The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life reveals how people are managing, exploiting, and resisting technological developments in the digital age. In this unique volume, distinguished experts from a broad range of fields candidly show how the latest technologies are being used to transform and control nitty-gritty aspects of life from conception onward and the surprising benefits and consequences. Bold and provocative, The Culture of Efficiency is for everyone concerned with efficiency and effectiveness. It offers fresh insights about social trends, practical suggestions for improving everyday life, and vital forecasts about the future of work and leisure. This is essential reading for researchers, professionals, and students in communication, sociology, education, anthropology, psychology, organizational science, operations management, marketing, gender studies, environmental studies, American studies, healthcare, and social policy. Overall, the volume offers a rich interpretation of the meaning of living in a culture of efficiency.

Displacing Place: Mobile Communication in the Twenty-first Century addresses the innovative, unanticipated, and far-reaching ways that mobile information and communication technologies (ICTs) are altering how we work, play, and relate to one another. This extraordinary collection of new essays by leading scholars and professionals from a range of disciplines reveals the effects, implications, and future of mobile communication in a reader-friendly balance of theoretical and empirical chapters. Displacing Place is a vital book for students, scholars, professionals, and all readers interested in social and technological trends in the twenty-first century.

Comprehensive yet concise, this up-to-date and user-friendly dictionary is a must-have reference for students, educators, and professionals in the field of media and communication. From Wikileaks to the telegraph, this dictionary is designed to help readers understand the latest developments in our media-rich environment as well as fundamental and historically significant terms and concepts. The evolving language, theories, and technologies of the field are explained with extraordinary clarity in an engaging format. Detailed cross-references are provided throughout, along with a helpful index.