Readers seeking to gain a handle on the internet's global expansion will find this book rich in scholarly foundations combined with cutting-edge discussion of emerging ICTs and services and the complex societal contexts in which they are embedded. To explore possibilities to the fullest extent, a sociotechnical systems approach is employed, focusing on the interplay of technical, social, cultural, political, and economic dynamics to explore alternative futures (ones that are not part of the dominant discourse about the internet). These shared perspectives are not well addressed elsewhere in current discussions. Awareness of these dynamics, and the fluidity of the future, is important, as humankind moves forward into the uncertain future. Due to the sociotechnical complexity of the Internet, policymakers, businesspeople, and academics worldwide have struggled to keep abreast of developments. This volume's approach is intended to stimulate dialogue between academics and practitioners on a topic that will affect most aspects of human life in the near-term future.

An essential tool for dispute resolution professionals as well as for anyone considering using dispute resolution in their lives and work, Online Dispute Resolution explains the many diverse and unique applications of doing conflict resolution online. The expert authors examine the tremendous growth of online dispute resolution-including its use by eBay and other e-commerce companies-and reveal the enormous possibilities to come, along with the many employment opportunities for practitioners in the field. They show how the online environment will affect the role of those who are concerned with dispute resolution just as it has brought changes to those who practice law, sell stocks, or run for office. For those who see the value of technology as a critical building block in the future of dispute resolution, Online Dispute Resolution will be an indispensable resource.

This invaluable text/reference investigates the state of the art in approaches to building, monitoring, managing, and governing smart cities. A particular focus is placed on the distributed computing environments within the infrastructure of such cities, including issues of device connectivity, communication, security, and interoperability. A selection of experts of international repute offer their perspectives on current trends and best practices, and their suggestions for future developments, together with case studies supporting the vision of smart cities based on the Internet of Things (IoT). Topics and features: examines the various methodologies relating to next-level urbanization, including approaches to security and privacy relating to social and legal aspects; describes a recursive and layered approach to modeling large-scale resource management systems for self-sustainable cities; proposes a novel architecture for hybrid vehicular wireless sensor networks, and a pricing mechanism for the management of natural resources; discusses the challenges and potential solutions to building smart city surveillance systems, applying knowledge-based governance, and adopting electric vehicles; covers topics on intelligent distributed systems, IoT, fog computing paradigms, big data management and analytics, and smart grids; reviews issues of sustainability in the design of smart cities and healthcare services, illustrated by case studies taken from cities in Japan, India, and Brazil. This illuminating volume offers a comprehensive reference for researchers investigating smart cities and the IoT, students interested in the distributed computing technologies used by smart living systems, and practitioners wishing to adopt the latest security and connectivity techniques in smart city environments.

Endorsements Demi Getchko, Member of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and Chairman Executive Committee of the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br)."This is the right book at the right time, when Internet governance is in the headlines. The political visions behind Brazil's governance system are very advanced and embody the rich diversity of our academic, political, technical, entrepreneurial, and civil society stakeholders. That diversity has allowed the Internet to flourish in our country. Peter Knight captures all these visions in a book that the reader will find both provocative and pleasurable to read." Michael Stanton, Director of Research and Development, National Education and Research Network (RNP). "This book provides a very informative description of how Brazilian governments and allied institutions have together built, and continue to extend, the communications infrastructure required for a modern knowledge-based society. The job is by no means complete, but the book shows examples of how future extensions can continue to be built to improve the result. Unsurprisingly, a common thread throughout the book is the emphasis on providing ubiquitous fiber optical infrastructure so that future expansion can reuse existing communications cables." Steve Goldstein, Former National Science Foundation Program Officer for International Internet Connections and former Member of the Board of ICANN. In this short book, Dr. Knight, a World Bank, Washington, transplant to Brazil, moves from a meticulously detailed rendition of the development of networking in Brazil through to the adoption of Internet technology by the academic community. Then, he follows the path to commercialization and present day status and the very latest global policy implications for Internet governance (e.g., NET Mundial). A gift to Internet historians and policy wonks as well Nagy Hanna, Author, Advisor, Academic. Former senior advisor on e-transformation and chief strategist at the World Bank. The Internet is central to realizing any eTransformation strategy. Harnessing this 21st century infrastructure is increasingly critical for the economic health and competitiveness of nations. Peter is a keen observer of the Internet's evolution, use, and governance in Brazil. This book is a timely and readable analysis that should help both external observers and Brazilians understand this important country's approach to the Internet. Vanda Scartezini, Former National Secretary for Information Technology Policy, Brazilian Ministry and Science and Technology, and twice member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and Member of the Internet Society, Brazil Chapter. Extremely relevant for rescuing the memory of Internet's evolution in Brazil. The book provides an excellent opportunity for the youth of today and tomorrow understand the path that led to them this fantastic opportunity for personal and social development that is the Internet.

