The number of hours individuals spend in front of screens, such as smartphones, televisions, computers, and tablets, is enormous in today's society because screen time plays a very important role in work contexts and an even more significant role in social interaction and cultural consumption. This almost compulsive relationship with screens is more evident in children and young people and can have a lasting impact on how a society approaches screen time. Managing Screen Time in an Online Society is a collection of innovative research on how screen time seduces the person to stay in the online interaction leaving her/him in a state of alienation from her/his face-to-face context. While highlighting the methods and applications of time management in the context of screen time, especially during leisure, social interaction, and cultural consumption, this book covers topics including media consumption, psychology, and social networks. This book is ideal for researchers, students, and professionals seeking emerging information on the relationship between online interaction and personal relationships.

While transitioning from autocracy to democracy, media in Africa has always played an important role in democratic and non-democratic states; focusing on politicians, diplomats, activists, and others who work towards political transformations. New Media Influence on Social and Political Change in Africa addresses the development of new mass media and communication tools and its influence on social and political change. While analyzing democratic transitions and cultures with a theoretical perspective, this book also presents case studies and national experiences for media, new media, and democracy scholars and practitioners.

With the rapid development of big data, it is necessary to transfer the massive data generated by end devices to the cloud under the traditional cloud computing model. However, the delays caused by massive data transmission no longer meet the requirements of various real-time mobile services. Therefore, the emergence of edge computing has been recently developed as a new computing paradigm that can collect and process data at the edge of the network, which brings significant convenience to solving problems such as delay, bandwidth, and off-loading in the traditional cloud computing paradigm. By extending the functions of the cloud to the edge of the network, edge computing provides effective data access control, computation, processing and storage for end devices. Furthermore, edge computing optimizes the seamless connection from the cloud to devices, which is considered the foundation for realizing the interconnection of everything. However, due to the open features of edge computing, such as content awareness, real-time computing and parallel processing, the existing problems of privacy in the edge computing environment have become more prominent. The access to multiple categories and large numbers of devices in edge computing also creates new privacy issues. In this book, we discuss on the research background and current research process of privacy protection in edge computing. In the first chapter, the state-of-the-art research of edge computing are reviewed. The second chapter discusses the data privacy issue and attack models in edge computing. Three categories of privacy preserving schemes will be further introduced in the following chapters. Chapter three introduces the context-aware privacy preserving scheme. Chapter four further introduces a location-aware differential privacy preserving scheme. Chapter five presents a new blockchain based decentralized privacy preserving in edge computing. Chapter six summarize this monograph and propose future research directions. In summary, this book introduces the following techniques in edge computing: 1) describe an MDP-based privacy-preserving model to solve context-aware data privacy in the hierarchical edge computing paradigm; 2) describe a SDN based clustering methods to solve the location-aware privacy problems in edge computing; 3) describe a novel blockchain based decentralized privacy-preserving scheme in edge computing. These techniques enable the rapid development of privacy-preserving in edge computing.

The recent emergence and prevalence of social network applications, sensor equipped mobile devices, and the availability of large amounts of geo-referenced data have enabled the analysis of new context dimensions that involve individual, social, and urban context. Creating Personal, Social, and Urban Awareness through Pervasive Computing provides an overview of the theories, techniques, and practical applications related to the three dimensions of context awareness. Through the exploration of emerging research trends of pervasive computing, this book is beneficial to professors, students, researchers, and developers interested this latest development in the field of context-awareness and pervasive computing.

Although virtual worlds continue to grow in popularity, a substantial amount of research is needed to determine best practices in virtual spaces. The artistic community is one field where virtual worlds can be utilized to the greatest effect. New Opportunities for Artistic Practice in Virtual Worlds provides a coherent account of artistic practices in virtual worlds and considers the contribution the Second Life platform has made in a historical, theoretical, and critical context within the fields of art and technology. This volume is intended for both artists and scholars in the areas of digital art, art and technology, media arts history, virtual worlds, and games studies, as well as a broader academic audience who are interested in the philosophical implications of virtual spaces.

