How the history of technological revolutions can help us better understand economic and political polarization in the age of automation the technology trap is a sweeping account of the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members. As Carl benedikt Frey shows, the industrial Revolution created unprecedented wealth and prosperity over the long run, but the immediate consequences of Mechanization were devastating. Middle-income jobs withered, wages stagnated, the lab or share of Income fell, profits surged, and economic inequality skyrocketed. These trends broadly mirror those in our current age of automation. But, just as the industrial Revolution eventually brought about extraordinary benefits for society, artificial intelligence systems have the potential to do the same. The technology trap demonstrates that in the midst of another technological revolution, the lessons of the past can help us to more effectively face the present.
Archives: Books
The Architect’s Dream
Forty years after he left, Vidhu Mirani—the Pritzker Prize winning architect whom Karl Lagerfeld once called the Coco Chanel of today—returns to India when the Prime Minister invites him to design a new public library for the capital New Delhi. But a chance encounter in a park now puts him at the centre of a political controversy and forces him to revisit a past that he thought he had left behind.
As his curiosity unspools into something resembling regret, his old friend Hanif Allana, furiously mastering a grief of his own, engages him in a desperate, obsessive cat-and-mouse game. Binding the two men is Tanya Sinha, the woman they both loved, but neither truly knew.
As each exhumes personal history to locate missing pieces of the puzzle they have individually carried within them for years, painful memories begin to surface.
The Architect’s Dream is a novel that asks the primordial question—how haunted are we by the secrets of others?—with a psychologically suspenseful twist that both devastates and redeems.
Mantra Meditations Hindi / Mantra Sadhna / मंत्र साधना
मंत्रों के जाप की परंपरा बहुत प्राचीन और हमारे जमीनी संस्कारों से जुड़ी हुई है। लेकिन इन्हें आज के लोगों के लिए भी प्रासंगिक बनाए रखना है। हमारी परंपराएँ संग्रहालय में रखी धूल खा रही किसी कलाकृति में नहीं बदलनी चाहिए। हालाँकि इन परंपराओं को इनकी शुद्धता के साथ प्रासंगिक बनाए रखना एक चुनौती भी है। राधिका दास की ये किताब आधुनिक भाषा में भी भक्ति परंपराओं की शुद्धता, आदर्श और गंभीरता को सहेजती है। इसीलिए ये किताब मंत्रों के जाप के समृद्ध खजाने तक पहुँचने का रास्ता दिखाती है। ईश्वरीय शक्ति से जुड़ने और एक मजबूत संबंध की नींव रखती है। यह पुस्तक मत्रों की बेमिसाल दुनिया में गोते लगवाकर उन्हें उसे समझाती है और उनका अनुभव कराती है।
Orbital Hindi / ऑर्बिटल
इस पृथ्वी नाम के ग्रह पर हमारे जीवन का एक ऐसा स्वरूप जिसके बारे में आपने पहले कभी नहीं सोचा होगा।
छह अंतरिक्षयात्री अपने अंतरिक्षयान में बैठकर लगातार पृथ्वी का चक्कर लगा रहे हैं। वहाँ उनका काम मौसम संबंधी आँकड़ों को इकट्ठा करना और वैज्ञानिक प्रयोगों को अंजाम देना है। लेकिन अमूमन वे अपना समय निरीक्षण में ही बिताते हैं। एक साथ मिलकर वे हमारी इस शांत नीले रंग के ग्रह को निहारते रहते हैं: एक ही दिन में शानदार सौंदर्य के अंतहीन नज़ारे उनकी आँखों के सामने से गुजरते हैं।
हालाँकि वे दुनिया से अलग-थलग हैं लेकिन फिर भी लगातार होने वाली इसकी खींचतान भागने का कोई विकल्प उनके पास नहीं है। उन तक माँ के गुजर जाने की ख़बर पहुँचती है और इसके साथ ही मन में विचार उठने लगता है वापस पृथ्वी पर लौटने का। उनकी बातचीत, उनके डर, उनके सपने, सब कुछ ही मानव जीवन की क्षणभंगुरता से लबरेज़ है।
पृथ्वी से दूर रहते हुए उन्हें इस बात का अभूतपूर्व अनुभव हुआ कि वे इसका अनन्य हिस्सा हैं या उनके भीतर इसे लेकर एक सुरक्षात्मक भाव है। पृथ्वी के बिना जीवन का अस्तित्व क्या है? मानवता के बिना पृथ्वी का क्या मतलब है? जैसे प्रश्नों से उनका दिमाग़ अटा पड़ा है।
21 Big Ideas That Will Change Your Life Hindi / Jeevan Badalnewale 21 Prabhawshali Vichar / जीवन बदलनेवाले 21 प्रभावशाली विचार
जीवन बदलने वाले 21 प्रभावशाली विचार एक प्रेरणादायक पुस्तक है, जो इतिहास के महान विचारकों से चुने गए 21 विचारों को सरल और व्यावहारिक रूप में प्रस्तुत करती है। यह पुस्तक आपको सिखाती है कि कैसे सोच में बदलाव लाकर आप अपने जीवन में स्पष्टता, संतुलन और उद्देश्य ला सकते हैं। आधुनिक जीवन की उलझनों में यह किताब एक मार्गदर्शक की तरह काम करती है, जो आपको आत्मचिंतन और सार्थक बदलाव की दिशा में प्रेरित करती है।
New Writing in India
Adil Jussawalla’s anthology of Indian writing was first published in 1974. Today, more than half a century later, it remains one of the landmarks of our literature, featuring writers from various Indian languages, including English, whose works have stood the test of time.
