Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Tom Clancy's Net Force #9: Springboard (Netforce)

Tom Clancy's Net Force #9: Springboard (Netforce)

by Steve Perry

A top secret Pentagon wargame is hacked. Only Net Force has the expertise to track down the culprit, but they are tied up with other priorities. Due to shifting budget priorities, Net Force is moved onto the DoD budget. That means that as a military operation, they can now give top priority to the Pentagon's problem. They soon make a connection between the attack and a Chinese general in Macau. But this... (more)

The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution

The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution

by Pierre Baldi

Throughout history, we have selected and manipulated the genomes of plants, animals, and even ourselves. Until now, however, such control could be exerted only at the level of the entire organism. Scientific and technological advances now allow us to manipulate genomes directly at the level of single genes and their constituents, with a speed and precision that far exceed what natural evolution has been able to... (more)

Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective (Information Revolution and Global Politics)

Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective (Information Revolution and Global Politics)

by Manuel Castells

Wireless networks are the fastest growing communications technology in history. Are mobile phones expressions of identity, fashionable gadgets, tools for life—or all of the above? Mobile Communication and Society looks at how the possibility of multimodal communication from anywhere to anywhere at any time affects everyday life at home, at work, and at school, and raises broader concerns about politics and... (more)

Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation (Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing)

Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation (Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing)

The contributors to this volume view digital libraries (DLs) from a social as well as technological perspective. They see DLs as sociotechnical systems, networks of technology, information artifacts, and people and practices interacting with the larger world of work and society. As Bruce Schatz observes in his foreword, for a digital library to be useful, the users, the documents, and the information system must... (more)

Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers (Inside Technology)

Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers (Inside Technology)

by Pablo J. Boczkowski

Winner of the 2005 Outstanding Book Award sponsored by the International Communication Association (ICA) , Co-winner of the 2005 Book of the Year Award presented by the Critical and Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication Association and Co-winner of the 2004 Book Award presented by the Organizational Communication Division of the National Communication Association In this study of how daily... (more)

Distributed Work

Technological advances and changes in the global economy are increasing the geographic distribution of work in industries as diverse as banking, wine production, and clothing design. Many workers communicate regularly with distant coworkers; some monitor and manipulate tools and objects at a distance. Work teams are spread across different cities or countries. Joint ventures and multiorganizational projects entail... (more)

A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium

A Culture of Improvement: Technology and the Western Millennium

by Robert D. Friedel

Finalist, 2008 Henry Paolucci / Walter Bagehot Book Award given by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Why does technology change over time, how does it change, and what difference does it make? In this sweeping, ambitious look at a thousand years of Western experience, Robert Friedel argues that technological change comes largely through the pursuit of improvement—the deep-rooted belief that things could... (more)

The Internet Imaginaire

by Patrice Flichy

Winning entry, General Trade Cover/Jacket Category, in the 2008 New England Book Show sponsored by Bookbuilders of Boston. In The Internet Imaginaire, sociologist Patrice Flichy examines the collective vision that shaped the emergence of the Internet—the social imagination that envisioned a technological utopia in the birth of a new technology. By examining in detail the discourses surrounding the... (more)

Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation

Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation

by Karen Mossberger

Just as education has promoted democracy and economic growth, the Internet has the potential to benefit society as a whole. Digital citizenship, or the ability to participate in society online, promotes social inclusion. But statistics show that significant segments of the population are still excluded from digital citizenship. The authors of this book define digital citizens as those who are online daily. By... (more)

Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945-1990 (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology)

Red Prometheus: Engineering and Dictatorship in East Germany, 1945-1990 (Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology)

by Dolores L. Augustine

In Cold War-era East Germany, the German tradition of science-based technology merged with a socialist system that made technological progress central to its ideology. Technology became an important part of East German socialist identity—crucial to how Communists saw their system and how citizens saw their state. In Red Prometheus, Dolores Augustine examines the relationship between a dictatorial system and the... (more)

Structures of Scientific Collaboration (Inside Technology)

Structures of Scientific Collaboration (Inside Technology)

by Wesley Shrum

Collaboration among organizations is rapidly becoming common in scientific research as globalization and new communication technologies make it possible for researchers from different locations and institutions to work together on common projects. These scientific and technological collaborations are part of a general trend toward more fluid, flexible, and temporary organizational arrangements, but they have... (more)

Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination

Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination

by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum

Winner, 2009 George A. and Jeanne S. DeLong Prize in Book History presented by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP). and Winner, 2009 Richard J. Finneran Award given by the Society for Textual Scholarship In Mechanisms, Matthew Kirschenbaum examines new media and electronic writing against the textual and technological primitives that govern writing, inscription, and... (more)

Built upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics

Built upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics

by Alberto Pe?rez Go?mez

In Built upon Love Pérez-Gómez uncovers the relationship between love and architecture in order to find the points of contact between poetics and ethics—between the architect's wish to design a beautiful world and architecture's imperative to provide a better place for society. The forced polarity between form and function in considerations of architecture—opposing art to social interests, ethics to poetic... (more)

The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Third Edition

The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, Third Edition

Science and Technology Studies is a flourishing interdisciplinary field that examines the creation, development, and consequences of science and technology in their cultural, historical, and social contexts. The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies provides a comprehensive and authoritative overview of the field, reviewing current research and major theoretical and methodological approaches and analyzing... (more)

Materials in eighteenth-century science : a historical ontology

Materials in eighteenth-century science : a historical ontology

by Ursula Klein

In the eighteenth century, chemistry was the science of materials. Chemists treated mundane raw materials and chemical substances as multidimensional objects of inquiry that could be investigated in both practical and theoretical contexts—as useful commodities, perceptible objects of nature, and entities with hidden and imperceptible features. In this history of materials, Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefèvre link... (more)

Functions in biological and artificial worlds : comparative philosophical perspectives

Functions in biological and artificial worlds : comparative philosophical perspectives

The notion of function is an integral part of thinking in both biology and technology. Biological organisms and technical artifacts are both ascribed functionality; yet the concept of function is notoriously obscure (with problematic issues regarding the normative and the descriptive nature of functions, for example) and demands philosophical clarification. So too the relationship between biological organisms and... (more)

Engineering invention : Frank J. Sprague and the U.S. electrical industry

Engineering invention : Frank J. Sprague and the U.S. electrical industry

by Frederick Dalzell

Over the course of a little less than twenty years, inventor Frank J. Sprague (1857-1934) achieved an astonishing series of technological breakthroughs—from pioneering work in self-governing motors to developing the first full-scale operational electric railway system—all while commercializing his inventions and promoting them (and himself as their inventor) to financial backers and the public. In Engineering... (more)

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