Wetware

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300155441
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Wetware by : Dennis Bray

Download or read book Wetware written by Dennis Bray and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-26 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A beautifully written journey into the mechanics of the world of the cell, and even beyond, exploring the analogy with computers in a surprising way” (Denis Noble, author of Dance to the Tune of Life). How does a single-cell creature, such as an amoeba, lead such a sophisticated life? How does it hunt living prey, respond to lights, sounds, and smells, and display complex sequences of movements without the benefit of a nervous system? This book offers a startling and original answer. In clear, jargon-free language, Dennis Bray taps the findings from the discipline of systems biology to show that the internal chemistry of living cells is a form of computation. Cells are built out of molecular circuits that perform logical operations, as electronic devices do, but with unique properties. Bray argues that the computational juice of cells provides the basis for all distinctive properties of living systems: it allows organisms to embody in their internal structure an image of the world, and this accounts for their adaptability, responsiveness, and intelligence. In Wetware, Bray offers imaginative, wide-ranging, and perceptive critiques of robotics and complexity theory, as well as many entertaining and telling anecdotes. For the general reader, the practicing scientist, and all others with an interest in the nature of life, this book is an exciting portal to some of biology’s latest discoveries and ideas. “Drawing on the similarities between Pac-Man and an amoeba and efforts to model the human brain, this absorbing read shows that biologists and engineers have a lot to learn from working together.” —Discover magazine “Wetware will get the reader thinking.” —Science magazine

Algorithms to Live By

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Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1627790365
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis Algorithms to Live By by : Brian Christian

Download or read book Algorithms to Live By written by Brian Christian and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Algorithms to Live By' looks at the simple, precise algorithms that computers use to solve the complex 'human' problems that we face, and discovers what they can tell us about the nature and origin of the mind.

All My Friends Live in My Computer

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Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 1978818971
Total Pages : 126 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (788 download)

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Book Synopsis All My Friends Live in My Computer by : Samira Rajabi

Download or read book All My Friends Live in My Computer written by Samira Rajabi and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All My Friends Live in my Computer combines personal stories, media studies, and interdisciplinary theories to examine case studies from three unique parts of society. From illness narratives among breast cancer patients to political upheaval among Iranian-Americans, this book examines what people do when they go online after they have suffered a trauma. It offers in-depth academic analysis alongside deeply personal stories and case studies to take the reader on a journey through rapidly changing digital/social worlds. When people are traumatized, their worlds stop making sense, and All My Friends Live in My Computer explores how everyday people use social media to try and make a new world for themselves and others who are suffering. Through its attention to personal stories and application of media theory to new contexts, this book highlights how, when given the tools, people will make meaning in creative, novel, and healing ways.

Artificial Unintelligence

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026253701X
Total Pages : 247 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Artificial Unintelligence by : Meredith Broussard

Download or read book Artificial Unintelligence written by Meredith Broussard and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology and why we should never assume that computers always get it right. In Artificial Unintelligence, Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we can (and should) do with technology. With this book, she offers a guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology—and issues a warning that we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against technochauvinism—the belief that technology is always the solution—Broussard argues that it's just not true that social problems would inevitably retreat before a digitally enabled Utopia. To prove her point, she undertakes a series of adventures in computer programming. She goes for an alarming ride in a driverless car, concluding “the cyborg future is not coming any time soon”; uses artificial intelligence to investigate why students can't pass standardized tests; deploys machine learning to predict which passengers survived the Titanic disaster; and attempts to repair the U.S. campaign finance system by building AI software. If we understand the limits of what we can do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we should do with it to make the world better for everyone.

Living Books

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262046024
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Living Books by : Janneke Adema

Download or read book Living Books written by Janneke Adema and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reimagining the scholarly book as living and collaborative--not as commodified and essentialized, but in all its dynamic materiality. In this book, Janneke Adema proposes that we reimagine the scholarly book as a living and collaborative project--not as linear, bound, and fixed, but as fluid, remixed, and liquid, a space for experimentation. She presents a series of cutting-edge experiments in arts and humanities book publishing, showcasing the radical new forms that book-based scholarly work might take in the digital age. Adema's proposed alternative futures for the scholarly book go beyond such print-based assumptions as fixity, stability, the single author, originality, and copyright, reaching instead for a dynamic and emergent materiality. Adema suggests ways to unbind the book, describing experiments in scholarly book publishing with new forms of anonymous collaborative authorship, radical open access publishing, and processual, living, and remixed publications, among other practices. She doesn't cast digital as the solution and print as the problem; the problem in scholarly publishing, she argues, is not print itself, but the way print has been commodified and essentialized. Adema explores alternative, more ethical models of authorship; constructs an alternative genealogy of openness; and examines opportunities for intervention in current cultures of knowledge production. Finally, asking why it is that we cut and bind our research together at all, she examines two book publishing projects that experiment with remix and reuse and try to rethink and reperform the book-apparatus by taking responsibility for the cuts they make.

