Focuses on the operatic soprano as the diva and her relationships with technology from the 1820s to the digital age.

This first volume in the International Technology Education Series offers a unique, worldwide collection of national surveys into the developments of Technology Education in the past two decades.

With the widespread transformation of information into digital form throughout society – firms and organisations are embracing this development to adopt multiple types of IT to increase internal efficiency and to achieve external visibility and effectiveness – we have now reached a position where there is data in abundance and the challenge is to manage and make use of it fully. This book addresses this new managerial situation, the post-digitalisation era, and offers novel perspectives on managing the digital landscape. The topics span how the post-digitalisation era has the potential to renew organisations, markets and society. The chapters of the book are structured in three topical sections but can also be read individually. The chapters are structured to offer insights into the developments that take place at the intersection of the management, information systems and computer science disciplines. It features more than 70 researchers and managers as collaborating authors in 23 thought-provoking chapters. Written for scholars, researchers, students and managers from the management, information systems and computer science disciplines, the book presents a comprehensive and thought-provoking contribution on the challenges of managing organisations and engaging in global markets when tools, systems and data are abundant.

Many of the things we now live with do not take a purely physical form. Objects such as smart phones, laptops and wearable fitness trackers are different from our things of the past. These new digital forms are networked, dynamic and contextually configured. They can be changeable and unpredictable, even inscrutable when it comes to understanding what they actually do and whom they really serve. In Changing Things, Johan Redstrom and Heather Wiltse address critical questions that have assumed a fresh urgency in the context of these rapidly-developing forms. Drawing on critical traditions from a range of disciplines that have been used to understand the nature of things, they develop a new vocabulary and a theoretical approach that allows us to account for and address the multi-faceted, dynamic, constantly evolving forms and functions of contemporary things. In doing so, the book prototypes a new design discourse around everyday things, and describes them as 'fluid assemblages'. Redstrom and Wiltse explore how a new theoretical framework could enable a richer understanding of things as fluid and networked, with a case study of the evolution of music players culminating in an in-depth discussion of Spotify. Other contemporary 'things' touched on in their analysis include smart phones and watches, as well as digital platforms and applications such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.

This text presents a detailed outline of ISDN, reflecting recent advances in the telecommunications industry due to digital technology. Describes the design, application, and operation of an integrated network carrying and switching voice, data, text, and facsimile services. Treatment is practical, not theoretical, drawing on experience gained from actual applications of ISDN. Explains the state of the art, the network development most suited to ISDN, national and international standard agreements necessary to make ISDN possible on a large scale, and what the future holds for integrated networks.

Jeanette MacDonald, the movie musical's first superstar, was an American original whose onscreen radiance mirrored a beguiling real-life personality. Based in large part on the author's exclusive access to MacDonald's private papers, including her unpublished memoir, this vivid, often touching biography transports us to a time when lavish musical films were major cultural events and a worldwide public eagerly awaited each new chance to fall under the singer's spell. Edward Baron Turk shows how MacDonald brilliantly earned her Hollywood nickname of "Iron Butterfly," and why she deserves a privileged position in the history of music and motion pictures. What made MacDonald a woman for our times, readers will discover, was her uncommon courage: Onscreen, the actress portrayed strong charcters in pursuit of deep emotional fulfillment, often in defiance of social orthodoxy, while offscreen she personified energy, discipline, and practical intellect. Drawing on interviews with individuals who knew her and on MacDonald's own words, Turk brings to life the intricate relations between the star and her legendary costars Maurice Chevalier, Clark Gable, and, above all, baritone Nelson Eddy. He reveals the deep crushes she inspired in movie giants Ernst Lubitsch and Louis B. Mayer and the extraordinary love story she shared with her husband of twenty-seven years, actor Gene Raymond. More than simply another star biography, however, this is a chronicle of American music from 1920s Broadway to 1960s television, in which Turk details MacDonald's fearless efforts to break down distinctions between High Art and mass-consumed entertainment. Hollywood Diva will attract fans of opera and concert music as much as enthusiasts of the great Hollywood musicals. It is first-rate cultural and film history.