A Rough Ride to the Future

Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1468311603
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
The great scientific visionary of our age presents a radical vision of humanity’s future as the thinking brain of our Earth-system. A Rough Ride to the Future introduces two new Lovelockian ideas. The first is that three hundred years ago, when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, he was unknowingly beginning what James Lovelock calls “accelerated evolution.” That is a process that is bringing about change on our planet roughly a million times faster than Darwinian evolution. The second idea is that as part of this process, humanity has the capacity to become the intelligent part of Gaia, the self-regulating earth system whose discovery Lovelock first announced nearly fifty years ago. A Rough Ride to theFuture is also an intellectual autobiography, in which Lovelock reflects on his life as a lone scientist and asks—eloquently—whether his career trajectory is possible in an age of increased bureaucratization. We are now changing the atmosphere again, and Lovelock argues that there is little that can be done about this. But instead of feeling guilty, we should recognize what is happening, prepare for change, and ensure that we survive as a species so we can contribute to—perhaps even guide—the next evolution of Gaia. The road will be rough, but if we are smart enough, life will continue on earth in some form far into the future. Praise for A Rought Ride to the Future “Arresting and disturbing . . . Lovelock writes wonderfully well. With the authority of age, his voice is that of an elder statesman . . . The result is mellifluous and fluent.” —Nature “Though the subject matter could scarcely be more discouraging, Lovelock’s fluent prose and vast range of knowledge make it a surprisingly easy read. . . . His writing has enormous warmth and vitality.” —Financial Times “The most important book for me this year . . . Lovelock is the most prescient of scientists. . . . He has given us a handbook for human survival.” —John Gray, The Guardian “Not simply another look at Mother Nature’s uncertain future, but a revealing glimpse at the life of an outspoken and accomplished man of ideas.” —Publishers Weekly

The Social Life of Books

Author: Abigail Williams
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300228104
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
“A lively survey…her research and insights make us conscious of how we, today, use books.”—John Sutherland, The New York Times Book Review Two centuries before the advent of radio, television, and motion pictures, books were a cherished form of popular entertainment and an integral component of domestic social life. In this fascinating and vivid history, Abigail Williams explores the ways in which shared reading shaped the lives and literary culture of the eighteenth century, offering new perspectives on how books have been used by their readers, and the part they have played in middle-class homes and families. Drawing on marginalia, letters and diaries, library catalogues, elocution manuals, subscription lists, and more, Williams offers fresh and fascinating insights into reading, performance, and the history of middle-class home life. “Williams’s charming pageant of anecdotes…conjures a world strikingly different from our own but surprisingly similar in many ways, a time when reading was on the rise and whole worlds sprang up around it.”—TheWashington Post

Rough Ride: A Chaos Novella

Author: Kristen Ashley
Publisher: Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated
ISBN: 1945920920
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description

Cowgirl Up and Ride

Author: Lorelei James
Publisher: Ridgeview Publishing
ISBN: 9781941869918
Category : Man-woman relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
For years, goody-two boots AJ Foster wished her dream man Cord McKay would see her beyond the girl in pigtails. Now that she's old enough to stake her claim on him, she challenges the cowboy to teach her how to ride-- and she doesn't mean horses."

Novacene

Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262539519
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Book Description
A fascinating new study from the originator of the Gaia Theory, “who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on earth since Charles Darwin” (Independent) One of the world’s leading scientific thinkers offers a vision of a future epoch in which humans and artificial intelligence unite to save the Earth. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the Anthropocene—the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies—is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age—the Novacene—has already begun. In the Novacene, new beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and they will regard us as we now regard plants. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by science fiction. These hyperintelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project. It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. He does not think there are intelligent aliens, so we are the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos. Perhaps, he speculates, the Novacene could even be the beginning of a process that will finally lead to intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos. At the age of 100, James Lovelock has produced the most important and compelling work of his life.

Rough Magic

Author: Lara Prior-Palmer
Publisher: Ebury Press
ISBN: 9781785038860
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Lara Prior-Palmer was seeking the unknown. In search of adventure aged nineteen, she entered the world's toughest horse race - a 1000km. ride through extreme conditions in the Mongolian wilderness.

