Lunar Logic

On the vacuum surface of the moon, life for Ai-dan and a cohort of moon-dwelling androids is anything but a lunar wasteland of boredom. They spend their days maintaining lunar data centers with a quaint blue-green, and sometimes whitish, orb hanging in the sky. Between playing games and spirited debates on the meaning of the shimmering orb, the robots' existence is near idyllic. But when a malfunctioning system leads Ai-dan to stumble upon a mysterious box and then a soft-bodied android—total lunar oddities—the harmony of their world gets tossed into disarray. As they dig deeper into these enigmatic discoveries, Ai-dan and their friends must reboot their understanding of existence—risking a crash in their carefully crafted, pre-programmed worldviews. Join Ai-dan, Ai-ko, Ai-mory and the rest as they toggle through an unusual adventure to uncover the hidden secrets of their life on the moon, and in the process, learn what it means to be and have free will. Will Ai-dan be able to integrate answers into their programming, or will their quest lead to yet another 'factory reset'? The fate of their lunar logic hangs in the balance!

Lionel Sims has produced an influential body of work that has challenged existing narratives about British prehistoric monuments and provided innovative ways to approach and think about skyscapes. This book, in his honour, is divided into three parts: Anthropology and Human Origins, Prehistory and Megalithic Monuments, and Theory.

The digital revolution is changing virtually every aspect of the business world. However, most attempts at the digital transformation of enterprises fail – largely because of a lack of comprehensive and coherent strategy. This book takes lessons learned from the rise of the digital platform giants and explores how they can be adapted and effectively applied to established businesses, allowing them to compete within the new digital business paradigm. Offering a holistic perspective on the business and technology landscape, the book describes the megatrends, evolution and impact of digital technologies and business models. It brings together what for many is a disjointed set of business transformation imperatives, to provide a practical guide to digital success. Drawing on the authors’ decades of experience in supporting transformation and innovation, the book lays out a path to a progressive iteration of business change and value realization, balancing the perspectives of revolutionary transformation and change-enabling optimization.

Unleash Your Agile Leadership Potential and Guide Your Entire Organization Toward Agility In this complex, fast-changing, and unpredictable world, radically agile organizations thrive when they combine strong local autonomy with deeply shared goals. Leadership is a key factor--individuals who welcome complexity and know how to leverage influence, culture, and organizational design to align widely distributed teams are integral to success. Renowned agile coach Zuzana Sochová presents the skills and techniques you need to become that needed agile leader. Sochová provides inspirational examples drawing on her experience working with leaders in organizations of all sizes, in multiple industries, worldwide. Through practical exercises and assessments, you learn how to unleash your potential, become a better catalyst and community builder, sensibly apply transparency, improve functions from HR to finance, and guide entire organizations toward greater agility. Build a powerful shared vision and change organizations and cultures to achieve it Explore types and models of agile leadership and choose styles that leverage your strengths Practice the competencies and high-level cognitive “meta-skills” of agile leadership Understand and promote agility at the executive and board levels Master practical techniques such as large group facilitation, system coaching, trust building, and team formation Lead in a world of soaring volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity The Agile Leader is for managers, directors, executives, and entrepreneurs--anyone, regardless of position, who is ready to take ownership, challenge the status quo, and become a true agile leader. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.

We are the first generation to live in a science fiction world. Media headlines declare this the age of automation. The TV talks about the coming revolution of the robot, tweets tell tales of jets that will ferry travelers to the edge of space, and social media reports that the first human to live for a thousand years has already been born. The science we do, the movies we watch, and the culture we consume is the stuff of fiction that became fact, the future imagined in our past—the future we now inhabit. The Science of Science Fiction is the story of how science fiction shaped our world. No longer a subculture, science fiction has moved into the mainstream with the advent of the information age it helped realize. Explore how science fiction has driven science, with topics that include: Guardians of the Galaxy: Is Space Full of Extraterrestrials? Jacking In: Will the Future Be Like Ready Player One? Mad Max: Is Society Running down into Chaos? The Internet: Will Humans Tire of Mere Reality? Blade Runner 2049: When Will We Engineer Human Lookalikes? And many more! This book will open your eyes to the way science fiction helped us dream of things to come, forced us to explore the nature and limits of our own reality, and aided us in building the future we now inhabit.

"This vastly learned, superbly illustrated collection has not a dull text within it. I was enlightened and fascinated by every essay on every topic. Visible Writings is a book to treasure."-Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, CUNY --

David H. Holmberg here examines the social forms, ritual practices, and history of a western Tamang community of Himalayan Nepal. Exploring the central question of ritual complexity, Order in Paradox demonstrates how a religious system that contains Buddhist, shamanic, and sacrificial practices may be understood as a whole. Holmberg begins by recounting the history of the Tamang and reexamining the meaning of caste, tribe, and ethnicity in greater Nepal. Holmberg reveals how cultural patterns thought to be uniquely Tamang reflect this people's development of an "involuted" "tribal" form of Buddhist religious expression—an evolution he interprets as a result in part of the unification of the Nepalese state. Holmberg then offers descriptions of the culture, mythic imagination, and ritual field of the Tamang. Exploring both structural and historical dimensions of Tamang rituals, Holmberg shows how they form a system linked to a cultural logic of exchange upon which Tamang society is built. He also sheds light on the relationship between gender and ritual, considering in detail the close association between femaleness and the shamanic in Tamang culture.