Arthur's Computer Disaster

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781951945015
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (45 download)

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Book Synopsis Arthur's Computer Disaster by : Marc Brown

Download or read book Arthur's Computer Disaster written by Marc Brown and published by . This book was released on 2020-02 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arthur disobeys his mother by playing his favorite game on her computer, which leads to a lesson in taking responsibility for one's actions.

At Home with Computers

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000184145
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis At Home with Computers by : Elaine Lally

Download or read book At Home with Computers written by Elaine Lally and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New technologies are profoundly reshaping the world around us. Home computers - unheard of two decades ago - now play an intimate role as personal possessions in many people's lives. For some, computer games may be vital to winding-down after a busy day, while for others the home computer represents only work or is a means through which to socialize in cyberspace. Powerfully symbolic of both future and present trends, computers are increasingly seen as essential home purchases. This book is the first sustained examination of the revealing role computers play in our domestic lives. Do computers cause or help to resolve arguments? What role does gender play in negotiating their use? Who spends the most time with the computer? How does the importance of home computers change as we move from childhood through careers to retirement? Drawing upon topical theories from material culture, technology and consumption studies, Lally traces the social life of these machines and provides unique insights into the many different ways in which they are transformed into highly personal possessions. The result is an absorbing account of everyday life in the information age. This book will be of interest to anthropologists, geographers, sociologists and anyone who wants to get to know how their home computer affects their family life.

Life on the Screen

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439127115
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Life on the Screen by : Sherry Turkle

Download or read book Life on the Screen written by Sherry Turkle and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-04-26 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life on the Screen is a book not about computers, but about people and how computers are causing us to reevaluate our identities in the age of the Internet. We are using life on the screen to engage in new ways of thinking about evolution, relationships, politics, sex, and the self. Life on the Screen traces a set of boundary negotiations, telling the story of the changing impact of the computer on our psychological lives and our evolving ideas about minds, bodies, and machines. What is emerging, Turkle says, is a new sense of identity—as decentered and multiple. She describes trends in computer design, in artificial intelligence, and in people’s experiences of virtual environments that confirm a dramatic shift in our notions of self, other, machine, and world. The computer emerges as an object that brings postmodernism down to earth.

Life in Code

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Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 0374711410
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

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Book Synopsis Life in Code by : Ellen Ullman

Download or read book Life in Code written by Ellen Ullman and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2017-08-08 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The never-more-necessary return of one of our most vital and eloquent voices on technology and culture, the author of the seminal Close to the Machine The last twenty years have brought us the rise of the internet, the development of artificial intelligence, the ubiquity of once unimaginably powerful computers, and the thorough transformation of our economy and society. Through it all, Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside that rising culture of technology, and in Life in Code she tells the continuing story of the changes it wrought with a unique, expert perspective. When Ellen Ullman moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s and went on to become a computer programmer, she was joining a small, idealistic, and almost exclusively male cadre that aspired to genuinely change the world. In 1997 Ullman wrote Close to the Machine, the now classic and still definitive account of life as a coder at the birth of what would be a sweeping technological, cultural, and financial revolution. Twenty years later, the story Ullman recounts is neither one of unbridled triumph nor a nostalgic denial of progress. It is necessarily the story of digital technology’s loss of innocence as it entered the cultural mainstream, and it is a personal reckoning with all that has changed, and so much that hasn’t. Life in Code is an essential text toward our understanding of the last twenty years—and the next twenty.

