Books by William Sims Bainbridge

This innovative book explores the new relationships connecting computer science, social science, and the humanities.In our time of great and uncertain change, business, government, and education must partner in many forms of technical and cultural convergence-for the benefit of both human welfare and economic recovery.This innovative book explores the new relationships connecting computer science, social science, and the humanities. One popular form of artificial social intelligence, recommender systems, can become a far more valuable tool for research on the arts, beginning with movies and computer games, then extending to all the other art forms.While artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for description of physical reality, it must become both social and cultural if it is to be a valued tool of human expression. Many new developments offer opportunities and challenges for both industry and government policy. This book shows how artificial intelligence and related information technologies can converge successfully with the social sciences and humanities, so together they can achieve maximum benefits for people.

This book deeply explores production-capable social media channels, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. Distributed manufacturing offers the promise of bringing jobs back to local communities, producing goods that are personalized or harmonize with distinctive cultures, and thereby reversing significant aspects of the globalization that has dominated in recent years. Large corporations may still have important roles to play, but in collaboration with local workshops, providing machinery, software, databases of designs, and communication media suitable for a diverse and dynamic workforce. For years, a set of computer simulation laboratories has flourished, in which millions of people have used virtual machines to produce a great variety of products: massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Their systems are highly diverse, complex, and provide information capable of serious social science analysis. This book deeply explores 30 of these production-capable social media, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. This book begins with an overview of this universe of online virtual worlds then demonstrates the principles of virtual manufacturing, modes of work-related communication, socio-economic structures and dynamics, and the function of artificial intelligence in these human-technology systems. It concludes with consideration of the large-scale technical and cultural variation illustrated both by individual examples and by the rather large industry in which they have long been successful.

At the intersection of astronautics, computer science, and social science, this book introduces the challenges and insights associated with computer simulation of human society in outer space, and of the dynamics of terrestrial enthusiasm for space exploration.

Draws upon the social-scientific evidence to understand profound religious changes occurring in advanced societies. This book finds that the positive functions of religion have been exaggerated, are declining, and are replaceable by benefits from new Transhumanist technologies.

A demonstration of how religion and religious belief can emerge using computer simulations

An exploration of the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft as a virtual prototype of the real human future.

Explaining religious schism, innovation, and conversion to show how religion and society transform each other, this book explores such movements as Holiness, Adventism, religious communes, Children of God, Satanism, New York City Mission Society, New Age, Asian imports, and democratization.