| Every since the fl int axe triggered the Paleolithic Revolution over two million years ago we have lived by a culture of scarcity. Technology shortfall placed innovative capability in the hands of only a few: those who provided their hunter - gatherer communities with tools for hunting and butchering; then those who could read and write; then, much later, the small number adept in the mysteries of science. For most of history the vast majority of the community, illiterate and uneducated, were excluded.
As time passed, institutions emerged in response to the requirements generated by innovation. The organizational demands of the Paleolithic hunt shaped our top – down command structures. The Agricultural Revolution of ten thousand years ago provisioned the fi rst cities and triggered the emergence of our legal and political systems. The printing press established our national languages and created the modern state. The 19th century Industrial Revolution introduced our fi rst grade schools to train farmhands for the factory.
Every social institution in the modern world was set up in the past, with the limited tools of the past, in order to solve the problems of the past. Few of these institutions will survive what lies ahead, as the new Information Revolution gathers speed and strength, and drives accelerating rates of innovation faster than the old ways can manage. If we are to prepare for the coming radical social changes, at every level from the personal to the global, we must fi nd ways better to predict, and to organize ourselves accordingly. |
|
|
 Industrial Gas Flaring Practices
This volume tackles for the first time in decades the world's gas flaring practices, a difficult, hot-button issue of our time, whose consequences are only just beginning to be understood. The book examines both the technical and environmental aspects of gas flaring, highlights different flare designs, and presents real-world case studies... | | Stack Frames: A Look From Inside
Teaches you exactly how program memory content and organization is vital for computer security, especially Unix-like operating systems. You will learn how it is manipulated to take control of a computer system, as well as the countermeasures that system designers set up to avoid this. Neither a guide for hackers nor an all-out theory book,... | | Holub on Patterns: Learning Design Patterns by Looking at CodeMost programmers learn by looking at computer programs. This book teaches you design patterns in exactly this way: by looking at computer programs and analyzing them in terms of the patterns that they use. Consequently, you learn how the patterns actually occur in the real world, and how to apply the patterns to solve real problems. This book... |
Hardware and Software, Verification and Testing: Second International Haifa Verification Conference, HVC 2006, Haifa, Israel, October 23-26, 2006This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Second International Haifa Verification Conference, HVC 2006, held in Haifa, Israel, in October 2006.
The 15 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. The papers are organized in three topical... | | TestGoal: Result-Driven TestingSoftware testing is traditionally seen as a difficult and time consuming activity that is hard to embed in the software development process. This book provides a different view. It explains to stakeholders how testing can add value to software development and doing business, and provides the tester with practical information.
TestGoal is not... | | Experimenting with AVR Microcontrollers
AVR is the brain that runs Arduino, but you don't need the whole Arduino board to do fun projects. Experimenting with AVR Microcontrollers, from Practical AVR Microcontrollers, shows you how to create a spiffy set of projects that you can build to learn more about electronics, about AVR, and just to generate new ideas... |
|
