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Consciousness and Science Fiction (Science and Fiction)
by Damien BroderickScience fiction explores the wonderful, baffling and wildly entertaining aspects of a universe unimaginably old and vast, and with a future even more immense. It reaches into that endless cosmos with the tools of rational investigation and storytelling. At the core of both science and science fiction is the engaged human mind--a consciousness that sees and feels and thinks and loves. But what is this mind, this aware and self-aware consciousness that seems unlike anything else we experience? What makes consciousness the Hard Problem of philosophy, still unsolved after millennia of probing? This book looks into the heart of this mystery - at the science and philosophy of consciousness and at many inspiring fictional examples - and finds strange, challenging answers.The book's content and entertaining style will appeal equally to science fiction enthusiasts and scholars, including cognitive and neuroscientists, as well as philosophers of mind. It is a refreshing romp through the science and science fiction of consciousness.
Consciousness, Cognition and Crosstalk: The Evolutionary Exaptation of Nonergodic Groupoid Symmetry-Breaking (SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology)
by Rodrick WallaceThis book makes application to the dynamics of arousal and distraction, and to other examples. A modified version of the Kadanoff picture of phase transitions in consciousness emerges from the Morse Function itself in a surprisingly standard manner, closely associated with the breaking of groupoid symmetries driven by fundamental equivalence class algebras. Although this is far indeed from the familiar world of physical theory, it should be possible, on the basis of the probability models developed in the book, to develop new statistical tools for the analysis of observational and empirical data regarding cognition and consciousness.
Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, And The Nature Of Experience (Studies in Brain and Mind #6)
by Richard BrownThis volume is product of the third online consciousness conference, held at http://consciousnessonline.com in February and March 2011. Chapters range over epistemological issues in the science and philosophy of perception, what neuroscience can do to help us solve philosophical issues in the philosophy of mind, what the true nature of black and white vision, pain, auditory, olfactory, or multi-modal experiences are, to higher-order theories of consciousness, synesthesia, among others. Each chapter includes a target article, commentaries, and in most cases, a final response from the author. Though wide-ranging all of the papers aim to understand consciousness both from the inside, as we experience it, and from the outside as we encounter it in our science. The Online Consciousness Conference, founded and organized by Richard Brown, is dedicated to the rigorous study of consciousness and mind. The goal is to bring philosophers, scientists, and interested lay persons together in an online venue to promote high-level discussion and exchanging of views, ideas and data related to the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness.
Consciousness: A Ladybird Expert Book (The Ladybird Expert Series #29)
by Hannah CritchlowPart of the ALL-NEW LADYBIRD EXPERT SERIES.____________Are other animals, or even plants, conscious?Can we create conscious robots?Are we able to assume the consciousness of someone else?We all experience the world differently.REALITY is shaped by our individual memories.So we respond to THE WORLD in our own ways.Our UNIQUE EXPERIENCE underpins what it means to be CONSCIOUS.This raises so many questions such as where does consciousness live? And what is it for?Discover the answers and more inside Hannah Critchlow's Ladybird Expert - Consciousness, the thrilling and accessible account that explains what it means to be conscious - from what defines it, to questioning the existence of free will.
The Consciousness Revolutions: From Amoeba Awareness to Human Emancipation
by Shimon EdelmanThis book is about all things consciousness, great and small. It starts by pointing to the key characteristic of consciousness, without realizing which it cannot be understood: like everything else about the mind, it is fundamentally a kind of computation. Among many other matters, this explains: how it is that we share some aspects of consciousness with bacteria; how it can arise in artificial machines and not just living ones; how the empty cocoon of the self that it spins ends up pretending to be the butterfly; and how consciousness dooms this virtual butterfly to the splendor and the suffering of being awake and aware. Unlike most other books on consciousness, this one includes a discussion of some possible ways whereby we, pinned like butterflies by our species’ history and socioeconomic circumstances, can awake to our collective predicament and join forces to do something about it. It should be of interest to all readers who care about the nature of our lived experience — and about our survival, which depends on developing critical consciousness of our dire situation and the social dynamics that shape it.
