This book is the first volume of a two-volume edition based on the International Society for Information Studies Summit Vienna 2015 on 'The Information Society at the Crossroads. Response and Responsibility of the Sciences of Information' (see summit.is4is.org).The book represents a trans-disciplinary endeavor of the leading experts in the field of information studies posing the question for a better society, in which social and technological innovations help make information key to the flourishing of humanity and dispense with the bleak view of the dark side of information society.It is aimed at readers that conduct research into any aspect of information, information society and information technology, who develop or implement social or technological applications. It is also for those who have an interest in participating in setting the goals for sciences of information and social applications of technological achievements and scientific results.

Digitising personal information is changing our ways of identifying persons and managing relations. What used to be a "natural" identity, is now as virtual as a user account at a web portal, an email address, or a mobile phone number. It is subject to diverse forms of identity management in business, administration, and among citizens. Core question and source of conflict is who owns how much identity information of whom and who needs to place trust into which identity information to allow access to resources. This book presents multidisciplinary answers from research, government, and industry. Research from states with different cultures on the identification of citizens and ID cards is combined towards analysis of HighTechIDs and Virtual Identities, considering privacy, mobility, profiling, forensics, and identity related crime. "FIDIS has put Europe on the global map as a place for high quality identity management research." –V. Reding, Commissioner, Responsible for Information Society and Media (EU)

An anthology of writings by thinkers ranging from Freeman Dyson to Bruno Latour that focuses on the interconnections of technology, society, and values and how these may affect the future. Technological change does not happen in a vacuum; decisions about which technologies to develop, fund, market, and use engage ideas about values as well as calculations of costs and benefits. This anthology focuses on the interconnections of technology, society, and values. It offers writings by authorities as varied as Freeman Dyson, Laurence Lessig, Bruno Latour, and Judy Wajcman that will introduce readers to recent thinking about technology and provide them with conceptual tools, a theoretical framework, and knowledge to help understand how technology shapes society and how society shapes technology. It offers readers a new perspective on such current issues as globalization, the balance between security and privacy, environmental justice, and poverty in the developing world. The careful ordering of the selections and the editors' introductions give Technology and Society a coherence and flow that is unusual in anthologies. The book is suitable for use in undergraduate courses in STS and other disciplines. The selections begin with predictions of the future that range from forecasts of technological utopia to cautionary tales. These are followed by writings that explore the complexity of sociotechnical systems, presenting a picture of how technology and society work in step, shaping and being shaped by one another. Finally, the book goes back to considerations of the future, discussing twenty-first-century challenges that include nanotechnology, the role of citizens in technological decisions, and the technologies of human enhancement.

We are in an ever-changing and fast-paced world that is entrenched in technological innovation. But how is technology and science impacting our society? How does it affect our interactions with these products and ultimately with each other? How is society shaping the types of technologies we are advancing? Critical Issues Impacting Science, Technology, Society (STS), and Our Future compiles theory and research from the confluence of a variety of disciplines to discuss how scientific research and technological innovation is shaping society, politics, and culture, and predicts what can be expected in the future. While highlighting topics including political engagement, artificial intelligence, and wearable technology, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, government officials, business managers, computer engineers, IT specialists, scientists, and professionals and researchers in the science, technology, and humanities fields.

"This book provides a source for definitions, antecedents, and consequences of social informatics and the cultural aspect of technology. It addresses cultural/societal issues in social informatics technology and society, the Digital Divide, government and technology law, information security and privacy, cyber ethics, technology ethics, and the future of social informatics and technology"--Provided by publisher.

This book is a scientific basis for understanding the urgent need for a Great Transformation to a third step in social evolution. Already being a community of common destiny, humanity can form an actual unity through diversity to avoid extinction. Social actors can recognise informational imperatives for cognition, communication and co-operation to achieve such a unity. By doing so, they apply a logic that underlies the structuration of any agency, which is a real logic of self-organising systems from the physical to the social. This logic is the Logic of the Third — the Third is a meta-structure that emerges in a leap. The agents interact and when they co-act they are likely to form a real meta-structure of organisational relations. Informational agents anticipate this by generating requisite information in their attempt to cope with complex challenges. Such an information is a meta-structure too. The Third helps achieve synergy effects.This book discusses considerations from philosophy, systems theory, the study of information, social systems, social information, ecology and technology. It addresses ethical issues connected with the long-forgotten arms race in an atomic age, the global warming not yet under control, the pandemic misunderstood, the social question still unanswered.

What is Quality of Life in a society that has embraced information and communication technology (ICT)? What is Wisdom in this kind of society? And what things are helping or hindering us from having both wisdom and a good quality of life in ICT societies? Taking the reader through a quick analysis of the current social and psychological changes in the Information and Communication Society, Bradley challenges us to avoid becoming victims of technology - whether we are professionals, policymakers, parents or citizens. Indeed, she introduces a theoretical model based on four decades’ worth of research to help the reader to understand this complex, technological world. In addition to focusing the reader’s attention on convergence and acceleration, this model describes the interplay between technology, societal structure, organizational design and human roles, thus leading to what Bradley describes as a "good ICT society". Emphasising the necessity of a co-operative parallel between the automation and humanization of society, this innovative volume will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in the subjects such as Information and Communication Technology and Social Change, Psychology and Sociology, Computer Technology and Media Technology.