Books with author Nicholas Agar

An argument in favor of finding a place for humans (and humanness) in the future digital economy.In the digital economy, accountants, baristas, and cashiers can be automated out of employment; so can surgeons, airline pilots, and cab drivers. Machines will be able to do these jobs more efficiently, accurately, and inexpensively. But, Nicholas Agar warns in this provocative book, these developments could result in a radically disempowered humanity.The digital revolution has brought us new gadgets and new things to do with them. The digital revolution also brings the digital economy, with machines capable of doing humans' jobs. Agar explains that developments in artificial intelligence enable computers to take over not just routine tasks but also the kind of “mind work” that previously relied on human intellect, and that this threatens human agency. The solution, Agar argues, is a hybrid social-digital economy. The key value of the digital economy is efficiency. The key value of the social economy is humanness.A social economy would be centered on connections between human minds. We should reject some digital automation because machines will always be poor substitutes for humans in roles that involve direct contact with other humans. A machine can count out pills and pour out coffee, but we want our nurses and baristas to have minds like ours. In a hybrid social-digital economy, people do the jobs for which feelings matter and machines take on data-intensive work. But humans will have to insist on their relevance in a digital age.

My First Picture Book of Boating Words is a unique boating book for young children. It's a fun way to give children a vocabulary of things commonly seen on boats and the water. Each page contains vibrant color photos of boating items along with the name of each item below it. Some of the photos in this 24 page book include: powerboat, sailboat, dinghy, life jacket, lighthouse, seagull, marina, harbor, anchor etc. It covers powerboats and sailboats as well as fishing and other water related items. The book was created by a boater and is designed for both boaters and non boaters who enjoy the beauty of the water.

Anti-war demonstrations. Protest music. Sit-ins. Flower children. 1968 is an exciting year to be eighteen years old. For an introverted girl like Sarah Sinnott, it is also a challenging, even frightening, year. Sarah begins college with a determination to meet new people and change her life. She soon connects with Nathan Rogers, an outgoing gay activist, and together they seek to make the world a better place. When Sarah falls for Seth Jackson, the handsome editor of the student newspaper, she fears her only involvement with him will be in her dreams. Along the way, she has to come to terms with the possibility that her brother will soon be drafted to fight in Vietnam, and she must deal with some unfinished business from high school in the form of a boy she had a crush on and a snide cheerleader. As the result of a war protest gone wrong, Sarah finds herself in a jail cell and has to make some difficult decisions about how she wants to live her life.

The small town of Cyprus Grove is the epicenter of all things unusual. Eastern European witches live alongside the talking dead and hungry nephilim. In the late 1880's Cyprus Grove has forces align that will bend the comprehension of man to its limit. In the first volume the eyes of three children are the portals to the small sparks that will ignite an inferno. The story of Rebekah has a young girl receive a strange gift. to her horror the life she once knew evaporates as she is hounded by an army of lost souls at the edge of oblivion. Mathias is a grave digger. A thankless and unpleasant job in most places, but in Cyprus Grove it carries additional duties to speak with the dead. When a boat of murdered men wash ashore of the Mississippi he must piece together the events to put them to rest or face terrible consequence of an unbound soul.Jacob struggles with an unsavory neighbor in the back drop of a corn field filled with steel fingered monsters. He will have to escape the corn field before he finds himself prey to the monsters inside.

The first adventure of a red balloon that was born just today and the story of how he found his best friend the frog. Soon the red balloon will be floating the frog on and in and for adventures in the big blue and blue. At first glance the "Red Balloon and Frog" books appear to be simple stories to read. They are not. They have unusual phrasing, cadence, word play, subtleties, humor, and levels of meaning that speak to the older as well as the young reader. These stories are more than just words, they are sounds and cadence and most of all ideas.

Excerpt from An Idyl of the Wabash: And Other StoriesShe had come to Indiana to teach school, and to Honeyport through the intercession in her behalf of Deacon Knox, an Old family friend at home whose second cousin had married Rev. Calvin Evans, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Honeyport.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The red balloon and frog take their first adventure together, floating up and into the big blue. They meet a round boy in a square city, some kitty cats and a very square person named Mr. Pooper. At first glance the "Red Balloon and Frog" books appear to be simple stories to read. They are not. They have unusual phrasing, cadence, word play, subtleties, humor, and levels of meaning that speak to the older as well as the young reader. These stories are more than just words, they are sounds and cadence and most of all ideas.