num_pages: 240
description: A computer beats the reigning human champion of Go a game harder than chess. Another is composing classical music. Labs are creating life-forms from synthetic DNA. A doctor designs an artificial trachea uses a 3D printer to produce it and implants it and saves a child's life. Astonishing technological advances like these are arriving in increasing numbers. Scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa uses this book to alert us to dozens of them and raise important questions about what they may mean for us. Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics self-driving vehicles drones and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier safer and easier. But the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening alienating future: eugenics a jobless economy complete loss of privacy and ever-worsening economic inequality. As Wadhwa puts it our choices will determine if our future is Star Trek or Mad Max. Wadhwa offers us three questions to ask about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are its risks and rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? Looking at a broad array of advances in this light he emphasizes that the future is up to us to create--that even if our hands are not on the wheel we will decide the driverless car's destination.ContentsPreface IntroductionPART ONE: The Here and Now1. A bitter taste of dystopia2. Welcome to Moores world3. How change will affect us personally and why choices matter4. If change is always the answer what are the questions?PART TWO: Does the technology have the potential to benefit everyone equally?5. The amazing and scary rise of Artificial Intelligence6. Remaking education with avatars and A.I.7. We are becoming data; our doctors softwarePART THREE: What are the risks and the rewards?8. Robotics and Biology: The inevitable merging of man and machine9. Security and privacy in an era of ubiquitous connectivity10. The drones are coming11. Designer genes the bacteria in our guts and precision medicinePART FOUR: Does the technology foster autonomy or dependency?12. Your own private driver: Self-driving cars trucks and planes13. When your scale talks to your refrigerator: The Internet of Things14. The future of your body is electric15. Almost free energy and foodConclusion: So will it be Star Trek or Mad Max?NotesAcknowledgmentsIndexAbout the authors
language: English
title: The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future
publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers