"In Silicon Valley the phrase "disruptive technology" is tossed around on a casual basis. No one doubts that technology has the power to devastate entire industries and upend various sectors of the job market. But Rise of the Robots asks a bigger question: Can accelerating technology disrupt our entire economic system to the point where a fundamental restructuring is required? Companies like Facebook and YouTube may only need a handful of employees...

Provides a speculative look ahead to the technological, environmental, and biological developments of the twenty-first century.

"The world's past and future rests in the hands of five unwitting strangers in this definitive edition of A. G. Riddle's time-traveling, mind-bending speculative thriller. En route to London from New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind.Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the...

"A timely investigation into the forces that are driving innovation in the four core areas of human experience: birth, food, sex, and death. In Sex Robots & Vegan Meat, award-winning journalist and documentary-maker Jenny Kleeman takes us on a journey into the world of the people who are changing what it means to be human. Focusing on the central pillars of the human experience-birth, food, sex, and death--Kleeman examines the people who are driving...

"Karl is an Abyssinian ground hornbill with a special challenge. His lower bill had broken off and made eating difficult. Karl did a great job of adapting and finding new ways to eat, but he wasn't getting all the food he needed. His zookeepers at the National Zoo and friends at the Smithsonian Institute wanted to help. Could an old bird skeleton and a 3-D printer give Karl a new beak? Karl's new adventure was about to begin!"--From the publisher's...

"A new thriller from a writer who's been compared to Michael Crichton, Alfred Hitchcock, Raymond Chandler, Blake Crouch, and David Cronenberg takes us to the most menacing core of California's upper crust, a class of billionaires with more money than theycould spend in eternity"-- "Who is Claire Gravesend? So PI Lee Crowe wonders when he finds her dead, in a fine cocktail dress, on top of a Rolls Royce in the most dangerous neighborhood in San Francisco....

Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing-and fast. In Abundance, space entrepreneur turned innovation pioneer Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, digital manufacturing synthetic biology, and other exponentially growing technologies...

"By one experts prediction, within twenty years half of Americans will have body implants that tell retailers how they feel about specific products as they browse their local stores. The notion may be outlandish, but it reflects executives drive to understand shoppers in the aisles with the same obsessive detail that they track us online. In fact, a hidden surveillance revolution is already taking place inside brick-and-mortar stores, where Americans...

"A lively and endlessly fascinating deep-dive into nature and the many groundbreaking human inventions inspired by the wild. When astronomers wanted a telescope that could capture X-rays from celestial bodies, they looked to the lobster. When doctors wanted a medication that could stabilize Type II diabetic patients, they found their muse in a lizard. When scientists wanted to drastically reduce emissions in cement manufacturing, they observed how...

"A structural engineer examines the seven most basic building blocks of engineering that have shaped the modern world"--