failing Old models for education healthcare and government food production energy supply are creaking under the weight of modern challenges As the world s population heads towards 10 billion it s clear we need new approaches Futurologist Mark Stevenson sets out to find them across four continents From Brazilian favelas to high tech Boston from rural India to a shed inventor in England s home counties We Do Things Differently travels the world to find the advance guard re imagining our future At each stop he meets innovators who have already succeeded in challenging the status quo pioneering new ways to make our world more sustainable equitable and humane Populated by extraordinary characters We Do Things Differently paints an enthralling picture of what can be done to address the world s most pressing dilemmas offering a much needed dose of down to earth optimism It is a window on and a roadmap to a different and better future

WINNER OF THE 800 CEO READ BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2015 In the vein of Susan Cain s QUIET and Malcolm Gladwell s DAVID AND GOLIATH HOW TO FLY A HORSE is a smart empowering book that dispels the myths around genius and creativity There is a myth about how something new comes to be that geniuses have dramatic moments of insight where great things and thoughts are born whole Symphonies are composed complete Science is accomplished with eureka shrieks Businesses are built by magic touch The myth is wrong Anyone can create Acclaimed technology pioneer Kevin Ashton takes us behind the scenes of creation to reveal the true process of discovery and how new comes to be From Archimedes to Apple from Kandinsky to the Coke can from the Wright brothers who set out to fly a horse to Woody Allen he exposes the seemingly unremarkable individuals gradual steps multiple failures and countless ordinary and often uncredited acts that led to our most astounding breakthroughs

In the midst of spiraling ecological devastation multispecies feminist theorist Donna J Haraway offers provocative new ways to reconfigure our relations to the earth and all its inhabitants She eschews referring to our current epoch as the Anthropocene preferring to conceptualize it as what she calls the Chthulucene as it more aptly and fully describes our epoch as one in which the human and nonhuman are inextricably linked in tentacular practices The Chthulucene Haraway explains requires sym poiesis or making with rather than auto poiesis or self making Learning to stay with the trouble of living and dying together on a damaged earth will prove more conducive to the kind of thinking that would provide the means to building more livable futures Theoretically and methodologically driven by the signifier SF string figures science fact science fiction speculative feminism speculative fabulation so far Staying with the Trouble further cements Haraway s reputation as one of the most daring and original thinkers of our time

Husserl s Missing Technologies looks at the early twentieth century classical phenomenology of Edmund Husserl both in the light of the philosophy of science of his time and retrospectively at his philosophy from a contemporary postphenomenology Of central interest are his infrequent comments upon technologies and especially scientific instruments such as the telescope and microscope Together with his analysis of Husserl Don Ihde ventures through the recent history of technologies of science reading and writing and science praxis calling for modifications to phenomenology by converging it with pragmatism This fruitful hybridization emphasizes human technology interrelationships the role of embodiment and bodily skills and the inherent multistability of technologies In a radical argument Ihde contends that philosophies in the same way that various technologies contain an ever shortening obsolescence ought to have contingent use lives

Peter Russell argues that global communications and the internet are helping to link the minds of humanity together to form a single global brain and consciousness with remarkable potential

While the working lives of tech entrepreneurs and delivery platform workers seem far removed both are engaged in digital labor What unites their experience and allows us to speak of their work under the same umbrella Is it even possible to talk about digital labor as if it were a single form of work Digital Labor explores these questions and critically examines the economics politics and experiences of workers in these new modes of employment Using a novel definition of the term digital labor Kylie Jarrett explores unpaid user activity platform mediated gig work and formal employment within the digital media industries mapping the common features of these varied practices Applying a critical Marxian lens the book interrogates the structures of exploitation in this sector the organisation of the labor process the dynamics of alienation associated with this work and the commodification of workers lives It also documents the struggle of digital laborers to resist the iniquities and inequalities of their working environments Ultimately the book identifies what is specific about this form of labor and in doing so offers insight into the nature of work as it is being reconstituted in digital capitalism Synthesising an extensive range of studies and s

How science has changed our perceptions of God from the age of Newton to the era of quantum mechanics

Is the automobility regime experiencing a transition towards sustainability To answer that question this book investigates stability and change in contemporary transport systems It makes a socio technical analysis of transport systems exploring the strategies and beliefs of crucial actors such as car manufacturers local and national governments citizens car drivers transport planners and civil society Two guiding questions are Will we see a greening of cars based on technological innovations that sustain the existing car based system Or is something more radical desirable and likely such as the development of travel regimes in which car use is less dominant

