Tecnologías de la comunicación

The web is an ever-changing medium whose scope, application, audience and platform continue to grow on a daily basis. If you’ve worked on the web for any amount of time, you’ve likely heard or even used the term “progressive enhancement.” Since the term’s inception, it has been considered a best practice for approaching web design. But what is it really? And how do we reconcile its meaning with the rapid evolution of the languages and browsers we rely on to do our jobs?

In this brief book, Aaron Gustafson chronicles the origins of progressive enhancement, its philosophy, and mechanisms, and reveals the countless practical ways that you can apply progressive enhancement principles using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. By understanding progressive enhancement and how to apply it properly, web practitioners can craft experiences that serve users (rather than browsers), giving them access to content without technological restrictions.

Understanding the military logics that created and continue to inform computer games.

To understand the place of computer games in contemporary culture, Patrick Crogan argues, we must first understand the military logics that created and continue to inform them. Drawing on critical theoretical perspectives on computer-based technoculture, Crogan reveals how today’s computer games—and the wider culture they increasingly influence—are informed by the technoscientific program they inherited from the military-industrial complex.

In Race After the Internet, Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White bring together a collection of interdisciplinary, forward-looking essays exploring the complex role that digital media technologies play in shaping our ideas about race. Contributors interrogate changing ideas of race within the context of an increasingly digitally mediatized cultural and informational landscape. Using social scientific, rhetorical, textual, and ethnographic approaches, these essays show how new and old styles of race as code, interaction, and image are played out within digital networks of power and privilege.

Race After the Internet includes essays on the shifting terrain of racial identity and its connections to social media technologies like Facebook and MySpace, popular online games like World of Warcraft, YouTube and viral video, WiFi infrastructure, the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, genetic ancestry testing, and DNA databases in health and law enforcement. Contributors also investigate the ways in which racial profiling and a culture of racialized surveillance arise from the confluence of digital data and rapid developments in biotechnology. This collection aims to broaden the definition of the "digital divide" in order to convey a more nuanced understanding of access, usage, meaning, participation, and production of digital media technology in light of racial inequality.

Contributors: danah boyd, Peter Chow-White, Wendy Chun, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Troy Duster, Anna Everett, Rayvon Fouché, Alexander Galloway, Oscar Gandy, Eszter Hargittai, Jeong Won Hwang, Curtis Marez, Tara McPherson, Alondra Nelson, Christian Sandvig, Ernest Wilson

There is little question of the social, cultural and economic importance of video games in the world today, with gaming now rivalling the movie and music sectors as a major leisure industry and pastime. The significance of video games within our everyday lives has certainly been increased and shaped by new technologies and gaming patterns, including the rise of home-based games consoles, advances in mobile telephone technology, the rise in more 'sociable' forms of gaming, and of course the advent of the Internet.

This book explores the opportunities, challenges and patterns of gameplay and sociality afforded by the Internet and online gaming. Bringing together a series of original essays from both leading and emerging academics in the field of game studies, many of which employ new empirical work and innovative theoretical approaches to gaming, this book considers key issues crucial to our understanding of online gaming and associated social relations, including: patterns of play, legal and copyright issues, player production, identity construction, gamer communities, communication, patterns of social exclusion and inclusion around religion, gender and disability, and future directions in online gaming.

En el año 1968, Garret Hardin publicó en la revis­ta «Science» un artículo determinante, «The Trage­dy of the Commons», en el que reflexionaba sobre la dificultad de la gestión de los bienes y los recursos comunes y sobre el peligro al que estaba expuesta su subsistencia. La Premio Nobel de Economía Elinor Ostrom pasaría la mayor parte de su vida profesional investigando, precisamente, sobre los mecanismos de la acción colectiva y la gestión solidaria del proco­mún, intentando inferir de las buenas prácticas al­gunas características estructurales comunes. Con la in­vención de Internet y la digitalización del conoci­miento, resurge con vigor en versión digital el pro­blema analógico precedente: ¿cómo pueden surgir y autogestionarse comunidades online cuyo propósito es la generación de conocimiento compartido? Es decir, ¿cómo puede y debe gestionarse el procomún digital, el «digital commons»? Wikipedia ofrece un ejem­plo prototípico y floreciente de la construcción de una comunidad que consensúa sus políticas, esta­blece sus mecanismos internos de reconocimiento y orga­niza sus dispositivos de control y vigilancia, todo sin que circule efectivo de ninguna clase. El caso del «potlatch» canadiense nos sirve para comprender cómo en determinados contextos y circunstancias es nece­sario desprenderse del capital que se posee para que la comunidad lo devuelva y lo reintegre en forma de reconocimiento y renombre; cómo en determinados contextos culturales, la especie de capital que circula no es monetaria, sino simbólica, en forma de repu­tación y popularidad, y la lógica de su acumulación exige ser desinteresado para generar otra forma de interés. Así funcionan algunos de los casos más co­nocidos de Internet y así se ha convertido la Wikipe­dia en un caso del triunfo de la gestión del procomún y el conocimiento compartido.

