Books like Thinking machines by Luke Dormehl

An analysis of IQ, genetics, environment, social class, and education in the United States, examining how intelligence test scores reflect both biological and social factors.

David Auerbach blends memoir and analysis to explore how algorithms shape our identities and the world, tracing his journey from childhood programming on the Apple IIe to contributions at Microsoft and Google.

How the extensive data we generate daily can be turned from a tool of unseen surveillance into a resource that benefits individuals, offering strategies to reclaim control over privacy and decision‑making in the digital economy.

Computers have changed our lives; with virtual reality, they will change our very experience, recreating it in an image of our choosing. That, at least, is what the champions of virtual reality claim. It will not simply reshape our view of technology, they say, but our view of ourselves and the world we live in. It is about the increasing power of information technology to create simulated environments, new universes that are neither actual nor fictional, but somewhere in between: virtual. In Virtual Worlds, Benjamin Woolley examines the reality of virtual reality. He looks at the dramatic intellectual and cultural upheavals that gave birth to it, at the hype that surrounds it, at the people who have promoted it, and at the dramatic implications of its development. Virtual reality is not simply a technology, it is a way of thinking created and promoted by a group of technologists and thinkers that sees itself as creating our future. Virtual Worlds reveals the politics and culture of these virtual realists, and examines whether they are creating reality, or losing their grasp of it.

"The AI delusion demonstrates why we should not be intimidated into thinking that computers are infallible, that data-mining is knowledge discovery, or that black boxes should be trusted"--Back dust jacket.

A history of artificial intelligence that has remained in print for nearly two decades and is now back with an updated Afterword.

In Slave in a Box, M. M. Manring investigates why the troubling figure of Aunt Jemima has endured in American culture. The author traces the evolution of the mammy from her roots in Old South slave reality and mythology, through reinterpretations during Reconstruction and in minstrel shows and turn-of-the-century advertisements, to Aunt Jemima's symbolic role in the Civil Rights movement and her present incarnation as a "working grandmother." The reader learns how advertising entrepreneur James Webb Young, aided by celebrated illustrator N. C. Wyeth, skillfully tapped into nostalgic 1920s perceptions of the South as a culture of white leisure and black labor. Aunt Jemima's ready-mixed products offered middle-class housewives the next best thing to a black servant: a "slave in a box" that conjured up romantic images of not only the food but also the social hierarchy of the plantation South.

Sometime in the future the intelligence of machines will exceed that of human brain power. So are we on the edge of an AI-pocalypse, with superintelligent devices superseding humanity, as predicted by Stephen Hawking? Or will this herald a kind of Utopia, with machines doing a far better job at complex tasks than us? You might not realise it, but you interact with AIs every day. They route your phone calls, approve your credit card transactions and help your doctor interpret results. Driverless cars will soon be on the roads with a decision-making computer in charge. But how do machines actually think and learn? In Machines That Think , AI experts and New Scientist explore how artificial intelligence helps us understand human intelligence, machines that compose music and write stories - and ask if AI is really a threat.

Terry Golway reexamines Tammany Hall, showing how its controversial machine provided essential social services, labor reforms, and progressive legislation to New York’s Irish immigrant community in the late nineteenth century.