Powerful profound and completely engrossing a meditation on not only technology but also history culture ideas ethics psychology and above all what it means to be human Michael Bhaskar co author of The Coming Wave Wise Animals explores the history of our relationship with technology and our deep involvement with our creations from the first use of tools and the taming of fire via the invention of reading and printing to the development of the computer the creation of the internet and the emergence of AI Human children know no more of modern technology than their ancestors did of older technologies thousands of years ago and develop in relation to the technologies of their time We co evolve with technology as individuals as we have as a species over thousands of years Rather than see technology as a threat this deeply humanist contribution to the debate proposes that we are neither masters nor victims of our technologies They are part of who we are and our future and theirs is in our hands

The revolution is here In breakthrough after breakthrough pioneering physicists are unlocking a new quantum universe which provides a better representation of reality than our everyday experiences and common sense ever could The birth of quantum computers which like Schrodinger s famous dead and alive cat rely on entities like electrons existing in a mixture of states is starting to turn the computing world on its head In his fascinating study of this cutting edge technology first published as Computing with Quantum Cats and now featuring a new foreword John Gribbin updates his previous views on the nature of quantum reality arguing for a universe of many parallel worlds where everything is real Looking back to Alan Turing s work on the Enigma machine and the first electronic computer Gribbin explains how quantum theory developed to make quantum computers work in practice as well as in principle He takes us beyond the arena of theoretical physics to explore their practical applications from machines which learn through intuition and trial and error to unhackable laptops and smartphones And he investigates the potential for this extraordinary science to allow communication faster than light and even teleportation as we step into a world of

In The Glass Cage Pulitzer Prize nominee and bestselling author Nicholas Carr shows how the most important decisions of our lives are now being made by machines and the radical effect this is having on our ability to learn and solve problems In May 2009 an Airbus A330 passenger jet equipped with the latest glass cockpit controls plummeted 30 000 feet into the Atlantic The reason for the crash the autopilot had routinely switched itself off In fact automation is everywhere from the thermostat in our homes and the GPS in our phones to the algorithms of High Frequency Trading and self driving cars We now use it to diagnose patients educate children evaluate criminal evidence and fight wars But psychological studies show that we perform best when fully involved in a task while the principle of automation that humans are inefficient is self fulfilling The glass cockpit is becoming a glass cage In this utterly engrossing expose bestselling writer Nicholas Carr reveals how automation is affecting our ability to solve problems forge memories and acquire skills Rather than rejecting technology Carr argues that we must urgently rethink its role in our lives using it to enhance rather than diminish the extraordinary abilities that make us human

An innovative view of the role of fitness concepts in evolutionary theory Natural selection is one of the factors responsible for changes in biological populations Some traits or organisms are fitter than others and natural selection occurs when there are changes in the distribution of traits in populations because of fitness differences Many philosophers of biology insist that a trait s fitness should be defined as an average of the fitnesses of individual members of the population that have the trait Marshall Abrams argues convincingly against this widespread approach As he shows it conflicts with the roles that fitness is supposed to play in evolutionary theory and with the ways that evolutionary biologists use fitness concepts in empirical research The assumption that a causal kind of fitness is fundamentally a property of actual individuals has resulted in unnecessary philosophical puzzles and years of debate Abrams came to see that the fitnesses of traits that are the basis of natural selection cannot be defined in terms of the fitnesses of actual members of populations as philosophers of biology often claim Rather it is an overall population environment system not actual particular organisms living in particular environmental conditions that is the

A bold defense of the internet arguing attempts to fix and regulate it are often misguided essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of the internet Taylor Lorenz author of Extremely Online The internet stands accused of dividing us spying on us making us stupid and addicting our children In response the press and panicked politicians seek greater regulation and control which could ruin the web before we are finished building it Jeff Jarvis is convinced we can have a saner conversation about the internet Examining the web s past present and future he shows that many of the problems the media lays at the internet s door are the result of our own failings The internet did not make us hate we brought our bias bigotry and prejudice with us online That s why even well intentioned regulation will fail to fix hate speech and misinformation and may instead imperil the freedom of speech the internet affords to all Once we understand the internet for what it is a human network we can reclaim it from the nerds pundits and pols who are in charge now and turn our attention where it belongs to fostering community conversation and creativity online The Web We Weave offers an antidote to today s pessimism about the internet outlining a bol

Machine Readable Me considers how and why data that is gathered about us is increasingly limiting what we can and can t do in our lives and crucially what the alternatives are

