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India has produced several drafts of data policies. In this work, they are referred to [1] JBNSCR 2018, [2] DPDPR 2018, [3] NSAI 2018, [4] RAITF 2018, [5] PDPB 2019, [6] PRAI 2021, [7] JPCR 2021, [8] IDAUP 2022, [9] IDABNUP 2022. All of them consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) a social problem solver at the societal level, let alone an incentive for economic growth. However, these policy drafts warn of the social disruptions caused by algorithms and encourage the careful use of computational technologies in various social contexts. Hence, the emerging data society and its implications in India's social contexts demand immense social science attention, which needs to be improved in the policy drafts, primarily because they are creations of industry stakeholders, technocrats, bureaucrats, and experts from tech schools. In the larger social milieu of digital infrastructure emerging, the fundamental question is whether India's national philosophy envisioned in the Indian constitution is reflected in the policy papers. The paper enquires whether the national data policy upholds the core values dispersed through the philosophy of the Indian constitution, which, among other things, is not confined only to inclusion, diversity, rights, liberty, justice and equality. By focusing on constitutional values, the paper seeks to offer a broader and more critical understanding of India's approach to AI policy by bringing together analyses of a wide array of policy documents available in the public realm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used to enhance production systems and meet the requirements of a rapidly evolving manufacturing environment. Compared to larger companies, however, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lack in terms of resources, available data and skills, which impedes the potential adoption of analytics solutions. This paper proposes a preliminary yet general approach to identify low-cost analytics solutions for manufacturing SMEs, with particular emphasis on ML. The initial studies seem to suggest that, contrarily to what is usually thought at first glance, SMEs seldom need digital solutions that use advanced ML algorithms which require extensive data preparation, laborious parameter tuning and a comprehensive understanding of the underlying problem. If an analytics solution does require learning capabilities, a 'simple solution', which we will characterise in this paper, should be sufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital systems are reshaping how we engage with music as a sounding dimension of cultural life that is capable of being transformed into a commodity. At the same time, as we increasingly engage through digital media with each other and with virtual others, attributes of music that underpin our capacity to interact communicatively are disregarded or overlooked within those media. Even before the advent of technologies of music reproduction, music was susceptible to assimilation into economic acts of exchange. What is new in the digital world is the way in which modes of engagement with music are themselves being absorbed into an economy built on the datafication of virtual acts and the digital shadows of casual preferences. But music is more than just sounds that are culturally sanctioned as musical. Music is manifested as behaviours, and in interactive behaviour. Music is participatory as well as presentational, and in the participatory mode—involving collective, non-specialist, interactive real-time music-making—has significant individual and social consequences. Yet music as real-time participation is largely absent from the virtual world, with potential social costs that remain to be understood. Moreover, our everyday, face-to-face communicative—conversational—interactions are imbued with patterns between interlocutors that are musical, in that they share features with what we are happy to describe as "music". These features are presently lacking in digital systems designed to subserve communicative functions, and this paper will consider the significant implications for our interactions with machines to which their successful incorporation into voice–user interfaces would give rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern democratic states are increasingly adopting new information and communication technologies to enhance the efficiency and quality of public administration, public policy and services. However, there is substantial variation in the extent to which countries are successful in pursuing such public digitalization. This paper zooms in on the role of social trust as a possible account for the observed empirical pattern in the range and scope of public digitalization across countries. Our argument is that high social trust makes it easier to digitalize the public sector to the benefit of overall society. We develop a simple game-theoretical model that specifies this positive externality from a high-trust culture and provide empirical evidence that a higher level of social trust is associated with a higher level of public digitalization. Of course, high-trust countries cannot do without the rule of law (formal rules of the game) and some institutionalized mechanisms of control and accountability. However, from our argument, it follows that one future challenge could be that control crowds out trust, so that the balance is no longer optimal. If such overcontrol occurs, public digitalization win–win situations between citizens and government can be undermined, even in high-trust countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our fascination with artificial intelligence (AI), robots and sentient machines has a long history, and references to such humanoids are present even in ancient myths and folklore. The advancements in digital and computational technology have turned this fascination into apprehension, with the machines often being depicted as a binary to the human. However, the recent domains of academic enquiry such as transhumanism and posthumanism have produced many a literature