Consejos Profesionales de Línea de Comando Bash
by Jason Cannon Andrés ParraudSi alguna vez te has dicho: "Tiene que haber una mejor forma de hacer esto", sigue leyendo. Como alguien que ha utilizado el Shell Bash casi a diario durante más de 15 años, he acumulado varios "trucos" de línea de comandos que me han ahorrado tiempo y frustraciones. Consejos Profesionales de Línea de Comando Bash es una colección de 10 técnicas que puedes comenzar a utilizar inmediatamente para mejorar tu eficiencia en la línea de comando. Esto es lo que aprenderás leyendo Consejos Profesionales de Línea de Comando Bash: Consejo 1: Autocompletar Consejo 2: Cambiar al Directorio Anterior Consejo 3: Reutilizar el Último Ítem de la Línea Anterior Consejo 4: Volver a Ejecutar un Comando que comienza con una Cadena dada Consejo 5: Sustitución de Comando Consejo 6: Usar un Bucle for en la Línea de Comando Consejo 7: Volver a Ejecutar el Comando Anterior con Privilegios de Root Consejo 8: Volver a Ejecutar el Comando Anterior Sustituyendo una Cadena Consejo 9: Reutilizar una Palabra en la Misma Línea de Comando Consejo 10: Corregir Errores y Acortar Comandos Largos con Alias
Consensual Illusion: The Mind in Virtual Reality (Cognitive Systems Monographs #44)
by Vanja KljajevicThis book is inspired by the contemporary fascination with virtual reality and growing presence of this type of technology in everyday life. It explores the ways in which virtual reality evokes illusory transformation responses. The power of virtual reality is in making the mediation by technology in these experiences appear irrelevant to cognitive processes, so much so that it is often assumed that skills acquired in virtual environments are generally transferable to the physical world. However, cognition is affected by virtual reality technology, which is reflected in issues related to virtual embodiment, choice of spatial strategies, differences in neural and electrophysiological patterns associated with movement processing when navigating virtual vs. physical environments, and, at least to some extent, in virtual proxemics. In addition to spatial cognition, the book explores the sense of self in virtual reality, social interaction and virtual togetherness, action and motor cognition, calling to mind debates from philosophy, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.
Consensus and Synchronization in Complex Networks (Understanding Complex Systems)
by Ljupco KocarevIn this book for the first time two scientific fields - consensus formation and synchronization of communications - are presented together and examined through their interrelational aspects, of rapidly growing importance. Both fields have indeed attracted enormous research interest especially in relation to complex networks. In networks of dynamic systems (or agents), consensus means to reach an agreement regarding a certain quantity of interest that depends on the state of all dynamical systems (agents). Consensus problems have a long history in control theory and computer sciences, and form the foundation of the field of distributed computing. Synchronization, which defines correlated-in-time behavior between different processes and roots going back to Huygens to the least, is now a highly popular, exciting and rapidly developing topic, with applications ranging from biological networks to mathematical epidemiology, and from processing information in the brain to engineering of communications devices. The book reviews recent finding in both fields and describes novel approaches to consensus formation, where consensus is realized as an instance of the nonlinear dynamics paradigm of chaos synchronization. The chapters are written by world-known experts in both fields and cover topics ranging from fundaments to various applications of consensus and synchronization.
