Wikipedia's first twenty years: how what began as an experiment in collaboration became the world's most popular reference work. We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty years. What began almost by accident—a wiki attached to an nascent online encyclopedia—has become the world's most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent of a Big Mac, Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly) reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia, built on a model of radical collaboration, remained true to its original mission of “free access to the sum of all human knowledge” when other tech phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book, scholars, activists, and volunteers reflect on Wikipedia's first twenty years, revealing connections across disciplines and borders, languages and data, the professional and personal. The contributors consider Wikipedia's history, the richness of the connections that underpin it, and its founding vision. Their essays look at, among other things, the shift from bewilderment to respect in press coverage of Wikipedia; Wikipedia as “the most important laboratory for social scientific and computing research in history”; and the acknowledgment that “free access” includes not just access to the material but freedom to contribute—that the summation of all human knowledge is biased by who documents it. Contributors Phoebe Ayers, Omer Benjakob, Yochai Benkler, William Beutler, Siko Bouterse, Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze, Amy Carleton, Robert Cummings, LiAnna L. Davis, Siân Evans, Heather Ford, Stephen Harrison, Heather Hart, Benjamin Mako Hill, Dariusz Jemielniak, Brian Keegan, Jackie Koerner, Alexandria Lockett, Jacqueline Mabey, Katherine Maher, Michael Mandiberg, Stephane Coillet-Matillon, Cecelia A. Musselman, Eliza Myrie, Jake Orlowitz, Ian A. Ramjohn, Joseph Reagle, Anasuya Sengupta, Aaron Shaw, Melissa Tamani, Jina Valentine, Matthew Vetter, Adele Vrana, Denny Vrandečić

The always thrilling and entertaining cases of Leroy Jethro Gibbs (cover shot), played by Mark Harmon, and his NCIS-crew have been keeping a vast amount of followers all around the world glued to their seats and have made this series to one of the most successful in our times. Most likely being the absolute number one series on TV in the USA and in many other countries. This fan book, covering season 1-20, includes all the vital and necessary information on the series, short summaries of all episodes, coverage of the role vitas and the famous actors and - it goes without saying - Gibbs, Tony, Kate, Ziva, McGee, Abby, Bishop, Palmer and Ducky's best lines.

An advertising and communications expert traces the fascinating process whereby a passion for an idea, a politician, a celebrity, or a brand gives rise to a set of illogical beliefs that becomes the basis for a powerful movement. Conventional wisdom has it that spin doctors and Madison Avenue are responsible for manipulating our thoughts, causing us to endorse ideas or buy products that we would otherwise reject outright. Holden shows that while advertising and propaganda can provide a spark and social media provides the kindling, individuals create consumer, political, and cultural trends based, more often than not, on thinking that they know logically to be flawed. For businesspeople who want to see their company or brand break through, this book is both essential and entertaining reading. For the rest of us, the author provides a window into our decision-making processes, and how emotion-based illogical leaps drive our support for movements, whether they are political, commercial, or related to popular culture.

This book examines the online memory wars in post-Soviet states – where political conflicts take the shape of heated debates about the recent past, and especially World War II and Soviet socialism. To this day, former socialist states face the challenge of constructing national identities, producing national memories, and relating to the Soviet legacy. Their pasts are principally intertwined: changing readings of history in one country generate fierce reactions in others. In this transnational memory war, digital media form a pivotal discursive space – one that provides speakers with radically new commemorative tools. Uniting contributions by leading scholars in the field, Memory, Conflict and New Media is the first book-length publication to analyse how new media serve as a site of political and national identity building in post-socialist states. The book also examines how the construction of online identity is irreversibly affected by thinking about the past in this geopolitical domain. By highlighting post-socialist memory’s digital mediations and digital memory’s transcultural scope, the volume succeeds in a twofold aim: to deepen and refine both (post-socialist) memory theory and digital-memory studies. This book will be of much interest to students of media studies, post-Soviet studies, Eastern European Politics, memory studies and International Relations in general.

Ebe Chandler McCabe, Jr, a retired Navy captain who also had a long career as a nuclear power plant regulator, examines his family history in context with mankind’s. He was born in Philadelphia into a family with an Irish and Polish heritage. His father lost his job during the Great Depression and supported the family as a milkman. Ebe was eight years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and the nation went to war. He grew up admiring the World War II leadership of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill and honoring Gold Star families who had lost sons in the war. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, his over twelve years of active duty ended with Cold War tours on two fleet ballistic missile submarines and a year on the staff of the Atlantic Submarine Force Commander. Later, he joined the Atomic Energy Commission as a regulator of commercial nuclear power plants. He finished over 20 years of that duty with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and also became a Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve. Join Ebe’s integration of his and mankind’s history and nature.

The engineering profession is at a critical juncture that requires reforming engineering education. The supply of engineers is declining whereas the nature of the demand is changing. Formulating a response to these challenges demands the adoption of new and innovative tools and methods for promoting the expansion of the community while supporting these evolving requirements. Initiatives to entice and retain students are being employed to support growth objectives. Modern technologies are reshaping reform efforts. This book discusses the state of affairs in the field of engineering education and presents practical steps for addressing the challenges in order to march toward a brighter future. Features Covers the latest state of engineering education in the North America, Europe, Middle East, North Africa, and Far East Asia Discusses advances in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and community engagement Outlines applications of digital technologies to enhance learning Provides advances in remote and online instructions for engineering education Presents discussions on innovation, leadership, and ethics

The global web and its digital ecosystem can be seen as tools of emancipation, communication, and spreading knowledge or as means of control, fueled by capitalism, surveillance, and geopolitics. The Digital Frontier interrogates the world wide web and the digital ecosystem it has spawned to reveal how their conventions, protocols, standards, and algorithmic regulations represent a novel form of global power. Sangeet Kumar shows the operation of this power through the web's "infrastructures of control" visible at sites where the universalizing imperatives of the web run up against local values, norms, and cultures. These include how the idea of the "global common good" is used as a ruse by digital oligopolies to expand their private enclosures, how seemingly collaborative spaces can simultaneously be exclusionary as they regulate legitimate knowledge, how selfhood is being redefined online along Eurocentric ideals, and how the web's political challenge is felt differentially by sovereign nation states. In analyzing this new modality of cultural power in the global digital ecosystem, The Digital Frontier is an important read for scholars, activists, academics and students inspired by the utopian dream of a truly representative global digital network.

