Susan Leigh Star (1954--2010) was one of the most influential science studies scholars of the last several decades. In her work, Star highlighted the messy practices of discovering science, asking hard questions about the marginalizing as well as the liberating powers of science and technology. In the landmark work Sorting Things Out, Star and Geoffrey Bowker revealed the social and ethical his…
"How will low-income communities be affected by the waves of social, economic, political, and cultural change that surround the new information technologies? How can we influence the outcome? This action-oriented book identifies the key issues, explores the evidence, and suggests some answers. Avoiding both utopianism and despair, the book presents the voices of technology enthusiasts and skept…
Every field of history has a basic need for a detailed chronology of what happened: who did what when. In the absence of such a resource, fanciful accounts flourish. This book provides a rich narrative of the early development of online information retrieval systems and services, from 1963 to 1976--a period important to anyone who uses a search engine, online catalog, or large database. Drawing…
Papers originally presented at the World Summit on the Information Society, November 2005.International organizations, governments, academia, industry, and the media have all begun to grapple with the information society as a global policy issue. The first United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in December 2003, recognized the connections between information technol…
A visionary book when it was first published in the late 1970s, The Network Nation has become the defining document and standard reference for the field of computer mediated communication (CMC). This revised edition adds a substantial new chapter on "superconnectivity" (invented and defined in the unabridged edition of the Online Dictionary of the English Language, 2067) that reviews the develo…
Leading media scholars consider the social and cultural changes that come with the contemporary development of ubiquitous computing. Ubiquitous computing and our cultural life promise to become completely interwoven: technical currents feed into our screen culture of digital television, video, home computers, movies, and high-resolution advertising displays. Technology has become at once larger…
An examination of the ways cyberspace is changing both the theory and the practice of international relations.
An examination of the ways cyberspace is changing both the theory and the practice of international relations.
In this book, Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman, drawing on a new, large-scale database, show that open source and proprietary software interact in sometimes unexpected ways, and discuss the policy implications of these findings.
Analyzes the extent to which foreign investment in Mexico's information technology sector brought economic, social, and environmental benefits to Guadalajara.Foreign investment has been widely perceived as a panacea for developing countries--as a way to reduce poverty and kick-start sustainable modern industries. The Enclave Economy calls this prescription into question, showing that Mexico's p…