Vivek Wadhwa

Alex Salkever

This book teaches readers to evaluate the potential impact of any new technology by asking three simple questions. According to Vivek Wadhwa, it is up to everyone to choose how technology moves forward. Will our future be Star Wars or Mad Max? If we simply let change happen, we may give our vote to the dark side, which will steal our privacy and control everything by default.

Making Informed Choices about Technology in a World Moving Faster and Faster

Choose Now

Argues that entrepreneurial immigants are increasingly taking their talents to other countries because of faulty U.S. immigration policies.

Why America is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent

The Immigrant Exodus

Technology promises to help us achieve our dreams, connect us to everyone, and free up time--so why are we more miserable then ever? Wadhwa and Salkever show that our unhappiness can be traced to a concerted effort to mold our behavior, thoughts, and dreams to accomplish the goals of tech companies. For all its considerable benefits, many argue that technology has been instrumental in eroding security, privacy, and community. But Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever argue that the truth is far more insidious: technology is actively robbing us of our happiness by making us so reliant on it that it becomes an addiction. Tech companies have all the weapons--sophisticated tracking bots, GPS coordinates, and algorithms that determine the optimal ways to distract us to their products and apps--even secret coding that defeats government monitoring and supervision--but Vivek and Salkever now provide us with insights and techniques to fight back. They focus on four key areas: Love, Work, Self, and Society. In each case, they document how the promise of technology has mutated into addiction and despair, and they lay out strategies to take back control by understanding the addictive mechanisms at the root of technology overload.

Why Tech is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain--and how to Fight Back

Your Happiness was Hacked

Ismail Amla

Not only can big companies be just as nimble as start-ups, they can out-innovate their challengers by combining a start-up mind-set with the powerful advantages that legacy companies have. Over and over, we see big legacy businesses getting beaten to the punch by energetic little start-ups. It seems like innovation can come from only the bottom up or from outside in. But tech experts Vivek Wadwha, Ismail Amla, and Alex Salkever are here to tell you that "big equals slow and stodgy" is a myth. Based on decades of experience working with the world's leading brands and start-ups, they explore the opportunity legacy companies have to create new markets, supercharge growth, and remake their businesses by combining the scrappy mind-set and tool belt of hypergrowth start-ups with the massive benefits of incumbency: boatloads of customer data, decades of brand equity, robust distribution channels, enormous financial asserts, and more. Equally important, they provide a playbook on how to use their insights in your own company, team, or career. This is a fast-paced, anecdote-rich story that rethinks modern innovation--a book every manager, executive, and ambitious employee will want to read.

How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation

From Incremental to Exponential

A computer beats the reigning human champion of Go, a game harder than chess. Another is composing classical music. Labs are creating life-forms from synthetic DNA. A doctor designs an artificial trachea, uses a 3D printer to produce it, and implants it and saves a child's life. Astonishing technological advances like these are arriving in increasing numbers. Scholar and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa uses this book to alert us to dozens of them and raise important questions about what they may mean for us. Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, self-driving vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. But the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening, alienating future: eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. As Wadhwa puts it, our choices will determine if our future is Star Trek or Mad Max. Wadhwa offers us three questions to ask about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are its risks and rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? Looking at a broad array of advances in this light, he emphasizes that the future is up to us to create—that even if our hands are not on the wheel, we will decide the driverless car's destination.

How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future

The Driver in the Driverless Car

Il pilota nell'auto senza pilota. Come non perdere il controllo delle nostre vite nell'era dell'intelligenza artificiale

Un computer batte il campione (umano) in carica di Go, un gioco più difficile degli scacchi. Un altro compone musica classica. I laboratori creano forme di vita a partire da DNA sintetico. Un medico progetta una trachea artificiale, usa una stampante 3D per realizzarla, la impianta e salva la vita a un bambino. Questi sono solo alcuni degli stupefacenti progressi tecnologici che stanno verificandosi in numero crescente. Lo studioso e imprenditore Vivek Wadhwa usa questo libro per metterci in guardia da molti di essi e solleva importanti questioni riguardo a cosa possano significare per noi. Scoperte rivoluzionarie quali la genomica personalizzata, i veicoli a guida automatica, i droni e l’intelligenza artificiale potrebbero rendere le nostre vite più sane, sicure e facili. Ma le stesse tecnologie sollevano lo spettro di un futuro spaventoso e alienante, fatto di eugenetica, di un’economia priva di lavoro, della completa perdita della privacy e di una sempre più acuta diseguaglianza economica. Wadhwa vuole sottolineare come stia a noi creare il futuro: anche se le nostre mani non sono sul volante, saremo noi a decidere la destinazione dell’automobile senza pilota.

Come non perdere il controllo delle nostre vite nell’era dell’intelligenza artificiale

Il pilota nell'auto senza pilota

Over and over, we see big legacy businesses getting beaten to the punch by energetic little start-ups. It seems like innovation can come from only the bottom up or from the outside in. But tech experts Vivek Wadhwa and Ismail Amla are here to tell you that "big equals slow and stodgy" is a myth. Based on decades of experience working with both the world's leading brands and disruptive start-ups, this book explores the opportunity legacy companies have to create new markets, supercharge growth, and remake their businesses by combining the mindset and tool belt of start-ups with the benefits of incumbency: boatloads of customer data, decades of brand equity, robust distribution channels, enormous financial asserts, and more. This fast-paced, anecdote-rich story rethinks modern innovation-a book every manager, executive, and ambitious employee will want to read.

From Incremental To Exponential: How Large Companies Can See the Future and Rethink Innovation

Your Happiness Was Hacked Why Tech Is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain—and How to Fight Back Do you feel in control of your life or enslaved by your devices? Have you risked your life texting and driving? Do you sympathize with a test group of students who endured painful shocks rather than be separated from their phones? Digital technology is wonderful, but it's making us miserable, say former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. There's a reason Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Guardian he won't let his nephew on social networks. We've become a nation of tech addicts—although it's not entirely our fault, and it is possible to enjoy the benefits of technology while taking our happiness back from the bots. Wadhwa and Salkever describe the applied neuroscience techniques developers are using to make their products so insidiously habit-forming and, drawing on the latest research, detail the negative impact of technology in four key areas: love, work, play, and life. There are dozens of vivid examples. Online dating apps like Tinder encourage users to evaluate people like products, leading to superficial, unsatisfying relationships. Workers check their email an average of seventy-seven times a day, wreaking havoc on productivity. Children now spend nearly twice as much time playing inside with their screens as they do outside in the natural world—it is any wonder childhood obesity is a problem? The light from the devices so many of us look at right before we go to sleep suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone vital for sleep and healthy organ functioning. But there's a way out. Wadhwa and Salkever lay out simple, common-sense ways to disrupt developers' efforts to get you hooked, including six simple questions to help you decide what role any given technology should play in your life. Ironically, they even describe some emerging technologies designed to give users more control. Get back to making technology serve you, not the other way around!

Alex Salkever

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