Science, Technology and Society
The glass consumer
Life in a surveillance society
We are all 'glass consumers'. Organisations know so much about us, they can almost see through us. This book takes the debate beyond privacy issues, arguing that we are living in a world in which - more than ever before - our personal information defines our opportunities in life.
Just Here for the Comments
Lurking as Digital Literacy Practice
This book challenges the conventional perspective of what ‘counts’ as participatory online culture. Presenting ‘lurking’ on social media newsfeeds as a communication and literacy practice that resists dominant power structures, it offers an innovative approach to digital qualitative methods.
Mundania
How and Where Technologies Are Made Ordinary
Emerging technologies eventually disappear into the atmosphere of everyday life – they become ordinary and enmeshed in ignored infrastructures and patterns of behaviour. This is how Mundania takes form.
Based on original research, this book uses the concept of mundania to better understand our relationship with technology.
The Imposter as Social Theory
Thinking with Gatecrashers, Cheats and Charlatans
Edited by expert scholars, this volume explores the 'imposter' through empirical cases, including click farms, bikers, business leaders and fraudulent scientists, providing insights into the social relations and cultural forms from which they emerge.
The Tensions of Algorithmic Thinking
Automation, Intelligence and the Politics of Knowing
In this pioneering book, David Beer redefines emergent algorithmic technologies as the new systems of knowing. He examines the acute tensions they create and how they are changing what is known and what is knowable.
Anarchist Cybernetics
Control and Communication in Radical Politics
Igniting a new field of scholarly inquiry, this pioneering book introduces cybernetic thinking to politics and organizational studies to explore the continuing development of the radical idea of participatory democracy within organizations.
Roads Not Yet Travelled
Transport Futures Beyond 2050
What will the world be like in 2050? This book explores possible future worlds through eight hard science fiction stories, taking in automation, big data, climate catastrophe and government disfunction. It will encourage all those interested in a positive future for public mobility to take the steps to ensure we get there.
Knowledge in Policy
Embodied, Inscribed, Enacted
The novel theoretical framework offered in this book presents a radical reconception of the place of knowledge in contemporary policy making in Europe.
Controversial Encounters in the Age of Algorithms
How Digital Technologies are Stifling Public Debate and What to Do About It
This book explores how digital technologies shape our opinions and interactions, often in ways that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives and therefore can fuel polarization. Drawing on the ancient art of controversy, (arguing all sides of a case) it offers a way to revive public debate as a source of trust and legitimacy in our society.
Dialogues in Data Power
Shifting Response-abilities in a Datafied World
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Written in an engaging dialogue format, this book introduces readers to emerging themes and future directions in the interdisciplinary field of data studies. It will be a key resource for scholars and students who require a cutting-edge guide to this rapidly evolving area of research.
Behind the Science
The Invisible Work of Data Management in Big Science
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
Examining the data processes at the European Spallation Source facility in Sweden, this book sheds light on the often underestimated, yet essential, contributions of those involved in the design and development of data management systems.
Reproduction, Kin and Climate Crisis
Making Bushfire Babies
Exploring the impact of climate change and the pandemic on people’s decisions to form families and their experience of having children, this book makes a valuable contribution to debates on contemporary planetary crises.