This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book describes the history, structure and institutions of open and distance education in six countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. It discusses how open and distance education is evolving in a digital age to reflect the needs and circumstances of national higher education systems in these countries, and explore…
Every chapter in the widely distributed first edition has been updated, and four new chapters on current issues such as connectivism and social software innovations have been added. Essays by practitioners and scholars active in the complex, diverse, and rapidly evolving field of distance education blend scholarship and research; practical attention to the details of teaching and learning; and …
The interest in and demand for online terminal degress across disciplines by professionals wishing to conduct research and fulfill doctoral degree requirements at a distance is only increasing. But what these programs look like, how they are implemented, and how they might be evaluated are the questions that challenge administrators and pedagogues alike. This book presents a model for a doctora…
The evolution of activism against the expansion of copyright in the digital domain, with case studies of resistance including eBook and iTunes hacks.The movement against restrictive digital copyright protection arose largely in response to the excesses of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. In The Digital Rights Movement, Hector Postigo shows that what began as an assertion of …
This book investigates regulatory and social pressures that social media companies face in the aftermath of high profile cyberbullying incidents. The author’s research evaluates the policies companies develop to protect themselves and users. This includes interviews with NGO and social media company reps in the US and the EU. She triangulates these findings against news, policy reports, evalu…
This anthology addresses ethical challenges that arise within the field of Internet research. Among the issues discussed in the book are the following: When is voluntary informed consent from research subjects required in using the Internet as a data source? How may researchers secure the privacy of research subjects in a landscape where the traditional public/private distinction is blurred an…
Internet use-related addiction problems (e.g., Internet addiction, problem mobile phone use, problem gaming, and social networking) have been defined according to the same core element: the addictive symptomatology presented by individuals who excessively and problematically behave using the technology. Online activity is the most important factor in their lives, causing them the loss of contro…
"This book contributes to the foundations of a critical theory of communication as shaped by the forces of digital capitalism. One of the world's leading theorists of digital media Professor Christian Fuchs explores how the thought of some of the Frankfurt School’s key thinkers can be deployed for critically understanding media in the age of the Internet. Five essays that form the heart of th…
"Through algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), objects and digital services now demonstrate new skills they did not have before, right up to replacing human activity through pre-programming or by making their own decisions. As part of the internet of things, AI applications are already widely used today, for example in language processing, image recognition and the tracking and processin…
"The objective of this book is to outline how a radically democratic politics can be reinvigorated in theory and practice through the use of the internet. The author argues that politics in its proper sense can be distinguished from anti-politics by analyzing the configuration of public space, subjectivity, participation, and conflict. Each of these terrains can be configured in a more or less …
Cyberpragmatics is an analysis of Internet-mediated communication from the perspective of cognitive pragmatics. It addresses a whole range of interactions that can be found on the Net: the web page, chat rooms, instant messaging, social networking sites, 3D virtual worlds, blogs, videoconference, e-mail, Twitter, etc. Of special interest is the role of intentions and the quality of interpretati…
Modern information and communication technologies, together with a cultural upheaval within the research community, have profoundly changed research in nearly every aspect. Ranging from sharing and discussing ideas in social networks for scientists to new collaborative environments and novel publication formats, knowledge creation and dissemination as we know it is experiencing a vigorous shift…
Break down the misconceptions of the Internet of Things by examining the different security building blocks available in Intel Architecture (IA) based IoT platforms. This open access book reviews the threat pyramid, secure boot, chain of trust, and the SW stack leading up to defense-in-depth. The IoT presents unique challenges in implementing security and Intel has both CPU and Isolated Securit…
This open access book provides the first comprehensive collection of papers that provide an integrative view on cybersecurity. It discusses theories, problems and solutions on the relevant ethical issues involved. This work is sorely needed in a world where cybersecurity has become indispensable to protect trust and confidence in the digital infrastructure whilst respecting fundamental values l…
Embedded Firmware Solutions is the perfect introduction and daily-use field guide--for the thousands of firmware designers, hardware engineers, architects, managers, and developers--to Intel’s new firmware direction (including Quark coverage), showing how to integrate Intel® Architecture designs into their plans. Featuring hands-on examples and exercises using Open Source codebases, like …
Apress is proud to announce that Rethinking the Internet of Things was a 2014 Jolt Award Finalist, the highest honor for a programming book. And the amazing part is that there is no code in the book. Over the next decade, most devices connected to the Internet will not be used by people in the familiar way that personal computers, tablets and smart phones are. Billions of interconnected devi…
This open access book was prepared as a Final Publication of the COST Action IC1304 “Autonomous Control for a Reliable Internet of Services (ACROSS)”. The book contains 14 chapters and constitutes a show-case of the main outcome of the Action in line with its scientific goals. It will serve as a valuable reference for undergraduate and post-graduate students, educators, faculty members, res…
This book investigates how trade unions representing different social classes use YouTube videos for renewal purposes. Information and communication technology has undoubtedly offered new opportunities for social movements, but while research suggests that these new means of communication can be used for trade union revitalization, few studies have examined what unions actually do on social me…
Digital technology already has permeated the physical world. Devices such as smartphones, tablets or wearables and online venues like virtual worlds and social networks have penetrated every part of our lives. The contributions to this volume apply innovative forms of ethnographic research to the digital realm. They examine the emergence of new online communities around Greenlandic news blogs o…
This open access book explores the collision between the sustainable energy transition and the Internet of Things (IoT). In that regard, this book’s arrival is timely. Not only is the Internet of Things for energy applications, herein called the energy Internet of Things (eIoT), rapidly developing but also the transition towards sustainable energy to abate global climate is very much at the f…