The E-Connected World: Risks and Opportunities

Digital technologies are now ubiquitous, changing the ways we live and learn and creating a new e-connected age of opportunity and risk. The e-Connected World provides a balanced, informed, and imaginative examination of the advent of these new technologies in areas such as education, crime, privacy, democracy, and social exclusion. Contrary to writings that herald the internet as a great liberator or see the information age as a dystopia requiring permanent surveillance, this book argues that we need to understand the changes that are taking place around us before we draw conclusions. The e-Connected World should be of interest to students, policy-makers and citizens seeking to look beyond the digital hype. Contributors include Richard Allan, member of the UK Parliament for Sheffield Hallam and former chairman of the Information select committee; Tom Calvert, professor and vice president for Research and External Affairs at the Technical University of British Columbia; Kevin Carey, director of Humanity, as well as a long-standing member of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and vice-chairman of the Royal National Institute for the Blind; Stephen Coleman, Ronald J. Deibert, assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto; Stephen Murgatroyd, president of Lifeskills International Ltd and vice-president of the Axia Corporation; Stephanie Perrin, chief privacy officer at Zer-Knowledge Systems, Montreal, Quebec; Raymond J. Protti, president and CEO of the Canadian Bankers Association; Paul Stacey, member of the management team for the E-Learning Innovation Centre at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia; and Chris Yapp, director of the Internet Society ofEngland and an associate of the UK think tank Demos.