This book provides an in-depth insight into the emerging paradigm of End-User Development (EUD), discussing the diversity and potential for creating effective environments for end users. Containing a unique set of contributions from a number of international researchers and institutes, many relevant issues are discussed and solutions proposed, making important aspects of end-user development research available to a broader audience. Most people are familiar with the basic functionality and interfaces of computers. However, developing new or modified applications that can effectively support users' goals still requires considerable programming expertise that cannot be expected of everyone. One of the fundamental challenges that lie ahead is the development of environments that enable users with little or no programming experience to develop and modify their own applications. The ultimate goal is to empower people to flexibly employ and personalise advanced inform ation and communication technologies.

This book covers ideas, methods, algorithms, and tools for the in-depth study of the performance and reliability of dependable fault-tolerant systems. The chapters identify the current challenges that designers and practitioners must confront to ensure the reliability, availability, and performance of systems, with special focus on their dynamic behaviors and dependencies. Topics include network calculus, workload and scheduling; simulation, sensitivity analysis and applications; queuing networks analysis; clouds, federations and big data; and tools. This collection of recent research exposes system researchers, performance analysts, and practitioners to a spectrum of issues so that they can address these challenges in their work.

It has been over twenty years since developments in actor-network theory were first written on paper. Since then, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) community has begun to discover the power of using actor-network theory as an explanatory framework for much of its research. This research community has come to an understanding that information systems are, of necessity, socio-technical in nature and require a socio-technical approach to their investigation. Thanks to developments in actor-network theory, researchers can now approach people and technology as one single entity that gives support to social influences on technological innovations. Social Influences on Information and Communication Technology Innovations discusses in great detail the use of actor-network theory in offering explanations for socio-technical phenomena, focusing greatly on information communication technologies. Implementation and use of information and communication technologies inevitably involves the interactions of both technology and people. This publication facilitates international growth in the body of research investigating the value of using actor-network theory as a means of understanding socio-technical phenomena and technological innovation.

The motivation of this edited book is to generate an understanding about information, related concepts and the roles they play in the modern, technology permeated world. In order to achieve our goal, we observe how information is understood in domains, such as cosmology, physics, biology, neuroscience, computer science, artificial intelligence, the Internet, big data, information society, or philosophy. Together, these observations form an integrated view so that readers can better understand this exciting building-block of modern-day society. On the surface, information is a relatively straightforward and intuitive concept. Underneath, however, information is a relatively versatile and mysterious entity. For instance, the way a physicist looks at information is not necessarily the same way as that of a biologist, a neuroscientist, a computer scientist, or a philosopher. Actually, when it comes to information, it is common that each field has its domain specific views, motivations, interpretations, definitions, methods, technologies, and challenges. With contributions by authors from a wide range of backgrounds, Understanding Information: From the Big Bang to Big Data will appeal to readers interested in the impact of 'information' on modern-day life from a variety of perspectives.

This book presents a guide to navigating the complicated issues of quality and process improvement in enterprise software implementation, and the effect these have on the software development life cycle (SDLC). Offering an integrated approach that includes important management and decision practices, the text explains how to create successful automated solutions that fit user and customer needs, by mixing different SDLC methodologies. With an emphasis on the realities of practice, the book offers essential advice on defining business requirements, and managing change. This revised and expanded second edition includes new content on such areas as cybersecurity, big data, and digital transformation. Features: presents examples, case studies, and chapter-ending problems and exercises; concentrates on the skills needed to distinguish successful software implementations; considers the political and cultural realities in organizations; suggests many alternatives for how to manage and model a system.

