Because it made possible rapid movement and shipping across large distances, joining far-off towns to economic and cultural capitals, many people who lived in the early 19th century regarded the railroad as an instrument of progress. Because anyone with the price of a ticket could board a train, regardless of social class, the railroad was also seen as a democratizing technology.

A powerful investigative look at data-based discrimination―and how technology affects civil and human rights and economic equity
The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years―because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In Los Angeles, an algorithm calculates the comparative vulnerability of tens of thousands of homeless people in order to prioritize them for an inadequate pool of housing resources. In Pittsburgh, a child welfare agency uses a statistical model to try to predict which children might be future victims of abuse or neglect.
Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, employment, politics, health and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems―rather than humans―control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor.
In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America. The book is full of heart-wrenching and eye-opening stories, from a woman in Indiana whose benefits are literally cut off as she lays dying to a family in Pennsylvania in daily fear of losing their daughter because they fit a certain statistical profile.
The U.S. has always used its most cutting-edge science and technology to contain, investigate, discipline and punish the destitute. Like the county poorhouse and scientific charity before them, digital tracking and automated decision-making hide poverty from the middle-class public and give the nation the ethical distance it needs to make inhumane choices: which families get food and which starve, who has housing and who remains homeless, and which families are broken up by the state. In the process, they weaken democracy and betray our most cherished national values.
This deeply researched and passionate book could not be more timely.

An engaging introduction to vectors and matrices and the algorithms that operate on them, intended for the student who knows how to program. Mathematical concepts and computational problems are motivated by applications in computer science. The reader learns by doing, writing programs to implement the mathematical concepts and using them to carry out tasks and explore the applications. Examples include: error-correcting codes, transformations in graphics, face detection, encryption and secret-sharing, integer factoring, removing perspective from an image, PageRank (Google's ranking algorithm), and cancer detection from cell features. A companion web site,
codingthematrix.com
provides data and support code. Most of the assignments can be auto-graded online. Over two hundred illustrations, including a selection of relevant xkcd comics.

“I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow.” This inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity.
In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it “globalization,” but the author places it in its larger context: a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism’s global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network.
Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It’s the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity’s great potential.

Appropriate for upper-division undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in computer vision found in departments of Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering. This long anticipated book is the most complete treatment of modern computer vision methods by two of the leading authorities in the field. This accessible presentation gives both a general view of the entire computer vision enterprise and also offers sufficient detail for students to be able to build useful applications. Students will learn techniques that have proven to be useful by first-hand experience and a wide range of mathematical methods.

Designed for students, scientists and engineers interested in learning about the core ideas of vision science, this volume brings together the broad range of data and theory accumulated in this field. The book consists of three sections and an appendix. The first section consists of an introduction and three chapters that describe image encoding. These chapters review optical image formation by the cornea and lens retinal sampling and wavelength-encoding by the photoreceptors. The text's second section consists of four chapters on image representation. The third section reviews how to interpret images in terms of objects. This section features two chapters that review computational and experimental studies of colour appearance, then motion and depth. These chapters are followed by a chapter with many demonstrations concerning object perception. Topics such as colour appearance, cortical colour-blindness, motion flow, motion appearance, motion physiology and visual illusions are also included in this part of the book. "Foundations of Science" is suitable for courses on vision science in psychology, neuroscience, engineering or computer science departments, and is suitable for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The text contains special study exercises at the end of most chapters. The questions aim to enrich the main material and point the way to additional material in the literature. Finally, the book has an appendix consisting of four parts: an introduction to linear systems methods; a discussion of monitor calibration; an introduction to Bayesian classifiers; and a discussion of optic flow computation.

