The groundbreaking memoir from the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. This is the story of our modern age.

The most influential inventor of the modern world, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a different kind of visionary. Born in the same year as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, Berners-Lee famously shared his invention, the World Wide Web, for no commercial reward. Its widespread adoption changed everything, transforming humanity into the first digital species. Through the web, we live, work, dream and connect.

In this intimate memoir, Berners-Lee tells the story of his iconic invention, exploring how it launched a new era of creativity and collaboration while unleashing a commercial race that today imperils democracies and polarizes public debate. As the rapid development of artificial intelligence heralds a new era of innovation, Berners-Lee provides the perfect guide to the crucial decisions ahead – and a gripping, in-the-room account of the rise of the online world.

Filled with Sir Tim’s characteristic optimism, technical insight and wry humour, this is a book about the power of technology – both to fuel our worst instincts and to profoundly shape our lives for the better. This Is for Everyone is an essential read for understanding our times and a bold manifesto for advancing humanity’s future.

‘Who is the greatest living Englishman? It would be hard to argue against the merits of Tim Berners-Lee’
Stephen Fry

As it absorbs data, gains agency, and intermediates between humans and reality, AI (Artificial Intelligence) will help us to address enormous crises, from climate change to geopolitical conflicts to income inequality. It might well solve some of the greatest mysteries of our universe and elevate the human spirit to unimaginable heights. But it will also pose challenges on a scale and of an intensity that we have never seen – usurping our power of independent judgment and action, testing our relationship with the divine, and perhaps even spurring a new phase in human evolution.

The last book of elder statesman Henry Kissinger, written with technologists Craig Mundie and Eric Schmidt, Genesis charts a course between blind faith and unjustified fear as it outlines an effective strategy for navigating the age of AI.

‘Nigel Toon is a visionary leader in the field of artificial intelligence… a must-read’ Marc Tremblay, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft

Those who understand how AI thinks are about to win big.

We are used to thinking of computers as being a step up from calculators – very good at storing information, and maybe even at playing a logical game like chess. But up to now they haven’t been able to think in ways that are intuitive, or respond to questions as a human might. All that has changed, dramatically, in the past few years.

Our search engines are becoming answer engines. Artificial intelligence is already revolutionising sectors from education to healthcare to the creative arts. But how does an AI understand sentiment or context? How does it play and win games that have an almost infinite number of moves? And how can we work with AI to produce insights and innovations that are beyond human capacity, from writing code in an instant to unfolding the elaborate 3D puzzles of proteins?

We stand at the brink of a historic change that will disrupt society and at the same time create enormous opportunities for those who understand how AI thinks. Nigel Toon shows how we train AI to train itself, so that it can paint images that have never existed before or converse in any language. In doing so he reveals the strange and fascinating ways that humans think, too, as we learn how to live in a world shared by machine intelligences of our own creation.

As it absorbs data, gains agency, and intermediates between humans and reality, AI (Artificial Intelligence) will help us to address enormous crises, from climate change to geopolitical conflicts to income inequality. It might well solve some of the greatest mysteries of our universe and elevate the human spirit to unimaginable heights. But it will also pose challenges on a scale and of an intensity that we have never seen – usurping our power of independent judgment and action, testing our relationship with the divine, and perhaps even spurring a new phase in human evolution.

The last book of elder statesman Henry Kissinger, written with technologists Craig Mundie and Eric Schmidt, Genesis charts a course between blind faith and unjustified fear as it outlines an effective strategy for navigating the age of AI.

‘Nigel Toon is a visionary leader in the field of artificial intelligence… a must-read’ Marc Tremblay, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft

Those who understand how AI thinks are about to win big.

We are used to thinking of computers as being a step up from calculators – very good at storing information, and maybe even at playing a logical game like chess. But up to now they haven’t been able to think in ways that are intuitive, or respond to questions as a human might. All that has changed, dramatically, in the past few years.

Our search engines are becoming answer engines. Artificial intelligence is already revolutionising sectors from education to healthcare to the creative arts. But how does an AI understand sentiment or context? How does it play and win games that have an almost infinite number of moves? And how can we work with AI to produce insights and innovations that are beyond human capacity, from writing code in an instant to unfolding the elaborate 3D puzzles of proteins?

