The digital music revolution and the rise of piracy cultures has transformed the music world as we knew it. Digital Music Distribution aims to go beyond the polarized and reductive perception of 'piracy wars' to offer a broader and richer understanding of the paradoxes inherent in new forms of distribution. Covering both production and consumption perspectives, Spilker analyses the changes and regulatory issues through original case studies, looking at how digital music distribution has both changed and been changed by the cultural practices and politicking of ordinary youth, their parents, music counter cultures, artists and bands, record companies, technology developers, mass media and regulatory authorities. Exploring the fundamental change in distribution, Spilker investigates paradoxes such as: The criminalization of file-sharing leading not to conflicts, but to increased collaboration between youths and their parents; Why the circulation of cultural content, extremely damaging for its producers, has instead been advantageous for the manufacturers of recording equipment; Why more artists are recording in professional sound studios, despite the proliferation of good quality equipment for home recording; Why mass media, hit by many of the same challenges as the music industry, has been so critical of the way it has tackled these challenges. A rare and timely volume looking at the changes induced by the digitalization of music distribution, Digital Music Distribution will appeal to undergraduate students and policy makers interested in fields such as Media Studies, Digital Media, Music Business, Sociology and Cultural Studies.

What is Quality of Life in a society that has embraced information and communication technology (ICT)? What is Wisdom in this kind of society? And what things are helping or hindering us from having both wisdom and a good quality of life in ICT societies? Taking the reader through a quick analysis of the current social and psychological changes in the Information and Communication Society, Bradley challenges us to avoid becoming victims of technology - whether we are professionals, policymakers, parents or citizens. Indeed, she introduces a theoretical model based on four decades' worth of research to help the reader to understand this complex, technological world. In addition to focusing the reader's attention on convergence and acceleration, this model describes the interplay between technology, societal structure, organizational design and human roles, thus leading to what Bradley describes as a "good ICT society". Emphasising the necessity of a co-operative parallel between the automation and humanization of society, this innovative volume will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in the subjects such as Information and Communication Technology and Social Change, Psychology and Sociology, Computer Technology and Media Technology.

Imagining, forecasting and predicting the future is an inextricable and increasingly important part of the present. States, organizations and individuals almost continuously have to make decisions about future actions, financial investments or technological innovation, without much knowledge of what will exactly happen in the future. Science and technology play a crucial role in this collective attempt to make sense of the future. Technological developments such as nanotechnology, robotics or solar energy largely shape how we dream and think about the future, while economic forecasts, gene tests or climate change projections help us to make images of what may possibly occur in the future. This book provides one of the first interdisciplinary assessments of how scientific and technological imaginations matter in the formation of human, ecological and societal futures. Rooted in different disciplines such as sociology, philosophy, and science and technology studies, it explores how various actors such as scientists, companies or states imagine the future to be and act upon that imagination. Bringing together case studies from different regions around the globe, including the electrification of German car infrastructure, or genetically modified crops in India, Imagined Futures in Science, Technology and Society shows how science and technology create novel forms of imagination, thereby opening horizons toward alternative futures. By developing central aspects of the current debate on how scientific imagination and future-making interact, this timely volume provides a fresh look at the complex interrelationships between science, technology and society. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students interested in Science and Technology Studies, History and Philosophy of Science, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Political Sciences, Future Studies and Literary Sciences.

There have never been so many ways of producing news and news-like content. From podcasts, to YouTube, blogs and the phenomenal popularity of social media, seismic shifts are underway in global media.News 2.0 bridges the gap between theory and practice to present an integrated approach to journalism that redefines the profession. Key ideas in journalism theory, political economy and media studies are used to explore the changing cultures of journalism in an historical context.Hirst explains the fragmentation of the mass audience for news products, and how digital commerce has disconnected consumers from real democracy. He argues that journalism requires a restatement of the role of journalists as public intellectuals with a commitment to truth, trust and the public interest.'. a powerful reply to those whose utopian dreams cloud their thinking about the political, social, economic and cultural implications of digital convergence.' - Vincent Mosco, Canada Research Chair, Queen's University'. essential reading for students, journalists and everyone interested in the future of news and journalism.' - Bob Franklin, Professor of Journalism Studies, Cardiff University'. tackles the urgent questions that surround journalism from a pragmatic yet radical perspective. ' - Janet Wasko, Knight Chair in Communication Research, University of Oregon'Anyone interested in where journalism finds itself now, and where it may be headed any time soon, should start by reading this book.' - Michael Bromley, Professor of Journalism, University of Queensland

