Traversing Digital Babel

Traversing Digital Babel
Author: Alon Peled
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2014-09-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0262027879

Alon Peled offers a groundbreaking approach for enabling information sharing among public sector agencies: using selective incentives to 'nudge' agencies to exchange information assets.

Traversing Digital Babel

Traversing Digital Babel
Author: Alon Peled
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 026231987X

A groundbreaking approach to information sharing among government agencies: using selective incentives to “nudge” them to exchange information assets. The computer systems of government agencies are notoriously complex. New technologies are piled on older technologies, creating layers that call to mind an archaeological dig. Obsolete programming languages and closed mainframe designs offer barriers to integration with other agency systems. Worldwide, these unwieldy systems waste billions of dollars, keep citizens from receiving services, and even—as seen in interoperability failures on 9/11 and during Hurricane Katrina—cost lives. In this book, Alon Peled offers a groundbreaking approach for enabling information sharing among public sector agencies: using selective incentives to “nudge” agencies to exchange information assets. Peled proposes the establishment of a Public Sector Information Exchange (PSIE), through which agencies would trade information. After describing public sector information sharing failures and the advantages of incentivized sharing, Peled examines the U.S. Open Data program, and the gap between its rhetoric and results. He offers examples of creative public sector information sharing in the United States, Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Peled argues that information is a contested commodity, and draws lessons from the trade histories of other contested commodities—including cadavers for anatomical dissection in nineteenth-century Britain. He explains how agencies can exchange information as a contested commodity through a PSIE program tailored to an individual country's needs, and he describes the legal, economic, and technical foundations of such a program. Touching on issues from data ownership to freedom of information, Peled offers pragmatic advice to politicians, bureaucrats, technologists, and citizens for revitalizing critical information flows.

Digital Lifeline?

Digital Lifeline?
Author: Carleen Maitland
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2018-05-04
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262535084

Interdisciplinary perspectives on the role of new information technologies, including mobile phones, wireless networks, and biometric identification, in the global refugee crisis. Today's global refugee crisis has mobilized humanitarian efforts to help those fleeing persecution and armed conflict at all stages of their journey. Aid organizations are increasingly employing new information technologies in their mission, taking advantage of proliferating mobile phones, remote sensors, wireless networks, and biometric identification systems. Digital Lifeline? examines the use of these technological innovations by the humanitarian community, exploring operations and systems that range from forecasting refugee flows to providing cellular and Internet connectivity to displaced persons. The contributors, from disciplines as diverse as international law and computer science, offer a variety of perspectives on forced migration, technical development, and user behavior, drawing on field work in countries including Jordan, Lebanon, Rwanda, Germany, Greece, the United States, and Canada. The chapters consider such topics as the use of information technology in refugee status determination; ethical and legal issues surrounding biometric technologies; information technology within organizational hierarchies; the use of technology by refugees; access issues in refugee camps; the scalability and sustainability of information technology innovations in humanitarian work; geographic information systems and spatial thinking; and the use of “big data” analytic techniques. Finally, the book identifies policy research directions, develops a unified research agenda, and offers practical suggestions for conducting displacement research. Contributors Elizabeth Belding, Karen E. Fisher, Daniel Iland, Lindsey N. Kingston, Carleen F. Maitland, Susan F. Martin, Galya Ben-Arieh Ruffer, Paul Schmitt, Lisa Singh, Brian Tomaszewski, Mariya Zheleva

Fake News

Fake News
Author: Melissa Zimdars
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2020-02-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262538369

