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Books > Computing & IT > Social & legal aspects of computing > Impact of computing & IT on society
Smart cities promise to generate economic, social and environmental value through the seamless connection of urban services and infrastructure by digital technologies. However, there is scant evidence of how these activities can enhance social well-being and contribute to just and equitable communities. Smart and Sustainable Cities? Pipedreams, Practicalities and Possibilities provides one of the first examinations of how smart cities relate to environmental and social issues. It addresses the gap between the ambitious visions of smart cities and the actual practices on the ground by focusing on the social and environmental dimensions of real smart city initiatives as well as the possibilities they hold for creating more equitable and progressive cities. Through detailed analyses of case studies in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, India and China, the contributors describe the various ways that social and environmental issues are interpreted and integrated into smart city initiatives and actions. The findings point towards the need for more intentional engagement and collaboration with all urban stakeholders in the design, development and maintenance of smart cities to ensure that everyone benefits from the increasingly digitalised urban environments of the twenty-first century. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Local Environment.
Neuroscience has begun to intrude deeply into what it means to be human, an intrusion that offers profound benefits but will demolish our present understanding of privacy. In Privacy in the Age of Neuroscience, David Grant argues that we need to reconceptualize privacy in a manner that will allow us to reap the rewards of neuroscience while still protecting our privacy and, ultimately, our humanity. Grant delves into our relationship with technology, the latest in what he describes as a historical series of 'magnitudes', following Deity, the State and the Market, proposing the idea that, for this new magnitude (Technology), we must control rather than be subjected to it. In this provocative work, Grant unveils a radical account of privacy and an equally radical proposal to create the social infrastructure we need to support it.
Digital media has exploded over the past quarter century, and in particular the past decade. As varieties of digital media multiply, scholars are beginning to examine its origins, organization, and preservation, which present new challenges compared to traditional media. To examine issues from multiple perspectives, experts were invited to an invitation-only workshop on digital media. The participants were carefully chosen to represent a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, ranging from humanities and fine arts to communication theory. The papers collected here are the results of that workshop. Digital Media: Technological and Social Challenges of the Interactive World is organized in four parts, each representing a different perspective on digital media: preservation, humanities, organizational, and historical. The section on preservation considers the problems of archiving digital media for long-term preservation; the humanities section offers a human-centered view of digital media, focusing on the interaction between technological changes and cultural practices; the section dealing with organization goes beyond the study of digital artifacts in isolation to consider the context, collection, and arrangement of objects; and the historical section examines how our perspectives on digital media have changed over time, looking at how issues such as the digital divide and digital production have changed as technology has changed. The wealth of varied perspectives in Digital Media provides new light on this topic, beyond the media studies viewpoint that is the most common way of engaging these topics. This collection will be a valuable addition for students and faculty in information studies, communication studies, rhetoric, new media, and more.
The contemporary internet focuses on user experiences of more recent developments on the internet, specifically with the spread of broadband, the audio-visual applications it has enabled, Web2.0 uptake more generally and the growth of eGovernment. The Contemporary Internet is comparative in two senses. The first is at the cross-national level, examining factors affecting different countries' experiences of the internet, with a particular, but not a sole, interest in what may be termed 'cultural influences on perceptions, adoption and use'. Second, the book is comparative within countries, examining the, sometimes very, uneven experiences of the internet's possibilities. One question that pervades several chapters is how the digital divide is evolving in the light of the more contemporary developments outlined above.
We live in an algorithmic society. Algorithms have become the main mediator through which power is enacted in our society. This book brings together three academic fields - Public Administration, Criminal Justice and Urban Governance - into a single conceptual framework, and offers a broad cultural-political analysis, addressing critical and ethical issues of algorithms. Governments are increasingly turning towards algorithms to predict criminality, deliver public services, allocate resources, and calculate recidivism rates. Mind-boggling amounts of data regarding our daily actions are analysed to make decisions that manage, control, and nudge our behaviour in everyday life. The contributions in this book offer a broad analysis of the mechanisms and social implications of algorithmic governance. Reporting from the cutting edge of scientific research, the result is illuminating and useful for understanding the relations between algorithms and power.Topics covered include: Algorithmic governmentality Transparency and accountability Fairness in criminal justice and predictive policing Principles of good digital administration Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the smart city This book is essential reading for students and scholars of Sociology, Criminology, Public Administration, Political Sciences, and Cultural Theory interested in the integration of algorithms into the governance of society.
