In a single volume, this book combines the history of invention and the interactions of technology with social, economic, cultural, and military change throughout the course of American history. It illustrates the gradual shift from the era of individual artisan inventors to emergence of science-based corporate technology, and links the origins and development of American innovation to the global transformation of industry, agriculture, and transportation. For professionals in any industry influenced by technology.
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The author, Gene Kranz ...."was present as the creation of America's manned space program and was key layer in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participacted in the space program for the early days of the Mercury propgram to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. ... Here He reveals behind-the- scenes details to demonstrate the leaership, discipline, and trust and teamwork that made the space program a sucess."
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Over the past twenty years, paleontologists have made tremendous fossil discoveries, including fossils that mark the growth of whales, manatees, and seals from land mammals and the origins of elephants, horses, and rhinos. Today there exists an amazing diversity of fossil humans, suggesting we walked upright long before we acquired large brains, and new evidence from molecules that enable scientists to decipher the tree of life as never before.The fossil record is now one of the strongest lines of evidence for evolution. In this engaging and richly illustrated book, Donald R. Prothero weaves an entertaining though intellectually rigorous history out of the transitional forms and series that dot the fossil record. Beginning with a brief discussion of the nature of science and the "monkey business of creationism," Prothero tackles subjects ranging from flood geology and rock dating to neo-Darwinism and macroevolution. He covers the ingredients of the primordial soup, the effects of communal living, invertebrate transitions, the development of the backbone, the reign of the dinosaurs, the mammalian explosion, and the leap from chimpanzee to human. Prothero pays particular attention to the recent discovery of "missing links" that complete the fossil timeline and details the debate between biologists over the mechanisms driving the evolutionary process. Evolution is an absorbing combination of firsthand observation, scientific discovery, and trenchant analysis. With the teaching of evolution still an issue, there couldn't be a better moment for a book clarifying the nature and value of fossil evidence. Widely recognized as a leading expert in his field, Prothero demonstrates that the transformation of life on this planet is far more awe inspiring than the narrow view of extremists. (7/1/08)
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Java Message Service, Second Edition, is a thorough introduction to the standard API that supports "messaging" -- the software-to-software exchange of crucial data among network computers. You'll learn how JMS can help you solve many architectural challenges, such as integrating dissimilar systems and applications, increasing scalability, eliminating system bottlenecks, supporting concurrent processing, and promoting flexibility and agility. Updated for JMS 1.1, this second edition also explains how this vendor-agnostic specification will help you write messaging-based applications using IBM's MQ, Progress Software's SonicMQ, ActiveMQ, and many other proprietary messaging services. With Java Message Service, you will:Build applications using point-to-point and publish-and-subscribe messaging models Use features such as transactions and durable subscriptions to make an application reliable Implement messaging within Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) using message-driven beans Use JMS with RESTful applications and with the Spring application framework Messaging is a powerful paradigm that makes it easier to uncouple different parts of an enterprise application. Java Message Service, Second Edition, will quickly teach you how to use the key technology that lies behind it.
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This unique autobiography of John Muir is told in his own words, brimming with his spirit and his adventures. The text was selected and retold by naturalist Joseph Cornell, author of Sharing Nature with Children, who is well known for his inspiring nature games. The result is a book with an aliveness, a presence of goodness, adventure, enthusiasm, and sensitive love of each animal and plant that will give young adults an experience of a true hero. It is a book that expands your sense of hope, adventure, and awareness. Adults will be just as fond of this book as young readers. Cornell includes numerous explore more activities that help the reader to understand and appreciate Muir's many wonderful qualities. (Softcover)
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The first edition of The Animation Book, published in 1979, became the authoritative guide to making animated movies. Now, as we enter the twenty-first century, the explosion in computer technology has created a corresponding boom in animation. Using desktop hardware and software, animators can easily produce high-quality, high-artistry animation and mix the aesthetics of traditional cel animation with dazzling 3-D effects. Kit Laybourne's digital revision to The Animation Book brings you to the cutting edge of animation technology. Richly illustrated with frame-grabs, production stills, and diagrams, this volume shares Kit's infectious enthusiasm for the limitless possibilities of today's hybrid techniques, and it provides beginning animators with all the information they need to jump in and start their own animation projects. More advanced animators will find The Animation Book to be an invaluable resource with detailed descriptions of filmmaking gear, computer hardware and software, art supplies, plus Internet and other resources.Using an innovative case-study approach, Kit deconstructs how a range of digital projects were carried out at some of today's hottest animation studios, including Wildbrain, Blue Sky, Protozoa, Fantome, Broderbund, Nicktoons, and Klasky Csupo. These step-by-step studies show how desktop animators can follow the same creative process in their own films.
