You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context, CONTEXT 2005, held in Paris, France in July 2005. The 42 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 120 submissions. The papers presented deal with the interdisciplinary topic of modeling and using context from various points of view, ranging through cognitive science, formal logic, artifical intelligence, computational intelligence, philosophical and psychological aspects, and information processing. Highly general philosophical and theoretical issues are complemented by specific applications in various fields.
This volume examines how people deal with information in a computerized environment, looking at what happens when people actively explore information space looking for objects without specific goals in mind. The topics are particularly relevant to the industrial application of computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) techniques, especially with regard to teleworking and virtual organizations. This volume will be useful for researchers interested in human computer interaction, virtual communities, and information visualization.
Virtual reality (VR) technology has been developed commercially since the early 1990s [1]. Yet it is only with the growth of the Internet and other high-bandwidth links that VR systems have increasingly become networked to allow users to share the same virtual environment (VE). Shared YEs raise a number of interesting questions: what is the difference between face-to-face interaction and interaction between persons inside YEs? How does the appearance of the "avatar" - as the graphical representation of the user has become known - change the nature of interaction? And what governs the formation of virtual communities? This volume brings together contributions from social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on social interaction in various types of YEs. Two previous volumes in this CSCW book series [2, 3] have examined related aspects of research on YEs - social navigation and collaboration - although they do not always deal with VRIVEs in the sense that it is used here (see the definition in Chapter 1). The aim of this volume is to explore how people interact with each other in computer-generated virtual worlds.
Here, the authors' unique focus is on the key issues of networked learning. These include: policy issues, the costs of networked learning, staff development issues, and the student experience. With contributions from authors based in Europe and the US and Australia, it offers a global perspective which is designed to inform professional practice and its administration. It will be essential reading for practitioners and researchers in higher education and learning technology and will be of interest to policy-makers and managers in HE academic administration. It will also be relevant to learning technologists, support staff, as well as students and researchers in education and social science.
There is a growing body of interesting research exploring the social shaping of mobile phones, covering a wide range of topics, from new forms of communication, to the changes in time organization, the uses of public places, the display of emotions and the formation and sustaining of communities. This book evaluates the launch and adoption of mobile phones, drawing out lessons for the future. In particular, it explores how social scientists can collaborate with designers and engineers in the development of new devices and uses. It will interest people from both industry and academia. Those working in the mobile communications industry in strategy, design and marketing will find this book of particular interest. In academia, undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers in a wide range of social science fields will find it a useful reference: sociologists, economists, psychologists in areas such as Science and Technology studies; Cultural studies and New Media studies.
This text examines the use of collaboration technologies in the problem-solving or decision-making process. These systems are widely used in both education and in the workplace to enable virtual groups to discuss and exchange ideas on issues ranging from applied problems to theoretical debate. While some systems are text-based, the majority rely on visualization techniques to allow participants to represent their ideas in a more flexible, graphical form. The text evaluates existing systems, and looks at how the specific needs of users in both educational and corporate environments can be reflected in the design of new systems.
Despite the massive growth of mobile technologies, very little research has been done on how these technologies influence human interaction. Most of the published work in this area focuses on technological aspects and not on the social implications the technology is having on society. This book aims to fill this gap by providing an overview of these issues. It identifies the major trends, discusses the main claims made about the mobile age, and looks at issues which affect design, usability and evaluation. This unique look at the mobile age provides many interesting and important insights and will appeal to anyone designing, testing, or studying mobile devices.
This truly multidisciplinary book explores how culture-founding terms like ‘space’ and ‘place’ have been reconsidered, re-elaborated and how they have acquired new meanings through academic research that crosses the traditional borderline between the humanities and social sciences. All chapters explore from different perspectives how the notions of space and place are still modelling our sense of reality by investigating social and cultural phenomena of various types that evolved between the 20th and 21st centuries. The essays collected here provide evidence of the growing necessity of building bridges across disciplines to allow knowledge, in general, and academic work, in particular, to work towards new forms of epistemology. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students in the areas of cultural studies, discourse analysis, multimodality, communication and media, linguistics, literary and film studies, anthropology and ethnography.
Groupware is a technology designed to help people working in groups to communicate their ideas more easily. While traditional technologies such as the telephone qualify as groupware, the term is usually used to refer to a specific class of technologies that rely on modern computer networks, such as email, newsgroups and videophones. Working with Groupware introduces the basic concepts and brings together ideas from various disciplines to provide an integrated approach to the evaluation and design of groupware technology. Key features include an analysis of the successes and failures of collaborative technology.
Follows on from Coakes's previous title "The New SocioTech". This title applies the principles of socio-technical design specifically to the area of Knowledge Management - KM. KM has been a key tool in ensuring that people and technology work together to optimum effect within organisations, but recent studies call for a more systemic approach.