First Published in 2001. In this collection of essays and interviews, Mark Poster examines theoretical approaches and develops his own position on our information based society. He contends that new communications media disrupt and transfigure the way identities are constituted in cultural exchanges. He looks in detail at several aspects of what might be called "internet culture", including virtuality and democracy. Poster advocates an awareness of the Internet and other new forms of communication, calling for a mobilization to ensure accessibility to all and to configure technology into vehicles of open cultural creation. For example, nothing is pure about the Internet politically, he points out, and it remains an open question as to who will transform the potentiality of new communications media into determinate cultural configurations. This book explores the rupture and potentiality between the electronic self and the face-to-face self inherent in new forms of technology and media.

Data is everywhere. We create it every time we go online, turn our phone on (or off) or pay with a credit card. This data is stored, studied, bought and sold by companies and governments for surveillance and for control. "Foremost security expert" (Wired) Bruce Schneier shows how this data has led to a double-edged Internet-a Web that gives power to the people but is abused by the institutions on which those people depend. In Data and Goliath, Schneier reveals the full extent of surveillance, censorship and propaganda in society today, examining the risks of cybercrime, cyberterrorism and cyberwar. He shares technological, legal and social solutions that can help shape a more equal, private and secure world.

Author Biography:
Andrew Herman is Associate Professor of Sociology and Cultural Studies at Drake University. Thomas Swiss is Center for the Humanities Professor of English and Director of the Web-Assisted Curriculum at Drake University.

Offers parents, and training and practising professionals in psychology, psychotherapy, education and social work insight into what the evidence says about human behaviour online, what this means for how children develop and how we can best support children to be safe and healthy online now and in future. Accessibly presents the key research from psychology, sociology and biology to reveal how and why humans interact with platforms, apps and software. Covers essential topics including social media, gaming and harmful effects of technology and social media.

Democracy in the Digital Age is a fascinating philosophical exploration of how the emerging information and communication technologies are impacting political participation in the United States. Rather than being the antidote to democratic ills, the political conversations occurring online are neither inclusive nor deliberative, suggesting that new technologies, as currently designed and used, are as much threats to progress as they are vehicles of progress. Wilhelm discussses four features of digitally-mediated political likfe (resources, inclusiveness, deliberation and design) and puts forward public policy solutions to bridge the digital divide.

Digital Democracy 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.
Digital Democracy will provide invaluable reading for those studying social policy, politics and sociology as well as for policy analysts, social scientists and computer scientists.

Recent years have seen an increased interest in the variety of cultures co-existing within one state, and a growing acknowledgement of the values ensconced in pluralistic social structures. this book examines the manner in which indigenous people can function in modern states, preserving their traditional customs, while simultaneously adapting aspects of their culture to the challenges posed by modern life. Whereas it was formerly assumed that these tribal frameworks were doomed to extinction, and some states even encouraged such a process, there has been a revival in their vitality, linked to a recognition of their rights.
The book offers a comprehensive survey of various aspects of tribal life, focusing on political issues such as the meaning of sovereignty, legal issues dealing with the role of custom and social issues concerned with sustaining communal life. A focused study is made of a whole series of legal factors, relating to possession and ownership of land, religious rites, the nature of polygamous marriages, the assertion of group rites, the manner of peacefully resolving disputes and allied questions. Recent judicial decisions are analysed as a reflection of the far-reaching changes that have taken place, in a process that has seen the former disregard of basic rights of indigenous people being replaced by an awareness of the injustices perpetrated in the past and a willingness to seek to redress them. The comparison between approaches of different English-speaking countries provides an account of interwoven developments.

Democracy in the Digital Age is a fascinating philosophical exploration of how the emerging information and communication technologies are impacting political participation in the United States. Rather than being the antidote to democratic ills, the political conversations occurring online are neither inclusive nor deliberative, suggesting that new technologies, as currently designed and used, are as much threats to progress as they are vehicles of progress.

