The 2nd Digital Revolution

"This book tells readers how technologies and business models are converging, and looks at technology and business holistically, arguing that it's no longer possible to think about business or technology without simultaneously thinking about the other"--Provided by publisher.

"This book tells readers how technologies and business models are converging, and looks at technology and business holistically, arguing that it's no longer possible to think about business or technology without simultaneously thinking about the other"--Provided by publisher.

This book tells the story of the turbulent decades when the book publishing industry collided with the great technological revolution of our time. From the surge of ebooks to the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks, Book Wars provides a comprehensive and fine-grained account of technological disruption in one of our most important and successful creative industries. Like other sectors, publishing has been thrown into disarray by the digital revolution. The foundation on which this industry had been based for 500 years – the packaging and sale of words and images in the form of printed books – was called into question by a technological revolution that enabled symbolic content to be stored, manipulated and transmitted quickly and cheaply. Publishers and retailers found themselves facing a proliferation of new players who were offering new products and services and challenging some of their most deeply held principles and beliefs. The old industry was suddenly thrust into the limelight as bitter conflicts erupted between publishers and new entrants, including powerful new tech giants who saw the world in very different ways. The book wars had begun. While ebooks were at the heart of many of these conflicts, Thompson argues that the most fundamental consequences lie elsewhere. The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms. Most important of all, it has transformed the broader information and communication environment, creating new challenges and new opportunities for publishers as they seek to redefine their role in the digital age. This unrivalled account of the book publishing industry as it faces its greatest challenge since Gutenberg will be essential reading for anyone interested in books and their future.

'A must-read to anyone interested in the digital world.' - Valérie Schafer, Center for Contemporary and Digital History, University of Luxembourg A concise history of the digital revolution and the lore, rhetoric, and debates that surround it. The Digital Revolution aims to tell a story, one of the most powerful ideologies of recent decades: that digitalization constitutes a revolution, a break with the past, a radical change for the human beings who are living through it. The book aims to investigate the origins of this idea, how it evolved, which other past revolutions consciously or unconsciously inspired it, which great stories it has conveyed over time, which of its key elements have changed and which ones have persisted and have been repeated in different historical periods. All these discussions, large or small, have settled and condensed into a series of media, advertising, corporate, political, and technical sources. Readers will be introduced to new, previously unpublished historical sources. The main aim of the book is to deconstruct what looks like a “natural” and incontestable idea and to help rethink digital societies today.

As technologists, we are constantly exploring and pushing the limits of our own disciplines, and we accept the notion that the efficiencies of new technologies are advancing at a very rapid rate. However, we rarely have time to contemplate the broader impact of these technologies as they impact and amplify adjacent technology disciplines. This book therefore focuses on the potential impact of those technologies, but it is not intended as a technical manuscript. In this book, we consider our progress and current position %toward on arbitrary popular concepts of future scenarios rather than the typical measurements of cycles per second or milliwatts. We compare our current human cultural situation to other past historic events as we anticipate the future social impact of rapidly accelerating technologies. We also rely on measurements based on specific events highlighting the breadth of the impact of accelerating semiconductor technologies rather than the specific rate of advance of any particular semiconductor technology. These measurements certainly lack the mathematic precision and repeatability to which technologists are accustomed, but the material that we are dealing with—the social objectives and future political structures of humanity—does not permit a high degree of mathematic accuracy. Our conclusion draws from the concept of Singularity. It seems certain that at the rate at which our technologies are advancing, we will exceed the ability of our post‒Industrial Revolution structures to absorb these new challenges, and we cannot accurately anticipate what those future social structures will resemble.

'A must-read to anyone interested in the digital world.' - Valérie Schafer, Center for Contemporary and Digital History, University of Luxembourg A concise history of the digital revolution and the lore, rhetoric, and debates that surround it. The Digital Revolution aims to tell a story, one of the most powerful ideologies of recent decades: that digitalization constitutes a revolution, a break with the past, a radical change for the human beings who are living through it. The book aims to investigate the origins of this idea, how it evolved, which other past revolutions consciously or unconsciously inspired it, which great stories it has conveyed over time, which of its key elements have changed and which ones have persisted and have been repeated in different historical periods. All these discussions, large or small, have settled and condensed into a series of media, advertising, corporate, political, and technical sources. Readers will be introduced to new, previously unpublished historical sources. The main aim of the book is to deconstruct what looks like a "natural" and incontestable idea and to help rethink digital societies today.

The final section considers the political ramifications of information technology for critical societal debates ranging from privacy to intellectual property. The contributors to the book map out how the digital revolution shakes up politics, creating new economic and political winners and losers. In order to do so, they connect theories of political economy to the implications of digital technology for international as well as national markets.Attempts to construct a framework for analyzing the international digital era: one that examines the ability of political actors to innovate and experiment in spite of, or perhaps because of, the constraints posed by digital technology. This book examines the reaction of nations to the dual challenges of globalization and technological change.How do high wage countries stay rich in a global digital economy? "How Revolutionary was the Revolution" constructs a framework for analyzing the international digital era: one that examines the ability of political actors to innovate and experiment in spite of, or perhaps because of, the constraints posed by digital technology. In order to assess the revolutionary nature of the digital era, this book takes four overlapping approaches. First, it examines the reaction of nations, specifically Finland, Japan, and emerging markets, to the dual challenges of globalization and technological change. This section identifies both successful and failed national experiments intended to deal with these dual pressures. Second, it assesses corporate attempts to leverage digital technology to reorganize work. A broad range of issues including off-shoring, open source production systems, and knowledge management are addressed. Third, devoting detailed analysis to the case of mobile telephones, the book offers insights into the political economy of market evolution in the digital era.

This textbook reviews the technological developments associated with the transition of radiology departments to filmless environments. Each chapter addresses the key topics in current literature with regard to the generation, transfer, interpretation and distribution of images to the medical enterprise. As leaders in the field of computerized medical imaging, the editors and contributors will provide insight into emerging technologies for physicians, administrators, and other interested groups. As health care organizations throughout the world begin to generate filmless implementation strategies, this exhaustive review has proven to be a vital aid to leaders in the development of health care.