"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, economics, and morality to escape a disaster of their own making-as long as they have enough money and the right technology. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters-master programmers who want to remake the world from scratch as if redesigning a video game and bankers who return from Burning Man convinced that incentivized capitalism is the solution to environmental disasters-Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so. And he shows how recent forms of anti-mainstream rebellion-QAnon, for example, or meme stocks-reinforce the same destructive order. This mind-blowing work of social analysis shows us how to transcend the landscape The Mindset created-a world alive with algorithms and intelligences actively rewarding our most selfish tendencies-and rediscover community, mutual aid, and human interdependency. In a thundering conclusion, Survival of the Richest argues that the only way to survive the coming catastrophe is to ensure it doesn't happen in the first place"--

Originally published in two volumes in 1980, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change is now issued in a paperback edition containing both volumes. The work is a full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change. Professor Eisenstein begins by examining the general implications of the shift from script to print, and goes on to examine its part in three of the major movements of early modern times - the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.

We are born with the instinct to create and invent. Indeed, our ability to do so is what separates us from the rest of the animal world. But have our creative ideas always produced desirable results? Have they always served us well? Bad Ideas? traces the fascinating history of our attempts at self-improvement but also questions their value. The dubious consequences of the development of weaponry, for example, is self-evident. But what of apparently more innocuous advances such as farming, writing and medicine? Science has produced huge good but has also had unforeseen consequences. Can science and scientists find solutions to the perils that now menace us? We join Robert Winston on a thrilling journey from our earliest days to the present. We meet some key individuals along the way and share quirky anecdotes about their lives and brainwaves. Inspiring, unusual and at times controversial, Bad Ideas? assesses the past and looks forward to the opportunities of the future. In so doing it celebrates man's extraordinary capacity for achievement and offers a hopeful way forward to protect humanity against what sometimes seem like bad ideas.

Marcel Mauss's writings on techniques and technology are at the forefront of an important anthropological and sociological research tradition, and they also highlight the theoretical and ideological challenges surrounding this field of study. A selection of Mauss's texts -- including his major statements on methodology, on body techniques, on practical reason, on nation and civilisation, on progress, and so forth -- are here translated and presented together for the first time, with a discussion of their context, impact and implications. This book will interest scholars and students dealing with the French sociological tradition, and also more generally those concerned with technology and material culture studies in archaeological, anthropological or contemporary settings.

A crucial guide to life before—and after—Tinder, IVF, and robots. What will happen to our notions of marriage and parenthood as reproductive technologies increasingly allow for newfangled ways of creating babies? What will happen to our understanding of gender as medical advances enable individuals to transition from one set of sexual characteristics to another, or to remain happily perched in between? What will happen to love and sex and romance as our relationships migrate from the real world to the Internet? Can people fall in love with robots? Will they? In short, what will happen to our most basic notions of humanity as we entangle our lives and emotions with the machines we have created? In Work Mate Marry Love , Harvard Business School professor and former Barnard College president Debora L. Spar offers an incisive and provocative account of how technology has transformed our intimate lives in the past, and how it will do so again in the future. Surveying the course of history, she shows how marriage as we understand it resulted from the rise of agriculture, and that the nuclear family emerged with the industrial revolution. In their day, the street light, the car, and later the pill all upended courtship and sex. Now, as we enter an era of artificial intelligence and robots, how will our deepest feelings and attachments evolve? In the past, the prevailing modes of production produced a world dominated by heterosexual, mostly-monogamous, two-parent families. In the future, however, these patterns are almost certain to be reshaped, creating entirely new norms for sex and romance, and for the construction of families and the raising of children. Steering clear of both techno-euphoria and alarmism, Spar offers a bold and inclusive vision of how our lives might be changed for the better.

Reviewing the major events, trends, and personalities of world history from 8000 BC to the present, the authors offer forecasts about what lies ahead in the next millennium

In the tumultuous late 60s and early 70s, a social movement known as the "New Left" emerged as a major cultural influence, especially on the youth of America. It was a movement that embraced "flower-power" and psychedelic "consciousness-expansion," that lionized Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro and launched the Black Panthers and the Theater of the Absurd. In Return Of The Primitive (originally published in 1971 as The New Left), Ayn Rand, bestselling novelist and originator of the theory of Objectivism, identified the intellectual roots of this movement. She urged people to repudiate its mindless nihilism and to uphold, instead, a philosophy of reason, individualism, capitalism, and technological progress. Editor Peter Schwartz, in this new, expanded version of The New Left, has reorganized Rand's essays and added some of his own in order to underscore the continuing relevance of her analysis of that period. He examines such current ideologies as feminism, environmentalism and multiculturalism and argues that the same primitive, tribalist, "anti-industrial" mentality which animated the New Left a generation ago is shaping society today. --

"The very notion of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human." With this succinct formulation, Murray Bookchin launches his most ambitious work, The Ecology of Freedom . An engaging and extremely readable book of breathtaking scope, its inspired synthesis of ecology, anthropology and political theory traces our conflicting legacies of hierarchy and freedom from the first emergence of human culture to today's globalized capitalism, constantly pointing the way to a sane, sustainable ecological future. Murray Bookchin , cofounder of the Institute for Social Ecology, has been an active voice in the ecology and anarchist movements for more than 40 years. The author of numerous books and articles, he lives in Burlington, Vermont. In Oakland, California on March 24, 2015 a fire destroyed the AK Press warehouse along with several other businesses. Please consider visiting the AK Press website to learn more about the fundraiser to help them and their neighbors.

"Seven elements have stood out as having most powerfully changed the course of human history . [and] have shaped the vast complexities of our social, economic and cultural existence. These seven elements hold a grip on our emotions--and our history--like no others"--Preface.

Text: English, German (translation)