This book presents vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) from the their onset, gradually going into technical details, providing a clear understanding of both theoretical foundations and more practical investigation. The editors gathered top-ranking authors to provide comprehensiveness and timely content; the invited authors were carefully selected from a list of who's who in the respective field of interest: there are as many from Academia as from Standardization and Industry sectors from around the world. The covered topics are organized around five Parts starting from an historical overview of vehicular communications and standardization/harmonization activities (Part I), then progressing to the theoretical foundations of VANETs and a description of the day-one standard-compliant solutions (Part II), hence going into details of vehicular networking and security (Part III) and to the tools to study VANETs, from mobility and channel models, to network simulators and field trial methodologies (Part IV), and finally looking into the future of VANETs by investigating alternative, complementary communication technologies, innovative networking paradigms and visionary applications (Part V). The way the content is organized, with a differentiated level of technical details, makes the book a valuable reference for a large pool of target readers ranging from undergraduate, graduate and PhD students, to wireless scientists and engineers, to service providers and stakeholders in the automotive, ITS, ICT sectors.

This book delivers concise coverage of classical methods and new developments related to indoor location-based services. It collects results from isolated domains including geometry, artificial intelligence, statistics, cooperative algorithms, and distributed systems and thus provides an accessible overview of fundamental methods and technologies. This makes it an ideal starting point for researchers, students, and professionals in pervasive computing. Location-based services are services using the location of a mobile computing device as their primary input. While such services are fairly easy to implement outside buildings thanks to accessible global positioning systems and high-quality environmental information, the situation inside buildings is fundamentally different. In general, there is no simple way of determining the position of a moving target inside a building without an additional dedicated infrastructure. The book's structure is learning oriented, starting with a short introduction to wireless communication systems and basic positioning techniques and ending with advanced features like event detection, simultaneous localization and mapping, and privacy aspects. Readers who are not familiar with the individual topics will be able to work through the book from start to finish. At the same time all chapters are self-contained to support readers who are already familiar with some of the content and only want to pick selected topics that are of particular interest.

The book presents a broad overview of emerging smart grid technologies and communication systems, offering a helpful guide for future research in the field of electrical engineering and communication engineering. It explores recent advances in several computing technologies and their performance evaluation, and addresses a wide range of topics, such as the essentials of smart grids for fifth generation (5G) communication systems. It also elaborates the role of emerging communication systems such as 5G, internet of things (IoT), IEEE 802.15.4 and cognitive radio networks in smart grids. The book includes detailed surveys and case studies on current trends in smart grid systems and communications for smart metering and monitoring, smart grid energy storage systems, modulations and waveforms for 5G networks. As such, it will be of interest to practitioners and researchers in the field of smart grid and communication infrastructures alike.

This book offers the first comprehensive view on integrated circuit and system design for the Internet of Things (IoT), and in particular for the tiny nodes at its edge. The authors provide a fresh perspective on how the IoT will evolve based on recent and foreseeable trends in the semiconductor industry, highlighting the key challenges, as well as the opportunities for circuit and system innovation to address them. This book describes what the IoT really means from the design point of view, and how the constraints imposed by applications translate into integrated circuit requirements and design guidelines. Chapter contributions equally come from industry and academia. After providing a system perspective on IoT nodes, this book focuses on state-of-the-art design techniques for IoT applications, encompassing the fundamental sub-systems encountered in Systems on Chip for IoT: ultra-low power digital architectures and circuits low- and zero-leakage memories (including emerging technologies) circuits for hardware security and authentication System on Chip design methodologies on-chip power management and energy harvesting ultra-low power analog interfaces and analog-digital conversion short-range radios miniaturized battery technologies packaging and assembly of IoT integrated systems (on silicon and non-silicon substrates). As a common thread, all chapters conclude with a prospective view on the foreseeable evolution of the related technologies for IoT. The concepts developed throughout the book are exemplified by two IoT node system demonstrations from industry. The unique balance between breadth and depth of this book: enables expert readers quickly to develop an understanding of the specific challenges and state-of-the-art solutions for IoT, as well as their evolution in the foreseeable future provides non-experts with a comprehensive introduction to integrated circuit design for IoT, and serves as an excellent starting point for further learning, thanks to the broad coverage of topics and selected references makes it very well suited for practicing engineers and scientists working in the hardware and chip design for IoT, and as textbook for senior undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students ( familiar with analog and digital circuits).

