The Signals Are Talking

A Fast Company best book of the yearA Washington Post bestsellerWinner of the 2017 Axiom Business Book Award in Business Technology How do you tell a real trend from the merely trendy? How, for example, will a technology--like artificial intelligence, machine learning, self-driving cars, biohacking, bots, and the Internet of Things--affect us, our businesses, and workplaces? How will it eventually change the way we live, work, play, and think--and how should we prepare for it now? In The Signals Are Talking, noted futurist Amy Webb shows us how to analyze the "true signals"--those patterns that will coalesce into a trend with the potential to change everything-and land on the right side of disruption. The future, Webb shows, isn't something that happens to us passively. Using a proven, tested methodology, she enables us to see ahead and forecast what's to come--challenging us to create our own preferred futures.

Counsels business leaders on how to identify clues to recognize important imminent trends and market developments, demonstrating how near-future business events emerge gradually from the fringes of society.

A call-to-arms about the broken nature of artificial intelligence, and the powerful corporations that are turning the human-machine relationship on its head. We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we -- the everyday people whose data powers AI -- aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into -- one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI -- the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself -- is broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centered call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course, and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.

“Amy Webb found her true love after a search that's both charmingly romantic and relentlessly data-driven. Anyone who uses online dating sites must read her funny, fascinating book.”—Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project After yet another disastrous date, Amy Webb was preparing to cancel her JDate membership when epiphany struck: her standards weren’t too high, she just wasn’t approaching the process the right way. Using her gift for data strategy, she found which keywords were digital-man magnets, analyzed photos, and then adjusted her (female) profile to make the most of that intel. Then began the deluge—dozens of men who actually met her own stringent requirements wanted to meet her. Among them: her future husband, now the father of her child.

In What Babies Say Before They Can Talk, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H., a explains how infants communicate with us, and we with them, and outlines the nine easily identifiable signals that will help you to decode your baby’s needs and feelings. Dr. Holinger decodes the nine easily identifiable signals—interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust (a reaction to bad tastes), and dissmell (a reaction to bad smells)—that all babies use to express their needs and wants. These insights will aid parents in discerning what their baby is feeling. This book can help all parents become more confident and self-aware in their interactions with their children, create positive communication, and put the joy back into parenting. This is a unique work. It provides a foundation for understanding feelings and behavior. Based on emerging research, What Babies Say Before They Can Talk offers parents a new perspective on their babies' sense of the world and the people around them. The goal of this book is to help parents enhance their infants' potential, prevent problems, and raise happy, healthy, responsible children.

Joel Rothschild and his friend Albert, both HIV positive, made a pact: whoever died first would attempt to "signal" the other from beyond. Joel wasn't sure he believed in psychic abilities, but from the day Albert died he began receiving messages. One message led Joel to a note Albert had left for him before he died. Another message told Joel to hang in there when he became sick, that he would get well - and he did.Albert's messages have changed not only Joel's life but the lives of many others who have been helped by messages Joel has delivered to them. Their stories and Joel's psychic awakening - a transformation from cynic to believer - are both amazing and reassuring.

A breakthrough investigation of synthetic biology: the promising and controversial technology platform that combines biology and artificial intelligence and has the potential to program biological systems like we program computers. Synthetic biology is the technique that enables us not just to read and edit but also write DNA to program living biological structures as though they were tiny computers. Unlike cloning Dolly the sheep-which cut and copied existing genetic material-the future of synthetic biology might be something like an app store, where you could download and add new capabilities into any cell, microbe, plant, or animal. This breakthrough science has the potential to mitigate, perhaps solve, humanity's immediate and longer-term existential challenges: climate change; the feeding, clothing, housing, and caring for billions of humans; fighting the next viral outbreak before it becomes a global pandemic; old age as a treatable pathology; bringing back extinct animals. It could also be anarchic and socially destructive. With our governing structures created in an era before startling advances in technology, we are not prepared for a future in which life could be manipulated or programmed. As futurist Amy Webb and synthetic biologist Andrew Hessel show in this book, within the next decade, we will need to make important decisions: whether to program novel viruses to fight diseases, what genetic privacy will look like, who will "own" living organisms, how companies should earn revenue from engineered cells, and how to contain a synthetic organism in a lab. The Genesis Machine​ provides the background for us to understand and grapple with these issues, and think through the religious, philosophical, and ethical implications for the future.

How understanding the signaling within social networks can change the way we make decisions, work with others, and manage organizations. How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer, writes Alex Pentland in Honest Signals, is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network. Biologically based “honest signaling,” evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, offers an unmatched window into our intentions, goals, and values. If we understand this ancient channel of communication, Pentland claims, we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates. Pentland, an MIT professor, has used a specially designed digital sensor worn like an ID badge—a “sociometer”—to monitor and analyze the back-and-forth patterns of signaling among groups of people. He and his researchers found that this second channel of communication, revolving not around words but around social relations, profoundly influences major decisions in our lives—even though we are largely unaware of it. Pentland presents the scientific background necessary for understanding this form of communication, applies it to examples of group behavior in real organizations, and shows how by “reading” our social networks we can become more successful at pitching an idea, getting a job, or closing a deal. Using this “network intelligence” theory of social signaling, Pentland describes how we can harness the intelligence of our social network to become better managers, workers, and communicators.