Laboring Bodies And The Quantified Self

The body has become central to practices of self-tracking. By focusing on the relations between quantification, the body, and labor, this volume sheds light on the ways in which discourses on data collection and versions of the ›corporate self‹ are instrumental in redefining concepts of labor, including notions of immaterial and free labor in an increasingly virtual work environment. The contributions explore the functions of quantification in conceptualizing the body as a laboring body and examine how quantification contributes to disciplining the body. By doing so, they also inquire how practices of self-tracking, self-monitoring, and self-optimization have evolved historically.

This book calls for an investigation of the ›borderlands of narrativity‹ — the complex and culturally productive area where the symbolic form of narrative meets other symbolic logics, such as data(base), play, spectacle, or ritual. It opens up a conversation about the ›beyond‹ of narrative, about the myriad constellations in which narrativity interlaces with, rubs against, or morphs into the principles of other forms. To conceptualize these borderlands, the book introduces the notion of »narrative liminality,« which the 16 articles utilize to engage literature, popular culture, digital technology, historical artifacts, and other kinds of texts from a time span of close to 200 years.

This book offers a detailed exploration of the role social media plays in our daily lives and across a variety of contexts, from social networking sites, messaging applications, and enterprise communication platforms to virtual reality. Offering readers an introduction to the uses, effects, and central debates surrounding the subject of social media, this text is organized into three sections, each with a distinct focus. Part I provides an overview of social media, defining it through communication characteristics and exploring both theoretical and practical approaches to understanding it; Part II examines the impact of social media on individual users, including its effects on expression, health, and relationship management; and Part III investigates the wider social implications of social media, including its impact on politics, entertainment, marketing, and information consumption. Featuring key contemporary case studies and learner-centered exercises throughout, this book offers a rich and engaging look at the most pertinent issues of the social media era on both an individual and societal level. This is an essential text for students of digital media, communication, journalism, and beyond, as well as a useful resource for researchers and industry professionals interested in exploring the social and psychological effects of social media.

This book provides an introduction into the field of digital medicine, its wide spectrum of current clinical applications, and the future practice of medicine. With "digital health" and "digital medicine" at its core, it focuses on the combination of therapeutics with modern hard- and software solutions, including artificial intelligence and advanced diagnostic technologies such as augmented imaging and ingestible or wearable (nano)sensors, to provide best patient care. In the four parts of this book, experts in the field have authored use cases and guiding principles on the visualization of patient data analytics and clinical decision support tools, including robotic-guided interventions, as well as nursing research along with palliative and inpatient care. The book also provides examples of "digital medicine" from almost all clinical disciplines together with technical and e-learning solutions.

The Multiverse of Office Fiction liberates Herman Melville’s 1853 classic, “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” from a microcosm of Melville studies, namely the so-called Bartleby Industry. This book aims to illuminate office fiction—fiction featuring office workers such as clerks, civil servants, and company employees—as an underexplored genre of fiction, by addressing relevant issues such as evolution of office work, integration of work and life, exploitation of women office workers, and representation of the Post Office. In achieving this goal, Bartleby plays an essential role not as one of the most eccentric characters in literary fiction, but rather as one of the most generic characters in office fiction. Overall, this book demonstrates that Bartleby is a generative figure, by incorporating a wide diversity of his cousins as Bartlebys. It offers fresh contexts in which to place these characters so that it can ultimately contribute to an ever-evolving poetics of the office.

From Microverse to Metaverse: Modelling the Future through Today's Virtual Worlds analyzes the political economy of emerging tech with the mechanisms of identity and behavioral constraints involved to map what a metaverse might be like, whether it can happen, and just why some companies seem so determined to make it happen.

Be resilient! Today, we hear this line in almost any context. The term resilience is among the most repeated buzzwords. But why, simply, do we need to be resilient? Hamideh Mahdiani presents answers to this question by challenging a reductionistic understanding of resilience from single disciplinary perspectives; by questioning the dominance of life sciences in defining an age-old concept; and by problematizing the neglected role of life writing in fostering resilience. In so doing, through a multidisciplinary frame of reference, the book works with various examples from life writing and life sciences, and testifies to the focal role of narrative studies in resilience research.