Few modern innovations have spread quite so quickly as the cell phone. This technology has transformed communication throughout the world. Mobile telecommunications have had a dramatic effect in many regions, but perhaps nowhere more than for low-income populations in countries such as Jamaica, where in the last few years many people have moved from no phone to cell phone. This book reveals the central role of communication in helping low-income households cope with poverty. The book traces the impact of the cell phone from personal issues of loneliness and depression to the global concerns of the modern economy and the transnational family. As the technology of social networking, the cell phone has become central to establishing and maintaining relationships in areas from religion to love. The Cell Phone presents the first detailed ethnography of the impact of this new technology through the exploration of the cell phone's role in everyday lives.

In Transnational Korean Cinema author Dal Yong Jin explores the interactions of local and global politics, economics, and culture to contextualize the development of Korean cinema and its current place in an era of neoliberal globalization and convergent digital technologies. The book emphasizes the economic and industrial aspects of the story, looking at questions on the interaction of politics and economics, including censorship and public funding, and provides a better view of the big picture by laying bare the relationship between film industries, the global market, and government. Jin also sheds light on the operations and globalization strategies of Korean film industries alongside changing cultural policies in tandem with Hollywood’s continuing influences in order to comprehend the power relations within cultural politics, nationally and globally. This is the first book to offer a full overview of the nascent development of Korean cinema.

"The most ambitious, thoughtful and internationally aware assessment to date of the creative economy. Defining creativity as the production of newness in complex, adaptive systems, the authors make the case that together the creative economy, along with other cultural outputs, represent a planet-wide innovation capability which marks an epochal turn in human affairs." - Ian Hargreaves, CBE, Professor of Digital Economy, Cardiff University Creativity, new ideas and innovation - and with them the growth of knowledge - have spilled out of the lab, studio and factory into the street, scene, and social media. Now, everyday life is productive, everyone is creative, and new ideas can come from anywhere around the world. Instead of confining cultural expression to talented artists and expert professionals, this book investigates creative new ideas from everyone. Instead of confining the 'creative industries' to one sector of the economy and one type of productivity, this book extends the idea of creative innovation to everything. Instead of confining the growth of knowledge to wealthy countries or markets, this book looks for it in developing and emergent countries, everywhere. The productivity of creativity can now be seen as a global phenomenon. It demands a systems-based and dynamic mode of explanation. Creative Economy and Culture pursues the conceptual, historical, practical, critical and educational issues and implications. It looks at conceptual challenges, the forces and dynamics of change, and prospects for the future of creative work at planetary scale. It is essential reading for upper level students and researchers of the creative and cultural industries across media and cultural studies, communication and sociology.

In the context of a systematic overview of the possibilities of applying narratological concepts to a study of TV series, ten case studies are explored in depth, demonstrating how series such as "24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twin Peaks, Star Trek, Blackadder," and "Sex and the City" make use of innovative audiovisual means of storytelling. Transgressing the traditional confines of narrative theory, the chapter authors address the question of how form, content, and function intersect in these series.

Exploring Science Communication demonstrates how science and technology studies approaches can be explicitly integrated into effective, powerful science communication research. Through a range of case studies, from climate change and public parks to Facebook, museums, and media coverage, it helps you to understand and analyse the complex and diverse ways science and society relate in today's knowledge intensive environments. Notable features include: A focus on showing how to bring academic STS theory into your own science communication research Coverage of a range of topics and case studies illustrating different analyses and approaches Speaks to disciplines across Media & Communication, Science & Technology Studies, Health Sciences, Environmental Sciences and related areas. With this book you will learn how science communication can be more than just about disseminating facts to the public, but actually generative, leading to new understanding, research, and practices.

The paradoxical relationship between Chinese creative workers and the state Chinese Creator Economies dives into the paradoxical lives lived by creative professionals in emerging economies across China. Jian Lin contextualizes the socioeconomic conditions in which cultural production takes place and pushes back against the dominant understanding of Chinese media as a centralized, state-controlled apparatus by looking at how individual creative workers grapple with governance and precarity in the Chinese cultural industries and develop their bilateral subjectivities within the politico-economic system of Chinese media. Drawing on intensive empirical research conducted on creative labor practices across television, journalism, design, and social media, Chinese Creative Economies looks at both Chinese and foreign-born content creators, exploring the tensions between Beijing’s limits on individual creativity, and its aspirations to become a global hub for cultural production. Lin maintains that it is the production of bilateral creatives that generates and maintains hope for the future of those who live and work within the cultural economies of China.