We stand at the brink of a historic change that will disrupt society and at the same time create enormous opportunities for those who understand how AI thinks. Nigel Toon shows how we train AI to train itself, so that it can paint images that have never existed before or converse in any language. In doing so he reveals the strange and fascinating ways that humans think, too, as we learn how to live in a world shared by machine intelligences of our own creation.

Corporations and whole nations are betting on quantum computing, hoping to exploit its power to design more efficient vehicles, create life-saving new drugs and streamline industries to revolutionize the economy. But this is only the beginning. Quantum computers could allow us to finally create nuclear fusion reactors that produce clean, renewable energy without radioactive waste or threats of meltdown. They could help us crack the biological processes that generate natural, cheap fertilizer and enable us to feed the world’s growing populations. And they could unravel the fiendishly difficult protein folding that lies at the heart of previously incurable diseases such as Alzheimer’s, motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s, helping us to live longer, healthier lives. Told with Kaku’s signature clarity and enthusiasm, Quantum Supremacy is the story of this exciting frontier and the race to claim humanity’s future.

A CUNNING CHRONICLE OF THE 50 CODES THAT ALTERED THE COURSE OF HISTORY AND CHANGED THE WORLD

From the bestselling author of Bletchley Park Brainteasers and The Scotland Yard Puzzle Book.

There have been secret codes since before the Old Testament, and there were secret codes in the Old Testament too. Almost as soon as writing was invented, so too were the devious means to hide messages and keep them under the wraps of secrecy.

In 50 Codes that Changed the World, Sinclair McKay explores these uncrackable codes, secret cyphers and hidden messages from across time to tell a new history of a secret world. From the temples of Ancient Greece to the court of Elizabeth I; from antique manuscripts whose codes might hold prophecies of doom to the modern realm of quantum mechanics, you will see how a few concealed words could help to win wars, spark revolutions and even change the faces of great nations.

Here is the complete guide to the hidden world of codebreaking, with opportunities for you to see if you could have cracked some of the trickiest puzzles and lip-chewing codes ever created.

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Praise for Sinclair McKay’s books:

‘This book [The Secret Life of Bletchley Park] seems a remarkably faithful account of what we did, why it mattered, and how it all felt at the time by someone who couldn’t possibly have been born then. – THE GUARDIAN

[Bletchley Park Brainteasers] is outrageously difficult but utterly fascinating. – THE EXPRESS

‘Sinclair McKay’s account of this secret war of the airwaves in [Secret Listeners] is as painstakingly researched and fascinating as his bestselling The Secret Life Of Bletchley Park, and an essential companion to it.’ – DAILY MAIL

An exhilarating new biography of John von Neumann: the lost genius who invented our world

‘A sparkling book, with an intoxicating mix of pen-portraits and grand historical narrative. Above all it fizzes with a dizzying mix of deliciously vital ideas. . . A staggering achievement’ Tim Harford

The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Self-replicating moon bases and nuclear weapons. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable man: John von Neumann.

Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived. His colleagues believed he had the fastest brain on the planet – bar none. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project and helped formulate the bedrock of Cold War geopolitics and modern economic theory. He created the first ever programmable digital computer. He prophesied the potential of nanotechnology and, from his deathbed, expounded on the limits of brains and computers – and how they might be overcome.

Taking us on an astonishing journey, Ananyo Bhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through so many different fields of science, sparking revolutions wherever he went.

Insightful and illuminating, The Man from the Future is a thrilling intellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century.

An exhilarating new biography of John von Neumann: the lost genius who invented our world

‘A sparkling book, with an intoxicating mix of pen-portraits and grand historical narrative. Above all it fizzes with a dizzying mix of deliciously vital ideas. . . A staggering achievement’ Tim Harford

The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Self-replicating moon bases and nuclear weapons. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable man: John von Neumann.

Born in Budapest at the turn of the century, von Neumann is one of the most influential scientists to have ever lived. His colleagues believed he had the fastest brain on the planet – bar none. He was instrumental in the Manhattan Project and helped formulate the bedrock of Cold War geopolitics and modern economic theory. He created the first ever programmable digital computer. He prophesied the potential of nanotechnology and, from his deathbed, expounded on the limits of brains and computers – and how they might be overcome.

Taking us on an astonishing journey, Ananyo Bhattacharya explores how a combination of genius and unique historical circumstance allowed a single man to sweep through so many different fields of science, sparking revolutions wherever he went.

Insightful and illuminating, The Man from the Future is a thrilling intellectual biography of the visionary thinker who shaped our century.