Cloudmoney

Author: Brett Scott
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062936328
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 327

Book Description
The reach of Corporations into our lives via cards and apps has never been greater; many of us rarely use cash these days. But what we’re told is a natural and inevitable move is actually the work of powerful interests. And the great battle of our time is the battle for ownership of the digital footprints that make up our lives. In Cloudmoney, Brett Scott tells an urgent and revelatory story about how the fusion of Big Finance and Big Tech requires “cloudmoney”—digital money underpinned by the banking sector—to replace physical cash. He dives beneath the surface of the global financial system to uncover a long-established lobbying infrastructure: an alliance of partners waging a covert war on cash. He explains the technical, political, and cultural differences between our various forms of money and shows how the cash system has been under attack for decades, as banking and tech companies promote a cashless society under the banner of progress. Cloudmoney takes us to the front lines of a war for our wallets that is also about our freedom, from marketing strategies against cash to the weaponization of COVID-19 to push fintech platforms, and from there to the rise of the cryptocurrency rebels and fringe groups pushing back. It asks the most pressing questions: Who benefits from a cashless society and who gets left behind? Is the end of cash the end of true privacy? And is our cloudmoney future closer than we think it is?

Summary of Brett Scott's Cloudmoney

Author: Everest Media
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The taller your building is, the less down-to-earth a mindset you must have. The architecture of these skyscrapers echoes our relationship with high finance, as most people stand beneath them, on the outside looking up. #2 Bankers are rarely in control of their own institutions, and are often channelling a logic that transcends them. The suits they wear are like protective uniforms, and the toilet is the only place where they might reveal a chink in that armor. #3 The global finance corporation community is like a dense nerve centre for a multi-layered empire of money and promises for money communicated via fibre optic cables under seabeds and routed via offshore centres. #4 The global monetary systems are interconnected networks that spread to the farthest reaches of the planet. They are embedded in us, and reach the dustiest small town. Everything in the final analysis is derived from our ecological systems, without which we would die.

The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance

Author: Brett Scott
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745333519
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Popular anger against bankers and financial speculators has never been greater, yet the practical workings of the system remain opaque to many people. The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance aims to bridge the gap between protest slogans and practical proposals for reform. As a stockbroker turned campaigner, Brett Scott has a unique understanding of life inside and outside the system. The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance is a practical handbook for campaigners, academics and students who wish to deepen their understanding of the inner workings of the financial sector. It shows how financial knowledge can be used to build effective social and environmental campaigns. Scott covers topics frequently overlooked, such as the cultural aspects of the financial sector, and considers major issues such as agricultural speculation, carbon markets and tar sands financing. The book shows how activists can use the internal dynamics of the sector to reform it and showcases the growing alternative finance movement.

The Reality Game

Author: Samuel Woolley
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541768248
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 221

Book Description
Fake news posts and Twitter trolls were just the beginning. What will happen when misinformation moves from our social media feeds into our everyday lives? Online disinformation stormed our political process in 2016 and has only worsened since. Yet as Samuel Woolley shows in this urgent book, it may pale in comparison to what's to come: humanlike automated voice systems, machine learning, "deepfake" AI-edited videos and images, interactive memes, virtual reality, and more. These technologies have the power not just to manipulate our politics, but to make us doubt our eyes and ears and even feelings. Deeply researched and compellingly written, The Reality Game describes the profound impact these technologies will have on our lives. Each new invention built without regard for its consequences edges us further into this digital dystopia. Yet Woolley does not despair. Instead, he argues pointedly for a new culture of innovation, one built around accountability and especially transparency. With social media dragging us into a never-ending culture war, we must learn to stop fighting and instead prevent future manipulation. This book shows how we can use our new tools not to control people but to empower them.

Capital Is Dead

Author: McKenzie Wark
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788735331
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
It's not capitalism, it's not neoliberalism - what if it's something worse? In this radical and visionary new book, McKenzie Wark argues that information has empowered a new kind of ruling class. Through the ownership and control of information, this emergent class dominates not only labour but capital as traditionally understood as well. And it’s not just tech companies like Amazon and Google. Even Walmart and Nike can now dominate the entire production chain through the ownership of not much more than brands, patents, copyrights, and logistical systems. While techno-utopian apologists still celebrate these innovations as an improvement on capitalism, for workers—and the planet—it’s worse. The new ruling class uses the powers of information to route around any obstacle labor and social movements put up. So how do we find a way out? Capital Is Dead offers not only the theoretical tools to analyze this new world, but ways to change it. Drawing on the writings of a surprising range of classic and contemporary theorists, Wark offers an illuminating overview of the contemporary condition and the emerging class forces that control—and contest—it.

