Technology, data and society
Reflecting on UN Sustainable Development Goal 9: Industries, Innovation and Infrastructure, Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities and Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, our list looks at the potential for innovation and creative solutions to global social problems, whilst critically engaging with the risks, such as worsened social inequality and damage to human rights.
Subjects covered include the development of sustainable technology to help combat climate change, the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse data more efficiently, the way social media creates a space for people to organise international social activism and the need to balance our digital lives and retain data sovereignty, especially for the most vulnerable in society.
Bristol University Press and Policy Press are signed up to the UN SDG Publishers Compact. In Technology, data and innovation, we aim to address the following goals:
From Capital to Commons
Exploring the Promise of a World beyond Capitalism
This stimulating analysis from Hannes Gerhardt shows how technology-led and commons-oriented strategies can create fairer economies and societies. Setting out the role of various digital tools with concrete examples of their value, it is a constructive and optimistic guide to overcoming anti-capitalist barriers.
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Science, Belief and Society
International Perspectives on Religion, Non-Religion and the Public Understanding of Science
This wide-ranging book critically reviews the ways in which religious and non-religious belief systems interact with scientific methods, traditions and theories. Moving beyond the traditional focus on the United States, the book shows how debates about science and belief are firmly embedded in political conflict, class, community and culture.
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Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy
Amazon and the Power of Organization
Drawing on interviews with Amazon workers and original empirical data, this book explores how different working conditions estrange and alienate workers, and how, despite these, workers find ways to organize and express their agency. This is an important analysis of work on the digital shop floor for the scholars of platform economy.
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Disrupted Urbanism
Situated Smart Initiatives in African Cities
The ‘smart city’ is often promoted as a technology-driven solution to complex urban issues. Drawing on original research conducted in urban African settings, this book provides a much-needed alternative view, exploring how ‘home-grown’ digital disruption, driven and initiated by local actors, upending the mainstream corporate narrative.
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We Have Always Been Cyborgs
Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism
This visionary new book explores the critical issues that link transhumanism with digitalisation, gene technologies and ethics. It examines the history and meaning of transhumanism, offering insightful reflections on values, norms and utopia.
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Exploring Digital Technology in Education
Why Theory Matters and What to Do about It
The field of digital technology in education has long been under-theorised. This book will enable the reader to reflect on the use of theory when explaining technology use and set out ways in which we can theorise better.
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DataPublics
The Construction of Publics in Datafied Democracies
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Drawing on empirical data from US and UK as well as the unique example of Nordic countries where there is a high level of confidence in state and media institutions, this book shows how platforms and algorithms are transforming media, journalism and audiences’ civic practices.
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Regional Organizations and Their Responses to Coups
Measures, Motives and Aims
Using a mixed methods approach, this book examines the role played by regional organisations (ROs) following the occurrence of a coup d’état. It analyses which factors influence the strength of reactions demonstrated by ROs and explores which different post-coup solutions ROs pursue.
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Robots and Immigrants
Who Is Stealing Jobs?
This book scrutinises the narratives created around stealing jobs, opening new debates on the role of automation and migration policies. The authors reveal how the advances in AI and demands for constant flow of immigrant workers eradicate political and working rights, propagating fears over job theft and ownership.
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The Economic Lives of Platforms
Rethinking the Political Economy of Digital Markets
This interdisciplinary collection rethinks the political economy of the digital market by asking what came before platforms and suggesting what might come after them. Addressing themes like internet decolonisation, the book makes a timely assessment of the impact of evolving connections between technology, information, society and markets.
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- Currently not availableEPUBGBP 27.99
The Digital Transformation of the European Border Regime
The Powers and Perils of Imagining Future Borders
This book offers an in-depth investigation into the digitizsation processes of Europe’s border regime.
With a focus on the European Union agency eu-LISA, one of the most significant actors in the digital border regime, it shows how sociotechnical imaginations drives the future of borders and European governance of mobility.
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The Political Economy of Digital Monopolies
Contradictions and Alternatives to Data Commodification
As outrage over the socially damaging practices of technology companies intensifies, this book asks what it actually means to hold a 'monopoly' in the tech world and offers an in-depth analysis of how these corporate giants are produced, financialized, and regulated.
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Related journals
Evidence & Policy
eHealth technologies and the know-do gap: exploring the role of knowledge mobilisation
Sharing confidential health data for research purposes in the UK: where are ‘publics’ in the public interest? [Open Access]
International Journal of Care and Caring
Responses to vulnerability: care ethics and the technologisation of eldercare
Critical and Radical Social Work
Technicist education: paving the way for the rise of the social work robots?