This work serves as an introduction to both the theoretical and practical aspects of using computers to improve the delivery of social services. Though many practitioners believe that computerization dehumanizes clients and should be avoided, John Murphy and John Pardeck demonstrate how, through a holistic approach to computer use, this problem, and others like it, can be averted. By providing practitioners the opportunity to sharpen their conceptual skills in computer technology, this book promotes a rational understanding of the possible uses and limitations of computers in social service agencies.

Unlike other, technically-oriented works in this field, Murphy and Pardeck's work focuses on the philosophical justification of computer use, along with the conceptual or symbolic nature of computerization. They fully illustrate how to create the organizational conditions necessary for computers to improve social-service delivery, and they do so in a manner that is easily accessible for both general classroom and professional use. Among the topics addressed are the technological world-view, Western philosophy, and knowledge; computer mediated therapy; ethical issues related to computerized service delivery; and construction of a socially responsible technology. This work will be a unique and important resource for courses in computer applications, policy analysis, and social service administration, as well as a useful reference source for human service agencies and practitioners. Public and academic libraries will also find it to be a valuable addition to their collections.

Author Biography:
Douglas Thomas is Lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. Brian D. Loader is Co-Director of CIRA, University of Teesside, and editor of the international journal Information, communication and Society.

This book provides a comprehensive guide to legal issues which have arisen as a result of the growth of the internet and the worldwide web. As well as discussing each topic in detail, Jonathan Rosenoer includes extensive coverage of the relevant cases and their implications for the future. Topics covered include: copyright and trademark issues, defamation, privacy, liability, electronic contracts, tax issues, and ethics. A potted history of the significant legal events is included which runs from the founding of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the 1996 Telecommunications Act. About the author: Jonathan Rosenoer has been general counsel for the Haft Corporation, Executive Editor for Lexis Counsel Connect, and is best known for his CyberLaw column which has a distribution list of over four million.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere, yet it causes damage to society in ways that can't be fixed. Instead of helping to address our current crises, AI causes divisions that limit people's life chances, and even suggests fascistic solutions to social problems. This book provides an analysis of AI's deep learning technology and its political effects and traces the ways that it resonates with contemporary political and social currents, from global austerity to the rise of the far right. Dan McQuillan calls for us to resist AI as we know it and restructure it by prioritising the common good over algorithmic optimisation. He sets out an anti-fascist approach to AI that replaces exclusions with caring, proposes people's councils as a way to restructure AI through mutual aid and outlines new mechanisms that would adapt to changing times by supporting collective freedom. Academically rigorous, yet accessible to a socially engaged readership, this unique book will be of interest to all who wish to challenge the social logic of AI by reasserting the importance of the common good.

- the book provides a short and accessible introduction to AI for learners - it examines seven different educational roles and settings, from AI as a peer to AI as a tutor and AI as textbook, among others - it considers both opportunities and risks: technological developments as well as ethical considerations

Cybercrime focuses on the growing concern about the use of electronic communication for criminal activities and the appropriateness of the counter-measures which are being adopted by law enforcement agencies, security services and legislators to address such anxieties. Fuelled by sensational media headlines and news coverage which have done much to encourage the belief that technologies like the Internet are likely to lead to a lawless electronic frontier, Cybercrime provides a more considered and balanced perspective to what is an important and contested arena for debate. It looks at:
*legislation
*electronic criminal behaviour
*privacy and liberty
*the dangers of surveillance
Cybercrime explains the basic issues surrounding cybercrime and its impact on society.

Social network analysis dates back to the early 20th century, with initial studies focusing on small group behavior from a sociological perspective. The emergence of the Internet and subsequent increase in the use of online social networking applications has caused a shift in the approach to this field. Faced with complex, large datasets, researchers need new methods and tools for collecting, processing, and mining social network data. Social Network Mining, Analysis and Research Trends: Techniques and Applications covers current research trends in the area of social networks analysis and mining. Containing research from experts in the social network analysis and mining communities, as well as practitioners from social science, business, and computer science, this book proposes new measures, methods, and techniques in social networks analysis and also presents applications and case studies in this changing field.