In recent decades we have witnessed an explosion in the number of visual images we encounter as our lives have become increasingly saturated with screens From Google Images to Instagram video games to installation art this transformation is confusing liberating and worrying all at once since observing the new visuality of culture is not the same as understanding it Nicholas Mirzoeff is a leading figure in the field of visual culture which aims to make sense of this extraordinary explosion of visual experiences As Mirzoeff reminds us this is not the first visual revolution the 19th century saw the invention of film photography and x rays and the development of maps microscopes and telescopes made the 17th century an era of visual discovery But the sheer quantity of images produced on the internet today has no parallels In the first book to define visual culture for the general reader Mirzoeff draws on art history theory and everyday experience to provide an engaging and accessible overview of how visual materials shape and define our lives

This text revolves around a new and unusual view on the most fundamental puzzle of physics It focusses on the key aspect that makes the role of the time dimension fundamentally different causality It deals on the one hand with general relativity and on the other hand with quantum theory The implicit and intuitive way by which causality is usually taken for granted is just made explicit and less self evident shedding a new light on the gravity quantum conflict The case is made that gravity is a necessary condition for a causal universe But upon turning to the pure unitary quantum physics explaining the nature of matter one is dealing with the strictly a causal time expressed through the thermal quantum field theory machinery When this a causal microscopic and causal macroscopic world meet one encounters the wavefunction collapse that itself may be rooted in the quantum gravity conflict Modern ideas are discussed resting on eigenstate thermalization showing how this may lie eventually at the origin of irreversible thermodynamics with its famous second law setting also a direction of time The case is anchored in the sophisticated modern mathematical machinery of both general relativity and quantum physics which is normally barely disseminated beyond the th

Lucinda Douglas Menzies Photo Researchers

Exploring one of the greatest potential contributors to climate change thawing permafrost and the anxiety of extinction on an increasingly hostile planet Climate scientists point to permafrost as a ticking time bomb for the planet and from the Arctic apocalyptic narratives proliferate on the devastating effects permafrost thaw poses to human survival In Earth Ice Bone Blood Charlotte Wrigley considers how permafrost and its disappearance redefines extinction to be a lack of continuity both material and social and something that affects not only life on earth but nonlife too Earth Ice Bone Blood approaches the topic of thawing permafrost and the wild new economies and mitigation strategies forming in the far north through a study of the Sakha Republic Russia s largest region and its capital city Yakutsk which is the coldest city in the world and built on permafrost Wrigley examines people who are creating commerce out of thawing permafrost including scientists wishing to recreate the prehistoric Mammoth steppe ecosystem by eventually rewilding resurrected woolly mammoths Indigenous people who forage the tundra for exposed mammoth bodies to sell their tusks and government officials hoping to keep their city standing as the ground collapses under

It may be surprising to focus on and praise imperfection but in reality perfection is a fiction Every aspect of our technologies is based on understanding and exploiting imperfections in the materials we use Imperfections are key to our use of metals glass electronics computers optical fibres and building materials Catalysis as used throughout chemical industries is dependent on imperfections as are a wide range of modern advances in biology and medicine This book provides examples in each area that are readily understandable to non scientists but also aim to offer a far deeper insight into how the technologies and disciplines advance and operate However once we change our focus from idealised perfection to reality the implications can extend far beyond the realm of the sciences The second part of the book examines the importance of our ability to recognise and adapt to imperfections in such wide ranging areas as cookery successful career development love life and the survival of humanity Using a broad range of accessible examples this book aims to give readers the tools to recognize technological imperfections and apply those lessons to improving several key aspects of our lives crucially enabling them to define a world that will survive curre

We live in the suburban era Well over half of all Americans and two thirds of Canadians live in suburbs Tracts of suburban bungalows ring Sydney and Melbourne Suburban apartments rise on the outskirts of Paris Prague Singapore and Beijing Nearly everyone has a strong opinion about suburbs Folks who love dense cities scorn suburbia while people who like big yards dislike bustling sidewalks and subways Social scientists argue whether contemporary suburbs are losing their luster or if a supposed back to the city trend is a mirage a debate that has been exacerbated by uncertainty over the effects of COVID 19 Suburbs A Very Short Introduction tackles two central questions What is the history behind a suburbanizing world What does the suburban trend mean for society politics and culture Two chapters describe the ways that the new technologies of streetcars trains automobiles and internet have allowed the compact cities of Britain and the United States to grow into sprawling metropolitan regions The following chapters explore the vertical suburbs of Europe and East Asia improvised or do it yourself suburbs in both North America Latin America and suburbs as places of employment The book concludes by exploring criticism and praise of suburbs in popular