Wetware

Author: Dennis Bray
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300155441
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
“A beautifully written journey into the mechanics of the world of the cell, and even beyond, exploring the analogy with computers in a surprising way” (Denis Noble, author of Dance to the Tune of Life). How does a single-cell creature, such as an amoeba, lead such a sophisticated life? How does it hunt living prey, respond to lights, sounds, and smells, and display complex sequences of movements without the benefit of a nervous system? This book offers a startling and original answer. In clear, jargon-free language, Dennis Bray taps the findings from the discipline of systems biology to show that the internal chemistry of living cells is a form of computation. Cells are built out of molecular circuits that perform logical operations, as electronic devices do, but with unique properties. Bray argues that the computational juice of cells provides the basis for all distinctive properties of living systems: it allows organisms to embody in their internal structure an image of the world, and this accounts for their adaptability, responsiveness, and intelligence. In Wetware, Bray offers imaginative, wide-ranging, and perceptive critiques of robotics and complexity theory, as well as many entertaining and telling anecdotes. For the general reader, the practicing scientist, and all others with an interest in the nature of life, this book is an exciting portal to some of biology’s latest discoveries and ideas. “Drawing on the similarities between Pac-Man and an amoeba and efforts to model the human brain, this absorbing read shows that biologists and engineers have a lot to learn from working together.” —Discover magazine “Wetware will get the reader thinking.” —Science magazine

Wetware

Author: Rudy von Bitter Rucker
Publisher: Eos
ISBN: 9780380701780
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Book Description
Stahn, a searcher is hired by Mr. Yukawa, a molecular biologist, to find Della Taze, his missing assistant, and discovers that the Boppers, moon-based robots have a plan to make their own humans

Wetware

Author: Craig Nova
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307430154
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
As a programmer for Galapagos Wetware, Hal Briggs is responsible for writing the genetic code for simple, efficient creatures to be employed in menial jobs–sweeping streets or washing dishes. But the demands for “wetware” are changing, and Briggs is given a project that calls for more sophisticated models: clients are demanding more human appearance and behavior. As the project progresses, Briggs finds himself endowing the new models with more than the specifications dictate, giving them distinct personalities and talents and highly developed acumens. When two of his pet projects, Jack and Kay, escape, Briggs reexamines their codes and makes a terrifying yet provocative discovery. From Craig Nova, a master of the modern novel, comes a tale eerie in its vision of a future not far off, of a world precariously close to today’s.

Wetware

Author: Craig Nova
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400031176
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning

Author: Andy Hunt
Publisher: Pragmatic Bookshelf
ISBN: 1680504223
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
Printed in full color. Software development happens in your head. Not in an editor, IDE, or designtool. You're well educated on how to work with software and hardware, but what about wetware--our own brains? Learning new skills and new technology is critical to your career, and it's all in your head. In this book by Andy Hunt, you'll learn how our brains are wired, and how to take advantage of your brain's architecture. You'll learn new tricks and tipsto learn more, faster, and retain more of what you learn. You need a pragmatic approach to thinking and learning. You need to Refactor Your Wetware. Programmers have to learn constantly; not just the stereotypical new technologies, but also the problem domain of the application, the whims of the user community, the quirks of your teammates, the shifting sands of the industry, and the evolving characteristics of the project itself as it is built. We'll journey together through bits of cognitive and neuroscience, learning and behavioral theory. You'll see some surprising aspects of how our brains work, and how you can take advantage of the system to improve your own learning and thinking skills. In this book you'll learn how to: Use the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to become more expert Leverage the architecture of the brain to strengthen different thinking modes Avoid common "known bugs" in your mind Learn more deliberately and more effectively Manage knowledge more efficiently

Cyberpunk

Author: Victoria
Publisher: Resurrection House
ISBN: 1937163091
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
Cyberpunk has brought us films like Blade Runner, Tron, and The Matrix, and it has brought us now-classic novels like Snow Crash and Neuromancer. It continues to be a powerful theme in contemporary literature as writers imagine a gritty, dark, wild, and wicked future where body modification, seedy elements, omniscient corporations, and a few down-luck anti-heroes are always having it out. Inside the covers of this book, readers find stories by the best and the finest cyberpunk writers — from foundational authors like Bruce Sterling and William Gibson to new voices like Cory Doctorow — all of whom write with the fire and zeal that powers the best cyberpunk writing. Here are stories about society gone wrong and society saved, about soulless humans and soulful machines, about futures worth fighting for and futures that do nothing but kill. Welcome to your cyberpunk world. Welcome to your cyberpunk world.

