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Jaron Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s, was among the first to predict the revolutionary changes the World Wide Web would bring to commerce and culture. Now, in his first book, written more than two decades after the web was created, Lanier offers this provocative and cautionary look at the way it is transforming our lives for better and for worse.
The current design and function of the web have become so familiar that it is easy to forget that they grew out of programming decisions made decades ago. The web’s first designers made crucial choices (such as making one’s presence anonymous) that have had enormous—and often unintended—consequences. What’s more, these designs quickly became “locked in,” a permanent part of the web’s very structure.
Lanier discusses the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design and warns that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.
Lanier also shows:
How 1960s antigovernment paranoia influenced the design of the online world and enabled trolling and trivialization in online discourse
How file sharing is killing the artistic middle class;
How a belief in a technological “rapture” motivates some of the most influential technologists
Why a new humanistic technology is necessary.
Controversial and fascinating, You Are Not a Gadget is a deeply felt defense of the individual from an author uniquely qualified to comment on the way technology interacts with our culture.
Kapcsolódó könyvek
Amrita Sondhi - The Tastes of Ayurveda
Ayurveda, the five thousand-year-old healing tradition from India linked to the development of yoga, is based on the concept that one's physical, mental, and spiritual well-being comes from a number of sources, including a healthful diet based on one's individual constitution. In this vegetarian cookbook, Amrita Sondhi, author of The Modern Ayurvedic Cookbook (now in its fourth printing), provides new twists on traditional Ayurvedic recipes that are also inspired by the growing popularity of whole grains (quinoa, spelt, and barley) and raw foods.
The Ayurvedic diet is based on the concept of three "doshas": vata (air), pitta (fire), and kapha (earth). Each of us has a primary dosha that we can strive to maintain at a healthy balance, but which can cause problems if excessive. The book includes a questionnaire so readers can determine their own primary dosha and then look for recipes that will help them to maintain or reduce it for optimal health.
Recipes include modern interpretations of Indian cuisine (spicy paneer zucchini kabobs and mango and coconut kulfi), and Ayurvedic spins on vegetarian fare (sprouted barley rainbow pilaf and raw zucchini hummus). The book also includes yoga and breathing exercises that one can easily do at home or at work, full-color recipe photos, and information on sprouting/fermenting techniques and backyard gardening.
The Tastes of Ayurveda offers simple and delicious ways to achieve a more healthful and serene life.
Amrita Sondhi is a yoga instructor, Ayurvedic cooking teacher, and the owner of Movement, a sustainable fiber clothing line.
Miriam Kasin Hospodar - Heaven's Banquet
Written with the support of the Maharishi Ayur-Veda Institute, this comprehensive cookbook shows how to incorporate the timeless principles of Ayurveda into the twenty-first-century kitchen.
A result of Miriam Kasin Hospodar's twenty-year culinary journey, Heaven's Banquet draws from a rich palette of international cuisines and shows how to match your diet to your mind-body type for maximum health and well-being. The more than 700 recipes included here range from Thai Corn Fritters and Asian-Cajun Eggplant Gumbo to West African Avocado Mousse and Mocha-Spice Cake with Coffee Cream Frosting. Readers will discover the most effective methods of preparing food, the benefits of eating seasonally for individual types, and how to create a diet for the entire family. There are special sections on how to lose weight and control sugar sensitivity, a questionnaire to help determine mind-body type, and essential ingredients for a well-stocked Ayurvedic kitchen.
Fully illustrated, and written for everyone from the beginner cook to the experienced chef, Heaven's Banquet shows how to use food to tap into your body's intelligence and create lifelong health.
Karl Schroeder - Sun of Suns
It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity.
Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He's come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden's nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden's spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn't bode well for Fanning's chances . . .
Christopher Moore - Coyote Blue
As a boy growing up in Montana, he was Samson Hunts Alone - until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, shortly after his thirty-fifth birthday, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love - in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid - and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient Indian god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to transform tranquillity into chaos, to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam ...and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.
Chuck Palahniuk - Fight Club
Every weekend, in basements and parking lots across the country, young men with good white-collar jobs and absent fathers take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded for as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight Club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter and dark, anarchic genius. And it's only the beginning of his plans for revenge on a world where cancer support groups have the corner on human warmth.
Christopher Moore - Lamb
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiahs best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer).
Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Saviors pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But theres no one who loves Josh more -- except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala -- and Biff isnt about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies...'
A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation. The narrators of _Cloud Atlas_ hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.
David Brin - Startide Rising
In its original paperback editon of 1983, this novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Brin's extensive revisions make this first hardcover edition an SF event. What remains most impressive is the complex background of political, cultural, linguistic and many other connections and missed connections among innumerable different species. Against the backdrop of an ancient spacefaring conglomerate, whose shared traditions have not halted their wars, the upstart Earthlings humans, dolphins, chimpanzees also stand divided. Brin raises questions not only of understanding but of ethics, for a "patron" race may genetically uplift another only to indenture them. His depiction of the dolphins' gains and losses now that they've become space pilots is particularly moving. Although Brin's characterization and storytelling are less adept here than in the work he has since written, this is one of the outstanding SF novels of recent years.
Arthur C. Clarke - The City and the Stars
Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar; for millennia its protective dome shutout the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rules the stars. But then, as legend had it, The invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, A Unique to break through Diaspar's stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.
