Ambient Assisted Living and Enhanced Living Environments: Principles, Technologies and Control separates the theoretical concepts concerning the design of such systems from their real-world implementations. For each important topic, the book bridges theory and practice, introducing the instruments needed by professionals in their activities. To this aim, topics are presented in a logical sequence, with the introduction of each topic motivated by the need to respond to claims and requirements from a wide range of AAL/ELE applications. The advantages and limitations of each model or technology are presented through concrete case studies for AAL/ELE systems. The book also presents up-to-date technological solutions to the main aspects regarding AAL/ELE systems and applications, a highly dynamic scientific domain that has gained much interest in the world of IT in the last decade. In addition, readers will find discussions on recent AAL/ELE technologies that were designed to solve some of the thorniest business problems that affect applications in areas such as health and medical supply, smart city and smart housing, Big Data and Internet of Things, and many more.

Smart Cities and Homes: Key Enabling Technologies explores the fundamental principles and concepts of the key enabling technologies for smart cities and homes, disseminating the latest research and development efforts in the field through the use of numerous case studies and examples. Smart cities use digital technologies embedded across all their functions to enhance the wellbeing of citizens. Cities that utilize these technologies report enhancements in power efficiency, water use, traffic congestion, environmental protection, pollution reduction, senior citizens care, public safety and security, literacy rates, and more. This book brings together the most important breakthroughs and advances in a coherent fashion, highlighting the interconnections between the works in different areas of computing, exploring both new and emerging computer networking systems and other computing technologies, such as wireless sensor networks, vehicle ad hoc networks, smart girds, cloud computing, and data analytics and their roles in creating environmentally friendly, secure, and prosperous cities and homes. Intended for researchers and practitioners, the book discusses the pervasive and cooperative computing technologies that will perform a central role for handling the challenges of urbanization and demographic change.

_______________ 'Through original interviews, a smart use of source material, and a wonderfully easy-going style, Blumenthal gives a full portrait of Jobs ...This is a smart book about a smart subject by a smart writer' - Ilene Cooper, American Library Journal _______________ Inventor. Visionary. Genius. Dropout. Adopted. Steve Jobs was the founder of Apple, and he was all of these things. Steve Jobs has been described as a showman, artist, tyrant, genius, jerk. Through his life he was loved, hated, admired and dismissed, yet he was a living legend; the genius who founded Apple in his parent's garage when he was just 21 years old, revolutionising the music world. He single-handedly introduced the first computer that could sit on your desk, and founded and nurtured a company called Pixar, bringing to life Oscar-winning animations Toy Story and Finding Nemo. So how did the man -- who was neither engineer nor computer geek -- change the world we live in, making us want every product he touched? On graduation day in 2005, a fifty-year-old Steve Jobs said: "Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. My second story is about love and loss. My third story is about death." This is his story. Critically acclaimed author Karen Blumenthal takes us to the core of this complicated and legendary man, from his adoption and early years through to the pinnacles of his career, his dismissal from his duties at Apple (for being too disruptive and difficult) to the graduation where he gave the commencement speech just 6 years before his death, giving life to what were soon to become some of most famous quotes of his career, ending with the message: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you." "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

India has become a highly visible participant in the information communication technology (ICT) industry. Since the 1990s, it has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world, emerging as the most watched test of global capitalism. The contributors to this volume examine how the ICT-driven development of India appears to have skipped the middle stages of the traditional economic development models and leapfrogged directly to the final stage whereby growth is mostly technologically driven. Information Communication Technology and Economic Development reveals new insights regarding the complex process of globalization. It shows how the generation and circulation of intellectual capital in the US and India in ICT have led to greater productivity in the US while facilitating the economic development of India. Most industrialized nations now see the vast intellectual capital-based services that India provides at extremely competitive rates as key to their own national competitiveness in the global arena. The contributors' findings suggest that India's ICT-led growth will accelerate in the next ten years, launching India as a major global economic power next to the US and China. This provocative and timely volume will be a necessary read for students and scholars of international business, public policy, economic development, management and strategy as well as all those interested in the impact of globalization on national and regional economies.

