In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures-vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments. The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus creating a new crypto fever. She introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like Buterin, the Web3 wunderkind; his short-lived CEO, Charles Hoskinson; and Joe Lubin, a former Goldman Sachs VP who became one of crypto's most well-known billionaires. Sparks fly as these outsized personalities fight for their piece of a seemingly limitless new business opportunity. This fascinating book shows the crypto market for what it really is: a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.

From factories to smartphones, Artificial Intelligence is already taking over. Outsmarting AI is not a how-to guide on making AI work, but making it work for YOU to boost profits and productivity. Each development in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology brings about apprehension and panic for the future of society and for business. We're bombarded with stories about the impending human-less workplace; it is no longer a question if man can be replaced by machine in certain tasks, but when. However, AI was not manufactured to destroy life as we know it. These emerging technologies were developed and are constantly updating with a particular goal in mind: optimization. AI feeds on data and information to improve outputs and increase potential. With this enhanced productivity, profit and productivity will be sure to follow. Written by Brennan Pursell, a business consultant and professor who hates jargon, and Joshua Walker, an AI pioneer with 18 years of experience in solutions and applications, Outsmarting AI is the first plain-English how-to guide on adapting AI for the non-coding proficient business leader. This book will help readers to -Cut through the fog of AI hype -See exactly what AI can actually do for people in business -Identify the areas of their organization in most need of AI tools -Prepare and control their data - AI is useless without it -Adopt AI and develop the right culture to support it -Track the productivity boost, cost savings, and increased profits -Manage and minimize the threat of crippling lawsuits

This book provides research on the state-of-the-art methods for data management in the fourth industrial revolution, with particular focus on cloud.based data analytics for digital manufacturing infrastructures. Innovative techniques and methods for secure, flexible and profi table cloud manufacturing will be gathered to present advanced and specialized research in the selected area.

The Google Story is the definitive account of one of the most remarkable organizations of our time. Every day over sixty-four million people use Google in more than one hundred languages, running billions of searches for information on everything and anything. Through the creative use of cutting-edge technology and a series of groundbreaking business ideas, Google's thirty-five year old founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have in ten years taken Google from being just another internet start-up to a company with a market value of over US$80 billion. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to the inner workings of Google, this book takes you inside the creation and growth of a company that has become so familiar its name is used as a verb around the world. But even as it rides high, Google wrestles with difficult challenges in a business that changes at lightning speed. In this new and updated edition to celebrate Google's 10th birthday, David A. Vise has written a new preface and new final chapter which look at further developments since 2005 and how Google will continue to expand and innovate while trying to follow its founders' mantra: DO NO EVIL 'If you want to know how the Google boys became wealthy and powerful beyond dreams, then David Vise's assiduously researched The Google Story is for you.' Sunday Telegraph 'If Google were to take on critical faculties as well as its other attributes Vise's book would probably come out on top.' The Times

If you wanted to build a machine that would distribute propaganda to millions of people, distract them from important issues, energize hatred and bigotry, erode social trust, undermine respectable journalism, foster doubts about science, and engage in massive surveillance all at once, you would make something a lot like Facebook. Of course, none of that was part of the plan. In Antisocial Media, Siva Vaidhyanathan explains how Facebook devolved from an innocent social site hacked together by Harvard students into a force that, while it may make personal life just a little more pleasurable, makes democracy a lot more challenging. It's an account of the hubris of good intentions, a missionary spirit, and an ideology that sees computer code as the universal solvent for all human problems. And it's an indictment of how "social media" has fostered the deterioration of democratic culture around the world, from facilitating Russian meddling in support of Trump's election to the exploitation of the platform by murderous authoritarians in Burma and the Philippines. Facebook grew out of an ideological commitment to data-driven decision making and logical thinking. Its culture is explicitly tolerant of difference and dissent. Both its market orientation and its labor force are global. It preaches the power of connectivity to change lives for the better. Indeed, no company better represents the dream of a fully connected planet "sharing" words, ideas, and images, and no company has better leveraged those ideas into wealth and influence. Yet no company has contributed more to the global collapse of basic tenets of deliberation and democracy. Both authoritative and trenchant, Antisocial Media shows how Facebook's mission went so wrong.

Raised in a small town in Georgia with no money or connections, Pat Mitchell challenged expectations to become one of media's most admired leaders-the first woman president of PBS and CNN productions, an award-winning film and TV producer, and the co-founder and curator of TEDWomen.