Neil Gaiman - Coraline (angol)
Coraline lives with her preoccupied parents in part of a huge old house--a house so huge that other people live in it, too... round, old former actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible and their aging Highland terriers ("We trod the boards, luvvy") and the mustachioed old man under the roof ("'The reason you cannot see the mouse circus,' said the man upstairs, 'is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed.'") Coraline contents herself for weeks with exploring the vast garden and grounds. But with a little rain she becomes bored--so bored that she begins to count everything blue (153), the windows (21), and the doors (14). And it is the 14th door that--sometimes blocked with a wall of bricks--opens up for Coraline into an entirely alternate universe. Now, if you're thinking fondly of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, you're on the wrong track. Neil Gaiman's Coraline is far darker, far stranger, playing on our deepest fears. And, like Roald Dahl's work, it is delicious.
Arthur C. Clarke - 3001: The Final Odyssey
One thousand years after the Jupiter mission to explore the mysterious Monolith had been destroyed, after Dave Bowman was transformed into the Star Child, Frank Poole drifted in space, frozen and forgotten, leaving the supercomputer HAL inoperable. But now Poole has returned to life, awakening in a world far different from the one he left behind--and just as the Monolith may be stirring once again . . .
David Brin - Foundation's Triumph
Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is one of the highwater marks of science fiction.The monumental story of a Galactic Empire in decline and a secret society of scientists who seek to shorten the coming Dark Age with tools of Psychohistory, Foundation pioneered many themes of modern science fiction.Now, with the approval of the Asimov estate, three of today's most acclaimed authors have completed the epic the Grand Master left unfinished.
The Second Foundation Trilogy begins with Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear, telling the origins of Hari Seldon, the Foundation's creator. Greg Bear's Foundation and Chaos relates the epic tale of Seldon's downfall and the first stirrings of robotic rebellion. Now, in David Brin's Foundation's Triumph, Seldon is about to escape exile and risk everything for one final quest-a search for knowledge and the power it bestows. The outcome of this final journey may secure humankind's future-or witness its final downfall...
Anne Rice - Blood and Gold
_The extraordinary Vampire Chronicles continue as golden-haired Marius, true Child of the Millennia, one-time mentor to the Vampire Lestat, reveals the secrets of his two-thousand-year existence_
Once a proud Senator in Imperial Rome, Marius was kidnapped by the Druids to make a blood god and protector of the Queen and King of vampires. Through his eyes we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Emperor Constantine, the horrific sack of the Eternal City at the hands of Visigoths, and the vile aftermath of the Black Death.
Ultimately restored by the beauty of the Renaissance, Marius becomes a painter, living dangerously yet happily among mortals, and gives his heart to the great master Botticelli, to the bewitching courtesan Bianca, and to the mysterious young apprentice Armand. But it is in our own time, deep in the jungle, when Marius will meet his fate seeking justice from the oldest vampires in the world.
'A wonderfully Gothic writer whose talents far outshine those of Stephen King and others in the field' - Boston Globe
'Anne Rice offers more than just a story; she creates myth' - Washington Post
Nick Hornby - Shakespeare Wrote for Money
With an affectionate introduction by Sarah Vowell, this is the third and final collection of columns by celebrated novelist Nick Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity, A Long Way Down) from the Believer magazine. Hornby's monthly reading diary is unlike any arts column in any other publication: It actually talks about cultural artifacts the way they actually exist in people's lives. Hornby is a voracious and unapologetic reader, and his notes on books, highbrow and otherwise, are always accessible and hilarious.
Stephen R. Covey - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®, has been a top-seller for the simple reason that it ignores trends and pop psychology for proven principles of fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity. Celebrating its fifteenth year of helping people solve personal and professional problems, this special anniversary edition includes a new foreword and afterword written by Covey exploring the question of whether the 7 Habits are still relevant and answering some of the most common questions he has received over the past 15 years.
Ibos Éva - XIX–XX. századi magyar festészet
Ez a könyv a festészet legérdekesebb száz éven keresztül mutatja be a XIX-XX. század magyar művészetét, átfogó képet adva a stílusok és irányzatok váltakozásáról. A rövid szöveg és a legjelentősebb alkotókat bemutató képanyag révén az album kézikönyvként is jól forgatható kezdő és haladó műkedvelők számára egyaránt.
Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Fairy tales retold and interwoven by a master of seductive, luminous storytelling
Haruki Murakami - 1Q84 1-3. (angol)
A mesmerising, epic masterpiece from Haruki Murakami.
The year is 1984.
Aomame sits in a taxi on the expressway in Tokyo.
Her work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a stand-still, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a top-secret mission, and her next job will lead her to encounter the apparently superhuman founder of a religious cult.
Meanwhile, Tengo is leading a nondescript life but wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange affair surrounding a literary prize to which a mysterious seventeen-year-old girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true?
Aomame and Tengo's stories influence one another, at times by accident and at times intentionally, as the two come closer and closer to intertwining. As 1Q84 accelerates towards its conclusion, both are pursued by persons and forces they do not know and cannot understand. As they begin to decipher more about the strange world into which they have slipped, so they sense their destinies converging. What they cannot know is whether they will find one another before they are themselves found.
1Q84 is a magnificent and fully-imagined work of fiction, a thriller, a love-story and a mind-bending ode to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is a world from which the reader emerges stunned and altered.
Jean-Claude Gautrand - Robert Doisneau
Ehhez a könyvhöz nincs fülszöveg, de ettől függetlenül még rukkolható/happolható.
Melissa De La Cruz - Witches of East End
The two novels will follow the lives of the Beauchamp girls, who live in the fictional town of North Hampton, as they struggle to stop an arch nemesis and restore the delicate balance between good and evil. De la Cruz will weave characters from her best-selling Blue Bloods young adult series into this new paranormal series for adults.
