Digital technology has changed the way we interact with everything from the games we play to the tools we use at work. Designers of digital technology products no longer regard their job as designing a physical object--beautiful or utilitarian--but as designing our interactions with it. In Designing Interactions, award-winning designer Bill Moggridge introduces us to forty influential designers who have shaped our interaction with technology. Moggridge, designer of the first laptop computer (the GRiD Compass, 1981) and a founder of the design firm IDEO, tells us these stories from an industry insider's viewpoint, tracing the evolution of ideas from inspiration to outcome. The innovators he interviews--including Will Wright, creator of The Sims, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, and Doug Engelbart, Bill Atkinson, and others involved in the invention and development of the mouse and the desktop--have been instrumental in making a difference in the design of interactions. Their stories chart the history of entrepreneurial design development for technology.

Moggridge and his interviewees discuss such questions as why a personal computer has a window in a desktop, what made Palm's handheld organizers so successful, what turns a game into a hobby, why Google is the search engine of choice, and why 30 million people in Japan choose the i-mode service for their cell phones. And Moggridge tells the story of his own design process and explains the focus on people and prototypes that has been successful at IDEO--how the needs and desires of people can inspire innovative designs and how prototyping methods are evolving for the design of digital technology.

Designing Interactions is illustrated with more than 700 images, with color throughout. Accompanying the book is a DVD that contains segments from all the interviews intercut with examples of the interactions under discussion.

Interviews with:
Bill Atkinson • Durrell Bishop • Brendan Boyle • Dennis Boyle • Paul Bradley • Duane Bray • Sergey Brin • Stu Card • Gillian Crampton Smith • Chris Downs• Tony Dunne • John Ellenby • Doug Englebart • Jane Fulton Suri • Bill Gaver • Bing Gordon • Rob Haitani • Jeff Hawkins • Matt Hunter • Hiroshi Ishii • Bert Keely • David Kelley • Rikako Kojima • Brenda Laurel • David Liddle • Lavrans Løvlie • John Maeda • Paul Mercer • Tim Mott • Joy Mountford • Takeshi Natsuno • Larry Page • Mark Podlaseck • Fiona Raby • Cordell Ratzlaff • Ben Reason • Jun Rekimoto • Steve Rogers • Fran Samalionis • Larry Tesler • Bill Verplank • Terry Winograd • Will Wright

Award-winning designer Bill Moggridge is a founder of IDEO, one of the most successful design firms in the world and one of the first to integrate the design of software and hardware into the practice of industrial design. He has been Visiting Professor in Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art in London, Lecturer in Design at the London Business School, member of the Steering Committee for the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy, and is currently Consulting Associate Professor in the Joint Program in Design at Stanford University.

Designing Interactions

Academic research and policy discussions of credit markets usually focus on borrowing by firms and producers rather than households, which are typically analyzed in terms of their savings and portfolio choices. The Economics of Consumer Credit brings together leading international researchers to focus specifically on consumer debt, presenting current empirical and theoretical research crucial to ongoing policy debates on such topics as privacy rules, the regulation of contractual responsibilities, financial stability, and overindebtedness.

The rapidly developing consumer credit industry in the United States is mirrored by that in Europe, and this volume is noteworthy for its cross-national perspective. Several chapters compare the use of credit markets by households in different countries, while others focus on single country case studies--including consumer credit dynamics in Italy, the role of housing expenditure in the cyclical pattern of borrowing in the United Kingdom, and the use of credit cards by U.S. consumers--to illustrate general insights. Other chapters draw policy lessons from the U.S. experience with bankruptcy regulation and the development of the credit counseling industry. Finally, the book reviews historical, theoretical, and empirical aspects of information sharing, of particular interest in light of the integration of European Union credit markets.

The Economics of Consumer Credit

In the age of global biotechnology, DNA can exist as biological material in a test tube, as a sequence in a computer database, and as economically valuable information in a patent. In The Global Genome, Eugene Thacker asks us to consider the relationship of these three entities and argues that -- by their existence and their interrelationships -- they are fundamentally redefining the notion of biological "life itself."

Biological science and the biotech industry are increasingly organized at a global level, in large part because of the use of the Internet in exchanging biological data. International genome sequencing efforts, genomic databases, the development of World Intellectual Property policies, and the "borderless" business of biotech are all evidence of the global intersections of biology and informatics -- of genetic codes and computer codes. Thacker points out the internal tension in the very concept of biotechnology: the products are more "tech" than "bio," but the technology itself is fully biological, composed of the biomaterial labor of genes, proteins, cells, and tissues. Is biotechnology a technology at all, he asks, or is it a notion of "life itself" that is inseparable from its use in the biotech industry?

