- Table View
- List View
Connected Vehicles: Intelligent Transportation Systems (Wireless Networks)
by Radovan MiucicThis book introduces concepts and technologies of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). It describes state of the art safety communication protocol called Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC), currently being considered for adoption by the USDOT and automotive industry in the US. However, the principles of this book are applicable even if the underlying physical layer protocol of V2X changes in the future, e.g. V2X changes from DSRC to cellular-based connectivity. Fundamental ITS concepts include topics like global positioning system; Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle to Pedestrian (V2P), and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communications; human-machine interface; and security and privacy. Fundamental concepts are sometimes followed by the real-life test experimental results (such as in V2P Chapter) and description of the performance metrics used to evaluate the results. This book also describes equations and math used in the development of the individual parts of the system. This book surveys current and previous publications for trending research in the ITS domain. It also covers state of the art standards that are in place for the DSRC in the US, starting from the application layer defined in SAE J2735 all the way to physical layer defined in IEEE 802.11. The authors provide a detailed discussion on what is needed to extend the current standards to accommodate future needs of the vehicle communications, such as needs for future autonomous vehicles. Programs and code examples accompany appropriate chapters, for example, after describing remote vehicle target classification function a pseudo code and description is provided. In addition, the book discusses current topics of the technology such as spectrum sharing, simulation, security, and privacy. The intended audience for this book includes engineering graduate students, automotive professionals/engineers, researchers and technology enthusiasts.
Connectedness: How the Best Leaders Create Authentic Human Connection in a Disconnected World
by Des Dearlove Lisa HumphriesImprove talent retention and employee productivity by encouraging connectedness in your firm In Connectedness, British business journalist and management theorist Des Dearlove delivers an insightful and practical discussion of how firms can build meaningful and authentic connections with their employees, encouraging productivity, improving talent retention, and creating an enduring competitive advantage. You’ll find out why the latest peer-reviewed research lends support to the notion that it is the nature of interpersonal environments – and not compensation – that many employees consider to be the most impactful when they’re deciding whether to exit a job. In the book, you’ll: Explore the most important factors that determine the connectedness of a healthy working environment Common mistakes and myths about employee wellbeing that sidetrack managerial efforts to improve working culture at a firm Examples and case studies that demonstrate the real-world impact of the ideas discussed in the book Perfect for managers, executives, directors, and other business leaders seeking to improve employee retention, productivity, engagement, and health, Connectedness is also a must-read resource for employees, human resources professionals, consultants, and everyone else with an interest in employee wellbeing and workplace productivity and safety.
Connecting Across Differences
by Jane Marantz Connor Dian KillianIn this fully revised second edition, Dr. Dian Killian and Dr. Jane Marantz Connor offer a comprehensive and accessible introductory guide to exploring the concepts, applications, and transformative power of the Nonviolent Communication process. Providing research-based insight into the psychology of communication, this reference explores the most common barriers to effective communication and provides tangible steps to address these barriers head-on. The book features an expanded selection of relevant, meaningful exercises, role-plays, and activities that give readers the chance to immediately apply the concepts to real-life experiences. With lessons including how to transform negative self-talk into self-empowerment, how to foster trust and collaboration when stakes are high, and how to defuse anger, enemy images, and other barriers to connection, Connecting Across Differences teaches effective communication skills that get to the root of conflict, pain, and violence peacefully.
Connecting After Chaos: Social Media and the Extended Aftermath of Disaster
by Stephen F. OstertagA riveting portrait of how one community used the power of culture to restore their lives and socialconnections in the years after a devastating natural disasterNatural disasters and other such catastrophes typically attract large-scale media attention and public concern in their immediate aftermath. However, rebuilding efforts can take years or even decades, and communities are often left to repair physical and psychological damage on their own once public sympathy fades away. Connecting After Chaos tells the story of how people restored their lives and society in the months and years after disaster, focusing on how New Orleanians used social media to cope with trauma following Hurricane Katrina.Stephen F. Ostertag draws on almost a decade of research to create a vivid portrait of life in “settling times,” a term he defines as a distinct social condition of prolonged insecurity and uncertainty after disasters. He portrays this precarious state through the story of how a group of strangers began blogging in the wake of Katrina, and how they used those blogs to put their lives and their city back together. In the face of institutional failure, weak authority figures, and an abundance of chaos, the people of New Orleans used social media to gain information, foster camaraderie, build support networks, advocate for and against proposed policies, and cope with trauma. In the efforts of these bloggers, Ostertag finds evidence of the capacity of this and other forms of cultural work to motivate, guide, and energize collective action aimed at weathering the constant instability of extended recovery periods. Connecting After Chaos is both a compelling story of a community in crisis and a broader argument for the power of social media and cultural cooperation to create order when chaos abounds.