Fire in the Valley

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Publisher : Pragmatic Bookshelf
ISBN 13 : 1680503529
Total Pages : 602 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (85 download)

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Book Synopsis Fire in the Valley by : Michael Swaine

Download or read book Fire in the Valley written by Michael Swaine and published by Pragmatic Bookshelf. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970s, while their contemporaries were protesting the computer as a tool of dehumanization and oppression, a motley collection of college dropouts, hippies, and electronics fanatics were engaged in something much more subversive. Obsessed with the idea of getting computer power into their own hands, they launched from their garages a hobbyist movement that grew into an industry, and ultimately a social and technological revolution. What they did was invent the personal computer: not just a new device, but a watershed in the relationship between man and machine. This is their story. Fire in the Valley is the definitive history of the personal computer, drawn from interviews with the people who made it happen, written by two veteran computer writers who were there from the start. Working at InfoWorld in the early 1980s, Swaine and Freiberger daily rubbed elbows with people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates when they were creating the personal computer revolution. A rich story of colorful individuals, Fire in the Valley profiles these unlikely revolutionaries and entrepreneurs, such as Ed Roberts of MITS, Lee Felsenstein at Processor Technology, and Jack Tramiel of Commodore, as well as Jobs and Gates in all the innocence of their formative years. This completely revised and expanded third edition brings the story to its completion, chronicling the end of the personal computer revolution and the beginning of the post-PC era. It covers the departure from the stage of major players with the deaths of Steve Jobs and Douglas Engelbart and the retirements of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer; the shift away from the PC to the cloud and portable devices; and what the end of the PC era means for issues such as personal freedom and power, and open source vs. proprietary software.

Code

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Publisher : Microsoft Press
ISBN 13 : 0137909292
Total Pages : 563 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (379 download)

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Book Synopsis Code by : Charles Petzold

Download or read book Code written by Charles Petzold and published by Microsoft Press. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic guide to how computers work, updated with new chapters and interactive graphics "For me, Code was a revelation. It was the first book about programming that spoke to me. It started with a story, and it built up, layer by layer, analogy by analogy, until I understood not just the Code, but the System. Code is a book that is as much about Systems Thinking and abstractions as it is about code and programming. Code teaches us how many unseen layers there are between the computer systems that we as users look at every day and the magical silicon rocks that we infused with lightning and taught to think." - Scott Hanselman, Partner Program Director, Microsoft, and host of Hanselminutes Computers are everywhere, most obviously in our laptops and smartphones, but also our cars, televisions, microwave ovens, alarm clocks, robot vacuum cleaners, and other smart appliances. Have you ever wondered what goes on inside these devices to make our lives easier but occasionally more infuriating? For more than 20 years, readers have delighted in Charles Petzold's illuminating story of the secret inner life of computers, and now he has revised it for this new age of computing. Cleverly illustrated and easy to understand, this is the book that cracks the mystery. You'll discover what flashlights, black cats, seesaws, and the ride of Paul Revere can teach you about computing, and how human ingenuity and our compulsion to communicate have shaped every electronic device we use. This new expanded edition explores more deeply the bit-by-bit and gate-by-gate construction of the heart of every smart device, the central processing unit that combines the simplest of basic operations to perform the most complex of feats. Petzold's companion website, CodeHiddenLanguage.com, uses animated graphics of key circuits in the book to make computers even easier to comprehend. In addition to substantially revised and updated content, new chapters include: Chapter 18: Let's Build a Clock! Chapter 21: The Arithmetic Logic Unit Chapter 22: Registers and Busses Chapter 23: CPU Control Signals Chapter 24: Jumps, Loops, and Calls Chapter 28: The World Brain From the simple ticking of clocks to the worldwide hum of the internet, Code reveals the essence of the digital revolution.

Computer

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Author :
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 081334591X
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (133 download)

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Book Synopsis Computer by : Martin Campbell-Kelly

Download or read book Computer written by Martin Campbell-Kelly and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2013-07-09 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computer: A History of the Information Machine traces the history of the computer and shows how business and government were the first to explore its unlimited, information-processing potential. Old-fashioned entrepreneurship combined with scientific know-how inspired now famous computer engineers to create the technology that became IBM. Wartime needs drove the giant ENIAC, the first fully electronic computer. Later, the PC enabled modes of computing that liberated people from room-sized, mainframe computers. This third edition provides updated analysis on software and computer networking, including new material on the programming profession, social networking, and mobile computing. It expands its focus on the IT industry with fresh discussion on the rise of Google and Facebook as well as how powerful applications are changing the way we work, consume, learn, and socialize. Computer is an insightful look at the pace of technological advancement and the seamless way computers are integrated into the modern world. Through comprehensive history and accessible writing, Computer is perfect for courses on computer history, technology history, and information and society, as well as a range of courses in the fields of computer science, communications, sociology, and management.

