Good computer and video games like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Pikmin, Rise of Nations, Neverwinter Nights, and Xenosaga: Episode 1 are learning machines. They get themselves learned and learned well, so that they get played long and hard by a great many people. This is how they and their designers survive and perpetuate themselves. If a game cannot be learned and even mastered at a certain level, it won't get played by enough people, and the company that makes it will go broke. Good learning in games is a capitalist-driven Darwinian process of selection of the fittest. Of course, game designers could have solved their learning problems by making games shorter and easier, by dumbing them down, so to speak. But most gamers don't want short and easy games. Thus, designers face and largely solve an intriguing educational dilemma, one also faced by schools and workplaces: how to get people, often young people, to learn and master something that is long and challenging--and enjoy it, to boot.

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What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

The configuration of developed countries has become today diverse and multiethnic due to international migration. A single coherent theoretical explanation for international migration is lacking. The aim of this discussion was the generation and integration of current theories that clarify basic assumptions and hypotheses of the various models. Theories were differentiated as explaining the initiation of migration and the perpetuation of international movement. Initiation theories discussed were 1) macro theories of neoclassical economics; 2) micro theories of neoclassical economics; 3) the new economics with examples for crop insurance markets futures markets unemployment insurance and capital markets; 4) dual labor market theory and structural inflation motivational problems economic dualism and the demography of labor supply; and 5) world systems theory and the impacts of land raw materials labor material links ideological links and global cities. Perpetuation theories were indicated as network theories of declining risks and costs; institutional theory cumulative causation through distribution of income and land organization of agrarian production culture of migration regional distribution of human capital and social labeling factors; and migration systems theory. The assumptions and propositions of these theories although divergent were not inherently contradictory but had very different implications for policy formulation. The policy decisions over the next decades will be very important and carry with them the potential for misunderstanding and conflict. Policy options based on the explicated models range from regulation by changing wages and employment conditions in destination countries or promoting development in countries of origin to changing structural market economic relations.

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Theories of international migration: a review and appraisal.

The field of information systems is premised on the centrality of information technology in everyday socio-economic life. Yet, drawing on a review of the full set of articles published inInformation Systems Research ( ISR) over the past ten years, we argue that the field has not deeply engaged its core subject matter--the information technology (IT) artifact. Instead, we find that IS researchers tend to give central theoretical significance to the context (within which some usually unspecified technology is seen to operate), the discrete processing capabilities of the artifact (as separable from its context or use), or the dependent variable (that which is posited to be affected or changed as technology is developed, implemented, and used). The IT artifact itself tends to disappear from view, be taken for granted, or is presumed to be unproblematic once it is built and installed. After discussing the implications of our findings, we propose a research direction for the IS field that begins to take technology as seriously as its effects, context, and capabilities. In particular, we propose that IS researchers begin to theorize specifically about IT artifacts, and then incorporate these theories explicitly into their studies. We believe that such a research direction is critical if IS research is to make a significant contribution to the understanding of a world increasingly suffused with ubiquitous, interdependent, and emergent information technologies.

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Research Commentary: Desperately Seeking the IT in IT Research--A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact

This essay elaborates a critical geographical perspective on neoliberalism that emphasizes (a) the path–dependent character of neoliberal reform projects and (b) the strategic role of cities in the contemporary remaking of political–economic space. We begin by presenting the methodological foundations for an approach to the geographies of what we term “actually existing neoliberalism.” In contrast to neoliberal ideology, in which market forces are assumed to operate according to immutable laws no matter where they are “unleashed,” we emphasize the contextual embeddedness of neoliberal restructuring projects insofar as they have been produced within national, regional, and local contexts defined by the legacies of inherited institutional frameworks, policy regimes, regulatory practices, and political struggles. An adequate understanding of actually existing neoliberalism must therefore explore the path–dependent, contextually specific interactions between inherited regulatory landscapes and emergent neoliberal, market–oriented restructuring projects at a broad range of geographical scales. These considerations lead to a conceptualization of contemporary neoliberalization processes as catalysts and expressions of an ongoing creative destruction of political–economic space at multiple geographical scales. While the neoliberal restructuring projects of the last two decades have not established a coherent basis for sustainable capitalist growth, it can be argued that they have nonetheless profoundly reworked the institutional infrastructures upon which Fordist–Keynesian capitalism was grounded. The concept of creative destruction is presented as a useful means for describing the geographically uneven, socially regressive, and politically volatile trajectories of institutional/spatial change that have been crystallizing under these conditions. The essay concludes by discussing the role of urban spaces within the contradictory and chronically unstable geographies of actually existing neoliberalism. Throughout the advanced capitalist world, we suggest, cities have become strategically crucial geographical arenas in which a variety of neoliberal initiatives—along with closely intertwined strategies of crisis displacement and crisis management—have been articulated.