Connecting People with Technology: Issues in Professional Communication (Baywood's Technical Communications)
by George F. HayhoeThis book explores five important areas where technology affects society, and suggests ways in which human communication can facilitate the use of that technology.Usability has become a foundational discipline in technical and professional communication that grows out of our rhetorical roots, which emphasize purpose and audience. As our appreciation of audience has grown beyond engineers and scientists to lay users of technology, our appreciation of the diversity of those audiences in terms of age, geography, and other factors has similarly expanded.We are also coming to grips with what Thomas Friedman calls the 'flat world,' a paradigm that influences how we communicate with members of other cultures and speakers of other languages. And because most of the flatteners are either technologies themselves or technology-driven, technical and professional communicators need to leverage these technologies to serve global audiences.Similarly, we are inundated with information about world crises involving health and safety issues. These crises are driven by the effects of terrorism, the aging population, HIV/AIDS, and both human-made and natural disasters. These issues are becoming more visible because they are literally matters of life and death. Furthermore, they are of special concern to audiences that technical and professional communicators have little experience targeting - the shapers of public policy, seniors, adolescents, and those affected by disaster.Biotechnology is another area that has provided new roles for technical and professional communicators. We are only beginning to understand how to communicate the science accurately without either deceiving or panicking our audience. We need to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how communication can shape reactions to biotechnology developments. Confronting this complex network of issues, we're challenged to fashion both our message and the audience's perceptions ethically.Finally, today's corporate environment is being shaped by technology and the global nature of business. Technical and professional communicators can play a role in capturing and managing knowledge, in using technology effectively in the virtual workplace, and in understanding how language shapes organizational culture.
Connecting People: Persönliche Netzwerke und ihre Bedeutung für die Zukunft (Fit for Future)
by Tatiana VogtNetzwerken ist so alt wie die Menschheit selbst. Es schenkt uns Verbindung, ein Gefühl von Zusammengehörigkeit, schafft einen sozialen und gesellschaftlichen Rahmen, der unser Gefüge zusammenhält und das eigene Überleben sichert. Das Zusammenwirken fördert unsere Entwicklung und schafft einen Verbund und Austausch von Interessen, in allen Bereichen unseres Lebens. Der Mensch ist nun einmal ein soziales Wesen, das Nähe, Kontakt, Austausch sucht und braucht. Doch wie netzwerkt man miteinander, gerade in einer sich stetig wandelnden Welt? Im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung werden persönliche Kontakte immer seltener und rücken in den Hintergrund. Roboter Netzwerke entstehen und ersetzen in vielen Fällen berufsbedingt den Menschen. Doch gerade hier liegt auch eine Chance, denn durch das aktive Netzwerken können sich Menschen im beruflichen und privaten Kontext von der Maschine abheben.
Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World
by Roland WenzlhuemerBy the end of the nineteenth century the global telegraph network had connected all continents and brought distant people into direct communication 'at the speed of thought' for the first time. Roland Wenzlhuemer here examines the links between the development of the telegraph and the paths of globalization, and the ways in which global spaces were transformed by this technological advance. His groundbreaking approach combines cultural studies with social science methodology, including evidence based on historical GIS mapping, to shed new light on both the structural conditions of the global telegraph network and the historical agency of its users. The book reveals what it meant for people to be telegraphically connected or unconnected, how people engaged with the technology, how the use of telegraphy affected communication itself and, ultimately, whether faster communication alone can explain the central role that telegraphy occupied in nineteenth-century globalization.
