Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Delaware

Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality

The guru of virtual reality looks back at the unique experiences that formed his vision for the future of technology With a singular voice and perspective, Lanier who The New York Times calls "daringly original . . . a major wizard in the futurist circus. He is the father of virtual reality in the gaudy, reputation-burnishing way that Michael Jackson was the king of pop" considers the future of virtual technology in a book that blends memoir with ideas. He tells the wild story of his own relationship with technology by starting from the beginning. The son of Jewish immigrants and concentration camp survivors, raised in the UFO territory of New Mexico, he lost his mother at a young age and built a geodesic dome with his father in the desert. He worked as a goatherd and midwife, attended college before graduating high school, transferred to and failed out of a tony northeast liberal arts college, played music for money on the streets of New York, and eventually landed in Silicon Valley at the dawn of the first tech boom where he suddenly became rich. This crazy course to becoming a world renowned technology guru informs Lanier's optimism about virtual reality--the technology he has been immersed in from its very start. While he has been very critical of social media and other manifestations of technology, he believes that virtual reality can actually make our lives richer and fuller.Dawn of the New Everything is ultimately a look at what it means to be human in the dawn of unprecedented technological possibility.

Dawn of the New Everything

53ace8fe-a644-4f9e-8897-211bc0e691d0-1

Corey J. White

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

California

The city of Neo Songdo is a Russian nesting doll of realities -- augmented and virtual spaces anchored in the weight of the real. The smart city is designed to be read by machine vision while people see only the augmented facade of the corporate ideal. At night the stars are obscured by an intergalactic virtual war being waged by millions of players, while on the streets below people are forced to beg, steal, and hustle to survive. Enter Julius Dax, online repo man and real-life thief. He's been hired for a special job: stealing an unknown object from a reclusive tech billionaire. But when he finds out he's stolen the first sentient AI, his payday gets a lot more complicated.

*BRAND NEW* Repo Virtual ARC 2020

2a8dc381-c680-460a-b8e7-5ce5f4413e6a-1

#hardcover #nonfiction #robot #technolgy #sci-fi #artificialintelligence #AI #robotics #automation 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Georgia

Tales from Our Human-Robot Futures

Award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan considers 24 visions of possible human-robot futures—Incredible scenarios from Teddy Bots to Warrior Bots, and Politician Bots to Sex Bots—Grounded in real technologies and possibilities and inspired by our imagination. What robot and AI systems are being built and imagined right now? What do they say about us, their creators? Will they usher in a fantastic new future, or destroy us? What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church, and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate about our human-robot future? For even as robots and A.I. intrigue us and make us anxious about the future, our fascination with robots has always been about more than the potential of the technology–it’s also about what robots tell us about being human.

Talking to Robots

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#hardcover #technology #computers #AI #nickpolson #jamesscott #nonfiction 

How People and Machines Are Smarter Together

Two statistics professors describe how intelligent machines are changing the world and use stories, rather than equations, to explain the mathematical language they use and provide a better grasp on concepts in data and probability.

89aa27ff-4461-4791-b11f-6e56838bef7b-1

#hardcover #toolsandweapons #DigitalAge #BradSmith #BillGates #Technology #AI #CyberSisterCurity, #SocialMedia ￼#China and #CriticalIssues box 95