This book addresses the measurement of the effect of information technology (IT) investments on a firm's productivity. Determining a quantifiable impact of a firm's IT has plagued senior executives, researchers, and policy-makers for several years, as evidenced by articles in trade magazines such as Fortune and Businessweek and in academic journals such as Management Science. Simple statistical techniques for measuring IT impact in a firm are fraught with methodological problems, as these techniques do not account for either the causal direction in managerial decision making or the behavioral assumptions about firms. Therefore, such studies have led to results and inferences that are not generalizable. While studies that measure the satisfaction of people who use IT are important, management typically would like to know whether IT has reduced operation costs by streamlining processes or increased revenues by increasing the demand-meeting capability of the firm. This book attempts to determine cost-reduction or output-enhancement that may be linked to IT investments through methodological sophistication.
The healthcare industry presents an important and interesting context in which to study IT impacts for several reasons. First, since the implementation of the Prospective Payment System (PPS) by Medicaid, most hospitals adopted cost containment measures, and hence capital investments in hospitals have come under greater scrutiny than ever before. Second, hospitals have been more thorough in reporting capital and labor expenses and revenues (due to state regulation) at a level of detail that makes it possible to aggregate IT and other capital investments without serious measurementerror. Most non-healthcare firms do not collect or report such data in their financial statements. Finally, though hospitals were slow in IT adoption, most hospitals have been acquiring sophisticated hardware and software over the past few years.
Results of the analysis bear evidence of the positive impact of IT on production of healthcare services. It also shows how methodological differences can lead to conflicting results. The effect of PPS determined in a comparative way shows that the economic behavior in the post-PPS differs from that in the pre-PPS years.

The Gendered Cyborg explores the relationship between representation, technoscience and gender, through the metaphor of the cyborg. The contributors argue that the figure of the cyborg offers ways of thinking about the relationship between culture and technology, people and machines which disrupt the power of science to enfore the categories through which we think about being human: male and female. Taking inspiration from Donna Haraway's groundbreaking Manifesto for Cyborgs, the articles consider how the cyborg has been used in cultural representation from reproductive technology to sci-fi, and question whether the cyborg is as powerful a symbol as is often claimed. The different sections of the reader explore: * the construction of gender categories through science
* the interraction of technoscience and gender in contemporary science fiction film such as Bladerunner and the Alien series
* debates around modern reproductive technology such as ultrasound scans and IVF, assessing their benefits and constraints for women
* issues relating to artificial intelligence and the internet.

In recent years, computers have learned to diagnose diseases, drive cars, write clean prose and win game shows. Advances like these have created unprecedented economic bounty but in their wake median income has stagnated and employment levels have fallen. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee reveal the technological forces driving this reinvention of the economy and chart a path towards future prosperity. Businesses and individuals, they argue, must learn to race with machines. Drawing on years of research, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies and policies for doing so. A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will radically alter how we think about issues of technological, societal and economic progress.

The major shift going on today in the technologies of reading and writing raises important questions about conventional conceptions of literacy and its role in education, society, and culture. What are the important characteristics of electronic forms of reading and writing distinguishing them from printed forms? To what extent and in what ways is literacy being transformed by new technologies? This central question is addressed in this volume from diverse, multidisciplinary perspectives. The contributing authors focus on a guiding question in one of the following areas, which correspond to the major sections of the book:
*Transforming Texts. What are the new differences between printed and electronic texts, and what are the implications of new textual forms for defining literacy, especially in regard to teaching and learning in schools?
*Transforming Readers and Writers. How do electronic reading and writing change conceptualizations of literacy development from childhood through adulthood?
*Transforming Classrooms and Schools. What are the effects of introducing new reading and writing technologies into schools and classrooms?
*Transforming Instruction. How can instruction be adapted in response to the changing literacy landscape, and how can teachers and students exploit forms of reading and writing to enhance teaching and learning?
*Transforming Society. What are the broad societal implications of the increasing prevalence of electronic forms of reading and writing?
*Transforming Literacy Research. What are the questions that must be addressed as digital reading and writing become more common, and what approaches to research will be most useful in addressing those questions?
This volume is the result of an interactive process. The contributors met as a group to discuss drafts of their chapters at a one-day meeting convened and sponsored by the National Reading Research Center, and had read each others' chapters prior to this gathering. That meeting was followed by a two-day conference attended by approximately 180 researchers, educators, and policymakers who responded to an open invitation to present papers and to attend sessions focusing on the six major themes of the book. Contributors then revised their chapters based on interactions with fellow contributors, conference participants, and volume editors. Thus, this work is more than just a compilation of the individual authors' views. Rather, it represents a synthesis of a broad range of current thinking about how literacy is being and may be transformed by technology.