New perspectives on the misinformation ecosystem that is the production and circulation of fake news. What is fake news? Is it an item on Breitbart, an article in The Onion, an outright falsehood disseminated via Russian bot, or a catchphrase used by a politician to discredit a story he doesn't like? This book examines the real fake news: the constant flow of purposefully crafted, sensational, emotionally charged, misleading or totally fabricated information that mimics the form of mainstream news. Rather than viewing fake news through a single lens, the book maps the various kinds of misinformation through several different disciplinary perspectives, taking into account the overlapping contexts of politics, technology, and journalism. The contributors consider topics including fake news as “disorganized” propaganda; folkloric falsehood in the “Pizzagate” conspiracy; native advertising as counterfeit news; the limitations of regulatory reform and technological solutionism; Reddit's enabling of fake news; the psychological mechanisms by which people make sense of information; and the evolution of fake news in America. A section on media hoaxes and satire features an oral history of and an interview with prankster-activists the Yes Men, famous for parodies that reveal hidden truths. Finally, contributors consider possible solutions to the complex problem of fake news—ways to mitigate its spread, to teach students to find factually accurate information, and to go beyond fact-checking. Contributors Mark Andrejevic, Benjamin Burroughs, Nicholas Bowman, Mark Brewin, Elizabeth Cohen, Colin Doty, Dan Faltesek, Johan Farkas, Cherian George, Tarleton Gillespie, Dawn R. Gilpin, Gina Giotta, Theodore Glasser, Amanda Ann Klein, Paul Levinson, Adrienne Massanari, Sophia A. McClennen, Kembrew McLeod, Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Paul Mihailidis, Benjamin Peters, Whitney Phillips, Victor Pickard, Danielle Polage, Stephanie Ricker Schulte, Leslie-Jean Thornton, Anita Varma, Claire Wardle, Melissa Zimdars, Sheng Zou

Open Government: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications

Open Government: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications
Author: Management Association, Information Resources
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 2625
Release: 2019-09-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1522598618

Open government initiatives have become a defining goal for public administrators around the world. As technology and social media tools become more integrated into society, they provide important frameworks for online government and community collaboration. However, progress is still necessary to create a method of evaluation for online governing systems for effective political management worldwide. Open Government: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that explores the use of open government initiatives and systems in the executive, legislative, and judiciary sectors. It also examines the use of technology in creating a more affordable, participatory, and transparent public-sector management models for greater citizen and community involvement in public affairs. Highlighting a range of topics such as data transparency, collaborative governance, and bureaucratic secrecy, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for government officials, leaders, practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and academicians seeking current research on open government initiatives.

Researching Internet Governance

Researching Internet Governance
Author: Laura Denardis
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0262539756

Scholars from a range of disciplines discuss research methods, theories, and conceptual approaches in the study of internet governance. The design and governance of the internet has become one of the most pressing geopolitical issues of our era. The stability of the economy, democracy, and the public sphere are wholly dependent on the stability and security of the internet. Revelations about election hacking, facial recognition technology, and government surveillance have gotten the public's attention and made clear the need for scholarly research that examines internet governance both empirically and conceptually. In this volume, scholars from a range of disciplines consider research methods, theories, and conceptual approaches in the study of internet governance.

Cyberinsurance Policy

Cyberinsurance Policy
Author: Josephine Wolff
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2022-08-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 026237076X

Why cyberinsurance has not improved cybersecurity and what governments can do to make it a more effective tool for cyber risk management. As cybersecurity incidents—ranging from data breaches and denial-of-service attacks to computer fraud and ransomware—become more common, a cyberinsurance industry has emerged to provide coverage for any resulting liability, business interruption, extortion payments, regulatory fines, or repairs. In this book, Josephine Wolff offers the first comprehensive history of cyberinsurance, from the early “Internet Security Liability” policies in the late 1990s to the expansive coverage offered today. Drawing on legal records, government reports, cyberinsurance policies, and interviews with regulators and insurers, Wolff finds that cyberinsurance has not improved cybersecurity or reduced cyber risks. Wolff examines the development of cyberinsurance, comparing it to other insurance sectors, including car and flood insurance; explores legal disputes between insurers and policyholders about whether cyber-related losses were covered under policies designed for liability, crime, or property and casualty losses; and traces the trend toward standalone cyberinsurance policies and government efforts to regulate and promote the industry. Cyberinsurance, she argues, is ineffective at curbing cybersecurity losses because it normalizes the payment of online ransoms, whereas the goal of cybersecurity is the opposite—to disincentivize such payments to make ransomware less profitable. An industry built on modeling risk has found itself confronted by new technologies before the risks posed by those technologies can be fully understood.

