Ever since the first successful International Cognitive Technology (CT) Conference in Hong Kong in August 1995, a growing concern about the dehumanising potential of machines, and the machining potential of the human mind, has pervaded the organisers' thinking. When setting up the agenda for the Second International CT Conference in Aizu, Japan, in August of 1997, they were aware that a number of new approaches had seen the light, but that the need to integrate them within a human framework had become more urgent than ever, due to the accelerating pace of technological and commercialised developments in the computer related fields of industry and research

What the present book does is re-emphasize the importance of the 'human factor' - not as something that we should 'also' take into account, when doing technology, but as the primary driving force and supreme aim of our technological endeavours. Machining the human should not happen, but humanising the machine should. "La Humacha" should replace the "Hemachine" in our thinking about these matters.

This book discusses major technical advancements and research findings in the field of prognostic modelling in healthcare image and data analysis. The use of prognostic modelling as predictive models to solve complex problems of data mining and analysis in health care is the feature of this book. The book examines the recent technologies and studies that reached the practical level and becoming available in preclinical and clinical practices in computational intelligence. The main areas of interest covered in this book are highest quality, original work that contributes to the basic science of processing, analysing and utilizing all aspects of advanced computational prognostic modelling in healthcare image and data analysis.

This book explores a wide range of topics in digital ethics. It features 11 chapters that analyze the opportunities and the ethical challenges posed by digital innovation, delineate new approaches to solve them, and offer concrete guidance to harness the potential for good of digital technologies. The contributors are all members of the Digital Ethics Lab (the DELab), a research environment that draws on a wide range of academic traditions. The chapters highlight the inherently multidisciplinary nature of the subject, which cannot be separated from the epistemological foundations of the technologies themselves or the political implications of the requisite reforms. Coverage illustrates the importance of expert knowledge in the project of designing new reforms and political systems for the digital age. The contributions also show how this task requires a deep self-understanding of who we are as individuals and as a species. The questions raised here have ancient -- perhaps even timeless -- roots. The phenomena they address may be new. But, the contributors examine the fundamental concepts that undergird them: good and evil, justice and truth. Indeed, every epoch has its great challenges. The role of philosophy must be to redefine the meaning of these concepts in light of the particular challenges it faces. This is true also for the digital age. This book takes an important step towards redefining and re-implementing fundamental ethical concepts to this new era.

The goal of this book is to close the gap between high technology and accessibility for people having lost their independence due to the loss of physical and/or cognitive capabilities. Robots and mechatronic devices bring the opportunity to improve the autonomy of disabled people and facilitate their social and professional integration by assisting them to perform daily living tasks. Technical topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Communication and learning applications in SCI an CP, Interface and Internet-based designs, Issues in human-machine interaction, Personal robotics, Hardware and control, Evaluation methods, Clinical experience, Orthotics and prosthetics, Robotics for older adults, Service robotics, Movement physiology and motor control.

This book is about the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and the unique and special environment of active implants that electrically interface with the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and organs. At the heart of the book is the matter of repairing and rehabilitating patients suffering from severe neurologic impairments, from paralysis to movement disorders and epilepsy, that often requires an invasive solution based on an implanted device. Past achievements, current work, and future perspectives of BCI and other interactions between medical devices and the human nervous system are described in detail from a pragmatic point of view. Reviews the Active Implantable Medical Devices (AIMDs) industry and how it is moving from cardiac to neuro applications Clear, easy to read, presentation of the field of neuro-technologies for human benefit Provides easy to understand explanations about the technical limitations, the physics of implants in the human body, and realistic long terms perspectives

This edited volume addresses the vast challenges of adapting Online Social Media (OSM) to developing research methods and applications. The topics cover generating realistic social network topologies, awareness of user activities, topic and trend generation, estimation of user attributes from their social content, behavior detection, mining social content for common trends, identifying and ranking social content sources, building friend-comprehension tools, and many others. Each of the ten chapters tackle one or more of these issues by proposing new analysis methods or new visualization techniques, or both, for famous OSM applications such as Twitter and Facebook. This collection of contributed chapters address these challenges. Online Social Media has become part of the daily lives of hundreds of millions of users generating an immense amount of 'social content'. Addressing the challenges that stem from this wide adaptation of OSM is what makes this book a valuable contribution to the field of social networks.

