Future Reality

From iconic books like Neuromancer to blockbuster films like The Matrix, virtual reality has long been hailed as the ultimate technology. But outside of a few research labs and military training facilities, this tantalizing vision of the future was nothing but science fiction. Until 2012, when Oculus founder Palmer Luckey - then just a rebellious teenage dreamer living alone in a camper trailer - invents a device that has the potential to change everything.

At a time when multiple crises are compounding to create epic inequality, four billionaires are hyping schemes that are designed to divert our attention away from issues that really matter. Each scheme - from the metaverse to cryptocurrency, space travel and transhumanism - is an existential threat in moral, political, and economic terms. In The End of Reality¸ Jonathan Taplin shines a light on the enormous cultural power of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Marc Andreessen.

We are entering a new technological age in which artificial intelligence and immersive media will transform society at all levels. If managed well, this could unleash a new age of abundance. If managed poorly, this technological revolution could easily go astray, deeply compromising our privacy, autonomy, agency, and even our humanity. In Our Next Reality, two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we're creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and gives guidance on how to aim for the best future we can.

From immersive virtual reality games to social media with 3-D holograms, listeners can find out what cool new technologies might change the way they are entertained.

From the written word to the cell phone, human communication has come a long way. What might the future hold? Listeners can discover how virtual reality, holograms, and a fully connected "internet of things" may affect how they communicate in the near and distant future.

In Heaven Awaits, you will explore what the Bible says about heaven and begin to envision the wonders and glories that await you. Heaven is real. And throughout this audiobook, you will discover that your eternal home is far more real than your earthly experience right now. As such, you will be energized to live each day in light of that awe-inspiring reality.

Is your loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Did you know humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes? And why an adult human being resembles a chimp foetus? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction; is it worse than the disease? Welcome to our genetic world: fast, furious, and out of control. This is not the world of the future; it's the world right now. Get used to it.

Dive into the future of AI with this audiobook! Embodied AI is transforming the world by seamlessly integrating advanced technologies into real-world applications. This audiobook offers an in-depth exploration of how AI is bridging the gap between simulations and reality. Discover the secrets of Embodied AI and learn how it’s revolutionizing industries. From innovative techniques like Sim2Real Transfer to the latest in Multimodal Perception, this audiobook covers it all.

This fourth edition of Racist America is significantly revised and updated, with an eye toward racism issues arising regularly in our contemporary era. This edition incorporates many recent research studies and reports on U.S. racial issues that update and enhance the last edition’s chapters. It expands the discussion and data on social science concepts such as intersectionality and gendered racism, as well as the concepts of the white racial frame, systemic racism, and the elite-white-male dominance system from research studies by Joe Feagin and his colleagues.

Extended reality (XR for short) - which encompasses virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality - is one of the biggest business trends of today. It refers to the use of technology to create more immersive digital experiences that are promising to transform many businesses and industries. In this book, best-selling author, strategic business advisor, and respected futurist Bernard Marr explains the role of XR in providing innovative businesses solutions for companies of varying sizes and across different industries.

The city of Neo Songdo is a Russian doll of realities. The smart city is designed to be read by machine vision while people see only the augmented facade of the corporate ideal. At night the stars are obscured by an intergalactic virtual war being waged by millions of players, while on the streets below people are forced to beg, steal, and hustle to survive. Enter Julius Dax, online repoman and real-life thief. He's been hired for a special job. But when he finds out he's stolen the first sentient AI, his payday gets a lot more complicated.

Donald R. Prothero explains the scientific process and why society has come to rely on science not only to provide a better life but also to reach verifiable truths no other method can obtain. He describes how major scientific ideas that are accepted by the entire scientific community (evolution, anthropogenic global warming, vaccination, the HIV cause of AIDS, and others) have been attacked with totally unscientific arguments and methods.

You've probably heard that the metaverse—a word that seemingly went from nonexistent to everywhere—is the next big thing in technology. What is it? Written by a leading futurist, Metaverse For Dummies unravels the mysteries of the metaverse, for the curious and for anyone looking to get in on the ground floor. Discover how to carve out your niche in the metaverse with easy-to-understand breakdowns of the major technologies and platforms, a guide to doing business in the metaverse, and explorations of what meta means for sports, education, and just about every other area of life.

Heralded as the most significant technological innovation since the smartphone, virtual reality is poised to transform our very notions of life and humanity. Though this tech is still in its infancy, to those on the inside, it is the future. VR will change how we work, how we experience entertainment, how we feel pleasure and other emotions, how we see ourselves, and most importantly, how we relate to each other in the real world. And we will never be the same. Peter Rubin, senior culture editor for Wired and the industry's go-to authority on the subject, calls it an "intimacy engine".

If you want to learn about the internet of things, then pay attention.... You were just woken up in the middle of the night by smart light bulbs in your house blasting at full power for no reason. Your bleary-eyed investigation shows they tried to download a firmware update and failed. At that moment, Alexa starts quietly whispering sweet nonsense to herself in the corner and Roomba starts slamming into the nearest wall. What do you do? Is your house haunted or have the machines finally started an uprising? Neither - it’s just another day in the IoT wonderland.

"Building the Metaverse: The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual Worlds" is a comprehensive exploration of the rapidly evolving landscape of the Metaverse. This book delves into the origins of the Metaverse concept, tracing its roots from speculative fiction to its emergence as a transformative digital reality. Through an in-depth analysis of key platforms like Second Life, Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite, the book examines how these virtual worlds have shaped the Metaverse and influenced cultural and social dynamics.

Those of you living through the next 30 years will become the most powerful creatures that have ever existed. You will have the opportunity and the duty to create a decidedly better world. Experience and maturity alone cannot provide the required wisdom fast enough. You will need to maximize your innate potential to accelerate wisdom. The Potentialist: Your Future in the New Reality of the Next Thirty Years explains the first steps to achieve your potential and accelerate wisdom. You will discover how forces of change create a New Reality by breaking down the one we know.

Emerging AI Realities is not just another book about AI. It's a unique invitation to journey into the heart of AI, where you will uncover its secrets, witness its remarkable applications, and grapple with the ethical and societal questions it raises. This is not a voyage into a distant future, but a future that is being shaped today by the tireless efforts of scientists, innovators, and dreamers.

Are humans close to living forever? With advances in medicine and new therapies that prolong life expectancy, we are on track to make aging even more manageable. This new entry in the exciting Alice in Futureland series explores both the science and cultural impulse behind extending lifespans, and the numerous ways the quest for eternity forces us to reevaluate what it means to be human. Some experts believe that we haven’t fully realized our true human potential, and we are about to embark on an extraordinary evolutionary shift.

We are entering a new technological age in which artificial intelligence and immersive media will transform society at all levels, mediating our lives by altering what we see, hear, and experience. If managed well, this could unleash a new age of abundance. If managed poorly, this technological revolution could easily go astray, compromising our privacy, autonomy, agency, and humanity. Two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we're creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and give guidance on how to aim for the best future we can.