Information technology industries Books

Book SynopsisA startup executive and investor draws on expertise developed at the premier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and as an executive at Uber to address how tech’s most successful products have solved the dreaded cold start problem”—by leveraging network effects to launch and scale toward billions of users.Although software has become easier to build, launching and scaling new products and services remains difficult. Startups face daunting challenges entering the technology ecosystem, including stiff competition, copycats, and ineffective marketing channels. Teams launching new products must consider the advantages of “the network effect,” where a product or service’s value increases as more users engage with it. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants utilize network effects, and most tech products incorporate them, whether they’re messaging apps, workplace collaboration tools, or marketplaces. Network effects provide a path for fledgling products to break through, attracting new users through viral growth and word of mouth.Yet most entrepreneurs lack the vocabulary and context to describe them—much less understand the fundamental principles that drive the effect. What exactly are network effects? How do teams create and build them into their products? How do products compete in a market where every player has them? Andrew Chen draws on his experience and on interviews with the CEOs and founding teams of LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Dropbox, Tinder, Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest to offer unique insights in answering these questions. Chen also provides practical frameworks and principles that can be applied across products and industries. The Cold Start Problem reveals what makes winning networks thrive, why some startups fail to successfully scale, and, most crucially, why products that create and compete using the network effect are vitally important today.

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Book SynopsisGOING PUBLIC is a character-driven narrative centered on the last five years of unparalleled change in how technology startups sell shares to the public. Initial public offerings, or IPOs, are typically the first time retail investors can own a piece of the New Economy companies promising to rewire economic rules. Selling IPOs is also one of the most profitable businesses for Wall Street investment banks, who have spent the last 40 years protecting their profits. In an era when algorithms and software have made the financial markets more efficient, the pricing of IPOs still relies on human judgment.In 2016, executives at music-streaming service Spotify sought to upend the status quo. Led by a trim and understated CFO, Barry McCarthy, and a shy but brilliant founder, Daniel Ek, they took a wild idea and forged something new. GOING PUBLIC explores how they got comfortable with the risk, and how they lobbied securities watchdogs and exchange staff to rewrite the regulations. Readers will meet executives at disruptive companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and data miner Palantir, venture capitalists, and even some bankers who seized on Spotify's labor and used it to knock Wall Street bankers off the piles of fees they'd been stacking for so long.GOING PUBLIC weaves in earlier attempts to rethink the IPO process, introducing readers to one of Silicon Valley's earliest bankers, Bill Hambrecht, whose invention for selling shares online was embraced by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they auctioned their shares in 2004. And it examines the recent boom in blank-check companies, those Wall Street insider deals that have suddenly become the hottest way to enter the public markets. GOING PUBLIC tells stories from inside the room, and more.

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Book SynopsisInternet entrepreneur Andrew Keen was among the earliest to write about the dangers that the Internet poses to our culture and society. His 2007 book The Cult of the Amateur was critical in helping advance the conversation around the Internet, which has now morphed from a tool providing efficiencies and opportunities for consumers and business to a force that is profoundly reshaping our societies and our world. In his new book, How to Fix the Future, Keen focuses on what we can do about this seemingly intractable situation. Looking to the past to learn how we might change our future, he describes how societies tamed the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, which, like its digital counterpart, demolished long-standing models of living, ruined harmonious environments and altered the business world beyond recognition. Travelling across the globe, from India to Estonia, Germany to Singapore, he investigates the best (and worst) practices in five key areas - regulation, innovation, social responsibility, consumer choice and education - and concludes by examining whether we are seeing the beginning of the end of the America-centric digital world.Powerful, urgent and deeply engaging, How to Fix the Future vividly depicts what we must do if we are to try to preserve human values in an increasingly digital world and what steps we might take as societies and individuals to make the future something we can again look forward to.Trade ReviewA truly important book and the most significant work so far in an emerging body of literature in which technology's smartest thinkers are raising alarm bells about the state of the Internet, and laying groundwork for how to fix it. * Fortune *How to Fix the Future, by longtime tech critic Andrew Keen, avoids simplistic condemnations, offering instead a progressive plan to ease the growing discomfort with emerging technologies that only a few years ago were being celebrated. The book provides compelling examples of ongoing experiments addressing new ways of developing and integrating socially responsible technology into our lives, especially in media, government, and education . . . Keen genuinely believes that, yes, we can fix the future. -- Larry Downes * Washington Post *With his new book, Keen switches from sarcasm to a kind of pragmatic optimism . . . Like Churchill, he offers mostly blood, sweat and tears; but at least he has a program of what needs to be done . . . It makes sense, as Keen seeks to do, to take the long view of our current dilemmas. -- John Naughton * Observer *In [Keen's] acerbic, articulate global survey of human-centered solutions, he examines best practice in consumer choice, education, innovation, regulation and social responsibility . . . An invigorating mix of principle and vision. * Nature *After years of giddiness about the wonders of technology, a new realization is dawning: the future is broken... In this bracing book, Keen offers tools for righting our societies and principles to guide us in the future. * Walter Isaacson *In this engaging, provocative book, [Keen] outlines five strategies - regulation, competitive innovation, consumer choice, civic responsibility, and education - that, working in collaboration, can help ensure an open, decentralized digital future... Valuable insights on preserving our humanity in a digital world. * Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) *Keen, has spent his career warning of the dangers of the Internet, takes a more positive turn in this complex yet accessible study. Comparing our current situation to the Industrial Revolution, he stresses the importance of keeping humanity at the center of technology. * Booklist *Eschewing much of the over-the-top luddism that now fills the New York Times, the Guardian, and other mainstream media outlets, Keen proffers practical solutions to a wide range of tech-related woes. * TechCrunch *