The Character of Consent

The Character of Consent
Author: Meg Leta Jones
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2024-06-18
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262378450

The rich, untold origin story of the ubiquitous web cookie—what’s wrong with it, why it’s being retired, and how we can do better. Consent pop-ups continually ask us to download cookies to our computers, but is this all-too-familiar form of privacy protection effective? No, Meg Leta Jones explains in The Character of Consent, rather than promote functionality, privacy, and decentralization, cookie technology has instead made the internet invasive, limited, and clunky. Good thing, then, that the cookie is set for retirement in 2024. In this eye-opening book, Jones tells the little-known story of this broken consent arrangement, tracing it back to the major transnational conflicts around digital consent over the last twenty-five years. What she finds is that the policy controversy is not, in fact, an information crisis—it’s an identity crisis. Instead of asking how people consent, Jones asks who exactly is consenting and to what. Packed into those cookie pop-ups, she explains, are three distinct areas of law with three different characters who can consent. Within (mainly European) data protection law, the data subject consents. Within communication privacy law, the user consents. And within consumer protection law, the privacy consumer consents. These areas of law have very different histories, motivations, institutional structures, expertise, and strategies, so consent—and the characters who can consent—plays a unique role in those areas of law. The Character of Consent gives each computer character its due, taking us back to their origin stories within the legal history of computing. By doing so, Jones provides alternative ways of understanding the core issues within the consent dilemma. More importantly, she offers bold new approaches to creating and adopting better tech policies in the future.

Smart City Governance

Smart City Governance
Author: Alois Paulin
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2018-11-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0128165995

Smart City Governance examines public domain activities and services in the digital age, evaluating all facets of smart city e-governance that fosters a cohesive understanding for the emerging generation of advanced "digital natives. Exploring the tensions between political science and jurisprudence theories with the principles of societies and their alignment with legal systems, the book examines how governance systems can translate into the digital domain, addressing both the technical and legal dimensions. It offers a model for the technological foundation of governance, discussing existing technological components. The book concludes with a section on outlooks for further research. - Explores the development of sustainable governance by examining how public domain governance can leverage the full potential of smart city technologies - Provides insights on the technical side of smart city governance - Fuels discussions on how tomorrow's urban public institutions can contribute to a more inclusive and participatory society - Provides a system architecture blueprint based on the insights and lessons learned

Health 4.0: How Virtualization and Big Data are Revolutionizing Healthcare

Health 4.0: How Virtualization and Big Data are Revolutionizing Healthcare
Author: Christoph Thuemmler
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017-01-07
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319476173

This book describes how the creation of new digital services—through vertical and horizontal integration of data coming from sensors on top of existing legacy systems—that has already had a major impact on industry is now extending to healthcare. The book describes the fourth industrial revolution (i.e. Health 4.0), which is based on virtualization and service aggregation. It shows how sensors, embedded systems, and cyber-physical systems are fundamentally changing the way industrial processes work, their business models, and how we consume, while also affecting the health and care domains. Chapters describe the technology behind the shift of point of care to point of need and away from hospitals and institutions; how care will be delivered virtually outside hospitals; that services will be tailored to individuals rather than being designed as statistical averages; that data analytics will be used to help patients to manage their chronic conditions with help of smart devices; and that pharmaceuticals will be interactive to help prevent adverse reactions. The topics presented will have an impact on a variety of healthcare stakeholders in a continuously global and hyper-connected world. · Presents explanations of emerging topics as they relate to e-health, such as Industry 4.0, Precision Medicine, Mobile Health, 5G, Big Data, and Cyber-physical systems; · Provides overviews of technologies in addition to possible application scenarios and market conditions; · Features comprehensive demographic and statistic coverage of Health 4.0 presented in a graphical manner.