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The Internet of Elsewhere
Through the lens of culture,The Internet of Elsewherelooks at the role of the Internet as a catalyst in transforming communications, politics, and economics. Cyrus Farivar explores the Internet's history and effects in four distinct and, to some, surprising societies-Iran, Estonia, South Korea, and Senegal. He profiles Web pioneers in these countries and, at the same time, surveys the environments in which they each work. After all, contends Farivar, despite California's great success in creating the Internet and spawning companies like Apple and Google, in some areas the United States is still years behind other nations.
Surprised?You won't be for long as Farivar proves there are reasons that:
Skype was invented in Estonia-the same country that developed a digital ID system and e-voting;Iran was the first country in the world to arrest a blogger, in 2003;South Korea is the most wired country on the planet, with faster and less expensive broadband than anywhere in the United States;Senegal may be one of sub-Saharan Africa's best chances for greater Internet access.The Internet of Elsewherebrings forth a new complex and modern understanding of how the Internet spreads globally, with both good and bad effects.
eBook
Lessons from Fukushima : Japanese case studies on science, technology and society
\"This book is about the consequences of the Fukushima disaster in light of their technological, societal, political, cultural, and environmental origins. The magnitude of the nuclear accident is investigated in this book in the contexts of politics, economy, and society. The authors scrutinize the relationships between science, technology, and society leading to this accident. Further, the authors reveal how these relationships were constructed historically. This book provides a case analysis on the Fukushima disaster in political, societal, economic and cultural dimensions. In addition, analyses for historically grown relationships between different societal spheres mouthing into disasters are presented using examples of the Minamata disease (Mercury pollution), Itai-Itai Disease (Cadmium pollution), BSE, and GMOs. With this book, Yuko Fujigaki achieves to connect local and cultural peculiarities with generalized scientific information and practices in a coherent, logical fashion to a comprehensive volume on a very actual topic of global significance. In light of a globally increasing energy gap, this book has a distinct global relevance, providing an honest account on different triggers mouthing into the nuclear disaster. This book not only gives a scientific account. It also can also contribute to prevent future disasters starting from similar vectors.\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
Digital media : human-technology connection
Digital Media: Human-Technology Connection examines what it is like to be alive in today's technologically textured world and showcases specific digital media technologies that make this kind of world possible. So much of human experience occurs through digital media that reflection on the process and proliferation of digital consumption has become necessary. This book takes on that task through an interdisciplinary array of sources including philosophy, media studies, film studies, media ecology, and philosophy of technology. When placed in the interpretive lenses of artifact, instrument, and tool, digital media can be studied in a uniquely different way that pushes the boundaries on production, distribution, and communication and alters the way humans and technology connect with each other and the world.
In the first section, Raw Materials, Stacey O'Neal Irwin examines pertinent concepts like digital media, philosophy of technology, phenomenology and postphenomenology . In the second, Feeling the Weave, Irwin uses the postphenomenological framework, to explore empirical cases focused on deep analysis of screens, sound, photo manipulation, data-mining, aggregate news and self-tracking. Postphenomenological concepts like multistability, variational theory, microperception, macroperception, embodiment, technological mediation are explored.
Digital Media demonstrates that digital media technologies and digital content are not neutral. They texture the world in multiple and varied ways that transform human abilities, augment experience, and pattern the world in significant ways.
eBook
The Golem at Large
In the very successful and widely discussed first volume in the Golem series, The Golem: What You Should Know About Science, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch likened science to the Golem, a creature from Jewish mythology, a powerful creature which, while not evil, can be dangerous because it is clumsy. In this second volume, the authors now consider the Golem of technology. In a series of case studies they demonstrate that the imperfections in technology are related to the uncertainties in science described in the first volume. The case studies cover the role of the Patriot anti-missile missile in the Gulf War, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, tests of nuclear fuel flasks and of anti-misting kerosene as a fuel for airplanes, economic modeling, the question of the origins of oil, analysis of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the contribution of lay expertise to the analysis of treatments for AIDS.
eBook
Making Virtual Worlds
The past decade has seen phenomenal growth in the development and use of virtual worlds. In one of the most notable, Second Life, millions of people have created online avatars in order to play games, take classes, socialize, and conduct business transactions. Second Life offers a gathering point and the tools for people to create a new world online.
Too often neglected in popular and scholarly accounts of such groundbreaking new environments is the simple truth that, of necessity, such virtual worlds emerge from physical workplaces marked by negotiation, creation, and constant change. Thomas Malaby spent a year at Linden Lab, the real-world home of Second Life, observing those who develop and profit from the sprawling, self-generating system they have created.
Some of the challenges created by Second Life for its developers were of a very traditional nature, such as how to cope with a business that is growing more quickly than existing staff can handle. Others are seemingly new: How, for instance, does one regulate something that is supposed to run on its own? Is it possible simply to create a space for people to use and then not govern its use? Can one apply these same free-range/free-market principles to the office environment in which the game is produced? \"Lindens\"-as the Linden Lab employees call themselves-found that their efforts to prompt user behavior of one sort or another were fraught with complexities, as a number of ongoing processes collided with their own interventions.
InMaking Virtual Worlds, Malaby thoughtfully describes the world of Linden Lab and the challenges faced while he was conducting his in-depth ethnographic research there. He shows how the workers of a very young but quickly growing company were themselves caught up in ideas about technology, games, and organizations, and struggled to manage not only their virtual world but also themselves in a nonhierarchical fashion. In exploring the practices the Lindens employed, he questions what was at stake in their virtual world, what a game really is (and how people participate), and the role of the unexpected in a product like Second Life and an organization like Linden Lab.
eBook
Material politics
In Material Politics, author Andrew Barry reveals that as we are beginning to attend to the importance of materials in political life, materials has become increasingly bound up with the production of information about their performance, origins, and impact.
* Presents an original theoretical approach to political geography by revealing the paradoxical relationship between materials and politics
* Explores how political disputes have come to revolve not around objects in isolation, but objects that are entangled in ever growing quantities of information about their performance, origins, and impact
* Studies the example of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline – a fascinating experiment in transparency and corporate social responsibility – and its wide-spread negative political impact
* Capitalizes on the growing interdisciplinary interest, especially within geography and social theory, about the critical role of material artefacts in political life
eBook