The dramatic advances in computer and telecommunications technologies such as the Internet, virtual reality,smart cards or multimedia applications are increasingly regarded as ushering in a new form of society: the Information Society. 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 and the emerging strategies for social inclusion in the Information Age.
This book analyses issues of agency, autonomy and equality as they are affected by global communications networks and information technologies. The contributors discuss such themes as human interaction, ethical behaviour, power relationships and gender divisions as well as the growing disparity between the information rich and the information poor. Also contrasted are the policy formulations by nation-states and trading areas such as the EU and China. Cyberspace Divide will be invaluable reading for those studying social policy, sociology, computing and communication studies.

This book investigates the ways in which the mobile telephone has transformed societies around the world, bringing both opportunities and challenges. At a time when knowledge and truth are increasingly contested, the book asks how mobile technology has changed the ways in which people create, disseminate, and access knowledge. Worldwide, mobile internet access has surpassed desktop access, and it is estimated that by 2022 there will be AN excess of 6 billion mobile phone users in the world. This widespread proliferation raises all sorts of questions around who creates knowledge, how is that knowledge shared and proliferated, and what are the structural political, economic, and legal conditions in which knowledge is accessed. The practices and power dynamics around mobile technologies are location specific. They look different depending on whether one chooses to highlight the legal, social, political, or economic context. Bringing together scholars, journalists, activists and practitioners from around the world, this book embraces this complexity, providing a multifaceted picture that acknowledges the tensions and contradictions surrounding accessing knowledge through mobile technologies. With case studies from Hong Kong, South Korea, India, Syria, Egypt, Botswana, Brazil, and the US, this book provides an important account of the changing nature of our access to knowledge, and is key reading for students, researchers, activists and policy makers with an interest in technology and access to knowledge, communication, social transformation, and global development.

From famed automotive journalist Jason Torchinsky comes a witty insider's guide to self-driving cars, the automated future, and the road ahead. Self-driving cars sound fantastical and futuristic and yet they'll soon be on every street in America. Whether it's Tesla's Autopilot, Google's Waymo, Mercedes's Distronic, or Uber's modified Volvo, companies around the world are developing autonomous cars. But why? And what will they mean for the auto industry and humanity at large? In Robot, Take the Wheel, Torchinsky, cofounder of The Autopian and former senior editor of Jalopnik, star of Jason Drives, and producer of Jay Leno's Garage, gives a colorful account of the development of autonomous vehicles and considers their likely implications. He encourages us to think of self-driving cars as an entirely new machine, something beyond cars as we understand them today, and considers how humans will get along with these robots that will take over our cars' jobs, what they will look like, what sorts of jobs they may do, what we can expect of them, how they should act, ethically, how we can have fun with them, and how we can make sure there's still a place for those of us who love to drive, especially with a manual transmission. This vibrant volume brimming with insider knowledge, humor, and original artwork pushes us to reconsider our understanding of cars, raises fascinating ethical questions, and compels us to act now to shape the automated future.

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.