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Cities and the Geographies of “Actually Existing Neoliberalism”

Manuel Castells, (bivši) neomarksist, autor je kapitalnih djela s područja urbane sociologije i urbanih društvenih pokreta. Predavao je na dvadesetak prestižnih svjetskih sveučilišta, a redovni je profesor na Berkeleyu. Njegov magnum opus, rezultat desetogodišnjeg izučavanja suvremenih društava, kroz brojne interkulturalne analize oslikava čovječanstvo na prijelazu u informacijsko doba, razapeto između net i self; između funkcije i značenja.

The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society

This book explores the patterns and dynamics of the network society through its policies. Topics range from the knowledge economy, based on technology and innovation, to organizational reform and modernization in the public sector. The contributors also examine media and communication policies. Contributors include Jorge Sampaio (president of the Portugese Republic), Manuel Castells (UCLA), Gustavo Cardoso (CIES/ISCTE, Portugal), Dale W. Jorgenson (Harvard University), Khuong M.Vu (Suffolk University), Luc Soete (UNU-INTECH and MERIT), Jane Fountain (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), James Katz (Rutgers University), Betty Collis (University of Twente, The Netherlands), Geoff Mulgan (Institute of Community Studies, London), Marcelo Branco (Brazilian Information Society), Jonathan Taplin (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California), Imma Tubella (Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona), Fran?ois Bar (Annenberg School for Communication, USC), Hernan Galperin (Annenberg School for Communication, USC), Jeff Cole (Annenberg School for Communication, USC), William Mitchell (MIT), Erkki Liikanen (Bank of Finland), Pekka Himanen (Helsinki Institute for Information Society and University of California, Berkeley), Carlos Alvarez (secretary of state for the economy, Chile), and Maria Joao Rodrigues (ISCTE, University of Lisbon).

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The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy

Technopoles - planned centres for the promotion for high- technology industry - have become a key feature of national economic development worldwide. Created out of a technological revolution, the formation of the global economy and the emergence of a new form of economic production and management, they constitute the mines and foundries of the information age, redefining the conditions and processes of local and regional development. This book is the first systematic survey of technopoles in all manifestations: science parks, science cities, national technopoles and technobelt programmes. Detailed case studies, ranging from the Silicon Valley to Siberia and from the M4 Corridor to Taiwan, relate how global technopoles have developed, what each is striving to achieve and how well it is succeeding. Technopoles of the World distills the lessons learnt from the successes and failures, embracing a host of disparate concepts and a few myths, and offering guidelines for national, regional and local planners and developers worldwide.

Technopoles of the world : the making of twenty-first-century industrial complexes

From the Publisher:
Nearly a century ago, Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism articulated the animating spirit of the industrial age, the Protestant ethic. Now, Pekka Himanen-together with Linus Torvalds and Manuel Castells-articulates how hackers* represent a new, opposing ethos for the information age. Underlying hackers' technical creations-such as the Internet and the personal computer, which have become symbols of our time-are the hacker values that produced them and that challenge us all.
These values promote passionate and freely rhythmed work; the belief that individuals can create great things by joining forces in imaginative ways; and the need to maintain our existing ethical ideals, such as privacy and equality, in our new, increasingly technologized society. The Hacker Ethic takes us on a journey through fundamental questions about life in the information age-a trip of constant surprises, after which our time and our lives can be seen from unexpected perspectives.
*In the original meaning of the word, hackers are enthusiastic computer programmers who share their work with others; they are not computer criminals.

The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age

A review of the original French edition of this book in the "American Journal of Sociology" hailed it as "the most finished product yet to emerge from the new (Marxist) school of French urban sociology... The aim of the book is nothing less than to reconceptualize the field of urban sociology. It is carried out in two stages: a critique of the literature of urban sociology (and urbanization) and an attempt to lay the Marxist bases for a reconstructed urban sociology."The problems facing the world's cities, whether problems of development or of decay, cannot be solved until they have been diagnosed. The race riots in Detroit, the shantytowns of Paris, the financial crisis of New York must not be seen in isolation. The mushrooming cities of the third world, demolition and urban sprawl at home are located in a network of economics, social welfare and power politics, and the decisions we are called upon to make elude us in a fog of ideology.This brilliant exposition of the function of the city in social, economic and symbolic terms illuminates the creation and structuring of space by action--administrative, productive and more immediately human. The interaction of environment and life-style, the complex of market forces and state policy against a background of traditional social practice is scrutinized with the aim of establishing concepts and research methods that will enable us to come to grips with the cities themselves and the way in which we view them.Castells draws on urban renewal in Paris, the English New Towns, the American megalopolis for concrete data in his empirical and theoretical investigation. In this English edition, a new Part V has been added on urban development in America. The chapters on the "pobladores" in Chile and the struggle of the FRAP in Quebec have been greatly extended and an Afterword traces the development of research in the past five years.

Manuel Castells

Papers

The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society

The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy

Technopoles of the world : the making of twenty-first-century industrial complexes

The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age

The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach