Richard Harper - Böcker

In this book, Richard Harper uses the International Monetary Fund as a case study to show how thinking differently about IT systems can dramatically improve the manageability and accessibility of documents in organisations. The systems he considers uses search and retrieval applications, the use of hypertext documents and shared database applications like Lotus Notes.

Financial organizations, like many others, are undergoing radical change. This is affecting both their organizational processes and the technology that supports those processes. This book reports on the use of sociological ethnography in helping guide these changes, both in terms of helping better understanding and redraw work processes and through providing more accurate and flexible understanding of the role technology plays. It places the reported research in context by contrasting it with those approaches more commonly associated with change, including business process engineering, participative design and soft systems methodologies. The book explains what are the benefits of ethnography, as well as the potential it has in helping achieve more desirable change in any and all organizations, financial services included. The book will be of interest to all international researchers concerned with organizational and technological change, as well as managers of organisational development. It will also interest advanced students in sociology, anthropology, management science and organizational studiesThe authors have published widely in the various disciplines associated with organizational life and technology design, and have built a considerable reputation for bringing new sociological insights into the organizational change literature

We make decisions every day. Yet we are sometimes perplexed by these decisions and the decisions of others. To complicate things further, we live in an age where there are more things to choose from than ever before – the Internet is transforming our choices and making us more accountable for them: what we choose is recorded, modelled and used to predict our future behaviour.So are we in a position to make better choices today than we were a decade ago? Certainly there are some who believe so. Psychologists claim we are subject to hidden mental processes that lead us to one thing rather than another; economists offer predictions about what people will buy; and some philosophers claim that our choices echo our evolutionary past.Are these claims merited? Do they reflect the beginnings of a new science of choice? This book offers a critical overview of these and other claims, showing where they are justified and where they are exaggerated. It will be an essential reference for anyone interested in whether science can help us to understand both the ways people make choices in their everyday lives and how these may be changing.

We make decisions every day. Yet we are sometimes perplexed by these decisions and the decisions of others. To complicate things further, we live in an age where there are more things to choose from than ever before – the Internet is transforming our choices and making us more accountable for them: what we choose is recorded, modelled and used to predict our future behaviour.So are we in a position to make better choices today than we were a decade ago? Certainly there are some who believe so. Psychologists claim we are subject to hidden mental processes that lead us to one thing rather than another; economists offer predictions about what people will buy; and some philosophers claim that our choices echo our evolutionary past.Are these claims merited? Do they reflect the beginnings of a new science of choice? This book offers a critical overview of these and other claims, showing where they are justified and where they are exaggerated. It will be an essential reference for anyone interested in whether science can help us to understand both the ways people make choices in their everyday lives and how these may be changing.

The title of this new book: “The Connected Home” reflects the move away from the idea that smart homes would alter the lives of those living in them by providing technologies to take over tasks that were previously the responsibility of the householder, such as managing entertainment, education – and even eating! Up until around 10 years ago this view was commonplace but time has shown that the technologies to support a smart home have not developed in such a way as to support this premise. Instead, what people do in their homes has moved the concept of a smart home into that of the ‘connected home’.  The rise of on-line games technologies, video connections via Skype, social networking, internet browsing etc are now an integral part of the home environment and have had a significant effect on the home.The contributors to this exciting new book consider and discuss the effects and ramifications of the connected home from a variety of viewpoints: an examination of the take-up of personal computers and the Internet in domestic situations; an analysis of the changing intersection of technology and human habits in the connected home; the impact of gaming, texting, e-book readers, tablets and other devices and their effect on the social conditions of a household; the relationship between digital messaging applications and real geography; and an overview of how sensing technologies for the smart home might evolve (lightweight medical technologies for example). The book culminates by addressing unfinished ambitions from the smart home agenda, the factors that have prevented their realisation, and addresses the need for extending research into the area.

Climate change is exerting profound and increasingly complex pressures on global agriculture, threatening food security, ecosystem viability and rural livelihoods worldwide. While past gains in crop productivity have been realized largely using fertilizers, agrochemicals, and intensive farming practices, these methods rely on finite resources and pose long-term environmental and economic sustainability challenges. In this context, recent advancements in genomics are transforming crop improvement by facilitating a shift from input-intensive practices toward knowledge-driven, climate-smart and sustainable agricultural systems. The rapid expansion of high-quality crop reference genomes, driven by the widespread adoption of high-throughput sequencing, long-read technologies and advanced assembly platforms, has ushered in the era of pangenomes and super-pangenomes. These genomic frameworks capture the full spectrum of allelic, structural and haplotypic diversity, providing unprecedented opportunities to discover, deploy and stack climate-adaptive traits. As a result, genomics-assisted breeding is now enabling the precise identification of quantitative trait loci, genomic regions and genes associated with abiotic and biotic stress tolerance, as well as improved resource-use efficiency and yield stability. This book provides a comprehensive and forward-looking synthesis of how climate change is reshaping agriculture and how cutting-edge genomic technologies can be leveraged to deliver resilient, high-performing and environmentally sustainable crops. It will appeal to researchers in plant genetics, breeding and genomics, and also to crop breeders, plant biotechnologists, environmental scientists and policymakers.

This book looks at why ethnographic approaches have been turned to in the design of computing devices for the workplace, for the home and elsewhere. It presents a history of ethnography, both as it was practiced before computer science picked it up and since, most especially in the CSCW and HCI domains. It examines, further, the various ethnographic or ‘fieldwork’ frameworks currently popular, explaining and examining what each claims and entails. The focus of the book throughout is on the practical relationship between theory and practice, a relationship that is often misunderstood yet fundamental to successful design.The book is illustrated with real examples from the authors’ various experiences in academic and commercial settings, reporting on the use of ethnography before, during and after design innovation and implementation. The result is a book that provides the working knowledge necessary for using any kind of ethnographic approach in the design of computer technologies.

This book looks at why ethnographic approaches have been turned to in the design of computing devices for the workplace, for the home and elsewhere. It presents a history of ethnography, both as it was practiced before computer science picked it up and since, most especially in the CSCW and HCI domains. It examines, further, the various ethnographic or ‘fieldwork’ frameworks currently popular, explaining and examining what each claims and entails. The focus of the book throughout is on the practical relationship between theory and practice, a relationship that is often misunderstood yet fundamental to successful design.The book is illustrated with real examples from the authors’ various experiences in academic and commercial settings, reporting on the use of ethnography before, during and after design innovation and implementation. The result is a book that provides the working knowledge necessary for using any kind of ethnographic approach in the design of computer technologies.

A fascinating insight into potentially one of the most exciting developments that affects each and every one of us as we move forward into the 21st Century. This book indicates the direction industry must take if we are to achieve the dream of living in a Smart Home.

This compelling work explores the profound experiences of persecution and exile as seen through the interconnected lives of three remarkable writers: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and Walter Benjamin. All three were displaced and hunted to death by fascism. Their literary brilliance, tumultuous lives and tragic ends continue to captivate the imagination and inspire. By bringing together the extraordinary stories of Zweig, Roth and Benjamin for the first time in a single overview, Richard Harper offers a thought-provoking examination of the meaning and feeling of displacement, so highly relevant to the widespread and challenging issues of persecution and migration today.