A biography of venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the enigmatic, controversial, and hugely influential power broker who sits at the dynamic intersection of tech, business, and politics
“Max Chafkin’s The Contrarian is much more than a consistently shocking biography of Peter Thiel, the most important investor in tech and a key supporter of the Donald Trump presidency. It’s also a disturbing history of Silicon Valley that will make you reconsider the ideological foundations of America’s relentless engine of creative destruction.”—Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store and Amazon Unbound
Since the days of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, no industry has made a greater impact on the world than Silicon Valley. And few individuals have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of our contemporary way of life, from the technologies we use every day to the delicate power balance between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. But despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious.
In the first major biography of Thiel, Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the innovator's singular life and worldview, from his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents and years at Stanford as a burgeoning conservative thought leader to his founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian illuminates the extent to which Thiel has sought to export his values to the corridors of power beyond Silicon Valley, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker and strenuously backing far-right political candidates, notably Donald Trump for president in 2016.
Eye-opening and deeply reported, The Contrarian is a revelatory biography of a one-of-a-kind leader and an incisive portrait of a tech industry whose explosive growth and power is both thrilling and fraught with controversy.

一部关于AlphaGo的纪录片定于4月21日在纽约翠贝卡电影节首映。该部纪录片由格雷格执导，演员表有李世石，樊麾，黄士杰，哈萨比斯和席尔瓦。影片时长90分钟。这部电影全方位展示了人机大战的过程，更尽可能多的揭示了人类思维的工作方式和人工智能未来的工作方式。

[内容简介]
●《技术的本质》（经典版）是布莱恩•阿瑟所创建的一套关于技术产生和进化的系统性理论。
●本书是打开“技术黑箱”的钥匙，它用平实的语言将技术本质的思想娓娓道来。
●构建了关于技术的理论体系，阐明了技术的本质及其进化机制。
●技术思想领域的开创性作品。
[编辑推荐]
●湛庐文化圣塔菲书系著作！
●复杂性科学奠基人、首屈一指的技术思想家、“熊彼特奖”得主布莱恩•阿瑟作品！
●谷歌Java程序开发的灵感源泉！
●技术理论体系的先河之作，前所未有的关于技术产生和进化的系统性理论！
●一次打开“技术黑箱”的尝试性创新探索！
●技术思想大师用平实的语言向大众讲述技术前沿思想

Journalist, tech blogger and director of The Centre For The Analysis Of Social Media Jamie Bartlett - author of several books on technology and politics - explores the reality behind Silicon Valley's glittering promise to build a better world.

Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperiled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialize on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection—a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being coopted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success.
Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science—from Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stuart Brand and the hippie origins of today’s Silicon Valley—Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide.
At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today’s corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They’re monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.

dward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.
In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.
Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online—a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

制作公司三橙传媒耗资百万，横跨四大洲，先后赴往中国、美国、加拿大、墨西哥、日本、瑞士、法国、澳大利亚等十余个国家和地区，走访了世界范围内的数十家区块链领军机构，打造了世界首部关注区块链技术的系列纪录片。
纪录片受访者包括了比特大陆CEO吴忌寒、以太坊创始人V神、比特币早期投资人Roger Ver、比特币早期开发者Jeff Garzik、Blockstream的CSO缪永权、风投届风云人物Tim Draper、数学经济之父Don Tapscott、行业争议人士Charlie Shrem等上百位意见领袖，堪称是区块链行业前所未有的全明星阵容。
纪录片团队在超过1000个小时的素材中精剪制作了这部六集系列纪录片，第一次以最直观的方式梳理了过去10年中影响着区块链行业发展变革的重要事件。从饱受争议的比特币，到区块链社区纷争；从日益兴起的智能合约、区块链概念下的“价值互联网体系”，乃至新科技掀起的泡沫骗局……
关于区块链技术的前世今生和价值反思，都能在这部纪录片系列中找到答案。

"What does AI mean for your business? Read this book to find out." -- Hal Varian, Chief Economist, Google
Artificial intelligence does the seemingly impossible, magically bringing machines to life--driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI will bring can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many analysts either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future.
But in Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this single, masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and show how basic tools from economics provide clarity about the AI revolution and a basis for action by CEOs, managers, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs.
When AI is framed as cheap prediction, its extraordinary potential becomes clear:
- Prediction is at the heart of making decisions under uncertainty. Our businesses and personal lives are riddled with such decisions.
- Prediction tools increase productivity--operating machines, handling documents, communicating with customers.
- Uncertainty constrains strategy. Better prediction creates opportunities for new business structures and strategies to compete.
Penetrating, fun, and always insightful and practical, Prediction Machines follows its inescapable logic to explain how to navigate the changes on the horizon. The impact of AI will be profound, but the economic framework for understanding it is surprisingly simple.

当原本欣欣向荣，充满希望和憧憬的年轻生命，突然遭遇无情的厄运时，他该如何接受和面对这一残酷的现实？作者用自己的亲身经历，记录下了这场蓬勃而感人的命运反击战。他是不幸的，刚走出校园，准备接受向往的offer，就被确诊了再生障碍性贫血，被命运无情推向深渊。
但他又是幸运的，在与残酷疾病作战的过程中，他收获了亲情、友情和四面八方的关爱，即便在最绝望的治疗过程中，也总有温暖的光托扶着他，给他勇敢向前的力量，并最终找到希望和出路。
我们无法阻挡厄运的脚步，但没有任何东西可以夺走勇气和决心，更何况还有人心的温暖。