The story of the mavericks and scientists, crackpots and artistic visionaries who imagined a future where machines fuse with our minds

As humanity and technology become ever more tightly interwoven, Wireheads explores the final and most intimate frontier: the brain, and the electronic devices, magnetic signals, implants, and computer interfaces that promise to merge it with the world of the machine. Will these technologies eventually direct our thoughts and behaviour-or are they doing so already? Will they maintain us in states of artificial bliss, or connect us to higher intelligences, or replace the world of our senses with simulated realities?

Mike Jay, acclaimed author of Psychonauts, now traces the tangled, paranoid history of these real and fantastical brain technologies. From the fictions of H. G. Wells and Philip K. Dick to The Matrix, the CIA's Cold War experiments and Elon Musk's Neuralink, scientists and visionaries have long chased the dream of neural enhancement and control, with wildly varying degrees of success.

Encompassing covert military operations and psychedelic art, moral philosophy and cybernetic theory, Jay has assembled a thrilling narrative out of our attempts to understand and rewire the brain-and a brilliant meditation on what it means to be human in a posthuman age.

≫Alle Menschen werden erzogen. Jede Gesellschaft erzieht.≪ Mit diesen knappen Saetzen beginnt Niklas Luhmanns zwischen 1975 und 1977 entstandenes Buch ueber ein bedeutendes Teilsystem moderner Gesellschaft: die Erziehung. Was ist ihre Funktion? Wodurch sind Lehren und Lernen bestimmt? Wie verhaelt sich Erziehung als System? Wie organisiert man sie als Prozess? Luhmann beantwortet diese Fragen mit einer umfassenden soziologischen Theorie, die bei aller Abstraktheit keineswegs blind ist fuer die Vielfalt der Erfahrungen, die in Schulen gemacht werden.

Gerade naemlich was in den Klassenzimmern geschieht, hat fuer Luhmann zentrale Bedeutung. Denn anders als in Wirtschaft und Politik kann man sich im Bereich der Erziehung auf Kommunikationsmedien wie Geld oder Macht, die auch Abwesende ueberzeugen, nicht verlassen. Dies wertet die Kommunikation unter den Anwesenden ? den Schuelern und Lehrerinnen ? auch fuer den Gesellschaftstheoretiker auf. Mit anderen Worten: Es liegt hier ein Grundlagenwerk vor, das keineswegs ausschliesslich fuer Soziologen geschrieben wurde. Auch Paedagoginnen und Erzieher koennen noch etwas lernen.

This book sheds philosophical light on the current and future scope of artificall inteligence. Artifical intelligence (AI) I is becoming increasingly relevant in today's world. However, 'AI' is a very generic label that encompasses a multitude of realities and fuels very dissimilar reactions. Some share a positive view on it, stressing the important services provided by its applications to everyday life and in specific fields. Others grimly focus on possible biases of AI utilization outcomes and damaging consequence, and there are even apocalyptic visions of the terrible future impact of AI developments (Artificial General Intelligence - AGI) on humanity.

Ricardo Crespo uses a classical philosophical approach to look at the nature of technology and of AI, including the ontology of AI and its potential abilities to think and act freely. This analysis reveals some of the current and upcoming perils of AI, calling for an appraisal of its actual pros and cons to determine the position and actions that should be adopted in its regard. Classical philosophical notions of metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology and ethics come in handy to gain a better understanding of this technological breakthrough. This approach challenges the notion that AI will eventually share human traits in the future. On the flip side, it will highlight the useful contributions that AI provides and will provide in the years to come.

Es ist die Gesellschaft, die einen Strich durch die Digitalisierung macht. Aber was bedeutet dieser Strich? Man kann ihn sehen, aber nicht lesen. Er verweist auf die bei jeder Digitalisierung analog mitlaufende und ebenso kontinuierliche wie widerstaendige Wirklichkeit. Gesellschaft und Bewusstsein, Koerper und Geist operieren nach eigenen Regeln. Was passiert, wenn digitale Daten in eine analoge Wirklichkeit zurueckgespielt werden? Dirk Baecker erprobt in seinem neuen Buch eine Theorie digitaler Medien aus sozialwissenschaftlicher Sicht. Lernende Daten und praediktive Modelle stehen im Zentrum seines tiefschuerfenden Versuchs, unsere Kommunikation mit Rechnern zu beschreiben.