Large corporations like IBM and Oracle are using Excel dashboards and reports as a Business Intelligence tool, and many other smaller businesses are looking to these tools in order to cut costs for budgetary reasons. An effective analyst not only has to have the technical skills to use Excel in a productive manner but must be able to synthesize data into a story, and then present that story in the most impactful way. Microsoft shows its recognition of this with Excel. In Excel, there is a major focus on business intelligence and visualization. Data Visualization with Excel Dashboards and Reports fills the gap between handling data and synthesizing data into meaningful reports. This title will show readers how to think about their data in ways other than columns and rows. Most Excel books do a nice job discussing the individual functions and tools that can be used to create an "Excel Report". Titles on Excel charts, Excel pivot tables, and other books that focus on "Tips and Tricks" are useful in their own right; however they don't hit the mark for most data analysts. The primary reason these titles miss the mark is they are too focused on the mechanical aspects of building a chart, creating a pivot table, or other functionality. They don't offer these topics in the broader picture by showing how to present and report data in the most effective way. What are the most meaningful ways to show trending? How do you show relationships in data? When is showing variances more valuable than showing actual data values? How do you deal with outliers? How do you bucket data in the most meaningful way? How do you show impossible amounts of data without inundating your audience? In Data Visualization with Excel Reports and Dashboards, readers will get answers to all of these questions. Part technical manual, part analytical guidebook; this title will help Excel users go from reporting data with simple tables full of dull numbers, to creating hi-impact reports and dashboards that will wow management both visually and substantively. This book offers a comprehensive review of a wide array of technical and analytical concepts that will help users create meaningful reports and dashboards. After reading this book, the reader will be able to: Analyze large amounts of data and report their data in a meaningful way Get better visibility into data from different perspectives Quickly slice data into various views on the fly Automate redundant reporting and analyses Create impressive dashboards and What-If analyses Understand the fundamentals of effective visualization Visualize performance comparisons Visualize changes and trends over time

This book makes the case that traditional security design does not take the end-user into consideration, and therefore, fails. This book goes on to explain, using a series of examples, how to rethink security solutions to take users into consideration. By understanding the limitations and habits of users - including malicious users, aiming to corrupt the system - this book Illustrates how better security technologies are made possible. Traditional security books focus on one of the following areas: cryptography, security protocols, or existing standards. They rarely consider the end user as part of the security equation, and when they do, it is in passing. This book considers the end user as the most important design consideration, and then shows how to build security and privacy technologies that are both secure and which offer privacy. This reduces the risk for social engineering and, in general, abuse. Advanced-level students interested in software engineering, security and HCI (Human Computer Interaction) will find this book useful as a study guide. Engineers and security practitioners concerned with abuse and fraud will also benefit from the methodologies and techniques in this book.

This book provides a cutting-edge introduction to Internet-facilitated crime-watching and examines how social media have shifted the landscape for producing, distributing, and consuming footage of crime. In this thought-provoking work, Mark Wood examines the phenomenon of antisocial media: participatory online domains where footage of crime is aggregated, sympathetically curated, and consumed as entertainment. Focusing on Facebook pages dedicated to hosting footage of street fights, brawls, and other forms of bareknuckle violence, Wood demonstrates that to properly grapple with antisocial media, we must address not only their content, but also their software. In doing so, this study goes a long way to addressing the fundamental question: how have social media changed the way we consume crime? Synthesizing criminology, media theory, software studies, and digital sociology, Antisocial Media is media criminology for the Facebook age. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in social media, cultural criminology, and the crime-media interface.

“the bird is freed”
- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, commentators were rooting for the visionary behind Tesla and SpaceX to succeed. Here was a tough leader who could grab back power from Twitter’s entitled workforce, motivate them to get “extremely hardcore,” and supercharge Twitter’s profit and potential. And it was all out of the goodness of his own heart, rooted in his fervent belief in the necessity of making Twitter friendlier to free speech. "I didn’t do it to make more money,” Musk said. “I did it to try and help humanity, whom I love.” 

Once Musk charged into the Twitter headquarters, the command-and-control playbook Musk honed at Tesla and SpaceX went off the rails immediately. Distilling hundreds of hours of interviews with more than sixty employees, thousands of pages of internal documents, Slack messages, presentations, as well as court filings and congressional testimony, Extremely Hardcore is the true story of how Musk reshaped the world’s online public square into his own personal megaphone. 

You’ll hear from employees who witnessed the destruction of their workplace in real-time, seeing years of progress to fight disinformation and hate speech wiped out within a matter of months. There’s the machine-learning savant who went all-in on Twitter 2.0 before getting betrayed by his new CEO, the father whose need for healthcare swept him into Musk’s inner circle, the trust and safety expert who became the subject of a harassment campaign his former boss incited, and the many other employees who tried to save the company from their new boss’s worst instincts. This is the story of Twitter, but it’s also a chronicle of the post-pandemic labor movement, a war between executives and a workforce newly awakened to their rights and needs.

