The book explores the varying experiences and engagement of youth with smartphones and digital technologies in India and South Africa. It examines the process of meaning-making (identity construction) garnered through smartphone technology — specifically relating to notions of love, sex, and sexuality. A keen reappraisal of the smartphone revolution, the essays underline the constant negotiations between technology and social institutions such as, family, schools, colleges\universities, religious groups, traditional community leaders, media, police, law, and governments. The volume looks at new forms of digital-based surveillance on girls, women and gender minorities and maps the responses of state, civil society and women’s movements in tackling the divergent narratives of freedom versus control; empowerment versus violence. It specifically looks at how concepts of ‘privacy’, ‘agency’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘consent’ are being framed in the legal arena regarding young women, which may or may not be empowering of their agency and choices. Challenging notions about gender, technology and society, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of sociology and social anthropology, politics, gender studies, and Global South studies.

As contemporary scholars, journalists, and commentators have indicated, mobile digital devices promote a constant shift of attention between the world around us and the stimulations afforded by screen-based interfaces. Investigating these uniquely contemporary hybrid interactions, Melanie Chan posits that while digital technologies are part of a long and historic trajectory, they nonetheless may instigate new forms of corporeal practices and experiences. How might continuous engagement with mobile devices and associated software impact our perception of sensory embodied experience? Drawing upon existing scholarship around mobile media and new media, Digital Reality explores digital technologies as phenomena (observable items such as such as smart-phones, handsets, consoles, head-mounted displays and goggles) in the light of theories of reality and corporeality. In so doing, the book highlights the qualitative dimensions of our sense of aliveness, movement, and interaction within a range of environments (virtual, real, or hybrid). Ultimately, the book illuminates how our sense of shared, objective reality changes due to hybrid forms of reality.

This book contains contributions from the IX International Scientific Conference “Digital Transformation of the Economy: Challenges, Trends and New Opportunities,” which was organized by Samara State University of Economics (SSEU, Samara, Russia), 2021, and devoted to the 90th anniversary of this higher education institution. Digital technologies became even more in demand during the pandemic, when companies, state authorities, and educational organizations were forced to switch to a remote format of work. The “forced” digitization of the usual ways of activity required rapid and decisive changes. Understanding the ongoing digital transformation implies the relevance of further in-depth research of this issue in the context of various socioeconomic systems, interdisciplinary interactions, and cooperation between scientists and practitioners. The book is an attempt to analyze these changes and consider them from the point of view of various scientific areas (economics, management, education, law, sociology, and others). This book addresses theoretical and practical aspects by studying the digital technology application in terms of the new socioeconomic reality development: big data in the digital economy, data collection and exchange, artificial intelligence, intelligent communications, digital platforms and strategies for the sustainable development of socioeconomic systems, and new requirements of professional and business education. It provides significant value for scientists, teachers, and students of higher educational institutions.

With newly commissioned essays by some of the leading writers on photography today, this companion tackles some of the most pressing questions about photography theory’s direction, relevance, and purpose. This book shows how digital technologies and global dissemination have radically advanced the pluralism of photographic meaning and fundamentally transformed photography theory. Having assimilated the histories of semiotic analysis and post-structural theory, critiques of representation continue to move away from the notion of original and copy and towards materiality, process, and the interdisciplinary. The implications of what it means to ‘see’ an image is now understood to encompass, not only the optical, but the conceptual, ethical, and haptic experience of encountering an image. The 'fractal' is now used to theorize the new condition of photography as an algorithmic medium and leads us to reposition our relationship to photographs and lend nuances to what essentially underlies any photography theory — that is, the relationship of the image to the real world and how we conceive what that means. Diverse in its scope and themes, The Routledge Companion to Photography Theory is an indispensable collection of essays and interviews for students, researchers, and teachers. The volume also features extensive images, including beautiful colour plates of key photographs.

