Some 600 million children worldwide do not legally exist. Without verifiable identification, they and unregistered adults could face serious difficulties in proving their identity, whether to open a bank account, purchase a SIM card, or cast a vote. Lack of identification is a barrier to full economic and social inclusion. Recent advances in the reach and technological sophistication of identification systems have been nothing less than revolutionary. Since 2000, over 60 developing countries have established national ID programs. Digital technology, particularly biometrics such as fingerprints and iris scans, has dramatically expanded the capabilities of these programs. Individuals can now be uniquely identified and reliably authenticated against their claimed identities. By enabling governments to work more effectively and transparently, identification is becoming a tool for accelerating development progress. Not only is provision of legal identity for all a target under the Sustainable Development Goals, but this book shows how it is also central to achieving numerous other SDG targets. Yet, challenges remain. Identification systems can fail to include the poor, leaving them still unable to exercise their rights, access essential services, or fully participate in political and economic life. The possible erosion of privacy and the misuse of personal data, especially in countries that lack data privacy laws or the capacity to enforce them, is another challenge. Yet another is ensuring that investments in identification systems deliver a development payoff. There are all too many examples where large expenditures sometimes supported by donor governments or agencies appear to have had little impact. Identification Revolution: Achieving Sustainable Development in the Digital Age offers a balanced perspective on this new area, covering both the benefits and the risks of the identification revolution, as well as pinpointing opportunities to mitigate those risks.

We are witnessing the development of new technologies that could have a dramatic impact on markets for both skilled and unskilled labour, including the use of Big Data. In addition, many welfare states have once again been restructured, sometimes weakening states? protection of employees. This timely book provides a systematic and vigorous analysis of the impact of new technology on the labour market and different kinds of welfare states. The book offers a novel contribution to the discussion of how welfare states can be maintained and developed to support groups in society who often need aid from a welfare state system. It also highlights the risk of increased social division as a consequence of these developments, and considers whether or not our response to this divide will have negative repercussions on the way societies function. With comprehensive analysis of the sharing and platform economies as well as new types of inequality, Technology and the Future of Work will appeal to academics and graduate students of social policy and readers interested in societal change more broadly.

In the very near future, "smart" technologies and "big data" will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such "solutionism" affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency? What if some such problems are simply vices in disguise? What if some friction in communication is productive and some hypocrisy in politics necessary? The temptation of the digital age is to fix everything--from crime to corruption to pollution to obesity--by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifying behavior. But when we change the motivations for our moral, ethical, and civic behavior we may also change the very nature of that behavior. Technology, Evgeny Morozov proposes, can be a force for improvement--but only if we keep solutionism in check and learn to appreciate the imperfections of liberal democracy. Some of those imperfections are not accidental but by design.
Arguing that we badly need a new, post-Internet way to debate the moral consequences of digital technologies, "To Save Everything, Click Here" warns against a world of seamless efficiency, where everyone is forced to wear Silicon Valley's digital straitjacket.

How will artificial intelligence change our world within twenty years?

AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand new forms of communication and entertainment. However, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order and bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up-both to AI's radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it.

In this provocative, utterly original work of "scientific fiction," Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, joins forces with celebrated novelist Chen Qiufan to imagine our AI world in 2041 in ten gripping short stories.

Gazing toward a not-so-distant horizon, AI 2041 offers urgent insights into our collective future and reminds us that we are the authors of our own destiny.

The ancient kalam cosmological argument maintains that the series of past events is finite and that therefore the universe began to exist. Two recent scientific discoveries have yielded plausible prima facie physical evidence for the beginning of the universe. The expansion of the universe points to its beginning-to a Big Bang-as one retraces the universe's expansion in time. And the second law of thermodynamics, which implies that the universe's energy is progressively degrading, suggests that the universe began with an initial low entropy condition. The kalam cosmological argument-perhaps the most discussed philosophical argument for God's existence in recent decades-maintains that whatever begins to exist must have a cause. And since the universe began to exist, there must be a transcendent cause of its beginning, a conclusion which is confirmatory of theism. So this medieval argument for the finitude of the past has received fresh wind in its sails from recent scientific discoveries. This collection reviews and assesses the merits of the latest scientific evidences for the universe's beginning. It ends with the kalam argument's conclusion that the universe has a cause-a personal cause with properties of theological significance.

The Outside the Research Lab series is a testament to the fact that the physics taught to high school and university students IS used in the real world. This book explores the physics and technology inherent to a selection of sports which have caught the author's attention and fascination over the years. Outside the Research Lab, Volume 3 is a path to discovering how less commonly watched sports use physics to optimize performance, diagnose injuries, and increase access to more competitors. It covers Olympic and Paralympic fencing, show jumping horses, and arguably the most brutal of motorsports - drag racing. Stunning images throughout the book and clear, understandable writing are supplemented by offset detail boxes which take the physics concepts to higher levels. Outside the Research Lab, Volume 3 is both for the general interest reader and students in STEM. Lecturers in university physics, materials science, engineering and other sciences will find this an excellent basis for teaching undergraduate students the range of applications for the physics they are learning. There is a vast range of different areas that require expertise in physics...this third volume of Outside the Research Lab shows a few with great detail provided by professionals doing the work.

