Product Description
The production and consumption of Information and Communication Technologies (or ICTs) has become embedded within our societies. The influence and implications of this have an impact at a macro level, in the way our governments, economies, and businesses operate, and in our everyday lives. This handbook is about the many challenges presented by ICTs. It sets out an intellectual agenda that examines the implications of ICTs for individuals, organizations, democracy, and the economy.

Explicity interdisciplinary, and combining empirical research with theoretical work, it is organised around four themes covering the knowledge economy; organizational dynamics, strategy, and design; governance and democracy; and culture, community and new media literacies.

It provides a comprehensive resource for those working in the social sciences, and in the physical sciences and engineering fields, with leading contemporary research informed principally by… More >>

The Oxford Handbook of Information and Communication Technologies

Product Description
The IT revolution made some glorious promises to the world’s poor: instant access to information and far-flung markets, political empowerment, greater growth, even the possibility that countries could leapfrog entire stages of development. But when none of that happened in a hurry, the hoopla gave way to concern that rather than closing the wealth gap, IT was exacerbating it. Yet for all the international debate and millions of words written about the digital divide, very little systematic empirical research or studies over time have been done to confirm claims and counterclaims and to guide policymakers on how this technology actually affects the development of low-income countries.In this volume, Maximo Torero and Joachim von Braun seek to address this omission with a collection of case studies exploring the relationship between information and communication technologies (ICTs) and development in Bangladesh, China, India, Ghana, Laos, Peru, and East Afri… More >>

Information and Communication Technologies for Development and Poverty Reduction: The Potential of Telecommunications

Product Description
This book is an introduction to media ecology as a theory group that encompasses a coherent body of canonical literature and perspectives on understanding culture, technology and communication. It examines the various facets of media ecology’s development since the turn of the 20th century as an intellectual tradition and how it has evolved into being through an interlocking network of researchers from multidisciplinary backgrounds, such as behavioral sciences; classics, cultural and structural anthropology; information and systems theory; history of technology; media and culture; and so on. Specifically, the volume clearly explains some of media ecology’s defining ideas, theories or themes about the interrelationship among culture, technology and communication; the thinkers behind these ideas; the social, political, and intellectual contexts in which these ideas came into being; as well as how the reader may use these ideas in our times…. More >>

Perspectives on Culture, Technology And Communication: The Media Ecology

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This book explains how optical communication systems are used to provide high-speed communication connections. You will learn basic optical principles including how to create and detect light signals, reflection and refraction, basic lightwave propagation and optical signal processing. Provided is an overview of the components and basic operation of optical systems including synchronous optical network (SONET), synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH), fiber distributed data interface (FDDI), passive optical networks (PON) and dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM). The common types of network equipment such as ONU, ADM, and optical switches are described. Discover how optical transmitters and modulators operate including light emitting diodes (LEDs) and LASERS. The differences between these light sources are explained along with how some types of light sources are better suited to send information over short and long distances. Fiber optic transmiss… More >>

Introduction to Optical Communication, Lightwave Technology, Fiber Transmission, and Optical Networks

In the developed world, there is no longer an issue of whether the Internet affects politics–but how, why and with what consequences. With the Internet now spreading at a breathtaking rate in the developing world, the new medium is fraught with tensions, paradoxes, and contradictions. How do we make sense of these? In this major new work, Andrew Chadwick addresses such concerns, providing the first comprehensive overview of Internet politics. Internet Politics examines the impact of new communication technologies on political parties and elections, pressure groups, social movements, local democracy, public bureaucracies, and global governance. It also analyzes persistent and controversial policy problems, including the digital divide; the governance of the Internet itself; the tensions between surveillance, privacy and security; and the political economy of the Internet media sector. The approach is explicitly comparative, providing numerous examples from the U.S., Britain, and many … More >>

Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies

A volume in Research in Educational Policy: Local, National, and Global Perspectives Series Editor Kenneth K. Wong, Brown University This compendium of papers documents educational ICT policies and practices in 37 countries, making it a valuable resource for understanding and comparing ICT-related national policy developments in education. We believe that this work offers a unique in-depth examination of the trends within major education systems and how they have adapted to and taken advantage of the challenges and opportunities posed by the new information and communication technologies. A special feature of this edition is that it allows for interesting comparative analyses of sub-groups of countries, as many Asian, European Union, and former eastern-European countries, as well as the United States and Canada (among others), are included in the book. But it allows also for other than regional comparisons given that a number of newly industrialized countries (such as Brazil, Chile, Ma… More >>

Cross-National Information and Communication Technology Policies and Practices in Education

What communication skills are essential in today’s global economy? BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION IN THE GLOBAL WORKPLACE, Third Edition, considers the changes occurring in professional communication today, while also presenting a strong theoretical foundation of organizational communication. Featuring coverage of the most up-to-date skill set available, the book reflects the rapid changes due to the global economy, advances in information technology, and an increasingly diverse workforce. The authors’ engaging narrative style, the unique CCCD model (Choosing, Creating, Coordinating, and Delivering) for building presentation competencies, and an integrated companion website combine to provide a definitive resource on professional communications…. More >>

Business and Professional Communication in the Global Workplace: Skills, Ethics, and Technologies

In the history of electronic communication, the last quarter of the nineteenth century holds a special place, for it was during this period that the telephone, phonograph, electric light, wireless, and cinema were all invented. In When old Technologies Were New, Carolyn Marvin explores how two of these new inventions–the telephone and the electric light–were publicly envisioned at the end of the nineteenth century, as seen in specialized engineering journals and popular media. Marvin pays particular attention to the telephone, describing how it disrupted established social relations, unsettling customary ways of dividing the private person and family from the more public setting of the community. On the lighter side, she describes how people spoke louder when calling long distance, and how they worried about catching contagious diseases over the phone. A particularly powerful chapter deals with telephonic precursors of radio broadcasting–the “Telephone Herald” in New York and the … More >>

When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century

Online Communication provides an introduction to both the technologies of the Internet Age and their social implications. This innovative and timely textbook brings together current work in communication, political science, philosophy, popular culture, history, economics, and the humanities to present an examination of the theoretical and critical issues in the study of computer-mediated communication. Continuing the model of the best-selling first edition, authors Andrew F. Wood and Matthew J. Smith introduce computer-mediated communication (CMC) as a subject of academic research as well as a lens through which to examine contemporary trends in society. This second edition of Online Communication covers online identity, mediated relationships, virtual communities, electronic commerce, the digital divide, spaces of resistance, and other topics related to CMC. The text also examines how the Internet has affected contemporary culture and presents the critiques being made to those cha… More >>

Online Communication: Linking Technology, Identity, and Culture

Communication in History’s outstanding selection of readings from classic and contemporary sources gives an extensive overview of the most important ideas in the field. Encompassing topics as wide-ranging as the role of printing in the rise of the modern state and the role of the Internet in the Information Age, this anthology reveals how media have been influential both in maintaining social order and as powerful agents of change. Revised with new readings for the Fifth Edition, Communication in History continues to be, as one reviewer wrote, “the only text in the sea of History of Mass Communication texts that introduces students to a more expansive, intellectually enlivening study of the relationship between human history and communication history.”… More >>

Communication in History: Technology, Culture, Society