New Release Books by Leslie Haddon

The easy interface of touchscreen technologies like tablets and smartphones have enabled children to access the digital world from a very young age. But while some commentators are enthusiastic about how this can open up a new world for play, learning, and developing digital skills, others see the dangers of yet more screens, inauthentic play, and time spent isolated with electronic babysitters that detract from interaction with parents and the learning of social skills. Including a glossary of key terms, this book draws on a three-year research project examining the realities of 0-5 years olds' experiences of these technologies in the UK and Australia. The authors draw heavily on Vygotsky and engage with other thinkers including Bronfenbrenner and Bruner. It explores how parents of young children evaluate these opportunities and concerns, and how they try to work out ways to parent in relation to technologies they did not experience in their own childhood. The book examines how digital technologies fit in with other elements of children's daily lives including their preferences, pleasures and sociability. The book also explores the extent to which grandparents, parents and educators engage with children's experience of digital technologies.

Generational Use of New Media examines and contrasts how younger and older people, representing different generations, engage with the new media that they increasingly encounter in everyday life. Exploring the various assumptions about the degrees to which younger and older people are more or less willing to use, or are capable of using, new media, the social circumstances under which they do so and the very design of those media, this book critically examines the gap that is assumed to exist between younger users of new media and older non-users. Thematically organised and offering comparative analyses of the generational use of new media and technology, this timely volume presents the latest research and rich new empirical material gathered in the EU, USA and Hong Kong, to reflect on societal practices and the practical implications of building a more inclusive information society.

The cellphone has achieved a global presence faster than any other form of information and communication technology. A global multi-billion dollar industry, this small, mundane device is now an intrinsic part of our everyday life. This communications medium has had an immense social and cultural impact and continues to evolve. Talking, texting, photographing, videoing, connecting to a network of other media – the cellphone now seems essential. But, beyond the ways in which it has actively restructured our daily lives, the cellphone has changed our sense of ourselves and the way we see the world. The relationship between public and private space, how we view time and space, how we rely on and negotiate social networks – all are increasingly centred on this small piece of technology. Mobile Communications presents a succinct, challenging, and accessible overview of the transformations and challenges presented by this most personal, yet most overlooked, technology.

How do cell phones change society? How do children use computers? How can we manage relationships via text messages? The internet, television, email and other new forms of information technology are changing at a rapid pace with potentially profound but also subtle influences on social life. This book offers a succinct introduction to both the experience and implications of these information and communication technologies (ICTs) in everyday life. Drawing on a wide variety of studies from different countries, the author considers the potential, or feared, social consequences of ICTs. Throughout, he analyzes what factors are shaping the debates surrounding information and communication technologies. The outcome is a cutting-edge book that offers a fresh approach to understanding ICTs and everyday life.

This work assesses how information technology will work in people's home in the near future. Among the topics it covers are home automation, electronic messaging, interactive compact-disk multimedia products and other innovations in home consumption of information technology products.