While issues surrounding Muslim women are common in the international media, the voices of Muslim women themselves are largely absent from media coverage and despite the rapidly increasing presence of Muslim women in online groups and discussions, it is still a relatively unexplored topic.This book examines Muslim women in transnational online groups, and their views on education, culture, marriage, sexuality, work, dress-code, race, class and sisterhood.

Looking at both egalitarian and traditionalist Muslim women's views, the author considers their interpretations of Islam and identifies a new category of holists who focus on developing the Islamic sisterhood. Drawing on detailed analysis of online transcripts, she highlights women's rhetorical techniques and the thorough knowledge of Islamic sources which they use to justify their points in online discussions. She details how in the online context, as opposed to offline interactions, Muslim women are much more willing to cross boundaries between traditionalist and egalitarian interpretations of Islam and women's Islamic rights and responsibilities and to develop collaborative interpretations with supporters of different views.

Shedding light on a candid and forthright global community, this book is an important contribution to the debate on women in Islam, and as such will be of interest to scholars and students of Islamic studies, gender studies, media studies and the Middle East.

From earpiece to app
• the triumph of the telephone
• for a readership interested in the media and art

Landline, mobile, Skype and iPhone: the once familiar telephone has become a mobile all-rounder. 15 texts by artists and cultural scientist present a multifaceted picture of the technology, praxis and aesthetic of the telephone, thereby opening up new access routes to an everyday object that is in a constant process of change.

With contributions by renowned national and international artists and scientists, including Regine Buschauer, Nicholas Knouf, Stefan Münker, Hansmartin Siegrist and Heike Weber.

Los adolescentes son el grupo poblacional que más uso de las tecnologías online hace en la sociedad española actual, muy por encima de los adultos que deben supervisarlos y orientarlos en su proceso educativo. La franja de edad que va desde los 12 a los 17 años (preadolescentes y adolescentes) se corresponde con la primera generación que ejerce su autonomía “digital” de la mano de las tecnologías online, una generación que comenzó a conectarse antes de los 13 años de edad. Los usos de Internet y su repercusión en la configuración de nuevas pautas de comportamiento en la adolescencia

La obra presenta las principales pautas de comportamiento y los usos que los adolescentes hacen de las tecnologías relacionadas con internet, la categorización de los nuevos estilos de comportamiento en la adolescencia actual, y se señalan posibles estrategias de prevención ante los riesgos y ciberpatologías.

Algunos de los resultados recogidos indican cómo el acoso escolar se ha trasladado a la red. Así mismo se identificó la presencia del ciber-bullying (comentarios o imágenes ofensivas), la realización de actos obscenos delante de la webcam (quitarse ropa o intercambiar imágenes o comentarios sexuales fuertes) o las propuestas de encuentros cara a cara con desconocidos.

Grupos de discusión y una encuesta representativa de la población adolescente escolarizada de 12 a 17 años el estudio analiza las principales pautas de comportamiento y los usos que los adolescentes hacen de Internet e identifica las prácticas de riesgo en su relación cotidiana online.

Is it true that, in this era of digitization and mass media, reading and writing are on the decline? In a thought-provoking collection of essays and profiles, 31 contributors explore what may instead be a rise in rhetorical activity, an upsurge due in part to the sudden blurring of the traditional roles of creator and audience in participatory media. This collection explores topics too often overlooked by traditional academic scholarship, though critical to an exploration of rhetoric and popular culture, including fan fiction, reality television, blogging, online role-playing games, and Fantasy Football. Both scholarly and engaging, this text draws rhetorical studies into the digital age.