Consensus Over Switching Network Topology: Characterizing System Parameters and Joint Connectivity (Studies in Systems, Decision and Control #393)
by Jiahu Qin Qichao Ma Huijun Gao Wei Xing Zheng Yu KangThis book aims to extend existing works on consensus of multi-agent systems systematically. The agents to be considered range from double integrators to generic linear systems. The primary goal is to explicitly characterize how agent parameters, which reflect both self-dynamics and inner coupling of each agent, and switching network topologies jointly influence the collective behaviors. A series of necessary and/or sufficient conditions for exponential consensus are derived. The contents of this book are as follows. Chapter 1 provides the background and briefly reviews the advances of consensus of multi-agent systems. Chapter 2 addresses the consensus problem of double integrators over directed switching network topologies. It is proven that exponential consensus can be secured under very mild conditions incorporating the damping gain and network topology. Chapter 3 considers generic linear systems with undirected switching network topologies. Necessary and sufficient conditions on agent parameters and connectivity of the communication graph for exponential consensus are provided. Chapter 4 furthers the study of consensus for multiple generic linear systems by considering directed switching network topologies. How agent parameters and joint connectivity work together for reaching consensus is characterized from an algebraic and geometric view. Chapter 5 extends the design and analysis methodology to containment control problem, where there exist multiple leaders. A novel analysis framework from the perspective of state transition matrix is developed. This framework relates containment to consensus and overcomes the difficulty of construction of a containment error.This book serves as a reference to the main research issues and results on consensus of multi-agent systems. Some prerequisites for reading this book include linear system theory, matrix theory, mathematics, and so on.
Consensus Problem of Delayed Linear Multi-agent Systems: Analysis and Design (SpringerBriefs in Electrical and Computer Engineering)
by Fei Liu Cheng-Lin LiuIn the context of coupled-coordination control mechanisms, this book focuses on the delay robustness of consensus problems with asynchronously coupled and synchronously coupled consensus algorithms respectively. Moreover, constructive consensus algorithms that tolerate larger communication delays are proposed according to idea of compensation. By providing rigorous theoretical proofs and numerous numerical simulations, it enhances readers' understanding of the consensus coordination control mechanism of multi-agent systems with communication delays.
Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle For Internet Freedom
by Rebecca Mackinnon<P>The Internet was going to liberate us, but in truth it has not. For every story about the web's empowering role in events such as the Arab Spring, there are many more about the quiet corrosion of civil liberties by companies and governments using the same digital technologies we have come to depend upon. <P> Sudden changes in Facebook's features and privacy settings have exposed identities of protestors to police in Egypt and Iran. Apple removes politically controversial apps at the behest of governments as well as for its own commercial reasons. Dozens of Western companies sell surveillance technology to dictatorships around the world. <P>Google struggles with censorship demands from governments in a range of countries--many of them democracies--as well as mounting public concern over the vast quantities of information it collects about its users. <P> In Consent of the Networked, journalist and Internet policy specialist Rebecca MacKinnon argues that it is time to fight for our rights before they are sold, legislated, programmed, and engineered away. Every day, the corporate sovereigns of cyberspace make decisions that affect our physical freedom--but without our consent. <P>Yet the traditional solution to unaccountable corporate behavior--government regulation--cannot stop the abuse of digital power on its own, and sometimes even contributes to it. <P> A clarion call to action, Consent of the Networked shows that it is time to stop arguing over whether the Internet empowers people, and address the urgent question of how technology should be governed to support the rights and liberties of users around the world.
Conservation of Leather and Related Materials
by Marion Kite Roy ThomsonThe conservation of skin, leather and related materials is an area that, until now, has had little representation by the written word in book form. Marion Kite and Roy Thomson, of the Leather Conservation Centre, have prepared a text which is both authoritative and comprehensive, including contributions from the leading specialists in their fields, such as Betty Haines, Mary Lou Florian, Ester Cameron and Jim Spriggs.The book covers all aspects of Skin and Leather preservation, from Cuir Bouillie to Bookbindings. There is significant discussion of the technical and chemical elements necessary in conservation, meaning that professional conservators will find the book a vital part of their collection. As part of the Butterworth-Heinemann Black series, the book carries the stamp of approval of the leading figures in the world of Conservation and Museology, and as such it is the only publication available on the topic carrying this immediate mark of authority.
