James A. Anderson - Böcker

Current computer technology doubles in in power roughly every two years, an increase called "Moore's Law. " This constant increase is predicted to come to an end soon. Digital technology will change. Although digital computers dominate today's world, there are alternative ways to "compute", which might be better and more efficient than digital computation. After Digital looks at where the field of computation began and where it might be headed, and offers predictions about a collaborative future relationship between human cognition and mechanical computation.James A. Anderson, a pioneer of biologically inspired neural nets, presents two different kinds of computation-digital and analog--and gives examples of their history, function, and limitations. A third, the brain, falls somewhere in between these two forms, and is suggested as a computer architecture that is more capable of performing some specific important cognitive tasks-perception, reasoning, and intuition, for example- than a digital computer, even though the digital computer is constructed from far faster and more reliable basic elements. Anderson discusses the essentials of brain hardware, in particular, the cerebral cortex, and how cortical structure can influence the form taken by the computational operations underlying cognition. Topics include association, understanding complex systems through analogy, formation of abstractions, the biology of number and its use in arithmetic and mathematics, and computing across scales of organization. These applications, of great human interest, also form the goals of genuine artificial intelligence. After Digital will appeal to a broad cognitive science community, including computer scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, as well as the curious science layreader, and will help to understand and shape future developments in computation.

Brings a borderlands perspective to the history of ChinaFrom the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived. These ties dramatically affected imperial China’s relations with the emerging kingdoms in its borderlands. Local chiefs before the tenth century had considered the control of such contacts an important aspect of their political authority. Rulers and high officials at the Chinese court valued commerce in the region, where rare commodities could be obtained and vassal kingdoms showed less belligerence than did northern ones. Trade routes along this Southwest Silk Road traverse the homelands of numerous non-Han peoples. This book investigates the principalities, chiefdoms, and market nodes that emerged and flourished in the network of routes that passed through what James A. Anderson calls the "Dong world," a collection of Tai-speaking polities in upland valleys. The process of state formation that arose through trade coincided with the differentiation of peoples who were later labeled as distinct ethnicities. Exploration of this formative period at the nexus of the Chinese empire, the Dali kingdom, and the Vietnamese kingdom reveals a nuanced picture of the Chinese province of Yunnan and its southern neighbors preceding Mongol efforts to impose a new administrative order in the region. These communities shared a regional identity and a lively history of interaction well before northern occupiers classified its inhabitants as "national minorities" of China.

Brings a borderlands perspective to the history of ChinaFrom the eighth to thirteenth centuries along China’s rugged southern periphery, trade in tribute articles and an interregional horse market thrived. These ties dramatically affected imperial China’s relations with the emerging kingdoms in its borderlands. Local chiefs before the tenth century had considered the control of such contacts an important aspect of their political authority. Rulers and high officials at the Chinese court valued commerce in the region, where rare commodities could be obtained and vassal kingdoms showed less belligerence than did northern ones. Trade routes along this Southwest Silk Road traverse the homelands of numerous non-Han peoples. This book investigates the principalities, chiefdoms, and market nodes that emerged and flourished in the network of routes that passed through what James A. Anderson calls the "Dong world," a collection of Tai-speaking polities in upland valleys. The process of state formation that arose through trade coincided with the differentiation of peoples who were later labeled as distinct ethnicities. Exploration of this formative period at the nexus of the Chinese empire, the Dali kingdom, and the Vietnamese kingdom reveals a nuanced picture of the Chinese province of Yunnan and its southern neighbors preceding Mongol efforts to impose a new administrative order in the region. These communities shared a regional identity and a lively history of interaction well before northern occupiers classified its inhabitants as "national minorities" of China.

The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao examines the rebellion of the eleventh-century Tai chieftain Nung Tri Cao (ca. 1025-1055), whose struggle for independence along Vietnam's mountainous northern frontier was a pivotal event in Sino-Vietnamese relations. Tri Cao's revolt occurred during Vietnam's earliest years of independence from China and would prove to be a vital test of the Vietnamese court's ability to confront local political challenges and maintain harmony with its powerful northern neighbor.Tri Cao established his first kingdom in 1042, at the age of seventeen, but was captured by Vietnamese troops. After his release in 1048, he announced the founding of a second kingdom, but an attack by Vietnamese forces drove him to flee into Chinese territory. Tri Cao made his final attempt in 1052, proclaiming a new kingdom and leading thousands of his subjects in a revolt that swept across the South China coast. But within a year, Chinese imperial troops had forced him to flee to the nearest independent kingdom. Official Chinese and Vietnamese accounts of the rebel leader's end vary: according to the Chinese, the ruler of the independent kingdom had Tri Cao executed, but in popular accounts, Tri Cao was granted safe passage into northern Thailand, where his descendants are said to flourish today.Scholar James Anderson places Tri Cao in context by exploring the Sino-Vietnamese tributary relationship and the conflicts that engaged both the Song and Vietnamese courts. The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao reconstructs the series of negotiations that took place between border communities and representatives of the imperial courts, examining the ways in which Tai and other ethnic groups deftly navigated the unstable political situation that followed the demise of China's cosmopolitan Tang dynasty. Though his rebellion was ill-fated, Tri Cao is, almost a thousand years later, still worshipped in temples along the Sino-Vietnamese border, and his memory provides a point of unity for people who have become separated by modern political boundaries.

