Computing and information, and their philosophy in the broad sense, play a most important scientific, technological and conceptual role in our world. This book collects together, for the first time, the views and experiences of some of the visionary pioneers and most influential thinkers in such a fundamental area of our intellectual development. This is yet another gem in the 5 Questions Series by Automatic Press / VIP

The Triadic Continuum is the invention of Jane Mazzagatti, a mathematician and software engineer. Mazzagatti came upon the idea for this new computer data structure, which is based on the work of Charles Peirce, while working on a project for Unisys Corporation. This same structure has proven commercially valuable in the efficient way it stores and allows for the analysis of large datasets. However, while learning about the nature of the structure she discovered more far-reaching implications to areas other than computer science. Charles Peirce was fascinated with how the mind reasons and with all of the scientific and philosophical implications of the mechanisms of how the brain records experience, constructs memories, and accesses previously stored experience and knowledge. Mazzagatti believes that she has rediscovered the structure of the Triadic Continuum, which is the foundation of many of Peirce's key theories dealing with human reasoning and the logic of thought. In this book the author, who worked with Mazzagatti writing patents for the invention, explains how this structure is unlike any other computer data structure or type of Artificial Intelligence-but more importantly why this structure may very well be a model for human cognition.

In this remarkably illustrative and thoroughly accessible look at one of the most intriguing frontiers in science and computers, award-winning "New York Times" writer George Johnson reveals the fascinating world of quantum computing--the holy grail of super computers where the computing power of single atoms is harnassed to create machines capable of almost unimaginable calculations in the blink of an eye.
As computer chips continue to shrink in size, scientists anticipate the end of the road: A computer in which each switch is comprised of a single atom. Such a device would operate under a different set of physical laws: The laws of quantum mechanics. Johnson gently leads the curious outsider through the surprisingly simple ideas needed to understand this dream, discussing the current state of the revolution, and ultimately assessing the awesome power these machines could have to change our world.

Khinchin. Comprehensive, rigorous introduction to work of Shannon, McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin. Translated by R. A. Silverman and M. D. Friedman.

The contributors to this book are both cautionary and hopeful as they offer visions of how information design can be practiced diligently and ethically, for the benefit of information consumers as well as producers. Information design is the newest of the design disciplines. As a sign of our times, when the crafting of messages and meaning is so central to our lives, information design is not only important-it is essential. Contemporary information designers seek to edify more than to persuade, to exchange more than to foist upon. With ever more powerful technologies of communication, we have learned that the issuer of designed information is as likely as the intended recipient to be changed by it, for better or worse. The contributors to this book are both cautionary and hopeful as they offer visions of how information design can be practiced diligently and ethically, for the benefit of information consumers as well as producers. They present various methods that seem to work, such as sense-making and way-finding. They make recommendations and serve as guides to a still young but extraordinarily pervasive-and persuasive-field. Contributors Elizabeth Andersen, Judy Anderson, Simon Birrell, Mike Cooley, Brenda Dervin, Jim Gasperini, Yvonne M. Hansen, Steve Holtzman, Robert E. Horn, Robert Jacobson, John Krygier, Sheryl Macy, Romedi Passini, Jef Raskin, Chandler Screven, Nathan Shedroff, Hal Thwaites, Roger Whitehouse

"From Language to Communication" focuses on the structure of texts and on the social and psychological aspects of language. Utilizing current thinking and research, this volume provides an overview of issues in linguistics, sociolinguistics, cognition, pragmatics, discourse, and semantics as they coalesce to create the communicative experience.
As a unique examination of the relationship between language and communication, key features of the second edition include:
* material on the biological bases of language,
* models of the mind and information processing,
* discussions of semantics and the creation of new words,
* conversation analysis with practical applications, and
* a chapter on sociolinguistics, including language and groups, dialects, and personal styles.
Designed as an introduction to language and communication study, this text is appropriate for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in discourse and related courses in language, meaning, and messages. It also makes an excellent companion volume for courses in theory or interpersonal communication.
ADDITIONAL COPY FOR MAILER
More readable and practical than its predecessor, this second edition contains major additions:
* A more general introduction to language and communication, including new material on the biological bases of language as well as a table of species comparisons and brain comparisons.
* New models of the mind and how you process information, including more on the role of short and long term memory. It also includes a section on the features of messages that aid in comprehension--in other words, how people use the messages of another to build meaning and comprehension.
* A new section on semantics, new words and how they come about, and a more interesting treatment of meaning and how it works. The section on new words details the many ways that new words come into being. The examples are interesting and engaging for the student.
* A new focus on pragmatics with a major new section on conversation analysis which includes very practical ways to apply the principles with numerous examples.
* A new chapter on sociolinguistics includes material on language and groups (including gender, African-American English, and social class) dialects, personal styles, and related issues.

For decades educators and cultural critics have deplored the corrosive effects of electronic media on the national consciousness. The average American reads less often, writes less well. And, numbed by the frenetic image-bombardment of music videos, commercials and sound bites, we may also, it is argued, think less profoundly. But wait. Is it just possible that some good might arise from the ashes of the printed word?