in the genre of science fiction (SF) that endeavours to alter this antagonistic notion of AI. In his novel Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro explores this notion of AI as a caring machine capable of nursing an ailing young girl back to health. Through this portrayal of AI as a sentient being capable of empathy and cognition, Ishiguro is attempting to usher in a new perception of AI: a posthuman perception that challenges the conventional notions of AI as a machine devoid of emotions. The novel further expands on the idea of self, soul and human consciousness and ponders on the question, what makes humans human, and if it is possible to imbibe these qualities onto an AI. Owing to the novelty of this notion, an unexplored avenue that deserves further exploration, this paper examines the plausibility of this new notion of AI through a careful exegesis of the novel. The paper also attempts to chart the impact of SF in society and culture. The study reveals a positive shift in perception towards AI, and there seems to be much scope for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides an overview of hermeneutics in relation to technology and culture. It highlights the importance of clear language when discussing the cultural and political aspects of technology. The document explores the work of philosophers Don Ihde, Patrick Heelan, Rudolf Makkreel, and Martin Heidegger, who have applied hermeneutics to various fields such as the natural sciences and multiculturalism. It also discusses the concept of material hermeneutics, which involves the interpretation of technology and its impact on perception. The document includes contributions from multiple authors that delve into the application of hermeneutics in different contexts, such as smart medical technologies and digital technologies. These essays offer valuable insights into the complex relationship between humans and technology, exploring topics such as the interpretation of data, the ethical dimensions of technology, and the cultural implications of scientific knowledge. [Extracted from the article]

Digital scholarship is ubiquitous, where even the most Luddite of scholars use some form of digital technology in their research. Differences in the level of technology use have become a question of degree not kind. Currently in the second wave of Digital Humanities, Presner (2010) argues that Digital Humanities 2.0 introduces entirely new-born digital paradigms, methodologies, and publication models not derived from print culture. This new wave is "deeply generative, creating the environments and tools for producing, curating, and interacting with knowledge that is 'born digital' and lives in various digital contexts" (Presner 2010, para. 13). Using the case study of a Digital Humanities project called "The Waterford Memories Project", this paper will consider both the role of born digital survivor testimony in confronting a difficult and disputed past in Ireland and, more broadly, how we create and access knowledge in this contested space. The Waterford Memories Project is an oral history driven study in digital humanities, publicly documenting survivor narratives of the Magdalene Laundries and Industrial Schools in the South-East of Ireland. The last Magdalene Laundry in Ireland closed in 1996. These institutions formed part of a system of coercive confinement, which incorporated a wide range of historical institutions used to confine both children and adults whose "crimes" were to act against the strict and punitive moral codes of the period, poverty, or mental illness. This paper will examine the role of born digital data in public humanities (in the form of the audio-recorded survivor oral histories), and frames the Waterford Memories digital humanities project in the technoculture and minimal computing literature, emphasising the overall need for a human-centred approach to technology at all stages of the research. Cultural stories can become fossilised and continue to perpetuate the silencing of survivors; it is therefore essential to consider how the openly available digital testimony contributes to the framing of cultural discourse around our history of coercive confinement in Ireland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Michael Polányi's account of how science, as an institution, establishes knowledge can provide a structure for a future institution capable of countering misinformation, or fake news, and deepfakes. I argue that only an institutional approach can adequately take up the challenge against the corresponding institution of fake news. The fact of filtering news and information may be bothering. It is the threat of censorship and free speech limitation. Instead, I propose that we should indicate reliable information with a trademark and news signing-approved information and brand equity. I offer a method of creating a standard for online news that people can rely on (similar to high-quality shopping products). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders the claim made by mainstream internet platforms that they inherently foster a democratic public sphere, offering reasons why the opposite may be true. It surveys past studies that have supported both views, showing how the position taken by scholars tends to depend on their disciplinary perspectives. Historically, scholarly approaches to the public or political impacts of the internet and social media have been characterised by four main interpretative lenses: technodeterminism, behaviourism, and the prioritising of either ideology, or the economics of media ownership. This article pays particular attention to the last two, and to Facebook, which among mainstream internet platforms has notably associated itself with democratic ideals. The article describes how many of the democratic ideals associated with Facebook's impacts on society are in fact reversed by the platform's practices, with effects that directly contradict the platform's stated principles. The article ends by suggesting that Facebook consciously pretends to favour the public sphere, and that such Orwellian doublethink is