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Machado de Assis, Blackness, and the Americas (SUNY series, Afro-Latinx Futures)
by Vanessa K. Valdés; Earl E. FitzConsidered a genius in his own lifetime, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) is Brazil's most canonized writer. Yet, he remains a contested and even enigmatic figure to readers in Brazil and abroad, his relative silence on slavery leaving him vulnerable to charges of aspirations to whiteness. Machado de Assis, Blackness, and the Americas reconsiders this issue by exploring how his prose fiction has been received in the United States. In seven original essays, contributors re-examine his novels and short stories, as well as photographs of the writer, in order to better understand the strategies he employed to navigate Brazil's literary scene as a man of African descent. Framed by a contextualizing introduction and an afterword in the form of a conversation between the editors, the volume speaks to and with our own historical moment and the realities of Black lives in the Americas over the course of the last two centuries.
Machiavelli for Women: Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace
by Stacey Vanek SmithFrom the NPR host of The Indicator and correspondent for Planet Money comes an &“accessible, funny, clear-eyed, and practical&” (Sarah Knight, New York Times bestselling author) guide for how women can apply the principles of 16th-century philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli to their work lives and finally shatter the glass ceiling—perfect for fans of Feminist Fight Club, Lean In, and Nice Girls Don&’t Get the Corner Office.Women have been making strides towards equality for decades, or so we&’re often told. They&’ve been increasingly entering male-dominated areas of the workforce and consistently surpassing their male peers in grades, university attendance, and degrees. They&’ve recently stormed the political arena with a vengeance. But despite all of this, the payoff is—quite literally—not there: the gender pay gap has held steady at about 20% since 2000. And the number of female CEOs for Fortune 500 companies has actually been declining. So why, in the age of #MeToo and #TimesUp, is the glass ceiling still holding strong? And how can we shatter it for once and for all? Stacy Vanek Smith&’s advice: ask Machiavelli &“with this delicious look at what we have to gain by examining our relationship to power&” (Sally Helgesen, New York Times bestselling author). Using The Prince as a guide and with charm and wit, Smith applies Renaissance politics to the 21st century, and demonstrates how women can take and maintain power in careers where they have long been cast as second-best. &“Machiavelli For Women is the ultimate battle guide for our times. Brimming with hard-boiled strategies, laced with wit, it&’s a must read for every woman ready to wield power unapologetically&” (Claire Shipman, coauthor of The Confidence Code).
Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance
by Guido RuggieroA “provocative” study of sex and sexual identity in Renaissance Italy, explored through major literary works and historical archives (Choice).Machiavelli in Love introduces a complex concept of sex and sexual identity and their roles in the culture and politics of the Italian Renaissance. Guido Ruggiero’s study counters the consensus among historians and literary critics that there was little sense of individual identity and almost no sense of sexual identity before the modern period.Drawing from the works of major literary figures such as Boccaccio, Aretino, and Castiglione, and rereading them against archival evidence, Ruggiero examines the concept of identity via consensus realities of family, neighbors, friends, and social peers, as well as broader communities and solidarities. The author contends that Renaissance Italians understood sexual identity as a part of the human life cycle, something that changed throughout stages of youthful experimentation, marriage, adult companionship, and old age.Machiavelli’s letters and literary production reveal a fascinating construction of self that is highly reliant on sexual reputation. Ruggiero’s challenging reinterpretation of this canonical figure, as well as his unique treatment of other major works of the period, offer new approaches for reading Renaissance literature and new understandings of the way life was lived and perceived during this time.
Machiavelli’s Gaze: Thinking Social Sciences in the Sixteenth Century (Italian and Italian American Studies)
by Sandro LandiThis book examines Machiavelli in contemporary or past realities through the way in which he read, wrote, related to cultures distant in time and space—a first in the field of Machiavellian studies. It proposes and experiments with a change of perspective: in essence, it is not interested in what Machiavelli probably was, but in what Machiavelli did. In this perspective, Machiavelli remains a paradoxically still little-explored historical case. Issues and methods developed in recent decades by intellectual history, the history of reading, and cultural anthropology have remained substantially unfamiliar to Machiavelli scholars. This is a book that renews the vision of Machiavelli: no longer the starting or finishing point of intellectual genealogies that are often openly ideological, but an extraordinary case study that allows us to analyse the birth, in the sixteenth century, of a composite knowledge specifically dedicated to man in society.
Machine (In Search of Media)
by Bernard Stiegler Gertrud Koch Thomas PringleOn the social consequences of machines Automation, animation, and ecosystems are terms of central media-philosophical concern in today&’s society of humans and machines. This volume describes the social consequences of machines as a mediating concept for the animation of life and automation of technology. Bernard Stiegler&’s automatic society illustrates how digital media networks establish a new proletariat of knowledge workers. Gertrud Koch offers the animation of the technical to account for the pathological relations that arise between people and their devices. And Thomas Pringle synthesizes how automation and animation explain the history of intellectual exchanges that led to the hybrid concept of the ecosystem, a term that blends computer and natural science. All three contributions analyse how categories of life and technology become mixed in governmental policies, economic exploitation and pathologies of everyday life thereby both curiously and critically advancing the term that underlies those new developments: &‘machine.&’
Machine Agency
by James Mattingly Beba CibralicAn engaging exploration of agency that provides students with the critical tools needed to understand and participate in debates about future machines.The great promise of artificial intelligence’s evolution lives alongside an equally great anxiety. As we develop increasingly autonomous machines that do things in the world, questions about agency—distinguishing machines that can act from those that cannot—are among the thorniest we face. A concise and probing exploration of agency, this accessible textbook provides the critical, technical, and conceptual tools needed to make sense of rapid changes in what machines can do and their role in our lives. James Mattingly and Beba Cibralic begin with an examination of foundational issues: What is agency? How does it differ from mindedness, consciousness, and intelligence? Can we attribute agency to certain machines, and if so, how and why? They then examine the social and ethical implications of building ever more complex machines, including those concerning moral status and responsibility. Drawing together ideas from philosophy and computer science as well as from information theory, literature, and the history of science, Machine Agency invites students to participate thoughtfully in critical debates about future machines.• Provides a roadmap for interrogating the concept of machine agency suitable for philosophy majors and non-majors alike• Investigates the connections between developments in AI and pressing issues in analytic philosophy• Explores the social and ethical impacts of computational systems with agency Features robust end-of-chapter exercises
Machine Art in the Twentieth Century
by Andreas Broeckmann"Machine art" is neither a movement nor a genre, but encompasses diverse ways in which artists engage with technical systems. In this book, Andreas Broeckmann examines a variety of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century artworks that articulate people's relationships with machines. In the course of his investigation, Broeckmann traces historical lineages that connect art of different periods, looking for continuities that link works from the end of the century to developments in the 1950s and 1960s and to works by avant-garde artists in the 1910s and 1920s. An art historical perspective, he argues, might change our views of recent works that seem to be driven by new media technologies but that in fact continue a century-old artistic exploration.Broeckmann investigates critical aspects of machine aesthetics that characterized machine art until the 1960s and then turns to specific domains of artistic engagement with technology: algorithms and machine autonomy, looking in particular at the work of the Canadian artist David Rokeby; vision and image, and the advent of technical imaging; and the human body, using the work of the Australian artist Stelarc as an entry point to art that couples the machine to the body, mechanically or cybernetically. Finally, Broeckmann argues that systems thinking and ecology have brought about a fundamental shift in the meaning of technology, which has brought with it a rethinking of human subjectivity. He examines a range of artworks, including those by the Japanese artist Seiko Mikami, whose work exemplifies the shift.
Machine Art in the Twentieth Century (Leonardo)
by Andreas BroeckmannAn investigation of artists' engagement with technical systems, tracing art historical lineages that connect works of different periods.“Machine art” is neither a movement nor a genre, but encompasses diverse ways in which artists engage with technical systems. In this book, Andreas Broeckmann examines a variety of twentieth- and early twenty-first-century artworks that articulate people's relationships with machines. In the course of his investigation, Broeckmann traces historical lineages that connect art of different periods, looking for continuities that link works from the end of the century to developments in the 1950s and 1960s and to works by avant-garde artists in the 1910s and 1920s. An art historical perspective, he argues, might change our views of recent works that seem to be driven by new media technologies but that in fact continue a century-old artistic exploration.Broeckmann investigates critical aspects of machine aesthetics that characterized machine art until the 1960s and then turns to specific domains of artistic engagement with technology: algorithms and machine autonomy, looking in particular at the work of the Canadian artist David Rokeby; vision and image, and the advent of technical imaging; and the human body, using the work of the Australian artist Stelarc as an entry point to art that couples the machine to the body, mechanically or cybernetically. Finally, Broeckmann argues that systems thinking and ecology have brought about a fundamental shift in the meaning of technology, which has brought with it a rethinking of human subjectivity. He examines a range of artworks, including those by the Japanese artist Seiko Mikami, whose work exemplifies the shift.