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Book SynopsisRupert Murdoch’s extraordinary career has no parallel. His control of Fox news, which so successfully supports the Trump presidency, is a key force in American politics. In the UK, his control of The Sun and The Times leaves politicians scrambling to get him onside. But what do we know about the man himself? This book looks closely at the Murdochs, focusing on Rupert's father Keith, who built the family’s media power and cultivated the anti-establishment instincts that his son Rupert is known for. Roberts traces the life of the Murdochs, how Rupert Murdoch’s view of the world was formed, and assesses it's impact on the media that influences our politics today.Trade ReviewTo unpeel the layers of ‘the man who owns the media’, it’s difficult to think of someone more qualified than Tom Roberts ... Here, Roberts again applies his forensic approach and scholarly rigour. * Spear's Magazine *The Making of Murdoch is the essential prequel to one of the great media and succession stories of our time. Tom Roberts' rigorous research shows how the life and times of Sir Keith Murdoch set his son Rupert on course to bestride print and television in three continents of the English speaking world from Adelaide to London to New York. How did a well-connected and Oxford-educated scion of the British Empire come to create the tabloid Sun newspaper and Fox News Channel? Roberts unearths the roots of the Murdoch story for good or bad. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the media today. * Adam Boulton, Editor-at-Large Sky News *'This outstanding book holds the key to understanding not just Rupert Murdoch, but also the brutal power of modern media.’ * Peter Oborne, journalist and broadcaster *[Includes] compelling material about Keith’s journalistic flaws. * British Journalism Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Moulding a myth 1. Rosehearty 2. American immigrant 3. Finding his voice 4. 'Murder, history, war' 5. Hearts and minds...and bodies 6. A romance into air 7. The Prince and the Pressman 8. Lessons from a madman's bible 9. Healthy competition 10. Kingmaker 11. Media empire 12. A girdle round about the Earth 13. By phone and clone 14. The son rises Epilogue: A new inheritance Index

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Book SynopsisThis second book in the FightBack collection responds to the question: what could the ‘new normal’ look like? Felix Staeritz and Sven Jungmann believe that business leaders and organizations have have formidable tools at their disposal – not just to cope with this situation, but to recreate the world so they come out of this stronger and more inventive. As entrepreneurs, Staeritz and Jungmann are passionate about solving challenges through continuous experimentation, in search of the solutions that will define and shape the new normal. At its core, this book is about the shared experiences of many business leaders, academics and entrepreneurs around how corporations can most effectively build new digital models to make the most of their existing assets. FightBack NOW is a timely and necessary book, challenging leaders and organizations to consider the new realities and the urgent problems which ultimately impact the future of every person and business.