Technologies develop rapidly and reach hurricane levels of velocity but quality E-Content and innovative applications lag behind. This book addresses the question how content industries change within a digital environment and what role information and communication technologies play in transforming the competitive landscape. The authors argue that post-industrial societies tend to pay substantial amounts for equipment and gadgets but invest far too little in the quality of the content. As a result, much effort is and has to be spent on the enhancement of E-Content.

The contributions give an elaborate overview of:
- the specifics, challenges and prospects of content in the network economy;
- market developments of digital media services;
- paid content business models;
- impacts on scientific publishing;
- developments in the field of E-Learning;
- the interplay between technology and content with the example of interactive digital TV;
- the mobile games market;
- emerging new cross media markets;
- the need to enhance the usability of websites and mobile applications;
- how digital applications might be used to capture and store our personal experiences.

A final chapter shows the prospects of the European E-Content market and gives an overview of valuable initiatives and resources dealing with the topic of E-Content.

Alexis Papathanassis postulates that ICS ought to be treated as a complex and demanding management process and that it should be acknowledged as a key enabler of merger value realization. The application of his "Post-merger information and communication systems framework" (POMICS) on a real-life post-merger integration situation in a tourism company serves as a validation and as an illustration of the framework's potential value. It also gives valuable insights into some of the key questions facing the entire tourism sector today.

The 'Indian Techie' has become a global icon, taking its place alongside McDonalds and MTV as one of the key symbols of contemporary globalization. India and the IT Revolution explores the contemporary emergence of cosmopolitan, high-tech India as marking the arrival of a truly global cyberculture. It argues against the notion that globalization is a process of 'Westernization', which radiates out unilaterally from the core, imposing itself upon a passive, backward periphery. Instead, it conceives of global culture as a dynamic, innovative network, which proceeds primarily from its edges.

The area of communication and computer networks has become a very active field of research by the control systems community in the last years. Tools from convex optimization and control theory are playing increasing roles in efficient network utilization, fair resource allocation, and communication delay accommodation and the field of Networked Control systems is fast becoming a mainstay of control systems research and applications. This carefully edited book brings together solicited contributions from experts in the various areas of communication/control networks referring to both networks under control (control in networks) as well as networked control systems (control over networks). The aim of this book is to reverse the trend of fragmentation and specialization in Communication Control Networks connecting various interdisciplinary research fields including control, communication, applied mathematics and computer science.

Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication offers a cross-disciplinary approach to examining dialogue as a communicative medium. Presented in five parts, the book takes the reader on a journey of exploring the power and potential of dialogue as a means for communication. In particular, this volume comes at a time when the global society's attention has been directed to creating more productive conversations in the name of world peace and harmony. It provides a unique new work on dialogue that brings the reader into a "dialogue with dialogue," offering an opportunity to understand the communicative potential of dialogue.
In the book, readers are introduced to five sections: Section I examines the historical and cultural perspectives of conversation. This examination helps to create a foundation for a deeper study of the emergent and salient aspects of conversation as it relates to cultural creativity and human systems design. Sections II offers the reader an examination of dialogue through different philosophical and theoretical perspectives as well as methodological ideas related to conversation. Section III explores different modalities of conversation and the application of design conversation within and across various types of design settings and human experiences. Section IV examines the field of practice as related to use of different forms of conversation. Here various authors will share their different approaches to conversation and their reflections and insights in using conversation in a variety of settings. Concluding the book, Section V reflectively examines the authors' contributions to the book and provides the reader with a focus on the future.

The third edition of Bill Nichols's best-selling text provides an up-to-date introduction to the most important issues in documentary history and criticism. A new chapter, "I Want to Make a Documentary: Where Do I Start?" guides readers through the steps of planning and preproduction and includes an example of a project proposal for a film that went on to win awards at major festivals. Designed for students in any field that makes use of visual evidence and persuasive strategies, Introduction to Documentary identifies the genre's distinguishing qualities and teaches the viewer how to read documentary film. Each chapter takes up a discrete question, from "How did documentary filmmaking get started?" to "Why are ethical issues central to documentary filmmaking?" Here Nichols has fully rewritten each chapter for greater clarity and ease of use, including revised discussions of earlier films and new commentary on dozens of recent films from The Cove to The Act of Killing and from Gasland to Restrepo.

