The End Of The Megamachine

Author : Fabian Scheidler
Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1789042720
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The End of the Megamachine written by Fabian Scheidler and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-25 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The End of the Megamachine provides a uniquely comprehensive picture of the roots of the destructive forces that are threatening the future of humankind today. Spanning 5000 years of history, the book shows how the three tyrannies of militarized states, capital accumulation and ideological power have been steering both ecosystems and societies to the brink of collapse. With the growing instability of the Megamachine in the 21st century, new dangers open up as well as new possibilities for systemic change, to which everyone can contribute. Originally published in Germany in 2015 to great acclaim, Zero Books presents the first English language edition of The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization. “The topic could not be more important. A very valuable and surely timely contribution.” Noam Chomsky

Author : David Watson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Against the Megamachine written by David Watson and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The green world in which we evolved is being shredded by our instruments and our way of life. David Watson’s wide-ranging essays—published in Fifth Estate, one of North America’s most original radical journals—ponder such themes as the state, empire and war; humanity’s tragic relation to the natural world; and the contemporary mass society generated by industrial capitalism and modern technology. His impassioned critique offers a vision of social transformation open to diverse possibilities, and suggests where a new politics must begin: as a radical challenge to the mystique of progress, in defense of nature, memory and spirit.

Author : Kate Crawford
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300209576
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Atlas of AI written by Kate Crawford and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy and freedom What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award-winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind "automated" services, to the data AI collects from us. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.

Author : Jonathan Nitzan
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134022298
Total Pages : 853 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Capital as Power written by Jonathan Nitzan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 853 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.

Author : Alex Hochuli
Publisher : John Hunt Publishing
ISBN 13 : 178904524X
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.46/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The End of the End of History written by Alex Hochuli and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-25 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “End of History” is over. The idea that Western liberal democracy was the “final form of human government” has been exposed as bluster: the old order is crumbling before our eyes. Angry anti-politics have arisen to threaten political establishments across the world. Elites have fallen into hysteria, blaming voters, “populism”, Putin, Facebook… anyone but themselves. They are suffering from Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome. Emerging from four years of interviews and debates on the popular global politics podcast Aufhebunga Bunga, The End of the End of History examines how the political consequences of the 2008 financial crisis have come home to roost. If Trump and Brexit shattered the liberal-democratic consensus in 2016, then the global pandemic of 2020 put a final end to the “End of History”. Politics is back, but it’s stranger than ever.

Author : Chellis Glendinning
Publisher : New Society Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9781550923322
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Off The Map written by Chellis Glendinning and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2002-08-13 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's global economy is yesterday's empire. Imperialism in whatever guise is the same through time, penetrating every area of our lives, affecting whole cultures as well as the deep core of individuals. And maps have been the tools of empire, defining the territory to be exploited. Off The Map is a unique exploration of globalization. Part history, part autobiography, and part fiction, it weaves together the history of the last 300 years of Western imperialism, the author's own story of sexual abuse in the 1950s, and a present-day horseback ride through the recently colonized Chicano world of New Mexico. The author takes us with her as she travels 'off the map' through the ancestral lands of her friend and traveling companion Snowflake Martinez, describing the Chicano people's struggle to survive the onslaught of a globalized world, and the ways in which that struggle has been replicated countless times. In a different voice, she reveals scenes from her childhood, her grandparents adorning themselves with artifacts symbolic of the British Empire, and her medical doctor father raping both her and her brother for twelve years. The political is deeply personal. And hope, according to Glendinning, resides in our creating new maps that chart worlds fashioned by love and respect for community, place and nature. "A dazzling contribution to the critical study of globalization (qua imperialism)." -- Devon Peña, author of Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics: Subversive Kin

Author : Evgeny Morozov
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 1610391381
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book To Save Everything, Click Here written by Evgeny Morozov and published by . This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning author of The Net Delusion shows how the radical transparency we've become accustomed to online may threaten the spirit of real-life democracy

Author : Lewis Mumford
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780156623414
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Myth of the Machine: The pentagon of power written by Lewis Mumford and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Arnulf Grübler
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521543323
Total Pages : 468 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Technology and Global Change written by Arnulf Grübler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-16 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to comprehensibly describe how technology has shaped society and the environment over the last 200 years. It will be useful for researchers, as a textbook for graduate students, for people engaged in long-term policy planning in industry and government, for environmental activists, and for the wider public interested in history, technology, or environmental issues.

Author : Morgan G. Ames
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262537443
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Charisma Machine written by Morgan G. Ames and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating examination of technological utopianism and its complicated consequences. In The Charisma Machine, Morgan Ames chronicles the life and legacy of the One Laptop per Child project and explains why—despite its failures—the same utopian visions that inspired OLPC still motivate other projects trying to use technology to “disrupt” education and development. Announced in 2005 by MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte, One Laptop per Child promised to transform the lives of children across the Global South with a small, sturdy, and cheap laptop computer, powered by a hand crank. In reality, the project fell short in many ways—starting with the hand crank, which never materialized. Yet the project remained charismatic to many who were captivated by its claims of access to educational opportunities previously out of reach. Behind its promises, OLPC, like many technology projects that make similarly grand claims, had a fundamentally flawed vision of who the computer was made for and what role technology should play in learning. Drawing on fifty years of history and a seven-month study of a model OLPC project in Paraguay, Ames reveals that the laptops were not only frustrating to use, easy to break, and hard to repair, they were designed for “technically precocious boys”—idealized younger versions of the developers themselves—rather than the children who were actually using them. The Charisma Machine offers a cautionary tale about the allure of technology hype and the problems that result when utopian dreams drive technology development.