In the early 1980 s, Jiang Zemin, then Minister of Electronics Ministry of China, assessed the IT industry as the strategic high ground in international competition. He "perceived the discrepancy between China s level and the world's advanced level was so great that we had to do our utmost to catch up." Since then through numerous articles and frequent speeches he has drawn up a detailed technological and policy roadmap for doing exactly that. This volume collects over 25 pieces written over more than 20 years. It demonstrates the former president of China s authority and insight into the development of China s IT industry since the introduction of reforms, and the cutting-edge issues experienced throughout the global IT industry. Jiang s ambitious goal is the transformation of China into a leader in the global IT industry by 2020. This volume offers IT industry analysts, China watchers, policy makers and advisors, IT researchers, and investors a singular and authoritative view on how China should get there.
Establishes key measurements for the development of China s IT industry

Sets forth the priorities for government and industry I

Identifies opportunities for interrelating military and civilian R&D and applications

Reveals key obstacles to progress and directives for overcoming them

Sets out an R&D agenda for industry

Names the core industry sectors for government and industry investment

Identifies opportunities and the necessity for international collaboration

Establishes the need to develop China s own IPR and to respect and protect others IPR "

Over the last decade, the digital technologies in everyday life have multiplied. Our lives have been gradually taken over by digital devices, networks, and services. Although useful, they have also become invasive additions to our personal, professional and public lives. This process has occurred in a globalized and deregulated economy and a few US-based start-ups transformed into an oligopoly of multinationals that today govern the informational infrastructure of our societies. This book offers an analytical framework of the contemporary internet studied through the lens of history and political economy. Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are examined as emblematic products of a new capitalist order that is resolutely opposed to the original project of the internet. The author retraces the process of commodification that resulted in financial rationales taking over from collective and individual emancipation and uncovers how this internet oligopoly uses its exorbitant market power to eliminate competition; take advantage of global financialization to exploit human labour on a global scale and to avoid taxation; and how it implements strategies to control our communication methods for accessing information and content online, thus increasingly controlling the digital public sphere. The book reveals how the reshaping of society via private company business models impact on the place of work in future societies, social and economic inequalities, and, ultimately, democracy.

Digital information and data flows permeate every aspect of our society. Within this context, design extensively avails itself of the technological bounty of advanced digital tools. Yet beyond these tools, the fluidity of digital information and the seemingly immaterial nature of communication dominate most discussions. Understanding the contemporary networks of information and communication as inherently geographic, Geographies of Information attempts to realign design's relationship to information and communication technologies (ICTs) by expounding on their multiscalar complexities and contextual intricacies. From the impact of digital social media on political action and the rise of predictive technologies in speculative real estate to new ways of mapping temporal conditions of a site and the evolving role of information in how designers see, understand, and act on space, ICTs exert critical influence. This issue of New Geographies examines the forms, imprints, places, and territories of ICTs through spatially grounded and nuanced accounts of the hybrid conditions that ICTs generate, the scales at which they operate, and how this production of space is manifested in both advanced and emerging economies.

Enter the world of Steve Jobs -- disrupter, icon, hero -- and be inspired by his fascinating life presented here as a graphic novel. This fast-paced and entertaining biography is a perfect complement to text-heavy books on Steve Jobs like Walter Isaacson's biography. Steve Jobs is the subject of a major movie project this Autumn, and this graphic telling of his life-story presents him as the ultimate American entrepreneur, who brought us Apple Computer, Pixar, Macs, iPods, iPhones and more. It's a unique and stylish book, sure to appeal to the legions of readers who live and breathe the perfect blend of technology and design that Jobs created. Jobs's remarkable life reads like a history of the personal technology industry. He started Apple Computer in his parents' garage and eventually became the tastemaker of a generation, creating products we can't live without. Through it all, he was an overbearing and demanding perfectionist, both impossible and inspiring. Capturing his unparalleled brilliance, as well as his many demons, Jessie Hartland's engaging biography illuminates the meteoric successes, devastating setbacks, and myriad contradictions that make up the extraordinary life and legacy of the insanely great Steve Jobs.

This open access book presents the foundations of the Big Data research and innovation ecosystem and the associated enablers that facilitate delivering value from data for business and society. It provides insights into the key elements for research and innovation, technical architectures, business models, skills, and best practices to support the creation of data-driven solutions and organizations. The book is a compilation of selected high-quality chapters covering best practices, technologies, experiences, and practical recommendations on research and innovation for big data. The contributions are grouped into four parts: * Part I: Ecosystem Elements of Big Data Value focuses on establishing the big data value ecosystem using a holistic approach to make it attractive and valuable to all stakeholders. * Part II: Research and Innovation Elements of Big Data Value details the key technical and capability challenges to be addressed for delivering big data value. * Part III: Business, Policy, and Societal Elements of Big Data Value investigates the need to make more efficient use of big data and understanding that data is an asset that has significant potential for the economy and society. * Part IV: Emerging Elements of Big Data Value explores the critical elements to maximizing the future potential of big data value. Overall, readers are provided with insights which can support them in creating data-driven solutions, organizations, and productive data ecosystems. The material represents the results of a collective effort undertaken by the European data community as part of the Big Data Value Public-Private Partnership (PPP) between the European Commission and the Big Data Value Association (BDVA) to boost data-driven digital transformation.