Texas

The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age

The instant New York Times bestseller. From Microsoft's president and one of the tech industry's broadest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates. “A colorful and insightful insiders’ view of how technology is both empowering and threatening us. From privacy to cyberattacks, this timely book is a useful guide for how to navigate the digital future.” —Walter Isaacson Microsoft President Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: When your technology changes the world, you bear a responsibility to help address the world you have helped create. This might seem uncontroversial, but it flies in the face of a tech sector long obsessed with rapid growth and sometimes on disruption as an end in itself. While sweeping digital transformation holds great promise, we have reached an inflection point. The world has turned information technology into both a powerful tool and a formidable weapon, and new approaches are needed to manage an era defined by even more powerful inventions like artificial intelligence. Companies that create technology must accept greater responsibility for the future, and governments will need to regulate technology by moving faster and catching up with the pace of innovation. In Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne bring us a captivating narrative from the cockpit of one of the world's largest and most powerful tech companies as it finds itself in the middle of some of the thorniest emerging issues of our time. These are challenges that come with no preexisting playbook, including privacy, cybercrime and cyberwar, social media, the moral conundrums of artificial intelligence, big tech's relationship to inequality, and the challenges for democracy, far and near. While in no way a self-glorifying "Microsoft memoir," the book pulls back the curtain remarkably wide onto some of the company's most crucial recent decision points as it strives to protect the hopes technology offers against the very real threats it also presents. There are huge ramifications for communities and countries, and Brad Smith provides a thoughtful and urgent contribution to that effort.

Tools and Weapons

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#hardcover cover is rough but book is in good shape #AI #androids 

New York

The Turing Option

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A Novel

A novel about an unlikely pair of lonely outsiders-one human, one AI-on an adventure to save the great American city of Metropolis written by "one of the most exciting new voices in fiction" (Charles Yu) .

In Metropolis, the gleaming city of tomorrow, the dream of the great American city has been achieved. But all that is about to change, unless a neurotic, rule-following bureaucrat and an irreverent, freewheeling artificial intelligence can save the city from a mysterious terrorist plot that threatens its very existence.

Henry Thompson has dedicated his life to improving America's infrastructure as a proud employee of the United States Municipal Survey. So when the agency comes under attack, he dutifully accepts his unexpected mission to visit Metropolis looking for answers. But his plans to investigate quietly, quickly, and carefully are interrupted by his new partner- a day-drinking know-it-all named Owen, who also turns out to be the projected embodiment of the agency's supercomputer. Soon, Henry and Owen are fighting to save not only their own lives and those of the city's millions of inhabitants, but also the soul of Metropolis.

The Municipalists is a thrilling, funny, and touching adventure story, a tour-de-force of imagination that trenchantly explores our relationships to the cities around us and the technologies guiding us into the future.

The Municipalists

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Lora Beth Johnson

Michigan

Andra wakes up from a cryogenic sleep 1,000 years later than she was supposed to, forcing her to team up with an exiled prince to navigate an unfamiliar planet in this smart, thrilling sci-fi adventure, perfect for fans of Renegades and Aurora Rising.

When Andra wakes up, she's drowning.

Not only that, but she's in a hot, dirty cave, it's the year 3102, and everyone keeps calling her Goddess. When Andra went into a cryonic sleep for a trip across the galaxy, she expected to wake up in a hundred years, not a thousand. Worst of all, the rest of the colonists--including her family and friends--are dead. They died centuries ago, and for some reason, their descendants think Andra's a deity. She knows she's nothing special, but she'll play along if it means she can figure out why she was left in stasis and how to get back to Earth.

Zhade, the exiled bastard prince of Eerensed, has other plans. Four years ago, the sleeping Goddess's glass coffin disappeared from the palace, and Zhade devoted himself to finding it. Now he's hoping the Goddess will be the key to taking his rightful place on the throne--if he can get her to play her part, that is. Because if his people realize she doesn't actually have the power to save their dying planet, they'll kill her.

With a vicious monarch on the throne and a city tearing apart at the seams, Zhade and Andra might never be able to unlock the mystery of her fate, let alone find a way to unseat the king, especially since Zhade hasn't exactly been forthcoming with Andra. And a thousand years from home, is there any way of knowing that Earth is better than the planet she's woken to?

Goddess in the Machine

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Jess Rothenberg

Massachusetts

A half-android, half-human girl is accused of murder in Jess Rothenberg's tautly-paced YA thriller,The Kingdom, perfect for fans ofWestworld and The Lunar Chronicles.

