The cities and the regions of the world are being transformed under the combined impact of a restructuring of the capitalist system and a technological revolution. This is the thesis of this book, now in paperback. Castells not only brings together an impressive array of evidence to support it but puts forward a new body of theory to explain it. He analyzes the interaction between information technology, economic restructuring and socio-spatial change through the empirical observation of contemporary national, urban and regional processes in the capitalist world, with emphasis on the United States. The author summarizes a very wide range of evidence of urban and regional development, and isolates the causes and consequences of the processes and trends that may be observed.

Recent rapid advances in high-speed computer technology have provided a new reality, an perhaps urgency, to the arguments concerning some of the most basic and long-standing of philosophical issues. If computers can, before too long, achieve a genuine artificial intelligence, then may they not also have artificial minds? In this series of lectures, a distinguished group of international contributors from a variety of disciplines debate the current position. Donald Broadbent's introduction describes the parallels in human and machine behaviour, asserting the value of a scientific approach. Roger Penrose goes on to set the scene by evaluating current claims and issues, supporting a sceptical view. Contributions from Allen Newell, Dana Ballard and Mike Brady present some recent achievements of engineering and computer science, showing just how far machines have come. In his chapter Edmund Rolls offers a perspective from neuroscience and examines how certain cognitive processes (such as memory) can be understood in terms of how the brain itself computes and functions. From linguistics, Gerald Gazdar considers recent progress in getting computers to handle natural languages (such as English, Japanese, etc) rather than artificial languages. In the final chapter, Margaret Boden assesses the impact on philosophty of the current argument, which hangs on the resolution of a deep philosophical debate about the nature of mind.

From the early demise of Trent Lott at the hands of bloggers to the agonized scream of Howard Dean; from Daily Kos and the blogosphere to the rise of Twitter and Facebook, politics and new media have co-existed and evolved in rapid succession. Here, an academic and practitioner team up to consider how new and old media technologies mix with combustible politics to determine, in real time, the shape of the emerging political order. Our political moment shares with other realigning periods the sense that political parties are failing to address the public interest. In an era defined by the collapse of the political center, extreme income inequality, rapidly changing demography, and new methods of communicating and organizing, a second-generation online progressive movement fueled by email and social media is coming into its own. In this highly readable text, the authors - one a scholar of Internet politics, the other a leading voice of the first generation netroots - draw on unique data and on-the-ground experience to answer key questions at the core of our tumultuous politics: How has Internet activism changed in form and function? How have the left and right changed with it? How does this affect American political power?

Explaining how ubiquitous computing is rapidly changing our private and professional lives, Ethical IT Innovation: A Value-Based System Design Approach stands at the intersection of computer science, philosophy, and management and integrates theories and frameworks from all three domains. The book explores the latest thinking on computer ethics, including the normative ethical theories currently shaping the debate over the good and bad consequences of technology. It begins by making the case as to why IT professionals, managers, and engineers must consider the ethical issues when designing IT systems, and then uses a recognized system development process model as the structural baseline for subsequent chapters. For each system development phase, the author discusses: the ethical issues that must be considered, who must consider them, and how that thought process can be most productive. In this way, an 'Ethical SDLC' (System Development Life Cycle) is created. The book presents an extensive case study that applies the "Ethical SDLC" to the example of privacy protection in RFID enabled environments. It explains how privacy can be built into systems and illustrates how ethical decisions can be consciously made at each stage of development. The final chapter revisits the old debate of engineers' ethical accountability as well as the role of management. Explaining the normative theories of computer ethics, the book explores the ethical accountability of developers as well as stakeholders. It also provides questions at the end of each chapter that examine the ethical dimensions of the various development activities.

