The Information Nexus

A provocative new book calling into question everything we thought we knew about capitalism and what makes it unique.

Capitalism is central to our understanding of contemporary economic and political life and yet what does it really mean? If, as has now been shown to be the case, capital and property rights existed in pre-modern and pre-capitalist societies, what is left of our understanding of capitalism? Steven G. Marks' provocative new book calls into question everything we thought we knew about capitalism, from the word's very origins and development to the drivers of Western economic growth. Ranging from the Middle Ages to the present, The Information Nexus reveals that the truly distinctive feature of capitalism is business's drive to acquire and analyze information, supported by governments that allow unfettered access to public data. This new interpretation of capitalism helps to explain the rise of the West, puts our current information age into historical perspective, and provides a benchmark for the comparative assessment of economic systems in today's globalized environment.

Cisco® Nexus switches and the new NX-OS operating system are rapidly becoming the new de facto standards for data center distribution/aggregation layer networking. NX-OS builds on Cisco IOS to provide advanced features that will be increasingly crucial to efficient data center operations. NX-OS and Cisco Nexus Switching is the definitive guide to utilizing these powerful new capabilities in enterprise environments. In this book, three Cisco consultants cover every facet of deploying, configuring, operating, and troubleshooting NX-OS in the data center. They review the key NX-OS enhancements for high availability, virtualization, In-Service Software Upgrades (ISSU), and security. In this book, you will discover support and configuration best practices for working with Layer 2 and Layer 3 protocols and networks, implementing multicasting, maximizing serviceability, providing consistent network and storage services, and much more. The authors present multiple command-line interface (CLI) commands, screen captures, realistic configurations, and troubleshooting tips—all based on their extensive experience working with customers who have successfully deployed Nexus switches in their data centers. Learn how Cisco NX-OS builds on and differs from IOS Work with NX-OS user modes, management interfaces, and system files Configure Layer 2 networking: VLANs/private VLANs, STP, virtual port channels, and unidirectional link detection Configure Layer 3 EIGRP, OSPF, BGP, and First Hop Redundancy Protocols (FHRPs) Set up IP multicasting with PIM, IGMP, and MSDP Secure NX-OS with SSH, Cisco TrustSec, ACLs, port security, DHCP snooping, Dynamic ARP inspection, IP Source Guard, keychains, Traffic Storm Control, and more Build high availability networks using process modularity and restart, stateful switchover, nonstop forwarding, and in-service software upgrades Utilize NX-OS embedded serviceability, including Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN), Smart Call Home, Configuration Checkpoint/Rollback, and NetFlow Use the NX-OS Unified Fabric to simplify infrastructure and provide ubiquitous network and storage services Run NX-OS on Nexus 1000V server-based software switches This book is part of the Networking Technology Series from Cisco Press®, which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers.

Book 1 of the Nexus Trilogy - Continued in Book 2: Crux In the near future, the experimental nano-drug Nexus can link humans together, mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it. When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he's thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage - for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes. From the halls of academe to the halls of power, from the headquarters of an elite US agency in Washington DC to a secret lab beneath a top university in Shanghai, from the underground parties of San Francisco to the illegal biotech markets of Bangkok, from an international neuroscience conference to a remote monastery in the mountains of Thailand - Nexus is a thrill ride through a future on the brink of explosion. Shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlisted for the Prometheus Award Shortlisted for the Kitschies Award An NPR Best Book of 2013! "Good. Scary good." - Wired "Provocative... A double-edged vision of the post-human."- The Wall Street Journal "A lightning bolt of a novel, with a sense of awe missing from a lot of current fiction."- Ars Technica "Starred Review. Naam turns in a stellar performance in his debut SF novel... What matters here is the remarkable scope and narrative power of the story."- Booklist "A superbly plotted high-tension technothriller ... full of delicious, thoughtful moral ambiguity ... a hell of a read."- Cory Doctorow "A gripping piece of near future speculation... all the grit and pace of the Bourne films."- Alastair Reynolds, author of Revelation Space "A sharp, chilling look at our likely future."- Charles Stross, author of Singularity Sky and Halting State "The most brilliant hard SF thriller I've read in years. Reminds me of Michael Crichton at his best."- Brenda Cooper, author of The Creative Fire "A rich cast of characters...the action scenes are crisp, the glimpses of future tech and culture are mesmerizing."- Publishers Weekly "Any old writer can take you on a roller coaster ride, but it takes a wizard like Ramez Naam to take you on the same ride while he builds the roller coaster a few feet in front of you."- John Barnes, author of Directive 51 "Michael Crichton-like."- SFX Magazine "An incredibly imaginative, action-packed intellectual romp!"- Dani Kollin, Prometheus Award-winning author of The Unincorporated Man "The only serious successor to Michael Crichton."- Scott Harrison, author of Archangel

