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Books > Computing & IT > Social & legal aspects of computing > Impact of computing & IT on society
The principles of sociotechnology derive from 19th century movements towards democracy equality in society. Due to its origins, it has been concerned specifically with the workplace but we now see that the concepts and principles apply much further or could apply to the way we design technology for the social environment as a whole. The word sociotechnical is now used by some authors to refer to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behavior. Technological Change and Societal Growth: Analyzing the Future focuses on new ideas and approaches, including studies of the practical implementation of practitioners, academics, researchers, and students. The aim of the book is to bring together the expertise of people who have worked practically in a changing society across the world for people in the field of organizational development and technology studies including information systems development and implementation.
Social Media: Principles and Applications examines social media in interpersonal, mass-mediated, educational, organizational, and political settings. Social media technologies take on many different forms, including social network sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogs, wikis, online video and photo-sharing sites (e.g., Pinterest), rating and social bookmarking sites, and video/text chatting sites (e.g., Skype). Beginning with the principles of social media, Sheldon disassembles applications of social media in a variety of settings to understand who is using social media, how they develop meaningful relationships, and how they use social media during major events. Sheldon also delves into the political, educational, commercial, and privacy issues of social media use, making this an excellent resource for communication, psychology, and social media scholars.
This set of essays brings together scholars and practitioners from different part of the world engaged in how ethical interpretations of globalization, citizenship, and information might provide insights into global relations and issues. This effort expands information ethics work into a wider circle, as the subject is examined by a purposefully diverse range of perspectives, from philosophers, to social justice educators, to working librarians. The book builds its arguments on both traditional scholarly and professional sources as well as new ones, by necessity, for example data leaked from software used by the Communications Security Establishment, Canada's national cryptologic agency, to spy on the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy that were part of the leaked Snowden data. The result is a work entwines cautionary tales with possibilities for resistance and that expands our understanding of citizenship and of the reshaping of public and private spheres. On one level the book brings to light the expansion of globalization, digital citizenship, and how the borders and boundaries of citizenship as a national concern have been challenged by globalized information systems and practices. On another level, the book reveals ways public and private spheres have been reshaped through colonialism, capitalism, and globalization.
Recent shifts in new literacy studies have expanded definitions of text, reading/viewing, and literacy itself. The inclusion of non-traditional media forms is essential, as texts beyond written words, images, or movement across a screen are becoming ever more prominent in media studies. Included in such non-print texts are interactive media forms like computer or video games that can be understood in similar, though distinct, terms as texts that are read by their users. This book examines how people are socially, culturally, and personally changing as a result of their reading of, or interaction with, these texts. This work explores the concept of ergodic ontogeny: the mental development resulting from interactive digital media play experiences causing change in personal identity.
This book examines two key themes in terrorism studies, the radicalization process and counter-terrorism policies, through the lens of social networks. The book aims to show that networks should be at the forefront not only when analysing terrorists, but also when assessing the responses to their actions. The volume makes a unique contribution by addressing two relatively new themes for terrorism studies. First it puts social relations and cooperation issues at the forefront - an approach often identified as crucial to future breakthroughs in the field. Second, many contributions tackle the role of the Internet in the process of radicalization and in recruitment more generally, a highly debated topic in the field today. In addition, the book provides a valuable mix of review essays, critical essays, and original empirical studies. This balanced approach is also found in the topics covered by the authors, as well as their academic disciplines, which include sociology, computer science, geography, history, engineering, and criminology as well as political science. Many of the true advances in terrorism studies depend on the successful collaboration of multi-disciplinary teams, each with a different set of methodological and conceptual tools. This volume reflects the newfound diversity in this field and is a true product of its time. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, social networks, security studies, sociology, criminology and international relations in general.
