In a few short years, the battle over intellectual property rights has emerged from obscurity to become front-page news. The continent-hopping, three-year court battle fought by activists to bring cheap versions of desperately needed AIDS drugs to South Africa is but one example of how this seemingly arcane area of international regulation has become a crucial battleground in the twenty-first century and is animating activists the world over. (more…)
This text covers all the material needed to understand the principles behind the AI approach to robotics and to program an artificially intelligent robot for applications involving sensing, navigation, planning, and uncertainty. Robin Murphy is extremely effective at combining theoretical and practical rigor with a light narrative touch. In the overview, for example, she touches upon anthropomorphic robots from classic films and science fiction stories before delving into the nuts and bolts of organizing intelligence in robots. (more…)
For the past fifty years researchers have been striving to create machines that rival the thinking capacity of humans. In Artificial Intelligence learn how AI experts simulate the human brain and construct smart robots. Today AI touches every aspect of our lives from business and medicine to exploration and entertainment. (more…)
Beyond the hype about dot-coms, WAP phones and dot-com entrepreneurs, what impacts will e-commerce have on society? How will it affect jobs and local communities? What will it mean for energy use, transport and the future shape of our cities? How can we ensure that everyone enjoys the benefits of the new digital technologies? (more…)
A spectacular dialogue of the deaf has been on-going for many years. Information systems are as misunderstood today as they have been for a decade. The designers who make them, the managers who commission them and the stakeholders who use them consistently fail to communicate with each other resulting in the inevitable plethora of systems failures which appear in the media every week. (more…)