"Wildly addictive and beautifully terrifying... Readers will leave this glittering theme park forgetting what is real."--Dhonielle Clayton,New York Times bestselling author ofThe Belles

Welcome to the Kingdom... where "Happily Ever After" isn't just a promise, but a rule.

Glimmering like a jewel behind its gateway, The Kingdom(tm) is an immersive fantasy theme park where guests soar on virtual dragons, castles loom like giants, and bioengineered species--formerly extinct--roam free.

Ana is one of seven Fantasists, beautiful "princesses" engineered to make dreams come true. When she meets park employee Owen, Ana begins to experience emotions beyond her programming including, for the first time... love.

But the fairytale becomes a nightmare when Ana is accused of murdering Owen, igniting the trial of the century. Through courtroom testimony, interviews, and Ana's memories of Owen, emerges a tale of love, lies, and cruelty--and what it truly means to be human.

The Kingdom

7e13cf8e-7830-40ce-a330-20cd1dff8b03-1

Read once. Perfect condition. #fiction #hardcover #ya #ai #mystery #disappearance #videogame

Arkansas

Perfect for fans of Warcross and Black Mirror, Girl Gone Viral is the inventive and timely story of a seventeen-year-old coder's catapult to stardom. For seventeen-year-old Opal Hopper, code is magic. She builds entire worlds from scratch: Mars craters, shimmering lakes, any virtual experience her heart desires. But she can't code her dad back into her life. When he disappeared after her tenth birthday, leaving only a cryptic note, Opal tried desperately to find him. And when he never turned up, she enrolled at a boarding school for technical prodigies and tried to forget. Until now. Because WAVE, the world's biggest virtual reality platform, has announced a contest where the winner gets to meet its billionaire founder. The same billionaire who worked closely with Opal's dad. The one she always believed might know where he went. The one who maybe even murdered him. What begins as a small data hack to win the contest spirals out of control when Opal goes viral, digging her deeper into a hole of lies, hacks, and manipulation. How far will Opal go for the answers--or is it the attention--she's wanted for years?

Girl Gone Viral

c009bcc2-cf98-4f99-94aa-e5f62cffb8d0-1

#hardcover #1 #krakenproject #scifi #mystery #AI #roguecode 

When a NASA accident kills seven scientists and enables a self-modifying artificial intelligence to escape into the Internet, Wyman Ford and the AI's creator, Melissa Shepherd, struggle to keep the evolving program out of the hands of scheming Wall Street traders. By the best-selling author of The Monster of Florence. 300,000 first printing.

The Kraken Project

c6d9682f-a02d-4ffe-9af5-82ce8d3412c1-1

How Robots Will Change Us

The director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab speculates about the future of humankind as it explores the relationship between humans and technologically engineered robots and examines the vast capabilities of such machines. 60,000 first printing.

Flesh and Machines

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Cate’s sister may be a clone, but that doesn’t make her a killer. Does it? Murder, morality, and a slow-burning romance fill the pages of this futuristic thriller “for die-hard fans of Divergent and The Hunger Games” (Kirkus Reviews). When Cate Benson was a kid, her sister, Violet, died. Two hours after the funeral, Cate’s family picked up Violet’s replacement like nothing had happened. Because Cate’s parents are among those who decided to give their children a sort of immortality by cloning them at birth—which means this new Violet has the same face. The same perfect smile. She even has all of the same memories as the girl she replaced. She also might have murdered the most popular girl in school. At least, that’s what the paparazzi and the anti-cloning protestors want everyone to think: that clones are violent, unpredictable monsters. Cate is used to hearing all that. She’s used to defending her sister, too. But Violet has vanished, and when Cate sets out to find her, she ends up in the line of fire instead. Because Cate is getting dangerously close to secrets that will rock the foundation of everything she thought was true.

