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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Controversial knowledge
Fake News in Digital Cultures presents a new approach to
understanding disinformation and misinformation in contemporary
digital communication, arguing that fake news is not an alien
phenomenon undertaken by bad actors, but a logical outcome of
contemporary digital and popular culture, conceptual changes
meaning and truth, and shifts in the social practice of trust,
attitude and creativity. Looking not to the problems of the present
era but towards the continuing development of a future digital
media ecology, the authors explore the emergence of practices of
deliberate disinformation. This includes the circulation of
misleading content or misinformation, the development of new
technological applications such as the deepfake, and how they
intersect with conspiracy theories, populism, global crises,
popular disenfranchisement, and new practices of regulating
misleading content and promoting new media and digital literacies.
Modern Conspiracy attempts to sketch a new conception of conspiracy
theory. Where many commentators have sought to characterize
conspiracy theory in terms of the collapse of objectivity and
Enlightenment reason, Fleming and Jane trace the important role of
conspiracy in the formation of the modern world: the scientific
revolution, social contract theory, political sovereignty,
religious paranoia and mass communication media. Rather than see in
conspiratorial thinking the imminent death of Enlightenment reason,
and a regression to a new Dark Age, Modern Conspiracy contends that
many characteristic features of conspiracies tap very deeply into
the history of the Enlightenment itself: among other things, its
vociferous critique of established authorities, and a conception of
political sovereignty fuelled by fear of counter-plots. Drawing out
the roots of modern conspiratorial thinking leads us to truths less
salacious and scandalous than the claims of conspiracy theorists
themselves yet ultimately far more salutary: about mass
communication; about individual and crowd psychology; and about our
conception of and relation to knowledge.Perhaps, ultimately, what
conspiracy theory affords us is a renewed opportunity to reflect on
our very relationship to the truth itself.
A Mayan Priest Reveals What the 2012 Prophecy Really Means for
Your Life
Written at the request of the Mayan Elders, by a member of the
Guatemalan Elders Council and Mayan priest Carlos Barrios, The Book
of Destiny is a tool to help people understand their life purpose
and to use this profound knowledge to make the best of their time
on earth.
According to the Mayan Elders, at the moment of birth every
human being is given a destiny. Our life challenge is to develop
ourselves and our skills in order to fulfill this destiny, thus
fueling our individual contribution to the planet. At the heart of
The Book of Destiny is the sacred Mayan Calendar, an extraordinary
tool that allows readers to discover this destiny, along with their
special Mayan symbol, origin, and protection spirits that accompany
them through life.
By the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen
countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities. I'll
know how a document is forged, how to withstand an interrogation,
and most important, how to disappear . . . To the young Cheryl
Diamond, life felt like one big adventure, whether she was hurtling
down the Himalayas in a rickety car or mingling with underworld
fixers. Her family appeared to be an unbreakable gang of five. One
day they were in Australia, the next in South Africa, the pattern
repeating as they crossed continents, changed identities, and
erased their pasts. What Diamond didn't yet know was that she was
born into a family of outlaws fleeing from the highest
international law enforcement agencies, a family with secrets that
would eventually catch up to all of them. By the time she was in
her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she
grew older, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her
family--the only people she had in the world--began to unravel. She
started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the
people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and
her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even
existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere. Surviving would
require her to escape, and to do so Diamond would have to unlearn
all the rules she grew up with. Wild, heartbreaking, and often
unexpectedly funny, Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true
story of self-discovery and triumph.
The second edition of this popular text, updated throughout and now
including Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election and
aftermath, introduces students to the research into conspiracy
theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing
so, Uscinski and Enders address the psychological, sociological,
and political sources of conspiracy theorizing. They rigorously
analyze the most current arguments and evidence while providing
numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the
current debates. Each chapter addresses important current
questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and
introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.
