A terminally ill man sells his life insurance policy for cheap to an investor who will collect the full amount when the sick man dies.But is the sick man really sick? Does he even exist? In the age of AIDS and no-holds-barred capitalism, the business of betting on how much longer sick people will live is thriving. Is this new market in which life insurance policies are bought and sold a legitimate enterprise, or is it an open invitation to fraud and murder?Carver Hartnett, Miranda ...

Will the Geeks inherit the earth?If computers become twice as fast and twice as capable every two years, how long is it before they’re as intelligent as humans? More intelligent? And then in two more years, twice as intelligent? How long before you won’t be able to tell if you are texting a person or an especially ingenious chatterbot program designed to simulate intelligent human conversation?According to Richard Dooling in Rapture for the Geeks—maybe not that lon...

When Dr. Ernst stands in the center of the ICU, surrounded on all sides by computer terminals and cardiac monitors, he imagines he is on the bridge of the starship Enterprise, a guardian of unknown galaxies. But by 3:00 a.m. the space fantasy has dissipated into the air like so much ether, leaving behind only a profound and desperate desire for sleep. The needs of Ernst's patients are as endless as his round of duty. Their lives are mere blips on the VDT console, their last bids for fading...

This book will enable leaders to manage change in a more proactive, tailored and engaged manner to increase the likelihood of achieving the expected outcomes of the change initiatives.Leaders today must be able to embed resiliency into their organizations and to re-position change as a natural process. Being an effective change agent has become a critical leadership competency for 21st Century leaders. With these factors in mind, we are proposing a new approach to ...

Men Seeking Women: Love and Sex On-line is an exciting and original collection of new short fiction by men about men seeking women, and women seeking men in the digital age.The Internet revolution has altered the look of the traditional relationship. Through e-mail correspondence, chat room chats, and message board postings, the manner in which we meet and mate has drastically changed. While the search for love is a timeless one, how and where we look has never been more a...

Over the past several years, many investigators interested in the effects of man-made sounds on animals have come to realize that there is much to gain from studying the broader literature on hearing sound and the effects of sound as well as data from the effects on humans. It has also become clear that knowledge of the effects of sound on one group of animals (e.g., birds or frogs) can guide studies on other groups (e.g., marine mammals or fishes) and that a review of all such studies tog...

This book explores the intersections between leadership and velocity (the speed of now) to identify key leadership competencies needed for the 21st Century.We offer a set of ten competencies that may serve as a foundation of effective leadership that emerged from our experiences, interviews with 30 leaders, and research. These competencies may be especially timely in the midst of the global COVID-19 crisis and the need for effective leadership at all levels.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology—and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who’s helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving ...

A NATIONAL BESTSELLERA programmer, musician, and father of virtual reality technology, Jaron Lanier was a pioneer in digital media, and among the first to predict the revolutionary changes it would bring to our commerce and culture. Now, with the Web influencing virtually every aspect of our lives, he offers this provocative critique of how digital design is shaping society, for better and for worse.Informed by Lanier’s experience and expertise as a compute...

Book Two in the Shades of Grey SeriesWhen Crystal Grey, a teenager with dark secrets, disappears from her Vancouver home, her family is tormented by questions:Where has Crystal gone?Why hasn't she returned?Who is she with?What is she doing?Why did she leave?When is she coming back?Involved in the drug trade and running with a fast crowd, Crystal is now being exploited by some very sinister people - facts that the Vancouver Police D...

This is "the Word" -- one man's word, certainly -- about the art (and artifice) of the state of our computer-centric existence. And considering that the "one man" is Neal Stephenson, "the hacker Hemingway" (Newsweek) -- acclaimed novelist, pragmatist, seer, nerd-friendly philosopher, and nationally bestselling author of groundbreaking literary works (Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, etc., etc.) -- the word is well worth hearing. Mostly well-reasoned examination and partial rant, Stephenson's In ...

Rob Delaney is a father, a husband, a comedian, a writer. He is the author of an endless stream of beautiful, insane jokes on Twitter. He is sober. He is sometimes brave. He speaks French. He has bungee-jumped off the Manhattan Bridge. He enjoys antagonizing political figures, powerful retailers and the Kardashians. He listens to metal while he works out. He broke into an abandoned mental hospital with his mother. He played Sir Lancelot in Camelot. He has battled ...