Riveting, character-driven, and filled with jaw-dropping revelations, Extremely Hardcore is the definitive, fly-on-the-wall story of how Elon Musk lit $44 billion on fire and burned down Twitter. It’s the next best thing to being there, and you won’t have to sleep in the Twitter office to get the scoop.

As computers become more prevalent throughout society, the issue of computer-human interaction has become paramount to computer scientists and professionals furthering the computerization of organizations. "Computers, Human Interaction, and Organizations" revisits important theoretical and conceptual issues that have not been resolved in discussions of the increasing computerization of society. The authors here move beyond the technical issues relating to computerization to examine the social and political nature of information and computer technology using contemporary critical theory. This unique volume, therefore, offers a serious reflection on the proper scope and nature of computerization and the proper adjustment to and utilization of these instruments.

According to the authors, without the guiding use of theory, computer use will be misguided and socially disruptive. Without a critical analysis of the issues involved in computer-human interaction, the current push to have computers support intimate interaction among workers and other groups may never come to fruition. By contrast, recognizing the computer as an expression of the technological worldview allows one to recognize the limits as well as the promise of these instruments and to define the proper scope of computerization. The authors of this volume help the reader understand the social nature of computer technology and the limits of its application while circumscribing socially responsible uses of the new technology.

Automation now supplants economic activity more than it supports it. Furthermore, this process is fueled by enormous economic forces, which intensifies dependence on automation and spawns other sociological consequences. Of these consequences, fraud generates the highest immediate losses, amounting to $300 billion annually. In the long run, however, the greatest economic cost will occur through loss of jobs, and a lowering of net skills for most of the balance. Other consequences include pervasive invasion of privacy, and overdependence on technology at the expense of developing critical reasoning, judgement, and a personal sense of responsibility. Fortunately, many of these consequences could be ameliorated by automated countermeasures that offset the excesses. Unfortunately, it usually takes a crisis to institute fundamental reform, though the looming economic meltdown stemming from the mounting federal debt offers just such an opportunity.

Discussion, whether in online or face-to-face environments, is central to attaining and disseminating information. Cases on Online Discussion and Interaction: Experiences and Outcomes contains examples of online discussions in a variety of contexts and for a variety of purposes, allowing readers to understand what is likely to facilitate discussion online, what is likely to encourage collaborative meaning-making, what is likely to encourage productive, supportive, engaged discussion, and what is likely to foster critical thinking. This book assembles cases that address an array of research methods, online communication media, forms of expression, communication contexts, and philosophical perspectives.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Frontier Computing (FC 2016), Tokyo, Japan, July 13-15, 2016. This international meeting provided a forum for researchers to share current understanding of recent advances and emergence in information technology, science, and engineering, with themes in the scope of Communication Networks, Business Intelligence and Knowledge Management, Web Intelligence, and any related fields that further the development of information technology. The articles presented cover a wide spectrum of topics: database and data mining, networking and communications, web and internet of things, embedded system, soft computing, social network analysis, security and privacy, optics communication, and ubiquitous/pervasive computing. Many papers report results of great academic potential and value, and in addition, indicate promising directions of research in the focused realm of this conference series. Readers, including students, academic researchers, and professionals, will benefit from the results presented in this book. It also provides an overview of current research and can be used as a guidebook for those new to the field.

