In this short introduction, David J. Gunkel examines the shifting world of artificial intelligence, mapping it onto everyday twenty-first century life and probing the consequences of this ever-growing industry and movement. The book investigates the significance and consequences of the robot invasion in an effort to map the increasingly complicated social terrain of the twenty-first century. Whether we recognize it as such or not, we are in the midst of a robot invasion. What matters most in the face of this machine incursion is not resistance, but how we decide to make sense of and respond to the social opportunities and challenges that autonomous machines make available. How to Survive a Robot Invasion is a fascinating and accessible volume for students and researchers of new media, philosophy of technology, and their many related fields. It aims both to assist readers' efforts to understand a changing world and to provide readers with the critical insight necessary for grappling with our science fiction-like future.

Blockchain is no longer just about bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general. Instead, it can be seen as a disruptive, revolutionary technology which will have major impacts on multiple aspects of our lives. The revolutionary power of such technology compares with the revolution sparked by the World Wide Web and the Internet in general. Just as the Internet is a means of sharing information, so blockchain technologies can be seen as a way to introduce the next level: sharing value. Blockchain and Web 3.0 fills the gap in our understanding of blockchain technologies by hosting a discussion of the new technologies in a variety of disciplinary settings. Indeed, this volume explains how such technologies are disruptive and comparatively examines the social, economic, technological and legal consequences of these disruptions. Such a comparative perspective has previously been underemphasized in the debate about blockchain, which has subsequently led to weaknesses in our understanding of decentralized technologies. Underlining the risks and opportunities offered by the advent of blockchain technologies and the rise of Web 3.0, Blockchain and Web 3.0 will appeal to researchers and academics interested in fields such as sociology and social policy, cyberculture, new media and privacy and data protection.

This book describes capacity building in strategic and non-strategic machine tool technology. It includes machine building in sectors such as machine tools, automobiles, home appliances, energy, and biomedical engineering, along with case studies. The book offers guidelines for capacity building in academia, covering how to promote enterprises of functional reverse engineering enterprises. It also discusses machine tool development, engineering design, prototyping of strategic, and non-strategies machine tools, as well as presenting communication strategies and IoT, along with case studies. Professionals from the CNC (Computer Numeric Control) machine tools industry, industrial and manufacturing engineers, and students and faculty in engineering disciplines will find interest in this book.

We delegate more and more decisions and tasks to artificial agents, machine-learning mechanisms, and algorithmic procedures or, in other words, to computational systems. Not that we are driven by powerful ambitions of colonizing the Moon, replacing humans with legions of androids, creating sci-fi scenarios a la Matrix or masterminding some sort of Person of Interest-like Machine. No, the current digital revolution based on computational power is chiefly an everyday revolution. It is therefore that much more profound, unnoticed and widespread, for it affects our customary habits and routines and alters the very texture of our day-to-day lives. This opens a precise line of inquiry, which constitutes the basic thesis of the present text: our computational power is exercised by trying to adapt not just the world but also our representation of reality to how computationally based ICTs work. The impact of this technology is such that it does not leave things as they are: it changes the nature of agents, habits, objects and institutions and hence it subverts the existing order, without necessarily generating a new one. I argue that this power is often not distributed in an egalitarian manner but, on the contrary, is likely to result in concentrations of wealth, in dominant positions or in unjust competitive advantages. This opens up a struggle, with respect to which the task of reaffirming the fundamental values, the guiding principles, the priorities and the rules of the game, which can transform, or attempt to transform, a fierce confrontation between enemies in a fair competition between opponents rests on us.

Using the SARS-CoV-2/CoVID-19 pandemic as a giant case study, and following the structure of the domains of information security, this book looks at what the crisis teaches us about security. It points out specific security fundamentals where social, medical, or business responses to the crisis failed or needed to make specific use of those concepts. For the most part, these lessons are simply reminders of factors that get neglected during times of non-crisis. The lessons particularly point out the importance of planning and resilience in systems and business. Those studying cybersecurity and its preventive measures and applications, as well as those involved in risk management studies and assessments, will all benefit greatly from the book. Robert Slade has had an extensive and prolific career in management, security, and telecommunications research, analysis, and consultancy. He has served as an educator visiting universities and delivering lecturers and seminars.