This fascinating work explores the meaning of death in the digital age, showing readers the new ways digital technology allows humans to approach, prepare for, and handle their ultimate destiny. With DeadSocial (TM) one can create messages to be published to social networks after death. Facebook's "If I Die" enables users to create a video or text message for posthumous publication. Twitter _LIVESON accounts will keep tweeting even after the user is gone. There is no doubt that the digital age has radically changed options related to death, dying, grieving, and remembering, allowing people to say goodbye in their own time and their own unique way. Drawing from a range of academic perspectives, this book is the only serious study to focus on the ways in which death, dying, and memorialization appear in and are influenced by digital technology. The work investigates phenomena, devices, and audiences as they affect mortality, remembrances, grieving, posthumous existence, and afterlife experience. It examines the markets to which the providers of such services are responding, and it analyzes the degree to which digital media is changing views and expectations related to death. Ultimately, the contributors seek to answer an even more important question: how digital existences affect both real-world perceptions of life's end and the way in which lives are actually lived. Explains how new technologies and online accessibility are changing human attitudes to death and dying-and impacting the ways in which people live Explores the afterlife experience as it can play out in a variety of digital media, including Facebook and other social media, World of Warcraft and video games, YouTube and other video services, and Internet memorials Analyzes the myriad ways encounters with death and dying and the capacity for mourning are mediated by new technologies Places death and dying in the digital age in historical perspective, showing how beliefs about and approaches to death and dying have changed constantly over time
Handbook of Usability and User Experience: Methods and Techniques is concerned with emerging usability and user experience in design concepts, theories and applications of human factors knowledge focusing on the discovery, design and understanding of human interaction and usability issues with products and systems for their improvement. This volume presents methods and techniques to design products, systems and environments with good usability, accessibility and user satisfaction. It introduces the concepts of usability and its association with user experience, and discusses methods and models for usability and UX. It also introduces relevant cognitive, cultural, social and experiential individual differences, which are essential for understanding, measuring and utilizing these differences in the study of usability and interaction design. In addition, the book discusses the use of usability assessment to improve healthcare, the relationship between usability and user experience in the built environment, the state-of-the-art review of usability and UX in the digital world, usability and UX in the current context, and emerging technologies. We hope that this first of two volumes will be helpful to a large number of professionals, students and practitioners who strive to incorporate usability and user experience principles and knowledge in a variety of applications. We trust that the knowledge presented in this volume will ultimately lead to an increased appreciation of the benefits of usability and incorporate the principles of usability and user experience knowledge to improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of consumer products, systems and environments in which we live.
This edited book introduces readers to the area of "Everyday Virtual and Augmented Reality". With Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies, becoming more pervasive in our homes and workplaces, new use cases and scenarios emerge together with new challenges that need to be addressed. These challenges encompass the design and implementation of appropriate VR/AR applications for ordinary environments that were not built with the explicit intention of supporting VR systems. The everyday/domestic environments present a range of issues that are usually not present in the physical locations purposed for VR and AR use in academic or professional environments, such as constrained spaces, presence of obstacles, absence of instrumentation, social and organizational restrictions etc. To address the above challenges, we collect the latest work from the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality research community, by combining the presentation of general definitions and characterization of the field, of interaction concepts and techniques, of a variety of use cases and areas. The constellation of different environment examples (from education, sport to consumer and marketing), from across the globe and platforms, provide a comprehensive discussion on scientific and engineering methods, which enable the development of VR/AR systems in everyday context.
The first guide to tackle security architecture at the software engineering level
As the "information superhighway" moves into the home through interactive media, enhanced telecom services, and hybrid appliances, interest continually grows in how consumers adopt and use Information Technology (IT), the strategies IT marketers use to reach consumers, and the public policies that help and protect consumers. USE COPY FROM THIS POINT ON FOR GENERAL CATALOGS... This book presents a unique collection of papers dealing with the demand side issues of new information technologies in the home. The contributors are from business, academia, and the public policy sector and represent many disciplines including communication, marketing, economics, psychology, engineering, and information systems. This book provides one of the best introductions to complex issues such as: * business forces that will shape "Home IT" of the future; * industry structure of the future "Infotainment" mega-business; * factors affecting consumer adoption and use of IT; * international differences in the management of the IT sector; and * public policies that will shape the deployment and use of IT.
Takes an interdisciplinary approach to contribute to the ongoing development of human-AI interaction. Current debate and development of AI is "algorithm-driven" or technical-oriented in lieu of human-centered. At present, there is no systematic interdisciplinary discussion to effectively deal with issues and challenges arising from AI. This book offers critical analysis of the logic and social implications of algorithmic processes. Reporting from the processes of scientific research, the results can be useful for understanding the relationship between algorithms and humans, allowing AI designers to assess the quality of the meaningful interactions with AI systems.