The Proceedings of The Third International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing and Systems provides the state-of-art developments of Communications, Signal Processing and Systems. The conference covered such topics as wireless communications, networks, systems, signal processing for communications. This book is a collection of contributions coming out of Third International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing and Systems held on July 2014 in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China.

Web technologies have become a vital element within educational, professional, and social settings as they have the potential to improve performance and productivity across organizations. Artificial Intelligence Technologies and the Evolution of Web 3.0 brings together emergent research and best practices surrounding the effective usage of Web 3.0 technologies in a variety of environments. Featuring the latest technologies and applications across industries, this publication is a vital reference source for academics, researchers, students, and professionals who are interested in new ways to use intelligent web technologies within various settings.

Medical internet of things (IoT)-based applications are being utilized in several industries and have been shown to provide significant advantages to users in critical health applications. Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role in the growth and success of medical IoT applications and IoT devices in the medical sector. To enhance revenue, improve competitive advantage, and increase consumer engagement, the use of AI with medical IoT should be encouraged in the healthcare and medical arena. Revolutionizing Healthcare Through Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things Applications provides greater knowledge of how AI affects healthcare and medical efficacy in order to improve outputs. It focuses on a thorough and comprehensive introduction to machine learning. Covering topics such as patient treatment, cyber-physical systems, and telemedicine, this premier reference source is a dynamic resource for hospital administrators, medical professionals, government officials, students and faculty of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

Emerging developments in cloud computing have created novel opportunities and applications for businesses. These innovations not only have organizational benefits, but can be advantageous for green enterprises as well. Cloud Computing Technologies for Green Enterprises is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the advancements, benefits, and challenges of cloud computing for green enterprise endeavors. Highlighting pertinent topics such as resource allocation, energy efficiency, and mobile computing, this book is a premier resource for academics, researchers, students, professionals, and managers interested in novel trends in cloud computing applications.

This book reports on a set of new techniques for resolving current issues in networked control systems. The main focus is on strategies for event-based control, for both centralized and decentralized architectures. The first part of the book addresses the problem of single-loop networked control systems and proposes an anticipative remote controller for dealing with delays and packet losses. The second part of the book proposes a distributed event-based control strategy for networked dynamical systems, which has been implemented in a test-bed of mobile robots, and provides readers with a thorough description of an interactive simulator used to validate the results. This thesis, examined at the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia in 2013, received the award for best thesis in control engineering from the Control Engineering group of the Spanish Committee of Automatic Control in 2015.

This thesis focuses on the design and use of software defined networking (SDN) in residential Internet service providers (ISPs), as well as innovative operational models that can be incorporated in broadband ecosystems. Though SDN addresses the challenges for bundled best-effort service provided by broadband operators for users, it does not distinguish between the different types of applications (video streaming, web-browsing, and large file transfers), nor does it cater to the varying needs of different household devices (entertainment tablets, work laptops, or connected appliances). This is a problem for end-users, who want to differentiate between applications and devices; for content providers (CPs), who want to exercise control over streams of high monetary value; and for Internet service providers (ISPs), who have to accommodate growing traffic volumes without additional revenues. This book develops a series of solution techniques that use SDN to find an optimal balance between the competing requirements of end-users, ISPs, and CPs. In addition to the design and discussions of various architectures, it provides technical details on real-world system implementations and prototypes. As such, it offers a valuable resource for researchers, network architects, network strategists, developers, and all other readers seeking to learn more about the practical value of SDN in future ISP networks.

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.

IT technology engineering changes everyday life, especially in Computing and Communications. The goal of this book is to further explore the theoretical and practical issues of Future Computing and Communications. It also aims to foster new ideas and collaboration between researchers and practitioners.