John Markoff

Análisis de la democratización como un proceso multicontinental que cubre dos siglos. El libro trata de la ola democratizadora reciente que desde los años 70 hasta el presente ha abarcado la península iberica, America Latina, Europa del Este, y partes de Asia y Africa. La obra enfatiza la dimension transnacional tanto de los movimientos sociales como de las reformas impulsadas por las elites. Para el autor, la democracia no ha constituido algo fijo, sino algo cuyo significado ha registrado continuas alteraciones en el curso de estos dos siglos de conflictos sociales.

As robots are increasingly integrated into modern society - on the battlefield and the road, in business, education, and health - Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff searches for an answer to one of the most important questions of our age: Will these machines help us, or will they replace us?In the past decade alone, Google introduced us to driverless cars, Apple debuted a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets, and an Internet of Things connected the smaller tasks of everyday life to the farthest reaches of the Internet. There is little doubt that robots are now an integral part of society, and cheap sensors and powerful computers will ensure that in the coming years, these robots will soon act on their own. This new era offers the promise of immense computing power, but it also reframes a question first raised more than half a century ago, at the birth of the intelligent machine: Will we control these systems, or will they control us?

El mundo rural suele estar ausente de los relatos sobre la Historia de la democracia. La identificación tópica entre campo y atraso político ha impregnado buena parte de los debates historiográficos sobre la España contemporánea. Pero la necesidad de redefinir el propio concepto de democracia, reforzando su carácter histórico, pasa por revisar la validez de la idea de un mundo rural desmovilizado y apático políticamente.

This makes entertaining reading. Many accounts of the birth of personal computing have been written, but this is the first close look at the drug habits of the earliest pioneers. New York TimesMost histories of the personal computer industry focus on technology or business. John Markoffs landmark book is about the culture and consciousness behind the first PCsthe culture being counter and the consciousness expanded, sometimes chemically. Its a brilliant evocation of Stanford, California, in the 1960s and 70s, where a group of visionaries set out to turn computers into a means for freeing minds and information. In these pages one encounters Ken Kesey and the phone hacker Capn Crunch, est and LSD, The Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Lab. What the Dormouse Said is a poignant, funny, and inspiring book by one of the smartest technology writers around.

Told by one of our greatest chroniclers of technology and society, the definitive biography of iconic serial visionary Stewart Brand, from the Merry Pranksters and the generation-defining Whole Earth Catalog to the marriage of environmental consciousness and hacker capitalism and the rise of a new planetary culturethe story behind so many other storiesStewart Brand has long been famous if you know who he is, but for many people outside the counterculture, early computing, or the environmental movement, he is perhaps best known for his famous mantra Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Steve Jobss endorsement of these words as his code to live by is fitting; Brand has played many roles, but one of the most important is as a model for how to live. The contradictions are striking: A blond-haired WASP with a modest family inheritance, Brand went to Exeter and Stanford and was an army veteran, but in California in the 1960s he became an artist and a photographer in the thick of the LSD revolution. While tripping on acid on the roof of his building, he envisioned how valuable it would be for humans to see a photograph of the planet they shared from space, an image that in the end landed on the cover of his Whole Earth Catalog, the defining publication of the counterculture. He married a Native American woman and was committed to protecting indigenous culture, which connected to a broader environmentalist mission that has been a through line of his life. At the same time, he has outraged purists because of his pragmatic embrace of useful technologies, including nuclear power, in the fight against climate change. The famous tagline promise of his catalog was Access to Tools; with rare exceptions he rejected politics for a focus on direct power. It was no wonder, then, that he was early to the promise of the computer revolution and helped define it for the wider world. Brands life can be hard to fit onto one screen. John Markoff, also a great chronicler of tech culture, has done something extraordinary in unfolding the rich, twisting story of Brands life against its proper landscape. As Markoff makes marvelously clear, the streams of individualism, respect for science, environmentalism, and Eastern and indigenous thought that flow through Brands entire life form a powerful gestalt, a California state of mind that has a hegemonic power to this day. His way of thinking embraces a true planetary consciousness that may be the best hope we humans collectively have.

La democracia ha sido producida a lo largo de la historia por aquellos que detentan el poder pero también por quienes lo han desafiado.Desde finales del revolucionario siglo XVIII, la democracia ha sido reinventada continuamente….