Conservation of Time-Based Media Art (Routledge Series in Conservation and Museology)
by Deena Engel Joanna PhillipsConservation of Time-based Media Art is the first book to take stock of the current practices and conceptual frameworks that define the emerging field of time-based media conservation, which focuses on contemporary artworks that contain video, audio, film, slides or software components. Written and compiled by a diverse group of time-based media practitioners around the world, including conservators, curators, registrars and technicians among others, this volume offers a comprehensive survey of specialized practices that have developed around the collection, preservation and display of time-based media art. Divided into 23 chapters with contributions from 36 authors and 85 additional voices, the narrative of this book provides both an overview and detailed guidance on critical topics, including the acquisition, examination, documentation and installation of time-based media art; cross-medium and medium-specific treatment approaches and methods; the registration, storage, and management of digital and physical artwork components; collection surveys and project advocacy; lab infrastructures, staffing and the institutional implementation of time-based media conservation. Conservation of Time-based Media Art serves as a critical resource for conservation students and for a diverse professional audience who engage with time-based media art, including conservation practitioners and other collection caretakers, curators, art historians, collectors, gallerists, artists, scholars and academics.
Conservative Political Communication: How Right-Wing Media and Messaging (Re)Made American Politics (New Agendas in Communication Series)
by Sharon E. JarvisConservative Political Communication examines the evolution of appeals, media, and tactics in right-wing media and political communication, tracking trends and shifts from the early days of contemporary conservatism in the 1950s to the Trump administration. The chapters in this edited volume feature the work of senior and junior scholars from the fields of communication, journalism, and political science employing content analytic, experimental, survey, historical, and rhetorical research methodologies. Analyses of the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, the range of partisan news sources, and the role of social media algorithms in political campaigns yield insights for our media and information ecosystems. A key theme across these chapters is how right-wing channels and communications help and hinder partisan fragmentation, a condition whereby novice elected officials create personal conservative brands, appeal to the base through partisan media, and complicate senior leadership’s ability to engage in bargaining, compromise, and deal-making. This volume interrogates conservative media and messaging to track where these processes came from, how they functioned in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, and where they may be going in the future. This book will interest scholars and upper-level students of political communication, media and politics, and political science, as well as readers invested in today’s political media landscape in the United States.
Conserving Humanity at the Dawn of Posthuman Technology
by Joseph R. Carvalko Jr.This volume examines the latest scientific and technological developments likely to shape our post-human future. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the author argues that we stand at the precipice of an evolutionary change caused by genetic engineering and anatomically embedded digital and informational technologies. The author delves into current scientific initiatives that will lead to the emergence of super smart individuals with unique creative capacities. He draws on technology, psychology and philosophy to consider humans-as-they-are relative to autonomy, creativity, and their place in a future shared with ‘post humans.’ The author discusses the current state of bioethics and technology law, both which policymakers, beset by a torrent of revolutionary advances in bioengineering, are attempting to steer. Significantly, Carvalko addresses why we must both preserve the narratives that brought us to this moment and continue to express our humanity through, music, art, and literature, to ensure that, as a uniquely creative species, we don’t simply vanish in the ether of an evolution brought about by our own technology.
Considering Computer Contracting?: The Computer Weekly Guide To Becoming A Freelance Computer Professional (Computer Weekly Professional Ser.)
by Michael PowellConsidering computer contracting?If you are, then read this book. It explores the many aspects of the computer contracting world and gives sound practical advice to both the newcomer and the experienced contractor. It will also be invaluable if you are an employer wrestling with the perennial problem of finding staff in this highly competitive marketplace.Let this book show you how to break loose from being an employee to working freelance. The author, a freelancer himself, considers what it takes to become a contract worker and gives you invaluable information throughout to help you get started in the world of computer contracting. This book looks at:* why contract workers are used at all - what kind of companies actually employ contractors, and why?* how you make the transition from full-time working - what does it actually take temperamentally to be a successful contractor?* how you start - what does forming your own company involve, and why is it even necessary?* how you go about finding a contract, and negotiating the right rate.* what agencies do for you - and how can you find who are the best?* the financial differences between being a full-time employee and a contractor - how do you manage your affairs?* how you keep your experience up to date when you do not have a regular employer to help train you.* what sort of opportunities are available, and what sort of rates of pay you can expect.* your possible career progressions after contracting.The contracting scene is ever changing. In this wide-ranging book, the current outlook for contract staff is analysed as well as the trends in the computer industry which are driving these changes. Some doors are opening whilst other close - let this book be your guide.If you have marketable skills, the right attitude and would like to be your own boss, there could not be a better time to consider computer contracting.
Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation
by Blake J. HarrisNow a documentary on CBS All Access. Following the success of The Accidental Billionaires and Moneyball comes Console Wars—a mesmerizing, behind-the-scenes business thriller that chronicles how Sega, a small, scrappy gaming company led by an unlikely visionary and a team of rebels, took on the juggernaut Nintendo and revolutionized the video game industry. In 1990, Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the video game industry. Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But that would all change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a man who knew nothing about videogames and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat and bold ideas of his renegade employees, transformed Sega and eventually led to a ruthless David-and-Goliath showdown with rival Nintendo.The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts: from living rooms and schoolyards to boardrooms and Congress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the US against Japan.Based on over two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the underdog tale of how Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punchline into a market leader. It’s the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, birth a $60 billion dollar industry.A best book of the year: NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Goodreads
Constitution and Production of Mathematics in the Cyberspace: A Phenomenological Approach
by Maria Aparecida Viggiani BicudoThis book brings together various studies that assume phenomenology to analyze how mathematics education is affected by the experience of being in the cyberspace. The authors of the chapters included in this contributed volume work with the theoretical framework developed by authors such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to investigate how mathematics is produced and comprehended in a new way of being in the world, with digital technologies. The aim of this book is not to explain the tools used and how one works with them in the cyberspace, aiming at better teaching and learning mathematics. Its purpose is to present philosophical investigations that contribute to the understanding of the complexity of the world in which we are being researchers and mathematics teachers. By doing so, Constitution and Production of Mathematics in the Cyberspace – A Phenomenological Approach will help researchers and mathematics teachers understand their role in a world in which the experience of teaching and learning mathematics is being radically changed by new technologies and new ways of being in this world.
The Constitution of Algorithms: Ground-Truthing, Programming, Formulating (Inside Technology)
by Florian JatonA laboratory study that investigates how algorithms come into existence.Algorithms--often associated with the terms big data, machine learning, or artificial intelligence--underlie the technologies we use every day, and disputes over the consequences, actual or potential, of new algorithms arise regularly. In this book, Florian Jaton offers a new way to study computerized methods, providing an account of where algorithms come from and how they are constituted, investigating the practical activities by which algorithms are progressively assembled rather than what they may suggest or require once they are assembled.
Constraining Designs for Synthesis and Timing Analysis: A Practical Guide to Synopsys Design Constraints (SDC)
by Sanjay Churiwala Sridhar GangadharanThis book serves as a hands-on guide to timing constraints in integrated circuit design. Readers will learn to maximize performance of their IC designs, by specifying timing requirements correctly. Coverage includes key aspects of the design flow impacted by timing constraints, including synthesis, static timing analysis and placement and routing. Concepts needed for specifying timing requirements are explained in detail and then applied to specific stages in the design flow, all within the context of Synopsys Design Constraints (SDC), the industry-leading format for specifying constraints.