a deliberate attempt to divert attention away from its augmentation of private and personal issues at the expense of collective engagement and empowerment. designed differently, Facebook could have had favourable impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While facing cuts, downsizing and revenue losses, media organizations experience paradoxical demands in being organized for print or linear production with daily deadlines and simultaneously striving to be 'digital first' and produce and publish stories online on a continuous basis throughout the day. In this paper, we describe efforts applied when introducing the metaphor flowline in a medium-sized newspaper organization in Norway with the aim of aligning their production and publishing processes to readers' consumption of online news. Both the production volume of journalistic content, reader consumption and the newsroom workers' experience of mastering their everyday work life increased dramatically in a very short time. The involvement of a temporary autonomous team in the planning and designing of a test pilot aiming to make flowline "as practice", was integral to the digital transformation success, allowing for participative action across newsroom boundaries. Based on the empirical findings from the local newspaper organization and drawing on theories on liminality (Turner 1982, 1986) and metaphorical work (Schön 1993), this article presents a set of six interrelated steps incorporating a structure for autonomous teams and their role in enabling lasting change in organizations facing digital transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to gain knowledge about key conditions in the process of digitalization using a socio-technical systems design as a theoretical framework and a case-study approach. Semi-structured interviews with 15 relevant stakeholders are conducted to learn about barriers to and enablers of the development and implementation process in a manufacturing company. After conducting a thematic analysis, eight higher-ranked themes relevant to the digitalization process are identified. These are grouped to describe the overarching phenomena, resulting in four enablers (shared trust, shared visual understanding, shared user perspective, and shared learning) and four barriers (trusting the system, understanding benefits, perspective of economics, and learning to manage scope). The study takes a holistic view of digitalization in its investigation of the development and subsequent implementation processes. The findings contribute to the literature via three key takeaways for stakeholders of a digitalization process in manufacturing. First, it is vital to understand and strengthen the role of the key enablers identified in this paper. Second, managers should observe and identify barriers in their own organizations, related both to technical and social aspects. Third, some of the enablers described in this paper can serve managers as helpful tools to approach the expected barriers to digitalization. This paper also challenges the research literature by arguing that research conducted on digitalization that sets new standards and premises for the working life in industry needs to use up-to-date socio-technical design concepts and theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the qualities of living and learning in digital cultures, the design of digital technologies and the philosophical history that has informed that design. It takes as its critical perspective the field of embodied cognition as it has developed over the last three decades, in concert with emerging neurophysiology and neurocognitive research. From this perspective the paper considers cognitive, neurological and physiological effects that are increasingly becoming noticed in user populations, especially young populations. I call this class of conditions 'sensorimotor debility', to distinguish it from other psychological, social, cultural and political symptoms associated with computer, internet and social media use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Operative communication: project Cybersyn and the intersection of information design, interface design, and interaction design" published in the journal AI & Society. The correction states that three references were missed during the copy editing process of the paper. The corrected version of the article includes the missing references and provides a range of perspectives on the project Cybersyn, including nostalgic perspectives, connections to current computational environments, and criticisms of neoliberal aspects. The correction notice also includes additional references to support these perspectives. [Extracted from the article]

Today, there is an emerging interest for the potential role of hermeneutics in reflecting on the practices related to digital technologies and their consequences. Nonetheless, such an interest has neither given rise to a unitary approach nor to a shared debate. The primary goal of this paper is to map and synthetize the different existing perspectives to pave the way for an open discussion on the topic. The article is developed in two steps. In the first section, the authors analyze digital hermeneutics "in theory" by confronting and systematizing the existing literature. In particular, they stress three main distinctions among the approaches: (1) between "methodological" and "ontological" digital hermeneutics; (2) between data- and text-oriented digital hermeneutics; and (3) between "quantitative" and "qualitative" credos in digital hermeneutics. In the second section, they consider digital hermeneutics "in action", by critically analyzing the uses of digital data (notably tweets) for studying a classical object such as the political opinion. In the conclusion, we will pave the way to an ontological turn in digital hermeneutics. Most of this article is devoted to the methodological issue of interpreting with digital machines. The main task of an ontological digital hermeneutics would consist instead in wondering if it is legitimate, and eventually to which extent, to speak of digital technologies, or at