Billions of dollars are being spent nationally and globally on providing computing access to digitally disadvantaged groups and cultures with an expectation that computers and the Internet can lead to higher socio-economic mobility. This ethnographic study of social computing in the Central Himalayas, India, investigates alternative social practices with new technologies and media amongst a population that is for the most part undocumented. In doing so, this book offers fresh and critical perspectives in areas of contemporary debate: informal learning with computers, cyberleisure, gender access and empowerment, digital intermediaries, and glocalization of information and media.

A Networked Self examines self presentation and social connection in the digital age. This collection brings together new work on online social networks by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines. The focus of the volume rests on the construction of the self, and what happens to self-identity when it is presented through networks of social connections in new media environments. The volume is structured around the core themes of identity, community, and culture ? the central themes of social network sites. Contributors address theory, research, and practical implications of many aspects of online social networks including self-presentation, behavioral norms, patterns and routines, social impact, privacy, class/gender/race divides, taste cultures online, uses of social networking sites within organizations, activism, civic engagement and political impact.

ICT is playing an increasingly important role in both business and individual's private life. It has increased international interconnectedness and speed up the process of globalization. But on the other side the total energy consumption by the communication and networking devices and the relevant global CO emission is increasing exponentially. ICT has, in many ways, a vital role to play. It accounts for about two percent of global CO emissions. Telecommunications applications can have a direct, tangible impact on lowering greenhouse gas emissions, power consumption, and achieve efficient recycling of equipment waste. This book is the outcome of the special session on Green Communications at 'The 12th International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications' (WPMC) held in September '09 in Sendai, Japan. To the best of the editors' knowledge this is the first book on the Green Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and can be considered a milestone and a key-tool aimed at driving the industrial, scientific and academic efforts of the international community to guarantee a greener future to the whole planet. Section I of the book Towards Green ICT provides the necessary background and technical content to understand the vision and the role of green communication packed with details of the technologies like Zigbee and RFID in turning the planet earth greener. Section II covers a number of paradigm-shifting technical approaches including energy-efficient deployment through optimizations in the planning of ICT networks, energy-efficient wireless transmission techniques, reduced transmission power & reduced radiation, cross-layer optimization methods, and opportunistic spectrum sharing without causing harmful interference pollution. Section III covers the application of Intelligent WiMAX (I-WiMAX), a green radio technique able to support new maritime communication services and ICT based Business models. The coverage of new and upcoming issues on Green ICT makes it a good choice for educators, industry practitioners, regulators, researchers and students.

A Networked Self examines self presentation and social connection in the digital age. This collection brings together new work on online social networks by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines. The focus of the volume rests on the construction of the self, and what happens to self-identity when it is presented through networks of social connections in new media environments. The volume is structured around the core themes of identity, community, and culture - the central themes of social network sites. Contributors address theory, research, and practical implications of many aspects of online social networks including self-presentation, behavioral norms, patterns and routines, social impact, privacy, class/gender/race divides, taste cultures online, uses of social networking sites within organizations, activism, civic engagement and political impact.

This timely book offers a mapping of the Internet as it has developed and is used internationally, providing a lively and challenging examination of the Internet and Internet studies. There is much interest among scholars and researchers in understanding the place of the Internet in cultural, social, national, and regional settings. This is the first book-length account that not only provides a range of perspectives on the international Internet, but also explores the implications of such new knowledge and accounts for concepts, methods, and themes in Internet studies. Of special interest will be the book's fresh and up-to-date coverage of the Internet in perhaps the most dynamic region at present: Asia-Pacific.

