"The regulation of innovation and the optimal design of legal institutions in an environment of uncertainty are two of the most important policy challenges of the twenty-first century. Innovation is critical to economic growth. Regulatory design decisions, and, in particular, competition policy and intellectual property regimes, can have profound consequences for economic growth. However, remarkably little is known about the relationship between innovation, competition, and regulatory policy. Any legal regime must attempt to assess the tradeoffs associated with rules that will affect incentives to innovate, allocative efficiency, competition, and freedom of economic actors to commercialize the fruits of their innovative labors. The essays in this book approach this critical set of problems from an economic perspective, relying on the tools of microeconomics, quantitative analysis, and comparative institutional analysis to explore and begin to provide answers to the myriad challenges facing policymakers"--

With the vast majority of Facebook users caught in a frenzy of 'friending', 'liking' and 'commenting', at what point do we pause to grasp the consequences of our info-saturated lives? What compels us to engage so diligently with social networking systems? Networks Without a Cause examines our collective obsession with identity and self-management coupled with the fragmentation and information overload endemic to contemporary online culture. With a dearth of theory on the social and cultural ramifications of hugely popular online services, Lovink provides a path-breaking critical analysis of our over-hyped, networked world with case studies on search engines, online video, blogging, digital radio, media activism and the Wikileaks saga. This book offers a powerful message to media practitioners and theorists: let us collectively unleash our critical capacities to influence technology design and workspaces, otherwise we will disappear into the cloud. Probing but never pessimistic, Lovink draws from his long history in media research to offer a critique of the political structures and conceptual powers embedded in the technologies that shape our daily lives.

A comprehensive understanding of food and agriculture security is best wrought through multidisciplinary analysis. Indeed, multiple academic disciplines provide lenses through which the multiple dimensions of food and agriculture security may be comprehensively examined. Food and agriculture security-- a stated priority research area of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security-- concerns the safety, security, and ongoing operation of the agricultural and food system in a global society that values both trade and security. Any attempt to understand the food system must involve multidisciplinary, multidimensional study. This book offers a bona fide multidisciplinary as well as historical approach to help students appreciate such a complex and multifaceted subject. Authored by scholars within the Frontier program for the historical studies of border security, food security, and trade policy, the book reviews some of the most salient and trade-related food and agriculture security concerns of the 19th century, describes the modern-day policy and industry contexts in which food and agriculture security issues arise, provides historical and contemporary illustrations of the vulnerability in the food and agriculture sector, identifies modern-day domestic (United States) as well as international (e.g., China) challenges, and highlights the role that public-private partnerships and cross-border cooperation must play in ensuring food and agriculture security in a globalized world.