The Breadth of Gaia

Author: D.R. Taylor
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 166241367X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 186

Book Description
Is Gaia, the living Earth, fighting back? Our postmodern world holds the Gaia hypothesis, where environmental issues and ecological awareness have been put forth for discussion. Climate change, the greenhouse effect, overpopulation, a global water crisis, nuclear energy, endangered species, and fossil fuels are part of the discourse of an ordinary twenty-first-century citizen. Gaia’s purpose might be in stopping us in our tracks with the virus, depriving us of close social contact, of travel and mass consumption, as a result of the thousands of years humans have exploited the planet without counting the cost. The natural ability of the environment to balance itself and the processes that disrupt the ecological cycles have contributed to the changes in the climate of our planet. The need for more natural resources has forced humans to infringe or destroy natural habitats, thus, exposing us to numerous pathogens. The outbreak of Ebola, MERS, and other coronaviruses have been triggered by the transition from animal to human through the upset of natural habitats. The speed from which the virus has spread has surprised many governments, putting the economies and millions of people in serious danger. The globe is in serious danger. Torcello and Mann wrote an article titled “Seeing the Covid-19 Crisis Is Like Watching a Time Lapse of Climate Change. Will the Right Lessons Be Learned?” The reality is that the slower we respond, the higher the death rate and economic loss.

Future Metaphysics

Author: Armen Avanessian
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509537988
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 101

Book Description
The triumph of technological rationality and of the sciences as a whole has by no means provided answers to humanity’s great questions. Instead, it has raised new and old questions and problems. To orient ourselves in the twenty-first century, we must take a new look at the central categories of philosophy that, often unbeknownst to us, continue to shape our everyday thinking. Future Metaphysics is an attempt at restating the importance of the great metaphysical categories for the present: how our contemporary predicament forces us both to reclaim them and to give them a radically new twist. Armen Avanessian re-examines and displaces categories like substance and accident, form and matter, life and death, giving them an unexpected twist. What if the idea of accident, for instance, had to take into account the many new kinds of glitches, crashes and crises – from finance to ecology, from technological catastrophes to social collapses – that permeate our culture and make everyday news? Can we keep on using this concept as it was traditionally meant to be used when risk and chance have become part of the very substance of our world, so rendering the distinction between substance and accident meaningless? The other concepts and distinctions require a similar interrogation, giving birth to a new metaphysical landscape, where the most urgent realities of the twenty-first century impinge on the most fundamental categories of thought.

The Crisis in Global Ethics and the Future of Global Governance

Author: Peter Burdon
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1786430878
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial} This thought-provoking book stimulates dialogue and action on the role of global ethics in the governance of individual societies and the international order. Such inquiry is imperative given the extraordinary challenges that face the world today. Leading figures in environmental ethics, philosophy and law approach questions surrounding global ethics and governance from a range of cultural and philosophical perspectives.

The World’s Future Crisis: Extractive Resources Depletion

Author: Shahla Seifi
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 981336498X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 205

Book Description
This book focuses mainly on strategic decision making at a global level, which is rarely considered in approaches to sustainability. This book makes a unique contribution as the work looks at global consequences of mineral exhaustion and steps that can be taken to alleviate the impending problems. This book highlights how sustainability has become one of the most important issues for businesses, governments and society at large. This book explores the topic of sustainability as one that is under much debate as to what it actually is and how it can be achieved, but it is completely evident that the resources of the planet are fixed in quantity, and once used, cannot be reused except through being reused in one form or another. This is particularly true of the mineral resources of the planet. These are finite in quantity, and once fully extracted, extra quantities are no longer available for future use. This book argues and presents evidence that the remaining mineral resources are diminishing significantly and heading towards exhaustion. Once mined and consumed, they are no longer available for future use other than what can be recycled and reused. This book demonstrates that future scarcity means that best use must be made of what exists, as sustainability depends upon this, and best use is defined as utility rather than economic value, which must be considered at a global level rather than a national level. Moreover, sustainability depends upon both availability in the present and in the future, so the use of resources requires attention to the future as well as to the present. This book investigates the alternative methods of achieving the global distribution of these mineral resources and proposes an optimum solution. This book adds to the discourse through the understanding of the importance of the depletion and finiteness of raw materials and their use for the present and the future, in order to achieve and maintain sustainability.