eBooks are accessible online, and many are available for download or 2 week check out.
Building Communities and Making Connections by
Building Communities and Making Connections explores areas of academic and community engagement, through various studies that include community service learning, and the development and implementation of university programs that contain a community dimension. Academic endeavors have long been seen as separate from the realities of local and regional communities. This book closes the gap by looking at ways in which both academia and the communities its serves can collaborate to create authentic and applied learning environments.
The Connected Home: The Future of Domestic Life by
The contributors to this exciting new book consider and discuss the effects and ramifications of the connected home from a variety of viewpoints: an examination of the take-up of personal computers and the Internet in domestic situations; an analysis of the changing intersection of technology and human habits in the connected home; the impact of gaming, texting, e-book readers, tablets and other devices and their effect on the social conditions of a household; the relationship between digital messaging applications and real geography; and an overview of how sensing technologies for the smart home might evolve (lightweight medical technologies for example). The book culminates by addressing unfinished ambitions from the smart home agenda, the factors that have prevented their realization, and addresses the need for extending research into the area.
The Connect Effect: Building Strong Personal, Professional, and Virtual Networks by
Networking is not mere socializing—it is a vital personal and professional development skill. An effective network can make you more knowledgeable, help you address critical issues, accelerate your career, and even improve your health and well-being.
Connecting Families: The Impact of New Communication Technologies on Domestic Life by
New technologies are radically changing the way that families connect with one another: we can text our teenagers from work, eat dinner with far-away parents via video link, and instantly upload and share photos after a family day out. Whether we are bridging time or distance, and whether we are enhancing our closest relationships or strengthening the bonds of extended family, as computer technologies alter the communication landscape, they in turn are changing the way we conduct and experience family life. This state of the art volume explores the impact of new communication systems on how families interact - how they share their lives and routines, engage in social touch, and negotiate being together or being apart - by considering a range of different family relationships that shape the nature of communication. Composed of three sections, the first looks at what is often the core of a 'family', the couple, to understand the impact of technology on couple relationships, communication, and feelings of closeness. The second section studies immediate families that have expanded beyond just the individual or couple to include children. Here, the emphasis is on connection for communication, coordination, and play. The third section moves beyond the immediate family to explore connections between extended, distributed family members. This includes connections between adult children and their parents, grandparents and grandchildren, and adult siblings. Here family members have grown older, moved away from 'home', and forged new families. Researchers, designers and developers of new communication technologies will find this volume invaluable. Connecting Families: The Impact of New Communication Technologies on Domestic Life brings together the most up-to-date studies to help in understanding how new communication technologies shape - and are shaped by - family life, and offers inspiration and guidance for design by making clear what families need and value from technological systems.
Deepening Community: Finding Joy Together in Chaotic Times by
Community shapes our identity, quenches our thirst for belonging, and bolsters our physical, mental, emotional, and economic health. But in the chaos of modern life, community ties have become unraveled, leaving many feeling afraid or alone in the crowd, grasping at shallow substitutes for true community. In this thoughtful and moving book, Paul Born describes the four pillars of deep community: sharing our stories, taking the time to enjoy one another, taking care of one another, and working together for a better world.
The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age by
"Links" are among the most basic---and most unexamined---features of online life. Bringing together a prominent array of thinkers from industry and the academy, The Hyperlinked Society addresses a provocative series of questions about the ways in which hyperlinks organize behavior online. Are hyperlinks "bridging" mechanisms that encourage people to see beyond their personal beliefs to a broader and more diverse world? Or do they simply reinforce existing bonds by encouraging people to ignore social and political perspectives that conflict with their existing interests and beliefs? This pathbreaking collection of essays will be valuable to anyone interested in the now taken for granted connections that structure communication, commerce, and civic discourse in the world of digital media. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.
Reimagining Social Movements: From Collectives to Individuals by
The social scientific study of social movements remains largely shaped by categories, concepts and debates that emerged in North Atlantic societies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, namely resource mobilization, framing, collective identity, and new social movements. It is now, however, increasingly clear that we are experiencing a profound period of social transformation associated with online interactivity, informationalization and globalization. Written by leading experts from around the world, the chapters in this book explore emerging forms of movement and action not only in terms of the industrialized countries of the North Atlantic, but recognizes the importance of globalizing forms of action and culture emerging from other continents and societies. This is the first book to bring together key authors exploring this transformation in terms of action, culture and movements. It not only engages with critical transformations in the nature of collective action, but also makes a significant contribution to the globalizing of sociology.
