On the Shelf from CCBC Libraries
Closer Together, Further Apart by
Closer Together, Further Apart offers current unique insight into the cultural shifts brought about by digital technology and the Internet. It considers how these new connections are impacting not only society as a whole, but more specifically communication in relationships and across generations. Digital technology has in less than a single generation, dramatically and permanently altered the ways in which humans connect and communicate with each other. Conversations and information transfers that once either weren't possible or took days to complete now occur in an instant. Technological advances are profoundly affecting humankind, forcing us to change on multiple levels. As with all forms of human/social/technological change, these advances will be good for some and bad for others. Those who learn to effectively absorb information and use new technologies in healthy ways will flourish, and those who don't may feel increasingly disconnected from our technology driven world. Robert Weiss, MSW, is a therapist, international speaker, author, and a blogger on PsychCentral.com, where he writes regularly on the topic of sex and intimacy in the digital age. He was featured in LA Weekly 2013 People issue as one of LA's most fascinating people. He currently serves as Senior Vice-President of Clinical Development for Elements Behavioral Health. Jennifer P. Schneider, MD, PhD, is a physician, international speaker, and the author of nine books and numerous journal articles.
Call Number: HM851 .W42975 2014
Digital Is Destroying Everything by
Every year, perhaps even every week, there is some new gadget, device, service, or other digital offering intended to make our lives easier, better, more fun, or more instantaneous--making it that much harder to question how anything digital can be bad for us. Digital has created some wonderful things and we can hardly imagine life without them. But digital--the most relentless social and economic juggernaut humanity has unleashed in centuries--is also destroying much we had taken for granted. And what is your place in this brave new world? In Digital Is Destroying Everything, futurist and digital marketing consultant Andrew Edwards tours the "blasted heath" digital is leaving behind and takes a fearless look at the troubled landscape that may lie ahead. The book is not, despite its title, a dystopian rant against all things digital and technological. Instead, expect to find a lively investigation into the ways digital has opened us to new and sometimes quite wonderful experiences, driven down costs for consumers, and given information a chance to be free. But the book also takes a clear-eyed look at many of the good (and sometimes bad) things--businesses and behaviors--digital has destroyed, and how the world may be diminished, compromised, and altered forever in its wake. This tour of the effects of digital technologies on our lives is sure to raise questions, touch a nerve, and enlighten even the most dedicated digital enthusiasts.
Call Number: T14.5 .E385 2015
Digitized Lives by
In a remarkably short period of time the Internet and associated digital communication technologies have deeply changed the way millions of people around the globe live their lives. But what is the nature of that impact? In chapters examining a broad range of issues--including sexuality, politics, education, race, gender relations, the environment, and social protest movements--Digitized Lives seeks answers to these central questions: What is truly new about so-called "new media," and what is just hype? How have our lives been made better or worse by digital communication technologies? In what ways can these devices and practices contribute to a richer cultural landscape and a more sustainable society? Cutting through the vast--and often contradictory--literature on these topics, Reed avoids both techno-hype and techno-pessimism, offering instead succinct, witty and insightful discussions of how digital communication is impacting our lives and reshaping the major social issues of our era. The book argues that making sense of digitized culture means looking past the glossy surface of techno gear to ask deeper questions about how we can utilize technology to create a more socially, politically, and economically just world. Companion website available at: culturalpolitics.net/digital_cultures
Call Number: HM851 .R4336 2014
How Are Digital Devices Impacting Society? by
Digital devices have changed how people communicate, obtain information, and go about countless other daily activities. Through objective discussion, numerous direct quotes, and full-color illustrations this title examines What Are the Origins of the Digital Device Controversies? How Are Digital Devices Impacting Privacy and Social Interaction? How Do Digital Devices Affect the Brain and Thought Processes? How Do Digital Devices Affect Physical and Mental Health? Do Digital Devices Promote Crime?
Call Number: HM851 .A247 2015
The People's Platform by
From a cutting-edge cultural commentator, a bold and brilliant challenge to cherished notions of the Internet as the great leveler of our age The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where everyone can be heard and all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? In a seminal dismantling of techno-utopian visions, The People's Platform argues that for all that we "tweet" and "like" and "share," the Internet in fact reflects and amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line, attention and influence largely accrue to those who already have plenty of both. What we have seen so far, Astra Taylor says, has been not a revolution but a rearrangement. Although Silicon Valley tycoons have eclipsed Hollywood moguls, a handful of giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook remain the gatekeepers. And the worst habits of the old media model--the pressure to seek easy celebrity, to be quick and sensational above all--have proliferated on the web, where "aggregating" the work of others is the surest way to attract eyeballs and ad revenue. When culture is "free," creative work has diminishing value and advertising fuels the system. The new order looks suspiciously like the old one. We can do better, Taylor insists. The online world does offer a unique opportunity, but a democratic culture that supports diverse voices and work of lasting value will not spring up from technology alone. If we want the Internet to truly be a people's platform, we will have to make it so.