Communication Yearbook 14, originally published in 1991 delves into research concerned with: audiences - their effect on the mass media and how the mass media effect them; the quality of mass media performance and public opinion; the study of contemporary media from an organization studies approach; the implications of propoganda; the pressure of public opinion; and media agenda setting, among other issues. Commentaries provide refreshing viewpoints to each chapter, enhancing each chapter with complementary, or sometimes competing perspectives. Once again Anderson has brough together an internationally distinguished team of contributors who have created a forum for discussing cutting-edge topics in the field.

In Communication Yearbook 11 major contributions from leading scholars in a variety of communication fields are presented and then critiqued by other authorities (often representing complementary or competing schools of thought). Topics addressed and commented on include the mass media audience, the theory of mediation, effective policy for health care communication and feminist criticism of television.

Recent applications to biomolecular science and DNA computing have created a new audience for automata theory and formal languages. This is the only introductory book to cover such applications. It begins with a clear and readily understood exposition of the fundamentals that assumes only a background in discrete mathematics. The first five chapters give a gentle but rigorous coverage of basic ideas as well as topics not found in other texts at this level, including codes, retracts and semiretracts. Chapter 6 introduces combinatorics on words and uses it to describe a visually inspired approach to languages. The final chapter explains recently-developed language theory coming from developments in bioscience and DNA computing. With over 350 exercises (for which solutions are available), many examples and illustrations, this text will make an ideal contemporary introduction for students; others, new to the field, will welcome it for self-learning.

Recent applications to biomolecular science and DNA computing have created a new audience for automata theory and formal languages. This is the only introductory book to cover such applications. It begins with a clear and readily understood exposition of the fundamentals that assumes only a background in discrete mathematics. The first five chapters give a gentle but rigorous coverage of basic ideas as well as topics not found in other texts at this level, including codes, retracts and semiretracts. Chapter 6 introduces combinatorics on words and uses it to describe a visually inspired approach to languages. The final chapter explains recently-developed language theory coming from developments in bioscience and DNA computing. With over 350 exercises (for which solutions are available), many examples and illustrations, this text will make an ideal contemporary introduction for students; others, new to the field, will welcome it for self-learning.

This update of the 1981 classic on neural networks includes new commentaries by the authors that show how the original ideas are related to subsequent developments. As researchers continue to uncover ways of applying the complex information processing abilities of neural networks, they give these models an exciting future which may well involve revolutionary developments in understanding the brain and the mind -- developments that may allow researchers to build adaptive intelligent machines. The original chapters show where the ideas came from and the new commentaries show where they are going.

Since 2005, a series of significant developments has been unfolding in the area of the Tongking Gulf under the rubric of an ambitious project called "Two Corridors and One Rim." Proposed by Vietnam in 2004 and enthusiastically embraced by China, the project is designed to link their shared shores and hinterlands by superhighways and high-speed rail. An area that had seemed a backwater for two hundred years has suddenly become a dynamic engine of growth.Yet how innovative are these developments? Drawing on fresh historical insights and recent archaeological research in northern Vietnam and southern China, The Tongking Gulf Through History reveals that this region has long been a center of cultural, political, and economic exchange. From a historical point of view, contributors argue, the Gulf of Tongking has come full circle. Inspired by the Braudelian vision that regionality arises from long-term human interactions, essays avoid state-centered approaches of nationalist histories to focus on local communities throughout the Gulf. In doing so, they reveal a complex pattern of interrelationships and geopolitical factors that has shaped the gulf region for over two millennia.The first half of the volume covers the era from the Neolithic to the tenth century, when an independent state emerged from old Chinese Jiaozhi, or modern northern Vietnam; the second surveys the nine centuries that followed, in which only two states came to share the maritime shores of the Tongking Gulf. Together, the essays illuminate how millennia of recurring human interactions within this geographical space have created a regional ensemble with its own longstanding historical integrity and dynamics.

First published in 1985. This is a collection of essays presenting various theoretical ideas concerning distributive memories and cortical models. In addition, it includes a discussion of how a central set of assumptions can explain much of what is now known about deprivation and normal development of visual cortex and can perhaps also serve as the basis for a theory of higher nervous system organization as well as the Changeux model of how a synapse can modify itself.

In Communication Yearbook 11 major contributions from leading scholars in a variety of communication fields are presented and then critiqued by other authorities (often representing complementary or competing schools of thought). Topics addressed and commented on include the mass media audience, the theory of mediation, effective policy for health care communication and feminist criticism of television.