In an age of email lists and discussion groups, e-zines and weblogs, bringing together users, consumers, workers and activists from around the globe, what kinds of political subjectivity are emerging? What kinds of politics become possible in a time of information overload and media saturation? What structures of power and control operate over a self-organising system like the internet?In this highly original new work, Tiziana Terranova investigates the political dimension of the network culture in which we now live, and explores what the new forms of communication and organisation might mean for our understanding of power and politics. Terranova engages with key concepts and debates in cultural theory and cultural politics, using examples from media culture, computing, network dynamics, and internet activism within the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements. Network Culture concludes that the nonlinear network dynamics that link different modes of communication at different levels (from local radio to satellite television, from the national press to the internet, from broadcasting to rumours and conspiracy theories) provide the conditions within which another politics can emerge. This other politics, the book suggests, does not entail the production of a new political discourse or ideology, but the invention of micropolitical tactics able to stand up to new forms of social control.

Communication and collaboration via the Internet has risen to great prominence in recent years, especially with the rise of social networking, Web 2.0 and virtual worlds. Many interesting and worthwhile studies have been conducted on the technology involved and the way it is used and shaped by its user communities. From some of the more popular coverage of these interactions, it might be thought that these are new phenomena. However, they draw on a rich heritage of technologies and interactions.

Online communication and collaboration presents a very timely set of articles that cover a range of different perspectives upon these themes, both classic and contemporary. It is unusually broad in the range of technologies it considers - many books on these topics cover only a few forms of collaboration technology - and in considering well-established technologies as well as recent ones. It blends academic and popular articles to combine scholarly rigour with readability.

The book is divided into eight sections, covering the foundations of online communication and collaboration, together with current collaboration technologies such as wikis, instant messaging, virtual worlds and social network sites. These modern communication tools are considered in terms of their interactions but also looking back at lessons to be learnt from their technological 'ancestors'. The book also contains an extended case study of online collaboration, taking open-source software as its example.

Online communication and collaboration will be of relevance in a wide range of higher education courses in fields related to soft computing, information systems, cultural and media studies, and communications theory.

The internet opens up new opportunities for citizens to organize and mobilize for action but it also provides new channels that established political, social and economic interests can use to extend their powers. Will the internet revolutionize politics? The Prospect of Internet Democracy is a rich and detailed exploration of the theoretical implications of the internet and related information and communication technologies (ICTs) for democratic theory. Focusing in particular on how political uses of the internet have affected or seem likely to affect patterns of influence among citizens, interest groups and political institutions, the authors examine whether the internet's impact on democratic politics is destined to repeat the history of other innovative ICTs. The volume explores the likely long-term effects of such uses on the conduct of politics in the USA and other nations that declare themselves modern democracies and assesses the extent to which they help or hinder viable democratic governance.

It's hard to imagine a place more central to American mythology today than Silicon Valley. To outsiders, the region glitters with the promise of extraordinary wealth and innovation. But behind this image lies another Silicon Valley, one segregated by race, class, and nationality in complex and contradictory ways. Its beautiful landscape lies atop underground streams of pollutants left behind by decades of technological innovation, and while its billionaires live in compounds, surrounded by redwood trees and security fences, its service workers live in their cars. With arresting photography and intimate stories, Seeing Silicon Valley makes this hidden world visible. Instead of young entrepreneurs striving for efficiency in minimalist corporate campuses, we see portraits of struggle-families displaced by an impossible real estate market, workers striving for a living wage, and communities harmed by environmental degradation. If the fate of Silicon Valley is the fate of America-as so many of its boosters claim-then this book gives us an unvarnished look into the future.

The United States is currently grappling with how to prepare our students to be computer literate citizens in the competitive technological world we live in. Understanding how children develop computer knowledge, and the ways that adults are able to guide their computer learning experiences, is a vital task facing parents and educators. This groundbreaking book is an attempt to fill a gap in current understanding of how we become computer literate and proposes a theory of how computer literacy skills emerge in computer users.

This timely book will offer a mapping of the Internet as it has developed and is used internationally, providing a lively and challenging examination of the Internet and Internet studies. There is much interest among scholars and researchers in understanding the place of the Internet in cultural, social, national, and regional settings. This is the first book-length account that not only provides a range of perspectives on the international Internet, but also explores the implications of such new knowledge and accounts for concepts, methods, and themes in Internet studies. Of special interest will be the book's fresh and up-to-date coverage of the Internet in perhaps the most dynamic region at present: Asia-Pacific.