The internet has begun to develop into a much more immersive and multi-dimensional space. Three dimensional spaces and sites of interaction have not just gripped our attention but have begun to weave or be woven into the fabric of our professional and social lives. The Immersive Internet - including social media, augmented reality, virtual worlds, online games, 3D internet and beyond - is still nascent, but is moving towards a future where communications technologies and virtual spaces offer immersive experiences persuasive enough to blur the lines between the virtual and the physical. It is this emerging Immersive Internet that is the focus of this book of short thought pieces - postcards from the metaverse - by some of the leading thinkers in the field. The book questions what a more immersive and intimate internet might mean for society and for each of us.

This book provides valuable insights into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) through a comprehensive examination of Vision 2030, an ambitious economic plan by the KSA to reinvent and diversify its economy from a heavy dependence on hydrocarbon to knowledge-based resources. Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia: Vision 2030 discusses how this initiative will assist the government in achieving its envisioned goals by creating a culture of research, innovation and entrepreneurship. It studies the current state of the field as well as new policies and reforms in Saudi Arabia which encompass education systems, ICT infrastructure and a vibrant innovation landscape that includes academia, the public and private sectors and civil society. The authors present a number of real-life case studies as a model of inspiration for cross-sector development. The book provides a source of inspiration for other nations in studying the KSA's determined and ambitious plans as a country in a transitioning journey, from a natural resources-based economy towards a knowledge-based country with considerable diversification in all sectors. This book is a useful reference for students, researchers and policy and decision-makers in understanding Saudi innovation and the economic diversification ecosystem.

The Indian software industry has rapidly grown over the past decade, and most of this growth has been derived from exports to the US market. This book deals with business models, particularly the way the unique software model in India has evolved. It focuses on manpower resources in the software industry and knowledge diffusion through job switching, and the resulting impacts on business strategy.

What do Goggle, Facebook, mobile phones and creative commons have in common? The answer is: economics! Stefano Comino and Fabio Manenti have written a crisp and thorough treatment of the economics of information and communications technologies. This valuable book fills a real gap in the market.' - Professor Tommaso Valletti, Imperial College Business School'I enjoyed reading this book immensely. So will students, as they will be able to see lucidly the economics behind their inseparable electronic companions. Researchers keeping a copy at hand will have a rich reference source of the ways in which good economic theory has captured the behaviour of sophisticated firms and their customer.' - Gianni De Fraja, The University of Nottingham, UK This text rigorously blends theory with real-world applications to study the industrial organization of the ICT sector. Each of the self-contained chapters, which can be studied in isolation, contains theoretical models that are presented in a clear and accessible way. Throughout, a series of useful boxes complements and elucidates the theories with additional empirical/anecdotal evidence. This text will be of great interest to advanced undergraduate students with a background in microeconomics and game theory, particularly those taking courses in industrial organization, innovation economics and the economics of networks. The authors address the most important issues and are able to explore and explain complex theories and concepts in a clear, logical and coherent manner. Some of the topics covered include: - the economics of innovation - digital markets - network externalities - two-sided networks - imitation, open source and file sharing - antitrust in high-tech sectors. Contents: 1. Industrial Organisation of High-Tech Markets 2. Digital Markets 3. Network Externalities 4. Two-Sided Networks 5. Access and Interconnection in Telecommunications 6. Cumulative Innovation in Dynamic Industries 7. Imitation, Open Source and File Sharing 8. Antitrust in High-Tech Sectors References Index

The emergence of new platform business models, notably the sharing economy, is impacting the economy in various ways, altering the structure of many industries, and raising a number of economic and political issues. This book investigates the widespread influence of the sharing economy on businesses and society, as well as examining its underpinning economic principles and development. This volume presents an exhaustive review of the existing knowledge on the sharing economy and addresses several major areas of concern for incumbent businesses. It also explains the business models for those who are interested in embarking on their own ventures and provides an excellent source for further research. It takes an in-depth look at controversial labour policies, such as using labour as self-employed contractors or using regulatory grey areas to expand in markets. It is highly multidisciplinary, establishing links between economics, finance, marketing and consumer behaviour. This contribution on the sharing economy will enable researchers and graduate and doctoral students to expand and improve their understanding of this topic and identify new research problems in all of these areas. The book will also appeal to policy makers, regional and local government decision makers, and those interested in labour markets transformation.