The rise and spread of the Internet has accelerated the global flows of money, technology and information that are increasingly perceived as a challenge to the traditional regulatory powers of nation states and the effectiveness of their constitutions. The acceleration of these flows poses new legal and political problems to their regulation and control, as shown by recent conflicts between Google and the European Union (EU). This book investigates the transnational constitutional dimension of recent conflicts between Google and the EU in the areas of competition, taxation and human rights. More than a simple case study, it explores how the new conflicts originating from the worldwide expansion of the Internet economy are being dealt with by the institutional mechanisms available at the European level. The analysis of these conflicts exposes the tensions and contradictions between, on the one hand, legal and political systems that are limited by territory, and, on the other hand, the inherently global functioning of the Internet. The EU's promising initiatives to extend the protection of privacy in cyberspace set the stage for a broader dialogue on constitutional problems related to the enforcement of fundamental rights and the legitimate exercise of power that are common to different legal orders of world society. Nevertheless, the different ways of dealing with the competition and fiscal aspects of the conflicts with Google also indicate the same limits that are generally attributed to the very project of European integration, showing that the constitutionalization of the economy tends to outpace the constitutionalization of politics. Providing a detailed account of the unfolding of these conflicts, and their wider consequences to the future of the Internet, this book will appeal to scholars working in EU law, international law and constitutional law, as well as those in the fields of political science and sociology.

What has made Silicon Valley so productive of new technologies and new firms? How did its pioneering achievements begin--in computer networking, semiconductors, personal computing, and the Internet--and what forces have propelled its unprecedented growth? This collection of nine chapters by contributors from varied disciplines--business, geography, history, regional planning, and sociology--examines the history, development, and entrepreneurial dynamics of Silicon Valley.
Part I, "History," provides context for the Valley's success by exploring its early industrial roots. It traces the development of the electronics industry in Silicon Valley back to the founding of Federal Telegraph in 1908, and discusses the role of defense spending and the relationship with Stanford University in the region's growth. Part II, "Institutions," emphasizes the importance of supporting institutions and practices in helping Valley startups succeed. Four chapters explore the role of law firms in facilitating the formation of new companies, the evolution of the venture capital industry and its role in funding new firms, the importance of labor mobility, and the significance of close interfirm relationships in the success of Silicon Valley companies.
Part III, "General Explanations," presents three different perspectives on the environment that has made Silicon Valley so successful. The first chapter considers Silicon Valley as an ecosystem of interacting institutions, individuals, and a culture that encourages and nurtures entrepreneurship. The second chapter argues that Silicon Valley should not be seen as a region in which relationships are based on civic virtue, but rather one in which trust is based on performance, which makes it uniquely permeable to new ideas and talented individuals. The final chapter contends that institutions specializing in new firm formation are responsible for Silicon Valley's unique ability to foster technological advances.

Industrial Machinery Repair provides a practical reference for practicing plant engineers, maintenance supervisors, physical plant supervisors and mechanical maintenance technicians. It focuses on the skills needed to select, install and maintain electro-mechanical equipment in a typical industrial plant or facility.
The authors focuses on "Best Maintenance Repair Practices" necessary for maintenance personnel to keep equipment operating at peak reliability and companies functioning more profitably through reduced maintenance costs and increased productivity and capacity.
A number of surveys conducted in industries throughout the United States have found that 70% of equipment failures are self-induced. If the principles and techniques in this book are followed, it will result in a serious reduction in "self induced failures."
In the pocketbook format, this reference material can be directly used on the plant floor to aid in effectively performing day-to-day duties. Data is presented in a concise, easily understandable format to facilitate use in the adverse conditions associated with the plant floor. Each subject is reduced to it simplest terms so that it will be suitable for the broadest range of users. Since this book is not specific to any one type of industrial plant and is useful in any type of facility.
-The new standard reference book for industrial and mechanical trades
-Accessible pocketbook format facilitates on-the-job use
-Suitable for all types of plant facilities

In his bestselling books The Cult of the Amateur and The Internet is not the Answer, Andrew Keen exposed the cultural and social dangers posed by internet technology. What was once seen as a tool for connecting people and providing opportunities is now recognised as a force that is profoundly reshaping our world. In How to Fix the Future, Andrew Keen sets out a compelling manifesto for improving how we live in the digital age. Taking lessons from the world-changing events of the Industrial Revolution, he travels around the globe, from India to Estonia, Germany to Singapore, investigating the best and worst practices in regulation, innovation, social responsibility, consumer choice and education - and shows what we can do to preserve human values in an increasingly digital world.