Im Fluchtpunkt von Baeckers Analyse steht ein Begriff der Stochastik, der aktuelle Programme der kuenstlichen Intelligenz ebenso erfasst wie die Gesellschaft und ihre Theorie. Stochastik ist demnach nicht nur die Lehre von Wahrscheinlichkeiten, eine Art ≫Theorie≪ der Statistik, sondern darueber hinaus eine Lehre vom Wirklichkeitsgewinn aus der Verknuepfung von Zufaellen mit Zufaellen. Baeckers originelle Bestandsaufnahme der Digitalisierung fuehrt uns mitten hinein in eine Verstaendigung der Gesellschaft ueber sich selbst ? und mit einer neuen, ≫fremden Intelligenz≪, die wir noch kaum begriffen haben.

This book profiles the developing realm of cultural values assessments (CVAs) or equivalent studies that are becoming prolific in use and narration in the settler state of Victoria, Australia. CVAs are being generated by First Peoples' organisations and their consultants to address land use and management dilemmas as well as pending major land use or water-related developments, major energy and road infrastructure projects, mineral extraction projects, and new greenfield suburb design and planning ventures. As CVAs are increasingly being interpreted as vehicles for Victoria's respective First Peoples' communities, this book explores how they are used to voice self-deterministic concerns and recommendations in considering how such projects negatively impact upon their Country, and how they could positively work towards healing and renourishing. This volume brings together some 38 CVAs, critiquing and interrogating their formative evolution as statements by First Peoples, to inform future applications in Australia and internationally.

The story of the social and sexual revolution responsible for the emergence of our most prized skill-the ability to speak

Speech is unprecedented in the natural world. Yet human infants can learn the grammar of their native tongue so quickly, it is as if they knew the basics already. How did such a unique ability evolve, and what does it reveal about the nature of our species?

Drawing on evolutionary and social anthropology, behavioural ecology, archaeology, and linguistics, Chris Knight and Jerome Lewis unearth the political and social origins of our capacity to speak. What they discover points to the revolutionary role played by women at every stage. It seems that formidable coalitions of women used laughter, song, and dance to restrain the male potential for violence. In so doing, women established extraordinary levels of community-wide trust-precisely what was needed for linguistic creativity to flourish.

The Revolutionary Origins of Language is a bold and surprising assessment of the complex conditions which produced our most prized skill.

This book argues that the time has come to embrace transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary teaching and research as essential to addressing today's complex challenges. It traces the shift from rigid "silo" thinking toward integrated approaches that connect sciences, humanities, and applied fields such as health, environmental policy, and technology. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship, it explores emerging intersections and conceptual frameworks that redefine concepts of place, landscape, networks, welfare, and wellbeing. The book also explores tensions between global interconnectedness and persistent social, economic, and political divides, offering insights into how scholars can navigate and bridge these worlds.

Essential reading for scholars, educators, and advanced students seeking to navigate and contribute to the evolving landscape of interdisciplinary research.

This edited book discusses the historical role of textbooks in promoting national ideology. It brings together chapters from several continents, establishing a dialogue between the Global North and South, and between authors from relatively newly independent states and those working in countries that were once centres of colonial empire.

Anchored in the symbolic space of the Atlantic, the book examines how empires, nations, and identities were historically constructed and contested across the ocean that once linked Europe, Africa, and the Americas through trade, slavery, and migration. It highlights the enduring influence of colonial legacies in textbooks from Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mexico, Argentina, Italy, and beyond, revealing how these narratives continue to shape civic imagination and historical consciousness.