We are told that the future of work will be increasingly automated. Algorithms, processing massive amounts of information at startling speed, will lead us to a new world of effortless labour and a post-work utopia of ever expanding leisure. But behind the gleaming surface stands millions of workers, often in the Global South, manually processing data for a pittance. Recent years have seen a boom in online crowdworking platforms like Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Clickworker, and these have become an increasingly important source of work for millions of people. And it is these badly paid tasks, not algorithms, that make our digital lives possible. Used to process data for everything from the mechanics of self-driving cars to Google image search, this is an increasingly powerful part of the new digital economy, although one hidden and rarely spoken of. But what happens to work when it makes itself obsolete. In this stimulating work that blends political economy, studies of contemporary work, and speculations on the future of capitalism, Phil Jones looks at what this often murky and hidden form of labour looks like, and what it says about the state of global capitalism.

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.

Software has become essential to the functioning of cities. It is deeply embedded into the systems and infrastructure of the built environment and is entrenched in the management and governance of urban societies. Software-enabled technologies and services enhance the ways in which we understand and plan cities. It even has an effect on how we manage urban services and utilities. Code and the City explores the extent and depth of the ways in which software mediates how people work, consume, communication, travel and play. The reach of these systems is set to become even more pervasive through efforts to create smart cities: cities that employ ICTs to underpin and drive their economy and governance. Yet, despite the roll-out of software-enabled systems across all aspects of city life, the relationship between code and the city has barely been explored from a critical social science perspective. This collection of essays seeks to fill that gap, and offers an interdisciplinary examination of the relationship between software and contemporary urbanism. This book will be of interest to those researching or studying smart cities and urban infrastructure.

Technology is even more than our world, our form of life, our civilization. Technology interacts with the world to change it. Philosophers need to seriously address the fluidity of a smartphone interface, the efficiency of a Dyson vacuum cleaner, or the familiar noise of an antique vacuum cleaner. Beyond their phenomenological description, the emotional experience acquires moral significance and in some cases even supplies ethical resources for the self. If we leave this dimension of modern experience unaddressed, we may miss something of value in contemporary life. Combining European humanism, Anglophone pragmatism, and Asian traditions, Michel Puech pleads for an "ethical turn" in the way we understand and address technological issues in modern day society. Puech argues that the question of "power" is what needs to be reconsidered today. In doing so, he provides a three-tier distinction of power: power to modify the outer world (our first-intention method in any case: technology); power over other humans (our enduring obsession: politics and domination); power over oneself (ethics and wisdom).

Everything we do online, and increasingly in the real world, is tracked, logged, analyzed, and often packaged and sold on to the highest bidder. Every time you visit a website, use a credit card, drive on the freeway, or go past a CCTV camera, you are logged and tracked. Every day billions of people choose to share their details on social media, which are then sold to advertisers. The Edward Snowden revelations that governments - including those of the US and UK - have been snooping on their citizens, have rocked the world. But nobody seems to realize that this has already been happening for years, with firms such as Google capturing everything you type into a browser and selling it to the highest bidder. Apps take information about where you go, and your contact book details, harvest them and sell them on - and people just click the EULA without caring. No one is revealing the dirty secret that is the tech firms harvesting customers' personal data and selling it for vast profits - and people are totally unaware of the dangers. You: For Sale is for anyone who is concerned about what corporate and government invasion of privacy means now and down the road. The book sets the scene by spelling out exactly what most users of the Internet and smart phones are exposing themselves to via commonly used sites and apps such as facebook and Google, and then tells you what you can do to protect yourself. The book also covers legal and government issues as well as future trends. With interviews of leading security experts, black market data traders, law enforcement and privacy groups, You: For Sale will help you view your personal data in a new light, and understand both its value, and its danger.

The use of digital information and communication technologies would be the traces of a social acceptability of the exploitation of all data, in the context of negotiations of uses. This is the reason why the users present themselves actors and contributors of the hyperconnectivity. We would thus witness a new form of dissemination, inviting user experience and social innovations. It is thus the victory of subordination by negotiated renunciation; A new form of serving, no longer that of the 1980s, with the counters and other services, which have become uncontrolled services - excepted when the users are overcome by restrictive ergonomics, revealing too much the subordination device - which joins the prescription apparently without an injunction. The lure is at its height when users and broadcasters come together to produce the services and goods, composing the business model, until the very existence of the companies, in particular the pure players. Crowdsourcing becomes legitimate: consumers create the content, deliver the data, the basis of the service sold (in a painless way because free access most of the time, indirect financing), the providers make available and administer the service, networks, Interfaces (representing considerable costs), also reputation to attract the attention of other consumers or contributors. In these conditions, the environmental stakes are considerable, so we propose another way of considering them, not as they are dealt with - material and pollution - but according to the prism of the relational practices analyzed in this volume.