The Sociology of Community Connections by
Many of our current social problems have been attributed to the breakdown or loss of community as a place and to the fragmentation of connections due to an extreme value of individualism in the Western world, particularly in the United States. Not all scholars and researchers agree that individualism and technology are the primary culprits in the loss of community as it existed in the middle decade of the 20th century. Nonetheless, people exist in groups, and connections are vital to their existence and in the daily performance of activities. The second edition of the Sociology of Community Connections will identify and help students understand community connectedness in the present and future.
Circulating books may be checked out in 3 week intervals.
The Church of Facebook: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community by
This timely release explores the community-altering phenomenon of social networking sites and what it reveals about friendship, God, and our own hearts. With hundreds of millions of users, social networks are changing how we form relationships, perceive others, and shape our identity. Yet at its core, this movement reflects our need for community.
Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life by
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, the nation's foremost expert in the new science of networks, takes us on an intellectual adventure to prove that social networks, corporations, and living organisms are more similar than previously thought. A full understanding of network science will someday enhance our ability to design blue-chip businesses, stop the outbreak of deadly diseases, and influence the exchange of ideas and information. Engaging and authoritative, Linked provides an exciting glimpse into the next century of science and an urgent new perspective on our interconnected world.
Mirroring People: The Science of Empathy and How We Connect with Others by
What accounts for our remarkable ability to get inside another person's head--to know what he or she is thinking and feeling? Marco Lacoboni, a leading neuroscientist, explains the groundbreaking research into mirror neurons, the "smart cells" in our brain that allow us to understand others. From imitation to morality, from political affiliations to consumer choices, mirror neurons are relevant to myriad aspects of social cognition. Mirroring People is the first book for the general reader on this revolutionary new science.
Moving Cultures: Mobile Communication in Everyday Life by
André Caron and Letizia Caronia look at teenager's use of text messaging to chat, flirt, and gossip. They find that messaging among teens has little to do with sending shorthand information quickly. Instead, it is a verbal performance through which young people create culture. Moving Cultures argues that teenagers have domesticated and reinterpreted this technology.
The Power of Many: How the Living Web is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everyday Life by
The Power of Many explores how people are using new methods of social computing to simplify the ways they locate others who share their interests and kindle face-to-face communication. It reveals the tools that make it nearly effortless for groups and individuals to accomplish significant results in the real world. By understanding these trends and techniques, we can identify where and how to apply them in own lives. See the companion website at www.thepowerofmany.com.
Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection by
We live in an age of connection, one that is accelerated by the Internet. This increasingly ubiquitous, immensely powerful technology often leads us to assume that as the number of people online grows, it inevitably leads to a smaller, more cosmopolitan world. We'll understand more, we think. We'll know more. We'll engage more and share more with people from other cultures. In reality, it is easier to ship bottles of water from Fiji to Atlanta than it is to get news from Tokyo to New York. In Rewire, media scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman explains why the technological ability to communicate with someone does not inevitably lead to increased human connection. At the most basic level, our human tendency to "flock together" means that most of our interactions, online or off, are with a small set of people with whom we have much in common. In examining this fundamental tendency, Zuckerman draws on his own work as well as the latest research in psychology and sociology to consider technology's role in disconnecting ourselves from the rest of the world. For those who seek a wider picture--a picture now critical for survival in an age of global economic crises and pandemics--Zuckerman highlights the challenges, and the headway already made, in truly connecting people across cultures. From voracious xenophiles eager to explore other countries to bridge figures who are able to connect one culture to another, people are at the center of his vision for a true kind of cosmopolitanism. And it is people who will shape a new approach to existing technologies, and perhaps invent some new ones, that embrace translation, cross-cultural inspiration, and the search for new, serendipitous experiences. Rich with Zuckerman's personal experience and wisdom, Rewire offers a map of the social, technical, and policy innovations needed to more tightly connect the world.
Scholarly articles from our databases.
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Connected: How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer
We’ve all heard of “six degrees of separation”, the idea that everyone in the world can be connected in just few steps. But what if those steps don’t just relate to people but also to viruses, neurons, cancers, proteins and even to fashion trends? What if this “small world theory” allowed us an insight into something at the very core of Nature?
