The nutshell: Scientists Aiden and Michel invented the Google Ngram Viewer, which allows users to analyze the evolution of language as captured in the millions of books Google has digitized. In Uncharted, they tell the story of how they developed this tool, explain some of their most trenchant findings, and demonstrate the potential of this data to illuminate the world we’ve created.

Literary lovechild of: Raymond Williams’ Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society and Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don’t.

The post Tomorrow’s Data, Tomorrow’s Water, and Tomorrow-Land appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: Risk-averse. Dependent. Superficial. Narcissistic. All of these are adjectives employed by developmental psychologists Gardner and Davis to describe the Web 2.0 generation. They argue that today’s kids are dependent on apps—from maps that prevent them from getting lost to social media that keep them in constant contact with one another.

Literary lovechild of: Sherry Turkle’s Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet and Jean M. Twenge’s Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before.

You’ll find it on your bookshelf if: You want to understand why your child blocked you from posting on her Facebook wall. It seems ungrateful, given how every day for six months you made sure to post a few links

The post This Is Your Brain On Apps, ‘Minecraft,’ and Fracking appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: This heavily illustrated biography of Thomas Edison from DeGraaf, the archivist at Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, New Jersey, creates a portrait not of a mad genius but of a brilliant, ambitious, and collaborative inventor and businessman with a knack for knowing what the public wanted.

Literary lovechild of: Randall E. Stross’ The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World and Henry Ford’s My Life and Work.

The post Turning On Light Bulbs, Dialing Back Climate Change, and Building Up Cities appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: For years, University of Colorado–Boulder and Vermilion Sea Institute biologist Hirsh has brought a class of college students to Baja California to study the ecology and history of the Sea of Cortez. He chronicles one summer’s adventures in teaching and offers ruminations on changing ecosystems and sea cucumbers, the evolution of domestic dogs and the development of Mexico.

Literary lovechild of: Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams and Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man.

You’ll find it on your bookshelf if: A C-minus in freshman biology quashed your dreams of doing a semester on a boat. And of going to medical school. And of marrying the one person you ever loved. But you’re still more upset about that semester-on-a-boat thing.

The post A World That’s Overdeveloped, Fatter, and Sadder appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: Lankov, a historian at South Korea’s Koomkin University who lived as an exchange student (from the Soviet Union) in North Korea in the 1980s, reveals the methods behind Pyongyang’s seeming madness and what it’s like to be an ordinary citizen of North Korea.

Literary lovechild of: Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty and Julia E. Sweig’s Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know.

The post Histories That Go Above the 38th Parallel, Beneath the Pasties, and Behind the Bar appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: Mead, a professor of English at Baruch College, explores the role of video games in the military-entertainment complex and the influence America’s armed forces have had on the country’s technology and education.

Literary lovechild of: Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.

The post War Simulation, Overpopulation, and Impossible Equations appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: Mary Sherman Morgan’s playwright son, George D. Morgan, knew that his mother had invented hydyne, the rocket propellant that put America’s first satellite in orbit, while working at North American Aviation during the Cold War. But much of her story was shrouded in mystery until he decided to write first a play and then a biography about her life.

The post The Mysteries of a Rocket Mom, Parasites, and Human Intelligence appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: Foxman and Wolf—both of the Anti-Defamation League—argue that Internet hate speech is a dangerous virtual epidemic that threatens us all in real life. But they don’t want to fight it in the courtroom. They prefer the court of public opinion—by having people and Internet companies self-regulate, by educating children in and outside school, and by generating positive counter-speech.

Literary lovechild of: Jeremy Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech and Stanley Fish’s There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too.

You’ll find it on your bookshelf if: You’re still mad at that forum poster who called you a “dumbass.”

The post The Evil Of Internet Trolls, Personalized Medicine, and Poseidon appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: University of Michigan information scholar Brunton uses spam as a window into the history of the Internet, providing insight on everything from early online community building to Google’s dominance.

Literary lovechild of: Katie Hafner’s Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet and Andrew Blum’s Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.

You’ll find it on your bookshelf if: You’re making $500-$1,000 a day working from home, just like we are. Click here to learn more: http://www.ivetriedthat.com/about/.

The post Spam, Psychos, or Nukes<span class="colon">:</span> Take Your Pick appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The nutshell: University of Delaware historian May chronicles the civil rights struggles—including the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr.—and political maneuverings that gave birth, eventually, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Literary lovechild of: Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 and Alexander Keyssar’s The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.

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