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Describes the massacre of a wagon train by Mormon militiamen and their Native American allies at a lowland creek called Mountain Meadows.
Throughout history mankind has struggled to reconcile itself with the inescapability of its own mortality. This book explores the themes of immortality and survivalism in contemporary culture, shedding light on the varied and ingenious ways in which humans and human societies aspire to confront and deal with death, or even seek to outlive it, as it were. Bringing together theoretical and empirical work from internationally acclaimed scholars across a range of disciplines, Postmortal Society offers studies of the strategies adopted and means available in modern society for trying to ‘cheat’ death or prolong life, the status of the dead in the modern Western world, the effects of beliefs t...
Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Frémont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. His adventures are fit for remaking into the tall tales Bridger himself liked to tell. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize character his due, Jerry Enzler takes this frontiersman’s full measure for the first time—and tells a story that would do Jim Bridger proud. Born in 1804 and orphaned at thirteen, Bridger made his first western foray in 1822, traveling up the Missouri River with Mike Fink and a hundred enterprising young men to ...
Since cities emerged ten thousand years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear—cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their very essence. In this book, a renowned architect and urban planner who studies the intersection of cities and technology argues that we are in such a moment. The authors explain some of the forces behind urban change and offer new visions of the many possibilities for tomorrow’s city. Pervasive digital systems that layer our cities are transforming urban life. The authors provide a front-row seat to this change. Their work at the MIT Senseable ...
This is a study of the material life of information and its devices; of electronic waste in its physical and electronic incarnations; a cultural and material mapping of the spaces where electronics in the form of both hardware and information accumulate, break down, or are stowed away. Where other studies have addressed "digital" technology through a focus on its immateriality or virtual qualities, Gabrys traces the material, spatial, cultural and political infrastructures that enable the emergence and dissolution of these technologies. In the course of her book, she explores five interrelated "spaces" where electronics fall apart: from Silicon Valley to Nasdaq, from containers bound for Chi...
An exploration of embodied intelligence and its implications points toward a theory of intelligence in general; with case studies of intelligent systems in ubiquitous computing, business and management, human memory, and robotics. How could the body influence our thinking when it seems obvious that the brain controls the body? In How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard demonstrate that thought is not independent of the body but is tightly constrained, and at the same time enabled, by it. They argue that the kinds of thoughts we are capable of have their foundation in our embodiment—in our morphology and the material properties of our bodies. This crucial notion ...
On the leading edge of trauma and archival studies, this timely book engages with the recent growth in visual projects that respond to the archive, focusing in particular on installation art. It traces a line of argument from practitioners who explicitly depict the archive (Samuel Beckett, Christian Boltanski, Art & Language, Walid Raad) to those whose materials and practices are archival (Mirosław Bałka, Jean-Luc Godard, Silvia Kolbowski, Boltanski, Atom Egoyan). Jones considers in particular the widespread nostalgia for ‘archival’ media such as analogue photographs and film. He analyses the innovative strategies by which such artefacts are incorporated, examining five distinct types of archival practice: the intermedial, testimonial, personal, relational and monumentalist.
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The ‘Cloud’, hailed as a new digital commons, a utopia of collaborative expression and constant connection, actually constitutes a strategy of vitalist post-hegemonic power, which moves to dominate immanently and intensively, organizing our affective political involvements, instituting new modes of enclosure, and, crucially, colonizing the future through a new temporality of control. The virtual is often claimed as a realm of invention through which capitalism might be cracked, but it is precisely here that power now thrives. Cloud time, in service of security and profit, assumes all is knowable. We bear witness to the collapse of both past and future virtuals into a present dedicated to the exploitation of the spectres of both.
The U.S. economy is the envy of the world, and the key to its success is technological innovation. In this fascinating and in-depth account reported from three continents, Robert Buderi turns the spotlight on corporate research and the management of innovation that is helping drive the economy's robust growth. Here are firsthand communiqués from inside the labs of a reborn IBM, resurgent GE and Lucent, research upstarts Intel and Microsoft, and other leading American firms -- as well as top European and Japanese competitors. It was only a few years ago that competitiveness experts -- U.S. well-wishers and naysayers alike -- concluded that America had lost its business and technological edge...