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Books > Computing & IT > Social & legal aspects of computing > Impact of computing & IT on society
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 shocking untold story of the elite secret society of hackers fighting to protect our privacy, our freedom, and even democracy itself. Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest, most respected, and most famous American hacking group of all time. Though until now it has remained mostly anonymous, its members invented the concept of hacktivism, released the top tool for testing password security, and created what was for years the best technique for controlling computers from afar, forcing giant companies to work harder to protect customers. They contributed to the development of Tor, the most important privacy tool on the net, and helped build cyberweapons that advanced US security without injuring anyone. With its origins in the earliest days of the Internet, the cDc is full of oddball characters -- activists, artists, even future politicians. Many of these hackers have become top executives and advisors walking the corridors of power in Washington and Silicon Valley. The most famous is former Texas Congressman and current presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, whose time in the cDc set him up to found a tech business, launch an alternative publication in El Paso, and make long-shot bets on unconventional campaigns. Today, the group and its followers are battling electoral misinformation, making personal data safer, and battling to keep technology a force for good instead of for surveillance and oppression. Cult of the Dead Cow shows how governments, corporations, and criminals came to hold immense power over individuals and how we can fight back against them.
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.
Providing a comprehensive introduction into an overview of the field of pervasive healthcare applications, this volume incorporates a variety of timely topics ranging from medical sensors and hardware infrastructures, to software platforms and applications and addresses issues of user experience and technology acceptance. The recent developments in the area of information and communication technologies have laid the groundwork for new patient-centred healthcare solutions. While the majority of computer-supported healthcare tools designed in the last decades focused mainly on supporting care-givers and medical personnel, this trend changed with the introduction of pervasive healthcare technologies, which provide supportive and adaptive services for a broad variety and diverse set of end users. With contributions from key researchers the book integrates the various aspects of pervasive healthcare systems including application design, hardware development, system implementation, hardware and software infrastructures as well as end-user aspects providing an excellent overview of this important and evolving field.
This work explores the problems arising from dynamic information technology in its application to intellectual property rights. In a global marketplace of ideas, political boundaries and the sovereignty of the nation state seem to be disappearing because of the increasing difficulty of scrutinizing the infringement of intellectual property. That is particularly true of computer software, the focus of this book. The work analyzes the legal and political economy implications of investment in the software programming industry and the near-futility of monitoring protection of intellectual property in industry. The book begins by exploring the current state of copyright laws for computer software. It analyzes the economic theories of demand elasticities, public choice, clubs, and the concept of public goods as those theories apply to intellectual property, particularly computer software. This analysis is followed by a discussion of prevailing legislation in the United States, Europe, Japan, Asia, and China. The analysis is fortified by a comprehensive coverage of the Uruguay Round. The work concludes in favor of the free flow of information, which yields overwhelming benefits to a globally integrated market.
In light of the increased utilization of information technologies, such as social media and the 'Internet of Things,' this book investigates how this digital transformation process creates new challenges and opportunities for political participation, political election campaigns and political regulation of the Internet. Within the context of Western democracies and China, the contributors analyze these challenges and opportunities from three perspectives: the regulatory state, the political use of social media, and through the lens of the public sphere. The first part of the book discusses key challenges for Internet regulation, such as data protection and censorship, while the second addresses the use of social media in political communication and political elections. In turn, the third and last part highlights various opportunities offered by digital media for online civic engagement and protest in the public sphere. Drawing on different academic fields, including political science, communication science, and journalism studies, the contributors raise a number of innovative research questions and provide fascinating theoretical and empirical insights into the topic of digital transformation.
"Bootstrapping" analyzes the genesis of personal computing from
both technological and social perspectives, through a close study
of the pathbreaking work of one researcher, Douglas Engelbart. In
his lab at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, Engelbart,
along with a small team of researchers, developed some of the
cornerstones of personal computing as we know it, including the
mouse, the windowed user interface, and hypertext. Today, all these
technologies are well known, even taken for granted, but the
assumptions and motivations behind their invention are not.
"Bootstrapping" establishes Douglas Engelbart's contribution
through a detailed history of both the material and the symbolic
constitution of his system's human-computer interface in the
context of the computer research community in the United States in
the 1960s and 1970s.
