Visual Vestiges explains how information design evolved over the centuries to make practical information clear, credible, and emotionally engaging.

In Visual Vestiges Charles Kostelnick analyzes the role of the past in understanding, studying, deploying, and teaching visual language in business, technical, and professional communication. He explores how information designs-text, pictures, icons, charts, and graphs-evolved to develop their rhetorical power and the many ways in which their vestigial forms permeate contemporary design. To explain these temporal dynamics, he examines the forces that underpin them: cultural shifts in aesthetics, taste, and values; social changes that redefine how we relate to one another rhetorically; and innovations in technology that transform the tools and channels we use to visualize and interpret information. Drawing on rhetorical theory, design studies, art history, and historical and contemporary examples, Kostelnick explores the rhetorical role of time in bridging past and present design forms-by constantly regenerating them through visual conventions, by heightening pathos appeals through sentiment and nostalgia, and by bolstering ethos, amplifying epideictic displays, and narrating stories with text, pictures, and charts.

This book explores how histories of technology, engineering, and information science can help us better understand history, while also informing how we envision and build more equitable futures. The chapters extend vibrant conversations in the history of technology as well as other fields, including Ccience and Technology Studies (STS), cybernetic studies, literary studies, development studies, discard studies, engineering ethics, and infrastructure studies. In doing so the authors pay tribute to Ronald R. Kline, one of the leading historians of technology and STS scholars of our era. This book showcases cutting-edge research around the state of technology studies today and its influences across and beyond academic fields.

This open access book aims to explore the dynamic interplay between human behavior and environmental design in shaping future habitats. The interplay between environment and behavior is a critical area of study with profound implications for designing better habitats for human well-being. The book offers a detailed examination of how behavioral science informs environmental design, sustainability practices, and the creation of future living spaces. By integrating theoretical insights with practical applications, the book provides a comprehensive resource for understanding and influencing the ways in which our environments impact and are impacted by human behavior. The book is a conference proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Environment-Behavior Studies, Committee of Environment-Behavior of Architectural Society of China (CEB-ASC 2024)? focusing on the rapidly changing social and technological conditions. CEB-ASC 2024 features keynote speeches and multi-topic parallel sessions from distinguished practitioners, researchers, and educators. Representatives are from Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), International Association for People-Environment Studies (IAPS), and Man-Environment Research Association (MERA). Professionals and scholars from different fields such as architecture, planning, landscape, psychology, sociology, and artificial intelligence from various countries are invited to the conference, delving into various related topics and contributing wisdom to achieving a more sustainable, intelligent, resilient, healthy, and inclusive living environment. By delving into the core theories, methodologies, and pedagogies, this book promises to be a vital resource for advancing our understanding of how human behavior and environmental design intersect to shape the habitats of tomorrow.

This book develops a sociological framework for understanding how societies produce and transform meaning. Rather than treating meaning as a fixed property of individuals or texts, it introduces relational meaning-making, in which meanings stabilise in particular situations while remaining open to alternatives. Revisiting Max Weber's concept of Sinn and Alfred Schutz's phenomenology, the book rethinks identity, agency and social structures. Drawing on Weber, Mead and Parsons, it explores why sociological theory has struggled to grasp the dynamics of meaning, and examines the contemporary crisis of meaning, self-referential individuals, and the implications of digital communication and generative AI. This book argues that relational meaning-making is a fundamental process through which society interprets and reshapes itself.

This book offers insights into the development and implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4, the UN's global education agenda. It highlights important tensions within the agenda and identifies key topics to address as we move closer to--and beyond--the conclusion of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, 2015-2030). Novel research, new perspectives, and critical reflection on these topics will help determine the path forward in the coming years. To this end, this book presents an array of critiques, best practices, and promising areas for future activity related not only to SDG 4 but also to future global education agendas. Challenges and barriers to meeting global goals, as well as innovative ideas and solutions, are emphasized to inform SDG4 and its successor. This edited volume benefits from insider insights, practitioner knowledge, scientific findings, and philosophical inquiry related to the progress achieved (and not achieved) in the 2030 Agenda. The book consists of contributions from top academic and policy scholars around the world.

Phylis West Johnson and Tina Korani reveal how women are shaping the forthcoming Metaverse with a unique social perspective that promises to revolutionize society.

Examining women in leadership across the top Metaverse companies through interviews and analysis, Johnson and Korani highlight women's social contributions to the development of the Metaverse. These women, they contend, have fundamentally different conceptions of the Metaverse than those shown in mainstream depictions, foregrounding the potential to make meaningful change through content creation and social ideation over the potential to use it as a path to easy wealth.