Today's "machine-learning" systems, trained by data, are so effective that we've invited them to see and hear for us-and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem. Systems cull resumes until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole-and appear to assess Black and White defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And as autonomous vehicles share our streets, we are increasingly putting our lives in their hands. The mathematical and computational models driving these changes range in complexity from something that can fit on a spreadsheet to a complex system that might credibly be called "artificial intelligence." They are steadily replacing both human judgment and explicitly programmed software. In best-selling author Brian Christian's riveting account, we meet the alignment problem's "first-responders," and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Readers encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they-and we-succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story. The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity's biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture-and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.

A look at the revolution in game live streaming and esports broadcasting Every day thousands of people broadcast their gaming live to audiences over the internet using popular sites such as Twitch, which reaches more than one hundred million viewers a month. In these new platforms for interactive entertainment, big esports events featuring digital game competitors live stream globally, and audiences can interact with broadcasters-and each other-through chat in real time. What are the ramifications of this exploding online industry? Taking readers inside home studios and backstage at large esports events, Watch Me Play investigates the rise of game live streaming and how it is poised to alter how we understand media and audiences. Through extensive interviews and immersion in this gaming scene, T. L. Taylor delves into the inner workings of the live streaming platform Twitch. From branding to business practices, she shows the pleasures and work involved in this broadcasting activity, as well as the management and governance of game live streaming and its hosting communities. At a time when gaming is being reinvented through social media, the potential of an ever-growing audience is transforming user-generated content and alternative distribution methods. These changes will challenge the meaning of ownership and intellectual property and open the way to new forms of creativity. The first book to explore the online phenomenon Twitch and live streaming games, Watch Me Play offers a vibrant look at the melding of private play and public entertainment.

The leading thinkers from the cognitive science tradition participated in a workshop sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories in July of 2003 to discuss progress in building their models. The goal was to summarize the theoretical and empirical bases for cognitive systems and to present exemplary developments in the field. Following the workshop, a great deal of planning went into the creation of this book. Eleven of the twenty-six presenters were asked to contribute chapters, and four chapters are the product of the breakout sessions in which critical topics were discussed among the participants. An introductory chapter provides the context for this compilation. Cognitive Systems thus presents a unique merger of cognitive modeling and intelligent systems, and attempts to overcome many of the problems inherent in current expert systems. It will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of cognitive science, computational modeling, intelligent systems, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction.

From the star of the YouTube sensation Jason Drives, the senior editor of the acclaimed website Jalopnik, and a producer of Jay Leno's Garage comes the wittiest and most insightful guide yet to self-driving cars 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 Volvos, 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, famed automotive expert Jason Torchinsky gives a colorful account of the development of autonomous vehicles and their likely implications. Torchinsky encourages us to think of self-driving cars as an entirely new machine, something beyond cars as we understand them today. He 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 trick them and 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 brims with insider information. It explores what's ahead and considers what we can do now to shape the automated future.

How many times do you check something on the internet but find you are drifting aimlessly from one link to another? If you can't not answer the phone when it rings, and you spend hours a week on social media, and you read your texts instead of kissing your loved one goodnight, and you don't give your kids proper attention because you just have to prioritize new responses to your tweet...then this book is for you. The digital world is spreading like an inferno - a swirling, hot storm of change, possibility, addiction, passion, manipulation, creativity and abuse. It demands our attention and encourages us to be always on, with its constant updates and feedback. It is exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. And it's developing faster than our ability to deal with it. To adherents of digital living and working, any criticism is uncool, a sign of being out of touch. Refreshingly, Digital Inferno is neither simple indictment nor unqualified endorsement. Rather, it's about holding your own in the digital realm - adapting in a healthy way to the new reality. It offers a conscious path that allows you to derive the benefits you need but also to manage the dangers. Packed with a wealth of practical advice, Digital Inferno describes numerous methods to enable you to step back from constant digital activity and virtual living, and to pay more attention to the real world. You'll find exercises to overcome tiredness from digital contact and to develop skills to enable you to remain awake and aware. Crucially, you will be master of the digital realm: to abstain from contact when you need to, but also freely to immerse yourself when you choose to. We don't need to shun new technology, but we do need to be armed with an understanding of its challenges, problems and limitations. This book provides the tools you will need to meet the future consciously.