Concept Progress is a fusion of science fiction and philosophy. It is a metaphysics that centers on progress being a driving force in human evolution. This recurring viewpoint has previously stirred much debate. However, as we escalate through the 21st century, the evidence is plentiful. Concept Progress offers a fresh perspective into the topic, citing humanity's ongoing accomplishments as a convincing piece of that evidence. In the book, we celebrate ourselves for our achievements, challenge our perceived limits, and conclude that progress will eventually produce the most evolved life form. In so doing, we look back to the beginning of time and circle forward to a time that is farther away than the current age of the universe. While the tone of the book's body resembles that of a philosophical prose, with each chapter, the reader realizes more and more that the narrative is actually one of science fiction. The intent of the book's structure and approach is manifold. First, it is safe to say that any literature that points to the future is already, by definition, a work of fiction—no matter how serious it tries to sound. Imagining future technologies, foreseeing the next stages of human evolution, and exploring the realm of the highest dimension surely makes it a science fiction. Second, the book is a collection of concepts—abstract notions of the mind that reflect our grasp on certain aspects of reality. It is also a play on those concepts, exposing how our progressive understanding of these notions can gradually be transcended. Each chapter starts with a sketch of a particular concept whose humanistic yet quantum mechanical context lets us identify with it and be mystified by it. From the concepts of sound and light to the concepts of consciousness and coexistence, each concept tale depicts a personal expression of our mutual worldview. Third, each one of the ten chapters concludes with a short sci-fi story. These stories project the theme further and subtly point to each other. As we connect the dots from one story to another, the outline reveals a world that makes us wonder whether we are headed toward its future or whether we will bypass it as an alternate universe. In one story, we meet the inventor of mind-reading technology while in another story, we meet an artificial life form that will be made possible by this technology. Yet another story is about the time-traveling mind of an astrophysicist whose life's work has impacts on whole timelines, as revealed by a different story. In the end, it all comes together with the final piece of the puzzle completing not only the short story series, but also the novel as a whole. Each three-part chapter is a triad with a distinct purpose in mind. We begin the journey with our own curiosity. This basic emotion allows us to open the door to that which we are so curiously seeking. Essentially, that covers everything. In questioning the entirety of existence, we commence with the premise that it is the element of life that sends us on a quest for meaning. So we review the trend of life's evolution on Earth from its roots to the present day and follow this trend into the distant future. The process of evolutionary development leads us to a recipe for one's own personal progress, which is comprised of physical, mental, and spiritual ingredients. It soon becomes clear that a species can change only insofar as its individual members embrace this change. And we realize that our choice in the matter has impacts not only on our own future, but also on the future of everyone who shares our timeline. In some ways, Concept Progress is a modern commentary of Charles Darwin's revolutionary theory of evolution. In other ways, it is an encouraging observation of our humble human existence. As we widen the time scale and follow an evolutionary trend from biological, social, and cosmic angles, the concepts of evolution and progress slowly but surely become synonymous.

Do you know what happens to your personal data when you are browsing, buying, or using apps? Discover how your data is harvested and exploited, and what you can do to access, delete, and monetize it. Data for All empowers everyone—from tech experts to the general public—to control how third parties use personal data. Read this eye-opening book to learn: The types of data you generate with every action, every day Where your data is stored, who controls it, and how much money they make from it How you can manage access and monetization of your own data Restricting data access to only companies and organizations you want to support The history of how we think about data, and why that is changing The new data ecosystem being built right now for your benefit The data you generate every day is the lifeblood of many large companies—and they make billions of dollars using it. In Data for All, bestselling author John K. Thompson outlines how this one-sided data economy is about to undergo a dramatic change. Thompson pulls back the curtain to reveal the true nature of data ownership, and how you can turn your data from a revenue stream for companies into a financial asset for your benefit. Foreword by Thomas H. Davenport. About the Technology Do you know what happens to your personal data when you’re browsing and buying? New global laws are turning the tide on companies who make billions from your clicks, searches, and likes. This eye-opening book provides an inspiring vision of how you can take back control of the data you generate every day. About the Book Data for All gives you a step-by-step plan to transform your relationship with data and start earning a “data dividend”—hundreds or thousands of dollars paid out simply for your online activities. You’ll learn how to oversee who accesses your data, how much different types of data are worth, and how to keep private details private. What’s Inside The types of data you generate with every action, every day How you can manage access and monetization of your own data The history of how we think about data, and why that is changing The new data ecosystem being built right now for your benefit About the Reader For anyone who is curious or concerned about how their data is used. No technical knowledge required. About the Author John K. Thompson is an international technology executive with over 37 years of experience in the fields of data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence. Table of Contents 1 A history of data 2 How data works today 3 You and your data 4 Trust 5 Privacy 6 Moving from Open Data to Our Data 7 Derived data, synthetic data, and analytics 8 Looking forward: What’s next for our data?