Publications

This book looks at socio-technological transitions and shifting roles of users in the desgin and innovation of broadband technologies and digital media. The different chapters aim to shed more light on the ‘black box’ of design and sue of ICTs. In this way we hope to contribute to the empowerment of people in their relationship(s) with new media and – through this – to increase the quality of their social life. The title refers to insights on how to innovate by involving users more intensely in the design of technological innovations, which can lead to innovations that create more benefits for these users.

This book discusses the new phenomena and the dynamics of change of the European media landscape.

The essays in this book tap the potential of the historical analysis of social contexts in which property rights are embedded – social relations, power and agency, political institutions, culture – to understand how landed resources are actually appropriated. This exploratory approach seeks both to take advantage of the existing theory of property rights, as it is applied by the institutionalist outlook on economic history, and to go beyond it by explicitly incorporating social processes and factors in the analysis of property institutions. With this common aim in mind, the book covers a wide variety of historical cases throughout space and time, from the late Middle Ages in the Czech lands and in Tuscany to the very recent de-collectivisation of the countryside in former socialist countries, which will contribute rich and grounded insights to the discussion of the topic and of its implications.