How popular debates about the so-called digital generation mediate anxieties about labor and life in twenty-first-century America "The children are our future" goes the adage, a proclamation that simultaneously declares both anxiety as well as hope about youth as the next generation. In The Digital Is Kid Stuff, Josef Nguyen interrogates this ambivalence within discussions about today's "digital generation" and the future of creativity, an ambivalence that toggles between the techno-pessimism that warns against the harm to children of too much screen time and a techno-utopianism that foresees these "digital natives" leading the way to innovation, economic growth, increased democratization, and national prosperity. Nguyen engages cultural histories of childhood, youth, and creativity through chapters that are each anchored to a particular digital media object or practice. Nguyen narrates the developmental arc of a future creative laborer: from a young kid playing the island fictions of Minecraft, to an older child learning do-it-yourself skills while reading Make magazine, to a teenager posting selfies on Instagram, to a young adult creative laborer imagining technological innovations using design fiction. Focusing on the constructions and valorizations of creativity, entrepreneurialism, and technological savvy, Nguyen argues that contemporary culture operates to assuage profound anxieties about-and to defuse valid critiques of-both emerging digital technologies and the precarity of employment for "creative laborers" in twenty-first-century neoliberal America.

Rampant abuse, hate speech, censorship, bias, and disinformation - our Internet has problems. It is governed by technology companies - search engines, social media platforms, and infrastructure providers - whose hidden rules influence what we are allowed to see and say. In Lawless, Nicolas P. Suzor presents gripping examples of exactly how tech companies govern our digital environment and how they bend to pressure from governments and other powerful actors to censor and control the flow of information online. We are at a constitutional moment - an opportunity to rethink the basic rules of how the Internet is governed. Suzor offers a vision of a vibrant, diverse, and flourishing internet that can protect our fundamental rights from the lawless rule of tech. The culmination of more than ten years of original research, this groundbreaking work should be read by anyone who cares about the internet and the future of our shared social spaces.

Rampant abuse, hate speech, censorship, bias, and disinformation - our Internet has problems. It is governed by technology companies - search engines, social media platforms, and infrastructure providers - whose hidden rules influence what we are allowed to see and say. In Lawless, Nicolas P. Suzor presents gripping examples of exactly how tech companies govern our digital environment and how they bend to pressure from governments and other powerful actors to censor and control the flow of information online. We are at a constitutional moment - an opportunity to rethink the basic rules of how the Internet is governed. Suzor offers a vision of a vibrant, diverse, and flourishing internet that can protect our fundamental rights from the lawless rule of tech. The culmination of more than ten years of original research, this groundbreaking work should be read by anyone who cares about the internet and the future of our shared social spaces.

In the world of Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, water-cooler conversations with co-workers and backyard small talk with neighbors have moved from the physical world to the digital arena. In this new landscape, organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies to political campaigns continuously monitor online opinions in an effort to guide their actions. Are consumers satisfied with our product? How are our policies perceived? Do voters agree with our platform? Measuring online opinion is more complex than just reading a few posted reviews. Social media is replete with noise and chatter that can contaminate monitoring efforts. By knowing what shapes online opinions, organizations can better uncover the valuable insights hidden in the social media chatter and better inform strategy. This book can help anyone facing the challenge of making sense of social media data to move beyond the current practice of social media monitoring to a more comprehensive use of social media intelligence.

IOT: Security and Privacy Paradigm covers the evolution of security and privacy issues in the Internet of Things (IoT). It focuses on bringing all security and privacy related technologies into one source, so that students, researchers, and practitioners can refer to this book for easy understanding of IoT security and privacy issues. This edited book uses Security Engineering and Privacy-by-Design principles to design a secure IoT ecosystem and to implement cyber-security solutions. This book takes the readers on a journey that begins with understanding the security issues in IoT-enabled technologies and how it can be applied in various aspects. It walks readers through engaging with security challenges and builds a safe infrastructure for IoT devices. The book helps readers gain an understand of security architecture through IoT and describes the state of the art of IoT countermeasures. It also differentiates security threats in IoT-enabled infrastructure from traditional ad hoc or infrastructural networks, and provides a comprehensive discussion on the security challenges and solutions in RFID, WSNs, in IoT. This book aims to provide the concepts of related technologies and novel findings of the researchers through its chapter organization. The primary audience includes specialists, researchers, graduate students, designers, experts and engineers who are focused on research and security related issues. Souvik Pal, PhD, has worked as Assistant Professor in Nalanda Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar, and JIS College of Engineering, Kolkata (NAAC "A" Accredited College). He is the organizing Chair and Plenary Speaker of RICE Conference in Vietnam; and organizing co-convener of ICICIT, Tunisia. He has served in many conferences as chair, keynote speaker, and he also chaired international conference sessions and presented session talks internationally. His research area includes Cloud Computing, Big Data, Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), Internet of Things, and Data Analytics. Vicente Garcia-Diaz, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oviedo (Languages and Computer Systems area). He is also the editor of several special issues in prestigious journals such as Scientific Programming and International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence. His research interests include eLearning, machine learning and the use of domain specific languages in different areas. Dac-Nhuong Le, PhD, is Deputy-Head of Faculty of Information Technology, and Vice-Director of Information Technology Apply and Foreign Language Training Center, Haiphong University, Vietnam. His area of research includes: evaluation computing and approximate algorithms, network communication, security and vulnerability, network performance analysis and simulation, cloud computing, IoT and image processing in biomedical. Presently, he is serving on the editorial board of several international journals and has authored nine computer science books published by Springer, Wiley, CRC Press, Lambert Publication, and Scholar Press.