Connexity: How to Live in a Connected World
by Geoff MulganCONNEXITY is the philosophical counterpart to Will Hutton's essentially political book. It looks at the profound tension that exists between two recent achievements of humanity: greater freedom (over how to live, who to love, what to believe and say, where to trade), and greater interdependence, or 'connexity' (through the financial markets, military structures, the internet, the ecosystem). This tension has led to crisis: institutions, including governments, sense themselves to be inadequate; individuals are faced with a mass of conflicting information and values. The issue we face, which will ultimately determine human survival in our densely packed planet, is how the tension between these two can be resolved, and a new order established. Mulgan presents his own powerful solution to this crisis. It is based around the notion of 'connexity': breaking down our rigid sense of ourselves as isolated units and seeing our lives as part of a system, a positive network of co-responsibility.
Connie: A Memoir
by Connie Chung"This delightful memoir is filled with Connie Chung&’s trademark wit, sharp insights, and deep understanding of people. It&’s a revealing account of what it&’s like to be a woman breaking barriers in the world of TV news, filled with colorful tales of rivalry and triumph. But it also has a larger theme: how the line between serious reporting and tabloid journalism became blurred." - Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author In a sharp, witty, and definitive memoir, iconic trailblazer and legendary journalist Connie Chung delves into her storied career as the first Asian woman to break into an overwhelmingly white, male-dominated television news industry. Connie Chung is a pioneer. In 1969 at the age of 23, this once-shy daughter of Chinese parents took her first job at a local TV station in her hometown of Washington, D.C. and soon thereafter began working at CBS news as a correspondent. Profoundly influenced by her family&’s cultural traditions, yet growing up completely Americanized in the United States, Chung describes her career as an Asian woman in a white male-centered world. Overt sexism was a way of life, but Chung was tenacious in her pursuit of stories – battling rival reporters to secure scoops that ranged from interviewing Magic Johnson to covering the Watergate scandal – and quickly became a household name. She made history when she achieved her dream of being the first woman to co-anchor the CBS Evening News and the first Asian to anchor any news program in the U.S. Chung pulls no punches as she provides a behind-the-scenes tour of her singular life. From showdowns with powerful men in and out of the newsroom to the stories behind some of her career-defining reporting and the unwavering support of her husband, Maury Povich, nothing is off-limits – good, bad, or ugly. So be sure to tune in for an irreverent and inspiring exclusive: this is CONNIE like you&’ve never seen her before.
Conrad’s Sensational Heroines: Gender and Representation in the Late Fiction of Joseph Conrad
by Ellen Burton HarringtonThis volume considers Joseph Conrad's use of multiple genres, including allusions to sensation fiction, pornography, anthropology, and Darwinian science, to respond to Victorian representations of gender in layered and contradictory representations of his own. In his stories and later novels, the familiar writer of sea stories centered on men moves to consider the plight of women and the challenges of renegotiating gender roles in the context of the early twentieth century. Conrad's rich and conflicted consideration of subjectivity and alienation extends to some of his women characters, and his complex use of genre allows him both to prompt and to subvert readers' expectations of popular forms, which typically offer recognizable formulas for gender roles. He frames his critique through familiar sensationalized typologies of women that are demonstrated in his fiction: the violent mother, the murderess, the female suicide, the fallen woman, the adulteress, and the traumatic victim. Considering these figures through the roles and the taxonomies that they simultaneously embody and disrupt, this study exposes internalized patriarchal expectations that Conrad presents as both illegitimate and inescapable.
Conscious Change: How to Navigate Differences and Foster Inclusion in Everyday Relationships
by Jean Kantambu Latting V. Jean RamseyEvery day, most of us interact with people of disparate backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences—individuals who hold different expectations than we do of the people and world around them. How does one navigate these often-turbulent waters?In Conscious Change, nineteen authors describe how they have applied the principles of Conscious Change within multicultural, diverse environments to overcome difficult and emotionally draining challenges—and, in doing so, provide a road map to shifting one&’s own story when moving through similarly demanding situations in all areas of life. These practical case studies reveal how transformational the Conscious Change tools can be, leading to a stronger sense of one&’s personal capacity as a leader, better interpersonal relationships, and the beginnings of greater equity and inclusion. Illuminating and instructive, these stories are vivid illustrations of the skills today&’s leaders need in their multicultural organizations and settings, where issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are, and will increasingly be, front and center.
