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At a loss for words : conversation in the age of rage / by Off, Carol,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Award-winning author and broadcast journalist Carol Off digs deep into six words whose meanings have been distorted and weaponized in recent years -- including democracy, freedom and truth -- and asks whether we can reclaim their value. As co-host of CBC Radio's As It Happens, Carol Off spent a decade and a half talking to people in the news five nights a week. On top of her stellar writing and reporting career, those 25,000 interviews have given her a unique vantage point on the crucial subject at the heart of her new book -- how, in these polarizing years, words that used to define civil society and social justice are being put to work for a completely different political agenda. Or they are being bleached of their meaning as the values they represent are mocked and distorted. As Off writes, "If our language doesn't have a means to express an idea, then the idea itself is gone -- even the range of thought is diminished." And, as she argues, that's a dangerous loss. In six, wide-ranging chapters, Off explores the mutating meanings and the changing political impact of her six chosen words -- freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes -- unpacking the forces, from right and left, that have altered them beyond recognition. She also shows what happens when we lose our shared political vocabulary: we stop being able to hear each other, let alone speak with each other in meaningful ways. This means we stop being able to reckon with the complexity of the crises we face, leaving us prey to conspiracy theories, autocrats and the machinations of greed. At a Loss for Words is both an elegy and a call to arms."--
Subjects: Interpersonal communication.; Miscommunication.; Semantics.;
Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1
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The Coming Wave Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma [electronic resource] : by Suleyman, Mustafa.aut; Bhaskar, Michael.; cloudLibrary;
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance—from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind “A fascinating, well-written, and important book.”—Yuval Noah Harari “Essential reading.”—Daniel Kahneman “An excellent guide for navigating unprecedented times.”—Bill Gates A Best Book of the Year: CNN, Economist, Bloomberg, Politico Playbook, Financial Times, The Guardian, CEO Magazine, Semafor • Winner of the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award • Finalist for the Porchlight Business Book Award and the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change.    Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.    None of us are prepared.   As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.    In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side, the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other.    Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?   This groundbreaking book from the ultimate AI insider establishes “the containment problem”—the task of maintaining control over powerful technologies—as the essential challenge of our age.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Future Studies; Intelligence (AI) & Semantics; Social Aspects;
© 2023., Crown,
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Starlings / by Linsmeier, Amanda,author.;
When seventeen-year-old Kit visits her father's hometown for the first time following his death, she not only discovers that her family is strangely revered among the locals, but that she also has an important role in the town's future.014+.Decoding demand: 96 (very high)HL630L.
Subjects: Horror fiction.; Young adult fiction.; Novels.; City and town life; Cities and towns; Families; Secrecy; Teenage girls; City and town life; Cities and towns; Family life; Families; Secrets; Teenage girls;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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