Falls the Shadow

442ee5b8-d0a6-4d6d-9224-240e143a670b-1

#hardcover #fiction #scifi #fantasy #fairytale #ya #ai #courtdrama 

Kentucky

"This sublime blend of The Stepford Wives and Westworld is richly composed and intricately plotted." —Kirkus Reviews Welcome to the Kingdom... where ‘Happily Ever After’ isn’t just a promise, but a rule. Glimmering like a jewel behind its gateway, The KingdomTM is an immersive fantasy theme park where guests soar on virtual dragons, castles loom like giants, and bioengineered species—formerly extinct—roam free. Ana is one of seven Fantasists, beautiful “princesses” engineered to make dreams come true. When she meets park employee Owen, Ana begins to experience emotions beyond her programming including, for the first time... love. But the fairytale becomes a nightmare when Ana is accused of murdering Owen, igniting the trial of the century. Through courtroom testimony, interviews, and Ana’s memories of Owen, emerges a tale of love, lies, and cruelty—and what it truly means to be human.

Amie Kaufman

Jay Kristoff

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

"The planet Kerenza is attacked, and Kady and Ezra find themselves on a space fleet fleeing the enemy, while their ship's artificial intelligence system and a deadly plague may be the end of them all"--

Illuminae

cb81d434-e48e-4ac2-a269-c975c1d57dac-1

New Jersey

*God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison started the high-flying tech company Oracle with $1,200 in 1977 and turned it into a billion-dollar Silicon Valley giant. If Bill Gates is the tech world's nerd king, Ellison is its Warren Beatty: racing yachts, buying jets, and romancing beautiful women. His rise to fame and fortune is a tale of entrepreneurial brilliance, ruthless tactics, and a constant stream of half-truths and outright fabrications for which the man and his company are notorious. Investigative reporter Mike Wilson, with access to Ellison himself and more than 125 of his friends, enemies, and former Oracle employees, has created an eye-opening, utterly fascinating portrayal of a Silicon Valley success story ... filled with the stuff that dreams and cultural icons are made of.

The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison

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#hardcover #fiction #ya #scifi #fantasy #ai #fairytale #courtdrama #thekingdom 

Puerto Rico

Pennsylvania

"The story of an artificial human being named Gene who discovers he's been created to provide a fresh new body for the consciousness of an aging business titan. Determined to maintain his autonomy, Gene rebels"--

Immortal Life

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The book was slightly damaged in shipment to me, as visible in photos. Inside is perfect with no writing/highlighting/underlining!

The highly anticipated science fiction debut from the founder of io9! Earth, 2144. Jack is an anti-patent scientist turned drug pirate, traversing the world in a submarine as a pharmaceutical Robin Hood, fabricating cheap scrips for poor people who can’t otherwise afford them. But her latest drug hack has left a trail of lethal overdoses as people become addicted to their work, doing repetitive tasks until they become unsafe or insane. Hot on her trail, an unlikely pair: Eliasz, a brooding military agent, and his robotic partner, Paladin. As they race to stop information about the sinister origins of Jack’s drug from getting out, they begin to form an uncommonly close bond that neither of them fully understand. And underlying it all is one fundamental question: Is freedom possible in a culture where everything, even people, can be owned?

Autonomous

a65e5859-4e9a-48b5-8921-75e112f9e551-1

A Pike Logan Novel

"Few authors write about espionage, terrorism, and clandestine hit squads as well as Taylor does."--Houston Press Pike Logan must divert two world powers from engaging in a major conflict that could ignite a war in this pulse-pounding thriller from New York Times bestselling author and former Special Forces officer Brad Taylor. Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill are enjoying a sunny vacation down under when they get disturbing news: their friend and colleague, Clifford Delmonty, is in serious trouble. While working as a contractor at an Australian F 35 facility, the former Taskforce member--callsign Dunkin--saw something he shouldn't have, and now he's on the run from Chinese agents. Pike and Jennifer soon discover that Dunkin's attackers are a dangerous part of a much larger scheme that could launch a full-on war between China and Taiwan. In their quest for dominance, China is determined to reclaim Taiwan--an ally the United States has sworn to protect. Pike learns that the Chinese have a devious plan to bait the small island nation into all-out war by destabilizing the government while manipulating an artificial intelligence defense system. As the threat of conflict reaches a boiling point, Pike alone realizes that what is being seen is not what is happening. A soldier who has always been trained to fight and win, Pike is now against an invisible enemy--one he can't actually attack. With the help of a Taiwanese intelligence agent, he races to prevent a catastrophic conflict from consuming a whole region of the world--and the lives of his teammates. --Vince Flynn on All Necessary Force