The experience of engaging with art and history has been utterly transformed by information and communications technology in recent decades. We now have virtual, mediated access to countless heritage collections and assemblages of artworks, which we intuitively browse and navigate in a way that wasn't possible until very recently. This collection of essays takes up the question of the cultural meaning of the information and communications technology that makes these new engagements possible, asking questions like: How should we theorise the sensory experience of art and heritage? What does information technology mean for the authority and ownership of heritage?

Digital Nomad tells us how current and future technological possibilities, combined with our natural urge to travel, will once again allow mankind to live, work, and exist on the move. This is what just some of the worlds major company leaders and thinkers are saying about Digital Nomad.

"The book provides us with a deep insight into the lifestyle in the future" Kazuo Kashio, President, Casio Computer

"The book is fun to read and the technical content is sound and perceptive" John G. Linvill, Professor of Electronic Engineering at Stanford University, California

"This book answers the question What is the value of information for human beings?" Hiroo Toyoda, Chairman (former President), NTT Electronics

"From a new perspective, based on fact, two famous authors describe a dramatic lifestyle change: global nomadism" JA1/4rgen Knorr, President, Siemens Semiconductors, 1983a96 ("for 13 years one of those Digital Nomads")

"Success in 21st century business will indeed depend on the ability to master the nomadic environment. A guide to this emerging world is therefore highly welcome" Pasquale Pistorio, President and CEO, SGS-Thomson Microelectronics

"At heart we are travellers and explorers, unnaturally constrained to our place of work. This books unique insight into modern technology shows how we can be freed to roam again" Doug Dunn OBE, Chairman and CEO, Phillips Sound and Vision

"Free as in Freedom" interweaves biographical snapshots of GNU project founder Richard Stallman with the political, social and economic history of the free software movement. It examines Stallman's unique personality and how that personality has been at turns a driving force and a drawback in terms of the movement's overall success.

"Free as in Freedom" examines one man's 20-year attempt to codify and communicate the ethics of 1970s era "hacking" culture in such a way that later generations might easily share and build upon the knowledge of their computing forebears. The book documents Stallman's personal evolution from teenage misfit to prescient adult hacker to political leader and examines how that evolution has shaped the free software movement. Like Alan Greenspan in the financial sector, Richard Stallman has assumed the role of tribal elder within the hacking community, a community that bills itself as anarchic and averse to central leadership or authority. How did this paradox come about? "Free as in Freedom" provides an answer. It also looks at how the latest twists and turns in the software marketplace have diminished Stallman's leadership role in some areas while augmenting it in others.

Finally, "Free as in Freedom" examines both Stallman and the free software movement from historical viewpoint. Will future generations see Stallman as a genius or crackpot? The answer to that question depends partly on which side of the free software debate the reader currently stands and partly upon the reader's own outlook for the future. 100 years from now, when terms such as "computer," "operating system" and perhaps even "software" itself seem hopelessly quaint, will Richard Stallman's particular vision of freedom still resonate, or will it have taken its place alongside other utopian concepts on the 'ash-heap of history?'

