"An intelligent book that struggles honestly with important questions: Is the net turning us into passive knowers? Is it degrading our ability to reason? What can we do about this?" —David Weinberger, Los Angeles Review of Books We used to say "seeing is believing"; now, googling is believing. With 24/7 access to nearly all of the world’s information at our fingertips, we no longer trek to the library or the encyclopedia shelf in search of answers. We just open our browsers, type in a few keywords and wait for the information to come to us. Now firmly established as a pioneering work of modern philosophy, The Internet of Us has helped revolutionize our understanding of what it means to be human in the digital age. Indeed, demonstrating that knowledge based on reason plays an essential role in society and that there is more to “knowing” than just acquiring information, leading philosopher Michael P. Lynch shows how our digital way of life makes us value some ways of processing information over others, and thus risks distorting the greatest traits of mankind. Charting a path from Plato’s cave to Google Glass, the result is a necessary guide on how to navigate the philosophical quagmire that is the "Internet of Things."

A exploration of the latest trend in technology and the impact it will have on the economy, science, and society at large.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 1999 Academic debates about pluralism and truth have become increasingly polarized in recent years. One side embraces extreme relativism, deeming any talk of objective truth as philosophically naïve. The opposition, frequently arguing that any sort of relativism leads to nihilism, insists on an objective notion of truth according to which there is only one true story of the world. Both sides agree that there is no middle path. In Truth in Context, Michael Lynch argues that there is a middle path, one where metaphysical pluralism is consistent with a robust realism about truth. Drawing on the work of Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others, Lynch develops an original version of metaphysical pluralism, which he calls relativistic Kantianism. He argues that one can take facts and propositions as relative without implying that our ordinary concept of truth is a relative, epistemic, or "soft" concept. The truths may be relative, but our concept of truth need not be.

Winner • National Council of Teachers of English - George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language The “philosopher of truth” (Jill Lepore, The New Yorker) returns with a clear-eyed and timely critique of our culture’s narcissistic obsession with thinking that “we” know and “they” don’t. Taking stock of our fragmented political landscape, Michael Patrick Lynch delivers a trenchant philosophical take on digital culture and its tendency to make us into dogmatic know-it-alls. The internet—where most shared news stories are not even read by the person posting them—has contributed to the rampant spread of “intellectual arrogance.” In this culture, we have come to think that we have nothing to learn from one another; we are rewarded for emotional outrage over reflective thought; and we glorify a defensive rejection of those different from us. Interweaving the works of classic philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Bertrand Russell and imposing them on a cybernetic future they could not have possibly even imagined, Lynch delves deeply into three core ideas that explain how we’ve gotten to the way we are: • our natural tendency to be overconfident in our knowledge; • the tribal politics that feed off our tendency; • and the way the outrage factory of social media spreads those politics of arrogance and blind conviction. In addition to identifying an ascendant “know-it-all-ism” in our culture, Lynch offers practical solutions for how we might start reversing this dangerous trend—from rejecting the banality of emoticons that rarely reveal insight to embracing the tenets of Socrates, who exemplified the humility of admitting how little we often know about the world, to the importance of dialogue if we want to know more. With bracing and deeply original analysis, Lynch holds a mirror up to American culture to reveal that the sources of our fragmentation start with our attitudes toward truth. Ultimately, Know-It-All Society makes a powerful new argument for the indispensable value of truth and humility in democracy.

Digital devices have made our busy lives a little easier and they do great things for us, too – we get just-in-time coupons, directions, and connection with loved ones while stuck on an airplane runway. Yet, these devices, though we love them, can invade our privacy in ways we are not even aware of. The digital devices send and collect data about us whenever we use them, but that data is not always safeguarded the way we assume it should be to protect our privacy. Privacy is complex and personal. Many of us do not know the full extent to which data is collected, stored, aggregated, and used. As recent revelations indicate, we are subject to a level of data collection and surveillance never before imaginable. While some of these methods may, in fact, protect us and provide us with information and services we deem to be helpful and desired, others can turn out to be insidious and over-arching. Privacy in the Age of Big Data highlights the many positive outcomes of digital surveillance and data collection while also outlining those forms of data collection to which we do not always consent, and of which we are likely unaware, as well as the dangers inherent in such surveillance and tracking. Payton and Claypoole skillfully introduce readers to the many ways we are “watched” and how to change behaviors and activities to recapture and regain more of our privacy. The authors suggest remedies from tools, to behavior changes, to speaking out to politicians to request their privacy back. Anyone who uses digital devices for any reason will want to read this book for its clear and no-nonsense approach to the world of big data and what it means for all of us.

A thoroughly updated, comprehensive, and accessible guide to U.S. telecommunications law and policy, covering recent developments including mobile broadband issues, spectrum policy, and net neutrality. In Digital Crossroads, two experts on telecommunications policy offer a comprehensive and accessible analysis of the regulation of competition in the U.S. telecommunications industry. The first edition of Digital Crossroads (MIT Press, 2005) became an essential and uniquely readable guide for policymakers, lawyers, scholars, and students in a fast-moving and complex policy field. In this second edition, the authors have revised every section of every chapter to reflect the evolution in industry structure, technology, and regulatory strategy since 2005. The book features entirely new discussions of such topics as the explosive development of the mobile broadband ecosystem; incentive auctions and other recent spectrum policy initiatives; the FCC's net neutrality rules; the National Broadband Plan; the declining relevance of the traditional public switched telephone network; and the policy response to online video services and their potential to transform the way Americans watch television. Like its predecessor, this new edition of Digital Crossroads not only helps nonspecialists climb this field's formidable learning curve, but also makes substantive contributions to ongoing policy debates.

Enterprise Information Architecture for a New Age: Big Data and The Internet of Things, provides guidance in designing an information architecture to accommodate increasingly large amounts of data, massively large amounts of data, not only from traditional sources, but also from novel sources such everyday objects that are fast becoming wired into global Internet. No business can afford to be caught out by missing the value to be mined from the increasingly large amounts of available data generated by everyday devices. The text provides background as to how analytical solutions and enterprise architecture methodologies and concepts have evolved (including the roles of data warehouses, business intelligence tools, predictive analytics, data discovery, Big Data, and the impact of the Internet of Things). Then you’re taken through a series of steps by which to define a future state architecture and create a plan for how to reach that future state. Enterprise Information Architecture for a New Age: Big Data and The Internet of Things helps you gain an understanding of the following: Implications of Big Data from a variety of new data sources (including data from sensors that are part of the Internet of Things) upon an information architecture How establishing a vision for data usage by defining a roadmap that aligns IT with line-of-business needs is a key early step The importance and details of taking a step-by-step approach when dealing with shifting business challenges and changing technology capabilities How to mitigate risk when evaluating existing infrastructure and designing and deploying new infrastructure Enterprise Information Architecture for a New Age: Big Data and The Internet of Things combines practical advice with technical considerations. Author Robert Stackowiak and his team are recognized worldwide for their expertise in large data solutions, including analytics. Don’t miss your chance to read this book and gain the benefit of their advice as you look forward in thinking through your own choices and designing your own architecture to accommodate the burgeoning explosion in data that can be analyzed and converted into valuable information to drive your business forward toward success.