Every age and every culture produce their own particular set of ‘False Gods’ and their associated narratives. Each of these ‘False Gods’ is supported by a whole range of sub-mythologies and ideological delusions that seek to justify, rationalise and normalise the worship of the particular ‘False God’.Setting out to identify Seven of the ‘False Gods’ of modernity, Civilization 21 opens a Pandora’s Box of alternative narratives that challenge the evolving norms of twenty-fir...

The Internet is the most remarkable thing human beings have built since the Pyramids. John Naughton's book intersperses wonderful personal stories with an authoritative account of where the Net actually came from, who invented it and why and where it might be taking us. Most of us have no idea how the Internet works, or who created it. Even fewer have any idea what it means for society and the future. In a cynical age, John Naughton has not lost his capacity for wonder. He examines the nat...

We've gone from regarding the Net as something exotic to something that we take for granted, like mains electricity or running water. Yet most people have no idea how the network functions, nor any conception of its architecture; and few can explain why it has been - and continues to be - so uniquely disruptive in social, economic and cultural contexts. John Naughton has been thinking, arguing, lecturing and writing about the Net for over two and a half decades, and in FROM GUTENBERG TO ZU...

John Naughton is the Observer's â??Networker' columnist, a prominent blogger, and Vice-President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. The Times has said that his writings, "[it] draws on more than two decades of study to explain how the internet works and the challenges and opportunities it will offer to future generations," and Cory Doctrow raved that "this is the kind of primer you want to slide under your boss's door." In From Gutenberg to Zuckerberg, Naughton explores the living history of o...

How is the internet changing the way you think? That is one of the dominant questions of our time, one which affects almost every aspect of our life and future. And it's exactly what John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to more than 150 of the world's most influential minds. Brilliant, farsighted, and fascinating, Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? is an essential guide to the Net-based world.

The renowned Internet commentator and author of How to Fix the Future"expos[es] the greed, egotism and narcissism that fuels the tech world" ( Chicago Tribune).The digital revolution has contributed to the world in many positive ways, but we are less aware of the Internet's deeply negative effects. The Internet Is Not the Answer, by longtime Internet skeptic Andrew Keen, offers a comprehensive look at what the Internet is doing to our liv...

Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction: “Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.”—Michael Agger, Slate“Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our a...

‘Extraordinary’ Angela Carter ‘One of the great war novels of the 20th century’ William Boyd ‘A remarkable journey’ Sunday TimesThe heartrending story of a British boy’s four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War.Like everything else since the war, the sky was in a state of changeBased on J. G. Ballard’s own childhood, this is the extraordinary account of a boy’s life in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Trapp...

From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory.Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language o...

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE BLACKBERRY#1 National BestsellerWinner of the National Business Book AwardIt was a classic modern business story: two Canadian entrepreneurs build an iconic brand that would forever change the way we communicate. From its humble beginnings in an office above a bagel store in Waterloo, Ontario, BlackBerry outsmarted the global giants with an addictive smartphone t...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The End of Faith, a thought-provoking, “brilliant and witty” (Oliver Sacks) look at the notion of free will—and the implications that it is an illusion.A belief in free will touches nearly everything that human beings value. It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagini...

A new edition to celebrate Alan Turing's centenary, includes a new foreword by the author and a preface by Douglas Hofstadter.Alan Turing was the extraordinary Cambridge mathematician who masterminded the cracking of the German Enigma ciphers and transformed the Second World War. But his vision went far beyond this crucial achievement. Before the war he had formulated the concept of the universal machine, and in 1945 he turned this into the first design for a digital computer....