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Book SynopsisDieses Buch behandelt die begrifflichen und sachlichen Grundlagen der Flugnavigation sowie die mathematisch-geometrischen Zusammenhänge mit zahlreichen Berechnungsbeispielen. Wegen des engen Bezugs zur Kartographie, welche die benötigten raum- und sachbezogenen Informationen für die thematischen Karten und Navigationsdatenbanken bereitstellt, sind die theoretischen Aspekte sowie der praktische Gebrauch und die Interpretation moderner Navigationskarten inhaltlicher Schwerpunkt. Weiterer Schwerpunkt ist die leistungsbasierte Navigation, wie diese in der heutigen Luftfahrtpraxis mithilfe integrierter bordseitiger Navigationssysteme in Verbindung mit den Ab- und Anflugverfahren realisiert wird. Hierbei werden Funk-, Trägheits- und Satellitennavigation kombiniert. Mithin widmet sich dieses Buch den Letzteren in einer angemessenen Detailtiefe sowie der Architektur der Bordsysteme am Beispiel der weltweit verbreiteten Airbus A320-Flugzeugfamilie. Des Weiteren werden relevante Aspekte der Flugsicherung einbezogen. Zielgruppe sind alljene, die ihre Ausbildung zum Piloten oder Fluglotsen mit einem Studium im Bereich der Luftfahrt kombinieren, Verfahrensplanende bei der Flugsicherung, Studierende des Verkehrsingenieurwesens oder der Geowissenschaften und alle, die sich für Navigationskarten und -systeme sowie die damit verbundenen aktuellen Technologien begeistern. Die vorliegende zweite Auflage ist gleichermaßen geeignet für Neueinsteiger und Fortgeschrittene, die Praxisbeispiele verhelfen zum „Ankommen". Zahlreiche hochwertige Abbildungen fördern die Anschaulichkeit, großer Wert wird auf Allgemeinverständlichkeit gelegt bei dennoch mathematischer Fundierung. Das Buchkonzept mit dem Schwerpunkt auf aktueller Thematik bindet die traditionellen Navigationssysteme jedoch soweit ein, dass die Leserinnen und Leser Kenntnisse erwerben, welche ihnen dazu verhelfen, oben genannte Systeme als alleinige Navigationsmittel anwenden zu können. Auch werden die vom Luftfahrtbundesamt für die Ausbildung zum Verkehrsflugzeugführer im Fach Navigation geforderten Inhalte im Wesentlichen abgedeckt.