In an illuminating study that blends diplomatic, military, technology, and business history, Winkler shows how U.S. officials during World War I discovered the enormous value of global communications. In this absorbing history, Winkler sheds light on the early stages of the global infrastructure that helped launch the United States as the predominant power of the century.

As one of the first books to distill the economics of information and networks into practical business strategies, this is a guide to the winning moves that can help business leaders--from writers, lawyers and finance professional to executives in the entertainment, publishing and hardware and software industries-- navigate successfully through the information economy.

Expanding the definition and use of literacies beyond verbal and written communication, this book examines contemporary literacies through action-focused analysis of bodies, places, and media. Nexus analysis examines how people enact and mobilize meanings that are largely unspoken. Wohlwend demonstrates how nexus analysis can be used as a tool to critically analyze and understand action in everyday settings, to provide a deeper understanding of how meanings are produced from a mix of modes in daily social and cultural contexts. Organized in three sections—Engaging Nexus, Navigating Nexus, and Changing Nexus—this book provides a roadmap to applying nexus analysis to literacy research, and offers tools to enable readers to compare methods across contexts. Designed to help readers understand the theoretical and methodological assumptions and goals of nexus analysis in classroom and literacy research, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of the theory, framework, and foundations of nexus analysis, by using multimodal examples such as films and media, artifacts, live action performances, and more. Each chapter features consistent sections on key ideas and methods, and a description of procedures for replication and application.

This book takes a new approach on understanding causes of extreme poverty and promising actions to address it. Its focus is on marginality being a root cause of poverty and deprivation. “Marginality” is the position of people on the edge, preventing their access to resources, freedom of choices, and the development of capabilities. The book is research based with original empirical analyses at local, national, and local scales; book contributors are leaders in their fields and have backgrounds in different disciplines. An important message of the book is that economic and ecological approaches and institutional innovations need to be integrated to overcome marginality. The book will be a valuable source for development scholars and students, actors that design public policies, and for social innovators in the private sector and non-governmental organizations.​

The Nexus of Practices: connections, constellations, practitioners brings leading theorists of practice together to provide a fresh set of theoretical impulses for the surge of practice-focused studies currently sweeping across the social disciplines. The book addresses key issues facing practice theory, expands practice theory’s conceptual repertoire, and explores new empirical terrain. With each intellectual move, it generates further opportunities for social research. More specifically, the book’s chapters offer new approaches to analysing connections within the nexus of practices, to exploring the dynamics and implications of the constellations that practices form, and to understanding people as practitioners that carry on practices. Topics examined include social change, language, power, affect, reflection, large social phenomena, and connectivity over time and space. Contributors thereby counter claims that practice theory cannot handle large phenomena and that it ignores people. The contributions also develop practice theoretical ideas in dialogue with other forms of social theory and in ways illustrated and informed by empirical cases and examples. The Nexus of Practices will quickly become an important point of reference for future practice-focused research in the social sciences.

Following the international success of his iconoclastic The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson now takes on the history of money -the sinews of war - and power.