Trust and Records in an Open Digital Environment explores issues that arise when digital records are entrusted to the cloud and will help professionals to make informed choices in the context of a rapidly changing digital economy. Showing that records need to ensure public trust, especially in the era of alternative truths, this volume argues that reliable resources, which are openly accessible from governmental institutions, e-services, archival institutions, digital repositories, and cloud-based digital archives, are the key to an open digital environment. The book also demonstrates that current established practices need to be reviewed and amended to include the networked nature of the cloud-based records, to investigate the role of new players, like cloud service providers (CSP), and assess the potential for implementing new, disruptive technologies like blockchain. Stancic and the contributors address these challenges by taking three themes - state, citizens, and documentary form - and discussing their interaction in the context of open government, open access, recordkeeping, and digital preservation. Exploring what is needed to enable the establishment of an open digital environment, Trust and Records in an Open Digital Environment should be essential reading for data, information, document, and records management professionals. It will also be a key text for archivists, librarians, professors, and students working in the information sciences and other related fields.
Trust and Records in an Open Digital Environment explores issues that arise when digital records are entrusted to the cloud and will help professionals to make informed choices in the context of a rapidly changing digital economy. Showing that records need to ensure public trust, especially in the era of alternative truths, this volume argues that reliable resources, which are openly accessible from governmental institutions, e-services, archival institutions, digital repositories, and cloud-based digital archives, are the key to an open digital environment. The book also demonstrates that current established practices need to be reviewed and amended to include the networked nature of the cloud-based records, to investigate the role of new players, like cloud service providers (CSP), and assess the potential for implementing new, disruptive technologies like blockchain. Stancic and the contributors address these challenges by taking three themes - state, citizens, and documentary form - and discussing their interaction in the context of open government, open access, recordkeeping, and digital preservation. Exploring what is needed to enable the establishment of an open digital environment, Trust and Records in an Open Digital Environment should be essential reading for data, information, document, and records management professionals. It will also be a key text for archivists, librarians, professors, and students working in the information sciences and other related fields.
Fake News in Context defines fake news and sets it within a historical and international context. Helping readers to become more skilled at detecting misinformation, the book also demonstrates how such knowledge can be leveraged to facilitate more effective engagement in civic education. Distinguishing between fake news and other forms of misinformation, the book explains the complete communication cycle of fake news: how and why it is created, disseminated and accessed. The book then explains the physical and psychological reasons why people believe fake news. Providing generic methods for identifying fake news, Farmer also explains the use of fact- checking tools and automated algorithms. The book then details how various literacies, including news, media, visual, information, digital and data, offer unique concepts and skills that can help interpret fake news. Arguing that individuals and groups can respond and counter fake news, which leads to civic engagement and digital citizenship, the book concludes by providing strategies for instruction and tips for collaborating with librarians. Including a range of international examples, Fake News in Context will be of interest to teaching faculty, and students of library and information science, communication studies, media studies, politics and journalism. Librarians and information professionals will also find a valuable resource in this book.
Fake News in Context defines fake news and sets it within a historical and international context. Helping readers to become more skilled at detecting misinformation, the book also demonstrates how such knowledge can be leveraged to facilitate more effective engagement in civic education. Distinguishing between fake news and other forms of misinformation, the book explains the complete communication cycle of fake news: how and why it is created, disseminated and accessed. The book then explains the physical and psychological reasons why people believe fake news. Providing generic methods for identifying fake news, Farmer also explains the use of fact- checking tools and automated algorithms. The book then details how various literacies, including news, media, visual, information, digital and data, offer unique concepts and skills that can help interpret fake news. Arguing that individuals and groups can respond and counter fake news, which leads to civic engagement and digital citizenship, the book concludes by providing strategies for instruction and tips for collaborating with librarians. Including a range of international examples, Fake News in Context will be of interest to teaching faculty, and students of library and information science, communication studies, media studies, politics and journalism. Librarians and information professionals will also find a valuable resource in this book.