Clear, engaging, and highly accessible, National and Global Historical Perspectives on Textbooks: The Atlantic Connection invites readers to examine closely what schoolbooks convey, through words and images, and to reflect on how these narratives shape public memory and civic life. By combining theoretical insights with comparative perspectives, the book offers a fresh and timely understanding of the role of education in an era marked by global inequalities, renewed nationalism, and debates over historical truth.

This volume will appeal not only to researchers and students in textbook studies, history education, curriculum theory, and memory politics, but also to teachers, policymakers, and anyone interested in how societies craft the stories they tell their children.

The materiality of photobooks.

Photobooks are an art form on the move. They travel physically, as copies are bought, traded, treasured, forgotten, and rediscovered around the world. They move conceptually, as their meanings evolve through changing use and value. Photobooks combine languages of photography, text and design into a distinct medium that breaks from the confines of galleries and libraries, entering unexpected or intimate environments, such as our homes.

Encounters with Photobooks marks a shift in scholarship by showing how meaningful experiences with photobooks are shaped by the situated, material, and political circumstances of these encounters. Weaving together creative writing about photobook encounters with critical traditions in museology, phenomenology, art history and new materialism, this innovative book illuminates the photobook's multiplicity: its unique potential for its many copies to matter differently to makers and readers in each momentary encounter.

This book will be made open access within three years of publication thanks to Path to Open, a program developed in partnership between JSTOR, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and The University of North Carolina Press to bring about equitable access and impact for the entire scholarly community, including authors, researchers, libraries, and university presses around the world. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/

This book presents neopragmatism as a fresh theoretical framework for the social and spatial sciences. Instead of relying on fixed truths or rigid subject-object divisions, it moves beyond traditional theoretical oppositions. At its core, the book applies Richard Rorty's vocabulary theory and a panrelationalist perspective, viewing the world as a dynamic network of relations shaped through language. This approach is enriched by insights from discourse theory, conflict theory, and actor-network theory, offering a comprehensive lens for understanding social and spatial phenomena. Concepts like landscape, region, or city are treated as contingent and contested constructions, rather than stable categories. The framework is tested through case studies on biography construction and landscape conflicts, demonstrating how it captures complexity and provides practical tools for addressing social issues.

The book is intended for readers seeking both theoretical depth and practical applicability in fields such as sociology, philosophy, geography, political science, and interdisciplinary studies of society and space.

In a world transformed by digital innovations and a social life increasingly digitally automated and augmented, Digital Society, Interaction Order and Automation advances our understanding of how interactionist thinking can be leveraged as a conceptual and methodological resource for approaching digital societies in relation to automation and the emerging contours of interaction order in the 21st century.

Drawing on the inspirational work of Erving Goffman, Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks, alongside empirical inquiry, Housley and Dahl consider how the study of interaction order might shape a contemporary and future-oriented sociological understanding of social interaction, automation and organisation in digital times. Adopting a creative and distinct approach situated within sociological inquiry, namely interactionist sociology, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, the authors explore the relationship between interaction order, synthetic sociality and socio-digital change through the lens of punctuation and automation and it's situated production and incorporation within contemporary contours of interaction.

A timely contribution to mediating the emerging contours of digital society, this is important reading for an interdisciplinary audience that includes, sociologists, cultural theorists, social psychologists, linguists, ethnographers and computer scientists.

QAnon can no longer be treated as a 'fringe issue' but must be considered a far-reaching social problem. In this crucial contribution to our understanding of how family relationships and dynamics deal with and are affected by conspiratorial beliefs, Mulcahy and Simpson explore how the social and relational consequences of QAnon belief affect both individuals and communities.

Through a feminist, relational lens and drawing on data from a digital ethnography of the Subreddit forum 'QAnonCasualties', A Relational Approach to the QAnon Movement: The Hidden Pandemic addresses a gap in current research by providing a much-needed analysis of the unheard voices and experiences of the primary social networks of QAnon believers (e.g., family, partners, friends etc.), exploring the impact such conspiratorial theories have on the lives of 'outgroup' members and their relationships with their loved ones. By doing so, it sheds light on the unacknowledged and far-reaching consequences of conspiratorial belief more generally. The experiences of QAnon believers' friends and families provide a unique perspective on the journey towards conspiratorial belief and political polarisation, as they watch (and react to) the process in real time. This also allows for the identification of push and pull factors relating to the QAnonCasualties and their 'Q's as they negotiate their relationships.

Through investigating the banality of the everyday experiences of those affected, the authors create space for the emergence of social responses to redress what has become a wicked social problem that requires a multifaceted, holistic and empathetic approach to solving it.

How the concept of improvement came to dominate and direct British thinking about social change during the eighteenth century

Improvement had a specific environmental meaning during the eighteenth century, referring primarily to the development of land. Its application, however, grew to encompass almost every arena of social life: agriculture, trade, infrastructure, morality, literature, language, the law, the arts, the sciences, the self. Rather than understanding improvement as a set of ideas, Rachael King shows for the first time how the concept developed in and through new forms of early interactive media, such as before-and-after flaps, printed diaries, and magazines and periodicals.

While we now understand improvement as generally "making things better," the idea played a key role in colonial, racist, sexist, and classist undertakings in the period, as colonized peoples, the enslaved, women, and the working classes were sometimes forcibly "improved." Drawing on extensive archival research and bringing together methodologies of media studies, literary studies, the environmental humanities, and the digital humanities, King shows how certain genres of writing elicit a level of interaction that blurs the boundaries of the book, enabling the transformation of an idea into a cultural keyword.

This edited collection offers a distinctive contribution to death studies by foregrounding analytical autoethnographic narratives from researchers and practitioners actively engaged in the field. Unlike works centred on personal bereavement, it explores the emotional and psychological residue left by prolonged scholarly encounters with death, dying, and end-of-life phenomena. The project's uniqueness lies in its multidisciplinary scope, international authorship, and integration of creative artifacts alongside textual analysis. It challenges conventional notions of subjectivity in qualitative research, reframing it as a vital, dialogic presence rather than bias. Contributors reflect on their own affective responses-grief, memory, sensory experience-while researching death spaces, death work, and the inheritance of death through ritual and conversation. The collection addresses a gap in scholarship by examining how researchers and practitioners are shaped by their fieldwork, offering therapeutic and introspective insights. Its organization around key thematic areas, and its cultural diversity, make it a valuable resource for scholars across disciplines, most notably death studies and (auto)ethnographic research, and anyone seeking to understand the complex interplay of emotion, memory, and research.

The story of the Black Civil War soldiers who fought for a nation to respect them as fully human

Over 135,000 Black Southerners defended the Union during the Civil War. This book tells the story of these soldiers, who fought their one-time oppressors with grit and gallantry to seize the manhood and honor that was denied them in slavery and to make the South a land of liberty, not bondage.

Jonathan Lande describes a fight that went far beyond the assaults and bayonet charges of the battlefield. While serving the nation as warriors, Black Southerners in Union blue also cared for enslaved and recently emancipated family members struggling to find shelter, food, and warmth. They clashed with irregular fighters on the war's peripheries, chasing Southern guerrillas and liberating captives from slavery. They enforced federal authority on prisoners of war and in Confederate towns. While bivouacked, they took up arms and resisted army officers who treated them as little more than slaves. Amid this civil war within the South, Black soldiers disproved those who dismissed them as unmanly cowards as they fought to recast a republic predicated on inequality and human enslavement.

Valiant Men of War transforms the Civil War struggle of freedmen in Union blue into a fight not only for the Union but also for their manhood and control of the South.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online.

Understanding and dismantling the deep-rooted structures of racism is essential for creating truly equitable societies. In recent years, initiatives aimed at Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and social justice have become more prevalent than ever. However, a critical issue persists: these efforts often fail to comprehensively address and confront anti-Black racism, particularly within the Black Atlantic region.

