Mass Disruption

Drawing on his thirty years in newspapers, the former editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail examines the crisis of serious journalism in the digital era, and searches for ways the invaluable tradition can thrive in a radically changed future. John Stackhouse entered the newspaper business in a golden age: 1980s circulations were huge and wealthy companies lined up for the privilege of advertising in every city's best-read pages. Television and radio could never rival newspapers for hard news, analysis and opinion, and the papers' brand of serious journalism was considered a crucial part of life in a democratic country. Then came the Internet... After decades as a Globe journalist, foreign bureau chief and then editor of its Report on Business (not to mention former Scarborough delivery boy), he assumed one of the biggest jobs in Canadian journalism: The Globe and Mail's editor-in-chief. Beginning in 2009, he faced the unthinkable: the possible end of not just Canada's "national" newspaper, but the steep and steady financial decline of newspapers everywhere. A non-stop torrent of free digital content stole advertisers and devalued advertising space so quickly that newspapers struggled to finance the serious journalism that distinguished them in a world of Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Yahoo and innumerable bloggers and citizen journalists. Meanwhile, ambitious online media aspired to the credibility of newspapers. The solution was clear, if the path to arriving at it was less so: the new school needed to meet the old school, and the future lay in undiscovered ground between them. Having led the Globe during this period of sudden and radical change, Stackhouse continues to champion the vital role of great reporting and analysis. Filled with stories from his three decades in the business, Mass Disruption tracks decisions good and bad, examines how some of the world's major newspapers--the Guardian, New York Times--are learning to cope, and lays out strategies for the future, of both newspapers and serious journalism, wherever it may live.

This book provides a warning to the United States about the immanent dangers of a terrorist attack using radioactive materials. Such materials are ubiquitous in our society and can be obtained from over 25,000 sources in the USA. In this unsymmetrical war with terrorism, the beneficial and life-saving advantages of radioactive materials can be turned against us. This book is intended to inform the reader of the dangers of terrorist attacks, to show how attacks can be mounted and, more importantly, to indicate how the consequences of an attack can be mitigated. Terrorist use fear as a weapon; this book shows how an informed public can overcome our natural aversion to all things radioactive and fight back against the potentially paralyzing effects of such an attack.

As technology advances, we have to look beyond the finite thinking of a task, will it be a human or a machine’s responsibility. We need to look at how we can use Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to enhance the task so that it can be performed better, faster, at a lower cost and a higher quality without destroying the human contribution in the process. This is where ‘New Grey’ thinking comes into play; it’s when things are not black or white, and they are grey. The New Grey is a hybrid thinking on how to utilize the best features of A.I., while partnering it with the best aspects of human intellect. There are already millions (and there will be eventually billions) of devices like smartphones, smart speakers, Internet of Things, and other gadgets creating larger amounts of data at an exponential rate. Existing and next-generation Big Data technologies will struggle to capture, store, query, analyze, search, and visualize all this information. A.I. can be a game-changer for businesses trying to process all this data or for whole new product categories. Although, It's not a magical buzzword that can be added to any product and will automatically improve it. Although, A.I. can make a product or service smarter when implemented correctly. A.I. can also give organizations the ability to find trends in data that a human might not be able to see. Although, in the end, we must never forget that it is the humans that are the consumers or benefactors of this information. The whole purpose of this book is to explore the roles that humans and machines will play together over the coming years and decades. Machines will be evolved by their creators to do more advanced operations in the near future. The question is will we be ready for what it holds for us. In the final chapter of this book, it shows how to set up a quick demo using one of the most advanced Machine Learning algorithm (i.e. GPT-2) that is publicly available to utilize or even use as a starting point for your own projects.

"A former Wall Street quantitative analyst sounds an alarm on mathematical modeling, a pervasive new force in society that threatens to undermine democracy and widen inequality,"--NoveList.

Drawing on his thirty years in newspapers, the former editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail examines the crisis of serious journalism in the digital era, and searches for ways the invaluable tradition can thrive in a radically changed future. John Stackhouse entered the newspaper business in a golden age: 1980s circulations were huge and wealthy companies lined up for the privilege of advertising in every city's best-read pages. Television and radio could never rival newspapers for hard news, analysis and opinion, and the papers' brand of serious journalism was considered a crucial part of life in a democratic country. Then came the Internet... After decades as a Globe journalist, foreign bureau chief and then editor of its Report on Business (not to mention former Scarborough delivery boy), he assumed one of the biggest jobs in Canadian journalism: The Globe and Mail's editor-in-chief. Beginning in 2009, he faced the unthinkable: the possible end of not just Canada's "national" newspaper, but the steep and steady financial decline of newspapers everywhere. A non-stop torrent of free digital content stole advertisers and devalued advertising space so quickly that newspapers struggled to finance the serious journalism that distinguished them in a world of Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Yahoo and innumerable bloggers and citizen journalists. Meanwhile, ambitious online media aspired to the credibility of newspapers. The solution was clear, if the path to arriving at it was less so: the new school needed to meet the old school, and the future lay in undiscovered ground between them. Having led the Globe during this period of sudden and radical change, Stackhouse continues to champion the vital role of great reporting and analysis. Filled with stories from his three decades in the business, Mass Disruption tracks decisions good and bad, examines how some of the world's major newspapers--the Guardian, New York Times--are learning to cope, and lays out strategies for the future, of both newspapers and serious journalism, wherever it may live.

Written for the average computer user, this introduction to the theory and practice of "hacking" walks readers through the various kinds of computer violation, probes why it's done, reveals what corporations and the military have done about it, and lays out specific anti-hacking tools and advice. 20,000 first printing.

The dynamic that currently underlies global social change is the product of forces that are not of a single type or origin. As a consequence, that change is experienced as a process that uproots individuals but gives no guidance for the future, that destroys but does not reconstruct, that prescribes action but provides no reassurance. The radical uncertainty it engenders is an understandable source of anxiety: the rich countries are increasingly worried about competition from low-wage economies, while the wretched of the earth suspect their precarious existences will come under even greater pressure. Within each nation, the constantly growing gap between winners and losers exacerbates these fears. The Great Disruption is at its height. This book is an examination and interpretation of the enormous complex of social changes which, for want of a better word, we term globalization.

In Beyond Disruption: Technology's Challenge to Governance, George P. Shultz, Jim Hoagland, and James Timbie present views from some of the country's top experts in the sciences, humanities, and military that scrutinize the rise of post-millennium technologies in today's global society. They contemplate both the benefits and peril carried by the unprecedented speed of these innovations—from genetic editing, which enables us new ways to control infectious diseases, to social media, whose ubiquitous global connections threaten the function of democracies across the world. Some techniques, like the advent of machine learning, have enabled engineers to create systems that will make us more productive. For example, self-driving vehicles promise to make trucking safer, faster, and cheaper. However, using big data and artificial intelligence to automate complex tasks also ends up threatening to disrupt both routine professions like taxi driving and cognitive work by accountants, radiologists, lawyers, and even computer programmers themselves.