The Founders

Author: Jimmy Soni
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501197258
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Book Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER National Bestseller * New York Times Editors’ Choice * Financial Times “Books to Read in 2022” A SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS FINALIST “A gripping account of PayPal’s origins and a vivid portrait of the geeks and contrarians who made its meteoric rise possible” (The Wall Street Journal)—including Elon Musk, Amy Rowe Klement, Peter Thiel, Julie Anderson, Max Levchin, Reid Hoffman, and many others whose stories have never been shared. Today, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven twenty-first-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they’re as controversial as they are admired. Yet for all their influence, the story of where they first started has gone largely untold. Before igniting the commercial space race or jumpstarting social media’s rise, they were the unknown creators of a scrappy online payments start-up called PayPal. In building what became one of the world’s foremost companies, they faced bruising competition, internal strife, the emergence of widespread online fraud, and the devastating dot-com bust of the 2000s. Their success was anything but certain. In The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, award-winning author and biographer Jimmy Soni explores PayPal’s turbulent early days. With hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to thousands of pages of internal material, he shows how the seeds of so much of what shapes our world today—fast-scaling digital start-ups, cashless currency concepts, mobile money transfer—were planted two decades ago. He also reveals the stories of countless individuals who were left out of the front-page features and banner headlines but who were central to PayPal’s success. Described as “an intensely magnetic chronicle” (The New York Times) and “engrossing” (Business Insider), The Founders is a story of iteration and inventiveness—the products of which have cast a long and powerful shadow over modern life. This narrative illustrates how this rare assemblage of talent came to work together and how their collaboration changed our world forever.

How Big-Tech Barons Smash Innovation—and How to Strike Back

Author: Ariel Ezrachi
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063030896
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
Two market experts deconstruct the drivers and inhibitors to innovation in the digital economy, explain how large tech companies can stifle disruption, assess the toll of their technologies on our well-being and democracy, and outline policy changes to take power away from big tech and return it to entrepreneurs. Silicon Valley’s genius combined with limited corporate regulation promised a new age of technological innovation in which entrepreneurs would create companies that would in turn fuel unprecedented job growth. Yet disruptive innovation has stagnated even as the five leading tech giants, which account for approximately 25 percent of the S&P 500’s market capitalization, are expanding to unimaginable scale and power. In How Big-Tech Barons Smash Innovation—and How to Strike Back, Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke explain why this is happening and what we can do to reverse it. While many distrust the Big-Tech Barons, the prevailing belief is that innovation is thriving online. It isn’t. Rather than disruptive innovations that create significant value, we are getting technologies that primarily extract value and reduce well-being. Using vivid examples and relying on their work in the field, the authors explain how the leading tech companies design their sprawling ecosystems to extract more profits (while crushing any entrepreneur that poses a threat). As a result, we get less innovation that benefits us and more innovations that surpass the dreams of yesteryears’ autocracies. The Tech Barons’ technologies, which seek to decode our emotions and thoughts to better manipulate our behavior, are undermining political stability and democracy while fueling tribalism and hate. But it’s not hopeless. The authors reveal that sustained innovation scales with cities not companies, and that we, as a society, should profoundly alter our investment strategy and priorities to certain entrepreneurs (“Tech Pirates”) and cities’ infrastructure.

Diy. On a Budget.

Author: Toni Trevillion
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473598281
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
'We love Diy. On a Budget. - it has the best DIY and decorating hacks and tips ever! ' Kate and Kay Allinson, Pinch of Nom Transform your home without breaking the bank - everything you need to know before starting your own DIY project. Dreaming of panelling but don't know where to start? Looking for ways to refresh your tired kitchen? Brimming with ideas but have a limited budget? The official Diy. On a Budget. handbook from the founder of the 2 million strong online community will give you all the tools, tips and inspiration you need to re-decorate rooms and homes of all sizes, no matter how big or small your budget. Your essential DIY handbook includes: - Before You Start: Toni's tips on what you need to know before you start painting, tiling, laying floors or upcycling furniture, including the essential kit to own. - Room by Room: the best ideas to decorate your Kitchen, Living Room, Bathroom, Bedroom, Utilities and Storage, Hall and Landing, even Nooks and Crannies. - Keep to Budget: A must-have budget planner to keep your transformation on track. - Help is on Hand: When things go wrong! Top tips from Toni on fixing mistakes, drawing in useful advice from the community. Make your home renovation picture perfect and wallet-friendly with Diy. On a Budget. 'Diy. On a Budget. is crammed full of decor hacks, tips and tricks to make small tweaks or big changes to your home.' The Observer

We, the Robots?

Author: Simon Chesterman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316517683
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
Explains how artificial intelligence is pushing the limits of the law and how we must respond.

Raunchy LIVE NUDE Cryptogram PUZZLES

Author: Buck Naked
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 88

Book Description
★ Do you love crass humor? ★ Do you giggle at sexual innuendos? ★ Do you love solving cryptogram puzzles? If so you will love Raunchy LIVE NUDE cryptogram PUZZLES! 139 cryptos to solves in the genre of dirty jokes and dirty quotes. Makes a great bachelorette or stag night gift. Each puzzle has its own unique cipher to keep the solve interesting. Did these celebrities really say that Adults only please as some topics may not be totally appropriate. Funny Sexy Raunchy Arousing Shareable Makes a great humorous gift! Add to cart now for a laugh and puzzle solving FUN!