Constraint-based Local Search
by Pascal Van Hentenryck Laurent MichelThe ubiquity of combinatorial optimization problems in our society is illustrated by the novel application areas for optimization technology, which range from supply chain management to sports tournament scheduling. Over the last two decades, constraint programming has emerged as a fundamental methodology to solve a variety of combinatorial problems, and rich constraint programming languages have been developed for expressing and combining constraints and specifying search procedures at a high level of abstraction. Local search approaches to combinatorial optimization are able to isolate optimal or near-optimal solutions within reasonable time constraints.This book introduces a method for solving combinatorial optimization problems that combines constraint programming and local search, using constraints to describe and control local search, and a programming language, COMET, that supports both modeling and search abstractions in the spirit of constraint programming.After an overview of local search including neighborhoods, heuristics, and metaheuristics, the book presents the architecture and modeling and search components of constraint-based local search and describes how constraint-based local search is supported in COMET. The book describes a variety of applications, arranged by meta-heuristics. It presents scheduling applications, along with the background necessary to understand these challenging problems. The book also includes a number of satisfiability problems, illustrating the ability of constraint-based local search approaches to cope with both satisfiability and optimization problems in a uniform fashion.
Constraint Handling in Cohort Intelligence Algorithm (Advances in Metaheuristics)
by Ishaan R. Kale Anand J. KulkarniMechanical Engineering domain problems are generally complex, consisting of different design variables and constraints. These problems may not be solved using gradient-based optimization techniques. The stochastic nature-inspired optimization techniques have been proposed in this book to efficiently handle the complex problems. The nature-inspired algorithms are classified as bio-inspired, swarm, and physics/chemical-based algorithms. Socio-inspired is one of the subdomains of bio-inspired algorithms, and Cohort Intelligence (CI) models the social tendencies of learning candidates with an inherent goal to achieve the best possible position. In this book, CI is investigated by solving ten discrete variable truss structural problems, eleven mixed variable design engineering problems, seventeen linear and nonlinear constrained test problems and two real-world applications from manufacturing domain. Static Penalty Function (SPF) is also adopted to handle the linear and nonlinear constraints, and limitations in CI and SPF approaches are examined. Constraint Handling in Cohort Intelligence Algorithm is a valuable reference to practitioners working in the industry as well as to students and researchers in the area of optimization methods.
Constraint Handling in Metaheuristics and Applications
by Anand J. Kulkarni Efrén Mezura-Montes Yong Wang Amir H. Gandomi Ganesh KrishnasamyThis book aims to discuss the core and underlying principles and analysis of the different constraint handling approaches. The main emphasis of the book is on providing an enriched literature on mathematical modelling of the test as well as real-world problems with constraints, and further development of generalized constraint handling techniques. These techniques may be incorporated in suitable metaheuristics providing a solid optimized solution to the problems and applications being addressed. The book comprises original contributions with an aim to develop and discuss generalized constraint handling approaches/techniques for the metaheuristics and/or the applications being addressed. A variety of novel as well as modified and hybridized techniques have been discussed in the book. The conceptual as well as the mathematical level in all the chapters is well within the grasp of the scientists as well as the undergraduate and graduate students from the engineering and computer science streams. The reader is encouraged to have basic knowledge of probability and mathematical analysis and optimization. The book also provides critical review of the contemporary constraint handling approaches. The contributions of the book may further help to explore new avenues leading towards multidisciplinary research discussions. This book is a complete reference for engineers, scientists, and students studying/working in the optimization, artificial intelligence (AI), or computational intelligence arena.
Constraint Management in Manufacturing: Optimising the Supply Chain
by Ted HutchinFocusing on making money out of the supply chain, this book describes how to successfully manage manufacturing companies in today's global context. The text explores how constraint management, with roots in the Theory of Constraints, produces wealth through the development of manufacturers' strengths. Constraint Management in Manufacturing:
Constraint Networks: Targeting Simplicity for Techniques and Algorithms (Wiley-iste Ser.)
by Christophe LecoutreA major challenge in constraint programming is to develop efficient generic approaches to solve instances of the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP). With this aim in mind, this book provides an accessible synthesis of the author's research and work in this area, divided into four main topics: representation, inference, search, and learning. The results obtained and reproduced in this book have a wide applicability, regardless of the nature of the problem or the constraints involved, making it an extremely user-friendly resource for those involved in this field.