This book explores why widespread predictions of the radical transformation in the recording industry did not materialise. Although the growing revenue generated from streaming signals the recovery of the digital music business, it is important to ask to what extent is the current development a response to digital innovation. Hyojung Sun finds the answer in the detailed innovation process that has taken place since Napster. She reassesses the way digital music technologies were encultured in complex music valorisation processes and demonstrates how the industry has become reintermediated rather than disintermediated. This book offers a new understanding of digital disruption in the recording industry. It captures the complexity of the innovation processes that brought about technological development, which arose as a result of interaction across the circuit of the recording business – production, distribution, valorisation, and consumption. By offering a more sophisticated account than the prevailing dichotomy, the book exposes deterministic myths surrounding the radical transformation of the industry.

**'A masterpiece of evocative scientific storytelling.' BRIAN COX** **'Will appeal to fans of Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens'. Mail on Sunday ** The extraordinary story of the species that became our allies. Dogs became our companions Wheat fed a booming population Cattle gave us meat and milk Maize fuelled the growth of empires Potatoes brought us feast and famine Chickens led us to wonder about tomorrow Rice promised us a golden future Horses gave us strength and speed Apples travelled with us HUMANS TAMED THEM ALL For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors depended on wild plants and animals to stay alive – until they began to tame them. Combining archaeology and cutting-edge genetics, Tamed tells the story of the greatest revolution in human history and reveals the fascinating origins of ten crucial domesticated species; and how they, in turn, transformed us. In a world creaking under the strain of human activity, Alice Roberts urges us to look again at our relationship with the natural world – and our huge influence upon it. AN ECONOMIST AND MAIL ON SUNDAY 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' 2017

Digital Revolution addresses the structural transformation of our society, in the context of the dominant impact of technologies, and the consequent changes in the overall production and wealth appropriation system. This is much beyond ‘Industry 4.0’ or neoliberalism concepts: the digital revolution is as deep as the industrial revolution was, more than two centuries ago. It is not a new feature or phase of capitalism; it goes beyond it. New structures are being born. When manufacture surged in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was not feudalism being modernized, but a new system – capitalism - being born. Similarly, what is surging now is not just a new feature of capitalism, but a new informational mode of production. Agriculture and industry will keep playing a role, but the dominant restructuring role belongs to knowledge, information, communication, finance and other non-material factors. Our institutions and governance systems have been outpaced, they belong to another age, and we are facing the resulting chaos. The digital revolution is leading to world-scale financialization, giant communication platforms, and a global drain on private information. In Davos they call it Industry 4.0; Bauman called it parasite capitalism; Mariana Mazzucato, extractive capitalism; Brett Christopher, rentier capitalism, and so forth. But it is not enough to add qualifiers to “capitalism”: the digital revolution is generating a radically new system. This research will be useful for all the readers or researchers interested in understanding the systemic change we are facing.

For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the epic story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world -- and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees. In a comprehensive, fast-paced account full of larger-than-life personalities, Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper shows that, after the incredible wealth and excess of the '80s and '90s, Sony, Warner, and the other big players brought about their own downfall through years of denial and bad decisions in the face of dramatic advances in technology. Big Music has been asleep at the wheel ever since Napster revolutionized the way music was distributed in the 1990s. Now, because powerful people like Doug Morris and Tommy Mottola failed to recognize the incredible potential of file-sharing technology, the labels are in danger of becoming completely obsolete. Knopper, who has been writing about the industry for more than ten years, has unparalleled access to those intimately involved in the music world's highs and lows. Based on interviews with more than two hundred music industry sources -- from Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. to renegade Napster creator Shawn Fanning -- Knopper is the first to offer such a detailed and sweeping contemporary history of the industry's wild ride through the past three decades. From the birth of the compact disc, through the explosion of CD sales in the '80s and '90s, the emergence of Napster, and the secret talks that led to iTunes, to the current collapse of the industry as CD sales plummet, Knopper takes us inside the boardrooms, recording studios, private estates, garage computer labs, company jets, corporate infighting, and secret deals of the big names and behind-the-scenes players who made it all happen. With unforgettable portraits of the music world's mighty and formerly mighty; detailed accounts of both brilliant and stupid ideas brought to fruition or left on the cutting-room floor; the dish on backroom schemes, negotiations, and brawls; and several previously unreported stories, Appetite for Self-Destruction is a riveting, informative, and highly entertaining read. It offers a broad perspective on the current state of Big Music, how it got into these dire straits, and where it's going from here -- and a cautionary tale for the digital age.

Non-Commercial digital piracy has seen an unprecedented rise in the wake of the digital revolution; with wide-scale downloading and sharing of copyrighted media online, often committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens. Bringing together perspectives from criminology, psychology, business, and adopting a morally neutral stance, this book offers a holistic overview of this growing phenomenon. It considers its cultural, commercial, and legal aspects, and brings together international research on a range of topics, such as copyright infringement, intellectual property, music publishing, movie piracy, and changes in consumer behaviour. This book offers a new perspective to the growing literature on cybercrime and digital security. This multi-disciplinary book is the first to bring together international research on digital piracy and will be key reading for researchers in the fields of criminology, psychology, law and business.

The big stories -- The skills of the new machines : technology races ahead -- Moore's law and the second half of the chessboard -- The digitization of just about everything -- Innovation : declining or recombining? -- Artificial and human intelligence in the second machine age -- Computing bounty -- Beyond GDP -- The spread -- The biggest winners : stars and superstars -- Implications of the bounty and the spread -- Learning to race with machines : recommendations for individuals -- Policy recommendations -- Long-term recommendations -- Technology and the future (which is very different from "technology is the future").

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.