The Clock Of The Long Now

Download or read book The Clock Of The Long Now written by Stewart Brand and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the designing and building of the Clock of the Long Now as a framework, this is a book about the practical use of long time perspective: how to get it, how to use it, how to keep it in and out of sight. Here are the central questions it inspires: How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare? Discipline in thought allows freedom. One needs the space and reliability to predict continuity to have the confidence not to be afraid of revolutions Taking the time to think of the future is more essential now than ever, as culture accelerates beyond its ability to be measured Probable things are vastly outnumbered by countless near-impossible eventualities. Reality is statistically forced to be extraordinary; fiction is not allowed this freedom This is a potent book that combines the chronicling of fantastic technology with equally visionary philosophical inquiry.

Download or read book On the Clock written by Emily Guendelsberger and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nickel and Dimed for the Amazon age," (Salon) the bitingly funny, eye-opening story of finding work in the automated and time-starved world of hourly low-wage labor After the local newspaper where she worked as a reporter closed, Emily Guendelsberger took a pre-Christmas job at an Amazon fulfillment center outside Louisville, Kentucky. There, the vending machines were stocked with painkillers, and the staff turnover was dizzying. In the new year, she travelled to North Carolina to work at a call center, a place where even bathroom breaks were timed to the second. And finally, Guendelsberger was hired at a San Francisco McDonald's, narrowly escaping revenge-seeking customers who pelted her with condiments. Across three jobs, and in three different parts of the country, Guendelsberger directly took part in the revolution changing the U.S. workplace. Offering an up-close portrait of America's actual "essential workers," On the Clock examines the broken social safety net as well as an economy that has purposely had all the slack drained out and converted to profit. Until robots pack boxes, resolve billing issues, and make fast food, human beings supervised by AI will continue to get the job done. Guendelsberger shows us how workers went from being the most expensive element of production to the cheapest - and how low wage jobs have been remade to serve the ideals of efficiency, at the cost of humanity. On the Clock explores the lengths that half of Americans will go to in order to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the modern workplace, but also surprising solutions to make work more humane for millions of Americans.

Download or read book The Science of Time 2016 written by Elisa Felicitas Arias and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The uses of time in astronomy - from pointing telescopes, coordinating and processing observations, predicting ephemerides, cultures, religious practices, history, businesses, determining Earth orientation, analyzing time-series data and in many other ways - represent a broad sample of how time is used throughout human society and in space. Time and its reciprocal, frequency, is the most accurately measurable quantity and often an important path to the frontiers of science. But the future of timekeeping is changing with the development of optical frequency standards and the resulting challenges of distributing time at ever higher precision, with the possibility of timescales based on pulsars, and with the inclusion of higher-order relativistic effects. The definition of the second will likely be changed before the end of this decade, and its realization will increase in accuracy; the definition of the day is no longer obvious. The variability of the Earth's rotation presents challenges of understanding and prediction. In this symposium speakers took a closer look at time in astronomy, other sciences, cultures, and business as a defining element of modern civilization. The symposium aimed to set the stage for future timekeeping standards, infrastructure, and engineering best practices for astronomers and the broader society. At the same time the program was cognizant of the rich history from Harrison's chronometer to today's atomic clocks and pulsar observations. The theoreticians and engineers of time were brought together with the educators and historians of science, enriching the understanding of time among both experts and the public.

Download or read book About Time written by David Rooney and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best History Books of 2021 A captivating, surprising history of timekeeping and how it has shaped our world. For thousands of years, people of all cultures have made and used clocks, from the city sundials of ancient Rome to the medieval water clocks of imperial China, hourglasses fomenting revolution in the Middle Ages, the Stock Exchange clock of Amsterdam in 1611, Enlightenment observatories in India, and the high-precision clocks circling the Earth on a fleet of GPS satellites that have been launched since 1978. Clocks have helped us navigate the world and build empires, and have even taken us to the brink of destruction. Elites have used them to wield power, make money, govern citizens, and control lives—and sometimes the people have used them to fight back. Through the stories of twelve clocks, About Time brings pivotal moments from the past vividly to life. Historian and lifelong clock enthusiast David Rooney takes us from the unveiling of al-Jazari’s castle clock in 1206, in present-day Turkey; to the Cape of Good Hope observatory at the southern tip of Africa, where nineteenth-century British government astronomers moved the gears of empire with a time ball and a gun; to the burial of a plutonium clock now sealed beneath a public park in Osaka, where it will keep time for 5,000 years. Rooney shows, through these artifacts, how time has been imagined, politicized, and weaponized over the centuries—and how it might bring peace. Ultimately, he writes, the technical history of horology is only the start of the story. A history of clocks is a history of civilization.

Download or read book The Clock of Ages written by John J. Medina and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-08-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who has watched a wrinkle slowly gouge their face like a strip mine, or has been disturbed by a loss of memory, has uncomfortably confronted the human ageing process. The inexorable march of time on our bodies begs an important question: why do we have to grow old? Written in everyday language, The Clock of Ages takes us on a tour of the ageing human body - all from a research scientist's point of view. From the deliberate creation of organisms that live three times their natural span to the isolation of human genes that may allow us to do the same, The Clock of Ages also examines the latest discoveries in geriatric genetics. Sprinkled throughout the pages are descriptions of the aging of many historical figures, such as Florence Nightingale, Jane Austen, Bonaparte and Casanova. These stories underscore the common bond that unites us all: they aged, even as we do. The Clock of Ages tells you why.

Download or read book The House With a Clock In Its Walls written by John Bellairs and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-08-03 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A haunting gothic tale by master mysery writer John Bellairs--soon to be a major motion picture starring Cate Blanchett and Jack Black! "The House With a Clock in Its Walls will cast its spell for a long time."--The New York Times Book Review When Lewis Barnavelt, an orphan. comes to stay with his uncle Jonathan, he expects to meet an ordinary person. But he is wrong. Uncle Jonathan and his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmermann, are both magicians! Lewis is thrilled. At first, watchng magic is enough. Then Lewis experiments with magic himself and unknowingly resurrects the former owner of the house: a woman named Selenna Izard. It seems that Selenna and her husband built a timepiece into the walls--a clock that could obliterate humankind. And only the Barnavelts can stop it!

Download or read book The Clock Without a Face written by Scott Teplin and published by McSweeneys Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve emerald-studded numbers have been stolen, so readers are asked to search the detailed illustrations of the 13 floors of Ternky Tower for clues hidden among the puzzles that show who and how.