Creating the Computer

The Filter Bubble

What the Internet is Hiding from You

Eli Pariser

A report on how internet personalization is controlling and limiting information to users reveals how sites like Google and Facebook only display search results that they believe people are most likely to select, raising a risk that users will become less informed, more biased and increasingly isolated. 50,000 first printing.

The Network Society

Jan van Dijk

The Network Society is now more than ever the essential guide to the past, consequences and future of digital communication. Fully revised, this Third Edition covers crucial new issues and updates. This book remains an accessible, comprehensive, must-read introduction to how new media function in contemporary society.

Here Comes Everybody

The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

Clay Shirky

Evaluates the significant role being played by technological advances on the formation and experience of modern group dynamics, citing such examples as Wikipedia and MySpace to demonstrate the Internet's power in bridging geographical and cultural gaps. Reprint.

Open Source

A Multidisciplinary Approach

Moreno Muffatto

In recent years, the way open source software is developed has taken hold as a valid alternative to commercial proprietary methods, as have the products themselves, e.g., the Linux operating system, Apache web-server software, and Mozilla Firefox browser. But what is open source software? How is the open source community organized? What makes this new model successful? What effects has it had and might it have on the future of the IT industry, companies and government policies? These and many other questions are answered in this book.The first chapter gives a brief history of the open source community and the second chapter takes a close look at the relationship between intellectual property rights and software, both open source and proprietary. The next three chapters consider the who, the open source community, the how, software development both within and outside the community, and the what, open source projects and product quality. Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the different users of open source software: companies and governments respectively. These are followed by two chapters that interpret the phenomenon, first from an organizational point of view in Chapter 8 and then using the theory of complex adaptive systems in Chapter 9. The last chapter explores the current and potential applications of the concept underlying open source software in other fields.

Misinformation and Mass Audiences

Brian G. Southwell, Emily A. Thorson, Laura Sheble

Lies and inaccurate information are as old as humanity, but never before have they been so easy to spread. Each moment of every day, the Internet and broadcast media purvey misinformation, either deliberately or accidentally, to a mass audience on subjects ranging from politics to consumer goods to science and medicine, among many others. Because misinformation now has the potential to affect behavior on a massive scale, it is urgently important to understand how it works and what can be done to mitigate its harmful effects. Misinformation and Mass Audiences brings together evidence and ideas from communication research, public health, psychology, political science, environmental studies, and information science to investigate what constitutes misinformation, how it spreads, and how best to counter it. The expert contributors cover such topics as whether and to what extent audiences consciously notice misinformation, the possibilities for audience deception, the ethics of satire in journalism and public affairs programming, the diffusion of rumors, the role of Internet search behavior, and the evolving efforts to counteract misinformation, such as fact-checking programs. The first comprehensive social science volume exploring the prevalence and consequences of, and remedies for, misinformation as a mass communication phenomenon, Misinformation and Mass Audiences will be a crucial resource for students and faculty researching misinformation, policymakers grappling with questions of regulation and prevention, and anyone concerned about this troubling, yet perhaps unavoidable, dimension of current media systems.

Financial Cryptography

8th International Conference, FC 2004, Key West, FL, USA, February 9-12, 2004. Revised Papers

Ari Juels

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Financial Cryptography, FC 2004, held in Key West, FL, USA, in February 2004. The 17 revised full papers presented together with abstracts of 4 invited talks and 4 panel statements were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on loyalty and micropayment systems, user authentication, e-voting, auctions and lotteries, game theoretic and cryptographic tools, and mix networks and anonymous communications.