The Diffusion of Military Power examines how the financial and organizational challenges of adopting new methods of fighting wars can influence the international balance of power. Michael Horowitz ...argues that a state or actor wishing to adopt a military innovation must possess both the financial resources to buy or build the technology and the internal organizational capacity to accommodate any necessary changes in recruiting, training, or operations. How countries react to new innovations--and to other actors that do or don't adopt them--has profound implications for the global order and the likelihood of war.
This book presents the previously untold history of the use of new media in Democratic electoral campaigning over the last decade. Drawing on open-ended interviews with more than fifty political ...staffers, fieldwork during the 2008 electoral cycle, and archival research, the book follows a group of technically skilled Internet staffers who came together on the Howard Dean campaign and created a series of innovations in campaign organization, tools, and practice. After the election, these individuals founded an array of consulting firms and training organizations and staffed a number of prominent Democratic campaigns. In the process, they carried their innovations across Democratic politics and contributed to a number of electoral victories, including Barack Obama’s historic bid for the presidency. The book contributes to an interdisciplinary body of scholarship from communication, sociology, and political science. The book theorizes processes of innovation in online electoral politics. It shows how the innovations of the Dean and Obama campaigns were the product of the movement of staffers between industries, organizational structures that provided a space for technical development, and incentives for experimentation. The book also analyzes how Dean’s former staffers created an infrastructure for Democratic new media campaigning after the 2004 elections that helped transfer knowledge, practice, and tools across electoral cycles and campaigns. The book shows how organizational contexts shaped the use of tools by the Obama campaign, analyzes the emergence of data systems that facilitate electoral coordination, and reveals how cultural work mobilizes supporters to participate in collective action.
Using a combination of theoretical discussion and real-world case studies, this book focuses on current and future use of RAISA technologies in the tourism economy, including examples from the hotel, ...restaurant, travel agency, museum, and events industries.
<p><b> Provides the foundations and principles needed for addressing the various challenges of developing smart cities </b> <p> Smart cities are emerging as a priority for ...research and development across the world. They open up significant opportunities in several areas, such as economic growth, health, wellness, energy efficiency, and transportation, to promote the sustainable development of cities. This book provides the basics of smart cities, and it examines the possible future trends of this technology. <i>Smart Cities: Foundations, Principles, and Applications</i> provides a systems science perspective in presenting the foundations and principles that span multiple disciplines for the development of smart cities. <p> Divided into three parts&mdash;foundations, principles, and applications&mdash;<i>Smart Cities</i> addresses the various challenges and opportunities of creating smart cities and all that they have to offer. It also covers smart city theory modeling and simulation, and examines case studies of existing smart cities from all around the world. In addition, the book: <ul> <li>Addresses how to develop a smart city and how to present the state of the art and practice of them all over the world</li> <li>Focuses on the foundations and principles needed for advancing the science, engineering, and technology of smart cities&mdash;including system design, system verification, real-time control and adaptation, Internet of Things, and test beds</li> <li>Covers applications of smart cities as they relate to smart transportation/connected vehicle (CV) and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) for improved mobility, safety, and environmental protection</li> </ul> <br> <p><i> Smart Cities: Foundations, Principles, and Applications</i> is a welcome reference for the many researchers and professionals working on the development of smart cities and smart city-related industries.
How do parents and children care for each other when they are separated because of migration? The way in which transnational families maintain long-distance relationships has been revolutionised by ...the emergence of new media such as email, instant messaging, social networking sites, webcam and texting. A migrant mother can now call and text her left-behind children several times a day, peruse social networking sites and leave the webcam for 12 hours achieving a sense of co-presence.
Drawing on a long-term ethnographic study of prolonged separation between migrant mothers and their children who remain in the Philippines, this book develops groundbreaking theory for understanding both new media and the nature of mediated relationships. It brings together the perspectives of both the mothers and children and shows how the very nature of family relationships is changing. New media, understood as an emerging environment of polymedia, have become integral to the way family relationships are enacted and experienced. The theory of polymedia extends beyond the poignant case study and is developed as a major contribution for understanding the interconnections between digital media and interpersonal relationships.
