John Markoff Livres

Told by one of our greatest chroniclers of technology and society, the definitive biography of iconic serial visionary Stewart Brand, from the Merry Pranksters and the generation-defining Whole Earth Catalog to the marriage of environmental consciousness and hacker capitalism and the rise of a new planetary culture--the story behind so many other stories Stewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental movement, he is perhaps best known for his famous mantra Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Steve Jobs's endorsement of these words as his code to live by is fitting; Brand has played many roles, but one of the most important is as a model for how to live. The contradictions are striking: A blond-haired WASP with a modest family inheritance, Brand went to Exeter and Stanford and was an army veteran, but in California in the 1960s he became an artist and a photographer in the thick of the LSD revolution. While tripping on acid on the roof of his building, he envisioned how valuable it would be for humans to see a photograph of the planet they shared from space, an image that in the end landed on the cover of his Whole Earth Catalog, the defining publication of the counterculture. He married a Native American woman and was committed to protecting indigenous culture, which connected to a broader environmentalist mission that has been a through line of his life. At the same time, he has outraged purists because of his pragmatic embrace of useful technologies, including nuclear power, in the fight against climate change. The famous tagline promise of his catalog was Access to Tools; with rare exceptions he rejected politics for a focus on direct power. It was no wonder, then, that he was early to the promise of the computer revolution and helped define it for the wider world. Brand's life can be hard to fit onto one screen. John Markoff, also a great chronicler of tech culture, has done something extraordinary in unfolding the rich, twisting story of Brand's life against its proper landscape. As Markoff makes marvelously clear, the streams of individualism, respect for science, environmentalism, and Eastern and indigenous thought that flow through Brand's entire life form a powerful gestalt, a California state of mind that has a hegemonic power to this day. His way of thinking embraces a true planetary consciousness that may be the best hope we humans collectively have.

Using the exploits of three international hackers, Cyberpunk provides a fascinating tour of a bizarre subculture populated by outlaws who penetrate even the most sensitive computer networks and wreak havoc on the information they find -- everything from bank accounts to military secrets. In a book filled with as much adventure as any Ludlum novel, the authors show what motivates these young hackers to access systems, how they learn to break in, and how little can be done to stop them.

An analysis of the political and cultural forces that gave rise to the personal computer chronicles its development through the people, politics, and social upheavals that defined its time, from a teenage anti-war protester who laid the groundwork for the PC revolution to the imprisoned creator of the first word processing software for the IBM PC. Reprint.

Focusing on the evolution of democracy over two centuries, this book explores how social movements and elite power holders across various countries have reshaped political systems. It highlights the dynamic interplay between governing elites and social movements, showcasing how they influence each other. With its extensive historical and cross-cultural analysis, it stands out as a unique resource for undergraduates seeking to understand the multifaceted nature of democratization globally.

In the past decade alone, Google introduced us to driverless cars, Apple debuted a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets, and an Internet of Things connected the smaller tasks of everyday life to the farthest reaches of the internet. There is little doubt that robots are now an integral part of society, and cheap sensors and powerful computers will ensure that, in the coming years, these robots will soon act on their own. This new era offers the promise of immense computing power, but it also reframes a question first raised more than half a century ago, at the birth of the intelligent machine: Will we control these systems, or will they control us? In Machines of Loving Grace, New York Times reporter John Markoff, the first reporter to cover the World Wide Web, offers a sweeping history of the complicated and evolving relationship between humans and computers. Over the recent years, the pace of technological change has accelerated dramatically, reintroducing this difficult ethical quandary with newer and far weightier consequences. As Markoff chronicles the history of automation, from the birth of the artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation communities in the 1950s, to the modern day brain trusts at Google and Apple in Silicon Valley, and on to the expanding tech corridor between Boston and New York, he traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental problem and urges them to carefully consider the consequences of their work. We are on the verge of a technological revolution, Markoff argues, and robots will profoundly transform the way our lives are organized. Developers must now draw a bright line between what is human and what is machine, or risk upsetting the delicate balance between them

A world-renowned computer security expert gives his personal account of the thrilling and ingenius capture of the Internet's most notorious cyberthief--Kevin Mitnick--in a gripping drama which illuminates the good, the bad, and the ugly of the computer world. Photos.

This Element suggests that the very crises that generated radical mobilizations since the turn of the millennium have both led activists to reject other strategies for social transformation and to see anarchist practices as appropriate to our time. It suggests the need for research on social movements as important sources of theory.

Vo februári 1995 zatkla FBI najhľadanejšieho počítačového zločinca na svete Kevina Mitnicka, po ktorom pátrala už niekoľko rokov. Mitnick by bol možno dodnes na slobode, keby neurobil osudnú chybu. Na Vianoce 1994 prenikol sieťou Internetu do osobného počítača jedného z najlepších odborníkov na bezpečnostné systémy v Amerike - Tsumomu Shimomuru. Od toho okamihu sa začal odohrávať strhujúci zápas dvoch geniálnych mozgov, v ktorom zvíťazil ten lepší. Nešlo však len o osobný súboj, išlo najma o záchranu obrovského množstva dát, ktorých majiteľmi boli veľké počítačové spoločnosti a vládne úrady. Kevin Mitnick mohol v každom okamihu ukradnúť a zničiť informácie v hodnote stoviek miliónov dolárov. Zatknutie Mitnicka bolo udalosťou, ktorá sa objavila na prvých stránkach svetovej tlače a ktorá podnietila mohutnú diskusiu o fenoméne Internet a o práve na súkromie. Táto kniha je predovšetkým napínavým detektívnym príbehom. Je však súčastne príbehom z virtuálneho sveta Internetu, v ktorom už dnes žijú milióny ľudí a v ktorom prebieha zápas dobra proti zlu presne tak, ako v každom inom ľudskom svete.