The near-ubiquitous spread of ICT offers unprecedented opportunities for social and economic agents, reshapes social and economic structures and drives the emergence of socioeconomic networks. This book contributes to the growing body of literature and present state of knowledge, offering the reader broad evidence on how new information and communication technologies impact women's economic and social empowerment and hence have an impact on overall welfare creation. More specifically, it concentrates on demonstrating how ICT may become "empowering technologies" through their implementation. The book is designed to provide deep insight into the theoretical and empirical evidence on ICT as a significant driver of women`s social and economic development. Special focus is given to examining the following broad topics: channels of ICT impact on women's development; the role of ICT in enhancing women's active participation in formal labor markets; examples of how ICT encourages education, skills development, institutions development et alia, and thus contributes to women's social and economic empowerment, as well as case-based evidence on ICT's role in fostering women's equality. The primary audience for the book will be scholars and academic professionals from a wide variety of disciplines but mainly those who are concerned with addressing the issues of economic development and growth, social development, the role of technology progress in the context of broadly defined socioeconomic progress. Chapters 1 and 3 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

"An excellent introduction to the essential problem of our republic. With a wake-up call like this one, we still have a chance." -Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny Ghosting the News tells the most troubling media story of our time: How democracy suffers when local news dies. From 2004 to 2015, 1,800 print newspaper outlets closed in the US. One in five news organizations in Canada has closed since 2008. One in three Brazilians lives in news deserts. The absence of accountability journalism has created an atmosphere in which indicted politicians were elected, school superintendents were mismanaging districts, and police chiefs were getting mysterious payouts. This is not the much-discussed fake-news problem-it's the separate problem of a critical shortage of real news. America's premier media critic, Margaret Sullivan, charts the contours of the damage, and surveys a range of new efforts to keep local news alive-from non-profit digital sites to an effort modeled on the Peace Corps. No nostalgic paean to the roar of rumbling presses, Ghosting the News instead sounds a loud alarm, alerting citizens to a growing crisis in local news that has already done serious damage.

This is definitive take on the wildest story of the year- the David-vs.-Goliath GameStop short squeeze, a tale of fortunes won and lost overnight that may end up changing Wall Street forever. Bestselling author Ben Mezrich offers a gripping, beat-by-beat account of how a loosely affiliate group of private investors and internet trolls took down one of the biggest hedge funds on Wall Street, firing the first shot in a revolution that threatens to upend the financial establishment. It started on a subreddit forum called WallStreetBets - a meme-filled, freewheeling place where a disparate group of investors shared their shoot-the-moon investment tips, laughed about big losses, and posted diamond hand emojis. Until some members noticed an opportunity in Game Stop - a flailing bricks and mortar video-game retailer - and somehow rode a rocket ship to tens of millions of dollars in earnings overnight, simultaneously triggering unfathomable losses for one of the most respected funds on the street. In thrilling, pulse-pounding prose, THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK offers a fascinating, never-before-seen glimpse at the outsize personalities, dizzying swings, corporate drama, and underestimated American heroes and heroines who captivated the world during one of the most volatile weeks in financial history. It's the amazing story of what just happened-and where we go from here.

This practical text offers a research-based account of the technical communication profession and its practice, outlining emergent touchpoints of this fast-changing field while highlighting its diversity. Through research on the history and the globalization of technical communication and up-to-date industry analysis, including first-hand narratives from industry practitioners, this book brings together common threads through the industry, suggests future trends, and points toward strategic routes for development. Vignettes from the workplace and examples of industry practice provide tangible insights into the different paths and realities of the field, furnishing readers with a range of entry routes and potential career sectors, workplace communities, daily activities, and futures. This approach is central to helping readers understand the diverse competencies of technical communicators in the modern, globalized economy. The Profession and Practice of Technical Communication provides essential guidance for students, early professionals, and lateral entrants to the profession and can be used as a textbook for technical communication courses.

