An analysis of the failure of U.S. broadband policy to solve the rural–urban digital divide, with a proposal for a new national rural broadband plan. As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband, Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implemented, explores business models for broadband providers, surveys the technologies of rural broadband, and offers case studies of broadband use in the rural Midwest. Ali argues that rural broadband policy is both broken and incomplete: broken because it lacks coordinated federal leadership and incomplete because it fails to recognize the important roles of communities, cooperatives, and local providers in broadband access. For example, existing policies favor large telecommunication companies, crowding out smaller, nimbler providers. Lack of competition drives prices up—rural broadband can cost 37 percent more than urban broadband. The federal government subsidizes rural broadband by approximately $6 billion. Where does the money go? Ali proposes democratizing policy architecture for rural broadband, modeling it after the wiring of rural America for electricity and telephony. Subsidies should be equalized, not just going to big companies. The result would be a multistakeholder system, guided by thoughtful public policy and funded by public and private support.

This landmark work – considered by many in the field to be THE reference on fiber-optic gyroscopes (FOGs) – provides you with a complete and thorough system analysis of the FOG and remains unmatched by any other single source. Now in its third edition, this fully updated and authoritative book: Gives you access to all the details you need to know about optics, single-mode fiber optics, and integrated optics to fully grasp the design rules of the fiber-optic gyroscope Helps you understand the concepts that have emerged as the preferred solutions to obtain a practical device Guides you through the advances that have occurred in the last seven years since the previous edition was published and how they are implemented in the current FOGs Drawing on 45 years of research and development, The Fiber-Optic Gyroscope, Third Edition, features new content on the relationship between white-noise power spectral density and random walk; Allan variance; testing with optical coherence domain polarimetry; a new simple mechanical model of the thermally induced stresses and related strains in the sensing coil; simple viewing of the reduction of the Shupe effect with symmetrical windings; and comments about dispersion and birefringence dispersion. The book contains over 350 illustrations (including 70 new figures) and many helpful appendixes, and gives you everything you need to understand the fiber gyro. The author is a leading expert in this field and is one of the early pioneers of the practical optical architecture and signal processing technique that is universally used in today’s FOGs. This is a must-have reference for anyone working with FOGs, from students and academics learning about the device, to optoelectronics engineers and professionals needing to stay abreast of the current concepts and recent advances.

This book covers different aspects of Internet of Drones (IoD) including fundamentals in drone design, deployment challenges, and development of applications. It starts with a detailed description of concepts and processes in designing an efficient system, and architecture. It details different applications of IoD and its implementations in smart cities, agriculture, health care, defense, security, logistics, GIS mapping, and so forth. Recent developments in IoD design, application of AI techniques, case studies, and future directions are covered. Features: Focuses on important perspectives of the Internet of Drones (IoD) Emphasizes drone deployment in smart cities, smart agriculture, smart health care, and 3D mapping Covers challenges in drone design for applications with security and privacy issues Reviews diversified drone applications with real-use cases from modern drone players ranging from start-up companies to big giants in the drone industry Includes different aspects of drone design such as hardware and software architecture, potential applications, and opportunities This book is aimed at researchers and professionals in computer sciences, electronics and communication engineering, and aeronautical engineering.

This two-volume set on Mathematical Principles of the Internet provides a comprehensive overview of the mathematical principles of Internet engineering. The books do not aim to provide all of the mathematical foundations upon which the Internet is based. Instead, these cover only a partial panorama and the key principles. Volume 1 explores Internet engineering, while the supporting mathematics is covered in Volume 2. The chapters on mathematics complement those on the engineering episodes, and an effort has been made to make this work succinct, yet self-contained. Elements of information theory, algebraic coding theory, cryptography, Internet traffic, dynamics and control of Internet congestion, and queueing theory are discussed. In addition, stochastic networks, graph-theoretic algorithms, application of game theory to the Internet, Internet economics, data mining and knowledge discovery, and quantum computation, communication, and cryptography are also discussed. In order to study the structure and function of the Internet, only a basic knowledge of number theory, abstract algebra, matrices and determinants, graph theory, geometry, analysis, optimization theory, probability theory, and stochastic processes, is required. These mathematical disciplines are defined and developed in the books to the extent that is needed to develop and justify their application to Internet engineering.

The technologies of the Internet have exerted an enormous influence on the way we live and work. This book presents research on the transformation of the workplace by the use of these information technologies. It focuses on the deleterious transformations, emergence of virtual teams, and the ways the troubling transformations can be redeemed.

Foresight for Organizations will acquaint the reader with various foresight methods and tools, to show the reader how these methods are used, what the pitfalls are and how the methods relate to each other. This innovative volume offers the reader the ability to carry out a study of the future by him- or herself and apply the results in a decision-making strategy process. The author addresses the following methods: scenarios, trend analysis, the Delphi method, quantitative trend extrapolation, technology assessment, backcasting and roadmapping; the most relevant and popular methods that also cover the range of approaches from predictive, via normative to explorative. Every chapter also contains references to additional literature about the methods being discussed. This book is essential reading for researchers, academics and students in the areas of Community Development, Sociology of organizations, Change management, Social entrepreneurship, Sustainable development and participative planning.

The growth of the internet has been spectacular. There are now more than 3 billion internet users across the globe, some 40 per cent of the world’s population. The internet’s meteoric rise is a phenomenon of enormous significance for the economic, political and social life of contemporary societies. However, much popular and academic writing about the internet continues to take a celebratory view, assuming that the internet’s potential will be realised in essentially positive and transformative ways. This was especially true in the euphoric moment of the mid-1990s, when many commentators wrote about the internet with awe and wonderment. While this moment may be over, its underlying technocentrism – the belief that technology determines outcomes – lingers on and, with it, a failure to understand the internet in its social, economic and political contexts. Misunderstanding the Internet is a short introduction, encompassing the history, sociology, politics and economics of the internet and its impact on society. This expanded and updated second edition is a polemical, sociologically and historically informed guide to the key claims that have been made about the online world. It aims to challenge both popular myths and existing academic orthodoxies that surround the internet.

This book discusses the challenges in the convergence of technologies as the Internet of Things (IoT) evolves. These include sensing, computing, information processing, networking, and controlling intelligent technologies. The contributors first provide a survey of various assessment and evaluation approaches available for successful convergence. They then go on to cover several operational ideas to apply. The contributors then discuss the challenges involved bridging gaps in computation and the communication process, hidden networks, intelligent decision making, human-to-machine perception and large-scale IoT environments. The contributors aim to provide the reader an overview of trends in IoT in terms of performability and traffic modeling and efforts that can be spent in assessing the graceful degradation in IoT paradigms. Provides a survey of IoT assessment and evaluation approaches; Covers new and innovative operational ideas that apply to the IoT industry and the industries it affects; Includes chapters from researchers and industry leaders in IoT from around the world.

The internet opens up new opportunities for citizens to organize and mobilize for action but it also provides new channels that established political, social and economic interests can use to extend their powers. Will the internet revolutionize politics? The Prospect of Internet Democracy is a rich and detailed exploration of the theoretical implications of the internet and related information and communication technologies (ICTs) for democratic theory. Focusing in particular on how political uses of the internet have affected or seem likely to affect patterns of influence among citizens, interest groups and political institutions, the authors examine whether the internet's impact on democratic politics is destined to repeat the history of other innovative ICTs. The volume explores the likely long-term effects of such uses on the conduct of politics in the USA and other nations that declare themselves modern democracies and assesses the extent to which they help or hinder viable democratic governance.