The newest communication technologies are profoundly changing the world's politics, economies, and cultures, but the specific implications of online game worlds remain mysterious. The Virtual Future employs theories and methods from social science to explore nine very different virtual futures: The Matrix Online, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, Entropia Universe, Star Trek Online, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, and The Chronicles of Riddick. Each presents a different picture of how technology and society could evolve in coming centuries, but one theme runs through all of them, the attempt to escape the Earth and seek new destinies among the stars. Four decades after the last trip to the moon, a new conception of spaceflight is emerging. Rather than rockets shooting humans across vast physical distances to sterile rocks that lack the resources to sustain life, perhaps robot space probes and orbiting telescopes will glean information about the universe, that humans can then experience inside computer-generated environments much closer to home. All nine of these fantastically rich multiplayer masterpieces have shown myriads of people that really radical alternatives to contemporary society could exist, and has served as a laboratory for examining the consequences. Each is a prototype of new social forms, a utopian subculture, and a simulation of technologies that have yet to be invented. They draw upon several different traditions of science fiction and academic philosophy, and they were created in several nations. By comparing these nine role-playing fantasies, we can better consider what kind of world we want to inhabit in the real future.

Advanced Virtual Assistants (AVAs) are computer programs that use artificial intelligence (AI) to perform various tasks for human users. These AI-powered assistants can help with multiple activities, including scheduling appointments, answering questions, managing email and social media, and even performing complex calculations. They can be accessed through various platforms, including smartphones, smart speakers, and other digital devices. AVAs utilize natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to understand human language and improve their responses over time. As these technologies advance, virtual assistants are becoming increasingly sophisticated and capable of handling more complex tasks. As a result, they are transforming how we interact with technology and providing users with more efficient and personalized experiences. This book is a helpful reference for scientists and industrial experts interested in AVAs' current and future capabilities.

Explores the idea that the future lies in its ability to articulate the consequences of an increasingly synthetic and virtual world.

Existing human beings stand in a unique relationship of asymmetrical influence over future generations. Our choices now can settle whether there are any human beings in the further future; how many will exist; what capacities and abilities they might have; and what the character of the natural world they inhabit is like. This volume, with contributions from both new voices and prominent, established figures in moral and political philosophy, examines three generally underexplored themes concerning morality and our relationship to future generations. First, would it be morally wrong to allow humanity to go extinct? Or do we have moral reasons to try and ensure that humanity continues into the indefinite future? Second, if humanity is to continue into the future, how many people should there be? And is it morally important whether they have lives that are of high quality or are just barely worth living? And third, how can we best make sense of the intuitive idea that by not taking action on climate change and preserving natural resources, we are in some way wronging future generations? This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Tim Mulgan introduces a new thought experiment: the world will end in two hundred years, and humanity faces imminent and unavoidable (but not immediate) extinction. This book presents imaginary philosophical debates and lectures within this slowly ending world. The Ending World is both a provocative thought experiment and a challenging possible future. Exploring it from within - adopting the perspective of philosophers living in that ending world - helps us to imagine this world from the inside, to evaluate it as a possible future, to discover what we owe to future people who might inhabit such a future, and to explore how we might justify ourselves to them. The book explores contemporary debates about pessimism, the meaning of life, the existence of God, the purpose of the universe, the permissibility of creating new people, the need to connect with past and future people, the rectification of historical injustice, the design of utopias, and the desirability of escaping into virtual realities. It draws on a wide range of work in contemporary philosophy - including Samuel Scheffler's discussions of human extinction, Jonathan Lear's exploration of radical hope, David Benatar's anti-natalism, work on procreative ethics by Rivka Weinberg, Melinda Roberts, and Elizabeth Harman, and the author's own previous work on collective consequentialism, future ethics, and alternative conceptions of divine purpose. A central question throughout the book is whether we could equip our descendants to flourish in an ending world, even if we cannot imagine flourishing there ourselves. The book defends an innovative account of our obligations to future people, based on the need to launch multigenerational projects to transform our inherited traditions and values so that they will still make sense even at humanity's end.

Combining two a central topics in philosophy in the 20th Century, this book considers the ethics and impact of decision-making alongside the philosophy of time. When we make simple decisions, like the decision to wake up at 8 a.m. tomorrow, we make use of a linear model of the future. But when we make open-ended decisions, like the decision to get fitter, or more involved in politics, we presuppose a much more complex model of the future. We project a variety of virtual futures. We can carry out a decision in many different ways at once, which may converge and diverge at different points in time. Using a phenomenological approach, The Many Futures of a Decision explores what we learn about the structure of the future specifically from decision-making. Most theories of decision concentrate on the rationality: the evidence and value assessments that build up grounds for a rational decision. Instead, this book innovatively engages with the nature of the future as a multi-layered decisions project. Through interpretations of the theories of decision in philosophers like Husserl and Heidegger, Schmitt and Habermas, Derrida and Deleuze, along with other decision theories, Lampert develops an original theory of multiple futures.

"The Virtual Dimension critically examines the role that digital and immersive technologies have on the methods used by architects, designers, and artists to conceptualize and represent both real and virtual spaces. Interdisciplinary in nature, the essays included here address the implications of "going virtual" from a variety of cultural and theoretical viewpoints."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Created through a student-tested, faculty-approved review process with input from more than 250 students and faculty, GOVT is an engaging and accessible solution to accommodate the diverse learning styles of today's learners at a value-based price. Focusing on the current and historical conflicts and controversies that define America as a nation, GOVT is a streamlined and extremely current text for the American Government course. Its motivating debate theme and appealing modern format speak directly to today's student. A full suite of learning tools--correlated to the text chapter-by-chapter--are available through CourseMate and include an eBook, Chapter In Review cards, videos, simulations, podcasts, and quizzes that allow students to learn and study wherever they are and whenever they have time.

Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us.

AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A STUNNINGLY DESIGNED DELUXE HARDCOVER EDITION • Celebrate the 20th anniversary of this timeless, structure-bending classic—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in twenty-first-century fiction • With an introduction by Gabrielle Zevin (author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow) Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium, 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate in the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon. With a stunning, unmissable new design, this Knopf Canada exclusive 20th anniversary hardcover edition is the perfect gift for fans.