This Palgrave Pivot analyzes how six countries in Central America-Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama-connected to and through computer networks such as UUCP, BITNET and the Internet from the 80s to the year 2000. It argues that this story can only be told from a transnational perspective. To connect to computer networks, Central America built a regional integration project with great implications for its development. By revealing the beginnings of the Internet in this part of the world, this study broadens our understanding of the development of computer networks in the global south. It also demonstrates that transnational flows of knowledge, data, and technologies are a constitutive feature of the historical development of the Internet.

The Handbook on Socially Interactive Agents provides a comprehensive overview of the research fields of Embodied Conversational Agents, Intelligent Virtual Agents, and Social Robotics. Socially Interactive Agents (SIAs), whether virtually or physically embodied, are autonomous agents that are able to perceive an environment including people or other agents, reason, decide how to interact, and express attitudes such as emotions, engagement, or empathy. They are capable of interacting with people and one another in a socially intelligent manner using multimodal communicative behaviors, with the goal to support humans in various domains. Written by international experts in their respective fields, the book summarizes research in the many important research communities pertinent for SIAs, while discussing current challenges and future directions. The handbook provides easy access to modeling and studying SIAs for researchers and students, and aims at further bridging the gap between the research communities involved. In two volumes, the book clearly structures the vast body of research. The first volume starts by introducing what is involved in SIAs research, in particular research methodologies and ethical implications of developing SIAs. It further examines research on appearance and behavior, focusing on multimodality. Finally, social cognition for SIAs is investigated using different theoretical models and phenomena such as theory of mind or pro-sociality. The second volume starts with perspectives on interaction, examined from different angles such as interaction in social space, group interaction, or long-term interaction. It also includes an extensive overview summarizing research and systems of human-agent platforms and of some of the major application areas of SIAs such as education, aging support, autism, and games.

The goal of this book is to close the gap between high technology and accessibility for people having lost their independence due to the loss of physical and/or cognitive capabilities. Robots and mechatronic devices bring the opportunity to improve the autonomy of disabled people and facilitate their social and professional integration by assisting them to perform daily living tasks. Technical topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Communication and learning applications in SCI an CP, Interface and Internet-based designs, Issues in human-machine interaction, Personal robotics, Hardware and control, Evaluation methods, Clinical experience, Orthotics and prosthetics, Robotics for older adults, Service robotics, Movement physiology and motor control.

The book is devoted to the analysis of promotional material of tourist activities on tourism websites, including walking, dining, and visiting natural and cultural heritage sights, as instances of multimodal texts through a case study of Croatian and Scottish tourism websites.

This book examines the internet as a form of power in global politics. Focusing on the United States' internet foreign policy, McCarthy combines analyses of global material culture and international relation theory, to reconsider how technology is understood as a form of social power.

This book systematically reviews world Internet development over the past 50 years, and comprehensively discusses the great contributions it has made to economic and social advances. Further, it describes the development, status and trends related to the Internet in major countries around the globe in 2019, and provides an in-depth analysis of the latest conditions, dynamics and development trends in key areas, including information infrastructure, information technology, digital economy, digital government, Internet media, cyberspace security, and international cyberspace governance. Moreover, the book further modifies and enhances the Global Internet Development Index System, in order to better show the Internet development strengths and advantages in various countries, and to reflect the global development trends more comprehensively, accurately and objectively. This book reviews the significant developments and summarizes the lessons learned as well as the future challenges. From a global perspective, it offers a vision of building a community with a shared future in cyberspace based on the new concepts, new ideas and new achievements of various countries participating in cyberspace development and construction. As such it is a valuable reference resource for anyone working in Internet related fields, such as those in government departments, internet enterprises, scientific research institutions, colleges and universities wanting to fully understand world Internet development.

The widespread availability of technologies has increased exponentially in recent years. This ubiquity has created more connectivity and seamless integration among technology devices. Emerging Trends and Applications of the Internet of Things is an essential reference publication featuring the latest scholarly research on the surge of connectivity between computing devices in modern society, as well as the benefits and challenges of this. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of topics such as cloud computing, spatial cognition, and ultrasonic sensing, this book is ideally designed for researchers, professionals, and academicians seeking current research on upcoming advances in the Internet of Things (IoT).

This book combines semi-physical simulation technology with an Internet of Things (IOT) application system based on novel mathematical methods such as the Fisher matrix, artificial neural networks, thermodynamic analysis, support vector machines, and image processing algorithms. The dynamic testing and semi-physical verification of the theory and application were conducted for typical IOT systems such as RFID systems, Internet of Vehicles systems, and two-dimensional barcode recognition systems. The findings presented are of great scientific significance and have wide application potential for solving bottlenecks in the development of RFID technology and IOT engineering. The book is a valuable resource for postgraduate students in fields such as computer science and technology, control science and engineering, and information science. Moreover, it is a useful reference resource for researchers in IOT and RFID-related industries, logistics practitioners, and system integrators.