This book outlines the legal powers of a major Western nation - Australia - to collect and use location information. Mobile service and social media service providers now have the ability to track, record and store more precise location information. Unlike 4G, 5G mobile communications require that cell towers and antennas be in much closer proximity; as a result, the location data can reveal more personal and sensitive information about individual citizens. Despite this aspect, service providers are required to disclose the data to the authorities, without the need for a judicial warrant. This book was written from the perspective of big location data software analytics, a capability that makes it possible to combine various location data points to create a profile on a given individual's movements, habits, and political, religious and ideological orientation. In this regard, privacy is poorly protected. The rationale used to justify the powers was enforcing serious crimes - terrorism offences. Location data can now be retained for at least two years and be collected to investigate even minor offences. This can be done without the person being reasonably suspected of a criminal offence - when the individual is simply determined to be a person of interest. This poses legal risks to vulnerable communities. And yet, such investigative techniques are deemed lawful and reasonable. At a time when national security is so broadly defined to include economic issues, which in turn overlap with climate change and environmental protection, these legal powers should be reassessed. The book clarifies the complex rules that every citizen must know in order to have agency. Further, it calls upon authorities to reflect and to self-regulate, by making the conscious decision to surrender some of their powers to review by the independent judiciary. Without the requirement for a judicial warrant or judicial review, the powers are unfairly broad. The book pursues an interdisciplinary approach to assess the functionality of mobile telecommunications in direct relation to law enforcement powers and existing judicial precedents. Further, it offers a unifying techno-legal perspective on a complex issue touching on modern privacy law and communications technologies.

Continuous improvements in technological applications have allowed more opportunities to develop systems with user-focused designs. This not only leads to higher success in day-to-day usage, but it increases the overall probability of technology adoption. Design Solutions for User-Centric Information Systems provides a comprehensive examination of the latest strategies and methods for creating technological systems with end users as the focal point of the design process. Highlighting innovative practices and applications across a variety of areas, such as cloud-based computing services, e-government adoption, and logistics evaluation, this book is an ideal reference source for computer engineers, practitioners, project managers, graduate students, and researchers interested in the enhancement of user-centric information system development.

This book presents a comprehensive framework for IoT, including its architectures, security, privacy, network communications, and protocols. The book starts by providing an overview of the aforementioned research topics, future directions and open challenges that face the IoT development. The authors then discuss the main architectures in the field, which include Three- and Five-Layer Architectures, Cloud and Fog Based Architectures, a Social IoT Application Architecture. In the security chapter, the authors outline threats and attacks, privacy preservation, trust and authentication, IoT data security, and social awareness. The final chapter presents case studies including smart home, wearables, connected cars, industrial Internet, smart cities, IoT in agriculture, smart retail, energy engagement, IoT in healthcare, and IoT in poultry and farming. Discusses ongoing research into the connection of the physical and virtual worlds; Includes the architecture, security, privacy, communications, and protocols of IoT; Presents a variety of case studies in IoT including wearables, smart cities, and energy management.

Technology has always played a decisive role in humanity's progress. Throughout history, it has not only strengthened economic development but has become a powerful tool for human development. Nevertheless, the positive impact technology has on human development may become tainted by the risks it entails.ICT Influences on Human Development, Interaction, and Collaboration creates awareness on how ICTs contribute to human development in multiple areas. This publication describes the link between ICTs and human development, which includes economic, social, and political development. It identifies potential applications for the development of human beings and provides insightful analysis about those factors (also contextual and institutional ones) that affect ICTs for human development initiatives. This book addresses future challenges, proposing strategies to both governments and international cooperation organizations for moving forward.

This book offers a systematic introduction to an understanding-oriented approach to multimedia content analysis. It integrates the visual understanding and learning models into a unified framework, within which the visual understanding guides the model learning while the learned models improve the visual understanding. More specifically, it discusses multimedia content representations and analysis including feature selection, feature extraction, image tagging, user-oriented tag recommendation and understanding-oriented multimedia applications. The book was nominated by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and China Computer Federation as an outstanding PhD thesis. By providing the fundamental technologies and state-of-the-art methods, it is a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers working in the field computer vision and machine learning.

This anthology brings together multiple viewpoints on the social dimensions of the revolution in information technology. The chapters cover social, political, educational, personal, and international dimensions of information technology impacts. Each chapter focuses on different aspects of the effects of computing and the new information technologies that have accelerated every area of human life. Social Dimensions of Information Technology: Issues for the New Millennium raises important issues with profound implications for public policy and societal development.

This book presents a compilation of the most recent implementation of artificial intelligence methods for solving different problems generated by the COVID-19. The problems addressed came from different fields and not only from medicine. The information contained in the book explores different areas of machine and deep learning, advanced image processing, computational intelligence, IoT, robotics and automation, optimization, mathematical modeling, neural networks, information technology, big data, data processing, data mining, and likewise. Moreover, the chapters include the theory and methodologies used to provide an overview of applying these tools to the useful contribution to help to face the emerging disaster. The book is primarily intended for researchers, decision makers, practitioners, and readers interested in these subject matters. The book is useful also as rich case studies and project proposals for postgraduate courses in those specializations.

