Vivek Wadhwa has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Your Happiness Was Hacked.
Your Happiness Was Hacked
Summary
Do you feel in control of your life or enslaved by your devices? Have you risked your life texting and driving? Do you sympathize with a test group of students who endured painful shocks rather than be separated from their phones? Digital technology is wonderful, but it's making us miserable, say former tech executives Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever. There's a reason Apple CEO Tim Cook told the Guardian he won't let his nephew on social networks. We've become a nation of tech addicts - although it's not entirely our fault, and it is possible to enjoy the benefits of technology while taking our happiness back from the bots. Wadhwa and Salkever describe the applied neuroscience techniques developers are using to make their products so insidiously habit-forming and, drawing on the latest research, detail the negative impact of technology in four key areas: love, work, play, and life. There are dozens of vivid examples. Online dating apps like Tinder encourage users to evaluate people like products, leading to superficial, unsatisfying relationships. Workers check their email an average of 77 times a day, wreaking havoc on productivity. Children now spend nearly twice as much time playing inside with their screens as they do outside in the natural world - is it any wonder childhood obesity is a problem? The light from the devices so many of us look at right before we go to sleep suppresses the production of melatonin, a hormone vital for sleep and healthy organ functioning. But there's a way out. Wadhwa and Salkever lay out simple common-sense ways to disrupt developers' efforts to get you hooked, including six simple questions to help you decide what role any given technology should play in your life. Ironically, they even describe some emerging technologies designed to give users more control. Get back to making technology serve you, not the other way around!
©2018 Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever (P)2018 Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever
The Driver in the Driverless Car
Summary
Technology is advancing faster than ever - but for better or for worse? On the one hand, astonishing technological developments from personalized genomics to self-driving cars to drones to artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. On the other hand, these very same technologies could raise the specter of a frightening and alienating future - eugenics, a jobless economy, complete loss of privacy, and an ever-worsening spiral of economic inequality. How can we make appropriate decisions about whether and how to adopt new technologies? Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever propose that we ask three questions: Does the technology have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are the risks and the rewards? Does the technology more strongly promote autonomy or independence? They subject a host of new and potential technologies to these questions, but ultimately it is up to the listener to make the final decision.
©2017 Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever (P)2017 Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever
The Driver in the Driverless Car
Summary
Tech experts Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever describe dozens of astonishing technological advances in this fascinating and thought-provoking book, which asks what kind of future lies ahead - Star Trek or Mad Max? Breakthroughs such as personalized genomics, drones, self-driving vehicles, and artificial intelligence could make our lives healthier, safer, and easier. On the other hand, the same technologies raise the specter of a frightening future - eugenics, a jobless economy, a complete loss of privacy, and ever-worsening economic inequality. Wadhwa says that we need to ask three questions about every emerging technology: Does it have the potential to benefit everyone equally? What are the risks and the rewards? And does it promote autonomy or dependence? This edition is updated throughout and includes a new chapter on quantum computing, which promises vastly increased processing times - and vastly increased security risks. In the end, our future is up to us; our hands may not be on the wheel, but we will decide the driverless car's destination.
©2019 Vivek Wadhwa, Alex Salkever (P)2019 Vivek Wadhwa, Alex Salkever
From Incremental to Exponential
Summary
Over and over, we see big legacy businesses getting beaten to the punch by energetic little start-ups. It seems like innovation can come from only the bottom up or from the outside in. But tech experts Vivek Wadwha and Ismail Amla are here to tell you that “big equals slow and stodgy” is a myth. Based on decades of experience working with both the world’s leading brands and disruptive start-ups, this audiobook explores the opportunity legacy companies have to create new markets, supercharge growth, and remake their businesses by combining the mindset and tool belt of start-ups with the benefits of incumbency: Boatloads of customer data, decades of brand equity, robust distribution channels, enormous financial asserts, and more. Wadhwa and Amla go deeply into why the pace and dynamics of innovation have changed so dramatically in recent years and show how companies can overcome obstacles like the "Eight Deadly Sins of Stasis". Equally important, they provide a playbook on how to use their insights in your own company, team, or career. This fast-paced, anecdote-rich story rethinks modern innovation - an audiobook every manager, executive, and ambitious employee will want to listen to.
©2020 Vivek Wadhwa, Ismail Amla, and Alex Salkever (P)2020 Vivek Wadhwa, Ismail Amla, and Alex Salkever