Paul Thagard, "Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?" (MIT Press, 2021)
Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favorite songs. But do animals and smart machines really...
6 Okt 202157min
Jaap-Henk Hoepman, "Privacy Is Hard and Seven Other Myths: Achieving Privacy Through Careful Design" (MIT Press, 2021)
We are tethered to our devices all day, every day, leaving data trails of our searches, posts, clicks, and communications. Meanwhile, governments and businesses collect our data and use it to monitor ...
5 Okt 202156min
Brian Clegg, "Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe" (MIT Press, 2021)
Our universe might appear chaotic, but deep down it's simply a myriad of rules working independently to create patterns of action, force, and consequence. In Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe (MI...
28 Sep 202146min
Giorgio Vallortigara, "Born Knowing: Imprinting and the Origins of Knowledge" (MIT Press, 2021)
Why do newborns show a preference for a face (or something that resembles a face) over a nonface-like object? Why do baby chicks prefer a moving object to an inanimate one? Neither baby human nor baby...
28 Sep 20211h 1min
Eric. S. Hintz, "American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D" (MIT Press, 2021)
Wonder how America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions beginning at the turn of the early twentieth century?American Independent Inventor...
28 Sep 20211h 17min
Ruth Aylett and Patricia A. Vargas, "Living with Robots: What Every Anxious Human Needs to Know" (MIT Press, 2021)
There's a lot of hype about robots; some of it is scary and some of it utopian. In this accessible book, two robotics experts reveal the truth about what robots can and can't do, how they work, and wh...
21 Sep 20211h 1min
Mariska van Sprundel, "Running Smart: How Science Can Improve Your Endurance and Performance" (MIT Press, 2021)
Conventional wisdom about running is passed down like folklore (and sometimes contradicts itself): the right kind of shoe prevents injury—or running barefoot, like our prehistoric ancestors, is best; ...
14 Sep 202158min
Collin Rice, "Leveraging Distortions: Explanation, Idealization, and Universality in Science" (MIT Press, 2021)
Most of us agree that science aims to tell us what is true about the world. But how do we get at the truth by using theories and models that deliberately, pervasively, and ineliminably distort what th...
10 Sep 20211h 3min
