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Books > Business & Economics > Industry & industrial studies > Media, information & communication industries > Information technology industries
'A fascinating expose of the world behind your screen. Timely, often disturbing, and so important' Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women 'Takes us beyond Zuckerberg, Bezos et al to a murkier world where we discover how everything online works and who benefits from it. Fascinating, engaging and important' Observer 'Could not be more timely' Spectator The internet is a network of physical cables and connections, a web of wires enmeshing the world, linking huge data centres to one another and eventually to us. All are owned by someone, financed by someone, regulated by someone. We refer to the internet as abstract from reality. By doing so, we obscure where the real power lies. In this powerful and necessary book, James Ball sets out on a global journey into the inner workings of the system. From the computer scientists to the cable guys, the billionaire investors to the ad men, the intelligence agencies to the regulators, these are the real-life figures powering the internet and pulling the strings of our society. Ball brilliantly shows how an invention once hailed as a democratising force has concentrated power in places it already existed - that the system, in other words, remains the same as it did before.
_______________ '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."
Protect your information assets with effective risk management In today's information economy, the development, exploitation and protection of information and associated assets are key to the long-term competitiveness and survival of corporations and entire economies. The protection of information and associated assets - information security - is therefore overtaking physical asset protection as a fundamental corporate governance responsibility. Information security management system requirements ISO 27000, which provides an overview for the family of international standards for information security, states that "An organisation needs to undertake the following steps in establishing, monitoring, maintaining and improving its ISMS [...] assess information security risks and treat information security risks". The requirements for an ISMS are specified in ISO 27001. Under this standard, a risk assessment must be carried out to inform the selection of security controls, making risk assessment the core competence of information security management and a critical corporate discipline. Plan and carry out a risk assessment to protect your information Information Security Risk Management for ISO 27001 / ISO 27002 Provides information security and risk management teams with detailed, practical guidance on how to develop and implement a risk assessment in line with the requirements of ISO 27001. Draws on national and international best practice around risk assessment, including BS 7799-3:2017 (BS 7799-3). Covers key topics such as risk assessment methodologies, risk management objectives, information security policy and scoping, threats and vulnerabilities, risk treatment and selection of controls. Includes advice on choosing risk assessment software. Ideal for risk managers, information security managers, lead implementers, compliance managers and consultants, as well as providing useful background material for auditors, this book will enable readers to develop an ISO 27001-compliant risk assessment framework for their organisation and deliver real, bottom-line business benefits. Buy your copy today! About the authors Alan Calder is the Group CEO of GRC International Group plc, the AIM-listed company that owns IT Governance Ltd. Alan is an acknowledged international cyber security guru and a leading author on information security and IT governance issues. He has been involved in the development of a wide range of information security management training courses that have been accredited by IBITGQ (International Board for IT Governance Qualifications). Alan has consulted for clients in the UK and abroad, and is a regular media commentator and speaker. Steve G Watkins is an executive director at GRC International Group plc. He is a contracted technical assessor for UKAS - advising on its assessments of certification bodies offering ISMS/ISO 27001 and ITSMS/ISO 20000-1 accredited certification. He is a member of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27, the international technical committee responsible for information security, cyber security and privacy standards, and chairs the UK National Standards Body's technical committee IST/33 (information security, cyber security and privacy protection) that mirrors it. Steve was an active member of IST/33/-/6, which developed BS 7799-3.
Software engineering education has a problem: universities and bootcamps teach aspiring engineers to write code, but they leave graduates to teach themselves the countless supporting tools required to thrive in real software companies. Building a Career in Software is the solution, a comprehensive guide to the essential skills that instructors don't need and professionals never think to teach: landing jobs, choosing teams and projects, asking good questions, running meetings, going on-call, debugging production problems, technical writing, making the most of a mentor, and much more. In over a decade building software at companies such as Apple and Uber, Daniel Heller has mentored and managed tens of engineers from a variety of training backgrounds, and those engineers inspired this book with their hundreds of questions about career issues and day-to-day problems. Designed for either random access or cover-to-cover reading, it offers concise treatments of virtually every non-technical challenge you will face in the first five years of your career-as well as a selection of industry-focused technical topics rarely covered in training. Whatever your education or technical specialty, Building a Career in Software can save you years of trial and error and help you succeed as a real-world software professional. What You Will Learn Discover every important nontechnical facet of professional programming as well as several key technical practices essential to the transition from student to professional Build relationships with your employer Improve your communication, including technical writing, asking good questions, and public speaking Who This Book is For Software engineers either early in their careers or about to transition to the professional world; that is, all graduates of computer science or software engineering university programs and all software engineering boot camp participants.