least of some of them, as interpretational machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the concept of digital modernity, the extension of narratives of modernity with the special affordances of digital networked technology. Digital modernity produces a new narrative which can be taken in many ways: to be descriptive of reality; a teleological account of an inexorable process; or a normative account of an ideal sociotechnical state. However, it is understood that narratives of digital modernity help shape reality via commercial and political decision-makers, and examples are given from the politics and society of the United Kingdom. The paper argues that digital modernity has two dimensions, of progression through time and progression through space, and these two dimensions can be in contradiction. Contradictions can also be found between ideas of digital modernity and modernity itself, and also between digital modernity and some of the basic pre-modern concepts that underlie the whole technology industry. Therefore, digital modernity may not be a sustainable goal for technology development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been widely argued that digital technologies are transforming the nature of reading, and with it, our brains and a wide range of our cognitive capabilities. In this article, we begin by discussing the new analytical category of deep-reading and whether it is really on the decline. We analyse deep reading and its grounding in brain reorganization, based upon Michael Anderson's Massive Redeployment hypothesis and Dehaene's Neuronal Recycling which both help us to theorize how the capacities of brains are transformed by acquisition of new skills. We examine some of the difficulties in comparing reading using technologies such as the web-browser, the tablet and E-Reader, with reading using the pre-existing print culture. While learning to read undoubtedly changes the brain, we examine what evidence there is for this being tightly tied to particular material substrates and find this lacking. Instead we attempt to situate cognitive changes around the new reading within the context of the specific new cognitive ecologies incorporating both screen and page. This involves a reconsideration of the role of material culture in the cognitive abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the globe, our work and social lives are increasingly integrated with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), yet massive disparities in the values, uses and benefits of ICT exist. New methods are needed to shed light on unique and integrative concepts of ICT across cultures. This paper explores the use of visual methods to facilitate critical engagement with ICT—defined as situational awareness, reflexive ICT practice and power and control over ICT. This definition of critical ICT engagement is informed by a cultural identity lens, and intends to improve participatory methods in ICT for Development (ICT4D) and community technology design and application. Our notion of critical ICT engagement is developed through an analysis of three case studies, each employing visual methods to shed light on concepts and practices of ICT cross-culturally. This paper makes three contributions to the ICT4D literature. First, it establishes a cultural identity lens to chart out cultural differences between researchers and participants, and to develop situational awareness of ICT in context. Second, it defines the conceptual domain of reflexive ICT practice and establishes the key role of researchers in facilitating it. Third, it argues for the need to support participants to develop capacity to engage critically with ICT as a means to influence social and organizational structures. This paper offers a way for researchers and practitioners to engage with cultural issues in community-based research and design using visual methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall trend toward globalization in design, greatly enhanced by digital technologies, has raised issues and challenges on how to preserve the cultural differences and values of different societies. There is a tendency to lose touch with local cultural values when designing artefacts for global use, and social nuances and traditions risk to be flattened or stereotyped in the pursuit of developing new technologies and products for the global society. Attempts to reduce the tension between the global and the local in design can be seen in the development of standards and guidelines for cross-cultural design, that are mostly focused on (online) user interface design. However, when moving from preferences, metaphors, appearance, and navigation toward cultural models of interaction and physical design, new methodologies and tools for cross-cultural design are needed. This paper describes a poetry-inspired design method for cross-cultural sharing within the design process. The approach uses poetry to sensitize the designer to the subtleties and diversity of a (new or known) culture so that the design can be given new aesthetic and cultural significance. The methodology is exemplified by actual design cases developed within the course "Cultural Sensitivity" of the Master's Degree Program in Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology, where poetry was used for uncovering underlying or implicit assumptions, intercultural differences and similarities, as well as for general sensitization of young designers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design process in Kashmiri carpet weaving is a distributed process encompassing a number of actors and artifacts. These include a designer called naqash who creates the design on graphs, and a coder called talim- guru who encodes that design in a specific notation called talim which is deciphered and interpreted by the weavers to weave the design. The technological interventions over the years have influenced these artifacts considerably and triggered major changes in the practice, from heralding profound cognitive accomplishments in manually driven design process causing major alterations in the overall