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- Urban jungle : the history and future of nature in the city / by Wilson, Ben,1980-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In this exhilarating look at cities, past and future, Ben Wilson proposes that, in our world of rising seas and threatening weather, the natural world may prove the city's savior. Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but quite artificial parks. In Urban Jungle, Ben Wilson--the author of Metropolis, a seven-thousand-year history of cities that the Wall Street Journal called "a towering achievement"--looks to the fraught relationship between nature and the city for clues to how the planet can survive in an age of climate crisis. Whether it was the market farmers of Paris, Germans in medieval forest cities, or the Aztecs in the floating city of Tenochtitlan, pre-modern humans had an essential bond with nature. But when the day came that water was piped in and food flown from distant fields, that relationship was lost. Today, urban areas are the fastest-growing habitat on Earth and in Urban Jungle Ben Wilson finds that we are at last acknowledging that human engineering is not enough to protect us from extremes of weather. He takes us to places where efforts to rewild the city are under way: to Los Angeles, where the city's concrete river will run blue again, to New York City, where a bleak landfill will be a vast grassland preserve. The pinnacle of this strategy will be Amsterdam: a city that is its own ecosystem, that makes no waste and produces its own energy. In many cities, Wilson finds, nature is already thriving. Koalas are settling in Brisbane, wild boar may raid your picnic in Berlin. Green canopies, wildflowers, wildlife: the things that will help cities survive, he notes, also make people happy. Urban Jungle offers the pleasures of history--how backyard gardens spread exotic species all over the world, how war produces biodiversity--alongside a fantastic vision of the lush green cities of our future. Climate change, Ben Wilson believes, is only the latest chapter in the dramatic human story of nature and the city"--- Subjects: Climatic changes.; Urban ecology (Biology); Urban ecology (Sociology);
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Moonbound : the last book of the Anth / by Sloan, Robin,1979-author.;
"Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure. In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what's next. It is eleven thousand years from now ... A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard's rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history--and becomes both Ariel's greatest ally and the narrator of our story."--- Subjects: Science fiction.; Novels.; Artificial intelligence; Dragons; Imaginary places; Quests (Expeditions); Wizards;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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- Moonbound A Novel [electronic resource] : by Sloan, Robin.aut; cloudLibrary;
Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure. In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what’s next. It is eleven thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history—and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story. Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.General adult.- Subjects: Electronic books.; Action & Adventure; Literary; Epic;
- © 2024., Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
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- Futureproof : 9 rules for humans in the age of automation / by Roose, Kevin,author.;
Includes bibliographical references."The machines are here. After decades of sci-fi doomsaying and marketing hype, advanced A.I. and automation technologies have leapt out of research labs and Silicon Valley engineering departments and into the center of our lives. Robots once primarily threatened blue-collar manufacturing jobs, but today's machines are being trained to do the work of lawyers, doctors, investment bankers, and other white-collar jobs previously considered safe from automation's reach. The world's biggest corporations are racing to automate jobs, and some experts predict that A.I could put millions of people out of work. Meanwhile, runaway algorithms have already changed the news we see, the politicians we elect, and the ways we interact with each other. But all is not lost. With a little effort, we can become futureproof. In Futureproof: 9 Rules for Machine-Age Humans, New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose lays out an optimistic vision of how people can thrive in the machine age by rethinking their relationship with technology, and making themselves irreplaceably human. In nine pragmatic, accessible lessons, Roose draws on interviews with leading technologists, trips to the A.I. frontier, and centuries' worth of history to prepare readers to live, work, and thrive in the coming age of intelligent machines. He shares the secrets of people and organizations that have successfully survived technological change, including a 19th-century rope-maker and a Japanese auto worker, and explains how people, organizations, and communities can apply their lessons to safeguard their own futures. The lessons include : Do work that is surprising, social, and scarce (the types of work machines can't do), break your phone addiction with the help of a rubber band, work in an office, treat A.I. like the office gorilla, resist "hustle porn" and efficiency culture and do less, slower Roose's examination of the future rejects the conventional wisdom that in order to compete with machines, we have to become more like them--hyper-efficient, data-driven, code-writing workhorses. Instead, he says, we should let machines be machines, and focus on doing the kinds of creative, inspiring, and meaningful work only humans can do"--- Subjects: Artificial intelligence; Computers and civilization.; Success in business.; Automation;
- Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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