Crime and Punishment in the Future Internet is an examination of the development and impact of digital frontier technologies (DFTs) such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of things, autonomous mobile robots, and blockchain on offending, crime control, the criminal justice system, and the discipline of criminology. It poses criminological, legal, ethical, and policy questions linked to such development and anticipates the impact of DFTs on crime and offending. It forestalls their wide-ranging consequences, including the proliferation of new types of vulnerability, policing and other mechanisms of social control, and the threat of pervasive and intrusive surveillance. Two key concerns lie at the heart of this volume. First, the book investigates the origins and development of emerging DFTs and their interactions with criminal behaviour, crime prevention, victimisation, and crime control. It also investigates the future advances and likely impact of such processes on a range of social actors: citizens, non-citizens, offenders, victims of crime, judiciary and law enforcement, media, NGOs. This book does not adopt technological determinism that suggests technology alone drives social development. Yet, while it is impossible to know where the emerging technologies are taking us, there is no doubt that DFTs will shape the way we engage with and experience criminal behaviour in the twenty-first century. As such, this book starts the conversation about a range of essential topics that this expansion brings to social sciences, and begins to decipher challenges we will be facing in the future. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to those engaged with criminology, sociology, politics, policymaking, and all those interested in the impact of DFTs on the criminal justice system.

Internet of Things (IoT) is an ecosystem comprised of heterogeneous connected devices that communicate to deliver capabilities making our living, cities, transport, energy, and other areas more intelligent. This book delves into the different cyber-security domains and their challenges due to the massive amount and the heterogeneity of devices. This book introduces readers to the inherent concepts of IoT. It offers case studies showing how IoT counteracts the cyber-security concerns for domains. It provides suggestions on how to mitigate cyber threats by compiling a catalogue of threats that currently comprise the contemporary threat landscape. It then examines different security measures that can be applied to system installations or operational environment and discusses how these measures may alter the threat exploitability level and/or the level of the technical impact. Professionals, graduate students, researchers, academicians, and institutions that are interested in acquiring knowledge in the areas of IoT and cyber-security, will find this book of interest.

The Internet and digital technologies have changed the world we live in and the ways we engage with one another and work and play. This is the starting point for this collection which takes analysis of the digital world to the next level exploring the frontiers of digital and creative transformations and mapping their future directions. It brings together a distinctive collection of leading academics, social innovators, activists, policy specialists and digital and creative practitioners to discuss and address the challenges and opportunities in the contemporary digital and creative economy. Contributions explain the workings of the digital world through three main themes: connectivity, creativity and rights. They combine theoretical and conceptual discussions with real world examples of new technologies and technological and creative processes and their impacts. Discussions range across political, economic and cultural areas and assess national contexts including the UK and China. Areas covered include digital identity and empowerment, the Internet and the 'Fifth Estate', social media and the Arab Spring, digital storytelling, transmedia and audience, economic and social innovation, digital inclusion, community and online curation, cyberqueer activism. The volume developed out of a UK Economic and Social Research Council funded research seminar series.

The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation critiques digital cultural heritage concepts and their application to data, developing new theories, curatorial practices and a more-than-human museology for a contemporary and future world. Presenting a diverse range of case examples from around the globe, Cameron offers a critical and philosophical reflection on the ways in which digital cultural heritage is currently framed as societal data worth passing on to future generations in two distinct forms: digitally born and digitizations. Demonstrating that most perceptions of digital cultural heritage are distinctly western in nature, the book also examines the complicity of such heritage in climate change, and environmental destruction and injustice. Going further still, the book theorizes the future of digital data, heritage, curation and the notion of the human in the context of the profusion of new types of societal data and production processes driven by the intensification of data economies and through the emergence of new technologies. In so doing, the book makes a case for the development of new types of heritage that comprise AI, automated systems, biological entities, infrastructures, minerals and chemicals - all of which have their own forms of agency, intelligence and cognition. The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, archives, libraries, galleries, archaeology, cultural heritage management, information management, curatorial studies and digital humanities.

This two-volume handbook set introduces the state-of-the-art development in research and applications related to usability and user-experience. Volume one includes methods and techniques and volume two covers research and case Studies. This handbook set is essential for everyone that is interested in understanding how the principles of usability and user-experience can contribute to a design that ensures that the needs of the users have been properly met. The books will cover several areas, such as the conceptual aspects of usability and user-experience, the knowledge of human characteristics in design, the methodological aspects; the books will include intervention, examples of consumer products, digital systems, and augmented and virtual realities. This set will be of interest to those working in the fields of ergonomics, designers, engineers, as well as students and practitioners.