The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly,
needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters
for years after reading! O'Connor's easy-going, conversational
style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces
behind life. The third in the four-part series explains how game
theory developed, and why it came to show us not only how humans
arrive at their decisions, but why so much of the apparently
bizarre behaviour of the natural world has the same mathematical
logic to it. Instead of the confusion and chaos one might expect in
life, O'Connor shows that there are profound reasons behind the
choices organisms make when they interact, and how we humans
refined this process through the addition of our intelligence and
language skills. Starting with the mind-blowing new ways of
thinking that Adam Smith opened the world's eyes to, the book
progresses to the 20th century-and shows how there's a coherent
rationale behind our thought processes-and how this was gradually
revealed by scientists at a time when the very future of the world
was at stake. As O'Connor unfolds the story in Why Do We All Behave
In The Way We Do?, it becomes ever clearer how cooperation has
evolved to be the critical force at every level of life. It was
what built our world, and it would settle so deeply into the
hardwiring of living things that it would eventually become
instinctive and innate in us. Perhaps most pleasingly, game theory
explains how the benefits of collaboration are bound to ratchet
upwards-and how this will inevitably lead to ever-increasing levels
of moral behaviour in our societies. It is so often an accepted
fact that bad people will win. And yet, as Book Three so clearly
explains, collaborative societies are bound to grow, that it's
rational to forgive to overcome vendettas and feuds, and that nice
folks will always win in life by coming second. Example questions
posed (and answered) in Book Three - Why Do All We Behave In The
Way We Do? What's Game Theory - and why is it so critical to
understanding how to make the right decisions? Why, if humans are
so convinced that most of us are bad, are we concerned about being
fair in our lives? Why do we value trust so highly? What are the
reasons for our surprising wish to care for each other? Why do we
share things, even though we might not have to? How did a failed
robbery explain human nature? Why can it be rational to be
irrational? And why is life like a poker game?
The second edition of this popular text, updated throughout and now
including Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election and
aftermath, introduces students to the research into conspiracy
theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing
so, Uscinski and Enders address the psychological, sociological,
and political sources of conspiracy theorizing. They rigorously
analyze the most current arguments and evidence while providing
numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the
current debates. Each chapter addresses important current
questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and
introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.
New Lands was the second nonfiction book of the author Charles
Fort, written in 1925. It deals primarily with astronomical
anomalies. Fort expands in this book on his theory about the
Super-Sargasso Sea - a place where earthly things supposedly
materialize in order to rain down on Earth - as well as developing
an idea that there are continents above the skies of Earth. As
evidence, he cites a number of anomalous phenomena, including
strange "mirages" of land masses, groups of people, and animals in
the skies. He also continues his attacks on scientific dogma,
citing a number of mysterious stars and planets that scientists
failed to account for.
Exploring how technological apparatuses "capture" invisible worlds,
this book looks at how spirits, UFOs, discarnate entities, spectral
energies, atmospheric forces and particles are mattered into
existence by human minds. Technological and scientific discourse
has always been central to the nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century spiritualist quest for legitimacy, but as this
book shows, machines, people, and invisible beings are much more
ontologically entangled in their definitions and constitution than
we would expect. The book shows this entanglement through a series
of contemporary case studies where the realm of the invisible
arises through technological engagement, and where the paranormal
intertwines with modern technology.
The Secrets of Life series is written for everyone who, frankly,
needs a spot of cheering up, and will provide conversation starters
for years after reading! O'Connor's easy- going, conversational
style brings an outsider's questioning eye to the great forces
behind life. The first book in the four-part series contends that
if we set received wisdom to one side and really dig into the
facts, there are actually very few 'secrets' in life. Instead,
suggesting it's possible to see that from the split second of Big
Bang, right up to our present attempts to make the world a better
place, everything that's alive has been trying to find strategies
to survive the iron Laws of Thermodynamics, to work together to
make more from less, and to overcome the constant threat of
destructive, entropic forces. How Did Life End Up With Us? delves
into explanations as to the reasons behind why cooperation is the
strongest force in life, and why altruism is the proof for the
'gene-based theory of evolution'. O'Connor reveals that from the
point that life first sparked off some 3.8 billion years ago, every
living thing has descended from the original cell by taking blind
mutational and genetic 'decisions'. Through The Secrets of Life
series, aimed at general readers like himself, O'Connor recognises
that life may appear as an endless and violent conflict, yet under
the obvious requirement to take one another's energy, there's
always been a deeper current that's driving living things to higher
and higher levels of cooperation. In other words, the future isn't
quite as bleak as you may believe! Example questions posed (and
answered) in Book One - How Did Life End Up With Us? Why are
mutations like a gambling scam? And why, if DNA is just a bunch of
chemical elements, does it behave like a sophisticated hedge fund
manager? If DNA is so brilliant at replicating things, then why
does the reproduction process make so many mistakes? Why does
everything have to die? How were the Beatles witnesses to one of
the great scientific breakthroughs? Is natural selection enough to
explain evolution?
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