Communication Yearbook 14, originally published in 1991 delves into research concerned with: audiences - their effect on the mass media and how the mass media effect them; the quality of mass media performance and public opinion; the study of contemporary media from an organization studies approach; the implications of propoganda; the pressure of public opinion; and media agenda setting, among other issues. Commentaries provide refreshing viewpoints to each chapter, enhancing each chapter with complementary, or sometimes competing perspectives. Once again Anderson has brough together an internationally distinguished team of contributors who have created a forum for discussing cutting-edge topics in the field.

"Media Violence and Aggression is a thoughtful and sophisticated work that dismantles the core assumptions of the media violence hypothesis piece by piece...This book makes several core contributions to the discussion on media violence effects above those seen in other critical works."—Christopher J. Ferguson, PsycCRITIQUESThe authors of Media Violence and Aggression: Science and Ideology, Tom Grimes, James A. Anderson, and Lori Bergen, are determined to leave no stone unturned, no perspectives unexplored, no names left unnamed of those in the field with whom, on both empirical and theoretical grounds, they strenuously disagree. It is an engaging book that needed to be and is up close and personal. In so doing, they have produced what may be the most comprehensive critique and rebuttal to date of the omnipresent media-violence and aggression argument." —JOURNAL OF MEDIA PSYCHOLOGYMedia Violence and Aggression: Science and Ideology provides a multimethod critique of the media violence/social aggression myth. It provides policy makers and students with information to understand why the violence/media aggression hypothesis does not explain or predict how most people react to what they see and hear in the media. Authors Tom Grimes, James A. Anderson, and Lori Bergen take the reader through a history of media effects research, pointing out where that research has made claims that go beyond empirical evidence.

Key Features

Dispels the media violence/social aggression myth: Through a multiple method analysis of the myth, the authors provide empirical evidence for their decoupling of media violence from social aggression.Illustrates how much of the media violence/social aggression equation derives from ideology: Taking a different perspective from most other books on media violence, this text shows how very easy—how almost imperceptible—it is to adopt an ideological perspective.Shows how the media violence/social aggression hypothesis conflicts with a range of established social science theory: The book examines why theories generated by media violence/social aggression advocates aren't compatible with other social science theories that explain human behavior (and why they must be compatible in order to achieve validity).Considers media effects for the general population and psychologically unwell people: The book explains that the clinical population's reactions to media violence are often improperly presumed to be the reaction of the general, psychologically well population.Argues that certain science practitioners view children as more psychologically vulnerable to media violence than they actually are: Children are surely more vulnerable to many social and environmental influences than adults, but the degree of media vulnerability is often overstated.Speaks directly to policy makers: This book helps policy makers sort through both the nature of the evidence they are presented with and the risks that such evidence poses to the public.

Intended Audience

This is an ideal text for graduate courses such as Mass Communication Theory, Media and Society, Media Effects, and Research Methods in Media in the departments of communication, media studies, journalism, sociology, cultural studies, and political science. It is also vital reading for scholars, researcher, and policy makers interested in media effects.

Media Research Methods: Understanding Metric and Interpretive Approaches brings the insights of a senior theorist, methodologist, and critic to the classroom. Departing from the methods recipe approach, the text explains the reasons behind the methods and makes the connections to theory and knowledge production. Written in a conversational style, the book engages students and appeals to them as media consumers and users of research. The book takes the reader through each step of the research process, outlining the procedures, differences, strengths and limitations of metric, interpretive and the newer hybrid approaches. The text lays down a strong foundation in empirical research and problem solving, addressing metric topics of hypotheses, sampling, statistics, survey and experimental protocols and interpretive topics of textual analysis, coding, critical engagement and ethnography. A special chapter at the end of the book is a helpful guide for those readers who aspire to a research and analysis career.

This book provides a thorough analysis of the scientific, critical, and cultural questions at the foundation of theory-building in communication and other social sciences. Any claim to knowledge, the author explains, can be analyzed in terms of a series of characteristics: the object of its explanation, the explanatory form and evidentiary method employed, its characteristic explanations, the scope of its performance, and its consequences of value. From identifying basic epistemological questions to exploring the impact of the knowledge industry on society, the volume offers readers the analytical tools to understand, compare, and evaluate theories and their use both inside and outside the classroom. The book also includes a systematic analysis of communication's most influential theories and traces their genealogies across different content fields and disciplines.

This book significantly advances discussion of the mission of higher education in today’s multicultural environment and global economy. It sets out the challenges and considerations that must be addressed by administrative leaders, by trustees, and others who shape the vision and direction of the institution – but most particularly by academic deans and faculty.The author makes the case that the inclusion of diversity and globalization in disciplinary work contributes to the research agendas of individual faculty and their departments, aligns with scholarly values, and promotes such student learning goals as tolerance of ambiguity and paradox, critical thinking and creativity. He offers a strategic vision of success, backed by theory and examples of effective application, for creating transformative change; and provides a roadmap to implementing inclusive pedagogical practices and curricula. With implementation dependent on leadership and participation at every level of an institution, everyone with a stake in its future should read this book.