Once considered a borderless and chaotic virtual landscape, the Internet is now home to the forces of international law and order. It s not just computer hackers and cyber crooks who lurk in the dark corners of the Web the cops are there, too.

In The Internet Police, Ars Technica editor Nate Anderson takes readers on a behind-the-screens tour of landmark cybercrime cases, revealing how criminals continue to find digital and legal loopholes even as police hurry to cinch them closed.

From the Cleveland man whose natural male enhancement pill inadvertently protected the privacy of your e-mail to the Russian spam king who ended up in a Milwaukee jail to the Australian arrest that ultimately led to the breakup of the largest child pornography ring in the United States, Anderson draws on interviews, court documents, and law-enforcement reports to reconstruct accounts of how online policing actually works.

Questions of online crime are as complex and interconnected as the Internet itself. With each episode in The Internet Police, Anderson shows the dark side of online spaces but also how dystopian a fully ordered alternative would be."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Human Choice and Computers (HCC8), IFIP TC9, held in Pretoria, South Africa on September 25-26, 2008.

The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of refereed international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.

- Written by world-leading subject specialist in both sport management and artificial intelligence - Includes interviews with elite sports managers and coaches - Examines the competitive advantages offered by AI to a wide-range of areas including Recruitment, Performance & Tactics, Health & Fitness, Pedagogy, Broadcasting, eSports, Gambling, and Stadium Design

This wide-ranging introductory text looks at the virtual community of cyberspace and analyzes its relationship to the real one as lived out in today's societies. Such issues as race, gender, power, economics and ethics in cyberspace are discussed by the leading experts on the subject of the Internet, grouped under four main sections: identity; social order and control; community structure and dynamics; and collective action. The book displays how the idea of community is being challenged and rewritten by the increasing power and range of cyberspace. As new societies and relationships are formed in this virtual landscape, we are now having to consider the potential consequences this might have on our own community and societies.;The text should appeal to students and professionals, but also to those concerned about the changing relationships between information technology and a society which is fast becoming divided between those on-line and those not.

This text examines the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their consequences for political institutions, and assesses critically the concept of an emergent electronic democracy. The first section discusses the concepts and issues of "Electronic Democracy" with chapters on democracy and cyberspace, local democracy, global control and interactive ICTs. In the second section, entitled ICTs and the state, the chapters examine the impacts and implications of televising the British "House of Commons", the effects of ICTs on political parties, and closed circuit television. The final section discusses ICTs and the citizen with chapters covering democracies online, strengthening communities in the information age and the community network. This book provides a source for those studying social policy, politics and sociology as well as for policy analysts, social scientists and computer scientists.

The calculus of IT support for the banking, securities and insurance industries has changed dramatically and rapidly over the past few years. Unheard of just a few years ago, corporate intranets are now used for everything from job postings to enhanced team communications. Whole new departments are being created to support e-commerce. And the Internet/Intranet/Extranet triple-whammy is the most critical component of most financial IT shops. At the same time, new intelligent agents stand ready to take on such diverse functions as customer profiling and data mining.

Get a handle on all these new and newer ripples with Handbook of Technology in Financial Services. Here, in this exhaustive new guide and reference book, industry guru Jessica Keyes gives you the no-nonsense scoop on not just the tried and true IT tools of today, but also the up-and-coming "hot" technologies of tomorrow, and how to plan for them.

Keyes gives you extensive, example-driven explanations of such topics
as:
o digital check imaging and Internet-based billing
o e-commerce and Internet banking
o portfolio management systems for the 21st century
o GIS technology in financial services
o and much more.