Conscious Collaboration: Re-Thinking The Way We Work Together, For Good
by Ben EmmensWhen collaboration works, the results can be breath-taking! But it doesn't always deliver on its potential. Collaboration has been defined as "an unnatural act practiced by non-consenting adults". And often that's exactly what it is! Some collaboration can be painfully difficult with the result that problems are either ignored or smoothed over until the collaboration falters or disintegrates, or self-interest and personal agendas take over and conflict quickly arises. Collaboration and partnerships work well in the aid sector because they have to - no one body has the resources to solve massive problems on their own. Business often sees the advantages of collaboratively sharing costs without fully recognizing the shift in mindset that is required to take managers with a "winner takes all" worldview and get them performing effectively in a win-win world. Part of the solution lies in bringing consciousness to the workplace and developing it as a core competence. A conscious approach to business relationships, planning, and delivery can enable individuals and organizations to truly think about what they are doing, make changes where needed, and become more effective. It is a particularly effective way of managing the multiple and occasionally conflicting stakeholder objectives inherent in any collaborative project. The author draws on his experience in the aid sector and with non-profit organizations to describe the building blocks that underpin successful collaboration, and inspires us to re-think the way we work together, for good.
Consecutive Interpreting
by Alexander V. KozinThis book sheds light on the phenomenon of consecutive interpreting. It combines phenomenological and empirical analyses to build a communication theory of interpreting. The author begins by reviewing mainstream research on consecutive interpreting and then dissociates himself from it, conducting a three-tier analysis of interpreting data. He concludes by presenting an alternative theory of consecutive interpreting. As he makes clear from the outset, a new and combined methodology for consecutive interpreting needs to be constructed to satisfy both the relation of the phenomenon to experience as well as its social foundation. He also stresses the potential within the humanities for wider employment of the phenomenological empirical method. This book will appeal to students and scholars of linguistics, translation, phenomenology, social interaction and communication
Consecutive Notetaking and Interpreter Training (Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies)
by Yasumasa SomeyaThis book focuses on the theoretical foundation of notetaking (NT), an essential skill of consecutive interpreting. Explaining the "whys" pertaining to the cognitive, linguistic, and pedagogical issues surrounding NT, this book addresses this neglected aspect of notetaking discourse and brings together most updated and different, if not opposing, theoretical perspectives by leading researchers and practitioners from both the West and the East: France, Germany, Taiwan, and Japan. The book, although primarily focused on the theoretical aspects of consecutive notetaking, also covers other issues pertaining to interpreter training and pedagogy in general, and provides instructors with useful guidelines and empirically-tested pieces of advice for good pedagogical practices.
Consensuality: Navigating Feminism, Gender, and Boundaries Towards Loving Relationships
by Helen WildfellThere are infinite possibilities in human relationships, but the fairytale ideal of companionship does not exist for most people. In Consensuality, Helen Wildfell and her co-adventurers detail the process for creating or finding a healthy, successful relationship as well as common pitfalls and how to avoid them, like gender identity, sexual boundaries, power struggles, and emotional dysfunction. Overcoming regret and resentment, the authors describe a journey towards a respectful social environment. Their experiences lead to lessons of self-empowerment and communication tips for building healthy partnerships. We recognize their preferences and boundaries. We discuss how those fit with our own preferences and boundaries. Filled with personal descriptions of the complex layers in human interaction, the book combines gender studies with memoir to truly make the personal political.
Consensus-Oriented Decision-Making
by Tim HartnettConsensus-Oriented Decision-Making combines extensive knowledge of effective communication techniques with deep insight into conflict resolution and group dynamics. This practical step-by-step facilitation guide presents an efficient method any business, government, non-profit, social or community group can use to generate widespread agreement on important decisions with full member participation in an atmosphere of true collaboration.
