Where is the line between virtual and real? This chapter introduces readers to the complex components, physical and virtual, which constitute our rapidly changing digital world. It examines how digital forms of representation blur the boundaries between what is considered material. The chapter addresses issues of transcendence and transgression in virtual space.

Dynamical downscaling uses high-resolution regional climate models (RCMs) to bias-correct and downscale global climate model output.This chapter discusses the models and methods used in dynamical downscaling. It provides an overview of the basic physics used in RCMs, and how this is similar to and differs from that used in global models. It also discusses the methods and metrics used to evaluate RCMs, and how projections from RCMs can be used to assess climate impacts at the regional scale

What lies in the future of regional downscaling, and how will future developments advance the information available for impacts and policymaking analyses? Models and methods are constantly under development; what might users expect to become available over the next decades as computing resources reach and extend beyond exascale (over 100 times faster than the current fastest computers), and global climate model resolutions reach regional scales? What uncertainties will remain to be resolved, even with these advances? By its nature, much of this discussion is somewhat philosophical and this chapter does not include real-world case studies. Instead, it highlights specific ways assessments may be affected by future advances and discusses key areas of future development.

This chapter explores the relation between the novel form and the emergence of postmodernism, postcolonialism, postfeminism and posthumanism in the second half of the twentieth century. It begins with an analysis of the relation between the prosthetic and the simulacral, under postmodern conditions, and with the technological revolution associated with the advent of computing. The novel, it suggests, from Orwell to Brooke-Rose, is involved in a difficult relationship with postmodernism, one which gives expression to its possibilities, while also seeking to resist its erosion of the materiality of our cultures and environments. It traces a strand of experimental realism in the postwar novel that is at odds with the terms in which we have conceived of postmodern fiction. It then goes on to read two of the novelists who are associated with the postmodern novel – Thomas Pynchon and Toni Morrison – to suggest that one can detect a persistent opposition in their work between the simulacrum and the prosthetic, one which helps us see past some of the contradictions that are the result of our existing accounts of postmodern politics and aesthetics.

This chapter accomplishes three primary goals. First, we review the history of technologies that have been influential in the world of work, from the abacus to innovations of the present day. We then identify eight characteristics that describe modern technologies: power, portability, usability, networking, encryption, ubiquity, immersion, and predictiveness. Finally, we present a SWOT analysis that identifies the implications of these characteristics for the future of work. In doing so, we demonstrate that although technological change is a constant, so too is humans’ ability to adapt to change.