Trust and Records in an Open Digital Environment explores issues that arise when digital records are entrusted to the cloud and will help professionals to make informed choices in the context of a rapidly changing digital economy. Showing that records need to ensure public trust, especially in the era of alternative truths, this volume argues that reliable resources, which are openly accessible from governmental institutions, e-services, archival institutions, digital repositories, and cloud-based digital archives, are the key to an open digital environment. The book also demonstrates that current established practices need to be reviewed and amended to include the networked nature of the cloud-based records, to investigate the role of new players, like cloud service providers (CSP), and assess the potential for implementing new, disruptive technologies like blockchain. Stancic and the contributors address these challenges by taking three themes - state, citizens, and documentary form - and discussing their interaction in the context of open government, open access, recordkeeping, and digital preservation. Exploring what is needed to enable the establishment of an open digital environment, Trust and Records in an Open Digital Environment should be essential reading for data, information, document, and records management professionals. It will also be a key text for archivists, librarians, professors, and students working in the information sciences and other related fields.

IoT is empowered by various technologies used to detect, gather, store, act, process, transmit, oversee, and examine information. The combination of emergent technologies for information processing and distributed security, such as Cloud computing, Artificial intelligence, and Blockchain, brings new challenges in addressing distributed security methods that form the foundation of improved and eventually entirely new products and services. As systems interact with each other, it is essential to have an agreed interoperability standard, which is safe and valid. This book aims at providing an introduction by illustrating state-of-the-art security challenges and threats in IoT and the latest developments in IoT with Cloud, AI, and Blockchain security challenges. Various application case studies from domains such as science, engineering, and healthcare are introduced, along with their architecture and how they leverage various technologies Cloud, AI, and Blockchain. This book provides a comprehensive guide to researchers and students to design IoT integrated AI, Cloud, and Blockchain projects and to have an overview of the next generation challenges that may arise in the coming years.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) fascinates, challenges and disturbs us. There are many voices in society that predict drastic changes that may come as a consequence of AI - a possible apocalypse or Eden on earth. However, only a few people truly understand what AI is, what it can do and what its limitations are. Understanding Artificial Intelligence explains, through a straightforward narrative and amusing illustrations, how AI works. It is written for a non-specialist reader, adult or adolescent, who is interested in AI but is missing the key to understanding how it works. The author demystifies the creation of the so-called "intelligent" machine and explains the different methods that are used in AI. It presents new possibilities offered by algorithms and the difficulties that researchers, engineers and users face when building and using such algorithms. Each chapter allows the reader to discover a new aspect of AI and to become fully aware of the possibilities offered by this rich field.

We live in an algorithmic society. Algorithms have become the main mediator through which power is enacted in our society. This book brings together three academic fields - Public Administration, Criminal Justice and Urban Governance - into a single conceptual framework, and offers a broad cultural-political analysis, addressing critical and ethical issues of algorithms. Governments are increasingly turning towards algorithms to predict criminality, deliver public services, allocate resources, and calculate recidivism rates. Mind-boggling amounts of data regarding our daily actions are analysed to make decisions that manage, control, and nudge our behaviour in everyday life. The contributions in this book offer a broad analysis of the mechanisms and social implications of algorithmic governance. Reporting from the cutting edge of scientific research, the result is illuminating and useful for understanding the relations between algorithms and power.Topics covered include: Algorithmic governmentality Transparency and accountability Fairness in criminal justice and predictive policing Principles of good digital administration Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the smart city This book is essential reading for students and scholars of Sociology, Criminology, Public Administration, Political Sciences, and Cultural Theory interested in the integration of algorithms into the governance of society.