Shortest Path Solvers. From Software to Wetware

Author: Andrew Adamatzky
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319775103
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Book Description
This book offers advanced parallel and distributed algorithms and experimental laboratory prototypes of unconventional shortest path solvers. In addition, it presents novel and unique algorithms of solving shortest problems in massively parallel cellular automaton machines. The shortest path problem is a fundamental and classical problem in graph theory and computer science and is frequently applied in the contexts of transport and logistics, telecommunication networks, virtual reality and gaming, geometry, and social networks analysis. Software implementations include distance-vector algorithms for distributed path computation in dynamics networks, parallel solutions of the constrained shortest path problem, and application of the shortest path solutions in gathering robotic swarms. Massively parallel algorithms utilise cellular automata, where a shortest path is computed either via matrix multiplication in automaton arrays, or via the representation of data graphs in automaton lattices and using the propagation of wave-like patterns. Unconventional shortest path solvers are presented in computer models of foraging behaviour and protoplasmic network optimisation by the slime mould Physarum polycephalum and fluidic devices, while experimental laboratory prototypes of path solvers using chemical media, flows and droplets, and electrical current are also highlighted. The book will be a pleasure to explore for readers from all walks of life, from undergraduate students to university professors, from mathematicians, computers scientists and engineers to chemists and biologists.

Wetwares

Author: Richard Doyle
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816640096
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
The mind of the machine, the body suspended in time, organs exchanged, thought computed, genes manipulated, DNA samples abducted by aliens: the terrain between science and speculation, fraught with the possibility of technological and perhaps even evolutionary transformations, is the territory Richard Doyle explores in Wetwares. In a manner at once sober and playful, Doyle maps potentials for human transformation by new ecologies of information in the early twenty-first century. Wetwares ranges over recent research in artificial life, cloning, cryonics, computer science, organ transplantation, and alien abduction. Moving between actual technical practices, serious speculative technology, and science fiction, Doyle shows us emerging scientific paradigms where "life" becomes more a matter of information than of inner vitality--in short, becomes "wetwares" for DNA and computer networks. Viewing technologies of immortality--from cryonics to artificial life--as disciplines for welcoming a thoroughly other future, a future of neither capital, god, human, nor organism, the book offers tools for an evolutionary, transhuman mutation in the utterly unpredictable decades to come.

Wetware

Author: Violet Blue
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781520874753
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 89

Book Description
Cyberpunk anti-heroes face global conspiracies, misused government R&D, thugs, drugs, true love, artificial intelligence, and vengeful sexbots in this collection's heady mix of sci-fi and sex. Wetware shows how hot "high tech low life" can be when all the glittering and frightening possibilities of cyberpunk meet the crisis point of sexual need. Seven unpredictable stories depict hackers, transhumans, androids, pop stars, armed revolutionaries, government contractors and more who discover that sex is hotter with hacked, stolen and renegade tech -- especially when it's a high-risk proposition.Some erotica writers have ideas, others have visions. Love is a side-effect of stolen, weaponized biotech in "Bishop to King's Pawn, Two" by Thomas S. Roche. In "Synthetic Skin" by Kendra Jarry, a government contractor steals secret field hardware for the sole purpose of seduction. A brainwave hacker's conquest in a club bathroom stall takes a turn in Cecilia Tan's "Rough, Trade." Lines are crossed and re-crossed when the household helper bot in Devyn X. Sands' "Never Say No" has had enough of her owner's perversions. "Sixty-Five Night" by Stephen Stavros charts a dangerous AI experiment that pushes one woman into a seedy neon ghetto for a public transhuman sexual encounter -- under the shadow of a murder conspiracy. Cyberpunk's sexuality has always been transgressive and prescient; this collection brings the genre's tradition into the current state of cyberpunk affairs. Wetware isn't a typical erotica collection, nor is it a typical sci-fi anthology. It's also a rich celebration of hacker and cyberpunk culture, within the hallmarks of this culture's rich and diverse sexualities and genders. It's a tech-savvy, philosophically-rich, erotic anthology artfully spiked with cyberpunk-themed cocktail recipes and recommendations for sexy cyberpunk films, books, and anime. Blue's introduction "Coded in Spirals and Pheromones" features story excerpts in an essay examining cyberpunk sexuality, and how our fantasies of a gilded cyberpunk future have arrived -- while at the same time, something has gone horribly wrong with the way technology was supposed to empower us. Blue explains exactly why "it is our growing sense of things gone terribly wrong that gives the stories here their power, anchored in one of cyberpunk's most defiant agents of change: Sex." This book contains adult situations, including BDSM, domestic discipline, gender fluidity in sexual situations, backdoor and oral play, power exchange, role-play, spanking, bisexual men, and explicit scenes. The book also depicts non-monogamous relationships and sexual activity (and penetration) involving more than two individuals. Table of Contents* Introduction: Coded in Spirals and Pheromones by Violet Blue * Bishop to King's Pawn, Two by Thomas S. Roche * Liquid Exploits: The Gibson Engine * Rough, Trade by Cecilia Tan * Say Cyber One More Time: Sexy Cyberpunk Films * Dangerous Circuitry by N.T. Morley * Liquid Exploits: Tschunk! * Grinding by Janine Ashbless * Say Cyber One More Time: Adult Cyberpunk Books * Never Say No by Devyn X. Sands * Liquid Exploits: Zero Couth * Sixty-Five Night by Stephen Stavros * Say Cyber One More Time: (Sexier) Cyberpunk Anime * Synthetic Skin by Kendra Jarry

