Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation

Artificial Intelligence fuels both enthusiasm and panic. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they’re animated beings, and consider them efficient. As users, we may complain when these technologies don’t obey, or worry about their influence on our choices and our livelihoods. And yet, we also yearn for their convenience, see ourselves reflected in them, and treat them as something entirely new. But when we overestimate the automation of these tools, award-winning author Antonio A. Casilli argues, we fail to recognize how our fellow humans are essential to their efficiency. The danger is not that robots will take our jobs, but that humans will have to do theirs.

In this bracing and powerful book, Casilli uses up-to-the-minute research to show how today’s technologies, including AI, continue to exploit human labor—even ours. He connects the diverse activities of today’s tech laborers: platform workers, like Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts; “micro workers,” including those performing atomized tasks like data entry on Amazon Mechanical Turk; and the rest of us, as we evaluate text or images to show we’re not robots, react to Facebook posts, or approve or improve the output of generative AI. As Casilli shows us, algorithms, search engines, and voice assistants wouldn’t function without unpaid or underpaid human contributions. Further, he warns that if we fail to recognize this human work, we risk a dark future for all human labor.

Waiting for Robots urges us to move beyond the simplistic notion that machines are intelligent and autonomous. As the proverbial Godot, robots are the bearers of a messianic promise that is always postponed. Instead of bringing prosperity for all, they discipline the workforce, so we don’t dream of a world without drudgery and exploitation. Casilli’s eye-opening book makes clear that most “automation” requires human labor—and likely always will—shedding new light on today’s consequences and tomorrow’s threats of failing to recognize and compensate the “click workers” of today.

*Taken from Amazon

Devaluing Public Apologies in the Age of Social Media: How Polarization and Cancel Culture Complicate the Mea Culpa

In Devaluing Public Apologies in the Age of Social Media, Joshua M. Bentley argues that apologies are losing their meaning in American society as organizations and public figures treat them as strategical tools without considering their ethical implications. As the demand for apologies in the age of social media continues to increase exponentially, Bentley posits, the apologies that are given carry less and less weight to the public. This book examines how controversial figures like Donald Trump and Joe Rogan, as well as brands like Google and Bud Light, have addressed public controversies both effectively and ineffectively, illustrating how social media, polarization, and cancel culture are changing the way apologies are given and received. If apologies are to serve their historical role of resolving conflict peacefully, Bentley argues, they must be placed back into their proper ethical context. This book offers insight on how individuals and organizations can ensure their apologies reflect their authentic values. Scholars of communication, ethics, media studies, political science, and public relations will find it especially useful.

*Taken from Amazon

Raising a Nation: 10 Reasons Every American Has a Stake in Child Care For All

Raising a Nation offers a new framework for thinking about a comprehensive, inclusive child care system: one that supports families in all their diversity, whether they want to utilize a licensed child care program, family member, or have a parent as the primary child care provider.

Thanks to a history of neglect, child care in America is expensive, scarce, and of questionable quality. Yet too often the response is not a push for governmental action but a derisive, "Why should I pay for your child?" At best, leaders make the case for child care on bloodless economic grounds: We need a place to put the kids so parents can work. Elliot Haspel argues that a key step has been missed. A step so fundamental that it has ruined the chances of winning an effective child care system, despite decades of pain that cross geographic and ideological borders. Establishing that good child care belongs among the pantheon of American values.

Haspel makes ten distinct but interlinking cases for why every American--whatever their political affiliation, and whether or not they have young children or any children at all--has a stake in ensuring a strong child care system to facilitate strong families and a strong nation. This groundbreaking book opens up conversations that can finally push child care from being seen as a private responsibility to being viewed as an essential part of the American social fabric.

*Taken from Amazon

The Student Debt Crisis: America’s Moral Urgency

Based on extensive interviews with students, college administrators, policymakers, and other leaders, The Student Debt Crisis illuminates one of the nation's most urgent and pressing civil rights questions of the last three decades: Who gets to go to college? This book comprehensively examines the history and current state of the student debt crisis in the US. With a focus on the moral imperative of ensuring equal access to higher education, The Student Debt Crisis highlights the disproportionate impact of student debt on Black and brown students, particularly Black women. By delving into the history and practical realities of student debt, higher-education journalist Jamal Watson sheds light on the challenges faced by debt-laden college graduates and non-graduates alike.

From the rising number of borrowers defaulting on their loans to the barriers that hinder accessibility for those from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, Watson offers a deeper understanding of the student debt crisis on macro and micro levels. As the spotlight on student debt continues to grow, The Student Debt Crisis is a vital resource for anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of this issue. From policymakers shaping paths of action to families and students navigating educational choices, this book offers essential insights and potential solutions to these pressing challenges.

*Taken from Amazon

We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big

After decades of union decline and rising inequality, an inspiring wave of workplace organizing—from Starbucks stores to Amazon warehouses to southern auto factories—has thrust unionization into the national spotlight. By analyzing this surge and telling the stories of the courageous workers driving it forward, We Are the Union makes a case for how to overcome business as usual in both corporate America and organized labor.
 
Eric Blanc shows that recent struggles have developed a new organizing model, worker-to-worker unionism, which builds scalable power by giving rank-and-filers an unprecedented degree of leadership. Through digital tools and ambitious campaigns, young worker leaders are turning the labor movement back into a movement—and they're winning. Rigorously researched and compellingly written, We Are the Union illustrates how this new grassroots approach can exponentially grow the power of working people to overcome economic exploitation, racial injustice, and authoritarianism at work and beyond.

*Taken from Amazon

Breakneck : China's quest to engineer the future

For close to a decade, technology analyst Dan Wang―“a gifted observer of contemporary China” (Ross Douthat)―has been living through the country’s astonishing, messy progress. China’s towering bridges, gleaming railways, and sprawling factories have improved economic outcomes in record time. But rapid change has also sent ripples of pain throughout the society. This reality―political repression and astonishing growth―is not a paradox, but rather a feature of China’s engineering mindset.

In Breakneck, Wang blends political, economic, and philosophical analysis with reportage to reveal a provocative new framework for understanding China―one that helps us see America more clearly, too. While China is an engineering state, relentlessly pursuing megaprojects, the United States has stalled. America has transformed into a lawyerly society, reflexively blocking everything, good and bad

Blending razor-sharp analysis with immersive storytelling, Wang offers a gripping portrait of a nation in flux. Breakneck traverses metropolises like Shanghai, Chongqing, and Shenzhen, where the engineering state has created not only dazzling infrastructure but also a sense of optimism. The book also exposes the downsides of social engineering, including the surveillance of ethnic minorities, political suppression, and the traumas of the one-child policy and zero-Covid.

In an era of animosity and mistrust, Wang unmasks the shocking similarities between the United States and China. Breakneck reveals how each country points toward a better path for the other: Chinese citizens would be better off if their government could learn to value individual liberties, while Americans would be better off if their government could learn to embrace engineering―and to produce better outcomes for the many, not just the few.

*Taken from Amazon

The Book: The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilizations

The world history ancient civilizations book contains 400 pages with discoveries in main areas: medicine, basic materials, mechanisms, military arts, hearth and home, farming, entertainment, musical instruments, and society. We combined a clear structure, high-quality texts, and detailed images to completely immerse you in the story.

*Taken from Amazon

Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.
 
Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.

*Taken from Amazon