The three sections of the book cover the three primary activities of biotechnology today: the encoding of biological materials into digital form -- as in bioinformatics and genomics; its recoding in various ways -- including the "biocolonialism" of mapping genetically isolated ethnic populations and the newly pervasive concern over "biological security"; and its decoding back into biological materiality -- as in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Thacker moves easily from science to philosophy to political economics, enlivening his account with ideas from such thinkers as Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, and Paul Virilio. The "global genome," says Thacker, makes it impossible to consider biotechnology without the context of globalism.

Eugene Thacker is Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"The book ambitiously tries to follow the ever-expanding ripples the genetic code is propaganding in the pond of civilization.... Thacker's is an interesting mind that wanders in and explores many directions. The Global Genome is a book likely to trigger very different thoughts, associations, and reactions from each reader."
-- Science

The Global Genome

Innovative uses of global and local networks of linked computers make new ways of collaborative working, learning, and acting possible. In Group Cognition Gerry Stahl explores the technological and social reconfigurations that are needed to achieve computer-supported collaborative knowledge building--group cognition that transcends the limits of individual cognition. Computers can provide active media for social group cognition where ideas grow through the interactions within groups of people; software functionality can manage group discourse that results in shared understandings, new meanings, and collaborative learning. Stahl offers software design prototypes, analyzes empirical instances of collaboration, and elaborates a theory of collaboration that takes the group, rather than the individual, as the unit of analysis.

Stahl's design studies concentrate on mechanisms to support group formation, multiple interpretive perspectives, and the negotiation of group knowledge in applications as varied as collaborative curriculum development by teachers, writing summaries by students, and designing space voyages by NASA engineers. His empirical analysis shows how, in small-group collaborations, the group constructs intersubjective knowledge that emerges from and appears in the discourse itself. This discovery of group meaning becomes the springboard for Stahl's outline of a social theory of collaborative knowing. Stahl also discusses such related issues as the distinction between meaning making at the group level and interpretation at the individual level, appropriate research methodology, philosophical directions for group cognition theory, and suggestions for further empirical work.

Group Cognition

Decades before the Internet, ham radio provided instantaneous, global, person-to-person communication. Hundreds of thousands of amateur radio operators--a predominantly male, middle- and upper- class group known as "hams"--built and operated two-way radios for recreation in mid-twentieth century America. In Ham Radio's Technical Culture, Kristen Haring looks at ham culture: why so many adopted this technical hobby and how the pastime helped them form identity and community.

Ham radio required solitary tinkering with sophisticated electronics equipment, often isolated from domestic activities in a "radio shack," yet thrived on fraternal interaction. Conversations on the air grew into friendships, and hobbyists gathered in clubs or met informally for "eyeball contacts." Within this community, hams developed distinct values and practices with regard to radio, creating what Haring calls a "technical culture." Outsiders viewed amateur radio operators with a mixture of awe and suspicion, impressed by hams' mastery of powerful technology but uneasy about their contact with foreigners.

Drawing on a wealth of personal accounts found in radio magazines and newsletters and on technical manuals, trade journals, and government documents, Haring describes how ham radio culture rippled through hobbyists' lives. She explains why hi-tech employers recruited hams and why electronics manufacturers sought out these specialty customers. She discusses hams' position within the military and civil defense during the Second World War and the Cold War as well as the effect of the hobby on family dynamics. By considering ham radio in the context of technical hobbies--model building, photography, high-fidelity audio, and other popular pursuits--Haring shows what experiences were shared by people who took up various technologies for leisure and how their perspectives influenced attitudes toward technology beyond hobby communities.

Kristen Haring is a historian of science and technology who lives in New York City. An article on which a chapter of Ham Radio's Technical Culture is based received the IEEE Life Members' Prize in Electrical History from the Society for the History of Technology.

Ham Radio's Technical Culture

Does the information on the Web offer many alternative accounts of reality, or does it subtly align with an official version? In Information Politics on the Web, Richard Rogers identifies the cultures, techniques, and devices that rank and recommend information on the Web, analyzing not only the political content of Web sites but the politics built into the Web's infrastructure. Addressing the larger question of what the Web is for, Rogers argues that the Web is still the best arena for unsettling the official and challenging the familiar.

Winner of the 2005 Best Information Science Book of the Year Award presented by the American society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST).

Information Politics on the Web

Interest in intellectual property and other institutions that promote innovation exploded during the 1990s. Innovation and Incentives provides a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the economics of innovation, suitable for teaching at both the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels. It will also be useful to legal and economics professionals. Written by an expert on intellectual property and industrial organization, the book achieves a balanced mix of institutional details, examples, and theory. Analytical, empirical, or institutional factors can be given different emphases at different levels of study.

Innovation and Incentives presents the historical, legal, and institutional contexts in which innovation takes place. After a historical overview of the institutions that support innovation, ranging from ancient history through today's government funding and hybrid institutions, the book discusses knowledge as a public good, the economic design of intellectual property, different models of cumulative innovation, the relation of competition to licensing and joint ventures, patent and copyright enforcement and litigation, private/public funding relationships, patent values and the return on R&D investment, intellectual property issues arising from direct and indirect network externalities, and globalization. The text presents technical and abstract analysis and at the same time sheds light on current controversies and policy-relevant topics, including the difficulty of enforcing copyright in the digital age and international protection of intellectual property.

