Anne Beaulieu

Sabina Leonelli

Data and Society: A Critical Introduction investigates the growing importance of data as a technological, social, economic and scientific resource. It explains how data practices have come to underpin all aspects of human life and explores what this means for those directly involved in handling data. The book fosters informed debate over the role of data in contemporary society explains the significance of data as evidence beyond the "Big Data" hype spans the technical, sociological, philosophical and ethical dimensions of data provides guidance on how to use data responsibly includes data stories that provide concrete cases and discussion questions. Grounded in examples spanning genetics, sport and digital innovation, this book fosters insight into the deep interrelations between technical, social and ethical aspects of data work.

A Critical Introduction

Data and Society

Jaap De Wilde

Jacquelien M.A. Scherpen

This book presents a cross-disciplinary approach to smart grids, offering an invaluable basis for understanding their complexity and potential, and for discussing their technical, legal, economic, societal, psychological and security aspects. Smart grids are a complex phenomenon involving new, active roles for consumers and prosumers, novel social, political and cultural practices, advanced ICT, new markets, security of supply issues, the informational turn in energy, valuation of assets and investments, technological innovation and (de)regulation. Furthermore, smart grids offer new interfaces, in turn creating hybrid fields: with the increasing use of electric vehicles and electric transportation, smart grids represent the crossroads of energy and mobility. While the aim is to achieve more sustainable production, transportation and use of energy, the importance of smart grids actually has less to do with electricity, heat or gas, and far more with transforming the infrastructure needed to deliver energy, as well as the roles of its owners, operators and users. The immediate goal is to contribute positively to a sustainable world society. The chapters are revised and expanded texts based upon lectures delivered at the Groningen Energy Summer School 2014. Questions for further discussion at the end of each chapter highlight the key themes that emerge. The book offers an indispensable resource for researchers, professionals and companies in the power supply industry, and for students seeking to broaden and deepen their understanding of smart grids.

Bridging Old and New Energy Systems

Smart Grids from a Global Perspective

Sally Wyatt

Paul Wouters

Andrea Scharnhorst

Today we are witnessing dramatic changes in the way scientific and scholarlyknowledge is created, codified, and communicated. This transformation is connected to the use ofdigital technologies and the virtualization of knowledge. In this book, scholars from a range ofdisciplines consider just what, if anything, is new when knowledge is produced in new ways. Doesknowledge itself change when the tools of knowledge acquisition, representation, and distributionbecome digital? Issues of knowledge creation and dissemination go beyond thedevelopment and use of new computational tools. The book, which draws on work from the VirtualKnowledge Studio, brings together research on scientific practice, infrastructure, and technology.Focusing on issues of digital scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, the contributorsdiscuss who can be considered legitimate knowledge creators, the value of "invisible"labor, the role of data visualization in policy making, the visualization of uncertainty, theconceptualization of openness in scholarly communication, data floods in the social sciences, andhow expectations about future research shape research practices. The contributors combine anappreciation of the transformative power of the virtual with a commitment to the empirical study ofpractice and use. The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.

Experimenting in the Humanities and the Social Sciences

Virtual Knowledge

The standard teaching text for Data and Society modules explaining to undergraduates, in different social-science disciplines, the Big Data Revolution in an accessible and critical way.

Anne Beaulieu

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