From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory. Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live. A New York Times Notable Book A Los Angeles Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer Best Book of the Year Winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

This volume comprises a curated conversation between members of the Material Culture Section of University College London Anthropology. In laying out the state of play in the field, it challenges how the anthropology of material culture is being done and argues for new directions of enquiry and new methods of investigation. The contributors consider the ramifications of specific research methods and explore new methodological frameworks to address areas of human experience that require a new analytical approach. The case studies draw from a range of contexts, including digital objects, infrastructure, data, extraterrestriality, ethnographic curation, and medical materiality. They include timely reappraisals of now-classical analytical models that have shaped the way we understand the object, the discipline, knowledge formation, and the artefact.

Discover everything you ever wanted to know about secret societies like the Freemasons, the historical mystery of Atlantis, why King Arthur, Leonardo da Vinci and Hitler are key figures, plus conspiracy theories, forgotten sciences and ancient wisdom.

The Quantum Realm: Philly the Photon, is an inspirational novella that addresses some of the key elements of Science and Quantum Physics and how it relates to the human experience. Understanding these elements in the context of human psychological growth and development can have a tremendous positive impact. This simple story of a young man confronting his trauma brought on by Nature--a freak electrical storm, by endeavoring on a quest of knowledge through the Quantum Realm, provide fundamental truths about how our personal life can be enhanced by the understanding of scientific analysis and the primary patterns of the Universe that govern our physical and spiritual existence. This journey will inspire, educate, and challenge your perceptions on relative reality. Children and young adults will find sanity and direction in these words, while adults of all ages will find nuggets of wisdom for personal application. Embark on a journey with Sebastian and visually experience the more elusive universal patterns that determine who we are as humans and how we are integrally and three-dimensionally connected to everything and everyone around us through the continuum of quantum events.