The ""Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction"" is the most thorough and definitive source providing coverage of everything related to the field of human computer interaction (HCI). This encyclopedia covers a wide range of HCI related topics such as concepts, design, usability, evaluation, innovations, and applications of HCI in organizations around the globe. Hundreds of contributors and advisors from around the world have conferred their expertise to this publication, making this encyclopedia a single source of authoritative and contemporary research in field of human computer interaction. The ""Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction"" also includes coverage of real life experiences and cases of HCI and the lessons learned helping readers to learn extensively about this important field of study.

This book sets out to define and consolidate the field of bioinformation studies in its transnational and global dimensions, drawing on debates in science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology. It provides situated analyses of bioinformation journeys across domains and spheres of interpretation. As unprecedented amounts of data relating to biological processes and lives are collected, aggregated, traded and exchanged, infrastructural systems and machine learners produce real consequences as they turn indeterminate data into actionable decisions for states, companies, scientific researchers and consumers. Bioinformation accrues multiple values as it transverses multiple registers and domains, and as it is transformed from bodies to becoming a subject of analysis tied to particular social relations, promises, desires and futures. The volume harnesses the anthropological sensibility for situated, fine-grained, ethnographically grounded analysis to develop an interdisciplinary dialogue on the conceptual, political, social and ethical dimensions posed by bioinformation.

As more individuals own and operate Internet-enabled devices and more critical government and industrial systems rely on advanced technologies, the issue of cybercrime has become a crucial concern for both the general public and professionals alike. The Psychology of Cyber Crime: Concepts and Principles aims to be the leading reference examining the psychology of cybercrime. This book considers many aspects of cybercrime, including research on offenders, legal issues, the impact of cybercrime on victims, punishment, and preventative measures. It is designed as a source for researchers and practitioners in the disciplines of criminology, cyberpsychology, and forensic psychology, though it is also likely to be of significant interest to many students of information technology and other related disciplines.

"Hacking Europe" traces the user practices of chopping games in Warsaw, hacking software in Athens, creating chaos in Hamburg, producing demos in Turku, and partying with computing in Zagreb and Amsterdam. Focusing on several European countries at the end of the Cold War, the book shows the digital development was not an exclusively American affair. Local hacker communities appropriated the computer and forged new cultures around it like the hackers in Yugoslavia, Poland and Finland, who showed off their tricks and creating distinct demoscenes. Together the essays reflect a diverse palette of cultural practices by which European users domesticated computer technologies. Each chapter explores the mediating actors instrumental in introducing and spreading the cultures of computing around Europe. More generally, the ludological element--the role of mischief, humor, and play--discussed here as crucial for analysis of hacker culture, opens new vistas for the study of the history of technology."

During the last few years, software evolution research has explored new domains such as the study of socio-technical aspects and collaboration between different individuals contributing to a software system, the use of search-based techniques and meta-heuristics, the mining of unstructured software repositories, the evolution of software requirements, and the dynamic adaptation of software systems at runtime. Also more and more attention is being paid to the evolution of collections of inter-related and inter-dependent software projects, be it in the form of web systems, software product families, software ecosystems or systems of systems.

With this book, the editors present insightful contributions on these and other domains currently being intensively explored, written by renowned researchers in the respective fields of software evolution. Each chapter presents the state of the art in a particular topic, as well as the current research, available tool support and remaining challenges. The book is complemented by a glossary of important terms used in the community, a reference list of nearly 1,000 papers and books and tips on additional resources that may be useful to the reader (reference books, journals, standards and major scientific events in the domain of software evolution and datasets).This book is intended for all those interested in software engineering, and more particularly, software maintenance and evolution. Researchers and software practitioners alike will find in the contributed chapters an overview of the most recent findings, covering a broad spectrum of software evolution topics. In addition, it can also serve as the basis of graduate or postgraduate courses on e.g., software evolution, requirements engineering, model-driven software development or social informatics.