Focusing on problems from both a technology perspective and a business perspective, the Handbook also addresses challenges and solutions associated with:
o supporting the self-service revolution by servicing kiosks and ATMs efficiently and economically
o straight-through processing for the securities industry
o outsourcing business communications in the insurance industry
o distributed integration as a cost-effective alternative to data warehousing
o and putting inbound fax automation to work in financial organizations.
Packed with real-world case-studies and practical solutions to problems confronting financial services IT managers every day of the week, Handbook of Technology in Financial Services covers everything from system security to IT support for the Web marketing of financial services. In short, it is a compendium of essential information no professional can afford to be without.

Is the emerging digital multimedia culture of today transforming the textbook or forever displacing it? As new media of transmission enter the classroom, the traditional textbook is now caught up in a dialogue reshaping the textual boundaries of the book, and with it the traditional modes of cognition and learning, which are bound more to language than to visual form. Most of the important work in the past two decades in the field of curriculum has focused on the culture of the textbook. A rich literature has evolved around textbooks as the traditional object of instructional activity. This volume is an important contribution to this literature, which focuses on the actual making of a textbook. This design process serves as a metaphor that suggests new paradigms of learning and instruction, in which text content is but one component in a multidimensional information space."The Visual Turn" is an exploration along the border of this new learning space transforming the traditional center of instruction in the classroom.

This book looks at what the communities we create in Cyberspace reveal about what "community" means to us. In a wide ranging introduction to the internet, leading experts discuss such issues as:
* race
* sex
* gender
* power
* economics and ethics in cyberspace.
It shows how the idea of community is being challenged and rewritten by the increasing power and range of the internet.

Hypertext, email, word-processing: electronic technologies have revolutionized the way we write language. How does language on screen work differently from language on the page? What new literacy skills are needed and how do we teach them?
"Page to Screen" collects some of the best contemporary thinkers in the fields of literacy and technology to discuss the impacts of new media on language. The contributors analyze the potential of new forms of text, the increased emphasis on visual representation, new forms of rhetoric, learning in the age of global communication networks and new approaches to storytelling.
Timely and important, this collection tackles important questions about the future of language and the way we use and teach it.

Is information technology enhancing democracy? Developments in information technology and the Internet are taking place at an almost bewildering pace. Such improvements, however, are believed to present opportunities for improving the responsiveness and accountability of political institutions and enhancing citizen participation. In this text the theoretical arguments for and against "electronic democracy" and the potential of information and communication technology are closely examined. The book is underpinned by a series of case studies in the US and Europe that demonstrate the application of "electronic democracy" in a number of city and civic projects. The book aims to provide a balanced and considered evaluation of the potential for "electronic democracy" based on empirical research.

Politicians, policy makers and business gurus are all encouraging us to join the information superhighway at the nearest junction or risk being excluded from the social and economic benefits of the information revolution. "Cyberspace Divide" critically considers the complex relationship between technological change, its effect upon social divisions, its consequences for social action an the emerging strategies for social inclusion in the Information Age. The contributors cover such themes as human interaction, ethical behavior, and the growing disparity between the information rich and the information poor.

Suzanne Keene's pioneering book shows how museums and other cultural organizations fit into the new world of information and electronic communications and, most importantly, how they can take advantage of what it has to offer.

By using new technology museums can build knowledge bases around information about collections. A collection object can be the central link for information about past and present, places, people and concepts, technologies, ways of working and evidence of the natural world. 'Digital Collections' explains how this vision can be realized. Sound, video and animations can be digitized and developed as a central resource that can be drawn on for many varied access routes: via the World Wide Web; CD ROMs; through on-gallery screens, and other future products still in development.
These technological capabilities raise many compelling issues that need to be understood in order to successfully develop information collections. In this book Suzanne Keene reviews these issues clearly and comprehensively. Her accompanying Click-Through Guide provides the latest news and links to Internet information:
http: //www.users.dircon.co.uk/~s-keene/infoage/infoage.htm
Suzanne Keene is a senior manager of museum collections and information at the Science Museum, London. She led the UK LASSI project to select a collections information system for UK museums. This, with her experience in directing information technology and multimedia projects, means that she is accustomed to translating the highly technical concepts of information technology into high level issues for senior and strategic management.
* Explains the Information Age/Information Economy and thestrategic implications for museums
* Describes the effects of increasing use of IT in museums and its future developments

