Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded research project on drug information and online drug-related communities. The editors of this pivotal text, Edward Murguia, Ann Lessem, and Melissa Tackett-Gibson, elevate the debate about drug use and the Internet from a polemic discourse to social scientific investigation. The essays confront issues related to the study of drug communication online, including the causal factors of abuse as discussed in online forums, the relationship between music and drug use in...

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...

A NATIONAL BESTSELLERA programmer, musician, and father of virtual reality technology, Jaron Lanier was a pioneer in digital media, and among the first to predict the revolutionary changes it would bring to our commerce and culture. Now, with the Web influencing virtually every aspect of our lives, he offers this provocative critique of how digital design is shaping society, for better and for worse.Informed by Lanier’s experience and expertise as a compute...

If you’re a tech company, the most dramatic effect of megatrends like cloud computing, managed services, and the rise of consumer technology won’t be felt in your company’s product line. The true disruption will be to your business model. Future customers won’t want to pay you high prices out of big “CapEx” budgets anymore. They will expect lower “cloud” prices paid from “OpEx” budgets only when and if they successfully consume the business value of your products. How your company reacts t...

We live in a world increasingly governed by technology—but to what end?Technology rules us as much as laws do. It shapes the legal, social, and ethical environments in which we act. Every time we cross a street, drive a car, or go to the doctor, we submit to the silent power of technology. Yet, much of the time, the influence of technology on our lives goes unchallenged by citizens and our elected representatives. In The Ethics of Invention, renowned schol...

That's the promise, and peril, of the third digital revolution, where anyone will be able to make (almost) anythingTwo digital revolutions -- computing and communication -- have radically transformed our economy and lives. A third digital revolution is here: fabrication. Today's 3D printers are only the start of a trend, accelerating exponentially, to turn data into objects: Neil Gershenfeld and his collaborators ultimately aim to create a universal replicator stra...

When companies develop a new technology, do they ask how it might affect the people who will actually use it? That, more or less, sums up Brian David Johnson’s duties as Intel’s futurist-in-residence. In this fascinating book, Johnson provides a collection of science fiction prototyping stories that attempt to answer the question.These stories focus on the same theme: scientists and thinkers exploring personal robotics as a new form of artificial intelligence. This isn’t fanciful s...

An unsparing analysis of class power and computerisation, Cyber-Proletariat shows us the dark-side of the information revolution. From Coltan mines in the Congo; electronics factories in China and devastated neighbourhoods in Detroit, this book reveals how technology facilitates growing polarisation between wealthy elites and precarious workers.Nick Dyer-Witheford reveals the class domination behind everything from expanding online surveillance to intensifying robotisation. At the ...

This volume gives language teachers, software designers, and researchers who wish to use technology in second or foreign language education the information they need to absorb what has been achieved so far and to make sense of it. It is designed to enable the kind of critical reading of a substantial literature that leads to a balanced and detailed knowledge of the field.Chapter by chapter, the book builds, through description, analysis, examples, and discussion, a detailed picture of mode...

From security training simulations to war games to role-playing games, to sports games to gambling, playing video games has become a social phenomena, and the increasing number of players that cross gender, culture, and age is on a dramatic upward trajectory. Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences integrates communication, psychology, and technology to examine the psychological and mediated aspects of playing video games. It is the first volume to delve deeply i...

The Age of You is the story about a new society, where we break away from the established rules regarding communication, relationships and the way we do business. It`s also a story about a major shift: we increasingly take control over our personal and commercial relationships. We alone decide who we want to listen to, and how we want to engage ourselves. "The age of You" explains the historical development; concepts and the foundation of networks, relations, social media and the new conne...

In a classic indictment of American individualism and isolationism, Philip Slater analyzes the great ills of modern society-violence, competitiveness, inequality, and the national 'addiction' to technology.