Consent: A Memoir
by Vanessa Springora“Consent” is a Molotov cocktail, flung at the face of the French establishment, a work of dazzling, highly controlled fury...By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph.” -- The New York Times Already an international literary sensation, an intimate and powerful memoir of a young French teenage girl’s relationship with a famous, much older male writer—a universal #MeToo story of power, manipulation, trauma, recovery, and resiliency that exposes the hypocrisy of a culture that has allowed the sexual abuse of minors to occur unchecked.Sometimes, all it takes is a single voice to shatter the silence of complicity.Thirty years ago, Vanessa Springora was the teenage muse of one of the country’s most celebrated writers, a footnote in the narrative of a very influential man in the French literary world.At the end of 2019, as women around the world began to speak out, Vanessa, now in her forties and the director of one of France’s leading publishing houses, decided to reclaim her own story, offering her perspective of those events sharply known.Consent is the story of one precocious young girl’s stolen adolescence. Devastating in its honesty, Vanessa’s painstakingly memoir lays bare the cultural attitudes and circumstances that made it possible for a thirteen-year-old girl to become involved with a fifty-year-old man who happened to be a notable writer. As she recalls the events of her childhood and her seduction by one of her country’s most notable writers, Vanessa reflects on the ways in which this disturbing relationship changed and affected her as she grew older.Drawing parallels between children’s fairy tales and French history and her personal life, Vanessa offers an intimate and absorbing look at the meaning of love and consent and the toll of trauma and the power of healing in women’s lives. Ultimately, she offers a forceful indictment of a chauvinistic literary world that has for too long accepted and helped perpetuate gender inequality and the exploitation and sexual abuse of children. Translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer"...One of the belated truths that emerges from [Consent] is that Springora is a writer. [...]Her sentences gleam like metal; each chapter snaps shut with the clean brutality of a latch." -- The New Yorker"Consent [is] rapier-sharp, written with restraint, elegance and brevity." -- The Times (London)"[Consent] has something steely in its heart, and it departs from the typical American memoir of childhood abuse in exhilarating ways." -- Slate"Lucid and nuanced...[Consent] will speak to trauma survivors everywhere." -- Los Angeles Review of Books”A piercing memoir about the sexually abusive relationship she endured at age 14 with a 50-year-old writer...This chilling account will linger with readers long after the last page is turned.” -- Publishers Weekly "Springora's lucid account is a commanding discussion of sexual abuse and victimization, and a powerful act of reclamation." -- Booklist"A chilling story of child abuse and the sophisticated Parisians who looked the other way...[Springora] is an elegant and perceptive writer." -- Kirkus
Conservative Political Communication: How Right-Wing Media and Messaging (Re)Made American Politics (New Agendas in Communication Series)
by Sharon E. JarvisConservative Political Communication examines the evolution of appeals, media, and tactics in right-wing media and political communication, tracking trends and shifts from the early days of contemporary conservatism in the 1950s to the Trump administration. The chapters in this edited volume feature the work of senior and junior scholars from the fields of communication, journalism, and political science employing content analytic, experimental, survey, historical, and rhetorical research methodologies. Analyses of the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, the range of partisan news sources, and the role of social media algorithms in political campaigns yield insights for our media and information ecosystems. A key theme across these chapters is how right-wing channels and communications help and hinder partisan fragmentation, a condition whereby novice elected officials create personal conservative brands, appeal to the base through partisan media, and complicate senior leadership’s ability to engage in bargaining, compromise, and deal-making. This volume interrogates conservative media and messaging to track where these processes came from, how they functioned in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, and where they may be going in the future. This book will interest scholars and upper-level students of political communication, media and politics, and political science, as well as readers invested in today’s political media landscape in the United States.