Few artworks have been the subject of more extensive modern interpretation than Melencolia I by renowned artist, mathematician, and scientist Albrecht Durer (1514). And yet, did each of these art experts and historians miss a secret manifesto that Durer included within the engraving? This is the first work to decrypt secrets within Melencolia I based not on guesswork, but Durer's own writings, other subliminal artists that inspired him (i.e., Leonardo da Vinci), the Jewish and Christian Bibles, and books that inspired Durer (De Occulta Philosophia and the Hieorglyphica). To read the covert message of Melencolia I is to understand that Durer was a humanist in his interests in mathematics, science, poetry, and antiquity. This book recognizes his unparalleled power with the burin, his mathematical skill in perspective, his dedication to precise language, and his acute observation of nature. Melencolia I may also be one of the most controversial (and at the time most criminal) pieces of art as it hid Durer's disdain for the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the Kaiser, and the Holy Roman Empire from the general public for centuries. This book closely ties the origins of philosophy (science) and the work of a Renaissance master together, and will be of interest for anyone who loves scientific history, art interpretation, and secret manifestos.

In Understanding Religion through Artificial Intelligence, Justin E. Lane looks at the reasons why humans feel they are part of a religious group, despite often being removed from other group members by vast distances or multiple generations. To achieve this, Lane offers a new perspective that integrates religious studies with psychology, anthropology, and data science, as well as with research at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI). After providing a critical analysis of approaches to religion and social cohesion, Lane proposes a new model for religious studies, which he calls the "Information Identity System." This model focuses on the idea of conceptual ties: links between an individual's self-concept and the ancient beliefs of their religious group. Lane explores this idea through real-world examples, ranging from the rise in global Pentecostalism, to religious extremism and self-radicalization, to the effect of 9/11 on sermons. Lane uses this lens to show how we can understand religion and culture today, and how we can better contextualize the changes we see in the social world around us.

'A most welcome book on the most neglected of topics by a pioneering team of interdisciplinary scholars. The volume illuminates the rendering asunder of the borders that previously protected personal information, even when the individual was in ''public'' and helps us see the muddying of the simple distinction between public and private. The book asks what public and private mean (and should mean) today as smart phones, embedded sensors and related devices overwhelm the barriers of space, time, physicality, and inefficiency that previously protected information. This collection offers a needed foundation for future conceptualization and research on privacy in literal and virtual public spaces. It should be in the library of anyone interested in the social, policy and ethical implications of information technologies.' - Gary T. Marx, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 'How we should think about privacy in public spaces in a world of artificial intelligence and ubiquitous sensors is among the most interesting and pressing questions in all of privacy studies. This edited volume brings together some of Europe and America's finest minds to shed theoretic and practical light on a critical issue of our time.' - Ryan Calo, University of Washington 'The deepest conundrum in the privacy world-especially, in light of the internet of other people's things-is perhaps the notion of privacy in public. Unraveling this practically Kantian antinomy is the ambitious aim of this important new collection. Together and apart, this intriguing assemblage of scientists, social scientists, philosophers and lawyers interrogate subjects ranging from conceptual distinctions between ''space'' and ''place'' and the social practice of ''hiding in plain sight'', to compelling ideas such as ''privacy pollution'' and the problem of ''out-of-body DNA''. With this edited volume, the team from TILT has curated a convincing account of the importance of preserving privacy in increasingly public spaces.' - Ian Kerr, University of Ottawa, Canada With ongoing technological innovations such as mobile cameras, WiFi tracking, drones, and augmented reality, aspects of citizens' lives are becoming increasingly vulnerable to intrusion. This book brings together authors from a variety of disciplines (philosophy, law, political science, economics, and media studies) to examine privacy in public space from both legal and regulatory perspectives. The contributors explore the contemporary challenges to achieving privacy and anonymity in physical public space at a time when legal protection remains limited in comparison to `private' space. To address this problem, the book clearly demonstrates why privacy in public space needs defending. Different ways of conceptualizing and shaping such protection are explored, for example through `privacy bubbles', obfuscation and surveillance transparency, as well as by revising the assumptions underlying current privacy laws. Scholars and students who teach and study issues of privacy, autonomy, technology, urban geography and the law and politics of public spaces will be interested in this book. Contributors include: M. Brincker, A. Daly, A.M. Froomkin, M. Galic, J.M. Hildebrand, B.-J. Koops, M. Leta, K. Mause, M. Nagenborg, B.C Newell, A.E. Scherr, T. Timan, S.B. Zhao