Machine Habitus: Toward a Sociology of Algorithms
by Massimo AiroldiWe commonly think of society as made of and by humans, but with the proliferation of machine learning and AI technologies, this is clearly no longer the case. Billions of automated systems tacitly contribute to the social construction of reality by drawing algorithmic distinctions between the visible and the invisible, the relevant and the irrelevant, the likely and the unlikely – on and beyond platforms. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this book develops an original sociology of algorithms as social agents, actively participating in social life. Through a wide range of examples, Massimo Airoldi shows how society shapes algorithmic code, and how this culture in the code guides the practical behaviour of the code in the culture, shaping society in turn. The ‘machine habitus’ is the generative mechanism at work throughout myriads of feedback loops linking humans with artificial social agents, in the context of digital infrastructures and pre-digital social structures. Machine Habitus will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, media and cultural studies, science and technology studies and information technology, and to anyone interested in the growing role of algorithms and AI in our social and cultural life.
Machine Learning Approaches in Cyber Security Analytics
by Tony Thomas Sabu Emmanuel Athira P. VijayaraghavanThis book introduces various machine learning methods for cyber security analytics. With an overwhelming amount of data being generated and transferred over various networks, monitoring everything that is exchanged and identifying potential cyber threats and attacks poses a serious challenge for cyber experts. Further, as cyber attacks become more frequent and sophisticated, there is a requirement for machines to predict, detect, and identify them more rapidly. Machine learning offers various tools and techniques to automate and quickly predict, detect, and identify cyber attacks.
Machine Learning Risk Assessments in Criminal Justice Settings
by Richard BerkThis book puts in one place and in accessible form Richard Berk’s most recent work on forecasts of re-offending by individuals already in criminal justice custody. Using machine learning statistical procedures trained on very large datasets, an explicit introduction of the relative costs of forecasting errors as the forecasts are constructed, and an emphasis on maximizing forecasting accuracy, the author shows how his decades of research on the topic improves forecasts of risk. Criminal justice risk forecasts anticipate the future behavior of specified individuals, rather than “predictive policing” for locations in time and space, which is a very different enterprise that uses different data different data analysis tools. The audience for this book includes graduate students and researchers in the social sciences, and data analysts in criminal justice agencies. Formal mathematics is used only as necessary or in concert with more intuitive explanations.
Machine Learning Techniques for Cybersecurity (Synthesis Lectures on Information Security, Privacy, and Trust)
by Elisa Bertino Sonam Bhardwaj Fabrizio Cicala Sishuai Gong Imtiaz Karim Charalampos Katsis Hyunwoo Lee Adrian Shuai Li Ashraf Y. MahgoubThis book explores machine learning (ML) defenses against the many cyberattacks that make our workplaces, schools, private residences, and critical infrastructures vulnerable as a consequence of the dramatic increase in botnets, data ransom, system and network denials of service, sabotage, and data theft attacks. The use of ML techniques for security tasks has been steadily increasing in research and also in practice over the last 10 years. Covering efforts to devise more effective defenses, the book explores security solutions that leverage machine learning (ML) techniques that have recently grown in feasibility thanks to significant advances in ML combined with big data collection and analysis capabilities. Since the use of ML entails understanding which techniques can be best used for specific tasks to ensure comprehensive security, the book provides an overview of the current state of the art of ML techniques for security and a detailed taxonomy of security tasks and corresponding ML techniques that can be used for each task. It also covers challenges for the use of ML for security tasks and outlines research directions. While many recent papers have proposed approaches for specific tasks, such as software security analysis and anomaly detection, these approaches differ in many aspects, such as with respect to the types of features in the model and the dataset used for training the models. In a way that no other available work does, this book provides readers with a comprehensive view of the complex area of ML for security, explains its challenges, and highlights areas for future research. This book is relevant to graduate students in computer science and engineering as well as information systems studies, and will also be useful to researchers and practitioners who work in the area of ML techniques for security tasks.