Although women play a large role in fueling virtual platforms through content creation, their overall decision-making power appears limited in the larger Metaverse, reflecting similar societal tensions to those that women face in reality. Ultimately, however, this book embraces the Metaverse as a landscape rich with potential, emphasizing not only women's responsibility for creating this space but also the benefits to be gained from it as it influences the economic and political futures of humanity.

The industrial revolution, environmental crises and socio-economic challenges underline the need for sustainable growth. Financial mechanisms used for systemic restructuring of the economy and reducing its carbon intensity are an effective and at the same time necessary tool for large-scale transformations. The taxonomy of "green" projects is a system of classification of economic activities, categories of projects and assets that contribute to sustainable development and are aimed at improving the efficiency of using existing natural resources, reducing negative environmental impacts, improving energy efficiency, energy conservation, mitigation of climate change and adaptation to climate change. This book evaluates these approaches as a means of systemic restructuring of the economy and of reducing carbon intensity throughout the world. Featuring select contributions presented at the 2nd International Scientific Conference "Green Taxonomy for Sustainable Development" (CONGREENTAX) held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, this book demonstrates modern achievement in green taxonomy focusing on scientific developments for real-world applications. It emphasizes the importance of a green taxonomy for achieving sustainable development goals by considering both fundamental methods and practical aspects of sustainable development-oriented processes. This book is useful for researchers, scholars, academics, practitioners, and policy makers interested in green taxonomy and sustainable development.

Grounded in critical theory, southern studies, archival methodologies, and anticolonial thought, Record, Document, Archive illuminates how the U.S. South is made knowable through the acts, objects, and systems that produce records, documents, and archives. Rather than treating "the South" as a fixed geography or predetermined object of study, this innovative, forward-thinking collection reframes region as an ontological and epistemological project shaped by-and resistant to-Eurocentric regimes of documentality.

Bringing together activists, archivists, and scholars across disciplines, the essays in Record, Document, Archive trace the extent to which documentality has governed life and death in the U.S. South, from Indigenous Removal, enslavement, and Jim Crow to contemporary regimes of immigration enforcement, border policing, and the legal erasure of queer and undocumented lives. "Record" emphasizes embodied, affective, and more-than-human acts of marking experience. "Document" interrogates the pedagogical, legal, and evidentiary force of documentation, highlighting counter-hegemonic methods that unsettle dominant southern narratives. "Archive" addresses curation, access, and governance, advancing liberatory memory work that confronts archival violence and privilege while imagining new possibilities for justice-oriented futures.

By attending to the anticipatory acts that precede narrative and law, Record, Document, Archive opens pathways toward "southern elsewheres"-modes of knowing, remembering, and belonging that resist rigid epistemologies and orient scholarship toward liberation.

This book has a clear and constant focus on the ultimate aim of language teaching: helping learners to develop the ability to communicate effectively. Drawn from 15 different countries, the authors discuss exactly what effective communication involves and what teachers should aim for when helping learners to develop. They then expand into the different ways in which materials can help teachers and learners to achieve this.

The chapters are organized into four sections - Proposals for Action, Materials Analysis and Evaluation, Materials Development Projects and Materials Development Research - with each section followed by comments from one of the editors on the commonalities shared by the chapters in the section and the issues that they raise. All of the chapters propose ways of developing and using materials to facilitate the development of communicative ability in any language. They are written to be accessible to newcomers in the field, and stimulating to experienced teachers, teacher trainers, materials developers and researchers.

Contrary to popular belief, the internet is not making us stupid or lazy or subjecting us to algorithmic domination. Devin Proctor contends that it is instead changing the way we perceive our bodies, our social worlds, and our identities along a spectrum of virtuality.
Proctor conceptualizes the internet as a social space, arguing for a return to spatial understandings of the digital. The reality of this space, he posits, is co-produced through our interaction with human and non-human agents - bots, AI programs, and algorithms - that exist alongside us in a field of internet presence.
From video calls to anonymous chat forums, Proctor traces progressive levels of virtual emplacement to interrogate the embodied forms we take across digital contexts and the ways in which these forms influence communication and identity. He draws on years of digital ethnographic fieldwork among the Otherkin community - a group of people who largely socialize online and internally identify as non-human - to complicate conventional notions about our relationships with the virtual, our understandings of the Self, and what it means to be human.