Unmasking DEI: New Frameworks for Confronting Anti-Black Racism in the Black Atlantic by Christopher Stuart Taylor offers an incisive exploration of how historical and contemporary DEI and social justice initiatives have fallen short in tackling anti-Black racism. Drawing on extensive research and professional experience as a DEI practitioner, Taylor employs a critical race theoretical lens to reveal how these movements often perpetuate exclusion within inherently inequitable systems. Focusing particularly on Canada, the study dissects the myths surrounding national narratives like the Underground Railroad and exposes the exclusionary immigration policies that have historically marginalized Black individuals. By integrating Black Studies methodologies and non-Eurocentric frameworks, this volume challenges dominant scholarly perspectives and provides alternative epistemological models aimed at disrupting the status quo of colonial structures.

This work is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, public policy professionals, and general readers interested in the intersections of DEI, social justice, and anti-Black racism. It offers practical insights and theoretical foundations for those committed to developing more effective and genuinely inclusive policies.

How does an occupation movement become a political force capable of taking power?
This book explores Mexico's 2006 mass encampment in Mexico City-an unprecedented 48-day protest sparked by a contested presidential election. From this occupation emerged new mobilisations against privatisation and inequality, reshaping the Mexican left and paving the way for electoral victories in 2018 and 2024. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, the book traces activist networks, grassroots organising, and innovative repertoires of action, offering insights into how movements transform into enduring political parties. Through the stories of key figures, including Claudia Sheinbaum and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, it provides a human and sociological account of political commitment, revitalising debates on occupations and social movements worldwide

Violence is never just an act; it is a spectacle, a mechanism of power, and a tool of erasure. As authoritarianism, ethnonationalism, and systemic racism intensify, the question becomes whose suffering is made visible and whose is ignored. At the intersections of gender, race, and media, these dynamics reveal that violence is structured, sustained, and legitimised by the narratives surrounding it.

Marked for Erasure offers a critical examination of how mediatisation, ethnonationalism, and necropolitical regimes intersect to determine which bodies are marked for violence or erasure. Drawing from political theory, gender studies, and media analysis, this book exposes the ways in which marginalised communities are subjected to systemic violence that is both physical and epistemic. Author Meghna Prabir interrogates how media spectacles sensationalise suffering while obscuring the structural forces behind it, creating an economy of grief that decides which lives matter. Prabir's work highlights acts of resistance, showing how activists and artists reclaim visibility and forge spaces of survival against regimes of disposability. By taking a transnational perspective, Marked for Erasure not only reveals patterns of oppression across different geopolitical contexts but also amplifies the counter-narratives that disrupt them.

Engaging with this work means tackling urgent questions about power, media, and the politics of life and death. Essential for scholars, activists, and justice advocates, it provides a crucial intervention in the global conversation on violence, visibility, and resistance.

This book breaks new ground in sports media research by looking in depth at the relatively recent nation-state phenomenon of sportswashing at a time when it is increasingly pervasive in commercial elements of elite sport. High-profile cases of sportswashing have seen states use their economic influence through event planning and sponsorship to distract from poor human rights, climate change or mining-industry issues, and instead seek positive coverage of their countries. The Middle East has been particularly prominent over the past decade, using sport as a vehicle for promotion, with the 2022 World Cup hosted in Qatar, Saudi Arabia financing LIV Golf, and numerous Formula 1 races being held throughout the region. Where the liberal west views these Middle Eastern practices as immoral, the states involved see their role more simply as promotion and nation building. Securing a future where oil may not be the focus is also a reason behind these governments providing more sports events for their people. It is within this context that this project has been developed, presenting a range of perspectives and case studies from scholars across the globe.

This book proposes that 21st-century political debates in AI, bioethics, and environmental policy are best understood as occurring along a new political spectrum: a zero-sum conflict between the intrinsic value of nature and technological progress. The political values spectrum is a simple conceptual tool that everyone already knows. However, many modern political debates are not adequately explained by traditional economic or social liberty spectra. Instead, they are better illuminated by this new spectrum, concerning technological mastery over the biology of our bodies, minds, functions and physical environment. By defining the metaphysical opposition of nature and technology, and building an original case for technology's intrinsic value as a form of physical liberty and collective human achievement, this broad work seeks to unify disparate ethical fields, provide clarity in political discourse, and show that the persistent struggles in philosophy of technology, environmental ethics and bioethics to draw a principled line between acceptable and unacceptable technological interventions is in fact a political problem of balancing competing intrinsic goods, not a failure of ethical reasoning.