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.
Justice apps - mobile and web-based programmes that can assist individuals with legal tasks - are being produced, improved, and accessed at an unprecedented rate. These technologies have the potential to reshape the justice system, improve access to justice, and demystify legal institutions. Using artificial intelligence techniques, apps can even facilitate the resolution of common legal disputes. However, these opportunities must be assessed in light of the many challenges associated with app use in the justice sector. These include the digital divide and other accessibility issues; the ethical challenges raised by the dehumanisation of legal processes; and various privacy, security, and confidentiality risks. Surveying the landscape of this emergent industry, this book explores the objectives, opportunities, and challenges presented by apps across all areas of the justice sector. Detailed consideration is also given to the use of justice apps in specific legal contexts, including the family law and criminal law sectors. The first book to engage with justice apps, this book will appeal to a wide range of legal scholars, students, practitioners, and policy-makers.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have profoundly changed many aspects of life, including the nature of entertainment, work, communication, education, healthcare, industrial production and business, social relations and conflicts. They have had a radical and widespread impact on our moral lives and hence on contemporary ethical debates. The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics, first published in 2010, provides an ambitious and authoritative introduction to the field, with discussions of a range of topics including privacy, ownership, freedom of speech, responsibility, technological determinism, the digital divide, cyber warfare, and online pornography. It offers an accessible and thoughtful survey of the transformations brought about by ICTs and their implications for the future of human life and society, for the evaluation of behaviour, and for the evolution of moral values and rights. It will be a valuable book for all who are interested in the ethical aspects of the information society in which we live.
Ethics and games are emerging as a very popular field of study. As such, there has become a need to define the field in terms of its primary challenges and the current state of the discipline. Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values through Play is the first book in its field to challenge scholars and researchers to answer questions such as: How can game design be improved to foster ethical thinking and discourse? What are the theories and methodologies that will help us understand, model, and assess ethical thinking in games? How do we use games in classrooms and informal educational settings to support moral development? This distinguished publication approaches such questions from a multidisciplinary perspective with the ultimate goal of inspiring further interdisciplinary dialogue and research in order to continue building the ethics and games community.
In 2014, Conrad Roy committed suicide following encouragement from his long-distance girlfriend, Michelle Carter, in what has become known as the Texting Suicide case. The case has attracted much attention, largely focusing on the First Amendment free speech issue. This book takes the view that the issue is intertwined with several others, some of which have received less attention but help explain why the case is so captivating and important, issues concerning privacy, accountability, coercion, punishment, and assisted suicide. The focus here is on how all of these issues are interconnected. By breaking the issue down into its complex layers, the work aids reasoned judgment, ensuring we aren't guided solely by our gut reactions. The book is laid out as a case against punishing Ms. Carter, but it is less important that we agree with that conclusion than that we reach our conclusions not just through our instincts and intuitions but by thinking about these fundamental issues. The work will be of interest to scholars in law, political theory, and philosophy as an example of how theoretical issues apply to particular controversies. It will also appeal to readers interested in freedom of speech and the First Amendment, criminal justice and theories of punishment, suicide laws, and privacy.
The Arab Spring, chat forums, political leaders tweeting, online petitions, and protestors in the Occupy Movement - new media public spheres have without doubt radically altered social and political activism in society. But to what extent is this new activist public sphere stifled by the neoliberal economy and workfare state? Have we in fact become transformed into subjects of online consumption and orderly surveillance, rather than committed social and political campaigners? In this highly topical book, John Michael Roberts employs a political economy perspective to explore the relationship between financial neoliberal capitalism and digital publics. He assesses the extent to which they provide new forms of radical protest in civil society and offers an indispensable guide to understanding the relationship between the state, new media activism and neoliberal practices.