Most emphatically yes, argues Mitchell Stephens, who asserts that the moving image is likely to make our thoughts not more feeble but more robust. Through a fascinating overview of previous communications revolutions, Stephens demonstrates that the charges that have been leveled against television have been faced by most new media, including writing and print. Centuries elapsed before most of these new forms of communication would be used to produce works of art and intellect of sufficient stature to overcome this inevitable mistrust and nostalgia. Using examples taken from the history of photography and film, as well as MTV, experimental films, and Pepsi commercials, the author considers the kinds of work that might unleash, in time, the full power of moving images. And he argues that these works--an emerging computer-edited and -distributed "new video"--have the potential to inspire transformations in thought on a level with those inspired by the products of writing and print. Stephens sees in video's complexities, simultaneities, and juxtapositions, new ways of understanding and perhaps even surmounting the tumult and confusions of contemporary life.

Sure to spark lively--even heated--debate, the rise of the image the fall of the word belongs in the library of millennium-watchers everywhere.

From family traditions like weddings and funerals, to state ceremonies and media events, rites and ceremonies mark socially important occasions, define beginnings and endings, and aid social transitions. Ritual and ceremonial as formal modes of conduct are equally ubiquitous, appearing in everything from modes of talk and rules of politeness to elaborate protocols from events of state. Ritual and rite, ceremonial and ceremony are symbolic social actions, thus modes of communication that implicate individuals in the social order, creating realities while expressing ideas and attitudes about them.

In Ritual Communication, author Eric W. Rothenbuhler combines bibliographic essay and theory construction to provide a unique perspective on ritual as a special and powerful form of communication. Part I is a critical review of definitions of ritual from anthropology, sociology, communication studies, and other literature, ending with a theoretical essay on the contributions of communication theory to understanding ritual. Part II is a critical review of the uses of the term ritual in communication studies literature, covering mediated rituals and ceremonies, ritualistic media uses and audience activities, political, rhetorical, and civic rituals, rituals of everyday interaction, rituals of organizational life, and finally a conception of communication as ritual.

A groundbreaking and fascinating examination, Ritual Communication will interest those in the fields of communication, speech communication, social psychology, anthropology, and sociology.

An innovative text that approaches complex concepts with relative ease and simplicity, this new work by internationally-known Graziella Tonfoni takes the reader on an architectural excursion that is the metaphorical representation of the components of the expression of knowledge. Through the progressive building and exploration of consistently designed and complex metaphors, which the author calls "metaphorical environments," the reader will come to understand the building principles upon which to base the construction of multimedia forms. The first section of the book creates the setting for accurately understanding the context and deals with the implications of designing teaching material for a course in information design. Other sections build upon this groundwork using a series of descriptions of actual architectural structures. A final section of visuals is meant to facilitate active learning of those concepts previously introduced. Blank boxes on each page in this last section encourage the reader to re-number the pages to create an individual path that relates the concepts to different sections of the text.

Love, Light, and a Dream is a timely and provocative look at the medium of television as one of the cultural vehicles carrying us toward the 21st century. It provides an up-to-the-minute review of developments and trends shaping the policy and regulatory issues that exert the strongest influence on the evolution of information technology. Topics covered in this study include the Federal Communications Commission and its role as a regulatory body, the relationship between cable services and telephone systems as information providers, television advertising campaigns and the structure of the agency business, public television and its struggle for financial independence, and the culture of television news and the creation of a journalistic mythology.

Introduction to Satellite Communications.

Early Proposals for Mobile Satellite Communications.

Marisat and Marecs: Pioneering Commercial Mobile Satellite Services.

Inmarsat.

Other Mobile Satellite Communications Systems in Service.

Planned Geostationary Mobile Satellite Systems.

Planned Low Earth Orbiting Mobile Satellite Systems for Telephone Service.

Planned Low Earth Orbiting Mobile Satellite Systems for Data Service.

Other Planned Mobile Satellite Communications Systems.

A Note on Radio Spectrum Issues.

Appendices.

Index.

A review of the dissemination of spatial data. Topics addressed include: spatial information infrastructure and innovation; designing information policy research; and evaluating information use, access and dissemination. The work also contains comparative case studies of information dissemination.

We will never know the precise identity of America's first political consultant. It is likely that candidates were seeking favorable coverage in colonial newspapers as early as 1704; it is also likely that by 1745 candidates were using handbills and pamphlets to augment press coverage of campaigns; and we know that one successful candidate, George Washington in 1758, purchased refreshments for potential voters. These traditional approaches to winning votes have in recent years been amplified by consultants who have shown how cable networks, videocassettes, modems, faxes, focus groups, and other means of communication can be put to partisan use. In this book, Robert V. Friedenberg examines all of the communication techniques used in contemporary political campaigning.

After providing a history of political consulting, Friedenberg examines the principal communication specialities used in contemporary campaigns. Throughout, political consultants discuss their approaches and evaluate the benefits and shortcomings of these methods. An invaluable text for what is arguably the most rapidly changing field of applied communication, this work is must reading for students and researchers of American politics, applied communication, and contemporary political theory.

