It is not possible to imagine our lives today without technology. From the moment we get up in the morning until the time that we go to bed at night, technology is present in almost every moment, even if we are not aware of it. Some of the most basic activities we need to perform regularly could not be carried out without technology. Sociological and Philosophical Aspects of Human Interaction with Technology: Advancing Concepts presents a careful blend of conceptual, theoretical and applied research in regards to the relationship between technology and humans. This book explores the importance of these interactions, aspects related with trust, communication, data protection, usability concerning organizational change, and e-learning. The advancement of these theories and practices will benefit from this publication as it provides a voice for the users.

There have arisen, in various settings, unmistakable calls for involvement of psychological factors in IT work, notably in development and deployment of information systems. Managing Psychological Factors in Information Systems Work: An Orientaion to Emotional Intelligence "pulls together" areas of existing involvement, to suggest yet new areas and to present an initial, and coherent vision and framework for, essentially, extending and humanizing the sphere of IT work. It may be indeed noteworthy that, while the Industrial Revolution may have moved the human person into intellectual predominance, the IT Revolution, with its recent calls for addressing and involving the "whole person," may indeed be initiating a re-centering of the human being in his/her essential core, giving rise to new consciousness, new vision and new, empowering experiences. May this book encourage the first few steps along a new and vivifying path!

A volume in Research in Management Education and Development Series Editors: Charles Wankel, St. John's University Virtual Worlds are being increasingly used in business and education. With each day more people are venturing into computer generated online persistent worlds such as Second Life for increasingly diverse reasons such as commerce, education, research, and entertainment. This book explores the emerging ethical issues associated with these novel environments for human interaction and cutting-edge approaches to these new ethical problems. This volume's goal is to put forward a number of these virtual world ethical issues of which research is only commencing. The developing literature specifically regarding virtual world ethics is a recent phenomenon. Research based on the phenomenon of virtual world life has only been developing in the past four years. This volume introduces pathbreaking work in a field which is only just beginning to take shape. It is ideal as both as a library reference and a supplementary text in upper-division courses focused on the issues of applied ethics and new media. It is unique in being one of the first volumes specifically addressed to ethical problems of the "metaverse." This volume includes articles from authors from around the world exploring topics such as: employing rationalist and casuistic approaches to the controversial topic of "virtual rape" yield an increased understanding of how virtual worlds ought to be designed, the relationship between the ethical and legal dimensions of virtual world users' participation in "paratexts," utilitarian consideration of harm and freedom in the case of virtual pedophilia, norms of research ethics in virtual worlds, the ethical implications of employing virtual worlds as tools for medical education and experimenting with healthcare services, the ethics of the collective action of virtual world communities, consideration of the virtue and potential of cosmopolitanism in virtual worlds, Deleuzian ethical approaches to the experience of the disabled in virtual worlds, the ethics of virtual world design, and the ethical implications of the "illusion of reality" presented by virtual worlds.

Originally designed for interpersonal communication, today mobile devices are capable of connecting their users to a wide variety of Internet-enabled services and applications. Multimodality in Mobile Computing and Mobile Devices: Methods for Adaptable Usability explores a variety of perspectives on multimodal user interface design, describes a variety of novel multimodal applications, and provides real-life experience reports. Containing research from leading international experts, this innovative publication presents core concepts that define multi-modal, multi-channel, and multi-device interactions and their role in mobile, pervasive, and ubiquitous computing.

The author presents Probatio, a toolkit for building functional DMI (digital musical instruments) prototypes, artifacts in which gestural control and sound production are physically decoupled but digitally mapped. He uses the concept of instrumental inheritance, the application of gestural and/or structural components of existing instruments to generate ideas for new instruments. To support analysis and combination, he then leverages a traditional design method, the morphological chart, in which existing artifacts are split into parts, presented in a visual form and then recombined to produce new ideas. And finally he integrates the concept and the method in a concrete object, a physical prototyping toolkit for building functional DMI prototypes: Probatio. The author's evaluation of this modular system shows it reduces the time required to develop functional prototypes. The book is useful for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in the areas of musical creativity and human-computer interaction, in particular those engaged in generating, communicating, and testing ideas in complex design spaces.

The human condition is affected by numerous factors in modern society. In modern times, technology is so integrated into culture that it has become necessary to perform even daily functions. Human Development and Interaction in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on the widespread integration of technological innovations around the globe and examines how human-computer interaction affects various aspects of people's lives. Featuring emergent research from theoretical perspectives and case studies, this book is ideally designed for professionals, students, practitioners, and academicians.

This book provides an insight into recent technological trends and innovations in solutions and platforms to improve mobility of visually impaired people. The authors' goal is to help to contribute to the social and societal inclusion of the visually impaired. The book's topics include, but are not limited to, obstacle detection systems, indoor and outdoor navigation, transportation sustainability systems, and hardware/devices to aid visually impaired people. The book has a strong focus on practical applications tested in a real environment. Applications include city halls, municipalities, and companies that must keep up to date with recent trends in platforms, methodologies and technologies to promote urban mobility. Also discuss are broader realms including education, health, electronics, tourism, and transportation. Contributors include a variety of researchers and practitioners around the world.

Clouds are being positioned as the next-generation consolidated, centralized, yet federated IT infrastructure for hosting all kinds of IT platforms and for deploying, maintaining, and managing a wider variety of personal, as well as professional applications and services. Handbook of Research on Cloud Infrastructures for Big Data Analytics focuses exclusively on the topic of cloud-sponsored big data analytics for creating flexible and futuristic organizations. This book helps researchers and practitioners, as well as business entrepreneurs, to make informed decisions and consider appropriate action to simplify and streamline the arduous journey towards smarter enterprises.

