This edited collection analyzes the role of digital technology in contemporary society dialectically. While many authors, journalists, and commentators have argued that the internet and digital technologies will bring us democracy, equality, and freedom, digital culture often results in loss of privacy, misinformation, and exploitation. This collection challenges celebratory readings of digital technology by suggesting digital culture's potential is limited because of its fundamental relat...

This bookdocuments and examines the history of technology used by consumers to serve oneself. The telephone’s development as a self-service technology functions as the narrative spine, beginning with the advent of rotary dialing eliminating most operator services and transforming every local connection into an instance of self-service. Today, nearly a century later, consumers manipulate 0-9 keypads on a plethora of digital machines. Throughout the book Palm employs a combination of histori...

During the last two decades, many U.S. universities have restructured themselves to operate more like corporations. Nowhere has this process been more dramatic than at New York University, which has often been touted as an exemplar of the "corporate university." Over the same period, an academic labor movement has arisen in response to this corporatization. Using the unprecedented 2005 strike by the graduate student union at NYU as a springboard, The University Against Itself

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A former Wall Street quant sounds the alarm on Big Data and the mathematical models that threaten to rip apart our social fabric—with a new afterword“A manual for the twenty-first-century citizen . . . relevant and urgent.”—Financial TimesNATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Boston Glo...

An “impressive” (Wall Street Journal) exposé of twenty-first century individuals and companies who have become obscenely rich from the resource trade in AfricaAfrica is the world’s poorest continent and, arguably, its richest. In The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis takes readers on a gripping journey into the world of the magnates and militiamen, the despots and jet-setting executives who gorge on Africa’s vast stocks of oil, gas, metals, and precious...

A Pulitzer Prize winner interviews workers, from policemen to piano tuners: "Magnificent . . . To read it is to hear America talking." — The Boston GlobeA National Book Award Finalist and New York Times bestsellerStuds Terkel's classic oral history Working is a compelling look at jobs and the people who do them. Consisting of over one hundred interviews with everyone from a gravedigger to a studio head, this book provide...

Social media penetrate our lives: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and many other platforms define daily habits of communication and creative production. This book studies the rise of social media, providing both a historical and a critical analysis of the emergence of major platforms in the context of a rapidly changing ecosystem of connective media. Author Jose van Dijck offers an analytical prism that can be used to view techno-cultural as well as socio-economic aspects of this transformation...

In the twentieth century, large companies employing many workers formed the bedrock of the U.S. economy. Today, on the list of big business's priorities, sustaining the employer-worker relationship ranks far below building a devoted customer base and delivering value to investors. As David Weil's groundbreaking analysis shows, large corporations have shed their role as direct employers of the people responsible for their products, in favor of outsourcing work to small companies that compet...

Why would highly skilled, well-trained pilots make errors that lead to accidents when they had safely completed many thousands of previous flights? The majority of all aviation accidents are attributed primarily to human error, but this is often misinterpreted as evidence of lack of skill, vigilance, or conscientiousness of the pilots. The Limits of Expertise is a fresh look at the causes of pilot error and aviation accidents, arguing that accidents can be understood only in the context of...

Performance at all costs, productivity without regard to consequences, and a competitive work environment: these are the ethical factors discussed in The Anatomy of Ethical Leadership, which highlights issues in workplace culture while looking into a brighter future for labour ethics. Langlois maintains that an enhanced awareness of the process of ethical decision making in difficult situations will lead to the establishment of practices that encourage productive relationships bet...

This book is a detailed compilation of writings and lectures about the life of James Larkin. It reviews his influence in history and on various movements across the country and abroad. James Larkin: Lion of the Fold includes writing by James Larkin and is a timely reminder of the long road that the Irish people have travelled together. The book considers much of the history of the early Irish Labour Movement and includes a vast range of opinion on James Larkin.

Originally broadcast on CBC Radio's Ideas as a series of interviews, Jacques Ellul's first-person approach here makes his ideas accessible to readers looking for new ways of understanding our society, and also gives unique new insight into Ellul's life, his work, and the origins and development of his beliefs and theories. Jacques Ellul, historian, theologian, and sociologist, was one of the foremost and widely known contemporary critics of modern technological society.