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewPhilip M. Napoli offers a rich and original synthesis of the many factors that help construct the audience, as well as the social, economic, and legal consequences of that process, and he has a real talent for creating a cohesive, interesting, and important story. Expansive and important, Audience Evolution is grounded in the relevant bodies of theory and ultimately enlightening. Anyone with a serious interest in the operation of the media industries or popular culture should read this book. -- James G. Webster, Northwestern University, author of Ratings Analysis: The Theory and Practice of Audience Research ...very concise, tightly argued and very timely volume... Communications and Strategies ...its clarity, simplicty, and systematic narrative make it appealing and useful... -- Giacomo Poderi Teachers College Record ...provides new entrees into understanding how socially constructed definitions of audiences are changing. -- Grace Jackson-Brown Journalism and Mass Communication Education The book provides an excellent overview of how new media technologies have changed the patterns of audience behavior.Journal of Communication Journal of Communication a good combination of a critical approach to audience measurement as well as a thorough review of the development of audience information systems. -- Louisa Ha AEJMC This is an important book-one of the first scholarly analyses of both commercial and academic audience research trends amidst change -- Chris Sterling Communication Booknotes Quarterly No college-level media or sociology collection should be without this. Midwest Book ReviewTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Introduction 1. Contextualizing Audience Evolution 2. The Transformation of Media Consumption 3. The Transformation of Audience Information Systems 4. Contesting Audiences 5. The Implications of Audience Evolution Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisAlex Sayf Cummings reveals the significance of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park to the emergence of the high-tech economy in a postindustrial United States. Brain Magnet pinpoints how it sheds new light on the origins of today’s urban landscape, in which innovation is lauded as the engine of economic growth against a backdrop of inequality.Trade ReviewFrom tobacco and plow to computer and creative economy, this rich and eloquent history shows how a group of civic leaders put rural North Carolina at the forefront of the postindustrial revolution. In California, they say Silicon Valley is one of a kind; this marvelous book proves otherwise. -- Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital UtopianismNorth Carolina’s Research Triangle emerged a half century or so ago as one of a veritable handful of the original suburban high-tech “office parks." Though its allure has been challenged by the rise of urban tech and the return of innovation and high-tech industries to big cities, the Triangle persists. Brain Magnet provides a much-needed historical account of the rise and challenges of this model of high-tech development. -- Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday LifeAlex Cummings has written a brilliant history of the unlikely making of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. The RTP has proven to be a grand success—but not for everyone. Cummings’s site-specific account of the idea economy gives us much to ponder. -- David Farber, author of Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of GreedBrain Magnet does essential work in connecting the historical processes of urban development to the social, spatial, and intellectual influences of universities. There are many more cases like RTP across the nation. Now scholars have a blueprint to better analyze them. -- Walter D. Greason, author of Suburban Erasure: How the Suburbs Ended the Civil Rights Movement in New JerseyIn an excellent treatment of the emergence of the postindustrial economy in the U.S. South, Cummings does a great job of chronicling the seeds of economic transformation using an underexplored case study. -- Bill Graves, coeditor of Charlotte, NC: The Global Evolution of a New South CitySmart and insightful...eminently readable. -- Peter Coclanis * Triangle Business Journal *A stellar contribution to multiple historical subfields, Brain Magnet exemplifies the best of the History of Capitalism. Demystifying the rhetoric of boosters and underscoring the uneven outcomes of postindustrial capitalism, the book adds to the growing urban history literature on the high tech economy, * Metropole *Demonstrates that the economic revolution that transformed the Triangle in the last half of the twentieth century was as much a national story as a local one. * North Carolina Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPreface: RTP DonutsIntroduction: From Textiles and Tobacco to the City of Ideas1. Imagining the Triangle: The Unlikely Origins of the Creative City in the Cold War South2. “Not a Second Ruhr”: Building a Postindustrial Economy in the 1960s3. Welcome to Parkwood: Newcomers Find Their Way in the Emerging TriangleInterlude: Sweet Gums, Traffic Jams, and Cilantro4. “The Greatest Concentration of PhDs in the Country”: The Idea Economy Comes of Age in the Triangle5. Cary, SAS, and the Search for the Good LifeInterlude: The Islamic School in Parkwood6. “We Think a Lot”: The Triangle in the Age of GentrificationEpilogue: The Figure of the Knowledge WorkerNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThe technological leadership of the United States increasingly involves collaboration with other countries, especially China and India. The Conflicted Superpower explores these relationships through in-depth case studies of U.S. policies toward skilled immigration, foreign students, and offshoring.Trade ReviewThis is a subject that has only now begun to elicit serious scrutiny, and Kennedy's book will be among the first to investigate this issue seriously. Kennedy's explanations are well thought out and eminently defensible. Superb. -- Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceKennedy has provided a historically and theoretically rich explanation of why the United States has for so long embraced openness as essential to technological innovation. The Conflicted Superpower will be essential reading for policy makers and analysts who want to understand the United States’ complex science and technology relationship with India and China. -- Adam Segal, Council on Foreign RelationsIn this groundbreaking book, Andrew Kennedy addresses the puzzle of why the United States has continued to collaborate with China and India on technological innovation despite economic and strategic rivalries. Through impeccably researched case studies, Kennedy shows how U.S. high-tech firms and research universities have been the drivers of open U.S. policies, and how their interests have often triumphed on issues such as immigration of skilled labor and offshoring of R&D. -- John Ravenhill, director, Balsillie School of International AffairsA must-read for policymakers but one that's not too wonkish for lay readers. * Kirkus Reviews *Kennedy's book provides important insights that help us better understand the possible outcomes of this epochal rivalry. It is essential reading for all interested in the dynamics of global innovation. * Political Science Quarterly *Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction1. The Rise of Global Innovation 2. Innovation Leadership and Contested Openness3. The Swinging Door: Skilled Workers4. The Open Door: Foreign Students5. The (Mostly) Open Door: Global R&DConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBest Edited Collection Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), 2015-2016. "A vivid picture of the vital, essential, and fundamental role that infrastructure plays in the mediation of our world. . . . With an all-star lineup of media scholars engaging with cutting-edge technology from a range of intellectual approaches, Signal Traffic doesn't just offer an important and timely contribution to the study of media, but also makes a powerful argument for the central role that issues of distribution play in the circuit of culture; it leaves the reader with a strong sense that media scholarship can no longer ignore the material infrastructures at the heart of our media systems." --Information Society"This highly original and thought-provoking volume does a good job of pointing out the remaining gaps in the field and makes a strong case for considering distribution from technological, economic, and political standpoints." --European Journal of Communication"Finally, a definitive collection on infrastructure studies. Moving from compression to geopolitics to platforms, this book crystalizes what's at stake in moving media studies away from focusing on what appears on our screen towards how content travels and, through this movement, is shaped and re-shaped in profound ways."--Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics"The first and only collection of its kind I know. This book is going to be a big deal, both nationally and internationally." --Vicki A. Mayer, author of Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy"In an age when we are led to believe that information and communication are virtual rather than material, Signal Traffic provides a much-needed corrective, reminding us that behind the pixels and mp3s lie extensive and complex infrastructures that shape how we inhabit the emerging media environment. This book revives the tradition of critical attention to material infrastructure in media and communication studies, and not a moment too soon."--Darin Barney, author of The Network Society