In a digital context, trust is a multifaceted concept, including trust in application usability, trust in information security, and trust in fellow users. Mobile technologies have compounded the impact of such considerations. Trust Management in Mobile Environments: Autonomic and Usable Models explores current advances in digital and mobile computing technologies from the user perspective, evaluating trust models and autonomic trust management. From the recent history of trust in digital environments to prospective future developments, this book serves as a potent reference source for professionals, graduate and post-graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in the field of trust management.

Changes in the availability, quality, and quantity of communication technologies are revolutionizing and fundamentally altering how individuals and organizations interact, communicate, and work. Interaction in Communication Technologies and Virtual Learning Environments: Human Factors examines the effect of technological rationalism on communication and learning outcomes in a global, multi-cultural world. Drawing on the experiences and research expertise of key researchers and educators from multiple disciplines, this book presents real-world examples of virtual communicators in global, cross-cultural, and multi-dynamic environments.

This book presents the outcomes of the 17th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Computer and Information Science (ICIS 2018), which was held in Singapore on June 6-8, 2018. The aim of the conference was to bring together researchers and scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users, and students to discuss the various fields of computer science and to share their experiences, and to exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. The book includes findings on all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information science and discusses related practical challenges and the solutions adopted to solve them. The conference organizers selected the best papers from those accepted for presentation. The papers were chosen based on review scores submitted by members of the program committee and underwent a further rigorous round of review. From this second round, 13 of the conference's most promising papers were then published in this Springer (SCI) book and not the conference proceedings. We impatiently await the important contributions that we know these authors will make to the field of computer and information science.

Cognitive architectures represent an umbrella term to describe ways in which the flow of thought can be engineered towards cerebral and behavioral outcomes. Cognitive Architectures are meant to provide top-down guidance, a knowledge base, interactive heuristics and concrete or fuzzy policies for which the virtual character can utilize for intelligent interaction with his/her/its situated virtual environment. Integrating Cognitive Architectures into Virtual Character Design presents emerging research on virtual character artificial intelligence systems and procedures and the integration of cognitive architectures. Emphasizing innovative methodologies for intelligent virtual character integration and design, this publication is an ideal reference source for graduate-level students, researchers, and professionals in the fields of artificial intelligence, gaming, and computer science.

Mankind has been fascinated with and drawn to the macabre for many years. This is particularly evident in the growing popularity of dark tourism, which centers on locations known for death and suffering. Virtual Traumascapes and Exploring the Roots of Dark Tourism is a pivotal reference source featuring the latest scholarly research in which the rise of new technology platforms is not only changing tourism worldwide, but also facilitating the access to areas of war, mourning, and disaster. Including coverage on a number of topics such as sexual tourism, disaster recovery, and capitalism, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on concepts and methodologies of the dark tourism industry. Topics Covered: The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to: Capitalism Consumption Cultural Theory Culture Dark Tourism Disaster Recovery Disaster Tourism Globalization Museums Politics Poverty Sexual Tourism Thana Tourism

The interaction between humans and computers is evolving rapidly, impacting every aspect of human and organizational life. This book presents the latest developments in this field of "Human Computer Interaction" (HCI). It discusses issues related End User Computing, as well as issues related to the human side of IT. This book will help to set a framework for the social and organizational issues related to IT, giving emphasis to its role as facilitator of social relationships, enabling the development of the organizational and individual intelligence and helping to improve human conditions. In Issues of Human Computer Interaction, models and theories are presented together with practical cases that will help students, lecturers, researchers and managers to have a clear idea of what is going on in HCI, today.

User Centered Design for Medical Visualization features a comprehensive review of leading advances in medical visualization and human-computer interaction. This book investigates the human roles during a visualization process, specifically motivation-based design, user-based design, and perception-and-cognitive-based design. An essential resource for researchers, scholars, healthcare practitioners, and medical technology specialists, ""User Centered Design for Medical Visualization"" provides real-world examples and insight into the analytical and architectural aspects of user centered design.

The book gathers the chapters of Cognitive InfoCommunication research relevant to a variety of application areas, including data visualization, emotion expression, brain-computer interfaces or speech technologies. It provides an overview of the kind of cognitive capabilities that are being analyzed and developed. Based on this common ground, it may become possible to see new opportunities for synergy among disciplines that were heretofore viewed as being separate. Cognitive InfoCommunication begins by modeling human cognitive states and aptitudes in order to better understand what the user of a system is capable of comprehending and doing. The patterns of exploration and the specific tools that are described can certainly be of interest and of great relevance for all researchers who focus on modeling human states and aptitudes. This innovative research area provides answers to the latest challenges in influence of cognitive states and aptitudes in order to facilitate learning or generally improve performance in certain cognitive tasks such as decision making. Some capabilities are purely human, while others are purely artificial, but in general this distinction is rarely clear-cut. Therefore, when discussing new human cognitive capabilities, the technological background which makes them possible cannot be neglected, and indeed often plays a central role. This book highlights the synergy between various fields that are perfectly fit under the umbrella of CogInfoCom and contribute to understanding and developing new, human-artificial intelligence hybrid capabilities. These, merged capabilities are currently appearing, and the importance of the role they play in everyday life are unique to the cognitive entity generation that is currently growing up.