As we begin a new century, the astonishing spread of nationally and internationally accessible computer-based communication networks has touched the imagination of people everywhere. Suddenly, the Internet is in everyday parlance, featured in talk shows, in special business "technology" sections of major newspapers, and on the covers of national magazines. If the Internet is a new world of social behavior it is also a new world for those who study social behavior. This volume is a compendium of essays and research reports representing how researchers are thinking about the social processes of electronic communication and its effects in society. Taken together, the chapters comprise a first gathering of social psychological research on electronic communication and the Internet.
The authors of these chapters work in different disciplines and have different goals, research methods, and styles. For some, the emergence and use of new technologies represent a new perspective on social and behavioral processes of longstanding interest in their disciplines. Others want to draw on social science theories to understand technology. A third group holds to a more activist program, seeking guidance through research to improve social interventions using technology in domains such as education, mental health, and work productivity. Each of these goals has influenced the research questions, methods, and inferences of the authors and the "look and feel" of the chapters in this book.
Intended primarily for researchers who seek exposure to diverse approaches to studying the human side of electronic communication and the Internet, this volume has three purposes:
* to illustrate how scientists are thinking about the social processes and effects of electronic communication;
* to encourage research-based contributions to current debates on electronic communication design, applications, and policies; and
* to suggest, by example, how studies of electronic communication can contribute to social science itself.

Gender, equity, learning, and information technology can intersect to form a theoretical and abstract field of knowledge emanating from very real, concrete, lived experiences. Gender Issues in Learning and Working with Technology: Social Constructs and Cultural Contexts discusses the social studies of information technology, specifically how IT skills are learned and how such skills are gendered. This book draws upon the disciplines of sociology, education, cultural and media studies, and gender studies, using a variety of research methods and theoretical perspectives to approach gender and IT in different contexts: education settings, work settings and everyday life. This unique reference source brings to light gender relations and IT, examining them in a multidimensional way.

*The most comprehensive up-to-date student-friendly guide to translation tools and technologies *Translation Tools and Technologies are an essential component of any translator training programme, following European Masters in Translation framework guidelines *Unlike the competition, this textbook offers comprehensive and accessible explanations of how to use current translation tools, illustrated by examples using a wide range of languages, linked to task-oriented, self-study training materials

This indispensable guide offers detailed coverage of the regulations, requirements, and techniques for the validation of processes and systems used in regulated international industries - addressing all significant requirements for pharmaceutical, medical device, and biologic companies as well as environmental laboratories. Elucidating up-to-the-minute industry changes and international concerns, Validation Compliance Annual 1995 examines Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), Good Clinical Practices (GCPs), Good Laboratory Practices (GLPs), and Good Automated laboratory Practices (GALPs)... provides unabridged texts of U.S. and European Union regulatory requirements as well as summaries of the validation requirements of other nations... furnishes complete guidelines and tools for system validation... supplies an in-depth look at problems related to inadequate system validation, including actual regulatory citations for noncompliance... explains the rationale behind regulatory compliance policies and inspectional practices... assesses the future of regulatory and industry trends... and more. Containing key bibliographic citations and a thorough glossary of validation terms, Validation Compliance Annual 1995 is an incomparable day-to-day workbook for analytical, pharmaceutical, food, and environmental chemists; instrumentation specialists; industrial, bio-process, chemical, and pharmaceutical engineers; quality and reliability managers and directors; laboratory managers and technicians; computer scientists; and upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in these disciplines.

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.

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.