Convergence, media, history

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Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski

"Do mass media turn us all into witnesses, and what might this mean? From the Holocaust to 9/11, modern communications systems have incessantly exposed us to reports of far-flung and often horrifying events, experienced by people whom we do not know personally, and mediated by a range of changing technologies. What is the truth status of such 'media witnessing', and how does it depend on journalists and media organizations?" "These are the themes taken up by the contributors to this volume, among them some of the leading contemporary thinkers in communication and media studies. Together they not only make a crucial intervention in ongoing debates about media witnessing and the representation of strangers, but present original conceptualizations of the relationship between knowledge, discourse and technology in the era of mass communications."--Jacket.

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Mario Giampietro and Kozo Mayumi

"Faced with the twin threats of peak oil and climate change, many governments have turned for an answer to the apparent panacea of biofuels. Yet, increasingly, the progressive implementation of this solution demonstrates that the promise of biofuels as a replacement to fossil fuels is in fact a mirage that, if followed, risks leaving us short of power, short of food and doing as much damage to the climate as ever - let alone the consequent impact on biodiversity due to additional loss of habitat for agricultural production and on rural development due to the additional stress on traditional farming systems. Worse still, these risks are being ignored. In this definitive exposé, Mario Giampietro and Kozo Mayumi present a theoretical framework and exhaustive evidence for the case against large scale biofuel production from agricultural crops. This book will be vital, sobering reading for anyone concerned with energy or agricultural policy, or bioenergy as a complex system."--Publisher's description.

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Mark Lynas

A well documented summary of studies relating to the effects of climate change. The chapters are organized by the effects on people, the economy,and the climate for every additional degree of temperature increase. The book is written for an educated layman and is quite interesting. Over half of the book is dedicated to an extensive bibliography which is very thorough and useful for further research.

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Lynn Hershman-Leeson

All things digital dominate the discourse of the nineties and inspire opinion that ranges from the outrage of the neo-Luddite to the heady optimism of the digiphile. In this collection, the most provocative voices of the Digital Age grapple with the direction of digital technology and its concomitant issues, including virtual identities and their relationship to the physical self, the collision of commercial and community interests on the Net, the Net threat to intellectual property, and the merger of art, popular culture, and commerce in interactive media. In Clicking On, the beautifully wrought companion CD-ROM artwork, Lynn Hershman Leeson appropriates the tools of digital culture to examine issues of privacy, invisibility, and authenticity. The disk includes video clips of interviews with the contributors. The CD-ROM is Macintosh and PC compatible.