"A compelling read about the ‘connected transnational family’ … The most compelling aspect of this book, this reader would argue, is its simultaneous engagement with a broad range of entangled issues. It convincingly puts mothers/children, migration/communication, mediation/relationship, past/present/future as well as theory/research practice into close encounter throughout." - Nicole Shephard, LSE Review of Books
"Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller seem to have formed a dream team when they embarked on their mutual research project on transnational families and the role of ICTs ... In my view, the book succeeds in what many authors fruitlessly pursue: deriving convincing theory from an abundance of vast qualitative data. It is a highly engaging book that is rich in detail without drowning the reader in it. Its empirical and theoretical innovations make it a highly recommended book for any scholar working on media and migration, long-distance communication and the increasingly complex media environments that enfold us." - Kevin Smets, Communications
"An exemplary and groundbreaking study, with contributions to theory and our understanding of polymedia in everyday life, this stands out as an extraordinary read on the technology of relationships." - Zizi Papacharissi, University of Illinois-Chicago, USA
"This fascinating, richly detailed book investigates the role that fluency across multiple digital platforms plays in enabling mothering and caring to be sustained at a distance. A genuine breakthrough." - Nick Couldry , Goldmiths, University of London, UK
"With deft weaving of interview material and theorization...Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller have produced an important and useful theoretical intervention that advances our understanding of the social life of transnational communities." - Radha S. Hegde, Media, Culture, & Society
Mirca Madianou is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Leicester, UK. She is the author of Mediating the Nation and several articles on the social consequences of the media.
Daniel Miller is Professor of Material Culture at the Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK. His most recent books include Tales from Facebook and Digital Anthropology (edited with Heather Horst).
1. Introduction 2. Philippines at the Forefront of Globalisation 3. The Hidden Motivations of Migration 4. Crafting Love: Letters and Cassettes 5. The Cultural Contradictions of Transnational Motherhood: The Mothers’ Perspective 6. The Children’s Perspective 7. Technologies of Relationships 8. Polymedia 9. A Theory of Mediated Relationships 10. Appendix: A Note on Method
InConfronting Dystopia, a distinguished group of scholars analyze the implications of the ongoing technological revolution for jobs, working conditions, and income. Focusing on the economic and ...political implications of AI, digital connectivity, and robotics for both the Global North and the Global South, they move beyond diagnostics to seek solutions that offer better lives for all. Their analyses of the challenges of technology are placed against the backdrop of three decades of rapid economic globalization. The two in tandem are producing the daunting challenges that analysts and policymakers must now confront.
The conjuncture of recent advances in AI, machine learning, and robotization portends a vast displacement of human labor, argues the editor, Eva Paus. AsConfronting Dystopiashows, we are on the eve of-indeed we are already amid-a technological revolution that will impact profoundly the livelihoods of people everywhere in the world.
Across a broad and deep set of topics, the contributors explore whether the need for labor will inexorably shrink in the coming decades, how pressure on employment will impact human well-being, and what new institutional arrangements-a new social contract, for example, will be needed to sustain livelihoods. They evaluate such proposals as a basic income, universal social services, and investments that address key global challenges and create new jobs.
Contributors:Vandana Chandra, Mignon Duffy, Dieter Ernst, Vincent Ferraro, Martin Ford, Juliana Martinez Franzoni, Irmgard Nubler, Robert Pollin, David Rueda, Diego Sanchez-Ancochea, Guy Standing, Stefan Thewissen
"Bessen sets out to refute the arguments of... techno-pessimists, relying on economic analysis and on a fresh reading of history" ( The Wall Street Journal ). Technology is constantly changing our ...world, leading to more efficient production. But where once technological advancements dramatically increased wages, the median wage has remained stagnant over the past three decades. Many of today's machines have taken over the work of humans, destroying old jobs while increasing profits for business owners and raising the possibility of ever-widening economic inequality. Here, economist and software company founder James Bessen discusses why these remarkable advances have, so far, benefited only a select few. He argues the need for unique policies to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to implement rapidly evolving technologies. Currently, this technical knowledge is mostly unstandardized and difficult to acquire, learned through job experience rather than in classrooms, but labor markets rarely provide strong incentives for learning on the job. Basing his analysis on intensive research into economic history as well as today's labor markets, Bessen explores why the benefits of technology can take decades to emerge. Although the right policies can hasten the process, policy has moved in the wrong direction, protecting politically influential interests to the detriment of emerging technologies and broadly shared prosperity. This is a thoughtful look at what leaders need to do to ensure success not only for the next quarter, but for society in the long term. "Everyone agrees that education is the key to wage growth. But what kind of education?... This enlightening and insightful book... shows that economic history can provide some useful and surprising answers." —Hal Varian, chief economist at Google
