|
Snow Crash
''Snow Crash'' is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, its themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy. In his 1999 essay " In the Beginning... Was the Command Line", Stephenson explained the title of the novel as his term for a particular software failure mode on the early Macintosh computer. Stephenson wrote, "When the computer crashed and wrote gibberish into the bitmap, the result was something that looked vaguely like static on a broken television set—a 'snow crash. Stephenson has also mentioned that Julian Jaynes' book ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'' was one of the main influences on ''Snow Crash''. ''Snow Crash'' was nominated for both the British Science Fiction Award in 1993 and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1994. Plot Plot background In the 21st centu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neal Stephenson
Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such as ''Wired (magazine), Wired''. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury. Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and also co-founded the Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project ''The Mongoliad''. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020. Early life Born on October 31, 1959, in Fort Meade, Maryland, Stephenson came from a family of engineers and scienti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind
''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'' is a 1976 book by the Princeton psychologist, psychohistorian and consciousness theorist Julian Jaynes (1920-1997). It explores the nature of consciousness – particularly "the ability to introspect" – and its evolution in ancient human history. Jaynes proposes that consciousness is a learned behavior rooted in language and culture rather than being innate. He distinguishes consciousness from sensory awareness and cognition. Jaynes introduces the concept of the " bicameral mind", a non-conscious mentality prevalent in early humans that relied on auditory hallucinations. In his book, Jaynes examines historical texts and archaeological evidence to support his theory. He places the origin of consciousness around the 2nd millennium BCE and suggests that the transition from the bicameral mind to consciousness was triggered by the breakdown of the bicameral system. The bicameral mind, he explains, was characteri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Business
Big business involves large-scale corporate-controlled financial or business activities. As a term, it describes activities that run from "huge transactions" to the more general "doing big things". In corporate jargon, the concept is commonly known as enterprise, or activities involving enterprise customers. The concept first rose in a symbolic sense after 1880 in connection with the combination movement that began in American business at that time. Some examples of American corporations that fall into the category of "big business" are ExxonMobil, Walmart, Google, Microsoft, Apple, General Electric, General Motors, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs; in the United States, big businesses in general are sometimes collectively pejoratively called "corporate America". The largest German corporations included Daimler AG, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, and Deutsche Bank. SAP is Germany's largest software company. Among the largest companie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Make-work Job
A make-work job is a job that is created and maintained at a cost not offset by the job’s fulfilment. Usually having little or no immediate financial benefit, such roles can be said to exist for other economic or social-political reasons, for example simply to provide work-experience or maintain a ceremonial function. Make-work jobs are similar to workfare, but are publicly offered on the job market and have otherwise normal employment requirements. Workfare jobs, in contrast, may be handed out to a randomly selected applicant or have special requirements such as continuing to search for a non-workfare job. Analysis Some consider make-work jobs to be harmful when they provide very little practical experience or training for future careers. As a part of the New Deal, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) was in 1933 created as a stopgap measure to boost the economic relief provided by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Public Works Administration. At its peak, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gated Community
A gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. Historically, cities have built defensive city walls and controlled gates to protect their inhabitants, and such fortifications have also separated quarters of some cities. Today, gated communities usually consist of small residential streets and include various shared amenities. For smaller communities, these amenities may include only a park or other common area. For larger communities, it may be possible for residents to stay within the community for most daily activities. Gated communities are a type of common interest development, but are distinct from intentional communities. For socio-historical reasons, in the developed world they exist primarily in the United States. Given that gated communities are spatially a type of enc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Security Guard
A security guard (also known as a security inspector, security officer, factory guard, or protective agent) is a person employed by a government or private party to protect the employing party's assets (property, people, equipment, money, etc.) from a variety of hazards (such as crime, waste, damages, unsafe worker behavior, etc.) by enforcing preventative measures. Security guards do this by maintaining a high-visibility presence to deter illegal and inappropriate actions, looking (either directly through patrols, or indirectly by monitoring alarm systems or video surveillance cameras) for signs of crime or other hazards (such as a fire), taking action to minimize damage (such as warning and escorting trespassers off property), and reporting any incidents to their clients and emergency services (such as the police or emergency medical services), as appropriate. Security officers are generally uniformed to represent their lawful authority to protect private property. Securit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercenary
A mercenary is a private individual who joins an armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather than for political interests. Beginning in the 20th century, mercenaries have increasingly come to be seen as less entitled to protection by rules of war than non-mercenaries. The Geneva Conventions declare that mercenaries are not recognized as legitimate combatants and do not have to be granted the same legal protections as captured service personnel of the armed forces. In practice, whether or not a person is a mercenary may be a matter of degree, as financial and political interests may overlap. International and national laws of war Protocol Additional GC 1977 (APGC77) is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions. Article 47 of the protocol provides the most widely accepted international definition of a mercenary, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sovereignty
Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over other people and to change existing laws. In political theory, sovereignty is a substantive term designating supreme legitimate authority over some polity. In international law, sovereignty is the exercise of power by a state. ''De jure'' sovereignty refers to the legal right to do so; '' de facto'' sovereignty refers to the factual ability to do so. This can become an issue of special concern upon the failure of the usual expectation that ''de jure'' and ''de facto'' sovereignty exist at the place and time of concern, and reside within the same organization. Etymology The term arises from the unattested Vulgar Latin *''superanus'' (itself a derived form of Latin ''super'' – "over") meaning "chief", "ruler". Its spellin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franchising
Franchising is based on a marketing concept which can be adopted by an organization as a strategy for business expansion. Where implemented, a franchisor licenses some or all of its know-how, procedures, intellectual property, use of its business model, brand, and rights to sell its branded products and services to a franchisee. In return, the franchisee pays certain fees and agrees to comply with certain obligations, typically set out in a franchise agreement. The word ''franchise'' is of Anglo-French derivation—from , meaning 'free'—and is used both as a noun and as a (transitive) verb. For the franchisor, use of a franchise system is an alternative business growth strategy, compared to expansion through corporate owned outlets or "chain stores". Adopting a franchise system business growth strategy for the sale and distribution of goods and services minimizes the franchisor's capital investment and liability risk. Franchising is rarely an equal partnership, especially in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entrepreneur () is an businessperson, individual who creates and/or invests in one or more businesses, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The process of setting up a business is known as "entrepreneurship". The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures. More narrow definitions have described entrepreneurship as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, often similar to a small business, or (per ''Business Dictionary'') as the "capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks to make a Profit (accounting), profit". The people who create these businesses are often referred to as "e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Government Of The United States
The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct branches: United States Congress, legislative, President of the United States, executive, and Federal judiciary of the United States, judicial. Powers of these three branches are defined and vested by the Constitution of the United States, U.S. Constitution, which has been in continuous effect since May 4, 1789. The powers and duties of these branches are further defined by Act of Congress, Acts of Congress, including the creation of United States federal executive departments, executive departments and courts subordinate to the Supreme Court of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court. In the Federalism in the United States, federal division of power, the federal government shares sovereignty with each of the 50 states in their respective t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, cultural center of Southern California. With an estimated 3,878,704 residents within the city limits , it is the List of United States cities by population, second-most populous in the United States, behind only New York City. Los Angeles has an Ethnic groups in Los Angeles, ethnically and culturally diverse population, and is the principal city of a Metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan area of 12.9 million people (2024). Greater Los Angeles, a combined statistical area that includes the Los Angeles and Riverside–San Bernardino metropolitan areas, is a sprawling metropolis of over 18.5 million residents. The majority of the city proper lies in Los Angeles Basin, a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