structure of the practice. The recent intervention is by the digital technology: on the one hand, it has brought precision and speedy processing in the design process, and on the other, it has eliminated some of the crucial actors from the practice. This paper, which forms part of a larger study on the situated and distributed cognitive process in Kashmiri carpet-weaving practice, describes the technological makeover of the design artifacts involved in this practice over the years and their resultant cognitive impact on the design process as well as on the practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, scholars across disciplines raised ethical, legal and social concerns about the notion of human intervention, control, and oversight over Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. This observation becomes particularly important in the age of ubiquitous computing and the increasing adoption of AI in everyday communication infrastructures. We apply Nicholas Garnham's conceptual perspective on mediation to users who are challenged both individually and societally when interacting with AI-enabled systems. One way to increase user agency are mechanisms to contest faulty or flawed AI systems and their decisions, as well as to request redress. Currently, however, users structurally lack such mechanisms, which increases risks for vulnerable communities, for instance patients interacting with AI healthcare chatbots. To empower users in AI-mediated communication processes, this article introduces the concept of active human agency. We link our concept to contestability and redress mechanism examples and explain why these are necessary to strengthen active human agency. We argue that AI policy should introduce rights for users to swiftly contest or rectify an AI-enabled decision. This right would empower individual autonomy and strengthen fundamental rights in the digital age. We conclude by identifying routes for future theoretical and empirical research on active human agency in times of ubiquitous AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current social and technological scenario, the term digital is abundantly used with an apparently transparent and unambiguous meaning. This article aims to unveil the complexity of this concept, retracing its historical and cultural origin. This genealogical overview allows to understand the reason why an instrumental conception of digital media has prevailed, considering the digital as a mere tool to convey a message, as opposed to a constitutive conception. The constitutive conception places the digital phenomenon in the broader ground of media studies, and it considers digital technologies as an interface between the subject and the world. In this perspective, the media is not added to the experience of the person, but it shapes it from within on a cognitive, expressive and communicative level. The article makes use of two powerful examples to show the shortcomings of an instrumental conception of the digital, and to affirm the value of a constitutive conception for current media studies regarding digital interfaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an introduction to digital tourism as mediated by presence research as a means to create substantive user experiences (UX) for visitors. Tourism is a rich and varied socio-economic activity that permeates our global society. Digital tourism is the digital support of the tourist experience. In this paper we introduce and survey both fields and introduce a number of examples of tourist experiences based on our blended spaces approach. Cutting across this is the sense of presence that visitors can experience in real or digital tourist experiences. We conclude the paper with a discussion of designing the user experience in blended tourist spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream operationalisations of music in contemporary digital culture tend to take forms that fit with Western folk-theoretic conceptions of music: as discrete sonic entities—songs, pieces, works—that fall within an autonomous domain of human experience, that have determinate structure and that have both affective and exchange value. This perspective is problematised in alternative digital manifestations of music as constituted in and through interaction, in which music is emergent from interactive processes that are computationally mediated. This alternative digital approach fits with broad conceptions of music that are grounded in ethnomusicological accounts and that have increasing weight in the cognitive sciences, in which music is understood and explored as a communicative medium. This paper will outline some of the possibilities, potentials and problems for digital approaches that are likely to arise in operationalising music as communicative interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To identify how digital media are being used by community-led initiatives of the Centro Region of Portugal, and to identify the requirements that a digital platform for mediation between agents in the territory should have, two focus groups were conducted, involving six small-sized community-led initiatives and six larger-sized community-led initiatives. This article details the results of these focus groups, according to the following main categories: use of existing communication and mediation tools; the purpose of use of digital tools; type of experiences prompted by digital tools and attributes and features desired in a digital platform to support community-led initiatives. The results show differences between the use and needs of digital tools by small- and larger-sized initiatives and offer interesting insights to prototype an innovative digital solution, to enhance the actions of community-led initiatives. A reference framework for digital mediation strategies and a mobile app prototype were developed, based on these surveys. The article contributes with an analytical view about the development of digital solutions, which aim to strengthen the relationship among agents of local communities and promote mediation mechanisms among all stakeholders in