San Antonio College Library

In The Glass Cage, best-selling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure and reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.

"Automated gripping and handling tasks offer a great rationalization potential but they are still difficult to realize. This book shows you how to ensure process reliability on the basis of combining the right components with advanced application know-how. By explaining basic preconditions of the gripping process and highlighting the milestones of automation history, we guide you all the way through to the center of the handling process - the workpiece....

Examines what must be regarded as the most important single trend in the banking industry today: the momentum for banks to seek to deliver routine and commoditized services via mechanisms that incorporate communications technology, with this trend being at the expense of encouraging customers to visit physical branches.

Advanced Manufacturing takes a step beyond our Manufacturing Technology series, and provides an in-depth view of processes and systems. Quality and increased productivity are emphasized as the viewer sees materials transformed into finished product during the manufacturing process. Computer integrated manufacturing and its continuing influence on manufacturing and the workplace is also discussed. A Meridian Production.

"Manufacturing and service related businesses are heavily dependent on office and administrative processes, which can add up to 60% of all costs associated with meeting customer demand. Applying lean techniques to the office must begin with a new definition of waste, backed by a set of techniques designed to eliminate waste and streamline nonvalue-adding activities." "In Creating the Ultimate Lean Office, the definition of waste in the office goes...

"Every year, perhaps even every week, there is some new gadget, device, service, or other digital offering intended to make our lives easier, better, more fun, or more instantaneous--making it that much harder to question how anything digital can be bad for us. Digital has created some wonderful things and we can hardly imagine life without them. But digital--the most relentless social and economic juggernaut humanity has unleashed in centuries--is...

Examines the resolution of conflicts that arise in e-commerce, as well as the tools for dispute resolution available online. The authors identify the basic goals and qualities of any online dispute resolution (ODR) system, propose the Internet as a supplement to dispute resolution occurring offline, and consider how the roles of each party are affected by the online environment.

"This book is a practical, broad-minded look at the effects of automation on the economy in the next ten to fifteen years and why the private sector needs to lead the charge in shaping a values-based response. The automation of a great deal of work as it is now known is no longer the concern of futurists, but of the current generation of business leaders and policy makers; Andrew Yang's recent run for the Democratic nomination, and his focus on UBI...

"From mechanical looms to the combustion engine to the first computers, new technologies have always provoked panic about workers being replaced by machines. For centuries, such fears have been misplaced, and many economists maintain that they remain so today. But as Daniel Susskind demonstrates, this time really is different. Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence mean that all kinds of jobs are increasingly at risk. Drawing on almost a decade...