Hacker Code will have over 400 pages of dedicated exploit, vulnerability, and tool code with corresponding instruction. Unlike other security and programming books that dedicate hundreds of pages to architecture and theory based flaws and exploits, HC1 will dive right into deep code analysis. Previously undisclosed security research in combination with superior programming techniques from Foundstone and other respected organizations will be included in both the Local and Remote Code sections of the book.
The book will be accompanied with a FREE COMPANION CD containing both commented and uncommented versions of the source code examples presented throughout the book. In addition to the book source code, the CD will also contain a copy of the author-developed Hacker Code Library v1.0. The Hacker Code Library will include multiple attack classes and functions that can be utilized to quickly create security programs and scripts. These classes and functions will simplify exploit and vulnerability tool development to an extent never before possible with publicly available software.
* Learn to quickly create security tools that ease the burden of software testing and network administration
* Find out about key security issues regarding vulnerabilities, exploits, programming flaws, and secure code development
* Discover the differences in numerous types of web-based attacks so that developers can create proper quality assurance testing procedures and tools
* Learn to automate quality assurance, management, and development tasks and procedures for testing systems and applications
* Learn to write complex Snort rules based solely upon traffic generated by network tools and exploits

Mobile devices allow users to remain connected with each other anytime and anywhere, but flaws and limitations in the design of mobile interfaces have often constituted frustrating obstacles to usability. Research and Design Innovations for Mobile User Experience offers innovative design solutions for mobile human-computer interfaces, addressing both challenges and opportunities in the field to pragmatically improve the accessibility of mobile technologies. Through cutting-edge empirical studies and investigative cases, this reference book will enable designers, developers, managers, and experts of mobile computer interfaces with the most up-to-date tools and techniques for providing their users with an outstanding mobile experience.

Describing several new biometric technologies, such as high-resolution fingerprint, finger-knuckle-print, multi-spectral backhand, 3D fingerprint, tongueprint, 3D ear, and multi-spectral iris recognition technologies, this book analyzes a number of efficient feature extraction, matching and fusion algorithms and how potential systems have been developed. Focusing on how to develop new biometric technologies based on the requirements of applications, and how to design efficient algorithms to deliver better performance, the work is based on the author's research with experimental results under different challenging conditions described in the text. The book offers a valuable resource for researchers, professionals and postgraduate students working in the fields of computer vision, pattern recognition, biometrics, and security applications, amongst others.

Spracklen explores the impact of the internet on leisure and leisure studies, examining the ways in which digital leisure spaces and activities have become part of everyday leisure. Covering a range of issues from social media and file-sharing to romance on the Internet, this book presents new theoretical directions for digital leisure.

This book describes pragmatic instruments and methods that enable business experts and software engineers to develop a common understanding of the software to be created, to determine their key requirements, and to manage the project in a way that fosters trust, encourages innovation and distributes risk fairly between clients and contractors. After an introduction to the fundamentals of agile software development in Part I, Part II describes the Interaction Room, an actual room where digitalization and mobilization strategies are developed, where technology potentials are evaluated, where software projects are planned and managed, and where business and technical stakeholders can communicate face to face, visualize complex relationships intuitively, and highlight value, effort and risk drivers that are keys to the project's success. After addressing these constructive aspects, the book focuses on the commercial aspects of software development: The adVANTAGE contract model described in Part III ensures that the insight-driven innovation process of software development does not just function, but is allowed to flourish in a trusted client-contractor relationship. Even though software contracting and construction may be grounded in two different academic disciplines, they are inseparable in practice, and how they interact is illustrated in the case study of developing a private health insurance benefit system in Part IV. Ultimately though, the success of every software project depends on the skills of the stakeholders. Part V therefore describes the qualification profile that software engineers and domain experts have to satisfy today. This book is aimed at CIOs, project managers and software engineers in industrial software development practice who want to learn how to effectively deal with the inevitable uncertainty of complex projects, who want to achieve higher levels of understanding and cooperation in their relationships with clients and contractors, and who want to run lower-risk software projects despite their inherent uncertainties.

Through use of networked embedded devices, pervasive computing leaves the concept of personal computers far behind and are offers new opportunities for businesses to avail and to offer to their customers. Strategic Pervasive Computing Applications: Emerging Trends combines the views and opinions of leading experts and practitioners in the field of pervasive computing technologies and infrastructure, considering trends and developments in pervasive applications. This innovative publication provides a significant reference source for professionals, managers, risk assessment practitioners, policy makers, and academicians throughout the world.

