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Extremism by J. M. Berger
Category: Reference | Series: The\MIT Press Essential Knowledge Ser.
What extremism is, how extremist ideologies are constructed, and why extremism can escalate into violence.A rising tide of extremist movements threaten to destabilize civil societies around the globe. It has never been more important to understand extremism, yet the dictionary definition--a logical star ...Show more
Free Will by Mark Balaguer
Category: Health and Wellbeing | Series: MIT Press Essential Knowledge
In our daily life, it really seems as though we have free will, that what we do from moment to moment is determined by conscious decisions that we freely make. You get up from the couch, you go for a walk, you eat chocolate ice cream. It seems that we're in control of actions like these; if we are, then ...Show more
Gender(s) by Kathryn Bond Stockton
Category: Sexual Health | Series: The\MIT Press Essential Knowledge Ser.
Why gender is strange, even when it's played straight, and how race and money are two of its most dramatic ingredients. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kathryn Bond Stockton explores the fascinating, fraught, intimate, morphing matter of gender. Stockton argues for gender's ...Show more
Gps by Paul E. Ceruzzi
Category: Science & Natural History | Series: The\MIT Press Essential Knowledge Ser.
A concise history of GPS, from its military origins to its commercial applications and ubiquity in everyday life. GPS is ubiquitous in everyday life. GPS mapping is standard equipment in many new cars and geolocation services are embedded in smart phones. GPS makes Uber and Lyft possible; driverless ca ...Show more
Haptics by Lynette Jones
Category: Science | Series: The\MIT Press Essential Knowledge Ser.
An accessible, nontechnical overview of active touch sensing, from sensory receptors in the skin to tactile surfaces on flat screen displays.Haptics, or haptic sensing, refers to the ability to identify and perceive objects through touch. This is active touch, involving exploration of an object with the ...Show more
Hate Speech by Caitlin Ring Carlson
Category: Philosophy and Religion | Series: The\MIT Press Essential Knowledge Ser.
An investigation of hate speech: legal approaches, current controversies, and suggestions for limiting its spread. Book jacket.
His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem; Michael Kandel
Category: Science Fiction | Series: The MIT Press
Scientists attempt to decode what may be a message from intelligent beings in outer space. By pure chance, scientists detect a signal from space that may be communication from rational beings. How can people of Earth understand this message, knowing nothing about the senders--even whether or not they e ...Show more
Hospital of the Transfiguration by Stanislaw Lem; William R. Brand
Category: Science Fiction | Series: The MIT Press
An early realist novel by Stanislaw Lem, taking place in a Polish psychiatric hospital during World War II. Taking place within the confines of a psychiatric hospital, Stanislaw Lem's The Hospital of the Transfiguration tells the story of a young doctor working in a Polish asylum during World War II. A ...Show more
Innovation + Equality - How to Create a Future That Is More Star Trek Than Terminator by Joshua Gans; Andrew Leigh; Lawrence H. Summers
Category: Business | Series: The MIT Press
How to get more innovation and more equality. Is economic inequality the price we pay for innovation? The amazing technological advances of the last two decades--in such areas as artificial intelligence, genetics, and materials--have benefited society collectively and rewarded innovators handsomely: we ...Show more
Memes: In Digital Culture by Limor Shifman
Category: Health and Wellbeing | Series: MIT Press Essential Knowledge
In December 2012, the exuberant video "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times. Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own variations of the video--"Mitt Romney Style," "NASA Johnson Style," "Egyptian Style," and many others. "Gangn ...Show more
Memoirs of a Space Traveler by Stanislaw Lem; Joel Stern; Maria Swiecicka-Ziemianek; Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Category: Science Fiction | Series: The MIT Press
The travels of Ijon Tichy, a Gulliver of the space age, who encounters faulty time machines, intelligent washing machines, suicidal potatoes, and other puzzling phenomena. Memoirs of a Space Traveler follows the adventures of Ijon Tichy, a Gulliver of the space age, who leads readers through strange ex ...Show more
Metadata by Jeffrey Pomerantz
Category: Health and Wellbeing | Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
When "metadata" became breaking news, appearing in stories about surveillance by the National Security Agency, many members of the public encountered this once-obscure term from information science for the first time. Should people be reassured that the NSA was "only" collecting metadata about phone cal ...Show more