This unique book offers a comprehensive and integrated introduction to the five fundamental elements of life and society: energy, information, feedback, adaptation, and self-organization. It is divided into two parts. Part I is concerned with energy (definition, history, energy types, energy sources, environmental impact); thermodynamics (laws, entropy definitions, energy, branches of thermodynamics, entropy interpretations, arrow of time); information (communication and transmission, modulation–demodulation, coding–decoding, information theory, information technology, information science, information systems); feedback control (history, classical methodologies, modern methodologies); adaptation (definition, mechanisms, measurement, complex adaptive systems, complexity, emergence); and self-organization (definitions/opinions, self-organized criticality, cybernetics, self-organization in complex adaptive systems, examples in nature).

 

In turn, Part II studies the roles, impacts, and applications of the five above-mentioned elements in life and society, namely energy (biochemical energy pathways, energy flows through food chains, evolution of energy resources, energy and economy); information (information in biology, biocomputation, information technology in office automation, power generation/distribution, manufacturing, business, transportation), feedback (temperature, water, sugar and hydrogen ion regulation, autocatalysis, biological modeling, control of hard/technological and soft/managerial systems), adaptation and self-organization (ecosystems, climate change, stock market, knowledge management, man-made self-organized controllers, traffic lights control).

 

Energy, Information, Feedback, Adaptation, and Self-organization
The Fundamental Elements of Life and Society
Spyros G Tzafestas

Source: link.springer.com

This eTextbook contains the system-scientific contents taught at the Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research (SIS) at the University of Graz

 

Organically farmed by Manfred Füllsack

Source: systems-sciences.uni-graz.at

This book uncovers mathematical structures underlying natural intelligence and applies category theory as a modeling language for understanding human cognition, giving readers new insights into the nature of human thought. In this context, the book explores various topics and questions, such as the human representation of the number system, why our counting ability is different from that which is evident among non-human organisms, and why the idea of zero is so difficult to grasp.
The book is organized into three parts: the first introduces the general reason for studying general structures underlying the human mind; the second part introduces category theory as a modeling language and use it for exposing the deep and fascinating structures underlying human cognition; and the third applies the general principles and ideas of the first two parts to reaching a better understanding of challenging aspects of the human mind such as our understanding of the number system, the metaphorical nature of our thinking and the logic of our unconscious dynamics.

 

Mathematical Structures of Natural Intelligence
Neuman, Yair

Springer

Source: www.springer.com

How will Artificial Intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology—and there’s nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who’s helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.
 
How can we grow our prosperity through automation without leaving people lacking income or purpose? What career advice should we give today’s kids? How can we make future AI systems more robust, so that they do what we want without crashing, malfunctioning or getting hacked? Should we fear an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons? Will machines eventually outsmart us at all tasks, replacing humans on the job market and perhaps altogether? Will AI help life flourish like never before or give us more power than we can handle?
 
What sort of future do you want? This book empowers you to join what may be the most important conversation of our time. It doesn’t shy away from the full range of viewpoints or from the most controversial issues—from superintelligence to meaning, consciousness and the ultimate physical limits on life in the cosmos.

Source: www.amazon.com

In their second collaboration, biographers Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman present the story of Claude Shannon—one of the foremost intellects of the twentieth century and the architect of the Information Age, whose insights stand behind every computer built, email sent, video streamed, and webpage loaded. Claude Shannon was a groundbreaking polymath, a brilliant tinkerer, and a digital pioneer. He constructed the first wearable computer, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots. He also wrote the seminal text of the digital revolution, which has been called “the Magna Carta of the Information Age.” In this elegantly written, exhaustively researched biography, Soni and Goodman reveal Claude Shannon’s full story for the first time. With unique access to Shannon’s family and friends, A Mind at Play brings this singular innovator and always playful genius to life.

Source: www.amazon.com