This book explores how predictive policing transforms police work. Police departments around the world have started to use data-driven applications to produce crime forecasts and intervene into the future through targeted prevention measures. Based on three years of field research in Germany and Switzerland, this book provides a theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of how the police produce and act upon criminal futures as part of their everyday work practices. The authors argue that predictive policing must not be analyzed as an isolated technological artifact, but as part of a larger sociotechnical system that is embedded in organizational structures and occupational cultures. The book highlights how, for crime prediction software to come to matter and play a role in more efficient and targeted police work, several translation processes are needed to align human and nonhuman actors across different divisions of police work. Police work is a key function for the production and maintenance of public order, but it can also discriminate, exclude, and violate civil liberties and human rights. When criminal futures come into being in the form of algorithmically produced risk estimates, this can have wide-ranging consequences. Building on empirical findings, the book presents a number of practical recommendations for the prudent use of algorithmic analysis tools in police work that will speak to the protection of civil liberties and human rights as much as they will speak to the professional needs of police organizations. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and cultural studies as well as to police practitioners and civil liberties advocates, in addition to all those who are interested in how to implement reasonable forms of data-driven policing.

What shapes the role of Information and Communication Technologies in our everyday life? Despite the speed with which information and communication technologies such as the PC, mobile telephone and internet have found their way into society, there remains a good deal of debate surrounding their adoption and use. Through empirical studies covering a broad range of everyday life and work settings, this volume provides grounded insights into the social dynamics influencing how ICTs are both shaped and experienced. Specifically, the book examines the contributions of diverse disciplines to our understanding of these processes, the symbolic nature of technologies, the influence of design on the experience of ICTs, the role of users in influencing that design, the social constraints affecting the use of those technologies, and strategies for evaluating the social consequences of ICT innovations.

The music industry has been waging some very significant battles in recent years, reacting to numerous inter-related crises provoked by globalization, digitalization and the ever more extensive commercialization of public culture. These struggles are viewed by many as central to the survival of the central mediators in the consumption of popular music. These battles are not just against piracy and the sharing of digital song files on the internet. The music industry is also struggling to find ways to compete or integrate with many other forms of entertainment, including films, television programmes, mobile phones, DVDs and video games in an extremely crowded communications environment. The battles currently being fought by the music industry are about nothing less than its continued ability to create and maintain specific kinds of profitable relationships with consumers. This book presents two inter-related cases of crisis and opportunity: the music industry's epic struggle over piracy and the 'Idol' phenomenon. Both are explicit attempts to control and justify the particular ways in which the music industry makes money from popular music through specific kinds of relationships with consumers. The battles over piracy have been fought with a remarkable collection of campaigns consisting of advice, coercion and argument about what is or is not the best way to consume music. From these complicated and often contradictory campaigns we form an unusually clear picture of what many within the music industry imagine their industry to be. In a complementary way, 'Idol' works to demonstrate the joy and pleasure of consuming popular music the 'right' way. By creating a series of intertwined relationships with consumers around multiple sites of consumption, incorporating television, radio, live performance, traditional print media campaigns, text messaging and all manner of internet-based systems of communication and 'fan management,' the producers of 'Idol' present an ideal relationship between musicians and audiences. Instead of focusing on selling CDs, the music industry's digital Achilles' heel, 'Idol' has given the music industry an integrated platform for displaying its expanded palette of products and venues for consumption. When understood in specific relation to the battle against piracy, Fairchild's analysis of 'Idol' and the emerging promotional cultures of the music industry it exhibits shows how multiple sites of consumption, and attempts to mediate and control the circulation of popular music, are being used to combat the foundational challenges facing the music industry.