Machine Learning Techniques for Online Social Networks (Lecture Notes In Social Networks Ser.)
by Tansel Özyer Reda AlhajjThe book covers tools in the study of online social networks such as machine learning techniques, clustering, and deep learning. A variety of theoretical aspects, application domains, and case studies for analyzing social network data are covered. The aim is to provide new perspectives on utilizing machine learning and related scientific methods and techniques for social network analysis. Machine Learning Techniques for Online Social Networks will appeal to researchers and students in these fields.
Machine Learning and Deep Learning in Natural Language Processing
by Anitha S. Pillai Roberto TedescoNatural Language Processing (NLP) is a sub-field of Artificial Intelligence, linguistics, and computer science and is concerned with the generation, recognition, and understanding of human languages, both written and spoken. NLP systems examine the grammatical structure of sentences as well as the specific meanings of words, and then they utilize algorithms to extract meaning and produce results. Machine Learning and Deep Learning in Natural Language Processing aims at providing a review of current Neural Network techniques in the NLP field, in particular about Conversational Agents (chatbots), Text-to-Speech, management of non-literal content – like emotions, but also satirical expressions – and applications in the healthcare field. NLP has the potential to be a disruptive technology in various healthcare fields, but so far little attention has been devoted to that goal. This book aims at providing some examples of NLP techniques that can, for example, restore speech, detect Parkinson’s disease, or help psychotherapists. This book is intended for a wide audience. Beginners will find useful chapters providing a general introduction to NLP techniques, while experienced professionals will appreciate the chapters about advanced management of emotion, empathy, and non-literal content.
Machine Learning and Mixed Reality for the Enhancement of Cultural Heritage: The Monastery of Saints Severino and Sossio Case Study
by Maurizio PerticariniThis book addresses the role of modern surveying and representation technologies in preserving and disseminating cultural heritage. A workflow is illustrated, describing the Former Monastery of Ss Severino and Sossio case study, currently the headquarters of the State Archives of Naples, Italy. After offering a historical overview, the work examines the spaces and structure of the building. A methodology for three-dimensional restitution is presented, using low-cost image-based and professional range-based surveying, concluding with recent AI technologies such as NeRF. The research continues with the virtual and augmented restitution of parts of the building that have been modified, lost over the centuries, or are no longer accessible. The Atrio dei Marmi, the Atrio del Platano, and the Sala del Capitolo and Sala del Refettorio are some of the places where the research has focused, creating a BIM model, using AR for precise interventions, and developing an immersive applied game to understand the third level of the monastery, rich in works of art and today also serving as a museum. In the final chapters, a particular focus is placed on the future of representation: new techniques, ongoing developments in AI supporting surveying, and the new possibilities offered by virtual spaces.
Machine Learning and Python for Human Behavior, Emotion, and Health Status Analysis
by Md Zia UddinThis book is a practical guide for individuals interested in exploring and implementing smart home applications using Python. Comprising six chapters enriched with hands-on codes, it seamlessly navigates from foundational concepts to cutting-edge technologies, balancing theoretical insights and practical coding experiences. In short, it is a gateway to the dynamic intersection of Python programming, smart home technology, and advanced machine learning applications, making it an invaluable resource for those eager to explore this rapidly growing field.Key Features: Throughout the book, practicality takes precedence, with hands-on coding examples accompanying each concept to facilitate an interactive learning journey Striking a harmonious balance between theoretical foundations and practical coding, the book caters to a diverse audience, including smart home enthusiasts and researchers The content prioritizes real-world applications, ensuring readers can immediately apply the knowledge gained to enhance smart home functionalities Covering Python basics, feature extraction, deep learning, and XAI, the book provides a comprehensive guide, offering an overall understanding of smart home applications
Machine Learning for Archaeological Applications in R (Elements in Current Archaeological Tools and Techniques)
by Denisse L. Argote Michael C. Thrun Pedro A. López-García Manuel A. Torres-GarcíaThis Element highlights the employment within archaeology of classification methods developed in the field of chemometrics, artificial intelligence, and Bayesian statistics. These run in both high- and low-dimensional environments and often have better results than traditional methods. Instead of a theoretical approach, it provides examples of how to apply these methods to real data using lithic and ceramic archaeological materials as case studies. A detailed explanation of how to process data in R (The R Project for Statistical Computing), as well as the respective code, are also provided.