"A Journey Through Cultures" addresses one of the hottest topics in contemporary HCI: cultural diversity amongst users. For a number of years the HCI community has been investigating alternatives to enhance the design of cross-cultural systems. Most contributions to date have followed either a 'design for each' or a 'design for all' strategy. "A Journey Through Cultures "takes a very different approach. Proponents of CVM - the Cultural Viewpoint Metaphors perspective - the authors invite HCI practitioners to think of how to expose and communicate the idea of cultural diversity. A detailed case study is included which assesses the metaphors' potential in cross-cultural design and evaluation. The results show that cultural viewpoint metaphors have strong epistemic power, leveraged by a combination of theoretic foundations coming from Anthropology, Semiotics and the authors' own work in HCI and Semiotic Engineering. Luciana Salgado, Carla Leitao and Clarisse de Souza are members of SERG, the Semiotic Engineering Research Group at the Departamento de Informatica of Rio de Janeiro's Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-Rio)."
International online access has grown rapidly in recent years with the number of global Internet users skyrocketing. The most astounding growth, however, is taking place in developing nations. ""Linguistic and Cultural Online Communication Issues in the Global Age"" provides readers with in-depth information on the various linguistic, cultural, technological, legal, and other factors that affect interactions in online exchanges within the global age. ""Linguistic and Cultural Online Communication Issues in the Global Age"" proposes information that implements effective decisions related to the uses and designs of online media when interacting with individuals from other cultures. This comprehensive and informative title is completed by foundational knowledge needed to communicate effectively with individuals from other countries and cultures via online media.
The 'smart city' is often promoted as a technology-driven solution to complex urban issues. While commentators are increasingly critical of techno-optimistic narratives, the political imagination is dominated by claims that technical solutions can be uniformly applied to intractable problems. This book provides a much-needed alternative view, exploring how 'home-grown' digital disruption, driven and initiated by local actors, upends the mainstream corporate narrative. Drawing on original research conducted in a range of urban African settings, Odendaal shows how these initiatives can lead to meaningful change. This is a valuable resource for scholars working in the intersection of science and technology studies, urban and economic geography and sociology.
This book gathers the state-of-the-art for industrial application of scientific and practical research in the Cloud and IoT paradigms to benefit society. The book first aims to discuss and outline various aspects of tackling climate change. The authors then discuss how Cloud and IoT can help for digital health and learning from industrial aspects. The next part of book discusses technical improvements in the fields of security and privacy. The book also covers Smart Homes and IoT in agriculture. The book is targeted towards advancing undergraduate, graduate, and post graduate students, researchers, academicians, policymakers, various government officials, NGOs, and industry research professionals who are currently working in the field of science and technology either directly or indirectly to benefit common masses.
How is the internet changing the way you think? That is one of the dominant questions of our time, one which affects almost every aspect of our life and future. And it's exactly what John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, posed to more than 150 of the world's most influential minds. Brilliant, farsighted, and fascinating, Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? is an essential guide to the Net-based world.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world around us, and it is changing the way people are living, working, and entertaining. As a result, demands for understanding how AI functions to achieve and enhance human goals from basic needs to high level well-being (whilst maintaining human health) are increasing. This edited book systematically investigates how AI facilitates enhancing human needs in the digital age, and reports on the state-of-the-art advances in theories, techniques, and applications of humanity driven AI. Consisting of five parts, it covers the fundamentals of AI and humanity, AI for productivity, AI for well-being, AI for sustainability, and human-AI partnership. Humanity Driven AI creates an important opportunity to not only promote AI techniques from a humanity perspective, but also to invent novel AI applications to benefit humanity. It aims to serve as the dedicated source for the theories, methodologies, and applications on humanity driven AI, establishing state-of-the-art research, and providing a ground-breaking book for graduate students, research professionals, and AI practitioners.
'Boldly reactionary... What looks like feast, Carr argues, may be closer to famine' Sunday Times 'Chilling' The Economist In this ground-breaking and compelling book, Nicholas Carr argues that not since Gutenberg invented printing has humanity been exposed to such a mind-altering technology. The Shallows draws on the latest research to show that the Net is literally re-wiring our brains inducing only superficial understanding. As a consequence there are profound changes in the way we live and communicate, remember and socialise - even in our very conception of ourselves. By moving from the depths of thought to the shallows of distraction, the web, it seems, is actually fostering ignorance. The Shallows is not a manifesto for luddites, nor does it seek to turn back the clock. Rather it is a revelatory reminder of how far the Internet has become enmeshed in our daily existence and is affecting the way we think. This landmark book compels us all to look anew at our dependence on this all-pervasive technology. This 10th-anniversary edition includes a new afterword that brings the story up to date, with a deep examination of the cognitive and behavioural effects of smartphones and social media. |
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