検索キーワード： 歴史・文化

Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford.

Leave Your Phone at the Door embraces the OFFLINE philosophy, which is a celebration of the much-underrated virtues of randomness and serendipity. Whether sharing stories of unexpected encounters, alarming behavioral trends or the joys of quiet and contemplation, Howard Lewis encourages us to adopt an open mind and a generosity of spirit whenever we are confronted by the unfamiliar or surprising or different.

2016年3月に筆者はアメリカ・サンフランシスコに出張した。出かける前後、日本で話題になっていたのが、Googleが開発した囲碁用AI「AlphaGo」と、囲碁の世界チャンピオン・李世ドルの対決だ。アメリカでは日本ほど話題になっていないようだが、そこは囲碁というゲームに対する認知度というか、注目度の差かな、と思う。筆者は囲碁にはさほど詳しくない。弱いながら、将棋とチェスはそこそこわかるが、囲碁はルールを知っている程度。場の展開の有利・不利がどうにも見通せない、というレベルに過ぎない。だが、囲碁というゲームの複雑さや、先を読むことの難しさを思うと、ここまでの囲碁用AIが作れたことには、感嘆を禁じえない。囲碁は、ゲーム理論の世界では「二人ゼロサム有限確定完全情報ゲーム」と呼ばれる。意思決定に関わる情報のすべてが盤面に存在するため、コンピュータにとっては比較的与し易いものとされ、AI研究の初期から研究が続けられてきた。それでも囲碁と将棋は難しく、プロに確実に勝つソフトを作るのは、一つの目標とされてきた。(本文より)小寺・西田の「金曜ランチビュッフェ　はこちらから→http://yakan-hiko.com/kode-nishi.html

A new industrial revolution has begun. Like mechanization or electricity before it, artificial intelligence will touch every aspect of our lives—and cause profound disruptions in the balance of global power, especially among the AI superpowers: China, the United States, and Europe. Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre takes listeners inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future.

How much do you know about your favorite videogame console or any other non-handheld console? Would you like to know more about video game history? If you want to know more about some of the greatest consoles ever, don’t worry, I'll tell you everything I know about them. In this videogame book you will find the history of non-handheld videogame consoles and their evolution, hope you enjoy this video game guide book I prepared for you!

Long before books were mass produced, those made of reeds from along the Nile were worth fighting and dying for. Journeying along the battlefields of Alexander the Great, beneath the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, at Cleopatra's palaces and the scene of Hypatia's murder, award-winning author Irene Vallejo chronicles the excitement of literary culture in the ancient world, and the heroic efforts that ensured this impressive tradition would continue.

The term metaverse is suddenly everywhere, from debates over Fortnite to the pages of the New York Times to the speeches of Mark Zuckerberg, who proclaimed in June 2021 that “the overarching goal” of Facebook is to “bring the metaverse to life”. But what, exactly, is the metaverse? As pioneering theorist and venture capitalist Matthew Ball explains, it is the successor to the mobile internet that has defined the last two decades.

The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann.

In the coming decades, the technology that enables virtual and augmented reality will improve beyond recognition. Within a century, world-renowned philosopher David J. Chalmers predicts, we will have virtual worlds that are impossible to distinguish from non-virtual worlds. But is virtual reality just escapism? In a highly original work of 'technophilosophy', Chalmers argues categorically, no: virtual reality is genuine reality. Virtual worlds are not second-class worlds. We can live a meaningful life in virtual reality - and increasingly, we will.

The story of humanity is the story of textiles - as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world.

Modern knowledge workers communicate constantly. Their days are defined by a relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital conversations - a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to perform substantive work. There was a time when tools like email felt cutting edge, but a thorough review of current evidence reveals that the "hyperactive hive mind" workflow they helped create has become a productivity disaster, reducing profitability and perhaps even slowing overall economic growth.

2018年12月10日に、インターネット商用化25周年&ダグラス・ エンゲルバートのThe Demo 50周年を記念して開催した「IT25・ 50」シンポジウムでは、アラン・ケイがロンドンと東京を繋ぎ、基調講演とパ ネルディスカッションを行い、それをYouTube Liveでライブと日 本語同時通訳付きライブの二系統で日本全国(共催11カ所/全20カ所)、全世界(米国・ドイツなど)に同時配信。どこにいても一 緒に議論をしたり視聴したりできる、現代のテクノロジーの最前線 を実際にデモンストレーションしたシンポジウムであった。

In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur sets forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology's origins and evolution. It achieves for the progress of technology what Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress.

The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction—in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility.

Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity - and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground. We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over 30 years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence.

Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.

The history of computing could be told as the story of hardware and software or the story of the Internet or the story of "smart" handheld devices, with subplots involving IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter. In this concise and accessible account of the invention and development of digital technology, computer historian Paul Ceruzzi offers a broader and more useful perspective. He identifies four major threads that run throughout all of computing's technological development.

We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. The Fourth Age provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how - rather than what - we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, superintelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity.

The Internet of Things is a networked world of connected devices, objects, and people. In this book Samuel Greengard offers a guided tour through this emerging world and how it will change the way we live and work. Greengard explains that the Internet of Things (IoT) is still in its early stages. Smartphones, cloud computing, RFID (radio-frequency identification), technology, sensors, and miniaturization are converging to make possible a new generation of embedded and immersive technology.

Bridging the gap between tech mania and the experience of being inside the human body, Dawn of the New Everything is a look at what it means to be human at a moment of unprecedented technological possibility. Through a fascinating look back over his life in technology, Jaron Lanier, an interdisciplinary scientist and father of the term virtual reality, exposes VR's ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species and gives listeners a new perspective on how the brain and body connect to the world.