How Brazilian favela residents engage with and appropriate technologies, both to fight the oppression in their lives and to represent themselves in the world. Brazilian favelas are impoverished settlements usually located on hillsides or the outskirts of a city. In Technology of the Oppressed, David Nemer draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork to provide a rich account of how favela residents engage with technology in community technology centers and in their everyday lives. Their stories reveal the structural violence of the information age. But they also show how those oppressed by technology don’t just reject it, but consciously resist and appropriate it, and how their experiences with digital technologies enable them to navigate both digital and nondigital sources of oppression—and even, at times, to flourish. Nemer uses a decolonial and intersectional framework called Mundane Technology as an analytical tool to understand how digital technologies can simultaneously be sites of oppression and tools in the fight for freedom. Building on the work of the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, he shows how the favela residents appropriate everyday technologies—technological artifacts (cell phones, Facebook), operations (repair), and spaces (Telecenters and Lan Houses)—and use them to alleviate the oppression in their everyday lives. He also addresses the relationship of misinformation to radicalization and the rise of the new far right. Contrary to the simplistic techno-optimistic belief that technology will save the poor, even with access to technology these marginalized people face numerous sources of oppression, including technological biases, racism, classism, sexism, and censorship. Yet the spirit, love, community, resilience, and resistance of favela residents make possible their pursuit of freedom.

In recent years, our world has experienced a profound shift and progression in available computing and knowledge sharing innovations. These emerging advancements have developed at a rapid pace, disseminating into and affecting numerous aspects of contemporary society. This has created a pivotal need for an innovative compendium encompassing the latest trends, concepts, and issues surrounding this relevant discipline area. During the past 15 years, the Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology has become recognized as one of the landmark sources of the latest knowledge and discoveries in this discipline. The Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, Fourth Edition is a 10-volume set which includes 705 original and previously unpublished research articles covering a full range of perspectives, applications, and techniques contributed by thousands of experts and researchers from around the globe. This authoritative encyclopedia is an all-encompassing, well-established reference source that is ideally designed to disseminate the most forward-thinking and diverse research findings. With critical perspectives on the impact of information science management and new technologies in modern settings, including but not limited to computer science, education, healthcare, government, engineering, business, and natural and physical sciences, it is a pivotal and relevant source of knowledge that will benefit every professional within the field of information science and technology and is an invaluable addition to every academic and corporate library.

Research on digital reality has been extensive in recent years, covering a wide range of topics and leading to new ways to approach and deal with complex situations. Within the Society 5.0 paradigm, people and machines establish a positive relationship to find solutions for social aspects and problems. This perspective establishes a strong interconnection between physical and virtual space, making the user an active player for better life and society. In these terms, digital systems and virtual and augmented reality technologies enable multi-dimensional scenarios and additional levels of interdisciplinary collaboration to create a highly inclusive communication network and social framework. The Handbook of Research on Implementing Digital Reality and Interactive Technologies to Achieve Society 5.0 provides an overview of methods, processes, and tools adopted to achieve super-smart society needs by exploiting digital reality and interactive technologies. It includes case studies that illustrate applications that place people’s quality of life at the center of the digitalization process, accessing and managing different information and data domains. Covering topics such as cultural heritage, interactive learning, and virtual participation, this major reference work is a comprehensive resource for business executives and managers, IT managers, government officials, community leaders, arts and performance organizers, healthcare administrators and professionals, faculty and administrators of both K-12 and higher education, students of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

Open-source development has been around for decades, with software developers co-creating tools and information systems for widespread use. With the development of open-source software such as learning objects, interactive articles, and educational games, the open-source values and practices have slowly been adopted by those in education sectors. Open-Source Technologies for Maximizing the Creation, Deployment, and Use of Digital Resources and Information highlights the global importance of open-source technologies in higher and general education. Written for those working in education and professional training, this collection of research explores a variety of issues related to open-source in education, such as its practical underpinnings, requisite cultural competence in global open-source, strategies for employing open-source in online learning and research, the design of an open-source networking laboratory, and other endeavors. It aims to enhance workplace practices in harnessing open-source resources in a time of budgetary frugality.

From health tracking to diet apps to biohacking, technology is changing how we relate to our material, embodied selves. Drawing from a range of disciplines and case studies, this volume looks at what makes these health and genetic technologies unique and explores the representation, communication and internalization of health knowledge. Showcasing how power and inequality are reflected and reproduced by these technologies, discourses and practices, this book will be a go-to resource for scholars in science and technology studies as well as those who study the intersection of race, gender, socio-economic status, sexuality and health.