What is well-being? Is it a stable income, comfortable home, and time shared with family and friends? Is it clean drinking water and freedom from political oppression? Is it finding Aristotle's Golden Mean by living a life of reason and moderation? Scholars have sought to define well-being for centuries, teasing out nuances among Aristotle's writings and posing new theories of their own. With each major technological shift this question of well-being arises with new purpose, spurring scholars to re-examine the challenge of living the good life in light of significantly altered conditions. Social media comprise the latest technological shift, and in this book leading scholars in the philosophy and communication disciplines bring together their knowledge and expertise in an attempt to define what well-being means in this perpetually connected environment. From its blog prototype in the mid-to-late-2000s to its microblogging reality of today, users have been both invigorated and perplexed by social media's seemingly near-instant propagation. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn have been hailed as everything from revolutionary to personally and societally destructive. In an exploration of the role social media play in affecting well-being, whether among individuals or society as a whole, this book offers something unique among academic tomes, an opening essay by an executive in the social media industry who shares his observations of the ways in which social communication conventions have changed since the introduction of social media. His essay is followed by an interdisciplinary academic exploration of the potential contributions and detractions of social media to well-being. Authors investigate social media's potential influence on friendship, and on individuals' physical, emotional, social, economic, and political needs. They consider the morality of online deception, how memes and the very structure of the internet inhibit rational social discourse, and how social media facilitate our living a very public life, whether through consent or coercion. Social media networks serve as gathering places for the exchange of information, inspiration, and support, but whether these exchanges are helpful or harmful to well-being is a question whose answer is necessary to living a good life.
It has become increasingly difficult to ignore the ways that the centrality of new media and technologies - from the global networking of information systems and social media to new possibilities for altering human genetics - seem to make obsolete our traditional ways of thinking about ethics and persuasive communication inherited from earlier humanist paradigms. This book argues that rather than devoting our critical energies towards critiquing humanist touchstones, we should instead examine the ways in which media and technologies have always worked as crucial cultural forces in shaping ethics and rhetoric. Pruchnic combines this historical itinerary with critical interrogations of diverse cultural and technological sites - the logic of video games and artificial intelligence, the ethics of life extension in contemporary medicine, the transition to computer-automated trading in world stock markets, the state of critical theory in the contemporary humanities - along with innovative analyses of the works of such figures as the Greek Sophists, Kenneth Burke, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Gilles Deleuze. This book argues that our best strategies for crafting persuasive communication and producing ethical relations between individuals will be those that creatively replicate and appropriate, rather than resist, the logics of dominant forms of media and technology.
Infrastructure makes worlds. Software coordinates labor. Logistics governs movement. These pillars of contemporary capitalism correspond with the materiality of digital communication systems on a planetary scale. Ned Rossiter theorizes the force of logistical media to discern how subjectivity and labor, economy and society are tied to the logistical imaginary of seamless interoperability. Contingency haunts logistical power. Technologies of capture are prone to infrastructural breakdown, sabotage, and failure. Strategies of evasion, anonymity, and disruption unsettle regimes of calculation and containment. We live in a computational age where media, again, disappear into the background as infrastructure. Software, Infrastructure, Labor intercuts transdisciplinary theoretical reflection with empirical encounters ranging from the Cold War legacy of cybernetics, shipping ports in China and Greece, the territoriality of data centers, video game design, and scrap metal economies in the e-waste industry. Rossiter argues that infrastructural ruins serve as resources for the collective design of blueprints and prototypes demanded of radical politics today.
From school lunchrooms to the White House press room, video games are an integral part of our popular culture, and the industry behind them touches all aspects of our lives, gamer and non-gamer alike. Business and entertainment, health and medicine, politics and war, social interaction and education, all fall under its influence. Virtual Ascendance tells the story of a formerly fringe enterprise that, when few were paying attention, exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry affecting the very way we live. Griffiths paints a thorough and vivid picture of the video game industry, illuminating the various, and often bizarre, ways it's changing how we work, play and live. He brings readers along on his own journey of discovery, from the back room of a small Irish pub where members of the second-largest industry enclave meet each month, to a university clinic where the Wii is being used to treat Parkinson's sufferers - and everywhere in between. Virtual Ascendance is more than just a story about video games, though. It's the story of an awakening, of a realization that a childhood pastime has exploded into a thriving enterprise - one rooted in entertainment but whose tendrils reach into virtually all aspects of life and society.