Imagine... a world where your next personal computing device is the last one that you would ever need to buy. Where you would never need to worry about operating systems, software patches, or viruses. Where you always had enough processing power, memory, storage, and top-of-the-line graphics. Where you could access all of the very best software applications, regardless of their platform. Where you had a constant connection to all your favourite digital services, and your battery lasted for days, perhaps even weeks, of full-on use. Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, this is the world of the Stream Tone. A world that does not exist in some far off future; this could be, figuratively speaking, our world a mere five minutes from now. All that is needed to make it a reality is the creative convergence of certain technologies that are already available and in use today. Personal computing is changing from an old world of local services, provided by local devices, to a new world of remote Web-based services, provided by cloud computing-based data centres. The STREAM TONE: The Future of Personal Computing? is a 408-page academically-oriented non-fiction book that explores, in some technical detail, what might be required to make a comprehensive move to this exciting new world, and the many benefits that move could bring. This book not only attempts to make a thorough evaluation of the technology ecosystem that will be required to create this future but also considers many of the implications of such a move. Along the way, it also discusses a wide range of currently-available technologies and how they could possibly be used to enable this future.

This book equips readers to understand a complex range of healthcare products that are used to diagnose, monitor, and treat diseases or medical conditions affecting humans. The first part of the book presents medical technologies such as medical information retrieval, tissue engineering techniques, 3D medical imaging, nanotechnology innovations in medicine, medical wireless sensor networks, and knowledge mining techniques in medicine. The second half of the book focuses on healthcare technologies including prediction hospital readmission risk, modeling e-health framework, personal Web in healthcare, security issues for medical records, and personalized services in healthcare. The contributors are leading world researchers who share their innovations, making this handbook the definitive resource on these topics. Handbook of Medical and Healthcare Technologies is intended for a wide audience including academicians, designers, developers, researchers and advanced-level students. It is also valuable for business managers, entrepreneurs, and investors within the medical and healthcare industries.

GeoComputation and Public Health is fundamentally a multi-disciplinary book, which presents an overview and case studies to exemplify numerous methods and solicitations in addressing vectors borne diseases (e.g, Visceral leishmaniasis, Malaria, Filaria). This book includes a practical coverage of the use of spatial analysis techniques in vector-borne disease using open source software solutions. Environmental factors (relief characters, climatology, ecology, vegetation, water bodies etc.) and socio-economic issues (housing type & pattern, education level, economic status, income level, domestics' animals, census data, etc) are investigated at micro -level and large scale in addressing the various vector-borne disease. This book will also generate a framework for interdisciplinary discussion, latest innovations, and discoveries on public health. The first section of the book highlights the basic and principal aspects of advanced computational practices. Other sections of the book contain geo-simulation, agent-based modeling, spatio-temporal analysis, geospatial data mining, various geocomputational applications, accuracy and uncertainty of geospatial models, applications in environmental, ecological, and biological modeling and analysis in public health research. This book will be useful to the postgraduate students of geography, remote sensing, ecology, environmental sciences and research scholars, along with health professionals looking to solve grand challenges and management on public health.

Co-creativity has become a significant cultural and economic phenomenon. Media consumers have become media producers. This book offers a rich description and analysis of the emerging participatory, co-creative relationships within the videogames industry. Banks discusses the challenges of incorporating these co-creative relationships into the development process. Drawing on a decade of research within the industry, the book gives us valuable insight into the continually changing and growing world of video games.

A Wall Street Journal Bestseller 'IT SHOULD BE READ BY ANYONE TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF GEOPOLITICS TODAY' FINANCIAL TIMES Three of our most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the way it is transforming human society - and what it means for us all. An AI learned to win chess by making moves human grand masters had never conceived. Another AI discovered a new antibiotic by analysing molecular properties human scientists did not understand. Now, AI-powered jets are defeating experienced human pilots in simulated dogfights. AI is coming online in searching, streaming, medicine, education, and many other fields and, in so doing, transforming how humans are experiencing reality. In The Age of AI, three leading thinkers have come together to consider how AI will change our relationships with knowledge, politics, and the societies in which we live. The Age of AI is an essential roadmap to our present and our future, an era unlike any that has come before.

Entrepreneurship is undoubtedly a social process and creating a firm requires both the mobilisation of social networks and the use of social capital. This book addresses the gap that exists between the need to take these factors into consideration and the understanding of how network relationships are developed and transformed across the venturing process. Expert contributions from key scholars in the field illustrate how social networks evolve across entrepreneurial stages, using studies from different regions across the world. Offering a comprehensive understanding, they emphasize the role of formal networks created inside professions and firms. Also examined is the impact of context including both family and internationally variable institutions that can help entrepreneurs to access resources and competencies useful for their projects. The book concludes by emphasizing the various research challenges: which theories are useful for our endeavors and which new methods can be used to understand the dynamics of the venturing process? Dynamic and eminently practical, this book will be invaluable to scholars and students studying the entrepreneurial process and the impact of social networks. It will also prove a useful tool in aiding entrepreneurs to optimize the development of their networks and better manage their entrepreneurial processes. Contributors include: L. Aaboen, M.A. Abebe, A.R. Anderson, M. Brettel, D. Chabaud, H. Chebbi, M. de Beer, S. Drakopoulou Dodd, A. Fayolle, R.T. Harrison, F.M. Hill, S.L. Jack, W. Jansen, W. Lamine, H. Lawton-Smith, C. Lechner, C.M. Leitch, C. Leyronas, F. Lind, S. Loup, A.B.R. Lwango, R. Mauer, S. Mian, G. Mollenhorst, J. Ngijol, S. Qureshi, T. Redd, V. Schutjens, M. Virahsawmy, S. Wu