Today's digital revolution is a worldwide phenomenon, with profound and often differential implications for communities around the world and their relationships to one another. This book presents a new, explicitly international theory of media ethics, incorporating non-Western perspectives and drawing deeply on both moral philosophy and the philosophy of technology. Clifford Christians develops an ethics grounded in three principles - truth, human dignity, and non-violence - and shows how these principles can be applied across a wide range of cases and domains. The book is a guide for media professionals, scholars, and educators who are concerned with the global ramifications of new technologies and with creating a more just world.

Parallelwelten (parallel worlds) are worlds invisible to anyone not part of them. More and more, our reality is defined through digital products, which afford us infinitely more freedom than in the analogue past. But increased choice has also heightened our susceptibility to manipulation. Filter bubbles, fake news and alternative facts are just data that can be easily and cheaply manipulated. We now live in multiple realities that are increasingly losing touch with each other. Reality has been turned into bits. Or is it the other way around? The digital world increasingly defines, controls and governs the analogue world. Tech companies buy and sell the raw data of human experience. Our human behaviour is turned into data, which is processed into information and then manipulated and fed back into our information diet to control our behaviour. Data is the raw material, and information - not content - is king. Information even defines reality. This book investigates these parallel worlds from different angles: technological, corporate, scientific, cultural, economic and political. It doesn't view tech as an end in itself and something the rest of the world simply must adapt to. Instead, it asks how tech can solve real problems and make the world not a worse place, but a better one.

The field of information technology continues to advance at a brisk pace, including the use of Remote Laboratory (RL) systems in education and research. To address the needs of remote laboratory development for such purposes, the authors present a new state-of-the-art unified framework for RL system development. Included are solutions to commonly encountered RL implementation issues such as third-party plugin, traversing firewalls, cross platform running, and scalability, etc. Additionally, the book introduces a new application architecture of remote lab for mobile-optimized RL application development for Mobile Learning (M-Learning). It also shows how to design and organize the remote experiments at different universities and make available a framework source code. The book is intended to serve as a complete guide for remote lab system design and implementation for an audience comprised of researchers, practitioners and students to enable them to rapidly and flexibly implement RL systems for a range of fields.

Data science ethics is all about what is right and wrong when conducting data science. Data science has so far been primarily used for positive outcomes for businesses and society. However, just as with any technology, data science has also come with some negative consequences: an increase of privacy invasion, data-driven discrimination against sensitive groups, and decision making by complex models without explanations. While data scientists and business managers are not inherently unethical, they are not trained to weigh the ethical considerations that come from their work - Data Science Ethics addresses this increasingly significant gap and highlights different concepts and techniques that aid understanding, ranging from k-anonymity and differential privacy to homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to address privacy concerns, techniques to remove discrimination against sensitive groups, and various explainable AI techniques. Real-life cautionary tales further illustrate the importance and potential impact of data science ethics, including tales of racist bots, search censoring, government backdoors, and face recognition. The book is punctuated with structured exercises that provide hypothetical scenarios and ethical dilemmas for reflection that teach readers how to balance the ethical concerns and the utility of data.