Publications

Proceedings of the 1st Workshop of COST Action D41 on “Inorganic Oxides: Surfaces and Interfaces”, which took place in Vienna, Austria on 2-4 November 2006.

COST Action 269 offered a unique opportunity for European scientists, without regard to any particular discipline, to participate in open research of user aspects of ICTs. Disciplines ranging from technology to sociology were represented. The results of COST 269 are published in three separate books of which this is book number three. The other two books are: International Collaborative Research: Cross-Cultural Differences and Cultures of Research and ICT Capabilities in Action: What People Do. One further output from the Action is the report of the Mobility Workgroup: (Haddon, L., de Gourney, C., Lohan, M., Östlund, B., Palombini, I., Sapio, B., Kilegran, M.) (2001) From Mobile to Mobility: The Consumption of ICTs and Mobility in Everyday Life. This has already been published in Haddon, L. (2004) Information and Communication Technologies in Everyday Life: A Concise Introduction and Research Guide, Berg, Oxford.

Children’s spaces are widening – culturally and socially: socially their spaces are more often multilocal, and culturally they are enlarged through mobility in the globalised and virtual spaces in the mediatised world. Children’s times are also less confined by strict borderlines; the more flexible and individualised use of time in the world of work impacts on children’s lives in families, day care and school. The chapters

of this volume each present particular temporal and spatial aspects of social change in childhood.

The aim of the book goes even further; it is directed toward considering the impact of such change on children’s welfare. As former boundaries between generations begin to blur and neo-liberal forces enter all realms of people’s lives, it can no longer be taken for granted – as it was in former periods of modernity – that continued efforts to realise the childhood project will automatically guarantee the ‘best interest

of the child’. With respect to children’s welfare in time and space, tensions between demands from the market economy, dynamics of rationalisation and technology, and visions of a ‘good’ childhood are discussed in the book.

This volume provides many innovative results which can be the basis for a new global (mobile/terrestrial/satellite) telecommunications systems providing multimedia services at high rates of data transfer.