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Recommended." --Choice"With The Huawei Model, Yun Wen has written a superb book on the complex relationship between Huawei and China as well as the implications of their simultaneous rises, albeit in different roles, with regard to the information and communications technology (ICT) industry and geopolitics." --Chinese Journal of Communication"Yun Wen's book The Huawei Model provides a detailed and useful account of the evolution and global expansion of Huawei Technologies." --China Quarterly​"An exhaustive history and analysis of a company in the diplomatic crosshairs." --Literary Review of Canada“Finally, there is a systematic analysis of Huawei, China's leading tech giant. Yun Wen's account is comprehensive, rigorous, and truly global spanning both the South and the North. Definitely a must-read.”--Jack Linchuan Qiu, author of Goodbye iSlave: A Manifesto for Digital Abolition ​"The well-organized approach, including the discussions of overseas investment and labor practices, presents unique findings, and adds to our knowledge not only of Huawei's path, but also of Chinese private company dynamics in broader terms. The primary source material, especially the author interviews with Huawei and other Chinese corporate officials, adds a valuable dimension to our understanding of the company's development."--Eric Harwit, author of China's Telecommunications RevolutionTable of ContentsList of IllustrationsAbbreviationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction {Introductions and conclusions don’t typically have chapter numbers}Chapter 1. Huawei’s Domestic Accumulation: A Path Intertwining with China’s ICT DevelopmentChapter 2. Going Global: Outward Expansion into the Global SouthChapter 3. March into the Global North: Opportunity or Peril?Chapter 4. From Path-Dependent to Path-Breaking? Huawei’s Technological Capability DevelopmentChapter 5. Ownership, Management, and Labor DisciplineConclusionNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisDelves into the ways networked systems and information and communications technologies (ICTs) have transformed global capitalism during the so-called Great Recession. This book shows, the forces at the core of capitalism - exploitation, commodification, and inequality - are ongoing and accelerating within the networked political economy.Trade Review"Provides a virtual fire hydrant stream of episodes and details. . . . Informed and informative. Recommended."--Choice "Schiller has outdone himself this time . . . . Schiller puts on an amazing performance juggling his well-placed emphasis on the role of the U.S. policy system, with the need to take note of changes taking place within the European community, and the rapidly rising power and influence being exercised on a global scale by government and corporate actors in China and India."--Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly "Drawing on excellent research across a range of fields, it provides the best book-length treatment of digital capitalism in the wake of the worldwide economic crisis that erupted in 2008 and offers the best map of the digital communications industry in current scholarship." --Vincent Mosco, author of To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent WorldTable of ContentsCoverTitleContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: A Contradictory MomentPart I: Digital Capitalism's Ascent to Crisis1. Network Connectivity and Labor Systems2. Networked Production and Reconstructed Commodity Chains3. Networked Financialization4. Networked MilitarizationPart II: The Recomposition of Communications5. The Historical Run-Up6. Web Communications Commodity Chains7. Services and Applications8. The Sponsor System Resurgent9. Growth amid DepressionPart III: Geopolitics and Social Purpose10. A Struggle for Growth11. A "New Foreign Policy Imperative"12. Taking Care of Business: The Internet at the U.S. Commerce Department13. Beyond a U.S.-centric Internet?14. Accumulation and Repression15. From Geopolitics to Social and Political StruggleNotesIndex

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