Rage Against The Machines

Examines how information technologies are affecting jobs, skills, wages, and the economy.

War is a dirty job - too dirty for humans! The ABC Warriors - hard-drinking robotic soldiers designed for combat in the worst Atomic, Bacterial and Chemical theatres of war. They are a tough fighting force that has slipped into legend. Led by the fearless Sergeant Hammerstein, the elite unit of warriors carry out the worst suicide missions available. When the tide of war turns against them on the Martian battlefield and all hope of victory slips away, the ABC Warriors are forced to disband their unit. They must go separate ways in a final, desperate attempt to save mankind from the alien terror.

We live in a world increasingly ruled by technology; we seem as governed by technology as we do by laws and regulations. Frighteningly often, the influence of technology in and on our lives goes completely unchallenged by citizens and governments. We comfort ourselves with the soothing refrain that technology has no morals and can display no prejudice, and it's only the users of technology who distort certain aspects of it.But is this statement actually true? Dr Robert Smith thinks it is dangerously untrue in the modern era.Having worked in the field of artificial intelligence for over 30 years, Smith reveals the mounting evidence that the mechanical actors in our lives do indeed have, or at least express, morals: they're just not the morals of the progressive modern society that we imagined we were moving towards. Instead, as we are just beginning to see - in the US elections and Brexit to name but a few - there are increasing incidences of machine bigotry, greed and the crass manipulation of our basest instincts.It is easy to assume that these are the result of programmer prejudices or the product of dark forces manipulating the masses through the network of the Internet. But what if there is something more fundamental and explicitly mechanical at play, something inherent within technology itself?This book demonstrates how non-scientific ideas have been encoded deep into our technological infrastructure. Offering a rigorous, fresh perspective on how technology has brought us to this place, Rage Inside the Machine challenges the long-held assumption that technology is an apolitical and amoral force. Shedding light on little-known historical stories and investigating the complex connections between scientific philosophy, institutional prejudice and new technology, this book offers a new, honest and more truly scientific vision of ourselves.

Rage Against The Machine changed the shape of music with their rampant self-titled debut album in 1992. Here was a politically charged troupe who took advantage of major label backing yet spoke out on issues that few stars in the spotlight dared to - never afraid to insist their message was just as important as the music. The sales came in the millions and critical acclaim besieged them...until De La Rocha left the band in 2000. Instead of attempting to replace the inimitable orator, Morello and Co. threw a curveball and hired ex-Soundgarden throat Chris Cornell to create a new band - Audioslave. Yet there was always the genius of Rage Against The Machine in the background and in 2007 the band reformed with De La Rocha included. Millions have waited a long time to see the spectacle unfold once again. This is the story of how a Harvard graduate and a poetic activist welded together, along with several capable cohorts, to create a bastion of youth revival and change through the medium of their striking, innovative material; a glutton of musical riches which continues to amaze and inspire today.

“Galloping suspense dominates this riveting sequel to the post-apocalyptic Dark Inside” (Kirkus Reviews) as four teens continue the struggle for survival in a world gone mad. Aries, Clementine, Michael, and Mason have survived the first wave of the apocalypse that wiped out most of the world’s population and turned many of the rest into murderous Baggers. Now they’re hiding out in an abandoned house in Vancouver with a ragtag group of fellow teen survivors, trying to figure out their next move. Aries is trying to lead, but it’s hard to be a leader when there are no easy answers and every move feels wrong. Clementine is desperate to find her brother Heath, but it’s impossible to know where he’d be, assuming he’s alive. Michael is haunted by the memories of his actions during his harrowing struggle to survive. And Mason is struggling with something far worse: the fear that he may be a danger to his friends. As the Baggers begin to create a new world order, these four teens will have to trust and rely on each other in order to survive.

"The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster, now presented in a beautifully illustrated edition, is a visionary and thought-provoking novella that explores the perils of technological dependency and the potential consequences of a society overly reliant on machines. Set in a future where humanity lives underground, isolated in individual cells, their every need attended to by an all-encompassing Machine, the story follows Vashti, a lecturer and true believer in the Machine's omnipotence. However, as the Machine begins to show signs of malfunction, Vashti's worldview is challenged, leading to a series of events that question the very foundations of her society. "The Machine Stops" remains a compelling exploration of the dangers of sacrificing human connections for the convenience of technology. This illustrated edition provides a fresh perspective on Forster's timeless work, making it an engaging and visually captivating experience for both new and returning readers.

"I'm both blessed and cursed to be a guitar player. I didn't choose it, it chose me. The challenge was to find a way to weave my convictions into my music in a meaningful way." - Tom Morello As the cofounder and guitarist of Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, and Prophets of Rage, and as a solo artist and collaborator with artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen and Wu-Tang Clan, few musicians have been as groundbreaking as Tom Morello. Now, for the first time, Morello's remarkable life as a guitarist, songwriter, singer, and political activist is captured in Whatever It Takes. Telling the story, from his first guitar to the present day, Morello's commentary is accompanied by a wealth of photographs, handwritten notes, and set lists, many of which are previously unpublished and come from the author's personal archives. Stunning images of Morello's heavily customized guitars complete this jam-packed photographic memoir, and the result, like his incendiary guitar playing, is fascinating, honest, and completely unique. Introduced by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, Jann Wenner, the cofounder of Rolling Stone, Morello's Prophets of Rage collaborator Chuck D, and Nora Guthrie, daughter of the legendary Woody Guthrie, Whatever It Takes is the defining document of one of the greatest rock guitar players of our times. "He's not only a brilliant musician, but he has a deep heart and a social conscience, just like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Bono, or Jackson Browne. Tom is right up there with that gang. I think this excellent book helps prove why." - Jann Wenner "Tom Morello is a Visionary Activist, meaning what he sees in his mind goes full throttle into him making IT happen." - Chuck D "Fascists, white supremacists, centrists beware: Tom Morello is armed and dangerous, and his weapon is his music." - Michael Moore

Can humans and artificial intelligences share concepts and communicate? One aim of Making AI Intelligible is to show that philosophical work on the metaphysics of meaning can help answer these questions. Cappelen and Dever use the externalist tradition in philosophy of to create models of how AIs and humans can understand each other. In doing so, they also show ways in which that philosophical tradition can be improved: our linguistic encounters with AIs revel that our theories of meaning have been excessively anthropocentric. The questions addressed in the book are not only theoretically interesting, but the answers have pressing practical implications. Many important decisions about human life are now influenced by AI. In giving that power to AI, we presuppose that AIs can track features of the world that we care about (e.g. creditworthiness, recidivism, cancer, and combatants.) If AIs can share our concepts, that will go some way towards justifying this reliance on AI. The book can be read as a proposal for how to take some first steps towards achieving interpretable AI. Making AI Intelligible is of interest to both philosophers of language and anyone who follows current events or interacts with AI systems. It illustrates how philosophy can help us understand and improve our interactions with AI.