"Optimization is the driving principle of our modern world. We now can manufacture, transport, and organize things more cheaply and faster than ever. Optimized models underlie everything from airline schedules to dating site matches. We strive for efficiency in our daily lives, obsessed with productivity and optimal performance. How did a mathematical concept take on such outsize cultural shape? And what is lost when efficiency is gained? Optimal...

"Too Much Magic" is what Kunstler sees in the bright visions of a future world dreamed up by optimistic souls who believe technology will solve all our problems. He argues that the time for magical thinking and hoping for miracles is over, and the time to begin preparing for the long emergency has begun.

Do our digital habits kill our attention span or alter the nature of focus? Is social media driving us apart or changing the meaning of social relationships? How we answer these questions will hinge on what we value. This wide-ranging account of our emotional responses to new technologies, from the telegraph to the smart phone, argues that we are profoundly changed by them. Today, for example, we are increasingly distrustful of social media, yet we...

"Markets are messy, and no one knows this better than traders who work tirelessly to predict what they will do next. In Whoosh Goes the Market: Algorithms, Automation, and Alienation, Daniel Souleles takes us into the day-to-day experiences of a team at a large trading firm, revealing what it's actually like to make and lose money on contemporary capital markets. The team Souleles shadows has mostly moved out of the pits and work with automated, glitch-prone...