The Book

The Book
Author: Amaranth Borsuk
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2018-05-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0262346893

The book as object, as content, as idea, as interface. What is the book in a digital age? Is it a physical object containing pages encased in covers? Is it a portable device that gives us access to entire libraries? The codex, the book as bound paper sheets, emerged around 150 CE. It was preceded by clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. Are those books? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive. Despite nostalgic paeans to the codex and its printed pages, Borsuk reminds us, the term “book” commonly refers to both medium and content. And the medium has proved to be malleable. Rather than pinning our notion of the book to a single form, Borsuk argues, we should remember its long history of transformation. Considering the book as object, content, idea, and interface, she shows that the physical form of the book has always been the site of experimentation and play. Rather than creating a false dichotomy between print and digital media, we should appreciate their continuities.

Oer

Oer
Author: Andrew Wesolek
Publisher: Pacific University Press
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2018-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781945398797

For many of us, the drive to affect positive change--however vague or idiosyncratic our sense of this might be--has guided our work in higher education. We champion the pursuit of a college degree because few endeavors can match it in terms of advancing a person's economic mobility (Chetty, Friedman, Saez, Turner, and Yagan; 2017). Despite recent debates about the value of a college degree (Pew Research Center, 2017), the opportunities and financial stability awarded to those with college degrees remain apparent when they are compared to peers who have only graduated high school (Pew Research Center, 2014). And while more Americans have a college degree than ever before (Ryan and Bauman, 2016), access to a formal, post-secondary education continues to be elusive for some. Indeed, over the last ten years, analysts have projected that the cost of attending college would keep 2.4 million low-to-moderate income, college-qualified high school graduates from completing a college degree (Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 2006). During that same period, college students in the United States saw expenses related to tuition and fees increase by 63 percent, school housing costs (excluding board) increase by 51 percent, textbook prices increase by 88 percent (Bureau of Labor, 2016). Because few students can afford a college education by salary alone, 44.2 million Americans have sought financial aid via student loans. As a result, total student loan debt is now topping $1.45 trillion in the United States (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 2017), and student loan delinquency rates are averaging 11.2 percent (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2017). The burden of a student's financial decisions extends beyond the mere individual: society will inevitably carry the weight of this debt for years to come.

Ground Truth

Ground Truth
Author: Ruby McConnell
Publisher: Overcup Press
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2020-04-14
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1732610339

FINALIST for the 2021 Oregon Book Award. Rooted in the Pacific Northwest, the essays in Ruby McConnell's Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life cover the vast terrain of this region &– from volcanoes to city parks, the eroding shorelines along the Oregon coast, badlands, lush forests, and city parks. Combining her background as a registered geologist, McConnell's essays also weave in personal landscapes composed of grief, loss, and optimism for the future of our environment. "The Pacific Northwest that you see today is the result of forty years of radical changes in the culture and economics of what was once a resource-extraction and agriculture-driven region. They are changes so fundamental in nature and scope...that, for those of us from this place, will always be marked by the cataclysmic eruptions of Mt. St. Helens on May 18, 1980." --Ruby McConnell In this collection of 17 essays, geologist Ruby McConnell opens her part natural history, part memoir-in-essays about the Pacific Northwest with the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May of 1980. She was two years old. "Everything that I have stood direct witness to since, everything I know about this place, happe

Deep Learning

Deep Learning
Author: Ian Goodfellow
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 801
Release: 2016-11-10
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262337371

An introduction to a broad range of topics in deep learning, covering mathematical and conceptual background, deep learning techniques used in industry, and research perspectives. “Written by three experts in the field, Deep Learning is the only comprehensive book on the subject.” —Elon Musk, cochair of OpenAI; cofounder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX Deep learning is a form of machine learning that enables computers to learn from experience and understand the world in terms of a hierarchy of concepts. Because the computer gathers knowledge from experience, there is no need for a human computer operator to formally specify all the knowledge that the computer needs. The hierarchy of concepts allows the computer to learn complicated concepts by building them out of simpler ones; a graph of these hierarchies would be many layers deep. This book introduces a broad range of topics in deep learning. The text offers mathematical and conceptual background, covering relevant concepts in linear algebra, probability theory and information theory, numerical computation, and machine learning. It describes deep learning techniques used by practitioners in industry, including deep feedforward networks, regularization, optimization algorithms, convolutional networks, sequence modeling, and practical methodology; and it surveys such applications as natural language processing, speech recognition, computer vision, online recommendation systems, bioinformatics, and videogames. Finally, the book offers research perspectives, covering such theoretical topics as linear factor models, autoencoders, representation learning, structured probabilistic models, Monte Carlo methods, the partition function, approximate inference, and deep generative models. Deep Learning can be used by undergraduate or graduate students planning careers in either industry or research, and by software engineers who want to begin using deep learning in their products or platforms. A website offers supplementary material for both readers and instructors.