For six hundred years, the nations of Europe and North America have periodically attempted to coerce, invade, or conquer other societies. They have relied on their superior technology to do so, yet these technologies have not always guaranteed success. "Power over Peoples" examines Western imperialism's complex relationship with technology, from the first Portuguese ships that ventured down the coast of Africa in the 1430s to America's conflicts in the Middle East today. Why did the sailing vessels that gave the Portuguese a century-long advantage in the Indian Ocean fail to overcome Muslim galleys in the Red Sea? Why were the same weapons and methods that the Spanish used to conquer Mexico and Peru ineffective in Chile and Africa? Why didn't America's overwhelming air power assure success in Iraq and Afghanistan? In "Power over Peoples", Daniel Headrick traces the evolution of Western technologies - from muskets and galleons to jet planes and smart bombs - and sheds light on the environmental and social factors that have brought victory in some cases and unforeseen defeat in others. He shows how superior technology translates into greater power over nature and sometimes even other people, yet how technological superiority is no guarantee of success in imperialist ventures - because the technology only delivers results in a specific environment, or because the society being attacked responds in unexpected ways. Breathtaking in scope, "Power over Peoples" is a revealing history of technological innovation, its promise and limitations, and its central role in the rise and fall of empire.

Learn how to program expertly with C++ with this practical book from Scott Meyers, one of the world's foremost authorities on this systems programming language. Scott Meyers takes some of the most difficult pieces of C++ code and unfurls them so that you can see how to manipulate your own project code. This is the first book to contain content written with the C++14 standard.
Tackle 42 separate C++ problems and solutions
Learn critical techniques for success on topics from smart pointers to lambda expressions
Understand key concepts by taking the C++ 98 standard to C++ 11 and then to C++ 14

This is by far the best thing I've ever read about negotiation. It is equally relevant for the individual who would like to keep his friends, property, and income and the statesman who would like to keep the peace. --John Kenneth Galbraith.

Let's face it. In this chaotic world of teams, matrix management, and horizontal organizations, it's tougher than ever to get things done. How do you lead when you're not the one in charge? How can you be effective when joint action is needed? You need an edge in order to reach solutions and effectively work with others.

在十九世纪，号称日不落帝国的英国拥有了无可争议的海上统治权，然而，这一支规模空前的海上力量逐渐被美国所取代，一些同样企图以对抗形式攫取海上霸权的其他力量却遭遇衰败。这对于二十一世纪的现在依然有着耐人寻味的启示。本书以十九到二十世纪各国海权发展之路作眼，对于美国如果一步一步走向海权大国的历程加以考察和分析，寻求对于当今中国的启示。

This book was designed not only for owners and managers of middle market businesses but as a training text for middle market M&A investment bankers and consultants. It discusses the art and science of middle market M&A as well the all-important psychology and behind-the-scenes negotiations pursued with a particular emphasis on obtaining the absolute highest value when selling a business. Subjects addressed include valuation, taxation, negotiations, M&A conventions, among many others from the buy-side and sell-side perspectives. Subtitled “Tales of A Deal Junkie,” this serious but occasionally irreverent book tells it like it is, including anecdotes to provide a “feel” for what really goes on in middle market transactions. The author, a former practicing CPA and a business valuation expert, is a veteran M&A investment banker with years of real life experience. He also is a widely-acclaimed instructor in the M&A field and a nationally-respected practitioner who has trained thousands of investment bankers. No comparable book on the market today provides this degree of comprehensive and invaluable insight.

In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen?
In this major new account of the causes of this “First Dark Ages,” Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires and globalized peoples of the Late Bronze Age and shows that it was their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries.
A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age—and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.

Histories of German philosophy in the nineteenth century typically focus on its first half--when Hegel, idealism, and Romanticism dominated. By contrast, the remainder of the century, after Hegel's death, has been relatively neglected because it has been seen as a period of stagnation and decline. But Frederick Beiser argues that the second half of the century was in fact one of the most revolutionary periods in modern philosophy because the nature of philosophy itself was up for grabs and the very absence of certainty led to creativity and the start of a new era. In this innovative concise history of German philosophy from 1840 to 1900, Beiser focuses not on themes or individual thinkers but rather on the period's five great debates: the identity crisis of philosophy, the materialism controversy, the methods and limits of history, the pessimism controversy, and the Ignorabimusstreit. Schopenhauer and Wilhelm Dilthey play important roles in these controversies but so do many neglected figures, including Ludwig Büchner, Eugen Dühring, Eduard von Hartmann, Julius Fraunstaedt, Hermann Lotze, Adolf Trendelenburg, and two women, Agnes Taubert and Olga Pluemacher, who have been completely forgotten in histories of philosophy. The result is a wide-ranging, original, and surprising new account of German philosophy in the critical period between Hegel and the twentieth century.