territorial-based innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to give an outline of digital hermeneutics understood as the encounter between hermeneutics and digital technology, particularly the Internet. In the first part, I want to raise the attention of IT researchers and hermeneuticists to the theoretic and practical relevance of the encounter of their areas of research that are sometimes considered as incompatible to each other. There is still a lot of translation work to be done in order to get these two cultures come closer to and profit from each other. The second part of the paper deals with the foundation of digital hermeneutics on what I call— following Heidegger's and Vattimo's paths—digital ontology as opposed to digital metaphysics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Sheridan talks with Clare L E Foster, sharing some wider observations about the challenges of the digital transformation of The National Archives. (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/our-role/executive-team/john-sheridan/). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our synthetic review of the relevant and related literatures on the ethics and effects of using AI in education reveals five qualitatively distinct and interrelated divides associated with access, representation, algorithms, interpretations, and citizenship. We open our analysis by probing the ethical effects of algorithms and how teams of humans can plan for and mitigate bias when using AI tools and techniques to model and inform instructional decisions and predict learning outcomes. We then analyze the upstream divides that feed into and fuel the algorithmic divide, first investigating access (who does and does not have access to the hardware, software, and connectivity necessary to engage with AI-enhanced digital learning tools and platforms) and then representation (the factors making data either representative of the total population or over-representative of a subpopulation's preferences, thereby preventing objectivity and biasing understandings and outcomes). After that, we analyze the divides that are downstream of the algorithmic divide associated with interpretation (how learners, educators, and others understand the outputs of algorithms and use them to make decisions) and citizenship (how the other divides accumulate to impact interpretations of data by learners, educators, and others, in turn influencing behaviors and, over time, skills, culture, economic, health, and civic outcomes). At present, lacking ongoing reflection and action by learners, educators, educational leaders, designers, scholars, and policymakers, the five divides collectively create a vicious cycle and perpetuate structural biases in teaching and learning. However, increasing human responsibility and control over these divides can create a virtuous cycle that improves diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. We conclude the article by looking forward and discussing ways to increase educational opportunity and effectiveness for all by mitigating bias through a cycle of progressive improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published in 2018, 'Re:Print' is an experimental artists' book, edited by Véronique Chance and Duncan Ganley, that brings together images and text by 20 contributors whose work addresses the role and language of the reproducible image. This article by Duncan Ganley discusses the challenges of translating artworks and text originally presented in the context of an exhibition and symposium, into a work of print an artists' book. The range of contributors emphasizes the diverse scope of forms, processes and ideas in the expanded field of Printmaking. Addressing a variety of approaches to integrating and repurposing this visual and textual material for the printed page, the article outlines the theoretical underpinning of the creation of 'Re:Print' and the editorial and design decisions taken to create a hybridized form that is both document and artwork and aims to draw out new agencies of the 'book' in a digital world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article holds that governmental investments in quantum technologies speak to the imaginable futures of digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, two major areas of change driven by related technologies like AI and Big Data, among other things, in international law today. Under intense development today for future interpolation into digital systems that they may alter, quantum technologies occupy a sort of liminal position, rooted in existing assemblages of computational technologies while pointing to new horizons for them. The possibilities they raise are neither certain nor determinate, but active investments in them (legal, political and material investments) offer perspective on digital technology-driven influences on an international legal imagination. In contributing to visions of the future that are guiding ambitions for digital sovereignty and digital infrastructures, quantum technologies condition digital technology-driven changes to international law and legal imagination in the present. Privileging observation and description, I adapt and utilize a diffractive method with the aim to discern what emerges out of the interference among the several related things assembled for this article, including material technologies and legal institutions. In conclusion, I observe ambivalent changes to an international legal imagination, changes which promise transformation but appear nonetheless to reproduce current distributions of power and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might experimental media art help theorise what falls by the wayside in the digital public sphere? Working in the years immediately following the launch of YouTube in 2005, some media artists centred their creative praxis towards the end of that decade upon rescuing, revalorising, and placing back into digital circulation audiovisual media formats and technologies that appeared aged or obsolete. Although there may be a degree of nostalgia behind such practices, these