Content

From the time we roll out of bed to check overnight updates to our last posts, likes, and views of the previous day, we're consuming and producing content. But what does the term “content” even mean? When did it become ubiquitous? And at what cost? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kate Eichhorn offers a concise introduction to content and the content industry, exa…

Power of Position: Classification and the Biodiversity Sciences

The idea that species live in nature as pure and clear-cut named individuals is a fiction, as scientists well know. According to Robert D. Montoya, classifications are powerful mechanisms and we must better attend to the machinations of power inherent in them, as well as to how the effects of this power proliferate beyond the boundaries of their original intent. We must acknowledge the many way…

Artificial Communication: How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence

Algorithms that work with deep learning and big data are getting so much better at doing so many things that it makes us uncomfortable. How can a device know what our favorite songs are, or what we should write in an email? Have machines become too smart? In Artificial Communication, Elena Esposito argues that drawing this sort of analogy between algorithms and human intelligence is misleading.…

Virtually Amish: Preserving Community at the Internet's Margins

The Amish are famous for their disconnection from the modern world and all its devices. But, as Lindsay Ems shows in Virtually Amish, Old Order Amish today are selectively engaging with digital technology. The Amish need digital tools to participate in the economy—websites for ecommerce, for example, and cell phones for communication on the road—but they have developed strategies for making…

Digital Work in the Planetary Market

Many jobs today can be done from anywhere. Digital technology and widespread internet connectivity allow almost anyone, anywhere, to connect to anyone else to communicate and exchange files, data, video, and audio. In other words, work can be deterritorialized at a planetary scale. This book examines the implications for both work and workers when work is commodified and traded beyond local lab…

Cyberinsurance Policy: Rethinking Risk in an Age of Ransomware, Computer Frau…

As cybersecurity incidents—ranging from data breaches and denial-of-service attacks to computer fraud and ransomware—become more common, a cyberinsurance industry has emerged to provide coverage for any resulting liability, business interruption, extortion payments, regulatory fines, or repairs. In this book, Josephine Wolff offers the first comprehensive history of cyberinsurance, from the…

Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can …

The early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labor, and downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the h…

The Political Lives of Information: Information and the Production of Develop…

Information, says Janaki Srinivasan, has fundamentally reshaped development discourse and practice. In this study, she examines the history of the idea of “information” and its political implications for poverty alleviation. She presents three cases in India—the circulation of price information in a fish market in Kerala, government information in information kiosks operated by a nonprofi…

Everyday Adventures with Unruly Data

Whether questioning numbers on a scale, laughing at a misspelling of one's name, or finding ourselves confused in a foreign supermarket, we are engaging with data. The only way to handle data responsibly, says Melanie Feinberg in this incisive work, is to take into account its human character. Though the data she discusses may seem familiar, close scrutiny shows it to be ambiguous, complicated,…

Connected in Isolation: Digital Privilege in Unsettled Times

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9780262371490

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