Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History

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The vast social apparatus of the computer network has aligned people with technology in unprecedented ways. The intimacy of the human-computer interface has made it impossible to distinguish technology from the social and cultural business of being human. Cyberculture is the broader name given to this process of becoming through technological means. This book shows that cyberculture has been a long time coming. In Prefiguring Cyberculture, media critics and theorists, philosophers, and historians of science explore the antecedents of such aspects of contemporary technological culture as the Internet, the World Wide Web, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, virtual reality, and the cyborg. The contributors examine key texts that anticipate cybercultural practice and theory, including Plato’s “Simile of the Cave”; the Renaissance Ars Memoria; Descartes’s Meditations (on the mind-body split); Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Alan Turing’s Computing Machinery and Intelligence; Philip K. Dick’s Man, Android, and Machine; William Gibson’s Neuromancer; and Arthur C. Clarke’s Profiles of the Future. In the final section, a number of cyberculture artists explore how cybercultural themes have been taken up and critiqued in the electronic arts. This book is not for sale in Australia and New Zealand

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A Wine Red Silence: A Novel

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I got the first piece of bad news when Mullet claimed there was a contract out on my life. Evidently old man Merrill wanted revenge on the Liquidator who cemeteried his son…

Private detective Jerico Drake is used to dealing with a world that has basically rejected goodness. With the nation now balkanized into white, black, and Hispanic sections, and new breed of “genrich” (genetically sculptured) humans, technology has given evil a few more wrinkles.

Drake’s client, the young and lovely Lori Hallendorf, seems like a light in the midst of darkness…even though her life has been marred by tragedy. As Drake investigates her brother’s murder, he discovers that he’s been targeted by an unrelenting assassin – a robotic killer with a shocking kind of artificial intelligence.

In a world of nanotechnology and genetic engineering, where fantasies are easily fulfilled but dreams turn to ashes, Drake must pursue a deadly trail that will show him both the worse, and the best, of humankind.

In the balkanized, bizarre, politically correct world of the future, sin has not yet been eradicated. Neither has murder…A fast-paced thriller for those who love science fiction.

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Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids

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Robots, androids, and bionic people pervade popular culture, from classics like Frankenstein and R.U.R. to modern tales such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator, and A.I. Our fascination is obvious – and the technology is quickly moving from books and films to real life.

In a lab at MIT, scientists and technicians have created an artificial being named COG. To watch COG interact with the environment – to recognize that this machine has actual body language – is to experience a hair-raising, gut-level reaction. Because just as we connect to artificial people in fiction, the merest hint of human-like action or appearance invariably engages us.

Digital People examines the ways in which technology is inexorably driving us to a new and different level of humanity. As scientists draw on nanotechnology, molecular biology, artificial intelligence, and materials science, they are learning how to create beings that move, think, and look like people. Others are routinely using sophisticated surgical techniques to implant computer chips and drug-dispensing devices into our bodies, designing fully functional man-made body parts, and linking human brains with computers to make people healthier, smarter, and stronger.

In short, we are going beyond what was once only science fiction to create bionic people with fully integrated artificial components – and it will not be long before we reach the ultimate goal of constructing a completely synthetic human-like being.

It seems quintessentially human to look beyond our natural limitations. Science has long been the lens through which we squint to discern our future. Although we are rightfully fearful about manipulating the boundaries between animate and inanimate, the benefits are too great to ignore. This thoughtful and provocative book shows us just where technology is taking us, in directions both wonderful and terrible, to ponder what it means to be human.

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Postsingular

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From Nanostructures to Nanosensing Applications

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Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies have grown increasingly fast for the last 20 years – after a somehow slow start – with an exceptional impact upon understanding of Nature, development of Science and related applications. Several new materials have been built and the possibility of tailoring their properties for particular purposes has opened unexpected perspectives in a multidisciplinary scenario. Furthermore, economy has also been deeply involved in this effort as a consequence of the fact that a significant amount of money has been invested in new enterprises with the hope of duplicating the “boom” of microelectronics: a wrong hope, according to our guess, since nanotechnologies probably will prove to be really crucial in niche production. Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies are developing at a very fast pace. It is then important to provide young and even expert scientists with the possibility of reviewing and updating some of the most significant features of nanostructures for a better understanding of their scientific foundations in order to put a firm basis for future developments. Nanostructures and Nanosensing Applications provide a very effective approach as they require a strict interaction between Science and Technology leading to a high degree of cross fertilization.

IOS Press is an international science, technical and medical publisher of high-quality books for academics, scientists, and professionals in all fields.

Some of the areas we publish in:

-Biomedicine
-Oncology
-Artificial intelligence
-Databases and information systems
-Maritime engineering
-Nanotechnology
-Geoengineering
-All aspects of physics
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-E-commerce
-The knowledge economy
-Urban studies
-Arms control
-Understanding and responding to terrorism
-Medical informatics
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