Machine Learning for Authorship Attribution and Cyber Forensics (International Series on Computer Entertainment and Media Technology)
by Mourad Debbabi Benjamin C. Fung Farkhund IqbalThe book first explores the cybersecurity’s landscape and the inherent susceptibility of online communication system such as e-mail, chat conversation and social media in cybercrimes. Common sources and resources of digital crimes, their causes and effects together with the emerging threats for society are illustrated in this book. This book not only explores the growing needs of cybersecurity and digital forensics but also investigates relevant technologies and methods to meet the said needs. Knowledge discovery, machine learning and data analytics are explored for collecting cyber-intelligence and forensics evidence on cybercrimes.Online communication documents, which are the main source of cybercrimes are investigated from two perspectives: the crime and the criminal. AI and machine learning methods are applied to detect illegal and criminal activities such as bot distribution, drug trafficking and child pornography. Authorship analysis is applied to identify the potential suspects and their social linguistics characteristics. Deep learning together with frequent pattern mining and link mining techniques are applied to trace the potential collaborators of the identified criminals.Finally, the aim of the book is not only to investigate the crimes and identify the potential suspects but, as well, to collect solid and precise forensics evidence to prosecute the suspects in the court of law.
Machine Learning for Social Transformation: Proceedings of EAIT 2024 (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems #1131)
by Debashis De Jyotsna Kumar MandalThe book includes original unpublished contributions presented at the Eighth International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology (EAIT 2024), organized by Computer Society of India, Kolkata Chapter during 12 – 13 January 2024. The Theme of the conference is “Machine Learning for Social Transformation”. The book covers the topics such as computational intelligence for social transformation, machine learning for healthcare informatics, and machine learning for agriculture and environmental sustainability.
Machine Learning, Deep Learning and AI for Cybersecurity
by Mark Stamp Martin JurečekThis book addresses a variety of problems that arise at the interface between AI techniques and challenging problems in cybersecurity. The book covers many of the issues that arise when applying AI and deep learning algorithms to inherently difficult problems in the security domain, such as malware detection and analysis, intrusion detection, spam detection, and various other subfields of cybersecurity. The book places particular attention on data driven approaches, where minimal expert domain knowledge is required. This book bridges some of the gaps that exist between deep learning/AI research and practical problems in cybersecurity. The proposed topics cover a wide range of deep learning and AI techniques, including novel frameworks and development tools enabling the audience to innovate with these cutting-edge research advancements in various security-related use cases. The book is timely since it is not common to find clearly elucidated research that applies the latest developments in AI to problems in cybersecurity.
Machine Vision: How Algorithms are Changing the Way We See the World
by Jill Walker RettbergHumans have used technology to expand our limited vision for millennia, from the invention of the stone mirror 8,000 years ago to the latest developments in facial recognition and augmented reality. We imagine that technologies will allow us to see more, to see differently and even to see everything. But each of these new ways of seeing carries its own blind spots. In this illuminating book, Jill Walker Rettberg examines the long history of machine vision. Providing an overview of the historical and contemporary uses of machine vision, she unpacks how technologies such as smart surveillance cameras and TikTok filters are changing the way we see the world and one another. By analysing fictional and real-world examples, including art, video games and science fiction, the book shows how machine vision can have very different cultural impacts, fostering both sympathy and community as well as anxiety and fear. Combining ethnographic and critical media studies approaches alongside personal reflections, Machine Vision is an engaging and eye-opening read. It is suitable for students and scholars of digital media studies, science and technology studies, visual studies, digital art and science fiction, as well as for general readers interested in the impact of new technologies on society.
Machine and Sovereignty: For a Planetary Thinking
by Yuk HuiDeveloping a new political thought to address today&’s planetary crises What is &“planetary thinking&” today? Arguing that a new approach is urgently needed, Yuk Hui develops a future-oriented mode of political thought that encompasses the unprecedented global challenges we are confronting: the rise of artificial intelligence, the ecological crisis, and intensifying geopolitical conflicts. Machine and Sovereignty starts with three premises. The first affirms the necessity of developing a new language of coexistence that surpasses the limits of nation-states and their variations; the second recognizes that political forms, including the polis, empire, and the state, are technological phenomena, which Lewis Mumford terms &“megamachines.&” The third suggests that a particular political form is legitimated and rationalized by a corresponding political epistemology. The planetary thinking that this book sketches departs from the opposition between mechanism and organism, which characterized modern thought, to understand the epistemological foundations of Hegel&’s political state and Schmitt&’s Großraum and their particular ways of conceiving the question of sovereignty. Through this reconstruction, Hui exposes the limits of the state and reflects on a new theoretical matrix based on the interrelated concepts of biodiversity, noodiversity, and technodiversity. Arguing that we are facing the limit of modernity, of the eschatological view of history, of globalization, and of the human, Hui conceives necessary new epistemological and technological frameworks for understanding and rising to the crises of our present and our future. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.
