Introduction: An invention without a future -- Part 1. Issues -- Authorship, auteurism, and cultural politics -- The reign of adaptation -- Notes on acting in cinema -- Imitation, eccentricity, and impersonation in movie acting -- The death and rebirth of rhetoric -- Part 2. Authors, actors, adaptations -- Hawks, Chandler, Bogart, Bacall: The big sleep -- Uptown folk: blackness and entertainment in Cabin in the sky -- Hitchcock and humor -- Hitchcock at the margins of noir -- Spies and lovers: North by Northwest -- Welles, Hollywood, and Heart of darkness -- Orson Welles and movie acting -- Welles and Kubrick: two forms of exile -- The treasure of the Sierra Madre -- The return of the dead -- Part 3. In defense of criticism -- James Agee -- Manny Farber -- Andrew Sarris -- Jonathan Rosenbaum -- Years as a critic: 2007-2010.

“Deftly shows how a seemingly frivolous film genre can guide us in shaping tomorrow’s world.” —Seth Shostak, senior astronomer, SETI Institute Artificial intelligence, gene manipulation, cloning, and interplanetary travel are all ideas that seemed like fairy tales but a few years ago. And now their possibilities are very much here. But are we ready to handle these advances? This book, by a physicist and expert on responsible technology development, reveals how science fiction movies can help us think about and prepare for the social consequences of technologies we don’t yet have, but that are coming faster than we imagine. Films from the Future looks at twelve movies that take us on a journey through the worlds of biological and genetic manipulation, human enhancement, cyber technologies, and nanotechnology. Readers will gain a broader understanding of the complex relationship between science and society. The movies mix old and new, and the familiar and unfamiliar, to provide a unique, entertaining, and ultimately transformative take on the power of emerging technologies, and the responsibilities they come with.

Hunt's novel is a wondrous imagining of an unlikely friendship between theeccentric inventor Nikola Tesla and a young chambermaid in the Hotel New Yorker, where Tesla lived out his last days.

Elon Musk named Our Final Invention one of 5 books everyone should read about the future A Huffington Post Definitive Tech Book of 2013 Artificial Intelligence helps choose what books you buy, what movies you see, and even who you date. It puts the "smart" in your smartphone and soon it will drive your car. It makes most of the trades on Wall Street, and controls vital energy, water, and transportation infrastructure. But Artificial Intelligence can also threaten our existence. In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI's Holy Grail—human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine. Through profiles of tech visionaries, industry watchdogs, and groundbreaking AI systems, Our Final Invention explores the perils of the heedless pursuit of advanced AI. Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?

We live in a world increasingly governed by technology—but to what end? Technology rules us as much as laws do. It shapes the legal, social, and ethical environments in which we act. Every time we cross a street, drive a car, or go to the doctor, we submit to the silent power of technology. Yet, much of the time, the influence of technology on our lives goes unchallenged by citizens and our elected representatives. In The Ethics of Invention, renowned scholar Sheila Jasanoff dissects the ways in which we delegate power to technological systems and asks how we might regain control. Our embrace of novel technological pathways, Jasanoff shows, leads to a complex interplay among technology, ethics, and human rights. Inventions like pesticides or GMOs can reduce hunger but can also cause unexpected harm to people and the environment. Often, as in the case of CFCs creating a hole in the ozone layer, it takes decades before we even realize that any damage has been done. Advances in biotechnology, from GMOs to gene editing, have given us tools to tinker with life itself, leading some to worry that human dignity and even human nature are under threat. But despite many reasons for caution, we continue to march heedlessly into ethically troubled waters. As Jasanoff ranges across these and other themes, she challenges the common assumption that technology is an apolitical and amoral force. Technology, she masterfully demonstrates, can warp the meaning of democracy and citizenship unless we carefully consider how to direct its power rather than let ourselves be shaped by it. The Ethics of Invention makes a bold argument for a future in which societies work together—in open, democratic dialogue—to debate not only the perils but even more the promises of technology.

This major new manifesto offers a “clear and compelling vision of a postcapitalist society” and shows how left-wing politics can be rebuilt for the 21st century (Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism) Neoliberalism isn’t working. Austerity is forcing millions into poverty and many more into precarious work, while the left remains trapped in stagnant political practices that offer no respite. Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms. This new edition includes a new chapter where they respond to their various critics.

The first collection of critical writing on the work of experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton. Hollis Frampton (1936–1984) was one of the most important experimental filmmakers and theorists of his time, and in his navigation of artistic media and discourses, he anticipated the multimedia boundary blurring of today’s visual culture. Indeed, his photography continues to be exhibited, and a digital edition of his films was issued by the Criterion Collection. This book offers the first collection of critical writings on Frampton’s work. It complements On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matter, published in the MIT Press’s Writing Art series, which collected Frampton’s own writings. October was as central to Frampton as he was to it. He was both a frequent contributor—appearing in the first issue in 1976—and a frequent subject of contributions by others. Some of these important and incisive writings on Frampton’s work are reprinted here. The essays collected in this volume consider Frampton’s photographic practice, which continued even after he turned to film; survey his film work from the 1960s to the late 1970s; and explore Frampton’s grounding in poetics and language. Two essays by the late Annette Michelson, one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers on experimental film, place Frampton in relation to film and art history. Contributors George Derk, Ken Eisenstein, Hollis Frampton, Peter Gidal, Barry Goldensohn, Brian Henderson, Bruce Jenkins, Annette Michelson, Christopher Phillips, Melissa Ragona, Allen S. Weiss, Federico Windhausen, Lisa Zaher, Michael Zryd