In Diminished Faculties Jonathan Sterne offers a sweeping cultural study and theorization of impairment. Drawing on his personal history with thyroid cancer and a paralyzed vocal cord, Sterne undertakes a political phenomenology of impairment in which experience is understood from the standpoint of a subject that is not fully able to account for itself. He conceives of impairment as a fundamental dimension of human experience, examining it as both political and physical. While som...

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty explores the religious freedom implications of defining marriage to include same-sex couples. It represents the only comprehensive, scholarly appraisal to date of the church-state conflicts virtually certain to arise from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage.It explores two principal questions. First, exactly what kind of religious freedom conflicts are likely to emerge if society embraces same-sex marriage? A redefinition of m...

MP3: The Meaning of a Format recounts the hundred-year history of the world's most common format for recorded audio. Understanding the historical meaning of the MP3 format entails rethinking the place of digital technologies in the larger universe of twentieth-century communication history, from hearing research conducted by the telephone industry in the 1910s, through the mid-century development of perceptual coding (the technology underlying the MP3), to the format's promiscuous...

'The global oil industry is an exceptionally complex one, and its importance to governments, business and society as a whole is immense...The New Economy of Oil aims to set out the challenges and choices ahead, and it makes a fascinating read.'Business News'John Mitchell, in this excellent book, is looking at the new elements which may influence, or indeed determine, the shape of the oil industry, the behaviour of the main actors, the forces of supply and demand, and the pri...

An enormous system comprising myriad technologies, options, and releases, Oracle's complexities have spawned numerous areas of specialization. For each area of specialization there are equally specialized how-to books and manuals. O'Reilly's Oracle Essentials claims a unique place among these books. Rather than focusing on one area, the book explains the foundational concepts of the Oracle technology and the core technical and business aspects of using it.The new edition of this c...

The Audible Past explores the cultural origins of sound reproduction. It describes a distinctive sound culture that gave birth to the sound recording and the transmission devices so ubiquitous in modern life. With an ear for the unexpected, scholar and musician Jonathan Sterne uses the technological and cultural precursors of telephony, phonography, and radio as an entry point into a history of sound in its own right. Sterne studies the constantly shifting boundary between phenome...

Meta-analysis allows researchers to combine results of several studies into a unified analysis that provides an overall estimate of the effect of interest and to quantify the uncertainty of that estimate. Stata has some of the best statistical tools available for doing meta-analysis. The unusual thing about these tools is that none of them are part of official Stata. They are all created by and documented by experts in the broader research community who also happen to be proficient Stata d...

This cutting-edge text offers an introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology and analyses the innovative theoretical and artistic methodology used to excavate current media through its past.Written with a steampunk attitude, What is Media Archaeology? examines the theoretical challenges of studying digital culture and memory and opens up the sedimented layers of contemporary media culture. The author contextualizes media archaeology in relation to other key med...

From our bank accounts to supermarket checkouts to the movies we watch, strings of ones and zeroes suffuse our world. Digital technology has defined modern society in numerous ways, and the vibrant digital culture that has now resulted is the subject of Charlie Gere’s engaging volume.In this revised and expanded second edition, taking account of new developments such as Facebook and the iPhone, Charlie Gere charts in detail the history of digital culture, as marked by responses to ...

Perspectives on the voice and technology, from discussions of voice mail and podcasts to reflections on dance and sound poetry.Voice has returned to both theoretical and artistic agendas. In the digital era, techniques and technologies of voice have provoked insistent questioning of the distinction between the human voice and the voice of the machine, between genuine and synthetic affect, between the uniqueness of an individual voice and the social and cultural for...

Digital records and broad access to the Internet have made it easier for genealogists to gather relevant information from distant sources and to share the information they have gathered. The law, however, remains tied to particular geographic locations. This book discusses how specific laws -- access to information, personal data protection, libel, copyright, and regulation of cemeteries -- apply to anyone involved in genealogical research in Canada.

Sketching User Experiences approaches design and design thinking as something distinct that needs to be better understood—by both designers and the people with whom they need to work— in order to achieve success with new products and systems. So while the focus is on design, the approach is holistic. Hence, the book speaks to designers, usability specialists, the HCI community, product managers, and business executives. There is an emphasis on balancing the back-end concern with usability ...