"This book, by one of the nation's leading students of patent law, is a wide-ranging, rigorous, and lucid synthesis of the economics of innovation and the law of intellectual property. It is packed with useful information, penetrating critique, and concrete, practical, and important proposals for legal reform."
-- Richard A. Posner, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and University of Chicago Law School

Innovation and Incentives

Software platforms are the invisible engines that have created, touched, or transformed nearly every major industry for the past quarter century. They power everything from mobile phones and automobile navigation systems to search engines and web portals. They have been the source of enormous value to consumers and helped some entrepreneurs build great fortunes. And they are likely to drive change that will dwarf the business and technology revolution we have seen to this point. Invisible Engines examines the business dynamics and strategies used by firms that recognize the transformative power unleashed by this new revolution--a revolution that will change both new and old industries.

The authors argue that in order to understand the successes of software platforms, we must first understand their role as a technological meeting ground where application developers and end users converge. Apple, Microsoft, and Google, for example, charge developers little or nothing for using their platforms and make most of their money from end users; Sony PlayStation and other game consoles, by contrast, subsidize users and make more money from developers, who pay royalties for access to the code they need to write games. More applications attract more users, and more users attract more applications. And more applications and more users lead to more profits.

Invisible Engines tells this story through the lens of the companies that have mastered this platform-balancing act. It offers detailed studies of the personal computer, video game console, personal digital assistant, smart mobile phone, and digital media software platform industries, focusing on the business decisions made by industry players to drive profits and stay a step ahead of the competition. Shorter discussions of Internet-based software platforms provide an important glimpse into a future in which the way we buy, pay, watch, listen, learn, and communicate will change forever. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

Invisible Engines

Manuel Castells has a new book on the way.

Wireless networks are the fastest growing communications technology in history. Are mobile phones expressions of identity, fashionable gadgets, tools for life--or all of the above? Mobile Communication and Society looks at how the possibility of multimodal communication from anywhere to anywhere at any time affects everyday life at home, at work, and at school, and raises broader concerns about politics and culture both global and local.

Drawing on data gathered from around the world, the authors explore who has access to wireless technology, and why, and analyze the patterns of social differentiation seen in unequal access. They explore the social effects of wireless communication--what it means for family life, for example, when everyone is constantly in touch, or for the idea of an office when workers can work anywhere. Is the technological ability to multitask further compressing time in our already hurried existence?

The authors consider the rise of a mobile youth culture based on peer-to-peer networks, with its own language of texting, and its own values. They examine the phenomenon of flash mobs, and the possible political implications. And they look at the relationship between communication and development and the possibility that developing countries could "leapfrog" directly to wireless and satellite technology. This sweeping book--moving easily in its analysis from the United States to China, from Europe to Latin America and Africa--answers the key questions about our transformation into a mobile network society.

Manuel Castells is Professor of Communication and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, as well as Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, Research Professor at the Open University of Catalonia, and Marvin and Joanne Grossman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Technology and Society at MIT. He is the author of, among other books, the three-volume work The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Jack Linchuan Qiu is Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and cofounder of the China Internet Research Network. Mireia Fern�ndez-Ard�vol is a Researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Open University of Catalonia, and a Lecturer in Econometrics at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Barcelona. Araba Sey is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California.

Mobile Communication and Society

"Naval architecture was born in the mountains of Peru, in the mind of a French astronomer named Pierre Bouguer who never built a ship in his life." So writes Larrie Ferreiro at the beginning of this pioneering work on the science of naval architecture. Bouguer's monumental book Trait� du navire (Treatise of the Ship) founded a discipline that defined not the rules for building a ship but the theories and tools to predict a ship's characteristics and performance before it was built. In Ships and Science, Ferreiro argues that the birth of naval architecture formed an integral part of the Scientific Revolution. Using Bouguer's work as a cornerstone, Ferreiro traces the development of this new discipline and describes its practical application to ship design in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Drawing on previously untapped primary-source and archival information, he places the development of naval architecture in the contexts of science, navy, and society, across the major shipbuilding nations of Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy.

Ferreiro describes the formulation of the three major elements of ship theory (the science of explaining the physical behavior of a ship): maneuvering and sail theory, ship resistance and hydrodynamics, and stability theory. He considers the era's influential books on naval architecture and describes the professionalization of ship constructors that is the true legacy of this period. Finally, looking from the viewpoints of both the constructor and the naval administrator, he explains why the development of ship theory was encouraged, financed, and used in naval shipbuilding. A generous selection of rarely seen archival images accompanies the text.

Ships and Science