Top 15 in Computers & Technology
Week of July 13, 2026
by Lola Ridge
"The Ghetto and Other Poems" by Lola Ridge is a compelling collection that delves into the complexities of urban life, social struggles, and the human condition. The titular poem, "The Ghetto," paints a vivid picture of life in a crowded, impoverished neighborhood, capturing the oppressive heat, the vibrant yet challenging community life, and the enduring spirit of its inhabitants. Ridge's work is characterized by its keen observation and empathy for the marginalized, as she explores themes of poverty, labor, and social justice. Her poems often juxtapose the harsh realities of city life with moments of beauty and resilience, as seen in "Manhattan," where the city's lights are both dazzling and isolating. Ridge's language is rich and evocative, employing vivid imagery and rhythmic cadences to convey the emotional and physical landscapes of her subjects. The collection also includes poems like "The Song of Iron," which reflects on industrialization and its impact on humanity, and "Frank Little at Calvary," a poignant tribute to a labor movement. Through her work, Ridge challenges readers to confront the social inequities of her time, making her poetry both a reflection of and a call to action against the injustices she witnessed.

by Jafari, Ali
Portals present unique strategic challenges in the academic environment. Their conceptualization and design requires the input of campus constituents who seldom interact and whose interests are often opposite. The implementation of a portal requires a coordination of applications and databases controlled by different campus units at a level that may never before have been attempted at the institution. Building a portal is as much about constructing intra-campus bridges as it is about user interfaces and content. Designing Portals: Opportunities and Challenges discusses the current status of portals in higher education by providing insight into the role portals play in an institution's business and educational strategy, by taking the reader through the processes of conceptualization, design, and implementation of the portals (in different stages of development) at major universities and by offering insight from three producers of portal software systems in use at institutions of higher learning and elsewhere.
by Taina Bucher
We live in a world in which Google's search algorithms determine how we access information, Facebook's News Feed algorithms shape how we socialize, and Netflix collaborative filtering algorithms choose the media products we consume. As such, we live algorithmic lives. Life, however, is not blindly controlled or determined by algorithms. Nor are we simply victims of an ever-expanding artificial intelligence. Rather than looking at how technologies shape or are shaped by political institutions, this book is concerned with the ways in which informational infrastructure may be considered political in its capacity to shape social and cultural life. It looks specifically at the conditions of algorithmic life -- how algorithms work, both materially and discursively, to create the conditions for sociality and connectivity. The book argues that the most important aspect of algorithms is not what they are in terms of their specific technical details but rather how they become part of social practices and how different people enlist them as powerful brokers of information, communication and society. If we truly want to engage with the promises of automation and predictive analytics entailed by the promises of "big data", we also need to understand the contours of algorithmic life that condition such practices. Setting out to explore both the specific uses of algorithms and the cultural forms they generate, this book offers a novel understanding of the power and politics of algorithmic l
by Marius S. Vassiliou
Command and Control (C2) is the set of organizational and technical attributes and processes by which an enterprise marshals and employs human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions.C2 Re-envisioned: The Future of the Enterprise identifies four interrelated megatrends that are individually and collectively sh
by Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in. Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.

by Kate Crawford
The hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and labor to privacy and freedom What happens when artificial intelligence saturates political life and depletes the planet? How is AI shaping our understanding of ourselves and our societies? In this book Kate Crawford reveals how this planetary network is fueling a shift toward undemocratic governance and increased inequality. Drawing on more than a decade of research, award-winning science, and technology, Crawford reveals how AI is a technology of extraction: from the energy and minerals needed to build and sustain its infrastructure, to the exploited workers behind "automated" services, to the data AI collects from us. Rather than taking a narrow focus on code and algorithms, Crawford offers us a political and a material perspective on what it takes to make artificial intelligence and where it goes wrong. While technical systems present a veneer of objectivity, they are always systems of power. This is an urgent account of what is at stake as technology companies use artificial intelligence to reshape the world.

by Norbert Wiener
It appers impossible for anyone seriously interested in our civilization to ignore this book. It is a 'must' book for those in every branch of science . . . in addition, economists, politicians, statesmen, and businessmen cannot afford to overlook cybernetics and its tremendous, even terrifying implications.

by Richard Blum
Unlike high-level languages such as Java and C++, assemblylanguage is much closer to the machine code that actually runscomputers; it's used to create programs or modules that are veryfast and efficient, as well as in hacking exploits and reverseengineering Covering assembly language in the Pentium microprocessorenvironment, this code-intensive guide shows programmers how tocreate stand-alone assembly language programs as well as how toincorporate assembly language libraries or routines into existinghigh-level applications Demonstrates how to manipulate data, incorporate advancedfunctions and libraries, and maximize application performance Examples use C as a high-level language, Linux as thedevelopment environment, and GNU tools for assembling, compiling,linking, and debugging
by Zach Vorhies
A Story of Big Tech Censorship and Bias and the Fight to Save Our Country The madness of Google's attempt to mold our reality into a version dictated by their corporate values has never been portrayed better than in this chilling account by Google whistleblower, Zach Vorhies. As a senior engineer at Zach watched in horror from the inside as the 2016 election of Donald Trump drove Google into a frenzy of censorship and political manipulation. The American ideal of an honest, hard-fought battle of ideas—when the contest is over, shaking hands and working together to solve problems—was replaced by a different, darker ethic alien to this country's history as wave after of censorship destroyed free speech and entire market sectors. Working with New York Times bestselling author Kent Heckenlively (Plague of Corruption), Vorhies and Heckenlively weave a tale of a tech industry once beloved by its central figure for its innovation and original thinking, turned into a terrifying “woke-church” of censorship and political intolerance. For Zach, an intuitive counter-thinker, brought up on the dystopian futures of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Ray Bradbury, it was clear that Google was attempting nothing less than a seamless rewriting of the operating code of reality in which many would not be allowed to participate. Using Google's own internal search engine, Zach discovered their real "AI-Censorship" system called “Machine Learning Fairness,” which he claims is a merging of critical

by Radford M. Neal
Artificial "neural networks" are widely used as flexible models for classification and regression applications, but questions remain about how the power of these models can be safely exploited when training data is limited. This book demonstrates how Bayesian methods allow complex neural network models to be used without fear of the "overfitting" that can occur with traditional training methods. Insight into the nature of these complex Bayesian models is provided by a theoretical investigation of the priors over functions that underlie them. A practical implementation of Bayesian neural network learning using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods is also described, and software for it is freely available over the Internet. Presupposing only basic knowledge of probability and statistics, this book should be of interest to researchers in statistics, engineering, and artificial intelligence.
by Jaime Levy
User experience (UX) strategy requires a careful blend of business strategy and UX design, and this hands-on guide offers an easy-to-apply framework for executing it. It is packed with product strategy tools and tactics to help you and your team craft innovative solutions that people want. This second edition includes new real-world examples, updated techniques and a chapter on conducting qualitative online user research. Whether you're a UX/UI designer, product manager/owner, entrepreneur, or member of a corporate innovation team, this book teaches simple to advanced methods that you can use in your work right away. You'll also gain perspective on the subject matter through historical context and case studies. Define value propositions and validate target users through provisional personas and customer discovery techniques Conduct methodical competitive research on direct and indirect competitors and create an analysis brief to decisively guide stakeholders Use storyboarding and rapid prototyping for designing experiments that focus on the value innovation and business model of your product Learn how to conduct user research online to get valuable insights quickly on any budget Test business ideas and validate marketing channels by running online advertising and landing page campaigns.

by Douglas E. Cowan
Cyberhenge examines the use of Internet technology in shaping religious traditions and rituals. Cowan asks how and why Neopaganism has embraced the Internet in such an innovative and imaginative way.

by Naomi S. Baron
Describes the impact that online and mobile technologies have had on our way of communicating with one another. Focuses on our ability to block incoming IMs, disguise ourselves on Facebook, and screen incoming callers. Explores the personal and social benefits of this technology.

by Hans Moravec
"A dizzying display of intellect and wild imaginings by Moravec, a world-class roboticist who has himself developed clever beasts . . . Undeniably, Moravec comes across as a highly knowledgeable and creative talent--which is just what the field needs".--Kirkus Reviews.
by Andrew Hunt
What others in the trenches say about The Pragmatic Programmer... “The cool thing about this book is that it’s great for keeping the programming process fresh. The book helps you to continue to grow and clearly comes from people who have been there.” — Kent Beck, author of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change “I found this book to be a great mix of solid advice and wonderful analogies!” — Martin Fowler, author of Refactoring and UML Distilled “I would buy a copy, read it twice, then tell all my colleagues to run out and grab a copy. This is a book I would never loan because I would worry about it being lost.” — Kevin Ruland, Management Science, MSG-Logistics “The wisdom and practical experience of the authors is obvious. The topics presented are relevant and useful.... By far its greatest strength for me has been the outstanding analogies—tracer bullets, broken windows, and the fabulous helicopter-based explanation of the need for orthogonality, especially in a crisis situation. I have little doubt that this book will eventually become an excellent source of useful information for journeymen programmers and expert mentors alike.” — John Lakos, author of Large-Scale C++ Software Design “This is the sort of book I will buy a dozen copies of when it comes out so I can give it to my clients.” — Eric Vought, Software Engineer “Most modern books on software development fail to cover the basics of what makes a great software developer, instead spending their time on syntax