The history of communications is a branch of the history of technology but, strictly speaking, it is in a category of its own. The goods produced by technology, whether a piece of machinery, a piece of clothing or a piece of furniture, are tangible: they perform some useful function. The goods produced by communications are messages. They are mostly useless but when they are useful they can be …

Although political communication can trace its roots to the earliest classical studies of Aristotle and Plato, modern political communication research is very much an interdisciplinary field of study, drawing on concepts from communication, political science, journalism, sociology, psychology, history, rhetoric, and other fields. In their seminal Handbook of Political Communication, Nimmo and S…

Each discipline optimizes its task to the best of its ability. Each manufacturing discipline has its own objectives and criteria of optimization according to its function. For example: the designer main objective is meeting product specifications: the process planner?s main objective is that the items will meet drawing specifications: the production planner?s main objectives are meeting the due…

Since the horrific and tragic events of September 11th, nothing has been more discussed and scrutinised in the public arena than Islam. The world at large has been subjected to a wealth of analysis by 'experts' which has further fuelled people's curiosity about this religion. Book-sellers in Europe and the Middle East have reported an upsurge in interest in the Qur'an, which confirms what one B…

This publication originated in the European Science Foundation (ESF) exploratory workshop on ''Innovative comparative methods for policy analysis. An interdisciplinary European endeavour for methodological advances and improved policy analysis/evaluation'' held in Erfurt from 25 to 28 September 2004 (ref. EW03-217). This volume brings together a selection of contributions to this workshop, whic…

The information technology (IT) revolution is surely coming in this century, just as did the agricultural and industrial revolutions that have already so enriched our lives. As the IT revolution progresses, it is expected that almost all social structures and economic activities will be changed substantially. In order for the IT revolution to penetrate our societies and enrich our lives, everyo…

Multimedia communications have emerged as a major research and development area. In particular, computers in multimedia open a wide range of possibilities by combining different types of digital media such as text, graphics, audio, and video. The emergence of the World Wide Web (WWW), two decades ago, has fuelled the growth of multimedia computing. Because the number of multimedia users is incr…

The worldwide popularity of both personal computers and the Internet has been a mixed blessing. The immediate popularity of the IBM PC was not anticipated. The DOS operating system installed on the original personal computers back in 1982 was never intended for commercial use and therefore was not designed to be secure. In the interest of maintaining compatibility with the early versions of DOS…

We decided to write this book while traveling together on a business trip. Returning from a meeting with a supplier whom we wanted to place on kanban scheduling, we were discussing how resistant the supplier had been to the idea. Our discussion migrated to how most companies and individuals were resistant at first, but that they soon came on board once they understood the benefits of using kanb…

With remarkable regularity a ?new idea? surfaces in the management community. Often it results from repackaging a long-lived management issue or truth. Conversely, the current vogue, Knowledge Management, is a genuinely new concept. In summary this involves the processes that ensure all the knowledge, explicit and implicit, that exists in the organisation is organised in a way that enables it t…