Residents in Boston, Massachusetts are automatically reporting potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Progressive Insurance tracks real-time customer driving patterns and uses that information to offer rates truly commensurate with individual safety. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its hundreds of millions of customers. Quantcast lets companies target precise audiences and key demographics throughout the Web. NASA runs contests via gamification site TopCoder, awarding prizes to those with the most innovative and cost-effective solutions to its problems. Explorys offers penetrating and previously unknown insights into healthcare behavior. How do these organizations and municipalities do it? Technology is certainly a big part, but in each case the answer lies deeper than that. Individuals at these organizations have realized that they don't have to be Nate Silver to reap massive benefits from today's new and emerging types of data. And each of these organizations has embraced Big Data, allowing them to make astute and otherwise impossible observations, actions, and predictions. It's time to start thinking big. In Too Big to Ignore, recognized technology expert and award-winning author Phil Simon explores an unassailably important trend: Big Data, the massive amounts, new types, and multifaceted sources of information streaming at us faster than ever. Never before have we seen data with the volume, velocity, and variety of today. Big Data is no temporary blip of fad. In fact, it is only going to intensify in the coming years, and its ramifications for the future of business are impossible to overstate. Too Big to Ignore explains why Big Data is a big deal. Simon provides commonsense, jargon-free advice for people and organizations looking to understand and leverage Big Data. Rife with case studies, examples, analysis, and quotes from real-world Big Data practitioners, the book is required reading for chief executives, company owners, industry leaders, and business professionals.
"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.
Blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt and transform the social media business space, but the existing literature uses complex technical jargon that prevents practitioners from taking advantage of its full potential. Nitin Upadhyay overcomes this barrier and offers a uniquely accessible discussion of how blockchain can revolutionise social media business models. His book offers an up-to-date analysis of the real benefits, usage and operationalisation aspects of blockchain and provides a systematic framework for social media business transformation through blockchain technology, all while using a simple, practical terminology. Readers learn about the utility of the blockchain ecosystem, about the innovation value proposition available to social media platforms through blockchain and about how to develop, assess and evaluate change in social media business models. Ultimately, they learn how to utilise blockchain innovation to develop a decentralised, autonomous and distributed ecosystem within the social-media space. Transforming Social Media Business Models Through Blockchain is essential reading for stakeholders associated with social media, blockchain and management, including practitioners, leaders, and scholars working with industry partners.
The latest edition of this international edited book series, based on the formation and growth problems of High Technology Small Firms (HTSF), contains the best papers presented at the 2011 and 2013 conferences, both held at Manchester Business School. This volume remains true to the initial mission of the HTSF Conference, established in 1993, to advance our knowledge of high-technology entrepreneurship and to advocate the need for more and better designed policy to promote such entrepreneurship. The need is as great as ever it was, not least given the continued economic stagnation of the European economy in the wake of the Financial Crisis and the Euro crisis. These papers address key themes relating to improving our understanding of the processes involved in high-technology entrepreneurship and of the design of effective policy to promote this research. The first two groups of papers examine the start-up and commercialization processes and the internationalization processes, which are often important for new high-technology businesses. Other papers examine topics like entrepreneurship clusters, inter-firm collaboration, and growth strategy for high-technology small firms.
One of the greatest challenges in the ever-changing world of IT is to create and maintain an innovation culture and align innovation activities with company strategy. This book provides a fresh perspective on innovation management activities in an IT environment using examples from both start-ups and established companies such as Cisco, Ericsson Nikola Tesla, Lufthansa Systems, Worldline, Amdocs, Telefonica and Enea. This book addresses the following issues: The software development environment offers many possibilities for innovation, yet also places some constraints on the innovation process at the same time. It considers how this can be bypassed to bring success to the company. It is a challenge to create and maintain an innovation culture using an agile process in the area of software development with its short cycles. This book describes how to bring innovation challenges closer to developers and use their experience and vision to create new projects. It also shows how to inspire software engineers using incremental and often small but useful money-saving improvements. The fourth industrial revolution changes companies from the inside and brings changes to common agile product management processes in IT. This book examines the effects on innovation management and what mechanisms are used for success in this new environment.
