The industrial age.--The world's science and invention.--Noteworthy facts of all nations.--Amazing wonders of nature.--Things we all should know.

Excerpt from Our Wonderful Progress, the World's Triumphant Knowledge and Works: A Vast Treasury and Compendium of the Achievements of Man and the Works of Nature This is the Industrial Age, the age of triumphant knowledge. Follow the records of mankind down through all the centuries, scrutinize the achievements of the race, and more and more conspicuous becomes the fact that in no other period of the world have such marvelous advances in material and industrial progress been made. Within the last decade we have seen a dozen inventions and discoveries, any one of which would be sufficient to illuminate a whole century of the Middle Ages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.

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In 1897, William Randolph Hearst said that his newspaper did not simply cover events that had already happened. «It doesn't wait for things to turn up», Hearst said. «It turns them up.» This book traces the close relationship between media and the United States' development from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. It explores how the active voice of citizen-journalists and trained media professionals has turned to media to direct the moral compass of the people and to set the agenda for a nation, and discusses how changes in technology have altered the way in which participatory journalism is practiced. What makes the book powerful is that its assessment of the influence and use of media encompasses many levels: it explores the potential of media as an agent for change from within small communities to the national stage.

Technologies and tech companies are routinely accused of creating many societal problems. This book exposes these charges as mostly myths, falsehoods, and exaggerations. Technology Fears and Scapegoats debunks 40 widespread myths about Big Tech, Big Data, AI, privacy, trust, polarization, automation, and similar fears, while exposing the scapegoating behind these complaints. The result is a balanced and positive view of the societal impact of technology thus far. The book takes readers through the steps and mindset necessary to restore the West's belief in technological progress. Each individual chapter provides a cogent and often controversial rebuttal to a common tech accusation. The resulting text will inspire conversations among tech insiders, policymakers, and the general public alike. Robert D. Atkinson is the founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the world's leading science and technology policy think tank. His previous books include Big is Beautiful (The MIT Press, 2018), Innovation Economics (Yale, 2012), Supply-Side Follies (Rowman Littlefield, 2007), and The Past and Future of America’s Economy (Edward Elgar, 2005). David Moschella is a nonresident senior fellow at ITIF, in charge of its "Defending Digital" project. For more than a decade, Moschella was Head of Worldwide Research for IDC. His previous books include Seeing Digital (DXC Technology, 2018), Customer-Driven IT (Harvard Business School Press, 2003), and Waves of Power (AMACOM, 1997). He has lectured and consulted on technology trends and strategies in more than 30 countries.

Push a button and turn on the television; tap a button and get a ride; click a button and “like” something. The touch of a finger can set an appliance, a car, or a system in motion, even if the user doesn't understand the underlying mechanisms or algorithms. How did buttons become so ubiquitous? Why do people love them, loathe them, and fear them? In Power Button, Rachel Plotnick traces the origins of today's push-button society by examining how buttons have been made, distributed, used, rejected, and refashioned throughout history. Focusing on the period between 1880 and 1925, when “technologies of the hand” proliferated (including typewriters, telegraphs, and fingerprinting), Plotnick describes the ways that button pushing became a means for digital command, which promised effortless, discreet, and fool-proof control. Emphasizing the doubly digital nature of button pushing—as an act of the finger and a binary activity (on/off, up/down)—Plotnick suggests that the tenets of precomputational digital command anticipate contemporary ideas of computer users. Plotnick discusses the uses of early push buttons to call servants, and the growing tensions between those who work with their hands and those who command with their fingers; automation as “automagic,” enabling command at a distance; instant gratification, and the victory of light over darkness; and early twentieth-century imaginings of a future push-button culture. Push buttons, Plotnick tells us, have demonstrated remarkable staying power, despite efforts to cast button pushers as lazy, privileged, and even dangerous.