When Walt Harrington was first invited to Kentucky to hunt with his African American father-in-law and his country friends--Bobby, Lewis, and Carl--he was a jet-setting reporter for The Washington Post with a distaste for killing animals and for the men's brand of old-fashioned masculinity. But over the next 12 years, this white city slicker entered a world of life, death, nature, and manhood that came to seem not brutal or outdated but beautiful in a way his experience in Washington was not. The Everlasting Stream is the absorbing, touching, and often hilarious story of how hunting with these good ol' boys forced an enlightened man to reexamine his modern notions of guilt and responsibility, friendship and masculinity, ambition and satisfaction. In crisp prose that bring autumn mornings crackling to life, Harrington shares the lessons that led him to leave Washington. When his son turned 14, Harrington began taking him hunting too, believing that these rough-edged, whiskey-drinking men could teach his suburban boy something worthwhile about lives different from his own, the joy of small moments, and the old-fashioned belief that a man's actions mean more than his words. The Everlasting Stream is a funny, intimate, inspiring meditation on the meaning of a life well lived. CHAPTER ONE Walt recounts the first time he went shooting with his father-in-law, Alex, in rural Glasgow, Kentucky, during a Thanksgiving visit with his wife. "I lived in Washington DC, where most people I knew believed hunters were sick, violent men." His attitude toward his African-American hunting mates ("I was white, and I figured it was going to be my worry to fit in") is "condescending as hell," but it all turns around when he shoots his first rabbit, and surprises himself with the purity of his exhuberence when he calls out, "I got him!" He discusses the repulsion over having to clean his rabbit, but when his guests act similarly repulsed when he serves them rabbit dinner, he says "I think I'm going to kill some more." CHAPTER TWO He describes hunting with Alex, Bobby, Lewis and Carl in a gully half the length of football field. "Over the years I've become convinced that Alex, Bobby, Lewis, and Carl have discovered the secrets of living life well," although "the idea that these men had anything to teach me didn't come to me for many Thanksgiving vacations." He is attracted by how well they get to know a place through hunting it: "How many of us can say that about any place in our lives?" The men are like relics of a bygone era, but they eventually convinced him that he should bring his son along too. He introduces Carl and Bobby, who have retired from factory jobs--they own sixty acres together in the country. Lewis bought his own 18-wheel rig a few years ago and still hauls freight. Alex is retired and has many hobbies. The men talk in a colorful drawl about their dogs, teasing each other mercilessly. CHAPTER THREE He talks about hunting at the Old Collins Place. Every time he comes back there, he sees something for the first time. He talks about how ambitious he was as a kid, determined to make a name for himself in journalism. He meets his wife-to-be, Keran, and works thankless 70-hour weeks until he finally writes a profile of George Bush that gets him major attention, a huge raise, and freedom to cover other figures such as Jesse Jackson, Jerry Falwell, etc. CHAPTER FOUR: BOBBY'S BARN His son Matt catches a rabbit and gets a sip off the post-hunting bottle of Wild Turkey. He discusses his tough decision of taking the boy hunting for the first time when he was seven: "Really I rolled the dice. I knew that most affluent city perople would shield their sons from such rough men and gritty settings. But after my first few years of hunting I deced that the forests, fields, wind, rain moon, stars, leaves, weeds, guns, killing, cursing, drinking--and naturally the men themselves--would be good for Matt." He describes skinning and gutting a rabit--he does it without squeamishness because "it has to be done," the same way you have to clean up a kid's vomit. LAWSON BOTTOM He discusses the time it dawned on him that he had come to savor things--the Miro painting he owns, for instance-- and asks himself "I love my work but what if the day comes when I don't? What happens to all of this? What happens to me? Will I be trapped in my affluence for the rest of my life?" (The climax of his career comes when President Bush is seriously considering appointing him as his official biographer, and even invites him to a celebrity-studded dinner, but eventually Bush decides the security risk is too great. Harrington considers it a blessing in disguise, thinking about all of the quality time he would have lost with his son, etc.) THE EVERLASTING STREAM He recalls a morning of picture-perfect contentment at a place called the Everlasting Stream--"such memorable moments are like waking versions of lucid dreams. We are within them and outside them at once as they are happening." He reflects "To this day I don't believe I have ever seen men so at ease, so thoroughly enjoying one another's company." He realizes he hasn't had true friends like these since he was kid. BEHIND BC WITT'S FARM He talks about the way that moment at the Everlasting Stream has caused him to think of hunting not just as a diversion, but to think of it off and on throughout the year. Carl takes him to the four-room shack where he grew up and Harrington is shocked by how small and run-down it is. Carl says "We hunted to eat." THE SQUARE He describes being in the zone--"hunters since Socrates onward have described an ethereal hunter's state of mental and emotional clarity. What nature writer James Swan calls the Zen of hunting--- 'a state of awe and reverence, which I sthe emotional foundation for transcendence." LEWIS'S GARAGE He talks about the joys of hanging out in Lewis's garage after hunting. "I have come to love hearing the men laugh. After all the years, if I were blind I'd still know the men by their laughs." .. "Listening to the men is like watching a pinball bounce around its board. The action is impossible to predict but it isn't random. The point is to relax and lety my time with the men wash over me in the way that a Christmas midnight Mass with candles and organ and incense would wash over me as a boy."