Considering Pragma-Dialectics
by Peter Houtlosser Agnès Van ReesConsidering Pragma-Dialectics honors the monumental contributions of one of the foremost international figures in current argumentation scholarship: Frans van Eemeren. The volume presents the research efforts of his colleagues and addresses how their work relates to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation with which van Eemeren’s name is so intimately connected. This tribute serves to highlight the varied approaches to the study of argumentation and is destined to inspire researchers to advance scholarship in the field far into the future. Replete with contributions from highly-esteemed academics in argumentation study, chapters in this volume address such topics as:*Pragma-dialectic versus epistemic theories of arguing and arguments;*Pragma-dialectics and self-advocacy in physician-patient interactions;*The pragma-dialectical analysis of the ad hominem family;*Rhetoric, dialectic, and the functions of argument; and*The semantics of reasonableness. As an exceptional volume and a fitting tribute, this work will be of interest to all argumentation scholars considering the astute insights and scholarly legacy of Frans van Eemeren.
Consiga un trabajo hoy (How to Write a Resume and Get a Job)
by Luis CortesConsiga Un Trabajo Hoy Encontrar un empleo puede ser una tarea estresante. Hasta resulta difícil saber por dónde comenzar. ¿Dónde están las listas de empleos? ¿Qué destrezas se requieren? ¿Cómo puede hacer que su hoja de vida se destaque? La búsqueda de un empleo conlleva muchas reglas que usted no puede quebrantar, y es fácil que inadvertidamente usted reduzca sus oportunidades. En Consiga un trabajo hoy, el Rdo. Luis Cortés le brinda a usted la información necesaria para obtener un empleo prometedor. Este libro lo conduce paso a paso a través de todo el proceso, desde la búsqueda y la solicitud de empleo, hasta la negociación de un mejor salario y la petición de beneficios. Un empleo no lo es todo en la vida, pero sí la llave de un futuro mejor. Este libro le garantiza que su búsqueda será exitosa.
Conspiracy Ideologies in Films and Series: Explanatory Approaches and Opportunities for Intervention
by Denis Newiak Anastasia SchnitzerCorona as a staged instrument of oppression, secretly kept vaccination deaths or politicians drinking children's blood: at the latest since the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic, conspiracy ideologies are booming and harm social peace and democratic will formation through their dogmatism. So-called conspiracy theories generate systematic distrust of legitimate political institutions and can contribute to social polarization, dangerous populism and extremist escalation. Conspiracy ideologies have always been a topic in movies and television series, as they have always dealt with the relationship between reality and illusion, truth and fiction, reality and dream, sense and madness through their cinematic means. Series and films not only serve as a discursive space for social self-understanding, but also, through their complex narratives, constellations of characters and aesthetics, offer catchy explanations for the emergence and spread of conspiracy narratives. At the same time, theymake suggestions, some of them astonishingly concrete, for dealing with such collective delusions. What can we learn from the fictional worlds of series and films for dealing with this very real contemporary phenomenon?
Conspiracy of Silence: Sportswriters and the Long Campaign to Desegregate Baseball
by Chris LambThe campaign to desegregate baseball was one of the most important civil rights stories of the 1930s and 1940s. But most of white America knew nothing about this story because mainstream newspapers said little about the color line and still less about the efforts to end it. Even today, as far as most Americans know, the integration of baseball revolved around Branch Rickey&’s signing of Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers&’ organization in 1945. This book shows how Rickey&’s move, critical as it may have been, came after more than a decade of work by Black and left-leaning journalists to desegregate the game. Drawing on hundreds of newspaper articles and interviews with journalists, Chris Lamb reveals how differently Black and white newspapers, and Black and white America, viewed racial equality. Between 1933 and 1945, Black newspapers and the communist Daily Worker published hundreds of articles and editorials calling for an end to baseball&’s color line, while white mainstream sportswriters perpetuated the color line by participating in what their Black counterparts called a &“conspiracy of silence.&” The alternative presses&’ efforts to end baseball&’s color line, chronicled for the first time in Conspiracy of Silence, constitute one of the great untold stories of baseball—and the civil rights movement.
Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
by Ryan HolidayIn the tradition of Janet Malcolm's THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER and Robert Greene's THE 48 LAWS OF POWER, author Ryan Holiday examines the case that rocked the media world--and the billionaire mastermind behind itIn 2007, a short blogpost on Valleywag, the Silicon Valley-vertical of Gawker Media, outed PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel as gay. Thiel's sexuality had been known to close friends and family, but he didn't consider himself a public figure, and believed the information was private. This post would be the casus belli for a meticulously plotted conspiracy that would end nearly a decade later with a $140 million dollar judgment against Gawker, its bankruptcy and with Nick Denton, Gawker's CEO and founder, out of a job. Only later would the world learn that Gawker's demise was not incidental--it had been masterminded by Thiel.For years, Thiel had searched endlessly for a solution to what he'd come to call the "Gawker Problem." When an unmarked envelope delivered an illegally recorded sex tape of Hogan with his best friend's wife, Gawker had seen the chance for millions of pageviews and to say the things that others were afraid to say. Thiel saw their publication of the tape as the opportunity he was looking for. He would come to pit Hogan against Gawker in a multi-year proxy war through the Florida legal system, while Gawker remained confidently convinced they would prevail as they had over so many other lawsuit--until it was too late. The verdict would stun the world and so would Peter's ultimate unmasking as the man who had set it all in motion. Why had he done this? How had no one discovered it? What would this mean--for the First Amendment? For privacy? For culture?In Holiday's masterful telling of this nearly unbelievable conspiracy, informed by interviews with all the key players, this case transcends the narrative of how one billionaire took down a media empire or the current state of the free press. It's a study in power, strategy, and one of the most wildly ambitious--and successful--secret plots in recent memory.Some will cheer Gawker's destruction and others will lament it, but after reading these pages--and seeing the access the author was given--no one will deny that there is something ruthless and brilliant about Peter Thiel's shocking attempt to shake up the world.
Constant Disconnection: The Weight of Everyday Digital Life
by Kenzie BurchellThe weight of constant digital connection is the default condition of working life, home life, and everyday personal life – driving us to engage more with platforms than with people, a new state of constant disconnection that we cannot escape. Overflowing email inboxes, deluges of mobile phone notifications and torrents of social media posts—the flow of communication in its abundance is today's individualized interface for interpersonal and professional practices. Communication technologies and their use are both the needle and the thread of the wider social tapestry of everyday contemporary life. This ever-changing communication environment is where the neoliberal economic policies of the West and the commercial imperatives of the platform and data-mining industries meet. It is where the contradictions they produce can be felt day-to-day by citizens-turned-users. How does it feel to live at the pressure points of intersecting economic realities and why does it matter? Drawing on extensive sociological research, Burchell examines how individuals try to manage connection as participation in everyday life and how, on a larger scale, the ever-expanding knowledge, communication, and data-driven economies depend on the very pressures that result from our disparate communication needs. With so much time spent managing the pressures of our communication environment, we often overlook the way media technologies produce systemic tensions that are reshaping how we interact with each other and what we understand to be social connection today.
Constraints on Language Acquisition: Studies of Atypical Children
by Helen Tager-FlusbergAfter decades of research most scholars generally agree that language acquisition is a complex and multifaceted process that involves the interaction of innate biologically-based mechanisms devoted to language, other non-linguistic cognitive and social mechanisms, linguistic input, and information about the social and physical world. Theoretical work in the field of language acquisition now needs to focus in greater depth and detail on some specific aspects of this general model, which is the main goal of this book. The chapters in this volume provide some new insights into one of the most remarkable accomplishments achieved by almost all children. The particular questions that are raised by contributors include: * What kinds of constraints operate on the process of language development? * Which aspects of the acquisition process depend on language-specific mechanisms? * Are there critical brain structures necessary for the acquisition of language? * What role do cognitive and social mechanisms play in language development? * How critical is perceptual input about the physical and social world? * What is the specific role played by linguistic input in the child's construction of a linguistic system? Questions are addressed from the perspective of children who come to the task of acquiring language with many hurdles to overcome, including deafness and blindness, mental retardation, autism, and prenatal or perinatal brain damage involving the left hemisphere. Each section contributes some insight on how an innate language-specific biological substrate interacts with cognitive and social factors, as well as external information, to support the child's construction of a linguistic system. Studies of atypical children offer a singular contribution to this enterprise by allowing us to see the specific influences of each component, and in turn, they shed new light on how all children are able to acquire language so effortlessly and during such a brief period of development.