With recent advances in IT in areas such as AI and IoT, collaboration systems such as business chat, cloud services, conferencing systems, and unified communications are rapidly becoming widely used as new IT applications in global corporations' strategic activities. Through in-depth longitudinal studies of global corporations, the book presents a new theoretical framework and implications for IT-enabled dynamic capabilities using collaboration systems from the perspective of micro strategy theory and organization theory. The content of the book is based on longitudinal analyses that employ various qualitative research methods including ethnography, participant observation, action research and in-depth case studies of global corporations in Europe, the United States and Asia that actively use collaboration systems. It presents a new concept of micro dynamism whereby dynamic "IT-enabled knowledge communities" such as "IT-enabled communities of practice" and "IT-enabled strategic communities" create "IT-enabled dynamic capabilities" through the integration of four research streams - an information systems view, micro strategy view, micro organization view and knowledge-based view. The book demonstrates that collaboration systems create, maintain and develop "IT-enabled knowledge communities" within companies and are strategic IT applications for enhancing the competitiveness of companies in the ongoing creation of new innovation and the realization of sustainable growth in a 21st century knowledge-based society. This book is primarily written for academics, researchers and graduate students, but will also offer practical implications for business leaders and managers. Its use is anticipated not only in business and management schools, graduate schools and university education environments around the world but also in the broad business environment including management and leadership development training.

"Uberization," "digitalization," "platform economy," "gig economy," and "sharing economy" are some of the buzzwords that characterize the current intense discussions about the development of the economy and work around the world, among both experts and laypersons. Immense changes in the ways goods are manufactured, business is done, work tasks are performed, education is accomplished, and so on, are clearly underway. This also means that demand for careful, first-rate social scientific analyses of the phenomena in question is rapidly growing. This edited volume gathers distinguished researchers from economics, business studies, organization studies, medicine, social psychology, occupational health, pedagogics, and sociology to put particular work in both public and private sectors and education in both academic and vocational settings at the focus of the emerging digitalized platform economy. The authors anchor their analyses and conceptual and theoretical work in distinctive empirical developments that are taking place in one of the leading countries of digitalization processes: Finland. Finnish case studies reflect general global developments and show their particular, context-related actualization in multiple ways. This double exposure enables the authors of this multi- and interdisciplinary volume to advance conceptualization and theorization of the key phenomena in digitalizing platform societies in novel, creative, and groundbreaking directions. This book will without doubt be of great value to academic researchers and students in the fields of economics, business studies, work studies, social sciences, education, technology, digitalization, platforms, occupational health, entrepreneurship, and professions.

Can the internet fundamentally challenge non-free regimes? The role that social networking played in political change in the Middle East and beyond raises important questions about the ability of authoritarian leaders to control the information sphere and their subjects. Revolution Stalled goes beyond the idea of "virtual " politics to study five key components in the relationship between the online sphere and society: content, community, catalysts, control, and co-optation. This analysis of the contemporary Russian internet, written by a scholar with in-depth knowledge of both the post-Soviet media and media theory, illuminates how and when online activity can spark political action. This book argues that there are critical pre-conditions that help the internet to challenge non-free states. For example, Russian leaders became vulnerable to online protest movements and online social entrepreneurs when they failed to control the internet as effectively as they control traditional media. At the same time, Russia experienced explosive growth in online audiences, tipping the balance of control away from state-run television and toward the more open online sphere. Drawing upon studies of small-scale protests involving health issues and children with disabilities, Oates provides compelling evidence of the way Russians are translating individual grievances into rising political awareness and efficacy via the online sphere. The Russian state is struggling to change its information and control strategy in response to new types of information dissemination, networking, and protest. At the same time, this new environment has transformed a state strategy of co-opted elections into a powerful catalyst for protest and demands for rights. While the revolution remains stalled, Oates shows how a new and changing generation of internet users is transforming the public sphere in Russia.

This book explores the strategic decisions made by organizations when implementing cybersecurity controls and leveraging economic models and theories from the economics of information security and risk-management frameworks. Based on unique and distinct research completed within the field of risk-management and information security, this book provides insight into organizational risk-management processes utilized in determining cybersecurity investments. It describes how theoretical models and frameworks rely on either specific scenarios or controlled conditions and how decisions on cybersecurity spending within organizations-specifically, the funding available in comparison to the recommended security measures necessary for compliance-vary depending on stakeholders. As the trade-off between the costs of implementing a security measure and the benefit derived from the implementation of security controls is not easily measured, a business leader's decision to fund security measures may be biased. The author presents an innovative approach to assess cybersecurity initiatives with a risk-management perspective and leverages a data-centric focus on the evolution of cyber-attacks. This book is ideal for business school students and technology professionals with an interest in risk management.