This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the Third IFIP WG 9.7 Conference on the History of Nordic Computing, HiNC3, held in Stockholm, Sweden, in October 2010. The 50 revised full papers presented together with a keynote address and a panel discussion were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers focus on the application and use of ICT and ways in which technical progress affected the conditions of the development and use of ICT systems in the Nordic countries covering a period from around 1970 until the beginning of the 1990s. They are organized in the following topical sections: computerizing public sector industries; computerizing management and financial industries; computerizing art, media, and schools; users and systems development; the making of a Nordic computing industry; Nordic networking; Nordic software development; Nordic research in software and systems development; teaching at Nordic universities; and new historiographical approaches and methodological reflections.
Cyber Security Management: A Governance, Risk and Compliance Framework by Peter Trim and Yang-Im Lee has been written for a wide audience. Derived from research, it places security management in a holistic context and outlines how the strategic marketing approach can be used to underpin cyber security in partnership arrangements. The book is unique because it integrates material that is of a highly specialized nature but which can be interpreted by those with a non-specialist background in the area. Indeed, those with a limited knowledge of cyber security will be able to develop a comprehensive understanding of the subject and will be guided into devising and implementing relevant policy, systems and procedures that make the organization better able to withstand the increasingly sophisticated forms of cyber attack. The book includes a sequence-of-events model; an organizational governance framework; a business continuity management planning framework; a multi-cultural communication model; a cyber security management model and strategic management framework; an integrated governance mechanism; an integrated resilience management model; an integrated management model and system; a communication risk management strategy; and recommendations for counteracting a range of cyber threats. Cyber Security Management: A Governance, Risk and Compliance Framework simplifies complex material and provides a multi-disciplinary perspective and an explanation and interpretation of how managers can manage cyber threats in a pro-active manner and work towards counteracting cyber threats both now and in the future.
We like to think that we are in control of the future of "artificial" intelligence. The reality, though, is that we--the everyday people whose data powers AI--aren't actually in control of anything. When, for example, we speak with Alexa, we contribute that data to a system we can't see and have no input into--one largely free from regulation or oversight. The big nine corporations--Amazon, Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Microsoft, IBM and Apple--are the new gods of AI and are short-changing our futures to reap immediate financial gain. In this book, Amy Webb reveals the pervasive, invisible ways in which the foundations of AI - the people working on the system, their motivations, the technology itself - are broken. Within our lifetimes, AI will, by design, begin to behave unpredictably, thinking and acting in ways which defy human logic. The big nine corporations may be inadvertently building and enabling vast arrays of intelligent systems that don't share our motivations, desires, or hopes for the future of humanity. Much more than a passionate, human-centred call-to-arms, this book delivers a strategy for changing course and provides a path for liberating us from algorithmic decision-makers and powerful corporations.
This deeply personal book tells the untold story of the significant contributions of technical professionals from the former Soviet Union to the US innovation economy, particularly in the sectors of software, social media, biotechnology, and medicine. Drawing upon in-depth interviews, it channels the voices and stories of more than 150 professionals who emigrated from 11 of the 15 former Soviet republics between the 1970s and 2015, and who currently work in the innovation hubs of Silicon Valley and Boston/Cambridge. Using the social science theories of institutions, imprinting, and identity, the authors analyze the political, social, economic, and educational forces that have characterized Soviet immigration over the past 40 years, showing how the particularities of the Soviet context may have benefited or challenged interviewees' work and social lives. The resulting mosaic of perspectives provides valuable insight into the impact of immigration on US economic development, specifically in high technology and innovation.
This book studies the motivation of crowdworkers to find out how to attract more people and reach a higher quality of outcomes. The book first proposes a taxonomy for studying the motivation of crowdworkers including the potential influencing factors, different types of motivation, and possible consequences and outcomes related to the motivation. Next, the CWMS questionnaire, an instrument for measuring the underlying motivation of crowdworkers is developed. It considers different dimensions of motivation suggested by the Self-Determination Theory of motivation which is a well-established and empirically validated psychological theory used in various domains. This instrument can be used to study the effect of platform and user characteristics on the general motivation of crowdworkers. Later, the task-specific motivation of crowdworkers is studied in detail: Influencing factors are investigated, subjective methods for measuring them are evaluated, a model for predicting worker's decision on taking a task is proposed, the relative importance of different factors for two populations of crowdworkers is studied, and finally, a model for predicting the expected workload (as one of the major influencing factors) given the task design is proposed.