Many designers enjoy the interfaces seen in science fiction films and television shows. Freed from the rigorous constraints of designing for real users, sci-fi production designers develop blue-sky interfaces that are inspiring, humorous, and even instructive. By carefully studying these "outsider" user interfaces, designers can derive lessons that make their real-world designs more cutting edge and successful.

Manuel Castells - one of the world's pre-eminent social scientists - has drawn together a stellar group of contributors to explore the patterns and dynamics of the network society in its cultural and institutional diversity. The book analyzes the technological, cultural and institutional transformation of societies around the world in terms of the critical role of electronic communication networks in business, everyday life, public services, social interaction and politics. The contributors demonstrate that the network society is the new form of social organization in the Information age, replacing the Industrial society. The book analyzes processes of technological transformation in interaction with social culture in different cultural and institutional contexts: the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Finland, Russia, China, India, Canada, and Catalonia. The topics examined include business productivity, global financial markets, cultural identity, the uses of the Internet in education and health, the anti-globalization movement, political processes, media and identity, and public policies to guide technological development. Taken together these studies show that the network society adopts very different forms, depending on the cultural and institutional environments in which it evolves. The Network Society is an outstanding and original volume of direct interest in academia - particularly in the fields of social sciences, communication studies, and business schools - as well as for policymakers engaged in technological policy and economic development. Business and management experts will also discover much of value to them within this book.

This volume explores how context has been and can be used in computing to model human behaviors, actions and communications as well as to manage data and knowledge. It addresses context management and exploitation of context for sharing experience across domains. The book serves as a user-centric guide for readers wishing to develop context-based applications, as well as an intellectual reference on the concept of context. It provides a broad yet deep treatment of context in computing and related areas that depend heavily on computing. The coverage is broad because of its cross-disciplinary nature but treats topics at a sufficient depth to permit a reader to implement context in his/her computational endeavors. The volume addresses how context can be integrated in software and systems and how it can be used in a computing environment. Furthermore, the use of context to represent the human dimension, individually as well as collectively is explained. Contributions also include descriptions of how context has been represented in formal as well as non-formal, structured approaches. The last section describes several human behavior representation paradigms based on the concept of context as its central representational element. The depth and breadth of this content is certain to provide useful as well as intellectually enriching information to readers of diverse backgrounds who have an interest in or are intrigued by using context to assist in their representation of the real world.

This book provides extensive research into the use of augmented reality in the three interconnected and overlapping fields of the tourism industry, museum exhibitions, and cultural heritage. It is written by a virtual team of 50 leading researchers and practitioners from 16 countries around the world. The authors explore the opportunities and challenges of augmented reality applications, their current status and future trends, informal learning and heritage preservation, mixed reality environments and immersive installations, cultural heritage education and tourism promotion, visitors with special needs, and emerging post-COVID-19 museums and heritage sites. Augmented Reality in Tourism, Museums and Heritage: A New Technology to Inform and Entertain is essential reading not only for researchers, application developers, educators, museum curators, tourism and cultural heritage promoters, but also for students (both graduates and undergraduates) and anyone who is interested in the efficient and practical use of augmented reality technology.

Our world is increasingly driven by sophisticated networks of advanced computing technology, and the basic operation of everyday society is becoming increasingly vulnerable to these networks' shortcomings. The implementation and upkeep of a strong network defense is a substantial challenge, beset not only by economic disincentives but also by an inherent logistical bias that grants advantage to attackers. Research Anthology on Combating Denial-of-Service Attacks examines the latest research on the development of intrusion detection systems and best practices for preventing and combatting cyber-attacks intended to disrupt business and user experience. Highlighting a range of topics such as network administration, application-layer protocols, and malware detection, this publication is an ideal reference source for cybersecurity professionals, IT specialists, policymakers, forensic analysts, technology developers, security administrators, academicians, researchers, and students.