And The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth

In And the Geek Shall Inherit the Earth, Carl Javier writes funny essays about being a geek, interviewing girls for men's mags, pondering the nuances of a pee-lemma (if you don't know what that is, you'll see in the book), teaching at an all-girls school, joining a reality show, and many other topics. Packed with insights as well as punchlines, the book is a fun and entertaining read for geeks and non-geeks alike.

In a smart, entertaining, reassuring book that reads like fiction, Alexandra Robbins manages to cross Gossip Girl with Freaks and Geeks and explain the fascinating psychology and science behind popularity and outcasthood. She reveals that the things that set students apart in high school are the things that help them stand out later in life. Robbins follows seven real people grappling with the uncertainties of high school social life, including: The Loner, who has withdrawn from classmates since they persuaded her to unwittingly join her own hate club The Popular Bitch, a cheerleading captain both seduced by and trapped within her clique's perceived prestige The Nerd, whose differences cause students to laugh at him and his mother to needle him for not being "normal" The New Girl, determined to stay positive as classmates harass her for her mannerisms and target her because of her race The Gamer, an underachiever in danger of not graduating, despite his intellect and his yearning to connect with other students The Weird Girl, who battles discrimination and gossipy politics in school but leads a joyous life outside of it The Band Geek, who is alternately branded too serious and too emo, yet annually runs for class president In the middle of the year, Robbins surprises her subjects with a secret challenge--experiments that force them to change how classmates see them. Robbins intertwines these narratives--often triumphant, occasionally heartbreaking, and always captivating--with essays exploring subjects like the secrets of popularity, being excluded doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, why outsiders succeed, how schools make the social scene worse--and how to fix it. The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth is not just essential reading for students, teachers, parents, and anyone who deals with teenagers, but for all of us, because at some point in our lives we've all been on the outside looking in.

Unnatural Selection is the first book to examine the rise of the "technocentric being"—or geek—who personifies a distinct new phase in human evolution. People considered geeks often have behavioral or genetic traits that were previously considered detrimental. But the new environment of the Anthropocene period—the Age of Man—has created a kind of digital greenhouse that actually favors their traits, enabling many non-neurotypical people to bloom. They resonate with the technological Zeitgeist in a way that turns their weaknesses into strengths. Think of Mark Zuckerberg versus the towering, Olympics-bound Winklevoss twins in the movie Social Network. Roeder suggests that the rise of the geek is not so much the product of Darwinian "natural selection" as of man-made—or unnatural—selection. He explains why geeks have become so phenomenally successful in such a short time and why the process will further accelerate, driven by breakthroughs in genetic engineering, neuropharmacology, and artificial intelligence. His book offers a fascinating synthesis of the latest trends in these fields and predicts a twenty-first century "cognitive arms race" in which new technology will enable everyone to become more intelligent and "geek-like."

Do you ever wonder where you fit in? Do you sometimes get that feeling that you have something much bigger to offer the universe, but then it fills you with fear and anxiety, so you think maybe I’ll just pay it safe? But what is safe? The factory job? The cubicle job? Factories all over have been converted to open spaces for startups. Skyscrapers have entire floors open for lease because the “same as everyone else” class of jobs have dried up. Many of us were raised to seek out a job that required us to fit in, to conform, to adapt until we fit the mold. The Freaks Shall Inherit The Earth is a guide for the kind of person who wouldn’t normally pick up a business book. The personal business revolution is upon us. Here’s your recipe book for starting your revolutionary business, including some of what you will learn: How to be as weird as you want while providing a viable business structure to support it What most people are missing from the basic frameworks of doing business How to turn passions into businesses How to build out the Digital Channel What Kickstarter and Square mean for the future of business) Take the plunge. Learn to fail and then win. Dare to do something that “everyone else” doesn’t. The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth will help. Bestselling author and successful entrepreneur Chris Brogan explains step-by-step how to build your business from the ground up, all without compromising the unique mindset and personal values that make you a freak in the first place.

The bestselling author of Pledged returns with a groundbreaking look at the pressure to achieve faced by America's teens In Pledged, Alexandra Robbins followed four college girls to produce a riveting narrative that read like fiction. Now, in The Overachievers, Robbins uses the same captivating style to explore how our high-stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control. During the year of her ten-year reunion, Robbins goes back to her high school, where she follows heart-tuggingly likeable students including "AP" Frank, who grapples with horrifying parental pressure to succeed; Audrey, whose panicked perfectionism overshadows her life; Sam, who worries his years of overachieving will be wasted if he doesn't attend a name-brand college; Taylor, whose ambition threatens her popular girl status; and The Stealth Overachiever, a mystery junior who flies under the radar. Robbins tackles teen issues such as intense stress, the student and teacher cheating epidemic, sports rage, parental guilt, the black market for study drugs, and a college admissions process so cutthroat that students are driven to suicide and depression because of a B. With a compelling mix of fast-paced narrative and fascinating investigative journalism, The Overachievers aims both to calm the admissions frenzy and to expose its escalating dangers.

Apparently I'm boring. A nobody. But that's all about to change. Because I am starting a project. Here. Now. For myself. And if you want to come along for the ride then you're very welcome. Bree is by no means popular. Most of the time, she hates her life, her school, her never-there parents. So she writes. But when Bree is told she needs to stop shutting the world out and start living a life worth writing about, The Manifesto on How to Be Interesting is born. A manifesto that will change everything... ...but the question is, at what cost?

After an accidental nuclear war, Vivian Gray joins a comically inept goup of fellow twentysomething survivors. She and her new friends embark on a cross-country road trip seeking sanctuary from the menagerie of deadly atomic mutants unleased by the contaminated atmosphere.

Will the Geeks inherit the earth? If computers become twice as fast and twice as capable every two years, how long is it before they’re as intelligent as humans? More intelligent? And then in two more years, twice as intelligent? How long before you won’t be able to tell if you are texting a person or an especially ingenious chatterbot program designed to simulate intelligent human conversation? According to Richard Dooling in Rapture for the Geeks—maybe not that long. It took humans millions of years to develop opposable thumbs (which we now use to build computers), but computers go from megabytes to gigabytes in five years; from the invention of the PC to the Internet in less than fifteen. At the accelerating rate of technological development, AI should surpass IQ in the next seven to thirty-seven years (depending on who you ask). We are sluggish biological sorcerers, but we’ve managed to create whiz-bang machines that are evolving much faster than we are. In this fascinating, entertaining, and illuminating book, Dooling looks at what some of the greatest minds have to say about our role in a future in which technology rapidly leaves us in the dust. As Dooling writes, comparing human evolution to technological evolution is “worse than apples and oranges: It’s appliances versus orangutans.” Is the era of Singularity, when machines outthink humans, almost upon us? Will we be enslaved by our supercomputer overlords, as many a sci-fi writer has wondered? Or will humans live lives of leisure with computers doing all the heavy lifting? With antic wit, fearless prescience, and common sense, Dooling provocatively examines nothing less than what it means to be human in what he playfully calls the age of b.s. (before Singularity)—and what life will be like when we are no longer alone with Mother Nature at Darwin’s card table. Are computers thinking and feeling if they can mimic human speech and emotions? Does processing capability equal consciousness? What happens to our quaint beliefs about God when we’re all worshipping technology? What if the human compulsion to create ever more capable machines ultimately leads to our own extinction? Will human ingenuity and faith ultimately prevail over our technological obsessions? Dooling hopes so, and his cautionary glimpses into the future are the best medicine to restore our humanity.