This book develops and examines the concepts and strategies for rural empowerment through the formation of a community-driven social knowledge management (SKM) framework aided by social technology. The framework is aimed at mobilizing knowledge resources to bridge the rural-urban knowledge divide while securing rural empowerment using digital connections and social collaborations built on strategies of self-sustenance and self-development. With key empirical findings supplemented by relevant theoretical structures, case studies, illustrative figures and a lucid style, the book combines social technologies and social development to derive a social knowledge management platform. It shows how the proposed SKM framework can enhance knowledge capabilities of rural actors by facilitating connection among rural-urban entities through formation of purposive virtual communities, which allow social agents to create, modify and share content collaboratively. The volume brings forward diverse issues such as conceptual foundations; bridging the rural-urban knowledge and information divide; issues of information and knowledge asymmetry; a knowledge-theoretic perspective of rural empowerment; knowledge capability, freedom of choice and wellbeing, to provide a comprehensive outlook on building a knowledge society through digital empowerment. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, rural sociology, management studies, IT/IS, knowledge management and ICT for development, public policy, sociology, political economy and development economics. It will benefit professionals and policymakers, government and nongovernment bodies and international agencies involved with policy decisions related to application of technologies for rural development, social workers and those in the development sector.

This book develops and examines the concepts and strategies for rural empowerment through the formation of a community-driven social knowledge management (SKM) framework aided by social technology. The framework is aimed at mobilizing knowledge resources to bridge the rural-urban knowledge divide while securing rural empowerment using digital connections and social collaborations built on strategies of self-sustenance and self-development. With key empirical findings supplemented by relevant theoretical structures, case studies, illustrative figures and a lucid style, the book combines social technologies and social development to derive a social knowledge management platform. It shows how the proposed SKM framework can enhance knowledge capabilities of rural actors by facilitating connection among rural-urban entities through formation of purposive virtual communities, which allow social agents to create, modify and share content collaboratively. The volume brings forward diverse issues such as conceptual foundations; bridging the rural-urban knowledge and information divide; issues of information and knowledge asymmetry; a knowledge-theoretic perspective of rural empowerment; knowledge capability, freedom of choice and wellbeing, to provide a comprehensive outlook on building a knowledge society through digital empowerment. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, rural sociology, management studies, IT/IS, knowledge management and ICT for development, public policy, sociology, political economy and development economics. It will benefit professionals and policymakers, government and nongovernment bodies and international agencies involved with policy decisions related to application of technologies for rural development, social workers and those in the development sector.

This book explains the concept of education divide in rural India and identifies various factors that shape and sustain such a divide. In doing so, it also discusses a range of attempts undertaken to bridge the education divide. Subsequently, the book has attempted in providing a socio-technical framework towards optimally deploying social technologies for addressing the issue of education divide of marginalized communities. The proposed framework offers a transition from traditional content-centric, teacher-centric and centralized education ecosystem to a connection-centric, learner-centric and decentralized education ecosystem of the socio-digital age. It demonstrates how Internet-enabled digital platforms, based on the principles of sharism and mass collaboration using social technologies, could help to solve one of the greatest problems facing the world: mitigating the extant education divide by delivering quality education to underprivileged sections of society. The book also presents empirical validation of the proposed framework to show how a community-driven blended learning platform can mobilize the dormant knowledge capital of domain experts to teach underprivileged rural Indian children, as well as help form communities of practice to enable lifelong learning for the rural adult population. The book closes by pointing out the challenges involved in building an equitable education ecosystem using social technologies and ultimately the possibility of creating a fair and equitable society. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the domain of education who want to transform education ecosystems by using technological and process-related innovations to improve educational practices for underprivileged sections of society.

This book explains the concept of education divide in rural India and identifies various factors that shape and sustain such a divide. In doing so, it also discusses a range of attempts undertaken to bridge the education divide. Subsequently, the book has attempted in providing a socio-technical framework towards optimally deploying social technologies for addressing the issue of education divide of marginalized communities. The proposed framework offers a transition from traditional content-centric, teacher-centric and centralized education ecosystem to a connection-centric, learner-centric and decentralized education ecosystem of the socio-digital age. It demonstrates how Internet-enabled digital platforms, based on the principles of sharism and mass collaboration using social technologies, could help to solve one of the greatest problems facing the world: mitigating the extant education divide by delivering quality education to underprivileged sections of society. The book also presents empirical validation of the proposed framework to show how a community-driven blended learning platform can mobilize the dormant knowledge capital of domain experts to teach underprivileged rural Indian children, as well as help form communities of practice to enable lifelong learning for the rural adult population. The book closes by pointing out the challenges involved in building an equitable education ecosystem using social technologies and ultimately the possibility of creating a fair and equitable society. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the domain of education who want to transform education ecosystems by using technological and process-related innovations to improve educational practices for underprivileged sections of society.

Networking Infrastructure for Pervasive Computing: Enabling Technologies & Systems is a comprehensive guide to tomorrow's world of ubiquitous computing where users can access and manipulate information from everywhere at all times.
The emphasis is on networking, systems and standards rather than detailed physical implementation. Addressed are many technical obstacles, such as, connectivity, levels of service, performance, and reliability and fairness. The authors also describe the existing enabling off-the-shelf technologies and its underlying infrastructure known as pervasive networking (PervNet). PervNet ties different sets of smart nodes together enabling them to communicate with each other to provide pervasive computing services to users. Throughout the book, important issues related to scalability, transparency, security, energy management, QoS provisioning, fault tolerance, and disconnected operations are discussed.
This work provides a research and development perspective to the field of PervNet and will serve as an essential reference for network designers, operators and developers.

Networking Infrastructure for Pervasive Computing: Enabling Technologies & Systems is a comprehensive guide to tomorrow's world of ubiquitous computing where users can access and manipulate information from everywhere at all times.
The emphasis is on networking, systems and standards rather than detailed physical implementation. Addressed are many technical obstacles, such as, connectivity, levels of service, performance, and reliability and fairness. The authors also describe the existing enabling off-the-shelf technologies and its underlying infrastructure known as pervasive networking (PervNet). PervNet ties different sets of smart nodes together enabling them to communicate with each other to provide pervasive computing services to users. Throughout the book, important issues related to scalability, transparency, security, energy management, QoS provisioning, fault tolerance, and disconnected operations are discussed.
This work provides a research and development perspective to the field of PervNet and will serve as an essential reference for network designers, operators and developers.

A large portion of the network capacity of an ad hoc network can be wasted by the medium access mechanisms of omni-directional antennas. To overcome this problem, researchers propose the use of directional or adaptive antennas that largely reduce radio interference, improving the utilization of wireless medium and the resulting network throughput. Enhancing the Performance of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks with Smart Antennas discusses these issues and challenges. Following an introduction to ad hoc networks, it presents an overview of basic Media Access Control (MAC) and routing protocols in ad hoc networks with omni-directional antennas. The book then focuses on the use of smart antennas in ad hoc networks and reviews the strategies used in designing MAC and routing protocols for improved medium utilization and improved routing performance with effective load balancing. Finally, it analyzes the design issues related to priority based quality-of-service (QoS) routing protocols, illustrating the potential of these antennas in comparison to omni directional antennas. The book concludes with an examination of open problems and challenges for ad hoc networks.