A major figure throws down the gauntlet before his colleagues. Pawley, a European architectural critic and correspondent, points out the facts of postmodern built environments--pollution, resource depletion, urban paralysis, a global information network--and accuses architects of leaving the field to commercial interests. A sequel to Reyner Banheim's Theory and design in the first machine age (1960). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The big stories -- The skills of the new machines : technology races ahead -- Moore's law and the second half of the chessboard -- The digitization of just about everything -- Innovation : declining or recombining? -- Artificial and human intelligence in the second machine age -- Computing bounty -- Beyond GDP -- The spread -- The biggest winners : stars and superstars -- Implications of the bounty and the spread -- Learning to race with machines : recommendations for individuals -- Policy recommendations -- Long-term recommendations -- Technology and the future (which is very different from "technology is the future").

First published in 1960, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age has become required reading in numerous courses on the history of modern architecture and is widely regarded as one of the definitive books on the modern movement. It has influenced a generation of students and critics interested in the formation of attitudes, themes, and forms which were characteristic of artists and architects working primarily in Europe between 1900 and 1930 under the compulsion of new technological developments in the first machine age.

Published in 1923, Toward an Architecture had an immediate impact on architects throughout Europe and remains a foundational text for students and professionals. Le Corbusier urges readers to cease thinking of architecture as a matter of historical styles and instead open their eyes to the modern world. Simultaneously a historian, critic, and prophet, he provocatively juxtaposes views of classical Greece and Renaissance Rome with images of airplanes, cars, and ocean liners. Le Corbusier's slogans--such as "the house is a machine for living in"--and philosophy changed how his contemporaries saw the relationship between architecture, technology, and history. This edition includes a new translation of the original text, a scholarly introduction, and background notes that illuminate the text and illustrations.

“A clear and crisply written account of machine intelligence, big data and the sharing economy. But McAfee and Brynjolfsson also wisely acknowledge the limitations of their futurology and avoid over-simplification.” —Financial Times In The Second Machine Age, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson predicted some of the far-reaching effects of digital technologies on our lives and businesses. Now they’ve written a guide to help readers make the most of our collective future. Machine | Platform | Crowd outlines the opportunities and challenges inherent in the science fiction technologies that have come to life in recent years, like self-driving cars and 3D printers, online platforms for renting outfits and scheduling workouts, or crowd-sourced medical research and financial instruments.