Machine-Created Culture: Essays on the Archaeology of Digital Things and Places (Digital Archaeology: Documenting the Anthropocene #3)
by Andrew ReinhardArchaeology can be weird and fun, especially the digital kind. Readers of archaeology, media studies, and game studies are introduced to the wild-and-wooly side of digital archaeology: artifacts, sites, and landscapes contained within—and supporting—interactive digital built environments. Follow your guide, the reluctant digital archaeologist Charlie, to disappear into the weeds of post-landscapes, non-place cultural spaces, persistent digital spaces, software citizenship, machine-created culture, digital drift, technofossils, quantum archaeology, archaeological time, singularities, complexity and retrocausality, noise, and more. These bite-sized chapters offer new ways of interpreting humanity’s blossoming digitalia, an archaeology done at the source of creation, use, and abandonment of our electronic selves.
Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran (Infrastructures)
by Katayoun ShafieeThe emergence of the international oil corporation as a political actor in the twentieth century, seen in BP's infrastructure and information arrangements in Iran. In the early twentieth century, international oil corporations emerged as a new kind of political actor. The development of the world oil industry, argues Katayoun Shafiee, was one of the era's largest political projects of techno-economic development. In this book, Shafiee maps the machinery of oil operations in the Anglo-Iranian oil industry between 1901 and 1954, tracking the organizational work involved in moving oil through a variety of technical, legal, scientific, and administrative networks. She shows that, in a series of disagreements, the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, which later became BP) relied on various forms of information management to transform political disputes into techno-economic calculation, guaranteeing the company complete control over profits, labor, and production regimes. She argues that the building of alliances and connections that constituted Anglo-Iranian oil's infrastructure reconfigured local politics of oil regions and examines how these arrangements in turn shaped the emergence of both nation-state and transnational oil corporation. Drawing on her extensive archival and field research in Iran, Shafiee investigates the surprising ways in which nature, technology, and politics came together in battles over mineral rights; standardizing petroleum expertise; formulas for calculating profits, production rates, and labor; the “Persianization” of employees; nationalism and oil nationalization; and the long-distance machinery of an international corporation. Her account shows that the politics of oil cannot be understood in isolation from its technical dimensions.
Machines for Making Gods: Mormonism, Transhumanism, and Worlds without End
by Jon BialeckiThe Mormon faith may seem so different from aspirations to transcend the human through technological means that it is hard to imagine how these two concerns could even exist alongside one another, let alone serve together as the joint impetus for a social movement. Machines for Making Gods investigates the tensions between science and religion through which an imaginative group of young Mormons and ex-Mormons have found new ways of understanding the world.The Mormon Transhumanist Association (MTA) believes that God intended humanity to achieve Mormonism’s promise of theosis through imminent technological advances. Drawing on a nineteenth-century Mormon tradition of religious speculation to reimagine Mormon eschatological hopes as near-future technological possibilities, they envision such current and possible advances as cryonic preservation, computer simulation, and quantum archeology as paving the way for the resurrection of the dead, the creation of worlds without end, and promise of undergoing theosis—of becoming a god. Addressing the role of speculation in the anthropology of religion, Machines for Making Gods undoes debates about secular transhumanism’s relation to religion by highlighting the differences an explicitly religious transhumanism makes.Charting the conflicts and resonances between secular transhumanism and Mormonism, Bialecki shows how religious speculation has opened up imaginative horizons to give birth to new forms of Mormonism, including a particular progressive branch of the faith and even such formations as queer polygamy. The book also reveals how the MTA’s speculative account of God and technology together has helped to forestall some of the social pressure that comes with apostasy in much of the Mormon Intermountain West.A fascinating ethnography of a group with much to say about crucial junctures of modern culture, Machines for Making Gods illustrates how the scientific imagination can be better understood when viewed through anthropological accounts of myth.