Call Number: HM851 .T39 2014
Social Media and Living Well by
What is well-being? Is it a stable income, comfortable home, and time shared with family and friends? Is it clean drinking water and freedom from political oppression? Is it finding Aristotle's Golden Mean by living a life of reason and moderation? Scholars have sought to define well-being for centuries, teasing out nuances among Aristotle's writings and posing new theories of their own. With each major technological shift this question of well-being arises with new purpose, spurring scholars to re-examine the challenge of living the good life in light of significantly altered conditions. Social media comprise the latest technological shift, and in this book leading scholars in the philosophy and communication disciplines bring together their knowledge and expertise in an attempt to define what well-being means in this perpetually connected environment. From its blog prototype in the mid-to-late-2000s to its microblogging reality of today, users have been both invigorated and perplexed by social media's seemingly near-instant propagation. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn have been hailed as everything from revolutionary to personally and societally destructive. In an exploration of the role social media play in affecting well-being, whether among individuals or society as a whole, this book offers something unique among academic tomes, an opening essay by an executive in the social media industry who shares his observations of the ways in which social communication conventions have changed since the introduction of social media. His essay is followed by an interdisciplinary academic exploration of the potential contributions and detractions of social media to well-being. Authors investigate social media's potential influence on friendship, and on individuals' physical, emotional, social, economic, and political needs. They consider the morality of online deception, how memes and the very structure of the internet inhibit rational social discourse, and how social media facilitate our living a very public life, whether through consent or coercion. Social media networks serve as gathering places for the exchange of information, inspiration, and support, but whether these exchanges are helpful or harmful to well-being is a question whose answer is necessary to living a good life.
Call Number: HM742 .S62817 2015
Streaming Videos
- Ted Talks with Kevin KelleyKevin Kelly has been publisher of the Whole Earth Review, executive editor at WIRED, a founder of visionary nonprofits, and a writer on biology, business, and “cool tools.” He’s admired for his fresh perspectives on technology and its relevance to history, biology, and religion. In this talk at the 2007 EG conference, Kelly celebrates the 5,000-day-mark in the lifespan of the World Wide Web, and asks: How can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?
Online from CCBC Libraries
Cached by
In the 1980s and 1990s, the internet became a major player in the global economy and a revolutionary component of everyday life for much of the United States and the world. It offered users new ways to relate to one another, to share their lives, and to spend their time--shopping, working, learning, and even taking political or social action. Policymakers and news media attempted--and often struggled--to make sense of the emergence and expansion of this new technology. They imagined the internet in conflicting terms: as a toy for teenagers, a national security threat, a new democratic frontier, an information superhighway, a virtual reality, and a framework for promoting globalization and revolution. Schulte maintains that contested concepts had material consequences and helped shape not just our sense of the internet, but the development of the technology itself. Cached focuses on how people imagine and relate to technology, delving into the political and cultural debates that produced the internet as a core technology able to revise economics, politics, and culture, as well as to alter lived experience. Schulte illustrates the conflicting and indirect ways in which culture and policy combined to produce this transformative technology.
Publication Date: 2013-03-18
Contemporary Issues in Ethics and Information Technology by
Information technology has produced ethical challenges and concerns in dealing with issues about privacy, security, piracy and professional ethics. This book discusses these issues as well as other important ethical aspects such as the outsourcing of high-level jobs and the value of IT itself.
Publication Date: 2005-11-01
The Googlization of Everything by
In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission??To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible??and its much-quoted motto, ?Don't be evil.? In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google?and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google's global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the ?evil? it pledged to avoid.
Publication Date: 2011-03-08
Is Technology Good for Education? by
Digital technologies are a key feature of contemporary education. Schools, colleges and universities operate along high-tech lines, while alternate forms of online education have emerged to challenge the dominance of traditional institutions. According to many experts, the rapid digitization of education over the past ten years has undoubtedly been a 'good thing'. Is Technology Good For Education? offers a critical counterpoint to this received wisdom, challenging some of the central ways in which digital technology is presumed to be positively affecting education. Instead Neil Selwyn considers what is being lost as digital technologies become ever more integral to education provision and engagement. Crucially, he questions the values, agendas and interests that stand to gain most from the rise of digital education. This concise, up-to-the-minute analysis concludes by considering alternate approaches that might be capable of rescuing and perhaps revitalizing the ideals of public education, while not denying the possibilities of digital technology altogether.
Publication Date: 2016-05-23
Love in the Age of the Internet by
This highly topical book explores the new technological environment we have created, and our adaptation to it, twenty-five years after the death of John Bowlby. In the space of just a couple of decades, the world has changed radically, and we are changing too: personal computers and smartphones mediate our lives, work, play, and love. Relationships of all kinds are now conducted through mobile phones, email, Skype and social network sites. Attachment theory is concerned with the impact of the external world on internal reality, where twenty-first century experiences encounter the powerful, primitive, and ancient instinct for attachment and survival. This book is written by psychotherapists whose practice, with individual adults and couples, is informed by attachment theory. It contains theoretical, observational, and clinical material, and will be relevant to all psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, counsellors, and psychologists interested in the profound impact of digital and communication technologies on human relationships.
Publication Date: 2014-11-26
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