Michael Crew and David Parker have compiled a comprehensive, up-to-date and detailed analytical work on leading research issues in the economics of regulation. With contributions from international specialists in economic regulation, the Handbook provides a comprehensive discussion of major developments in both the theory and practice of regulatory economics. This book will be an indispensable source for both students and practitioners of regulation.The Handbook begins by looking at the principles, history and methods of regulation before turning to specialist themes including: pricing and social welfare regulating service quality consumer representation< performance benchmarking environmental regulation calculating the cost of capital information revelation and incentives the economics of access charging regulatory governance regulatory policy in developing countries particular issues in the regulation of the telecommunications, energy, transport and water sectors. The International Handbook on Economic Regulation is essential reading for researchers in the economics of regulation and students of regulation on final year undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses. As a major reference work, it is of value and assistance to economists in regulatory offices, regulated companies and government departments.

Are children today growing up too soon? How do they - and their parents - feel about media portrayals of sex and personal relationships? Are the media a corrupting influence, or a potentially positive and useful resource for young people? Drawing on an extensive research project, which investigated children's interpretations of sexual content in films, TV and print media, this book considers how young people (ages 9-17) use such material to understand their experiences and build their identities; and how they and their parents respond to public concerns about these issues. The book offers a clearly-written and entertaining insight into children's and parents' perspectives on these difficult issues - perspectives that are often ignored or trivialized in public debate.

The companies that provide the Internet to the rest of the world do not have the luxury of setting high expectations and assuming they will be met. These Internet infrastructure companies (IICs) are responsible for delivering the Internet's promise, including everything from eBusiness and mobile Internet applications to optical services and high-speed access. The Internet's audience takes this promise for granted, and IICs face the daunting challenge of making the Internet, and networks like it, do what the audience expects them to. To meet the expectations they face, IICs must harness the power of their operations support systems (OSSs) - the software systems in the background they use to create, manage, maintain, manipulate and adapt their networks to serve customers reliably and rapidly.
Broadband Infrastructure: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Delivering OSS/BSS is a "how to" book for Internet infrastructure companies to help them prepare for the decisions they will face when constructing their core OSS strategies and infrastructure. This book provides a source of reference and education to learn the language, methods, and technologies associated with the OSS market. It examines the Internet infrastructure supply chain and how it will be automated. Finally, it brings together a wealth of proven knowledge and advice, gathered from BusinessEdge Solutions' extensive OSS experience, that broadband providers can use to minimize their OSS risks while maximizing their ability to differentiate and compete.

The focus of this book is on the management of inbound call centers. Based on technical performance measures this book develops economic performance measures for different classes of telephone service numbers. Both the numbers of agents and the number of offered phones lines are decision variables in the operational personnel planning process. Since call arrivals as well as call-handling times are random in inbound call centers, this book concentrates on performance analysis and optimization using queueing models. These models may differ with respect to several features, for example, the number of customer classes, the number of differently trained agent groups, the limitation of the waiting room, or the customer's impatience. This book describes mathematical methods and algorithms to relate these decision variables to technical as well as economic performance measures.

Global Mobile Satellite Systems - A Systems Overview makes mobile satellite communications understandable for communication engineers, candidates for an engineering degree, technicians, managers, and other decision makers such as financiers and regulators. It provides a systems oriented top-level view of mobile satellite communications. In particular, it focuses on Global Mobile Satellite Systems (GMSS) including active programs such as Globalstar, IRIDIUM, ORBCOMM, ACeS, and Thuraya, or so-called the second generation mobile satellite systems class. The authors start with a brief description of three generations of satellite systems in use or planned in the telecommunications industry. Selected systems architectural trades are identified and explained to illustrate how various GMSS systems are formulated, developed and evaluated. It includes an examination of market demand trends, business trades, regulatory issues as well as technical considerations.

Major issues are examined in trade study style to provide easy access to key information. Key systems drivers such as orbit trades between LEO's, MEO's, and GEO's, frequency, protocols, customer bases, and regulatory and engineering issues are included. This book should appeal to individuals interested in the basic elements of Global Mobile Satellite Systems.

