Risk And Hyperconnectivity

Risk and Hyperconnectivity brings together for the first time three paradigms: new risk theory, neoliberalization theory, and connectivity theory, to illuminate how the kaleidoscope of risk events in the opening years of the new century has recharged a neoliberal battlespace of media, economy, and security. Hoskins and Tulloch argue that hyperconnectivity is both a conduit of risk and a form of risk in itself, and that it alters the ways in which we experience events and remember them. Through interdisciplinary dialogue and case study analysis they offer original perspectives on the key questions of risk of our age, including: What is the path to a 'balance' between individual privacy and state (or corporate) security? Is hyperconnectivity itself a new risk condition of our time? How do remembering and forgetting shape citizen insecurity and cultures of risk, and legitimize neoliberal governance? How do journalists operate as 'public intellectuals' of risk? Through probing a series of risk events that have already scarred the twenty-first century, Hoskins and Tulloch show how both established and emergent media are central in shaping past, present and future horizons of neoliberalism, while also propelling wide pressure for its alternatives on those ranging from economics students worldwide to potential political leaders cultivated by austerity policies.

Risk and Hyperconnectivity brings together for the first time three paradigms of work: new risk theory, neoliberalization theory and connectivity theory, to illuminate how the kaleidoscope of risk events in the opening years of the new century have recharged a neoliberal battlespace of media, economy and security.

Cyber risk arises from contemporary conditions of informational hyperconnectivity and consequent relations of value and dependence. As the Covid-19 pandemic has illustrated, increased use of and reliance upon digital networks and systems has heightened awareness of these dynamics and deepened attention to cyber risk as the object of public policy, corporate practice and user behaviours. Scholarship on cyber risk management, as found in the cybersecurity literature and adjacent fields, has yet to fully link these processes and practices to wider conceptions of societal and systemic risk, particularly to sociological accounts of the contemporary 'risk society'. This paper explores the notion of 'cyber risk', asking how we might understand it through a sociotechnical lens. It pays specific attention to how we can theorise cyber risk as an assemblage of sociotechnical 'riskscapes', in which our understanding of risk goes beyond organisational imperatives of 'risk management' and into treating cyber risk as a set of productive knowledges and practices within a political economy of uncertainty. This emergent research programme will contribute to theoretical and methodological innovation at the intersection of International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE).

Digital hyperconnectivity is a defining fact of our time. The Silicon Valley dream of universal connection – the dream of connecting everyone and everything to everyone and everything else, everywhere and all the time – is rapidly becoming a reality. In this wide-ranging and sharply argued book, Rogers Brubaker develops an original interpretive account of the pervasive and unsettling changes brought about by hyperconnectivity. He traces transformations of the self, social relations, culture, economics, and politics, giving special attention to underexplored themes of abundance, miniaturization, convenience, quantification, and discipline. He shows how hyperconnectivity prepared us for the pandemic and how the pandemic, in turn, has prepared us for an even more fully digitally mediated future. Throughout, Brubaker underscores the ambivalence of digital hyperconnectivity, which opens up many new and exciting possibilities, yet at the same time threatens human freedom and flourishing. Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents will be essential reading for everyone interested in the constellation of socio-technical forces that are profoundly remaking our world.

This book addresses the topic of hyperconnectivity by building on, expanding, and critically examining issues that have to do with information communication technology (ICT) and networked societies. The book explores questions relating to attention and consciousness, techno-capitalism and communicative action taking. Adopting different philosophical angles to assess the challenges we face due to our entanglement with hyperconnected technologies, the book studies performance and performativity in a digitised world by considering the unfolding of our onlife and by looking at what this means to educated future scientists and engineers in a hyperconnected world. The book further discusses digital activities as the new constructs of ourselves and poses questions about how much literacy is needed for us not to be enslaved by those constructs. The book also explores the challenges of hyperconnectivity and the health sector to showcase the vulnerabilities we are increasingly exposed to. It makes clear that - since the boundaries between on- and offline are becoming increasingly blurred - we will require new, flexible frameworks that reconsider what it means to be human in a hyperconnected world.

There is a growing appreciation that many psychiatric (and neurological) conditions can be understood as functional disconnection syndromes – as reflected in aberrant functional integration and synaptic connectivity. This Research Topic considers recent advances in understanding psychopathology in terms of aberrant effective connectivity – as measured noninvasively using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Recently, there has been increasing interest in inferring directed connectivity (effective connectivity) from fMRI data. Effective connectivity refers to the influence that one neural system exerts over another and quantifies the directed coupling among brain regions – and how they change with pathophysiology. Compared to functional connectivity, effective connectivity allows one to understand how brain regions interact with each other in terms of context sensitive changes and directed coupling – and therefore may provide mechanistic insights into the neural basis of psychopathology. Established models of effective connectivity include psychophysiological interaction (PPI), structural equation modeling (SEM) and dynamic causal modelling (DCM). DCM is unique because it explicitly models the interaction among brain regions in terms of latent neuronal activity. Moreover, recent advances in DCM such as stochastic and spectral DCM, make it possible to characterize the interaction between different brain regions both at rest and during a cognitive task.

This anthology explores the spatial dimension and politics of haunting. It considers how the ‘appearance’ of absence, emptiness and the imperceptible can indicate an overwhelming presence of something that once was, and still is, (t)here. At its core, the book asks: how and why do certain places haunt us? Drawing from a diversity of mediums, forms and disciplinary approaches, the contributors to Spectral Spaces and Hauntings illustrate the complicated ways absent presences can manifest and be registered. The case studies range from the memory sites of a terrorist attack, the lost home, a vanished mining town and abandoned airports, to the post-apocalyptic wastelands in literary fiction, the photographic and filmic surfaces where spectres materialise, and the body as a site for re-corporealising the disappeared and dead. In ruminating on the afteraffects of spectral spaces on human experience, the anthology importantly foregrounds the ethical and political imperative of engaging with ghosts and following their traces.

The Internet of Things describes a world in which smart technologies enable objects with a network to communicate with each other and interface with humans effortlessly. This connected world of convenience and technology does not come without its drawbacks, as interconnectivity implies hackability. Security Solutions for Hyperconnectivity and the Internet of Things offers insights from cutting-edge research about the strategies and techniques that can be implemented to protect against cyber-attacks. Calling for revolutionary protection strategies to reassess security, this book is an essential resource for programmers, engineers, business professionals, researchers, and advanced students in relevant fields.

This new volume reviews early detection approaches and possible subsequent interventions for psychosis. After introductory chapters, various methods for early detection not only in adults, but also adolescents are described. In this context, the validity of the psychosis high-risk state is debated along with whether early detection is indeed helpful, or actually stigmatizing, for the patient. Further contributions review neuroimaging, including structural and functional MRI, as well as pattern recognition methods and measurement of connectivity abnormalities. Neurocognitive and neurophysiological assessments are also discussed in detail. The last part focuses on early intervention for emerging psychosis, including psychological methods, non-pharmacological substances and pharmacological treatments. Overall conclusions and future perspectives are provided in a final chapter. This book is a state-of-the-art review of current options. It is important reading for researchers and clinicians faced with recognizing and treating psychosis in the most timely and effective manner possible.