The book traces a map of what Jussawalla calls ‘literary and linguistic cross-currents’, through the writings of Nirmal Verma (Hindi), Sunil Gangopadhyay (Bengali), Bhalchandra Nemade (Marathi), P. Lankesh (Kannada) and Ashokamitran (Tamil), among other literary greats.
This anthology challenges the colonial notion of Indian literature as a collection of exotica as well as the terrible misconception that modern Indian writing is an inferior mimicry of Western forms. What we have here is a literary record that stands out for the originality of the voices it contains and yet underscores a set of shared themes and artistic concerns that galvanized these writers and brought them together.
When this book was first published, the pieces collected here were barely a decade old and hence were presented under the rubric of ‘New Indian Writing’ of the time. But as Amit Chaudhuri reminds us in his introduction to the anniversary edition, the term ‘new’ in the title is not merely a reference to recency but to a ‘self-replenishing, revolutionary’ quality that never diminishes in great literature.
Ezra Pound once said that literature is news that stays news. New Writing in India bears testament to those words and to the multifarious tradition of Indian writing.
Somehow: Thoughts on Love
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Love is our only hope. It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks.
In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Anne Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity and guides us forward.
In each chapter, Lamott refracts all the colours of the spectrum. She explores the unexpected love for a partner later in life. The bruised (and bruising) love for a child who disappoints, even frightens. Drawing from her own life and experience to delineate the intimate and elemental ways that love buttresses us in the face of despair, she galvanises us to believe that tomorrow will be better than today. The lessons she underscores are that love enlightens as it educates, comforts as it energises, sustains as it surprises.
Full of the compassion and humanity that have made Lamott beloved by millions of readers, Somehow is classic Anne Lamott: funny, warm and wise.
She & Hers
What really is the true definition of love? That which we set, or that which our bodies define?
When Yash meets Renu, they quickly move from the physical to the metaphysical plane where Renu’s story is unfolding itself in ways that it begins to shake Yash’s world. And as he starts to question his ideas of manhood, of love, of normalcy, he also helps build another world—a world of love, inhabited and unsullied by men.
From delicate layers of human emotions, the author builds a narrative that shows a mirror to patriarchy and redundant notions of love. He punctures the ideals of male gaze and male superiority and jabs a finger at societal norms and the idea of ‘normal’.
She & Hers is not just a story of queer love, it’s also a multidimensional lens under which each character though flawed, seeks a life of fulfilment and understanding.
Girls Who Said Nothing and Everything
‘Meera’s compelling and lyrical writing jumps from the page into the reader’s heart. Her words speak to how love and survival shape our identities’
AISHA SULTAN, columnist, St. Louis Post -Dispatch
An evocative collection of eleven autobiographical essays, Girls Who Said Nothing & Everything navigates the tumultuous journey of self-discovery, shame and love within a dysfunctional family in 1990s India.
Through candid insights and humour, Meera Vijayann reflects on the deep-seated generational trauma that shapes the lives of Indian women. From public humiliation after a horrific accident in third grade to the confusion and anxiety caused by parental discord, money and young love, each essay delicately unravels the multifaceted experiences of Indian girlhood.
This debut essay collection stands as a powerful testament to resilience, offering young Indian women a voice to express their deepest emotions. Ultimately, it encourages them to see their grief, joy, shame, love, sexuality and rage as human.
Perfect Happiness
When perfection is the only condition of living—will anyone be spared?
Yuna Shin is a dotting and charmingly beautiful woman, caring towards her family with delicious dinner spreads—that sometimes feel like a high stake 4-D chess game.
Yun Shin is the image of calm before a storm; everyone can be happy as long it is by her idea of happiness.
Just don’t cross the line, don’t seek the truth, don’t ask about that stain under the rug; as some secrets are better left undiscovered.
So, what happens when her daughter starts suspecting that bedtime stories will always come with disturbing dreams. Her husband, who has mastered the art of looking away, is now rattled when one too many times when their jigsaw of a family butts heads.
And her sister? Well, she is has started to look harder at Yuna’s house of cards.
Everyone is asking questions; but Yuna Shin knows how to keep her ‘perfect’ life from unravelling; because with her, there aren’t any slip-ups or so she thinks?
Perfect Happiness by You Jeong-Jeong, the queen of crime from South Korea, is a menacing ride into a domestic nightmare where the tighter you hold, the more ends unravel. A gripping thriller which leaves you feeling hauntingly watched over the shoulder.
- A chilling psychological thriller from bestselling Korean author You-Jeong Jeong.
- Twisting timelines and hidden truths reveal the cost of You-nah’s pursuit of happiness.
- Perfect for fans of K-drama and K-pop, blending cultural depth with edge-of-your-seat suspense.
- Intricately plotted with unpredictable twists and a rising body count wrapped in mystery.
- Writing that combines emotional complexity with a gripping, adrenaline-fueled pace.