Highly useful text studies the logarithmic measures of information and their application to testing statistical hypotheses. Topics include introduction and definition of measures of information, their relationship to Fisher's information measure and sufficiency, fundamental inequalities of information theory, much more. Numerous worked examples and problems. References. Glossary. Appendix. 1968 second, revised edition.

The original edition of "Public Journalism and Public Life," published in 1995, was the first comprehensive argument in favor of public journalism. Designed to focus the discussion about public journalism both within and outside the profession, the book has accomplished its purpose. In the ensuing years, the debate has continued; dozens of newspapers and thousands of journalists have been experimenting with the philosophy, while others still dispute its legitimacy.
This larger second edition further develops the philosophy, responds to the arguments against it, outlines how specific principles can be applied, and explains the importance of public deliberation and the role of values in public journalism. Divided into three sections, it can be used as a supplement to the first edition or as a starting point for those being newly introduced to the ideas that have been the subject of debate within the profession and among those interested and involved in civic life at all levels. Section 1 summarizes two major arguments -- why journalism and public life are inseparably bound in success or failure and why the way journalism operates in the current environment fosters failure more often than success. Section 2 looks at the evolution of the profession's culture, its impact on the author's extensive career, and how he grew to believe that substantive change is needed in journalism. Section 3 deals with the implications of public journalism philosophy -- how it requires the application of additional values to daily work, its evolution in the early years and where its current focus should be, plus various questions about the future of cyberspace.

This is an examination of information policy in environmental sustainability. It covers issues such as information, knowledge and models; environmental regulation; and information policy.

Marshall McLuhan's insights are fresher and more applicable today than when he first announced them to a startled world. A whole new generation is turning to his work to understand a global village made real by the information superhighway and the overwhelming challenge of electronic transformation."Before anyone could perceive the electric form of the information revolution, McLuhan was publishing brilliant explanations of the perceptual changes being experienced by the users of mass media. He seemed futuristic to some and an enemy of print and literacy to others. He was, in reality, a deeply literate man of astonishing prescience. Tom Wolfe suggested aloud that McLuhan's work was as important culturally as that of Darwin or Freud. Agreement and scoffing ensued. Increasingly Wolfe's wonder seems justified."From the IntroductionHere in one volume, are McLuhan's key ideas, drawn from his books, articles, correspondence, and published speeches. This book is the essential archive of his constantly surprising vision.

Arguments from Ignorance explores the situations in which the argument from ignorance (also known as the lack-of-knowledge inference, negative evidence, or default reasoning) functions as a respectable form of reasoning and those in which it is indeed fallacious. Douglas Walton draws on everyday conversations on all kinds of practical matters in which the argumentum ad ignorantiam is used quite appropriately to infer conclusions. He also discusses the inappropriate use of this kind of argument, referring to various major case studies, including the Salem witchcraft trials, the McCarthy hearings, and the Alger Hiss case.

This book makes an original contribution in the areas of argumentation theory and informal logic, contending that, despite its traditional classification as a fallacy, the argument from ignorance is a genuine, very common, and legitimate type of argumentation with an identifiable structure. But the book is also interdisciplinary in scope, explaining many widely interesting and controversial subjects in artificial intelligence, medical education, philosophy of science, and philosophy of law in a clear way that makes it accessible to a broad range of readers.

'Every word we record, every trip we make, every item we buy or order, and every move we make leaves a trace or trail. Who owns it, controls it, has access to it? Anne Wells Branscomb has written a very accessible guidebook for students, scholars, and all citizens on how to think about control of information and thus of action.'-George Gerbner, Professor and Dean Emeritus, Annenberg School of Communication

"Beautiful Data" is both a history of big data and interactivity, and a sophisticated meditation on ideas about vision and cognition in the second half of the twentieth century. Contending that our forms of attention, observation, and truth are contingent and contested, Orit Halpern historicizes the ways that we are trained, and train ourselves, to observe and analyze the world. Tracing the postwar impact of cybernetics and the communication sciences on the social and human sciences, design, arts, and urban planning, she finds a radical shift in attitudes toward recording and displaying information. These changed attitudes produced what she calls communicative objectivity: new forms of observation, rationality, and economy based on the management and analysis of data. Halpern complicates assumptions about the value of data and visualization, arguing that changes in how we manage and train perception, and define reason and intelligence, are also transformations in governmentality. She also challenges the paradoxical belief that we are experiencing a crisis of attention caused by digital media, a crisis that can be resolved only through intensified media consumption.

Die Chancen, die Big Data und Digitalisierung bieten, bringen fur Unternehmen und ihre Funktionsbereiche weitreichende AEnderungen mit sich - so auch fur das Controlling. Die Autoren analysieren die aufgabenbezogenen Trends im Controllingumfeld und leiten die Anforderungen ab, die sich daraus fur das Kompetenzprofil des Controllers ergeben. Ausgewahlte Angebote zur Weiterbildung und Kompetenzerweiterung als klassisches Weiterbildungsangebot oder als Studiengang runden die Analyse ab.