This revised edition has more breadth and depth of coverage than the first edition. Information Technology: An Introduction for Today's Digital World introduces undergraduate students to a wide variety of concepts that they will encounter throughout their IT studies and careers. The features of this edition include: Introductory system administration coverage of Windows 10 and Linux (Red Hat 7), both as general concepts and with specific hands-on instruction Coverage of programming and shell scripting, demonstrated through example code in several popular languages Updated information on modern IT careers Computer networks, including more content on cloud computing Improved coverage of computer security Ancillary material that includes a lab manual for hands-on exercises Suitable for any introductory IT course, this classroom-tested text presents many of the topics recommended by the ACM Special Interest Group on IT Education (SIGITE). It offers a far more detailed examination of the computer and IT fields than computer literacy texts, focusing on concepts essential to all IT professionals - from system administration to scripting to computer organization. Four chapters are dedicated to the Windows and Linux operating systems so that students can gain hands-on experience with operating systems that they will deal with in the real world.
Science and technology have had a profound effect on the way humans perceive space and time. In this book an international team of authors explore themes of depth and surface, of real and conceptual space and of human/machine interaction. The collection is organized around the concept of Technospace - the temporal realm where technology meets human practice. In exploring this intersection the contributors initiate debate on a number of important conceptual questions: is there a clear distinction between the "real" space of the body or with city and the conceptual space of "virtual" reality?; how are the real and metaphorical space of electronic cultures quantified and regulated?; and is there an ethics of technospace?;Historically the reception of new technologies has been invested with romantic idealism on the one hand and panic on the other. The authors argue that in order for utopian dreams to be tempered by ethical, humanistic needs, we have an urgent need to reveal, reflect upon and evaluate technospace and our relationship to it.
The Arab Spring, chat forums, political leaders tweeting, online petitions, and protestors in the Occupy Movement, new media public spheres have without doubt radically altered social and political activism in society. But to what extent is this new activist public sphere stifled by the neoliberal economy and workfare state? Have we in fact become transformed into subjects of online consumption and orderly surveillance, rather than committed social and political campaigners? In this highly topical book, John Michael Roberts employs a political economy perspective to explore the relationship between financial neoliberal capitalism and digital publics. He assesses the extent to which they provide new forms of radical protest in civil society and offers an indispensable guide to understanding the relationship between the state, new media activism and neoliberal practices.
Inspired by Roland Barthes's practice of "semioclasm" in Mythologies, this book offers a "technoclasm"; a cultural critique of US narratives, discourses, images, and objects that have transformed the politics of automation into statements of fact about the "rise of the robots". Treating automation as an ensemble of technologies and science fictions, this book foregrounds automation's ideologies, exaggerations, failures, and mystifications of the social value of human labor in order to question accepted and prolific automation mythologies. Jesse Ramirez offers a study of automation that recognizes automation as a technosocial project, that uses the tools of cultural studies and history to investigate the narratives and ideologies that often implicitly frame the automation debate, and that concretely and soberly assesses the technologies that have made the headlines. The case studies featured include some of the most widely cited and celebrated automatic technologies, such as the Baxter industrial robot, the self-driving car, and the Watson AI system. An ideal resource for anyone interested in or studying emerging technology and society, automation, Marxist cultural theory, cultural studies, science fiction studies, and the cultural history of technology.
Have you ever considered how much effect information technology has on society throughout the world? Progress often places lower income and marginalized communities at a distinct disadvantage. Community Participation and Geographic Information Systems, however, offers a detailed look at numerous incidences around the world where communities have actually taken control of the technology and really used it to their advantage. This is presented in the form of case studies and models such as Philadelphia's neighborhoods, the Atlanta Project, and neighborhood revitalization in Minneapolis, reflect on public participation in GIS concepts, best practices, constraints and opportunities.