American Traitor

e18809b9-316c-4cf6-a810-53a9dd4dce2a-1

Erin Bow

Vermont

The children of world leaders are held hostage in an attempt to keep the peace in this “slyly humorous, starkly thought-provoking” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel. Greta is a Duchess and a Crown Princess. She is also a Child of Peace, a hostage held by the de facto ruler of the world, the great Artificial Intelligence, Talis. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Start a war and your hostage dies. The system has worked for centuries. Parents don’t want to see their children murdered. Greta will be free if she can make it to her eighteenth birthday. Until then she is prepared to die with dignity, if necessary. But everything changes when Elian arrives at the Precepture. He’s a hostage from a new American alliance, and he defies the machines that control every part of their lives—and is severely punished for it. His rebellion opens Greta’s eyes to the brutality of the rules they live under, and to the subtle resistance of her companions. And Greta discovers her own quiet power. Then Elian’s country declares war on Greta’s and invades the prefecture, taking the hostages hostage. Now the great Talis is furious, and coming himself to deliver punishment. Which surely means that Greta and Elian will be killed...unless Greta can think of a way to break all the rules.

The Scorpion Rules

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#hardcover #autonomous #scifi #fiction #sciencefiction #ai 

#scifi #humanity #fiction #AI #memory #artificialintelligence #time #computer #human #family

A thoughtful, poignant novel that explores the creation of Artificial Intelligence--illuminating the very human need for communication, connection, and understanding.

In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the seventeenth century, to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human, and what it means to be less than fully alive.

A young Puritan woman travels to the New World with her unwanted new husband. Alan Turing, the renowned mathematician and code breaker, writes letters to his best friend's mother. A Jewish refugee and professor of computer science struggles to reconnect with his increasingly detached wife. An isolated and traumatized young girl exchanges messages with an intelligent software program. A former Silicon Valley Wunderkind is imprisoned for creating illegal lifelike dolls.

Each of these characters is attempting to communicate across gaps--to estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human--shrinking rapidly with today's technological advances--echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard, or understood.

Save this search

Jaron Lanier

Dawn of the New Everything

Corey J. White

*BRAND NEW* Repo Virtual ARC 2020

David Ewing Duncan

Talking to Robots

Nick Polson; James Scott

Aiq

Brad Smith; Carol Ann Browne; Bill Gates (Foreword by); Bill Gates (Foreword by)

Tools and Weapons

Harry Harrison; Marvin Minsky

The Turing Option

Seth Fried

The Municipalists

Lora Beth Johnson

Goddess in the Machine

Jess Rothenberg

The Kingdom

Arvin Ahmadi

Girl Gone Viral

Douglas Preston

The Kraken Project

Rodney A. Brooks; Dan Frank (Editor)

Flesh and Machines

Stefanie Gaither

Falls the Shadow

Jess Rothenberg

The Kingdom

Amie Kaufman; Jay Kristoff

Illuminae

Mike Wilson

The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison

Jess Rothenberg

The Kingdom

Gil Schwartz; Stanley Bing

Immortal Life

Annalee Newitz

Autonomous

Brad Taylor

American Traitor

Erin Bow

The Scorpion Rules

Annalee Newitz

Autonomous

Louisa Hall

Speak

Jess Rothenberg

The Kingdom

BRAND NEW Repo Virtual ARC 2020