Currently, most organizations are dependent on IS/ICT in order to support their business strategies. IS/ICT can promote the implementation of strategies and enhancers of optimization of the various aspects of the business. In market enterprises and social organizations, digital economy and ICTs are important tools that can empower social entrepreneurship initiatives to develop, fund, and implement new and innovative solutions to social, cultural, and environmental problems. The Handbook of Research on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and ICTs is an essential reference source that discusses the digitalization techniques of the modern workforce as well as important tools empowering social entrepreneurship initiatives. Featuring research on topics such as agile business analysis, multicultural workforce, and human resource management, this book is ideally designed for business managers, entrepreneurs, IT consultants, researchers, industry professionals, human resource consultants, academicians, and students.

'An exciting, astute analysis of how our capacity for desire has been slotted into the grooves of digital capitalism, and made to work for profit - from porn to Pokemon' - Richard Seymour We are in the middle of a 'desirevolution' - a fundamental and political transformation of the way we desire as human beings. Perhaps as always, new technologies - with their associated and inherited political biases - are organising and mapping the future. What we don't seem to notice is that the primary way in which our lives are being transformed is through the manipulation and control of desire itself. Our very impulses, drives and urges are 'gamified' to suit particular economic and political agendas, changing the way we relate to everything from lovers and friends to food and politicians. Digital technologies are transforming the subject at the deepest level of desire - re-mapping its libidinal economy - in ways never before imagined possible. From sexbots to smart condoms, fitbits to VR simulators and AI to dating algorithms, the 'love industries' are at the heart of the future smart city and the social fabric of everyday life. This book considers these emergent technologies and what they mean for the future of love, desire, work and capitalism.

This critical ethnographic study of knowledge workers and knowledge-intensive organization workplaces focuses on the issues of timing and schedules, the perception of formality and trust and distrust in software development as well as motivation and occupational identity among software engineers. The book is a cross-cultural, comparative study of American and European high-tech workplaces that addresses the issues currently of interest to both Academia and to practice and provides a rare international comparison of organizations from both sides of the Atlantic. Its conclusions shed new light on the problems typical for software projects. The book specifically focuses on, and gives voice to, the perspectives of knowledge workers rather than managers and will thus be useful to not only scholars and human resource managers from software companies, but also to high-tech professionals. Scholars and professionals in organization studies, management, HRM, innovation and knowledge management will find this book engaging and enlightening.

Cutting through the confusion around the nature and implications of digitalization, this book explores the rise of the new digital networks, how they affect traditional infrastructure, and how they will eventually need to be regulated. The authors examine how digitalization affects infrastructures in telecommunications, transport, and energy, and how digital platforms establish themselves as a new network on top of and in addition to traditional ones. Complex concepts are introduced through short and colorful stories about the founders of the most popular platforms (Google, Facebook, Skype, Uber, etc.) and how they grew to positions of power, drawing parallels with century-old traditional network industries' monopoly power (AT&T, General Electric, etc.). The authors argue that these digital platforms strongly interfere with traditional infrastructures that are heavily regulated and provide essential services for society - meaning that digital platforms should be considered as a new and much more powerful type of infrastructure and will require regulation accordingly. A global audience of policy makers, public authorities, consultants, lawyers, students, and academics, as well as anyone with an interest in these digital platforms, will find this book enlightening and essential reading.

Cutting through the confusion around the nature and implications of digitalization, this book explores the rise of the new digital networks, how they affect traditional infrastructure, and how they will eventually need to be regulated. The authors examine how digitalization affects infrastructures in telecommunications, transport, and energy, and how digital platforms establish themselves as a new network on top of and in addition to traditional ones. Complex concepts are introduced through short and colorful stories about the founders of the most popular platforms (Google, Facebook, Skype, Uber, etc.) and how they grew to positions of power, drawing parallels with century-old traditional network industries' monopoly power (AT&T, General Electric, etc.). The authors argue that these digital platforms strongly interfere with traditional infrastructures that are heavily regulated and provide essential services for society - meaning that digital platforms should be considered as a new and much more powerful type of infrastructure and will require regulation accordingly. A global audience of policy makers, public authorities, consultants, lawyers, students, and academics, as well as anyone with an interest in these digital platforms, will find this book enlightening and essential reading.