Artificial intelligence (AI) is often discussed as something extraordinary, a dream-or a nightmare-that awakens metaphysical questions on human life. Yet far from a distant technology of the future, the true power of AI lies in its subtle revolution of ordinary life. From voice assistants like Siri to natural language processors, AI technologies use cultural biases and modern psychology to fit specific characteristics of how users perceive and navigate the external world, thereby projecting the illusion of intelligence. Integrating media studies, science and technology studies, and social psychology, Deceitful Media examines the rise of artificial intelligence throughout history and exposes the very human fallacies behind this technology. Focusing specifically on communicative AIs, Natale argues that what we call "AI" is not a form of intelligence but rather a reflection of the human user. Using the term "banal deception," he reveals that deception forms the basis of all human-computer interactions rooted in AI technologies, as technologies like voice assistants utilize the dynamics of projection and stereotyping as a means for aligning with our existing habits and social conventions. By exploiting the human instinct to connect, AI reveals our collective vulnerabilities to deception, showing that what machines are primarily changing is not other technology but ourselves as humans. Deceitful Media illustrates how AI has continued a tradition of technologies that mobilize our liability to deception and shows that only by better understanding our vulnerabilities to deception can we become more sophisticated consumers of interactive media.

The book will tell the history and story of Down East Maine lobster fishing. Author Christina Lemieux's family has been lobster fishermen for four generations, and the book draws from their personal recollections and documentation. It will then bring to life the experience of Down East Maine lobster fishing and living in a lobster fishing community. The book details how one goes about catching lobster, the seasons of lobster fishing and the perils of such a physically grueling job. It also talks about "lobster culture" some of the unique pastimes of lobster fishermen, such as the sport of Maine lobster boat racing. Finally, the book will give a brief overview of how to properly cook Maine lobster and provide some of the area's favorite lobster recipes.

A Best Book of 2020: The Washington Post * NPR * Chicago Tribune * Smithsonian A "remarkable" (Los Angeles Times), "seductive" (The Wall Street Journal) debut from the new cohost of Radiolab, Why Fish Don't Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and--possibly--even murder. "At one point, Miller dives into the ocean into a school of fish...comes up for air, and realizes she's in love. That's how I felt: Her book took me to strange depths I never imagined, and I was smitten." --The New York Times Book Review David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake--which sent more than a thousand discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life's work was shattered. Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish that he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world. When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool--a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet. Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don't Exist is a wondrous fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.

A clear and lively account of the machinery, innovation and personalities that have shaped the industry that provides the all-essential daily bread. Indispensible for anyone with an interest in industrial history. There is a wealth of literature on the traditional flour milling industry, much of it concerned with the charms of rural settings and ancient crafts, whereas the history of the dramatic changes in milling methods from the 1870s onwards has been somewhat neglected. Written by Glyn Jones, engineer and lecturer in technology, `The Millers' sets out to redress the balance and tells the story of the transformation of the flour milling industry by men of vision with enterprise and engineering skill, from the first experiments with roller mills before 1880 to the sleek, automated flour mills operating at the end of the twentieth century. It is a story of technological endeavour and industrial success. The innovations were revolutionary, with roller mills, purifiers and a variety of sifting and sorting machines replacing millstones and crude sieving equipment. Change was propelled by an increasing demand for white bread, and whiter flour could be produced by roller milling of hard foreign wheats, whereas traditional millstone methods were not suitable for the production of large quantities of branless flour. Henry Simon, who became the pioneering leader of the new field of milling engineering, installed his first roller plant in Manchester in 1878; by 1887 mills on the Simon system could produce enough flour to meet the requirements of 11 million people. The mass production of flour for our daily bread began in earnest. From 1904, the most forceful innovator among British millers was Joseph Rank, who commissioned Henry Simon Ltd to supply new plants at the main ports of Hull, London, Cardiff and Liverpool. The roles played by the other leading millers, many of which are still household names, are also included in this account. Despite the hugely impressive and far-reaching technological advances made by British millers and milling engineers, they have not received the credit they deserve. In truth, they replaced the traditional, basic form of the industry rapidly and effectively, and their inventions transformed milling in Britain and further afield. `The Millers' describes, in a clear and lively way, not only the changes in machinery and processing and the effects on the traditional industry, but the personalities who shaped the trade and the companies they ran, and the myths and legends which have surrounded them. Modern mills, rooted in British innovation and enterprise, are impressive in appearance and striking inside, with machinery that looks smart and is automatically controlled, processing wheat for a range of attractive foods and for the still essential daily bread.

If the United States couldn't catch up to the Soviets in space, how could it compete with them on Earth? That was the question facing John F. Kennedy at the height of the Cold War-a perilous time when the Soviet Union built the wall in Berlin, tested nuclear bombs more destructive than any in history, and beat the United States to every major milestone in space. The race to the heavens seemed a race for survival-and America was losing. On February 20, 1962, when John Glenn blasted into orbit aboard Friendship 7, his mission was not only to circle the planet; it was to calm the fears of the free world and renew America's sense of self-belief. Mercury Rising re-creates the tension and excitement of a flight that shifted the momentum of the space race and put the United States on the path to the moon. Drawing on new archival sources, personal interviews, and previously unpublished notes by Glenn himself, Mercury Rising reveals how the astronaut's heroics lifted the nation's hopes in what Kennedy called the "hour of maximum danger."

"Old maps lead you to strange and unexpected places, and none does so more ineluctably than the subject of this book: the giant, beguiling Waldseemuller world map of 1507." So begins this remarkable story of the map that gave America its name.
For millennia Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts: Europe, Africa, and Asia. They drew the three continents in countless shapes and sizes on their maps, but occasionally they hinted at the existence of a "fourth part of the world," a mysterious, inaccessible place, separated from the rest by a vast expanse of ocean. It was a land of myth--until 1507, that is, when Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure scholars working in the mountains of eastern France, made it real. Columbus had died the year before convinced that he had sailed to Asia, but Waldseemuller and Ringmann, after reading about the Atlantic discoveries of Columbus's contemporary Amerigo Vespucci, came to a startling conclusion: Vespucci had reached the fourth part of the world. To celebrate his achievement, Waldseemuller and Ringmann printed a huge map, for the first time showing the New World surrounded by water and distinct from Asia, and in Vespucci's honor they gave this New World a name: America.
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The Fourth Part of the World "is the story behind that map, a thrilling saga of geographical and intellectual exploration, full of outsize thinkers and voyages. Taking a kaleidoscopic approach, Toby Lester traces the origins of our modern worldview. His narrative sweeps across continents and centuries, zeroing in on different portions of the map to reveal strands of ancient legend, Biblical prophecy, classical learning, medieval exploration, imperial ambitions, and more. In Lester's telling the map comes alive: Marco Polo and the early Christian missionaries trek across Central Asia and China; Europe's early humanists travel to monastic libraries to recover ancient texts; Portuguese merchants round up the first West African slaves; Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci make their epic voyages of discovery; and finally, vitally, Nicholas Copernicus makes an appearance, deducing from the new geography shown on the Waldseemuller map that the earth could not lie at the center of the cosmos. The map literally altered humanity's worldview.
One thousand copies of the map were printed, yet only one remains. Discovered accidentally in 1901 in the library of a German castle it was bought in 2003 for the unprecedented sum of $10 million by the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. Lavishly illustrated with rare maps and diagrams, "The Fourth Part of the World "is the story of that map: the dazzling story of the geographical and intellectual journeys that have helped us decipher our world.