The Naked Diplomat Understanding Power And Politics In The Digital Age

Who will be in power in the 21st century? Governments? Big business? Internet titans? And how do we influence the future?

Who will be in power in the 21st century? Governments? Big business? Internet titans? And how do we influence the future?

“It’s been a long time since I’ve read a more interesting, informing, and inspiring book.”—Bill Moyers What can we do beyond Occupy Wall Street? Political and economic systems are failing us, and it’s time for citizens to create change—individually and collaboratively. In The Leaderless Revolution, Carne Ross sounds a call to action. With dramatic stories from the United States and around the world, Ross’s analysis contrasts with the naïve, Panglossian optimism of globalization boosters like Thomas Friedman. Uncontrolled economic volatility, perpetual insecurity, rampant inequality, and accelerating climate change are heading us into a dangerous period of prolonged crisis. Ross—a former British diplomat to Iraq who resigned over his nation’s involvement in the U.S.-led invasion—draws from his own experiences to offer an empowering new vision of how we can put things right.

Through conversations with State Department officials, ambassadors, public relations executives, public policy experts, and academics, Digital Diplomacy explores what it means to be innovative in foreign policy and diplomacy. These leading experts explain what are the new dynamics, developments, trends, and theories in diplomacy brought on by the digital revolution in which non-state actors play an active role. Such access now provides diplomats the means to influence the countries they work in on a massive scale, not just through elites. The book’s focus on innovative approaches shows how both public and traditional diplomacy have been transforming foreign policy in the 21st century, highlighting new means and trends in conducting diplomacy and implementing foreign policy. The enhanced e-book version features interviews with the experts who appear in the book, including Carne Ross, the “rock star” of digital diplomacy; Teddy Goff, the Digital Director for President Obama's 2012 Campaign; Lara Stein, Director of TEDx; Ambassador David Thorne, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State, and more.

SELECTED AS A 2008 BEST BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST The Net Generation Has Arrived. Are you ready for it? Chances are you know a person between the ages of 11 and 30. You've seen them doing five things at once: texting friends, downloading music, uploading videos, watching a movie on a two-inch screen, and doing who-knows-what on Facebook or MySpace. They're the first generation to have literally grown up digital--and they're part of a global cultural phenomenon that's here to stay. The bottom line is this: If you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future. If you're a Baby Boomer or Gen-Xer: This is your field guide. A fascinating inside look at the Net Generation, Grown Up Digital is inspired by a $4 million private research study. New York Times bestselling author Don Tapscott has surveyed more than 11,000 young people. Instead of a bunch of spoiled “screenagers” with short attention spans and zero social skills, he discovered a remarkably bright community which has developed revolutionary new ways of thinking, interacting, working, and socializing. Grown Up Digital reveals: How the brain of the Net Generation processes information Seven ways to attract and engage young talent in the workforce Seven guidelines for educators to tap the Net Gen potential Parenting 2.0: There's no place like the new home Citizen Net: How young people and the Internet are transforming democracy Today's young people are using technology in ways you could never imagine. Instead of passively watching television, the “Net Geners” are actively participating in the distribution of entertainment and information. For the first time in history, youth are the authorities on something really important. And they're changing every aspect of our society-from the workplace to the marketplace, from the classroom to the living room, from the voting booth to the Oval Office. The Digital Age is here. The Net Generation has arrived. Meet the future.

What do diplomats actually do? That is what this text seeks to answer by describing the various stages of a typical diplomat’s career. The book follows a fictional diplomat from his application to join the national diplomatic service through different postings at home and overseas, culminating with his appointment as ambassador and retirement. Each chapter contains case studies, based on the author’s thirty year experience as a diplomat, Ambassador, and High Commissioner. These illustrate such key issues as the role of the diplomat during emergency crises or working as part of a national delegation to a permanent conference as the United Nations. Rigorously academic in its coverage yet extremely lively and engaging, this unique work will serve as a primer to any students and junior diplomats wishing to grasp what the practice of diplomacy is actually like.

‘Original and thought provoking’ Gordon Brown ‘Challenging and hopeful: a groundbreaking guide to the future’ Valerie Amos

'Blown to Bits' is about how the digital explosion is changing everything. The text explains the technology, why it creates so many surprises and why things often don't work the way we expect them to. It is also about things the information explosion is destroying: old assumptions about who is really in control of our lives.

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

"In the early 1990s, a small group of "AIDS denialists," including a University of California professor named Peter Duesberg, argued against virtually the entire medical establishment's consensus that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Science thrives on such counterintuitive challenges, but there was no evidence for Duesberg's beliefs, which turned out to be baseless. Once researchers found HIV, doctors and public health officials were able to save countless lives through measures aimed at preventing its transmission"--