A brilliant foray into the nature of information, of history, and of making meaning in the face of death and decay.When world-renowned scholar Thomas S. Mullaney “lost” both his parents, he began thinking of how information—all the stuff that makes us, that we make, and that we leave behind—ultimately disappears. The information that makes up our lives, from mundane official documents, poignant family photos, and sentimental artifacts to the cues embodied ...

How Chinese characters triumphed over the QWERTY keyboard and laid the foundation for China's information technology successes today.Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabe...

The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing.A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device? In The Chinese Computer, Thomas S. Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to...

A brilliant foray into the nature of information, of history, and of making meaning in the face of death and decay.Our lives are collections of information—from mundane official documents, poignant family photos, and random artifacts to the cues embodied in our genes. Never is this more evident than in the wake of a parent's death. Yet from all these elusive, even evanescent, data points, history is written and a future is made.This information is stored on...

China is a vast nation comprised of hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, each with its own language, history, and culture. Today the government of China recognizes just 56 ethnic nationalities, or minzu, as groups entitled to representation. This controversial new book recounts the history of the most sweeping attempt to sort and categorize the nation's enormous population: the 1954 Ethnic Classification project (minzu shibie). Thomas S. Mullaney draws on recently dec...

Learn how to choose a research project that matters to you and yields results that matter to other people."An innovative and insightful primer for anyone about to embark on a research project. This is a book anyone teaching research methods, introduction to research, or an undergraduate research program needs to make use of and assign to their students." —Harry Elam, Jr., President of Occidental CollegeThe hardest part of research isn't ans...

Techno-utopianism is dead: Now is the time to pay attention to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.This book sounds an alarm: after decades of being lulled into complacency by narratives of technological utopianism and neutrality, people are waking up to the large-scale consequences of Silicon Valley-led technophilia. This book trains a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases in our technological systems...

Piracy CulturesEditorial IntroductionMANUEL CASTELLS1University of Southern CaliforniaGUSTAVO CARDOSOLisbon University Institute (ISCTE-IUL)What are "Piracy Cultures"? Usually, we look at media consumption starting from a media industry definition. We look at TV, radio, newspapers, games, Internet, and media content in general, all departing from the idea that the access to such content is made available through the payment of a license fee o...

**PULITZER PRIZE FINALISTA New York Times Notable Book of 2022What does it take to reinvent a language?**After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge ...

A revealing look at how negative biases against women of color are embedded in search engine results and algorithmsRun a Google search for “black girls”—what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls,” the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a...

INFPs, one of the personalities within the Myers-Briggs Inventory, often feel alienated from the rest of the world. They can see a different universe—one that is far more interesting and ideal than the realities of "ordinary life." Although there are struggles to being an INFP, there are also lots of perks. This book tells the stories of an INFP, giving a personal narration about what its like to be this unique—and often misunderstood—personality type. The book also covers the INFPs' cogni...

A New York Times Notable Book of the YearIn the very near future, "smart" technologies and "big data" will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such "solutionism" affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are reca...