New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman declared the modern age in which we live as the 'age of distraction' in 2006. The basis of his argument was that technology has changed the ways in which our minds function and our capacity to dedicate ourselves to any particular task. Others assert that our attention spans and ability to learn have been changed and that the use of media devices has become essential to many people's daily lives and indeed the impulse to use technology is harder to resist than unwanted urges for eating, alcohol or sex. This book seeks to portray the see-saw like relationship that we have with technology and how that relationship impacts upon our lived lives. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives that cross traditional subject boundaries we examine the ways in which we both react to and are, to an extent, shaped by the technologies we interact with and how we construct the relationships with others that we facilitate via the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) be it as discreet online only relationships or the blending of ICTs enabled communication with real life co present interactions.
From race, sex, class, and culture, the multidisciplinary field of Internet studies needs theoretical and methodological approaches that allow us to question the organization of social relations that are embedded in digital technologies, and that foster a clearer understanding of how power relations are organized through technologies. Representing a scholarly dialogue among established and emerging critical media and information studies scholars, this volume provides a means of foregrounding new questions, methods, and theories which can be applied to digital media, platforms, and infrastructures. These inquiries include, among others, how representation to hardware, software, computer code, and infrastructures might be implicated in global economic, political, and social systems of control. Contributors argue that more research needs to explicitly trace the types of uneven power relations that exist in technological spaces. By looking at both the broader political and economic context and the many digital technology acculturation processes as they are differentiated intersectionally, a clearer picture emerges of how under-acknowledging culturally situated and gendered information technologies are impacting the possibility of participation with (or purposeful abstinence from) the Internet. This book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in Internet studies, library and information studies, communication, sociology, and psychology. It is also ideal for researchers with varying expertise and will help to advance theoretical and methodological approaches to Internet research.
Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, this book explores the key challenges associated with the proliferation of cyber capabilities. Over the past two decades, a new man-made domain of conflict has materialized. Alongside armed conflict in the domains of land, sea, air, and space, hostilities between different types of political actors are now taking place in cyberspace. This volume addresses the challenges posed by cyberspace hostility from theoretical, political, strategic and legal perspectives. In doing so, and in contrast to current literature, cyber-security is analysed through a multidimensional lens, as opposed to being treated solely as a military or criminal issues, for example. The individual chapters map out the different scholarly and political positions associated with various key aspects of cyber conflict and seek to answer the following questions: do existing theories provide sufficient answers to the current challenges posed by conflict in cyberspace, and, if not, could alternative approaches be developed?; how do states and non-state actors make use of cyber-weapons when pursuing strategic and political aims?; and, how does the advent of conflict in cyberspace challenge our established legal framework? By asking important strategic questions on the theoretical, strategic, ethical and legal implications and challenges of the proliferation of cyber warfare capabilities, the book seeks to stimulate research into an area that has hitherto been neglected. This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-conflict and cyber-warfare, war and conflict studies, international relations, and security studies.
It's the founding myth of humanities computing and digital humanities: In 1949, the Italian Jesuit scholar, Roberto Busa, S.J., persuaded IBM to offer technical and financial support for the mechanized creation of a massive lemmatized concordance to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas. Using Busa's own papers, recently accessioned in Milan, as well as IBM archives and other sources, Jones illuminates this DH origin story. He examines relationships between the layers of hardware, software, human agents, culture, and history, and answers the question of how specific technologies afford and even constrain cultural practices, including in this case the academic research agendas of humanities computing and, later, digital humanities.
Matchmaking is a tradition as old as marriage itself, and the activities and practices surrounding it have shifted alongside marriage. Building Relationships: Online Dating and the New Logics of Internet Culture uses an apparatus approach to media analysis to examine logics of compatibility, online dating site procedures, and user narratives of popular matchmaking sites. Shepherd's investigation serves as a case study to help understand the larger relationship between contemporary identity and what she calls matching technologies, as well as the complex of big data, computational processing, and the cultural assumptions that power today's most popular web applications.