Smart cities promise to generate economic, social and environmental value through the seamless connection of urban services and infrastructure by digital technologies. However, there is scant evidence of how these activities can enhance social well-being and contribute to just and equitable communities. Smart and Sustainable Cities? Pipedreams, Practicalities and Possibilities provides one of the first examinations of how smart cities relate to environmental and social issues. It addresses the gap between the ambitious visions of smart cities and the actual practices on the ground by focusing on the social and environmental dimensions of real smart city initiatives as well as the possibilities they hold for creating more equitable and progressive cities. Through detailed analyses of case studies in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, India and China, the contributors describe the various ways that social and environmental issues are interpreted and integrated into smart city initiatives and actions. The findings point towards the need for more intentional engagement and collaboration with all urban stakeholders in the design, development and maintenance of smart cities to ensure that everyone benefits from the increasingly digitalised urban environments of the twenty-first century. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Local Environment.

This book provides a critical overview of the changing ways people mourn, commemorate and interact with the remains of the dead, including bodies, materials and digital artefacts. It focuses on how residues of death persist and circulate through different spaces, materials, data and mediated memories, refiguring how the disposal of the dead is understood, enacted and contested across the globe. The volume contains contributions by scholars from a number of disciplines and includes a diverse range of case studies drawn from Asia, Europe and North America. Together they reveal how rapidly changing practices, industries and experiences around death's remains involve the entwining of digital technologies with other material and ritualised forms of commemoration, as well as with shifting boundaries between the sacred and the profane, the institutional and the vernacular, the public and the private.

Fake News in Context defines fake news and sets it within a historical and international context. Helping readers to become more skilled at detecting misinformation, the book also demonstrates how such knowledge can be leveraged to facilitate more effective engagement in civic education. Distinguishing between fake news and other forms of misinformation, the book explains the complete communication cycle of fake news: how and why it is created, disseminated and accessed. The book then explains the physical and psychological reasons why people believe fake news. Providing generic methods for identifying fake news, Farmer also explains the use of fact- checking tools and automated algorithms. The book then details how various literacies, including news, media, visual, information, digital and data, offer unique concepts and skills that can help interpret fake news. Arguing that individuals and groups can respond and counter fake news, which leads to civic engagement and digital citizenship, the book concludes by providing strategies for instruction and tips for collaborating with librarians. Including a range of international examples, Fake News in Context will be of interest to teaching faculty, and students of library and information science, communication studies, media studies, politics and journalism. Librarians and information professionals will also find a valuable resource in this book.

Fake News in Context defines fake news and sets it within a historical and international context. Helping readers to become more skilled at detecting misinformation, the book also demonstrates how such knowledge can be leveraged to facilitate more effective engagement in civic education. Distinguishing between fake news and other forms of misinformation, the book explains the complete communication cycle of fake news: how and why it is created, disseminated and accessed. The book then explains the physical and psychological reasons why people believe fake news. Providing generic methods for identifying fake news, Farmer also explains the use of fact- checking tools and automated algorithms. The book then details how various literacies, including news, media, visual, information, digital and data, offer unique concepts and skills that can help interpret fake news. Arguing that individuals and groups can respond and counter fake news, which leads to civic engagement and digital citizenship, the book concludes by providing strategies for instruction and tips for collaborating with librarians. Including a range of international examples, Fake News in Context will be of interest to teaching faculty, and students of library and information science, communication studies, media studies, politics and journalism. Librarians and information professionals will also find a valuable resource in this book.

Justice apps - mobile and web-based programmes that can assist individuals with legal tasks - are being produced, improved, and accessed at an unprecedented rate. These technologies have the potential to reshape the justice system, improve access to justice, and demystify legal institutions. Using artificial intelligence techniques, apps can even facilitate the resolution of common legal disputes. However, these opportunities must be assessed in light of the many challenges associated with app use in the justice sector. These include the digital divide and other accessibility issues; the ethical challenges raised by the dehumanisation of legal processes; and various privacy, security, and confidentiality risks. Surveying the landscape of this emergent industry, this book explores the objectives, opportunities, and challenges presented by apps across all areas of the justice sector. Detailed consideration is also given to the use of justice apps in specific legal contexts, including the family law and criminal law sectors. The first book to engage with justice apps, this book will appeal to a wide range of legal scholars, students, practitioners, and policy-makers.

Discusses the legal, ethical, and societal implications of information technology. Covers important topics including infringement of intellectual property, security risks, Internet crime, and social networking. Provides in-depth knowledge of privacy techniques. Discusses concepts of intellectual property (IPR) and issues in software development.

