I have been fortunate to have spent the last 40 years of my professional life dealing with new networks and new technology. From the early days of cable television and mobile communications to the development of digital video and the transmission of data over cable lines and satellite. It was a career topped off with the privilege of being the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with regulatory responsibly for approximately 1/6th of the American economy (on which the other 5/6s depended).
I wrote
From Gutenberg to Google: The History of Our Future
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The classic work that predicted the anxieties of a world upended by rapidly emerging technologies—and now provides a road map to solving many of our most pressing crises.
“Explosive . . . brilliantly formulated.” —The Wall Street Journal
Future Shock is the classic that changed our view of tomorrow. Its startling insights into accelerating change led a president to ask his advisers for a special report, inspired composers to write symphonies and rock music, gave a powerful new concept to social science, and added a phrase to our language. Published in over fifty countries, Future…
Microsoft president Brad Smith’s thoughtful book is basically about responsibility in the digital age.
Smith takes an approach that is different from most corporate executive books in that he calls out the threats represented by digital technology his company is built on rather than trying to sugarcoat them.
Then he suggests responsible steps that everyone – individuals, public policy, and companies like his – should take to mitigate those threats.
The New York Times bestseller, now updated with new material on cyber attacks, digital sovereignty, and tech in a pandemic.
From Microsoft's president and one of the tech industry's broadest thinkers, a frank and thoughtful reckoning with how to balance enormous promise and existential risk as the digitization of everything accelerates.
"A colorful and insightful insiders' view of how technology is both empowering and threatening us. From privacy to cyberattacks, this timely book is a useful guide for how to navigate the digital future." -Walter Isaacson
Microsoft president Brad Smith operates by a simple core belief: When your technology changes…
The Curiosity Cycle is a book for parents and educators who want to teach their children to be active explorers of the world. Learning through curiosity leads to adaptive thinking because your child is continually trying to improve his or her understanding of the world, and new facts and ideas…
Tech analyst and investor Azeem Azhar concisely pulls together his take on how the arc of technology has moved from linear to exponential both in its development as well as its impact on society and business.
Azhar brings great insight into how exponential growth – creating an “exponential gap” – has put strains not only on businesses, but also on government and society writ large.
A bold exploration and call-to-arms over the widening gap between AI, automation, and big data—and our ability to deal with its effects
We are living in the first exponential age.
High-tech innovations are created at dazzling speeds; technological forces we barely understand remake our homes and workplaces; centuries-old tenets of politics and economics are upturned by new technologies. It all points to a world that is getting faster at a dizzying pace.
Azeem Azhar, renowned technology analyst and host of the Exponential View podcast, offers a revelatory new model for understanding how…
Columbia Law Professor and recently departed White House
advisor Tim Wu looks at the evolution of the information industry.
While
written in 2011, Master Switch describes the technological and corporate
developments that have brought us to today’s information age and all its
corporate and civil challenges. I love the historical stories he uses and how
they are really not that different from contemporary developments.
The Internet Age: on the face of it, an era of unprecedented freedom in both communication and culture. Yet in the past, each major new medium, from telephone to satellite television, has crested on a wave of similar idealistic optimism, before succumbing to the inevitable undertow of industrial consolidation. Every once free and open technology has, in time, become centralized and closed; as corporate power has taken control of the 'master switch.' Today a similar struggle looms over the Internet, and as it increasingly supersedes all other media the stakes have never been higher.
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
At a time when new technology has delivered us to a world of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, we have lost our shared understanding of just what facts and truth are.
Jonathan Rauch helps us recall the importance of facts and truth to the liberal democratic process. He challenges us to reinstate knowledge and truth.
Arming Americans to defend the truth from today's war on facts.
Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.
In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood…
In today’s era of rapid change, it is easy to think that the current revolutions - which new technology has changed communications, business, and daily life - are unprecedented. The reality is that new technologies have always introduced confusion, uncertainty, and fear into both commerce and culture. Today’s changes may involve new technology and be happening faster than ever, but we have been here before. The stories of those experiences are important to understanding today and tomorrow.
Author Tom Wheeler is the former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and technology entrepreneur. He brings to his work the experience of dealing with the changes imposed by new technology as a businessman, regulator, and historian to put today’s and tomorrow’s tech-driven challenges in perspective.
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…
Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration
By
Mark Doherty,
I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted repartee…