Teaching Computational Thinking

Teaching Computational Thinking
Author: Maureen D. Neumann
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2021-12-21
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262045052

A guide for educators to incorporate computational thinking—a set of cognitive skills applied to problem solving—into a broad range of subjects. Computational thinking—a set of mental and cognitive tools applied to problem solving—is a fundamental skill that all of us (and not just computer scientists) draw on. Educators have found that computational thinking enhances learning across a range of subjects and reinforces students’ abilities in reading, writing, and arithmetic. This book offers a guide for incorporating computational thinking into middle school and high school classrooms, presenting a series of activities, projects, and tasks that employ a range of pedagogical practices and cross a variety of content areas. As students problem solve, communicate, persevere, work as a team, and learn from mistakes, they develop a concrete understanding of the abstract principles used in computer science to create code and other digital artifacts. The book guides students and teachers to integrate computer programming with visual art and geometry, generating abstract expressionist–style images; construct topological graphs that represent the relationships between characters in such literary works as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Romeo and Juliet; apply Newtonian physics to the creation of computer games; and locate, analyze, and present empirical data relevant to social and political issues. Finally, the book lists a variety of classroom resources, including the programming languages Scratch (free to all) and Codesters (free to teachers). An accompanying website contains the executable programs used in the book’s activities.

The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction

The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction
Author: Dale Peck
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2016-06-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1616955465

In The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction, editor Dale Peck offers readers a fresh take on a seminal period in American history, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Cold War was rushing to its conclusion, and literature was searching for ways to move beyond the postmodern unease of the 1970s. Morally charged by newly politicized notions of identity but fraught with anxiety about a body whose fragility had been freshly emphasized by the AIDS epidemic, the 34 works gathered here are individually vivid, but taken as a body of work, they challenge the prevailing notion of the ’80s as a time of aesthetic as well as financial maximalism. Formally inventive yet tightly controlled, they offer a more expansive, inclusive view of the era’s literary accomplishments. The anthology blends early stories from writers like Denis Johnson, Jamaica Kincaid, Mary Gaitskill, and Raymond Carver, which have gone on to become part of the American canon, with remarkable and often transgressive work from some of the most celebrated writers of the underground, including Dennis Cooper, Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, and Gary Indiana. Peck has also included powerful work by writers such as Gil Cuadros, Essex Hemphill, and Sam D’Allesandro, whose untimely deaths from AIDS ended their careers almost before they had begun. Almost a third of the stories are out of print and unavailable elsewhere. The Soho Press Book of ’80s Short Fiction is a daring reappraisal of a decade that is increasingly central to our culture.

Political Awakenings

Political Awakenings
Author: Harry Kreisler
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2011-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1458731839

As a kid, Noam Chomsky handed out the Daily Mirror at his uncle's newsstand on 72nd Street, inadvertently finding himself in a buzzing intellectual and political hub for European immigrants in New York. Iranian human rights Nobelist Shirin Ebadi and her husband signed their own legal contract, attempting to restore equality to their marriage after the Iranian Revolution effectively erased the legal rights of women. Elizabeth Warren set out to expose those frauds declaring bankruptcy and taking advantage of the system-only to discover, in her research, a very different story of hard-working middle-class families facing economic collapse in the absence of a social safety net. While studying at Oxford, a young Tariq Ali made a bet with a friend that he could work the Vietnam War into every single answer on his final exams. In this rousing, thoughtful, often funny, and always inspiring volume, a diverse and impressive group of thinkers reflect on those formative experiences that shaped their own political commitments. A fascinating new window into the revealing links between the personal and the political, Political Awakenings will engage readers across generations.

What Universities Owe Democracy

What Universities Owe Democracy
Author: Ronald J. Daniels
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1421442698

Introduction -- American dreams : access, mobility, fairness -- Free minds : educating democratic citizens -- Hard facts : knowledge creation and checking power -- Purposeful pluralism : dialogue across difference on campus -- Conclusion.

Leadership Matters

Leadership Matters
Author: W. Joseph King
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2022-01-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1421442450

Leadership matters more than ever in this turbulent moment in American higher education. During these unprecedented times, glaring internal inefficiencies, communication breakdowns, and an overriding sense of cultural inertia on many campuses are too often set against a backdrop of changing consumer preferences, high sticker prices, declining demand, massive tuition discounting, aging infrastructure, technological and pedagogical alternatives, and political pressure. Strategic leadership in such a complex environment needs to be exercised in nuanced ways that differ from those embraced by corporate cultures. In Leadership Matters, W. Joseph King and Brian C. Mitchell argue that the success of higher education institutions depends on strategic leaders who can utilize the strengths of their institutions and leaders to balance internal pressures, shifting demographics, global education needs, and workforce preparation demands beyond the college gates. Drawing on their extensive experience, the authors guide senior administration, trustees, and presidents on how to lead during immense financial, demographic, and social challenges. King and Mitchell believe that, to survive, colleges must be well run—flexible, effective, and forward thinking. The authors begin with a fundamental premise—that colleges and universities must evolve and adapt by modernizing their practices, monetizing their assets, focusing on core educational strategies, and linking explicitly to the modern world. Discussing a broad range of leadership positions, including presidents, provosts, and board chairs, Leadership Matters touches on strategic planning, management and operations, stakeholder relations, campus and community, accreditation and athletic conferences, and much more. The authors offer an optimistic assessment based upon frank and stark conclusions about what colleges must do—and must not do—to remain relevant in the coming decades.