What identity means in an algorithmic age: how it works, how our lives are controlled by it, and how we can resist it Algorithms are everywhere, organizing the near limitless data that exists in our world. Derived from our every search, like, click, and purchase, algorithms determine the news we get, the ads we see, the information accessible to us and even who our friends are. These complex configurations not only form knowledge and social relationships in the digital and physical world, but also determine who we are and who we can be, both on and offline. Algorithms create and recreate us, using our data to assign and reassign our gender, race, sexuality, and citizenship status. They can recognize us as celebrities or mark us as terrorists. In this era of ubiquitous surveillance, contemporary data collection entails more than gathering information about us. Entities like Google, Facebook, and the NSA also decide what that information means, constructing our worlds and the identities we inhabit in the process. We have little control over who we algorithmically are. Our identities are made useful not for us-but for someone else. Through a series of entertaining and engaging examples, John Cheney-Lippold draws on the social constructions of identity to advance a new understanding of our algorithmic identities. We Are Data will educate and inspire readers who want to wrest back some freedom in our increasingly surveilled and algorithmically-constructed world.

A revealing look at how user behavior is powering deep social divisions online-and how we might yet defeat political tribalism on social media In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Chris Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves. Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and off-detailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit "reset" and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research. Providing data-driven recommendations for strengthening our social media connections, Breaking the Social Media Prism shows how to combat online polarization without deleting our accounts.

"Financial Times" Business Book of the Year Finalist
"Illuminating and very timely . . . a fascinating -- and sometimes alarming -- survey of big data's growing effect on just about everything: business, government, science and medicine, privacy, and even on the way we think."
--"New York Times"
It seems like "big data" is in the news every day, as we read the latest examples of how powerful algorithms are teasing out the hidden connections between seemingly unrelated things. Whether it is used by the NSA to fight terrorism or by online retailers to predict customers' buying patterns, big data is a revolution occurring around us, in the process of forever changing economics, science, culture, and the very way we think. But it also poses new threats, from the end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven't even done yet, based on big data's ability to predict our future behavior. What we have already seen is just the tip of the iceberg.
"Big Data" is the first major book about this earthshaking subject, with two leading experts explaining what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards.
"An optimistic and practical look at the Big Data revolution -- just the thing to get your head around the big changes already underway and the bigger changes to come."
--Cory Doctorow, boingboing.com

While there is a lot of talk about how we now live in a knowledge society, the reality has been less impressive: We have yet to truly transition to a knowledge society-in part, this book argues, because discussion mostly focuses on a knowledge economy and information society rather than on ways to mobilise to create an actual knowledge society. That all may change, however, with the rise of open data and big data. This book considers the role of the open data movement in fostering transformation, showing that at the heart of any successful mobilisation will be an emerging open data ecosystem and new ways for societal actors to effectively produce and use data.

Information technology has become an essential component of contemporary society, allowing much faster and more widespread communication, not least through the growth of the internet. However, many issues concerned with the human aspects of the use of IT remain problematic despite technological advances. An enhanced ability to collect and process data, or to communicate electronically across time and space, does not necessarily lead to improved human communication and action.

This book explores the social aspects of computerization, using a wide range of detailed case studies, analysed from a variety of conceptual viewpoints. A further distinctive feature of the book is that it draws epirical material from accross the world as a whole, including non-Western countries. It is argued that we should be using IT to support a world in which diversity and difference are respected.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, we either hear of a paradise on earth or of our imminent extinction. It's time we stand face-to-digital-face with the true powers and limitations of the algorithms that already automate important decisions in healthcare, transportation, crime, and commerce. Hello World is indispensable preparation for the moral quandaries of a world run by code, and with the unfailingly entertaining Hannah Fry as our guide, we'll be discussing these issues long after the last page is turned.

Digital technologies have prompted the emergence of new modes of regulation and governance, since they allow for more decentralized processes of elaboration and implementation of norms. Moreover, the Internet has been raising a wide set of governance issues since it affects many domains, such as individual rights, public liberties, property rights, economic competition, market regulation, conflict management, security and the sovereignty of states. There is therefore a need to understand how technical, political, economic and social norms are articulated, as well as to understand who the main actors of this process of transformation are, how they interact and how these changes may influence international rulings. This book brings together an international team of scholars to explain and analyse how collective regulations evolve in the broader context of the development of post-modern societies, globalization, the reshaping of international relations and the profound transformations of nation-states.