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Are we driving off a digital cliff and heading for disaster, unable to focus, maintain concentration, or form the human bonds that make life worth living? Are media and business doomed and about to be replaced by amateur hour?The world, as Nick Bilton—with tongue-in-cheek—shows, has been going to hell for a long, long time, and what we are experiencing is the twenty-first-century version of the fear that always takes hold as new technology replaces the old. In fact, as Bilton shows, the digital era we are part of is, in all its creative and disruptive forms, the foundation for exciting and engaging experiences not only for business but society as well.Both visionary and practical, I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works captures the zeitgeist of an emerging age, providing the understanding of how a radically changed media world is influencing human behavior: • With a walk on the wild side—through the porn industry—we see how this business model is leading the way, adapting product to consumer needs and preferences and beating piracy. • By understanding how the Internet is creating a new type of consumer, the “consumnivore,” living in a world where immediacy trumps quality and quantity, we see who is dictating the type of content being created. • Through exploring the way our brains are adapting, we gain a new understanding of the positive effect of new media narratives on thinking and action. One fascinating study, for example, shows that surgeons who play video games are more skillful than their nonplaying counterparts. • Why social networks, the openness of the Internet, and handy new gadgets are not just vehicles for telling the world what you had for breakfast but are becoming the foundation for “anchoring communities” that tame information overload and help determine what news and information to trust and consume and what to ignore. • Why the map of tomorrow is centered on “Me,” and why that simple fact means a totally new approach to the way media companies shape content. • Why people pay for experiences, not content; and why great storytelling and extended relationships will prevail and enable businesses to engage with customers in new ways that go beyond merely selling information, instead creating unique and meaningful experiences. I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works walks its own talk by creating a unique reader experience: Semacodes embedded in both print and eBook versions will take readers directly to Bilton’s website (www.NickBilton.com), where they can access videos of the author further developing his point of view and also delve into the research that was key to shaping the central ideas of the book. The website will also offer links to related content and the ability to comment on a chapter, allowing the reader to join the conversation.From the Hardcover edition.
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Price : $37.75
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Technology influences society, and society influences technology--but how? The newly updated 11th edition of TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE helps you answer that question and others with a diverse collection of articles and essays that examine the controversial technological issues affecting society. Written by technology critics and enthusiasts, the essays take you beyond definitions and descriptions and into the minds of some of the field's most respected thought leaders. Thoroughly covering the philosophical approaches and specific technologies, TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE provides a unique and unparalleled overview of technology today.
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A visible presence for some two decades, electronic literature has already produced many works that deserve the rigorous scrutiny critics have long practiced with print literature. Only now, however, with Electronic Literature by N. Katherine Hayles, do we have the first systematic survey of the field and an analysis of its importance, breadth, and wide-ranging implications for literary study.Hayles’s book is designed to help electronic literature move into the classroom. Her systematic survey of the field addresses its major genres, the challenges it poses to traditional literary theory, and the complex and compelling issues at stake. She develops a theoretical framework for understanding how electronic literature both draws on the print tradition and requires new reading and interpretive strategies. Grounding her approach in the evolutionary dynamic between humans and technology, Hayles argues that neither the body nor the machine should be given absolute theoretical priority. Rather, she focuses on the interconnections between embodied writers and users and the intelligent machines that perform electronic texts. Through close readings of important works, Hayles demonstrates that a new mode of narration is emerging that differs significantly from previous models. Key to her argument is the observation that almost all contemporary literature has its genesis as electronic files, so that print becomes a specific mode for electronic text rather than an entirely different medium. Hayles illustrates the implications of this condition with three contemporary novels that bear the mark of the digital. Included with the book is a CD, The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1, containing sixty new and recent works of electronic literature with keyword index, authors’ notes, and editorial headnotes. Representing multiple modalities of electronic writing—hypertext fiction, kinetic poetry, generative and combinatory forms, network writing, codework, 3D, narrative animations, installation pieces, and Flash poetry—the ELC 1 encompasses comparatively low-tech work alongside heavily coded pieces. Complementing the text and the CD-ROM is a website offering resources for teachers and students, including sample syllabi, original essays, author biographies, and useful links. Together, the three elements provide an exceptional pedagogical opportunity. “In Electronic Literature, N. Katherine Hayles has delivered a wonderfully structured synthetic overview of writers, texts, critics, and publication venues for the field of electronic literature. In it, she has managed to articulate a non-canonical canon, a body of work and set of ideas that are flexible rather than fixed, inclusive rather than exclusive.” —Rita Raley, University of California, Santa Barbara “Kate Hayles has been there since the beginning. She helped formulate the field of digital literature. All readers will be charmed by her new book; high school and college literature and art teachers, in particular, will find this book (and the CD) immediately helpful to introducing students to creative writing in a new media mode.” —Thom Swiss, University of Minnesota "Kate Hayles stays with a text, whether electronic or otherwise, like almost no other reader or player, inhabiting each work with care and caring, transforming its material specificity to embodied sense and sensuality rather than a hollow category. In the course of defining a field she has set it abloom and in the process refreshed our imagination." —Michael Joyce, Vassar College “No critic, save N. Katherine Hayles, has the wide grasp of literary criticism, new media history and technology, cyberculture and its philosophical implications, and the interplay between electronic and print imaginative writing. Now, in the five straightforward, readable chapters of Electronic Literature, she supplies the tools and builds the contexts necessary for everyone to grasp the importance of her topic and integrate it into her or his own knowledge base. Her book and CD package will be snapped up by scholars and students alike.” —Dee Morris, University of Iowa
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