'Masterful . . . [Thompson] illuminates both the fascinating coders and the bewildering technological forces that are transforming the world in which we live.' - David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z. Facebook's algorithms shaping the news. Uber's cars flocking the streets. Revolution on Twitter and romance on Tinder. We live in a world constructed of computer code. Coders - software programmers - are the people who built it for us. And yet their worlds and minds are little known to outsiders. In Coders, Wired columnist Clive Thompson presents a brilliantly original anthropological reckoning with the most influential tribe in today's world, interrogating who they are, how they think, what they value, what qualifies as greatness in their world, and what should give us pause. One of the most prominent journalists writing on technology today, Clive Thompson takes us into the minds of coders, the most quietly influential people on the planet, in a journey into the heart of the machine - and the men and women who made it.

New computer and communications technologies have acted as the catalyst for a revolution in the way goods are produced and services delivered, leading to profound changes in the way work is organized and the way jobs are designed. This important book examines the nature, setting and impact of new technologies on work, organization and management. Conventional debates about new technology often invoke optimistic visions of enhanced democracy, rising skills and economic abundance; others predict darker scenarios such as the destruction of jobs through labour-eliminating devices. This book proposes an alternative perspective, arguing that technology can be powerful, but in and of itself has no independent causal powers. It considers the impact of new technologies on manufacturing, clerical, administrative and call centre employment, in both managerial and professional arenas, and introduces the growing phenomena of telework. The book also assesses the important political and economic forces that restrict or facilitate the flow of new technologies on national and global levels. New Technology @ Work is an illuminating and thought-provoking text that will prove invaluable to all serious students of business, management and technology.

New computer and communications technologies have acted as the catalyst for a revolution in the way goods are produced and services delivered, leading to profound changes in the way work is organized and the way jobs are designed. This important book examines the nature, setting and impact of new technologies on work, organization and management. Conventional debates about new technology often invoke optimistic visions of enhanced democracy, rising skills and economic abundance; others predict darker scenarios such as the destruction of jobs through labour-eliminating devices. This book proposes an alternative perspective, arguing that technology can be powerful, but in and of itself has no independent causal powers. It considers the impact of new technologies on manufacturing, clerical, administrative and call centre employment, in both managerial and professional arenas, and introduces the growing phenomena of telework. The book also assesses the important political and economic forces that restrict or facilitate the flow of new technologies on national and global levels. New Technology @ Work is an illuminating and thought-provoking text that will prove invaluable to all serious students of business, management and technology.

In this exceptional study, Christian Fuchs discusses how the internet has transformed the lives of human beings and social relationships in contemporary society. By outlining a social theory of the internet and the information society, he demonstrates how the ecological, economic, political, and cultural systems of contemporary society have been transformed by new ICTs. Fuchs highlights how new forms of cooperation and competition are advanced and supported by the internet in subsystems of society and also discusses opportunities and risks of the information society.

The transnational architecture of global information networks has made territorial borders less significant. Boundaries between spaces are becoming blurred in the evolving information age. But do information and communication technologies networks really lead to a weakening of the nation-state? This volume revisits the 'retreat of the state' thesis and tests its validity in the 21st century. It considers cyberspace as a matter of collective and policy choice, prone to usurpation by governance structures. Governments around the world are already reacting to the information revolution and trying to re-establish their leading role in creating governance regimes for the Information Age. The volume comes at a historical moment when new political dynamics are detected and new conceptual models are sought to categorize the attempts to deal with global/transnational issues. It will intrigue the reader with expert-level analysis of the role of the state in the emerging global/supranational governance structures by providing historical context and conceptualizing trends and social dynamics.

Digital Encounters is a cross media study of digital moving images in animation, cinema, games, and installation art.

In a world increasingly marked by proliferating technologies, the way we encounter and understand these story-worlds, game spaces and art works reveals aspects of the ways in which we organize and decode the vast amount of visual material we are bombarded with each day.

Working with examples from The Incredibles, The Matrix, Tomb Raider: Legend and Bill Viola's Five Angels for the Millennium, Aylish Wood considers how viewers engage with the diverse interfaces of digital effects cinema, digital games and time-based installations, and argues that technologies alter human engagement, distributing our attention across a network of images and objects.

Mokyr provides a long term perspective on the economic impact of technological change, surveying developments in production technologies between 500 BC and 1914.