This book demonstrates the use of a wide range of strategic engineering concepts, theories and applied case studies to improve the safety, security and sustainability of complex and large-scale engineering and computer systems. It first details the concepts of system design, life cycle, impact assessment and security to show how these ideas can be brought to bear on the modeling, analysis and design of information systems with a focused view on cloud-computing systems and big data analytics. This informative book is a valuable resource for graduate students, researchers and industry-based practitioners working in engineering, information and business systems as well as strategy.

This book provides an examination of e-Government frameworks and maturity stages in governments around the world, including an overview of the legal frameworks that have supported them. Divided into three sections, the first part of this book analyses the theoretical context of current policies, codes of best practice and their implementation. The second section presents case studies which bring key issues to the fore including open government, privacy protection, social media, democracy, systems failures, innovations in inter-organizational e-government projects, and open data systems. The authors demonstrate the importance of the successful implementation of e-Government for improving managerial efficiency, public service delivery and citizen engagement, with special attention given to developing countries. The book concludes by drawing out the lessons learned from the latest research and recommending solutions for improving the implementation of e-Government in the future, thereby helping to achieve more transparent, participative and democratic societies. This book will provide an invaluable resource for researchers, policy-makers, public managers, international organizations and technical experts.

"Softwars: The Legal Battles for Control of the Global Software Industry" explains why the future of the computer industry depends on the nature and extent of intellectual property protection for the software that controls computer hardware. The softwars it discusses are the confrontations taking place in the courtroom, in the legislative chambers and in professional symposia around the world in which the scope of intellectual property protection for computer software is being debated and, in some cases, determined. In a highly readable and entertaining series of essays, the author explains the influences of clones, hackers, vendors of proprietary systems, vendors of open systems, software patents, copyrights and trade secrets on the evolution of the industry. No other book to date has provided either as lucid a description of the major litigation involving software protection or as cogent an analysis of the economic and strategic consequences of that litigation.

"SoftwarS" is divided into five parts, each consisting of two or more essays. In Part I, the author discusses the nature of computer programs and the history of intellectual property protection for computer programs. Part II deals with the look and feel issue; it explains what constitutes infringement of rights in screen displays and other aspects of user interfaces, and the importance of the issue. Part III concerns the practice known as reverse engineering of software; who does it, why, and what the legal and economic consequences are. In Part IV, the reader is led to the boundaries of the legal debate, where the limits of the law are being tested. Part V is the author's conclusion and prognostications for the future of the computer industry and the law. Anyone interested in the intersection of law and technology, and particularly those involved in the computer industry, will find Softwars valuable and compelling reading.

This book focuses on the implementation of digital strategies in the public sectors in the US, Mexico, Brazil, India and Germany. The case studies presented examine different digital projects by looking at their impact as well as their alignment with their national governments' digital strategies. The contributors assess the current state of digital government, analyze the contribution of digital technologies in achieving outcomes for citizens, discuss ways to measure digitalization and address the question of how governments oversee the legal and regulatory obligations of information technology. The book argues that most countries formulate good strategies for digital government, but do not effectively prescribe and implement corresponding policies and programs. Showing specific programs that deliver results can help policy makers, knowledge specialists and public-sector researchers to develop best practices for future national strategies.

Technology in the world today impacts every aspect of society and has infiltrated every industry, affecting communication, management, security, etc. With the emergence of such technologies as IoT, big data, cloud computing, AI, and virtual reality, organizations have had to adjust the way they conduct business to account for changing consumer behaviors and increasing data protection awareness. The Handbook of Research on Social and Organizational Dynamics in the Digital Era provides relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings on all aspects of social issues impacted by information technology in organizations and inter-organizational structures and presents the conceptualization of specific social issues and their associated constructs. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as business management, knowledge management, and consumer behavior, this publication seeks to advance the practice and understanding of technology and the impacts of technology on social behaviors and norms in the workplace and society. It is intended for business professionals, executives, IT practitioners, policymakers, students, and researchers.