Digital Economy: Impacts, Influences and Challenges provides information about the socioeconomic aspects of the Digital Economy. This set of 18 essays covers the effects of Digital Economy on business transactions, technology and culture, as well as on education. It also covers various aspects of global production, trade, and investment and the effects of Internet. The chapters review best practices from concept to development, through implementation and evaluation. This book is one of the few books that looks at the digital economy from a socio economic angle, offering perspectives from scholars and practitioners of digital economics around the world.

Web-based training, known as e-learning, has experienced a great evolution and growth in recent years, as the capacity for education is no longer limited by physical and time constraints. The emergence of such a prized learning tool mandates a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness and implications of e-learning. This book explores the technical, pedagogical, methodological, tutorial, legal, and emotional aspects of e-learning, considering and analyzing its different application contexts, and providing researchers and practitioners with an innovative view of e-learning as a lifelong learning tool for scholars in both academic and professional spheres.

The Internet of Things (IoT) usually refers to a world-wide network of interconnected heterogeneous objects (sensors, actuators, smart devices, smart objects, RFID, embedded computers, etc) uniquely addressable, based on standard communication protocols. Beyond such a definition, it is emerging a new definition of IoT seen as a loosely coupled, decentralized system of cooperating smart objects (SOs). A SO is an autonomous, physical digital object augmented with sensing/actuating, processing, storing, and networking capabilities. SOs are able to sense/actuate, store, and interpret information created within themselves and around the neighbouring external world where they are situated, act on their own, cooperate with each other, and exchange information with other kinds of electronic devices and human users. However, such SO-oriented IoT raises many in-the-small and in-the-large issues involving SO programming, IoT system architecture/middleware and methods/methodologies for the development of SO-based applications. This Book will specifically focus on exploring recent advances in architectures, algorithms, and applications for an Internet of Things based on Smart Objects. Topics appropriate for this Book include, but are not necessarily limited to: - Methods for SO development - IoT Networking - Middleware for SOs - Data Management for SOs - Service-oriented SOs - Agent-oriented SOs - Applications of SOs in Smart Environments: Smart Cities, Smart Health, Smart Buildings, etc. Advanced IoT Projects.

The aim of this book is to stimulate research on the topic of the Social Internet of Things, and explore how Internet of Things architectures, tools, and services can be conceptualized and developed so as to reveal, amplify and inspire the capacities of people, including the socialization or collaborations that happen through or around smart objects and smart environments. From new ways of negotiating privacy, to the consequences of increased automation, the Internet of Things poses new challenges and opens up new questions that often go beyond the technology itself, and rather focus on how the technology will become embedded in our future communities, families, practices, and environment, and how these will change in turn.

This volume gives a comprehensive coverage of Internet technologies. It provides both a contemporary and extensive review of developments in the field and also gives details of research. Areas covered include: developments in the network protocols on which the Internet is based; the evolving capability of the Internet to carry audio and video traffic; and the development in security and payment technologies which are opening up a wide range of commercial electronic applications. As the importance of the Internet continues to increase, this book should be of interest to businesses. Several case studies of on-line services are included. The text should prove useful not only to researchers in the communications and computing sectors working directly in the development of the technology, but also to people working in banking and finance. Business users of the Internet should also find the book to be useful in the development of such applications as Internet trading and corporate intranets.

Kein Zweifel: A ber soziale Medien erreichen Sie Ihre Kunden am besten, am authentischsten, am persAnlichsten. Was kann Ihnen Besseres passieren, als wenn jemand Ihr Produkt beispielsweise auf Facebook mit einer persAnlichen Empfehlung versieht? Allerdings ist die KomplexitAt von Social-Media-Marketing hoch und die Gefahr extrem groA , jede Menge Zeit und Geld in den sozialen Medien zu verpulvern. Dieses Buch senkt die HA1/4rde fA1/4r den Einsteiger ins Social-Media-Marketing und gibt Ihnen einen einfachen Leitfaden an die Hand, um erfolgreicher im Social Web zu werben. Finden Sie Ihren Wunschkunden, definieren Sie Ihre Ziele und Ihre Marketingstrategie passend zu Ihren Ressourcen und optimieren Sie Ihren Arbeitseinsatz. Werden Sie Ihr eigener Influencer!

Violent behavior has become deeply integrated into modern society and it is an unavoidable aspect of human nature. Examining peacemaking strategies through a critical and academic perspective can assist in resolving violence in societies around the world. The Handbook of Research on Examining Global Peacemaking in the Digital Age is a pivotal reference source for the latest research findings on the utilization of peacemaking in media, leadership, and religion. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas such as human rights, spirituality, and the Summer of Peace, this publication is an ideal resource for policymakers, universities and colleges, graduate-level students, and organizations seeking current research on the application of conflict resolution and international negotiation.

Search is not just a box and ten blue links. Search is a journey: an exploration where what we encounter along the way changes what we seek. But in order to guide people along this journey, designers must understand both the art and science of search.In "Designing the Search Experience, "authors Tony Russell-Rose and Tyler Tate weave together the theories of information seeking with the practice of user interface design.

Understand how people search, and how the concepts of information seeking, information foraging, and sensemaking underpin the search process.

Apply the principles of user-centered design to the search box, search results, faceted navigation, mobile interfaces, social search, and much more.

Design the cross-channel search experiences of tomorrow that span desktop, tablet, mobile, and other devices.