The Fifth Beginning

What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us About Our Future

By Robert L. Kelly

"In The Fifth Beginning, archeologist Robert Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity. In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that began about AD 1500. Some might call it 'globalization,' but the author places it in its larger context: a 5,000-year arms race, capitalism's global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network. Kelly predicts the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread appearance of world citizenship, and forms of cooperation that end nation-states' near-sacred status. It's the end of life, as we have known it. However, this book and the author are cautiously optimistic: it dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity's great potential"

Publisher: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016]

ISBN: 9780520293120, 0520293126

We Are Data

Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves By John Cheney-Lippold We are Data" explores what identity means in an algorithmic age: how it works, how our lives are controlled by it, and how we can resist it. Algorithms are everywhere, organizing the near limitless data that exists in our world. Derived from our every search, like, click, and purchase, algorithms determine the news we get, the ads we see, the information accessible to us and even who our friends are. These complex configurations not only form knowledge and social relationships in the digital and physical world, but also determine who we are and who we can be, both on and offline. Algorithms create and recreate us, using our data to assign and reassign our gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship status. They can recognize us as celebrities or mark us as terrorists. In this era of ubiquitous surveillance, contemporary data collection entails more than gathering information about us. Entities like Google, Faceboo...

To Be A Machine

Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death By Mark O'Connell "A globe-spanning investigation into the Transhumanist movement, considering the tech billionaires, scientific luminaries, and DIY body-hackers attempting to prolong, improve, and ultimately transcend the limits of human life" Publisher : New York : Doubleday, [2017] ISBN : 9780385540414, 0385540418

Four Futures

Visions of the World After Capitalism By Peter Frase It is easier to imagine the end of the world,' the theorist Fredric Jameson has remarked, 'than to imagine the end of capitalism.' 'Jacobin' Editor Peter Frase argues that technological advancements and environmental threats will inevitably push our society beyond capitalism, and 'Four Futures' imagines just how this might look. Extrapolating possible futures from current changes the world is now experiencing, and drawing upon speculative fictions to illustrate how these futures might be realized, 'Four Futures' examines communism, rentism, socialism, and exterminism-or in other words, the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail. Publisher : London : Verso, 2016 ISBN : 9781781688137, 1781688133

Skynet Six