This book’s key purpose is to contribute to the ongoing "theoretical" discussion in the field of international relations (IR) concerning the status of grand theories. However, it also has a wider, critical mission: to challenge mainstream social science and its dominant methodology, as well as the unfettered optimism that the problem of social order can be solved by the "application" of scientific knowledge to our practical problems. The author uses rigorous philosophical analysis to focus on the unexamined assumptions that form the bedrock of many contemporary scholars in IR and demonstrates the unavailability of a universal "scientific" procedure for finding the facts, when we face practical choices and issues of social reproduction. This book will be of interest to upper-level students of IR, sociology, history, and philosophy of science; it will also speak to students of security, foreign policy making, migration, and political economy, in addressing the basis of their attitudes in thinking about the world and the role of scholarship.
The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.
In a world of soaring digitization, social media, financial transactions, and production and logistics processes constantly produce massive data. Employing analytical tools to extract insights and foresights from data improves the quality, speed, and reliability of solutions to highly intertwined issues faced in supply chain operations. From procurement in Industry 4.0 to sustainable consumption behavior to curriculum development for data scientists, this book offers a wide array of techniques and theories of Big Data Analytics applied to Supply Chain Management. It offers a comprehensive overview and forms a new synthesis by bringing together seemingly divergent fields of research. Intended for Engineering and Business students, scholars, and professionals, this book is a collection of state-of-the-art research and best practices to spur discussion about and extend the cumulant knowledge of emerging supply chain problems.
As digital technologies occupy a more central role in working and everyday human life, individual and social realities are increasingly constructed and communicated through digital objects, which are progressively replacing and representing physical objects. They are even shaping new forms of virtual reality. This growing digital transformation coupled with technological evolution and the development of computer computation is shaping a cyber society whose working mechanisms are grounded upon the production, deployment, and exploitation of big data. In the arts and humanities, however, the notion of big data is still in its embryonic stage, and only in the last few years, have arts and cultural organizations and institutions, artists, and humanists started to investigate, explore, and experiment with the deployment and exploitation of big data as well as understand the possible forms of collaborations based on it. Big Data in the Arts and Humanities: Theory and Practice explores the meaning, properties, and applications of big data. This book examines therelevance of big data to the arts and humanities, digital humanities, and management of big data with and for the arts and humanities. It explores the reasons and opportunities for the arts and humanities to embrace the big data revolution. The book also delineates managerial implications to successfully shape a mutually beneficial partnership between the arts and humanities and the big data- and computational digital-based sciences. Big data and arts and humanities can be likened to the rational and emotional aspects of the human mind. This book attempts to integrate these two aspects of human thought to advance decision-making and to enhance the expression of the best of human life.
Summary Big Data teaches you to build big data systems using an architecture that takes advantage of clustered hardware along with new tools designed specifically to capture and analyze web-scale data. It describes a scalable, easy-to-understand approach to big data systems that can be built and run by a small team. Following a realistic example, this book guides readers through the theory of big data systems, how to implement them in practice, and how to deploy and operate them once they're built. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Book Web-scale applications like social networks, real-time analytics, or e-commerce sites deal with a lot of data, whose volume and velocity exceed the limits of traditional database systems. These applications require architectures built around clusters of machines to store and process data of any size, or speed. Fortunately, scale and simplicity are not mutually exclusive. Big Data teaches you to build big data systems using an architecture designed specifically to capture and analyze web-scale data. This book presents the Lambda Architecture, a scalable, easy-to-understand approach that can be built and run by a small team. You'll explore the theory of big data systems and how to implement them in practice. In addition to discovering a general framework for processing big data, you'll learn specific technologies like Hadoop, Storm, and NoSQL databases. This book requires no previous exposure to large-scale data analysis or NoSQL tools. Familiarity with traditional databases is helpful. What's Inside Introduction to big data systems Real-time processing of web-scale data Tools like Hadoop, Cassandra, and Storm Extensions to traditional database skills About the Authors Nathan Marz is the creator of Apache Storm and the originator of the Lambda Architecture for big data systems. James Warren is an analytics architect with a background in machine learning and scientific computing. Table of Contents A new paradigm for Big Data PART 1 BATCH LAYER Data model for Big Data Data model for Big Data: Illustration Data storage on the batch layer Data storage on the batch layer: Illustration Batch layer Batch layer: Illustration An example batch layer: Architecture and algorithms An example batch layer: Implementation PART 2 SERVING LAYER Serving layer Serving layer: Illustration PART 3 SPEED LAYER Realtime views Realtime views: Illustration Queuing and stream processing Queuing and stream processing: Illustration Micro-batch stream processing Micro-batch stream processing: Illustration Lambda Architecture in depth
Data science has never had more influence on the world. Large companies are now seeing the benefit of employing data scientists to interpret the vast amounts of data that now exists. However, the field is so new and is evolving so rapidly that the analysis produced can be haphazard at best. The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science shows us real-world examples of what can go wrong. Written to be an entertaining read, this invaluable guide investigates the all too common mistakes of data scientists - who can be plagued by lazy thinking, whims, hunches, and prejudices - and indicates how they have been at the root of many disasters, including the Great Recession. Gary Smith and Jay Cordes emphasise how scientific rigor and critical thinking skills are indispensable in this age of Big Data, as machines often find meaningless patterns that can lead to dangerous false conclusions. The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science is loaded with entertaining tales of both successful and misguided approaches to interpreting data, both grand successes and epic failures. These cautionary tales will not only help data scientists be more effective, but also help the public distinguish between good and bad data science.
This book covers three major parts of Big Data: concepts, theories and applications. Written by world-renowned leaders in Big Data, this book explores the problems, possible solutions and directions for Big Data in research and practice. It also focuses on high level concepts such as definitions of Big Data from different angles; surveys in research and applications; and existing tools, mechanisms, and systems in practice. Each chapter is independent from the other chapters, allowing users to read any chapter directly. After examining the practical side of Big Data, this book presents theoretical perspectives. The theoretical research ranges from Big Data representation, modeling and topology to distribution and dimension reducing. Chapters also investigate the many disciplines that involve Big Data, such as statistics, data mining, machine learning, networking, algorithms, security and differential geometry. The last section of this book introduces Big Data applications from different communities, such as business, engineering and science. Big Data Concepts, Theories and Applications is designed as a reference for researchers and advanced level students in computer science, electrical engineering and mathematics. Practitioners who focus on information systems, big data, data mining, business analysis and other related fields will also find this material valuable.
The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.
How should historians speak truth to power – and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history – especially long-term history – so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which gave rise to our conflicted present? The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society. Leading historians Jo Guldi and David Armitage identify a recent shift back to longer-term narratives, following many decades of increasing specialisation, which they argue is vital for the future of historical scholarship and how it is communicated. This provocative and thoughtful book makes an important intervention in the debate about the role of history and the humanities in a digital age. It will provoke discussion among policymakers, activists and entrepreneurs as well as ordinary listeners, viewers, readers, students and teachers. This title is also available as Open Access.
