Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots by John Markoff


English | 2015 | ISBN: 0062266683 | 400 pages | PDF | 1,2 MB

As robots are increasingly integrated into modern society—on the battlefield and the road, in business, education, and health—Pulitzer-Prize-winning New York Times science writer John Markoff searches for an answer to one of the most important questions of our age: will these machines help us, or will they replace us?




In the past decade alone, Google introduced us to driverless cars, Apple debuted a personal assistant that we keep in our pockets, and an Internet of Things connected the smaller tasks of everyday life to the farthest reaches of the internet. There is little doubt that robots are now an integral part of society, and cheap sensors and powerful computers will ensure that, in the coming years, these robots will soon act on their own. This new era offers the promise of immense computing power, but it also reframes a question first raised more than half a century ago, at the birth of the intelligent machine: Will we control these systems, or will they control us?




In Machines of Loving Grace, New York Times reporter John Markoff, the first reporter to cover the World Wide Web, offers a sweeping history of the complicated and evolving relationship between humans and computers. Over the recent years, the pace of technological change has accelerated dramatically, reintroducing this difficult ethical quandary with newer and far weightier consequences. As Markoff chronicles the history of automation, from the birth of the artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation communities in the 1950s, to the modern day brain trusts at Google and Apple in Silicon Valley, and on to the expanding tech corridor between Boston and New York, he traces the different ways developers have addressed this fundamental problem and urges them to carefully consider the consequences of their work.




We are on the verge of a technological revolution, Markoff argues, and robots will profoundly transform the way our lives are organized. Developers must now draw a bright line between what is human and what is machine, or risk upsetting the delicate balance between them.

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Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice, Revised Edition

Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning Toward Social Justice, Revised Edition (Reconstructing the Public Sphere in Curriculum Studies) by Kevin K. Kumashiro


English | June 25, 2009 | ISBN: 0415802229, 0415802210 | 180 Pages | PDF | 1 MB

The phrase "teaching for social justice" is often used, but not always explained. What does it really mean to teach for social justice? What are the implications for anti-oppressive teaching across different areas of the curriculum? Drawing on his own experiences teaching diverse grades and subjects, Kevin Kumashiro examines various aspects of anti-oppressive teaching and learning in six different subject areas. Connecting practice to theory through new pedagogical elements, the revised edition of this bestselling text features:




A new and timely preface that considers the possibilities of anti-oppressive teaching and teaching for social justice in the face of increasing pressure from both the Right and the Left to accept neoliberal school reform policies.


End of chapter questions that enhance comprehension of arguments, help concretize abstract ideas into classroom practice, and encourage critique.


A sampling of print and online resources that will inspire students to further their social justice education


The new pedagogical components of the revised edition will offer K-12 teachers and teacher educators the tools they need to teach against their common sense assumptions and continue the evolution of social justice in education.

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Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron

Lives in Common: Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Hebron by Menachem Klein


English | 2014 | ISBN: 0199396264 | 256 pages | PDF | 1,2 MB

Most books dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict see events through the eyes of policy-makers, generals or diplomats. Menachem Klein offers an illuminating alternative by telling the intertwined histories, from street level upwards, of three cities-Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Hebron-and their intermingled Jewish, Muslim and Christian inhabitants, from the nineteenth century to the present. Each of them was and still is a mixed city. Jerusalem and Hebron are holy places, while Jaffa till 1948 was Palestine"s principal city and main port of entry. Klein portrays a society in the late Ottoman period in which Jewish-Arab interactions were intense, frequent, and meaningful, before the onset of segregation and separation gradually occurred in the Mandate era. The unequal power relations and increasing violence between Jews and Arabs from 1948 onwards are also scrutinised. Throughout, Klein bases his writing not on the official record but rather on a hitherto hidden private world of Jewish-Arab encounters, including marriages and squabbles, kindnesses and cruelties, as set out in dozens of memoirs, diaries, biographies and testimonies. Lives in Common brings together the voices of Jews and Arabs in a mosaic of fascinating stories, of lived experiences and of the major personalities that shaped them over the last 150 years.


Most books dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict see events through the eyes of policy-makers, generals or diplomats. Menachem Klein offers an illuminating alternative by telling the intertwined histories, from street level upwards, of three cities-Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Hebron-and their intermingled Jewish, Muslim and Christian inhabitants, from the nineteenth century to the present. Each of them was and still is a mixed city. Jerusalem and Hebron are holy places, while Jaffa till 1948 was Palestine"s principal city and main port of entry. Klein portrays a society in the late Ottoman period in which Jewish-Arab interactions were intense, frequent, and meaningful, before the onset of segregation and separation gradually occurred in the Mandate era. The unequal power relations and increasing violence between Jews and Arabs from 1948 onwards are also scrutinised. Throughout, Klein bases his writing not on the official record but rather on a hitherto hidden private world of Jewish-Arab encounters, including marriages and squabbles, kindnesses and cruelties, as set out in dozens of memoirs, diaries, biographies and testimonies. Lives in Common brings together the voices of Jews and Arabs in a mosaic of fascinating stories, of lived experiences and of the major personalities that shaped them over the last 150 years.

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