From race, sex, class, and culture, the multidisciplinary field of Internet studies needs theoretical and methodological approaches that allow us to question the organization of social relations that are embedded in digital technologies, and that foster a clearer understanding of how power relations are organized through technologies. Representing a scholarly dialogue among established and emerging critical media and information studies scholars, this volume provides a means of foregrounding new questions, methods, and theories which can be applied to digital media, platforms, and infrastructures. These inquiries include, among others, how representation to hardware, software, computer code, and infrastructures might be implicated in global economic, political, and social systems of control. Contributors argue that more research needs to explicitly trace the types of uneven power relations that exist in technological spaces. By looking at both the broader political and economic context and the many digital technology acculturation processes as they are differentiated intersectionally, a clearer picture emerges of how under-acknowledging culturally situated and gendered information technologies are impacting the possibility of participation with (or purposeful abstinence from) the Internet. This book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in Internet studies, library and information studies, communication, sociology, and psychology. It is also ideal for researchers with varying expertise and will help to advance theoretical and methodological approaches to Internet research.
This book presents an introduction to strategies for qualitative digital social research on emotions in a digital world. The book emphasizes the connections that exist between emotional ecologies, emotions as texts, and the virtual / mobile / digital world that brings us closer to a hermeneutics of the practices of feeling. In the context of 'Society 4.0', the book explores: Changes in the organization of daily life and work in virtual, mobile and digital environments. The impact of apps and social networks on sensations, emotions and sensibilities. Necessary changes in social research to employ the power of these apps and networks for social enquiry. As such, this book shares a set of social inquiry practices developed and applied to capture and understand emotions today. It should be considered as a first step in a long journey of exploring the close connections between sensibilities, emotions, and social research methodology. The book will appeal to students and instructors of emotion studies from across the social sciences, including sociology, psychology, organization studies, ethnography, history, and political science.
Digital media have become deeply immersed in our lives, heightening both hopes and fears of their affordances. While the internet, mobile phones, and social media offer their users many options, they also engender concerns about their manipulations and intrusions. Emotions Online explores the visions that shape responses to media and the emotional regimes that govern people's engagements with them. This book critically examines evidence on the role of digital media in emotional life. Offering a sociological perspective and using ideas from science and technology studies and media studies, it explores: * The dimensions and operations of the online emotional economy * Growing concerns about online harms and abuse, especially to children * 'Deepfakes' and other forms of image-based abuse * The role of hope in shaping online behaviours * 'Digital well-being' and its market * COVID-19's impacts on perceptions of digital media and Big Tech * Growing challenges to centralised control of the internet, and the implications for future emotional life The book breaks new ground in the sociological study of digital media and the emotions. It reveals the dynamics of online emotional regimes showing how deceptive designs and algorithm-driven technologies serve to attract and engage users. As it argues, digital media rely on the emotional labours of many people, including social media inf luencers and content moderators who make the internet seem smart. The book provides an invaluable overview of the evidence and debates on the role of digital media in emotional life and guidance for future research, policy, and action.
Media technologies for play have become major industries in Japan and South Korea. Even in North Korea, citizens bypass the state to enjoy popular culture. At the same time, corporations and governments encourage people to produce economic values through play. The first comparative study of media technologies in Japan and the two Koreas, this book illuminates the peculiar geopolitical relations between the three countries through their development and use of digital technologies. Drawing from political economy, cultural studies and technology studies, this book will be essential reading for researchers and students of media technologies and popular culture in Northeast Asia.
Thematically organized around three of the most pressing ethical issues of the digital age (shifting of professional norms, moderating offensive content, and privacy), this volume offers a window into some of the hot-button ethical issues facing a society where digital has become the new normal. Straddling an applied ethical and theoretical approach, the research represented not only reflects on how our ethical frameworks have been changed and challenged by digital technology, but also provides insights for those confronted with specific ethical dilemmas related to digital technology. With contributions from established experts and up-and-coming scholars alike, this book cuts across disciplines and with appeal to communication scholars, philosophers, and anyone with an interest in ethics and technology. |
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