Our Towns

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Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 1101871857
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Towns by : James Fallows

Download or read book Our Towns written by James Fallows and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "James and Deborah Fallows have always moved to where history is being made.... They have an excellent sense of where world-shaping events are taking place at any moment" —The New York Times • The basis for the HBO documentary streaming on HBO Max For five years, James and Deborah Fallows have travelled across America in a single-engine prop airplane. Visiting dozens of towns, the America they saw is acutely conscious of its problems—from economic dislocation to the opioid scourge—but it is also crafting solutions, with a practical-minded determination at dramatic odds with the bitter paralysis of national politics. At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. Our Towns is the story of their journey—and an account of a country busy remaking itself.

The Computer and the Brain

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Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300084733
Total Pages : 116 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (847 download)

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Book Synopsis The Computer and the Brain by : John Von Neumann

Download or read book The Computer and the Brain written by John Von Neumann and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book represents the views of one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century on the analogies between computing machines and the living human brain. John von Neumann concludes that the brain operates in part digitally, in part analogically, but uses a peculiar statistical language unlike that employed in the operation of man-made computers. This edition includes a new foreword by two eminent figures in the fields of philosophy, neuroscience, and consciousness.

Living with Robots

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262365472
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Living with Robots by : Ruth Aylett

Download or read book Living with Robots written by Ruth Aylett and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The truth about robots: two experts look beyond the hype, offering a lively and accessible guide to what robots can (and can't) do. There’s a lot of hype about robots; some of it is scary and some of it utopian. In this accessible book, two robotics experts reveal the truth about what robots can and can’t do, how they work, and what we can reasonably expect their future capabilities to be. It will not only make you think differently about the capabilities of robots; it will make you think differently about the capabilities of humans. Ruth Aylett and Patricia Vargas discuss the history of our fascination with robots—from chatbots and prosthetics to autonomous cars and robot swarms. They show us the ways in which robots outperform humans and the ways they fall woefully short of our superior talents. They explain how robots see, feel, hear, think, and learn; describe how robots can cooperate; and consider robots as pets, butlers, and companions. Finally, they look at robots that raise ethical and social issues: killer robots, sexbots, and robots that might be gunning for your job. Living with Robots equips readers to look at robots concretely—as human-made artifacts rather than placeholders for our anxieties. Find out: •Why robots can swim and fly but find it difficult to walk •Which robot features are inspired by animals and insects •Why we develop feelings for robots •Which human abilities are hard for robots to emulate

Artificial Life

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780140231052
Total Pages : 390 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis Artificial Life by : Steven Levy

Download or read book Artificial Life written by Steven Levy and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at artificial life science - A-Life, an important new area of scientific research involving the disciplines of microbiology, evolutionary theory, physics, chemistry and computer science. In the 1940s a mathematician named John von Neumann, a man with a claim to being the father of the modern computer, invented a hypothetical mathematical entity called a cellular automaton. His aim was to construct a machine that could reproduce itself. In the years since, with the development of hugely more sophisticated and complex computers, von Neumann's insights have gradually led to a point where scientists have created, within the wiring of these machines, something that so closely simulates life that it may, arguably, be called life. This machine reproduces itself, mutates, evolves through generations and dies.

Hacking Life

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Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262538997
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Hacking Life by : Joseph M. Reagle, Jr.

Download or read book Hacking Life written by Joseph M. Reagle, Jr. and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an effort to keep up with a world of too much, life hackers sometimes risk going too far. Life hackers track and analyze the food they eat, the hours they sleep, the money they spend, and how they're feeling on any given day. They share tips on the most efficient ways to tie shoelaces and load the dishwasher; they employ a tomato-shaped kitchen timer as a time-management tool.They see everything as a system composed of parts that can be decomposed and recomposed, with algorithmic rules that can be understood, optimized, and subverted. In Hacking Life, Joseph Reagle examines these attempts to systematize living and finds that they are the latest in a long series of self-improvement methods. Life hacking, he writes, is self-help for the digital age's creative class. Reagle chronicles the history of life hacking, from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack through Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Timothy Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek. He describes personal outsourcing, polyphasic sleep, the quantified self movement, and hacks for pickup artists. Life hacks can be useful, useless, and sometimes harmful (for example, if you treat others as cogs in your machine). Life hacks have strengths and weaknesses, which are sometimes like two sides of a coin: being efficient is not the same thing as being effective; being precious about minimalism does not mean you are living life unfettered; and compulsively checking your vital signs is its own sort of illness. With Hacking Life, Reagle sheds light on a question even non-hackers ponder: what does it mean to live a good life in the new millennium?