eFieldnotes Roger Sanjek, Susan W. Tratner / Roger Sanjek, Susan W. Tratner
2015, 2016-06-20
eBook
In this volume, sixteen distinguished scholars address the impact of digital technologies on how anthropologists do fieldwork and on what they study. With nearly three billion Internet users and more ...than four and a half billion mobile phone owners today, and with an ever-growing array of electronic devices and information sources, ethnographers confront a vastly different world from just decades ago, when fieldnotes produced by hand and typewriter were the professional norm.Reflecting on fieldwork experiences both off- and online, the contributors survey changes and continuities since the classic volume Fieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology, edited by Roger Sanjek, was published in 1990. They also confront ethical issues in online fieldwork, the strictures of institutional review boards affecting contemporary research, new forms of digital data and mediated collaboration, shifting boundaries between home and field, and practical and moral aspects of fieldnote recording, curating, sharing, and archiving.The essays draw upon fieldwork in locales ranging from Japan, Liberia, Germany, India, Jamaica, Zambia, to Iraqi Kurdistan, and with diaspora groups of Brazilians in Belgium and Indonesians of Hadhrami Arab descent. In the United States, fieldwork populations include urban mothers of toddlers and young children, teen tech users, Bitcoin traders, World of Warcraft gamers, online texters and bloggers, and anthropologists themselves.With growing interest in both traditional and digital ethnographic methods, scholars and students in anthropology and sociology, as well as in computer and information sciences, linguistics, social work, communications, media studies, design, management, and policy fields, will find much of value in this engaging and accessibly written volume. Contributors: Jenna Burrell, Lisa Cliggett, Heather A. Horst, Jean E. Jackson, Graham M. Jones, William W. Kelly, Diane E. King, Jordan Kraemer, Rena Lederman, Mary H. Moran, Bonnie A. Nardi, Roger Sanjek, Bambi B. Schieffelin, Mieke Schrooten, Martin Slama, Susan W. Tratner.
Metrics at Work Christin, Angele
2020, 2020-06-30, 2020.
eBook
The starkly different ways that American and French online news companies respond to audience analytics and what this means for the future of news When the news moved online, journalists suddenly ...learned what their audiences actually liked, through algorithmic technologies that scrutinize web traffic and activity. Has this advent of audience metrics changed journalists' work practices and professional identities? In Metrics at Work, Angèle Christin documents the ways that journalists grapple with audience data in the form of clicks, and analyzes how new forms of clickbait journalism travel across national borders.Drawing on four years of fieldwork in web newsrooms in the United States and France, including more than one hundred interviews with journalists, Christin reveals many similarities among the media groups examined—their editorial goals, technological tools, and even office furniture. Yet she uncovers crucial and paradoxical differences in how American and French journalists understand audience analytics and how these affect the news produced in each country. American journalists routinely disregard traffic numbers and primarily rely on the opinion of their peers to define journalistic quality. Meanwhile, French journalists fixate on internet traffic and view these numbers as a sign of their resonance in the public sphere. Christin offers cultural and historical explanations for these disparities, arguing that distinct journalistic traditions structure how journalists make sense of digital measurements in the two countries.Contrary to the popular belief that analytics and algorithms are globally homogenizing forces, Metrics at Work shows that computational technologies can have surprisingly divergent ramifications for work and organizations worldwide.
For most of the vast span of human history, economic growth was all but nonexistent. Then, about two centuries ago, some nations began to emerge from this epoch of economic stagnation, experiencing ...sustained economic growth that led to significant increases in standards of living and profoundly altered the level and distribution of wealth, population, education, and health across the globe. The question ever since has been--why?
This is the first book to put forward a unified theory of economic growth that accounts for the entire growth process, from the dawn of civilization to today. Oded Galor, who founded the field of unified growth theory, identifies the historical and prehistorical forces behind the differential transition timing from stagnation to growth and the emergence of income disparity around the world. Galor shows how the interaction between technological progress and population ultimately raised the importance of education in coping with the rapidly changing technological environment, brought about significant reduction in fertility rates, and enabled some economies to devote greater resources toward a steady increase in per capita income, paving the way for sustained economic growth.
Presents a unified theory of economic growth from the dawn of civilization to today
Explains the worldwide disparities in living standards and population we see today
Provides a comprehensive overview of the three phases of the development process
Analyzes the Malthusian theory and its empirical support
Examines theories of demographic transition and their empirical significance
Explores the interaction between economic development and human evolution