The Pragmatic Programmer

Author: Andrew Hunt
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 013211917X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
What others in the trenches say about The Pragmatic Programmer... “The cool thing about this book is that it’s great for keeping the programming process fresh. The book helps you to continue to grow and clearly comes from people who have been there.” — Kent Beck, author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change “I found this book to be a great mix of solid advice and wonderful analogies!” — Martin Fowler, author of Refactoring and UML Distilled “I would buy a copy, read it twice, then tell all my colleagues to run out and grab a copy. This is a book I would never loan because I would worry about it being lost.” — Kevin Ruland, Management Science, MSG-Logistics “The wisdom and practical experience of the authors is obvious. The topics presented are relevant and useful.... By far its greatest strength for me has been the outstanding analogies—tracer bullets, broken windows, and the fabulous helicopter-based explanation of the need for orthogonality, especially in a crisis situation. I have little doubt that this book will eventually become an excellent source of useful information for journeymen programmers and expert mentors alike.” — John Lakos, author of Large-Scale C++ Software Design “This is the sort of book I will buy a dozen copies of when it comes out so I can give it to my clients.” — Eric Vought, Software Engineer “Most modern books on software development fail to cover the basics of what makes a great software developer, instead spending their time on syntax or technology where in reality the greatest leverage possible for any software team is in having talented developers who really know their craft well. An excellent book.” — Pete McBreen, Independent Consultant “Since reading this book, I have implemented many of the practical suggestions and tips it contains. Across the board, they have saved my company time and money while helping me get my job done quicker! This should be a desktop reference for everyone who works with code for a living.” — Jared Richardson, Senior Software Developer, iRenaissance, Inc. “I would like to see this issued to every new employee at my company....” — Chris Cleeland, Senior Software Engineer, Object Computing, Inc. “If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. . . . And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book.” — Ward Cunningham Straight from the programming trenches, The Pragmatic Programmer cuts through the increasing specialization and technicalities of modern software development to examine the core process--taking a requirement and producing working, maintainable code that delights its users. It covers topics ranging from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse. Read this book, and you'll learn how to Fight software rot; Avoid the trap of duplicating knowledge; Write flexible, dynamic, and adaptable code; Avoid programming by coincidence; Bullet-proof your code with contracts, assertions, and exceptions; Capture real requirements; Test ruthlessly and effectively; Delight your users; Build teams of pragmatic programmers; and Make your developments more precise with automation. Written as a series of self-contained sections and filled with entertaining anecdotes, thoughtful examples, and interesting analogies, The Pragmatic Programmer illustrates the best practices and major pitfalls of many different aspects of software development. Whether you're a new coder, an experienced programmer, or a manager responsible for software projects, use these lessons daily, and you'll quickly see improvements in personal productivity, accuracy, and job satisfaction. You'll learn skills and develop habits and attitudes that form the foundation for long-term success in your career. You'll become a Pragmatic Programmer.