Welcome to the world of sports writing, where success lies in the trust established between journalists, athletes, coaches, and other personnel who make magic, both on the field and off it.

Acclaimed sports journalists Nicole Kraft and Jean-Jacques Taylor deliver a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges and triumphs of capturing and communicating sporting events. Beyond statistics and scores that dominate headlines, sports journalism is about sharing the stories of the teams, players, coaches, administrators, executives, topics, controversies, and individual events.

Learning the artistry of sports writing, you will learn to showcase the narratives, emotions, and human stories that shape the games. The authors teach essential skills, including:
- Asking the right questions and listening carefully to the answers
- Building relationships with players, coaches, and staff
- Excelling at storytelling that engages readers
- Reaching audiences through social media
- Leveraging the power of AI in ethical ways

Discussion questions and actual assignments will help you build relationships and hone your journalism skills from day one, empowering you to uncover stories that excite and engage readers on a profound level.

This Palgrave Pivot book examines how AI-based technologies shape children's everyday lives and imagines possible digital futures. Drawing on qualitative interviews and a child-rights approach, the authors map how new AI tools are used and understood at home, at school, and among peers. They trace shifts in family routines; education, care, and health practices; and peer cultures associated with AI; cutting through the current hype to assess both promises and risks.

Building on prior work on the datafication of childhood and family life, Children and AI: Changing Digital Childhoods? rethinks AI's implications for children's wellbeing, rights, and life chances amid rapid market diffusion. It highlights potential harms, including widening digital divides and privacy violations, and calls for child-centred, safety-by-design legal and policy frameworks. Timely and interdisciplinary, it will interest scholars, students, and policymakers across childhood studies, digital and family sociology, internet studies, children's rights, and education.

Contributors explore the intertextuality of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, illuminating its ability to both interpret and influence audiences and culture.

The sustained popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and its continued ability to spark fan and cultural responses with each phase of the franchise - achieving both commercial and critical acclaim in its quest to transform a once-niche genre into a pop culture powerhouse - demonstrate the vast potential it holds to convey, channel, and challenge existing discourses of culture, society, politics, entertainment, and education at their various intersection/s. While the franchise relies heavily on genre-based tropes of good versus evil, the intricate intertextuality of the extended universe offers a diversity in character, story, and setting that renders it a particularly deep well for crafting and communicating culture.
An interdisciplinary roster of contributors has selected a wide range of MCU texts, from series like She-Hulk and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to feature films including Captain Marvel (2019) and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), to offer critical interrogations through varied lenses across four thematic sections of the volume: political economy and politics; gender studies and feminisms; race, ethnicity, and identity; and symbols and signs. Through their analyses, contributions to this volume ask us to reflect on what messages may be uncovered and understood through deeper interrogation of the texts that entertain and inform us.

Reimagine what it means to be human in the age of AI

Artificial intelligence was created by modeling human cognition. While AI was built to run on slow and deliberate thinking processes, humans maintained dominance in fast, intuitive, emotion-based cognition: until now.

In The AI Instinct: The Future of AI and Human Decision-Making, Rana Gujral introduces the concept of Artificial General Experience (AGE): systems designed not only to solve problems, but to structure and update a continuous stream of experience. The book follows the rise of AI from a background tool to a force that shapes how we think, feel, and experience the world. Drawing on his pioneering work in cognitive AI at Behavioral Signals, Gujral takes readers to new depths in understanding where AI is headed and provides a fresh perspective on what it means to be human in a world where intelligence is no longer uniquely ours.

Readers gain a clear understanding of how cognitive AI operates in the real world: where it delivers value, quietly steers human decisions, and where the hype runs ahead of reality. From there, the book turns to the path toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and AGE, exploring brain-computer interfaces and other emerging technologies that blend human bodies and machine intelligence, and argues that intelligence is shifting from isolated minds and standalone models to shared hybrid systems that shape how we think and live. The book closes by examining futures beyond AGI, where superintelligence appears not as a distant machine overlord but as composite minds that fuse human and AI capacities into new kinds of persons. Drawing on cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy, The AI Instinct asks what truly makes us human and how we can hold onto agency at the frontiers of hybrid thinking.

Perfect for technologists, business leaders, young people preparing for the world they are about to inherit, and any curious reader trying to make sense of AI's rapid ascent, The AI Instinct offers a grounded, forward-looking roadmap for navigating a future in which our choices, our institutions, and even our identities are increasingly tied to and impacted by AI.