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"One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one--homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition."--
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"From the New York Times-bestselling author of Where Good Ideas Come From and Everything Bad Is Good for You, a new look at the power and legacy of great ideas. In this illustrated volume, Steven Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing facets of modern life (refrigeration, clocks, and eyeglass lenses, to name a few) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences....
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A finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world—sand—and the crucial role it plays in our lives.
After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other—even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids...
The gripping story of the most important overlooked commodity in the world—sand—and the crucial role it plays in our lives.
After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other—even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. From Egypt's pyramids...
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"An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible--a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish. We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our...
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"Vaclav Smil's mission is to make facts matter. An environmental scientist, policy analyst, and a hugely prolific author, he is Bill Gates' go-to guy for making sense of our world. In Numbers Don't Lie, Smil answers questions such as: What's worse for the environment--your car or your phone? How much do the world's cows weigh (and what does it matter)? And what makes people happy?"--
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"As robots are increasingly integrated into modern society--on the battlefield and the road, in business, education, and health--Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff searches for an answer to one of the most important questions of our age: will these machines help us, or will they replace us? In the past decade alone, Google introduced us to driverless cars, Apple debuted a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets,...
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"The tech elite have a plan to survive the apocalypse: they want to leave us all behind. Five mysterious billionaires summoned theorist Douglas Rushkoff to a desert resort for a private talk. The topic? How to survive the "Event": the societal catastrophe they know is coming. Rushkoff came to understand that these men were under the influence of The Mindset, a Silicon Valley-style certainty that they and their cohort can break the laws of physics,...
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The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods. The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines--on punishment of death--and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction....
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Friedman discusses how the key to understanding the 21st century is understanding that the planet's three largest forces -- Moore's law (technology), the market (globalization) and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loos) -- are accelerating all at once. And these accelerations are transforming the five key realms: the workplace, politics, geopolitics, ethics, and community. Friedman posits that we should purposely "be late" -- we should...
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Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben's groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization...
12) Breaking the Wall of Data Deluge: How Efficient Data Exploration Enables New Scientific Discoveries
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Science has entered its fourth paradigm: after being observational, empirical, and theoretical, scientific discovery is now data-intensive. Anastasia (Natassa) Ailamaki, professor of computer sciences at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and winner of the Eppendorf European Young Investigator Award and a Sloan Research Fellowship, is pushing the limits of the speed of research and our capacity to deal with massive amounts of information....
13) Waves
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The invention of "waves" - as in radio waves or electromagnetic fields - has led to many great inventions. This program examines how the ability to transmit music, conversations, pictures, or data invisibly through the air, over thousands of miles, has changed our lives. Whether we are talking about cell phones, microwave ovens, TVs, RADAR systems, or any one of the thousands of other wireless technologies, all of them use radio waves to communicate....
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Engineering is where human knowledge meets real-world problems--and solves them. It's the source of some of our greatest inventions, from the catapult to the jet engine, from the cell phone to the Large Hadron Collider. Marshall Brain, creator of the How Stuff Works series, provides a detailed look at 250 milestones in aerospace, architecture, chemistry, computer engineering, and more, from ancient history to the present.
15) Gunpowder
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Few substances in history have had as profound an effect on mankind as gunpowder. And yet its discovery was probably an accident - a big bang, for one. This program examines the invention and history of gunpowder, as well as its surprising ingredients. As you can imagine, making gunpowder takes some effort. Gunpowder once needed saltpeter, and saltpeter needed poop. It turns out that secretions have such an explosive character due to microscopic bacteria,...
16) Flight
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As early as the 1500s, we were dreaming of flight - that's when Leonardo da Vinci tried to build his flying machine. Unfortunately, his "Ornithopter" didn't work, and indeed, the airplanes of today do not have flapping wings! This program charts the history of manned flight - from the kite made by the now-famous Wright brothers, which became the forerunner of the flying machine, to today's commercial planes that can top 800 kmph. What is it that makes...
17) Users
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A mother wonders, will my children love their perfect machines more than they love me, their imperfect mother? A cinematic meditation on technology and parenthood.
18) Cures
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Throughout the history of mankind, the business of curing, understanding, and treating disease has taken a rather peculiar path. Some procedures have proven to be very efficient while other methods could only have made things worse for the patient. This program traces the history of bacteria and antibiotics. From Alexander Fleming to "super drugs" for superbugs, have these cures led to bacteria becoming more resistant and harder to kill? What else...
20) Rubber
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South American tribes used rubber long before the world got to know about it. When Columbus witnessed Haitian natives playing ball, he found himself mesmerized by the bouncing goo. This program discovers how Charles Goodyear learned the secret of stabilizing rubber - by dropping a lump of natural rubber on his wife's stove. Viewers then see how this invention spurred the Industrial Revolution and created a rubber boom - turning a remote Brazilian...