The book is about user interfaces to applications that have been designed for social and physical interaction. The interfaces are 'playful', that is, users feel challenged to engage in social and physical interaction because that will be fun. The topics that will be present in this book are interactive playgrounds, urban games using mobiles, sensor-equipped environments for playing, child-computer interaction, tangible game interfaces, interactive tabletop technology and applications, full-body interaction, exertion games, persuasion, engagement, evaluation and user experience. Readers of the book will not only get a survey of state-of-the-art research in these areas, but the chapters in this book will also provide a vision of the future where playful interfaces will be ubiquitous, that is, present and integrated in home, office, recreational, sports and urban environments, emphasizing that in the future in these environments game elements will be integrated and welcomed.

The second volume of this research monograph describes a number of applications of Artificial Intelligence in the field of Customer Relationship Management with the focus of solving customer problems. We design a system that tries to understand the customer complaint, his mood, and what can be done to resolve an issue with the product or service. To solve a customer problem efficiently, we maintain a dialogue with the customer so that the problem can be clarified and multiple ways to fix it can be sought. We introduce dialogue management based on discourse analysis: a systematic linguistic way to handle the thought process of the author of the content to be delivered. We analyze user sentiments and personal traits to tailor dialogue management to individual customers. We also design a number of dialogue scenarios for CRM with replies following certain patterns and propose virtual and social dialogues for various modalities of communication with a customer. After we learn to detect fake content, deception and hypocrisy, we examine the domain of customer complaints. We simulate mental states, attitudes and emotions of a complainant and try to predict his behavior. Having suggested graph-based formal representations of complaint scenarios, we machine-learn them to identify the best action the customer support organization can chose to retain the complainant as a customer.

This book introduces the latest visual effects (VFX) techniques that can be applied to game programming. The usefulness of the physicality-based VFX techniques, such as water, fire, smoke, and wind, has been proven through active involvement and utilization in movies and images. However, they have yet to be extensively applied in the game industry, due to the high technical barriers. Readers of this book can learn not only the theories about the latest VFX techniques, but also the methodology of game programming, step by step. The practical VFX processing techniques introduced in this book will provide very helpful information to game programmers. Due to the lack of instructional books about VFX-related game programming, the demand for knowledge regarding these high-tech VFXs might be very high.

Information technologies play a significant role in modern information-driven societies, making a comprehensive understanding of digital media a fundamental requisite to success. Cases on Usability Engineering: Design and Development of Digital Products provides readers with case studies and real-life examples on usability methods and techniques to test the design and development of digital products, such as web pages, video games, and mobile computer applications. Students, lecturers, and academics concentrating in computer science can use these cases to investigate how and why usability can improve the design of digital technology, offering diverse technological solutions that many academics have largely failed to disseminate. This book is part of the Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology series collection.

In an effort to increase an understanding of the relationship between information technology and the cultural and social dynamics within the workplace, we must bridge the gap between technology and social sciences. Integrations of Technology Utilization and Social Dynamics in Organizations covers all aspects of social issues impacted by information technology in organizations and inter-organizational structures; this book presents the conceptualization of specific social issues and their associated constructs. It encompasses designs and infrastructures, empirical validation of social models, and case studies illustrating socialization success and failures relating to Information technology.

The book presents recent trends and solutions to help healthcare sectors and medical staff protect themselves and others and limit the spread of the COVID-19. The book also presents the problems and challenges researchers and academics face in tackling this monumental task. Topics include: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or drones that can be used to detect infected people in different areas; robots used in fighting the COVID-19 by protecting workers and staff dealing with infected people; blockchain technology that secures sensitive transactions in strict confidentiality. With contributions from experts from around the world, this book aims to help those creating and honing technology to help with this global threat.

Information architecture has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s and earlier conceptions of the world and the internet being different and separate have given way to a much more complex scenario in the present day. In the post-digital world that we now inhabit the digital and the physical blend easily and our activities and usage of information takes place through multiple contexts and via multiple devices and unstable, emergent choreographies. Information architecture now is steadily growing into a channel- or medium-specific multi-disciplinary framework, with contributions coming from architecture, urban planning, design and systems thinking, cognitive science, new media, anthropology. All these have been heavily reshaping the practice: conversations about labelling, websites, and hierarchies are replaced by conversations about sense-making, place-making, design, architecture, cross media, complexity, embodied cognition and their application to the architecture of information spaces as places we live in in an increasingly large part of our lives.

Via narratives, frameworks, references, approaches and case-studies this book explores these changes and offers a way to reconceptualize the shifting role and nature of information architecture where information permeates digital and physical space, users are producers and products are increasingly becoming complex cross-channel or multi-channel services.