This book presents a new management model that has evolved in Silicon Valley. The future will favor companies that can migrate to a management model, better suited for the times. The abilities to remain entrepreneurial and innovate constantly will be essential for all companies in an innovation economy. However, most firms still use industrial-age management models that are not suited to attracting and energizing entrepreneurial talent. This book imbibes latest results from a year-long study of Google's approaches to management, and finds similar principles being applied at companies including, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tesla Motors, and Apigee. By distilling on the aspects that work across a variety of innovative firms, the authors present a synthesis that could have profound implications for managers everywhere.
From addiction expert Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a startling argument that technology has profoundly affected the brains of children--and not for the better. We've all seen them: kids hypnotically staring at glowing screens in restaurants, in playgrounds and in friends' houses--and the numbers are growing. Like a virtual scourge, the illuminated glowing faces--the Glow Kids--are multiplying. But at what cost? Is this just a harmless indulgence or fad like some sort of digital hula-hoop? Some say that glowing screens might even be good for kids--a form of interactive educational tool. Don't believe it. In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology--more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity--has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain's pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis. Most shocking of all, recent brain imaging studies conclusively show that excessive screen exposure can neurologically damage a young person's developing brain in the same way that cocaine addiction can. Kardaras will dive into the sociological, psychological, cultural, and economic factors involved in the global tech epidemic with one major goal: to explore the effect all of our wonderful shiny new technology is having on kids. Glow Kids also includes an opt-out letter and a quiz for parents in the back of the book.
This book examines the role of transnational advocacy networks in enabling effective participation for individual citizens in the deliberative processes of global governance. Contextualized around the international conference setting of the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 and 2005, the book sees epistemic communities and information and communication technologies (ICTs) as critical to the effectiveness of this important organizational form. Historically, governments have dominated the official "conference diplomacy" surrounding these World Summits. However, reflecting the UN General Assembly resolution authorizing WSIS, transnational civil society and private sector organizations were invited to participate as official partners in a multistakeholder dialogue at the summit alongside the more traditional governments and international organizations. This book asks: are transnational advocacy networks active in the global information society influential partners in these global governance processes, or merely symbolic tokens-or pawns? Cogburn explores the factors that enabled some networks-such as the Internet Governance Caucus-to persist and thrive, while others failed, and sees linkages with epistemic communities-such as the Global Internet Governance Academic Network-and ICTs as critical to network effectiveness.
This book presents a collection of interrelated research advances in the field of technological entrepreneurship from the perspective of competition in emerging markets. Featuring contributions by scholars from different fields of interest, it provides a mix of theoretical developments, insights and research methods used to uncover the unexplored aspects of competitiveness in emerging markets in an age characterized by disruptive technologies.
This richly illustrated book provides an easy-to-read introduction to the challenges of organizing and integrating modern data worlds, explaining the contribution of public statistics and the ISO standard SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange). As such, it is a must for data experts as well those aspiring to become one. Today, exponentially growing data worlds are increasingly determining our professional and private lives. The rapid increase in the amount of globally available data, fueled by search engines and social networks but also by new technical possibilities such as Big Data, offers great opportunities. But whatever the undertaking - driving the block chain revolution or making smart phones even smarter - success will be determined by how well it is possible to integrate, i.e. to collect, link and evaluate, the required data. One crucial factor in this is the introduction of a cross-domain order system in combination with a standardization of the data structure. Using everyday examples, the authors show how the concepts of statistics provide the basis for the universal and standardized presentation of any kind of information. They also introduce the international statistics standard SDMX, describing the profound changes it has made possible and the related order system for the international statistics community.
The two-volume set IFIP AICT 535 and 536 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International IFIP WG 5.7 Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems, APMS 2018, held in Seoul, South Korea, in August 2018. The 129 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 149 submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: lean and green manufacturing; operations management in engineer-to-order manufacturing; product-service systems, customer-driven innovation and value co-creation; collaborative networks; smart production for mass customization; global supply chain management; knowledge based production planning and control; knowledge based engineering; intelligent diagnostics and maintenance solutions for smart manufacturing; service engineering based on smart manufacturing capabilities; smart city interoperability and cross-platform implementation; manufacturing performance management in smart factories; industry 4.0 - digital twin; industry 4.0 - smart factory; and industry 4.0 - collaborative cyber-physical production and human systems. |
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