To properly understand the nature of the digital economy we need to investigate the phenomenon of a "ubiquitous computing system" (UCS). As defined by Robin Milner, this notion implies the following characteristics: (i) it will continually make decisions hitherto made by us; (ii) it will be vast, maybe 100 times today’s systems; (iii) it must continually adapt, on-line, to new requirements; and, (iv) individual UCSs will interact with one another. This book argues that neoclassical approac...

What are systems? What is society? What happens to human beings in a hypermodern world? This book is an introduction to Niklas Luhmann's social system theory which explains specific functions like economy and mass media from a cybernetic perspective. Integrating various schools of thought including sociology, philosophy and biology Luhmann Explained results in an overall analysis of "world society". Special attention is given to the present-day relevance of Luhmann's theory with respect to...

An overview of information retrieval rooted in the humanities and social sciences but informed by an understanding of information technology and information theory.Information retrieval in the age of Internet search engines has become part of ordinary discourse and everyday practice: “Google” is a verb in common usage. Thus far, more attention has been given to practical understanding of information retrieval than to a full theoretical account. In Human Informa...

“Appiah is a writer and thinker of remarkable range… [He] has packed into this short book an impressive amount of original reflection… A rich and illuminating book.”—Thomas Nagel, New York Review of BooksIdealization is a fundamental feature of human thought. We build simplified models to make sense of the world, and life is a constant adjustment between the models we make and the realities we encounter. Our beliefs, desires, and sense of justice are bound up with t...

This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology.

Gilbert Simondon: Information, Technology and Media is a comprehensive introduction to the work of the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon. In particular it examines Simondon's original informational ontology, as developed from a synthesis of Cybernetics, thermodynamics and French epistemology,The book goes on to delineate the role this ontology plays in developing an original account of individuation in the physical, biological and psycho-social regimes. This is done, in part, thr...

Humanesis critically examines central strains of posthumanism, searching out biases in the ways that human–technology coupling is explained. Specifically, it interrogates three approaches taken by posthumanist discourse: scientific, humanist, and organismic. David Cecchetto’s investigations reveal how each perspective continues to hold on to elements of the humanist tradition that it is ostensibly mobilized against. His study frontally desublimates the previously unseen presumptio...

Sociolinguistics is a dynamic field of research that explains the role and function of language in social life. This book offers the most substantial account available of the core contemporary ideas and arguments in sociolinguistics, with an emphasis on innovation and change. Bringing together original writing by more than twenty of the field's most influential international thinkers and researchers, this is an indispensable guide to the newest and most searching ideas about language in so...

In this innovative book, Celia Lury argues that the time has come for us to explore the world not only with new methods, but with a new approach to methodology itself. Fundamental changes are taking place in how we produce knowledge, how we communicate it and, indeed, what we consider to be knowledge. These changes demand innovative and creative responses to research questions.Lury's rethinking of the nature of social inquiry starts by reconceptualizing the 'problem space'. Problem...

A discussion of the rapidly growing field, from a thinker at the forefront of research at the interface of technology and the humanities, this is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary developments in Continental philosophy and philosophy of technology.Philosophy of technology regularly draws on key thinkers in the Continental tradition, including Husserl, Heidegger, and Foucault. Yet because of the problematic legacy of the 'empirical turn', it often criticizes 'bad' co...

Computable Foundations for Economics is a unified collection of essays, some of which are published here for the first time and all of which have been updated for this book, on an approach to economic theory from the point of view of algorithmic mathematics. By algorithmic mathematics the author means computability theory and constructive mathematics. This is in contrast to orthodox mathematical economics and game theory, which are formalised with the mathematics of real analysis,...

Covering major developments from post-war cybernetics and telegraphy to the Internet and our networked society, Remodelling Communication explores the critical literature from across disciplines and eras on the models used for studying communications and culture.Proceeding model-by-model, Genosko provides detailed explanations of mathematical, semiotic, and reception theory's encoding/decoding models, as well as Baudrillard's critique of models and general models that brin...