There can be few subjects as important in our rapidly changing contemporary world as technology and nature. And the two are often seen to be in conflict. But why do we value them? Ben Steyn argues that a key ingredient is missing from our understanding and that this hampers our ability to shape policy; do we regard technology and nature as intrinsically or merely instrumentally significant? This book is a vital contribution to that debate.

David Edmonds, Oxford University, author of Would You Kill the Fat Man? and co-host of Philosophy Bites

This book examines the increasing internationalization of the social sciences, focusing specifically on how Europeanization has reshaped the production of social science knowledge. Over recent decades, research has highlighted how ideas, people, and techniques have circulated between nation-states and how international organizations have facilitated these flows. Following a similar trajectory to nation-states, the EU has driven shifts in knowledge production to address its unique challenges, including economic and social integration, cultural coordination, homogenization, standardization, and institutional construction. The book explores these dynamics through 10 chapters that analyze the processes and consequences of Europeanization. Drawing on diverse methods and analytical approaches, the chapters are structured around three key dimensions: hierarchies, practices, and institutions. Together, they provide a comprehensive account of how European institutions, networks, and ideas have transformed the social sciences.

The unprecedented crises that the contemporary educational world and global society are facing, intricately interwoven with traumas of human tragedies and eco-disasters, call for responses based upon the awareness of the connectedness within, between, and among individuals, groups, nations, and our shared planetary environment. We desperately need to heal, to heal from the injuries of wars, dominations, and polarizations, and to heal education's instrumental disconnections from its own existential roots. It is in this context that wisdoms of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism with their abundant and diverse practices of healing are approached in this volume as gifts to contemporary educational thoughts and praxis. In these wisdom traditions, healing is a holistic, ongoing process physically, psychologically, philosophically and spiritually to integrative pathways.

This book, through engaging in intercultural, transdisciplinary, and international conversations and dialogues, intends to synergize our collective energies to enhance our resilience and create a space for strength-based, community-based, and experience-based, and inner-outer connected restorative approach of healing in education. This book also serves as a 20-year celebration of the Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Education SIG at AERA. It is a timely collection for addressing today's challenges and will make an important contribution to transforming education, curriculum, and pedagogy internationally.

The book is about the multiple meanings and instances of masks (and makeup which seems to have a mask-like function such as in Kiss, many black metal bands, and Insane Clown Posse) within popular culture, specifically films and music. While mainly focusing on the Western contexts, there will also be examples from other regions and cultural contexts such as Japan and Korea. Each chapter offers an in-depth analysis of a particular work(s) or artist/band rather than just name dropping mainstream and obscure work that many scholars, unfortunately, do. The study in its entirety belongs to cultural studies and the interpretive sciences. The target audience consists of other academic researchers, students and the broader audience of people who are interested in film and music (e.g., fans).

This edited anthology critically engages with the intersection of feminism, politics, and popular culture, with an emphasis on how shifts in cultural discourse have shaped the perception, understanding, and practice of feminist thought in contemporary society. Drawing on Foucault, this volume provides a critical framework for understanding how feminist movements-particularly second-wave feminism-were commodified and subsumed into capitalist logics. It demonstrates how feminist aims like gender equity and bodily autonomy are rendered into categories that can be surveilled, managed, and ultimately co-opted once they are made legible to power and argues that this transformation diminishes the efficacy of feminist action, as its revolutionary potential becomes subsumed into the very structures it seeks to resist. The future of feminism is thus framed as a question of how to contend with its past: How do we reconcile the radical aims of the second wave with the neoliberalization of contemporary feminism? Each chapter bridges scholarly theory with contemporary analysis, making use of academic sources as well as cultural texts like media. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars in feminist theory, gender studies, literary criticism, critical theory, and pop culture studies.