There remains a widespread perception among both the public and elements of academia that the Internet is "ungovernable". However, this idea, as well as the notion that the Internet has become some type of cyber-libertarian utopia, is wholly inaccurate. Governments may certainly encounter tremendous difficulty in attempting to regulate the Internet, but numerous types of authority have nevertheless become pervasive. So who, then, governs the Internet? This book will contend that the Internet is, in fact, being governed, that it is being governed by specific and identifiable networks of policy actors, and that an argument can be made as to how it is being governed. This book will present a new conceptual framework for analysis that deconstructs the Internet into four policy "layers" with the aim of formulating a new political architecture that accurately maps out and depicts authority on the Internet today. Foremost, it will seek to draw a distinction between those actors who have a demonstrable policymaking authority versus those who merely wield influence. The book will then apply this four-layer model to an analysis of U.S. national cybersecurity policy, post-9/11. Ultimately, it will seek to determine the consequences of these political arrangements and governance policies.
The most exciting and productive areas of academic inquiry are often where the interests of two disciplines meet. This is certainly the case for the subject of this book, originally published in 1994, which explores the contribution that computer-based modelling and artificial intelligence can make to understanding fundamental issues in social science. Simulating Societies shows how computer simulations can help to clarify theoretical approaches, contribute to the evaluation of alternative theories, and illuminate one of the major issues of the social sciences: how social phenomena can "emerge" from individual action. The authors discuss how simulation models can be constructed using recently developed artificial intelligence techniques and they consider the methodological issues involved in using such models for theory development, testing and experiment. The introductory chapters situate the book within social science, and suggest why the time was ripe for significant progress, before defining basic terminology, showing how simulation has been used to theorize about organizations, and indicating through examples some of the fundamental issues involved in simulation. The main body of the text provides case studies drawn from economics, anthropology, archaeology, planning, social psychology and sociology. The appeal of this path-breaking book was twofold. It offered an essential introduction to simulation for social scientists and it provided case study applications for computer scientists interested in the latest advances in the burgeoning area of distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) at the time.
In this book, Steffen Lange and Tilman Santarius investigate how digitalization influences environmental and social sustainability. The information revolution is currently changing the daily lives of billions of people worldwide. At the same time, the current economic model and consumerist lifestyle needs to be radically transformed if society is to overcome the challenges humanity is facing on a finite planet. Can the much-discussed disruption potential of digitalization be harnessed for this purpose? Smart Green World? provides guiding principles for a sustainable digital society and develops numerous hands-on proposals for how digitalization can be shaped to become a driving force for social transformation. For instance, the authors explain why more digitalization is needed to realize the transition towards 100% renewable energy and show how this can be achieved without sacrificing privacy. They analyze how the information revolution can transform consumption patterns, mobility habits and industry structures - instead of fostering the consumption of unneeded stuff due to personalized commercials and the acceleration of life. The authors reveal how Artificial Intelligence and the Industrial Internet of Things pose novel environmental challenges and contribute to a polarization of income; but they also demonstrate how the internet can be restored to its status as a commons, with users taking priority and society at large reaping the benefits of technological change in a most democratic way. Providing a comprehensive and practical assessment of both social and environmental opportunities and challenges of digitalization, Smart Green World? Making Digitalization Work for Sustainability will be of great interest to all those studying the complex interrelationship of the twenty-first-century megatrends of digitalization and decarbonization.
In this collection of essays, leaders in the emerging field of information ethics (Daniel Dennett, Senator Patrick Leahy, Kirkpatrick Sale, ACLU president Nadine Strossen, and 15 others) discuss the challenges associated with advances in technology. The essays are divided into five subject areas: freedom if information and the pursuit of knowledge; information, technology and education; information, rights and social justice; ethics and the Internet; and professional ethics. The writers come from many backgrounds (e.g., libraries, law, and academy) and provide a variety of views on the value of information and its ethical dimension in an increasingly technological age. The essays have been drawn from many periodicals, including ""Library Journal"", ""Daedalus"", ""The Nation"", ""Journal of Information Ethics"" and ""Wired"". |
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