 The dynamics of the digital economy in the US, Europe and Japan are rather different. Some EU countries come close to the USA as the leading OECD country in the new economy, but Japan faces particular problems in catching-up digitally. Information and communication technology will affect productivity growth, production, the financial system and trade. Setting adequate rules for the digital economy - at the national and international level - is a key challenge for industrialized countries. Moreover, cultural and organizational challenges will also have to be met.

As the media converges with the telecommunication industry leveraging content becomes key for both formerly separate industries. As new channels are offered and used to distribute various contents - from music to games, from text to videos - companies have to think about innovative ways to even more profit from providing the channels or from providing the content or from providing both. New business models are emerging that are made for leveraging content and finding their way to the customers. This book explains why and how more content leverage becomes reality.  

In 1984 journalist Peregrine Hodson crossed the Pakistan border into Afghanistan with rebel mujahedin smuggling arms and ammunition, beginning a thousand-mile journey through the war-torn nation. Fluent in Farsi, he was able to observe the war with stunning intimacy and eloquently capture the essence of the Afghan people and their culture. As the travelers survived bombings by Soviet aircraft, an ambush by a rival faction, and becoming swept up in a major offensive, Hodson would come to gain a unique perspective on their hopes for peace and religious devotion. Bringing together travel writing, war reportage, and history, this is a richly rendered portrait of a complex people. "Gripping and moving ... [a] powerful account of a war that has often been described as 'forgotten.'" -- Gail Pool, The Christian Science Monitor "Will long remain the most vivid account of a strange and horrible wrong." -- Ahmed Rashid, The Independent (London) "Vivid and intriguing." -- Jonathan Kirsch, -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

In this exciting new book Angela McRobbie charts the 'euphoric' moment of the new creative economy, as it rose to prominence in the UK during the Blair years, and considers it from the perspective of contemporary experience of economic austerity and uncertainty about work and employment.McRobbie makes some bold arguments about the staging of creative economy as a mode of 'labour reform'; she proposes that the dispositif of creativity is a fine-tuned instrument for acclimatising the expanded, youthful urban middle classes to a future of work without the raft of entitlements and security which previous generations had struggled to win through the post-war period of social democratic government. Adopting a cultural studies perspective, McRobbie re-considers resistance as 'line of flight' and shows what is at stake in the new politics of culture and creativity. She incisively analyses 'project working' as the embodiment of the future of work and poses the question as to how people who come together on this basis can envisage developing stronger and more protective organisations and associations. Scattered throughout the book are excerpts from interviews with artists, stylists, fashion designers, policy-makers, and social entrepreneurs.

The Media Economy analyzes the media industries and its activities from macro to micro levels, using concepts and theories to demonstrate the role the media plays in the economy as a whole. Representing a rapidly changing and evolving environment, this text breaks new ground through its analysis from two unique perspectives: 1) Examining the media industries from a holistic perspective by analyzing how the media industries function across different levels of society (global, national, household, and individual); 2) Looking at the key forces (technology, globalization, regulation, and social aspects) constantly evolving and influencing the media industries. Building on the contributions of the original text, this Second Edition provides new references and current data to define and analyze today's media markets. To understand the role of media in the global economy, the insights included here are crucial for media students and practitioners.

In our "wireless" world it is easy to take the importance of the undersea cable systems for granted, but the stakes of their successful operation are huge, as they are responsible for carrying almost all transoceanic Internet traffic. In The Undersea Network Nicole Starosielski follows these cables from the ocean depths to their landing zones on the sandy beaches of the South Pacific, bringing them to the surface of media scholarship and making visible the materiality of the wired network. In doing so, she charts the cable network's cultural, historical, geographic and environmental dimensions. Starosielski argues that the environments the cables occupy are historical and political realms, where the network and the connections it enables are made possible by the deliberate negotiation and manipulation of technology, culture, politics and geography. Accompanying the book is an interactive digital mapping project, where readers can trace cable routes, view photographs and archival materials, and read stories about the island cable hubs.

Deregulation, privatization and internationalization of the telecommunications industry has brought about enormous changes within both the European and world economy. The dynamics of the Internet and the recent wave of innovations in the telecommunications and computer industry have given rise to new opportunities for entrepreneurship, employment and growth. No doubt, the dynamics and imperfections of today`s information markets raise crucial challenges for Western Europe. The changing patterns of innovation in the digital economy have forced governments to consider new strategies to promote innovation, network effects and growth. In response to these developments this text presents new approaches to macroeconomic modelling, growth theory and trade analysis. Still further, the deregulation policies of OECD-countries are analyzed. An indispensible text for academics and professionals who want to deepen their knowledge of how the New Economy revolution continues to change the economy.