This revised edition has more breadth and depth of coverage than the first edition. Information Technology: An Introduction for Today's Digital World introduces undergraduate students to a wide variety of concepts that they will encounter throughout their IT studies and careers. The features of this edition include: Introductory system administration coverage of Windows 10 and Linux (Red Hat 7), both as general concepts and with specific hands-on instruction Coverage of programming and shell scripting, demonstrated through example code in several popular languages Updated information on modern IT careers Computer networks, including more content on cloud computing Improved coverage of computer security Ancillary material that includes a lab manual for hands-on exercises Suitable for any introductory IT course, this classroom-tested text presents many of the topics recommended by the ACM Special Interest Group on IT Education (SIGITE). It offers a far more detailed examination of the computer and IT fields than computer literacy texts, focusing on concepts essential to all IT professionals - from system administration to scripting to computer organization. Four chapters are dedicated to the Windows and Linux operating systems so that students can gain hands-on experience with operating systems that they will deal with in the real world.

In 2014, Conrad Roy committed suicide following encouragement from his long-distance girlfriend, Michelle Carter, in what has become known as the Texting Suicide case. The case has attracted much attention, largely focusing on the First Amendment free speech issue. This book takes the view that the issue is intertwined with several others, some of which have received less attention but help explain why the case is so captivating and important, issues concerning privacy, accountability, coercion, punishment, and assisted suicide. The focus here is on how all of these issues are interconnected. By breaking the issue down into its complex layers, the work aids reasoned judgment, ensuring we aren't guided solely by our gut reactions. The book is laid out as a case against punishing Ms. Carter, but it is less important that we agree with that conclusion than that we reach our conclusions not just through our instincts and intuitions but by thinking about these fundamental issues. The work will be of interest to scholars in law, political theory, and philosophy as an example of how theoretical issues apply to particular controversies. It will also appeal to readers interested in freedom of speech and the First Amendment, criminal justice and theories of punishment, suicide laws, and privacy.

Inspired by Roland Barthes's practice of "semioclasm" in Mythologies, this book offers a "technoclasm"; a cultural critique of US narratives, discourses, images, and objects that have transformed the politics of automation into statements of fact about the "rise of the robots". Treating automation as an ensemble of technologies and science fictions, this book foregrounds automation's ideologies, exaggerations, failures, and mystifications of the social value of human labor in order to question accepted and prolific automation mythologies. Jesse Ramirez offers a study of automation that recognizes automation as a technosocial project, that uses the tools of cultural studies and history to investigate the narratives and ideologies that often implicitly frame the automation debate, and that concretely and soberly assesses the technologies that have made the headlines. The case studies featured include some of the most widely cited and celebrated automatic technologies, such as the Baxter industrial robot, the self-driving car, and the Watson AI system. An ideal resource for anyone interested in or studying emerging technology and society, automation, Marxist cultural theory, cultural studies, science fiction studies, and the cultural history of technology.

This book provides critical commentary on key issues around virtual reality, using media technology as a tool to challenge perspectives for learning and understanding cultural diversities. With a focus on empathy, embodiment and ethics, the book interrogates the use of immersive technologies for formal and informal educational contexts. Taking a critical approach to discourses around emerging technology and learning, the book presents the idea that a new literacy is emerging and an emphasis on media and technology is needed in the context of education to explore and experience cultural diversities. Employing a personal reflexive narrative, the chapters highlight key issues through research and interviews with leading practitioners in the field. Understanding Virtual Reality will be of great interest to academics and students interested in the effects of immersive realities on the education experience, and to anyone keen on exploring the paradigm shift from entertainment to education.

Videogames and Agency explores the trend in videogames and their marketing to offer a player higher volumes, or even more distinct kinds, of player freedom. The book offers a new conceptual framework that helps us understand how this freedom to act is discussed by designers, and how that in turn reflects in their design principles. What can we learn from existing theories around agency? How do paratextual materials reflect design intention with regards to what the player can and cannot do in a videogame? How does game design shape the possibility space for player action? Through these questions and selected case studies that include AAA and independent games alike, the book presents a unique approach to studying agency that combines game design, game studies, and game developer discourse. By doing so, the book examines what discourses around player action, as well as a game's design can reveal about the nature of agency and videogame aesthetics. This book will appeal to readers specifically interested in videogames, such as game studies scholars or game designers, but also to media studies students and media and screen studies scholars less familiar with digital games.