artworks articulate a cogent critique of the drive towards constant innovation that was responsible for the invention and global expansion of cinema, but in recent decades has been responsible for its decay—or, perhaps more accurately, for its perpetual transformation. The article explores this 'media-archaeology' sensibility as a way of thinking about AI more widely: an approach that sees histories of media not as a linear, chronological search for origins, but as a critical recovery of artefacts lodged discontinuously in multiple layers of the past. Although digital technologies form a central part of the creative process of the artists considered in this article, their works also act as a critical conscience about digital change, asking what the so-called digital revolution is leaving out, and leaving behind. In so doing, it illuminates some potential positive and negative impacts of digital technologies' mediation of new forms of public engagement, whether in art, archives, or on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postphenomenology is not a critique of phenomenology, but a practical interpretive epistemology where technological artifacts and practices are studied. These new researchers can be called 'R&D postphenomenologists'. Over the past 25 years, the expanding hermeneutics of postphenomenology has been undertaken by classical phenomenologists, cultural anthropologists, media/communications writers and performance artists. But these face Scharff's challenge of 'insufficient critical consideration' and an entire world of artifice experienced through embodied mobile devices. In response there is a 'weaving metaphor' and performance art with the intentional use of artifice/illusion to allow for multistability and 'implicit idealism' in a complex and unpredictable sensory world of ontological experiments and case studies. Allowing for multistable interpretations, variational theory, and the study of illusions, technoscience researchers and users of emerging technologies can develop heuristics for interpreting the world through devices, if programmers of these technologies make the hermeneutics accessible and visually interpretable. Both groups must expand the purview of the 'readable technologies' of Patrick Heelan, allowing for an expanding material hermeneutics of postphenomenology that is poised to become a praxis of perception for users of ubiquitous digital technologies and devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid and dynamic nature of digital transformation challenges companies that wish to develop and deploy novel digital technologies. Like other actors faced with this transformation, companies need to find robust ways to ethically guide their innovations and business decisions. Digital ethics has recently featured in a plethora of both practical corporate guidelines and compilations of high-level principles, but there remains a gap concerning the development of sound ethical guidance in specific business contexts. As a multinational science and technology company faced with a broad range of digital ventures and associated ethical challenges, Merck KGaA has laid the foundations for bridging this gap by developing a Code of Digital Ethics (CoDE) tailored for this context. Following a comprehensive analysis of existing digital ethics guidelines, we used a reconstructive social research approach to identify 20 relevant principles and derive a code designed as a multi-purpose tool. Versatility was prioritised by defining non-prescriptive guidelines that are open to different perspectives and thus well-suited for operationalisation for varied business purposes. We also chose a clear nested structure that highlights the relationships between five core and fifteen subsidiary principles as well as the different levels of reference—data and algorithmic systems—to which they apply. The CoDE will serve Merck KGaA and its new Digital Ethics Advisory Panel to guide ethical reflection, evaluation and decision-making across the full spectrum of digital developments encountered and undertaken by the company whilst also offering an opportunity to increase transparency for external partners, and thus trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a framework for analysing how digital software and models become mediums for creative imagination in architectural design. To understand the hermeneutics of these relationships, we develop key concepts from Material Engagement Theory (MET) and Postphenomenology (PP). To push these frameworks into the realm of digital design, we develop the concept of Digital Materiality. Digital Materiality describes the way successive layers of mathematics, code, and software come to mediate enactive perception, and the possibilities of creative material engagement actualised in work with software. Just as molecular materials come to transform action with material objects, so digital materiality comes to enable and transform creative practices with computers. Digital architectural design form a new space for ongoing enactive discovery and creativity through manipulation of digital models and their underlying software environments. By shifting relationships within their digital models, architects can direct their attention, intention, and imagination towards widely different aspects of the model. Here, creative imagination becomes a fundamentally situated activity where mind emerges through dynamic interaction between a variety of embodied, material, and cultural domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Alberto Romele's book, "Digital Hermeneutics," which explores the understanding and implications of digital technologies in our lives. Romele argues that as technologies become more integrated and autonomous, the need for interpretation and hermeneutics re-emerges. The book is divided into two parts, with the first part focusing on the relationship between reality and digital representations, and the second part delving into the ontological question of whether digital machines have interpretational capacities. The article concludes by discussing the political and social implications of digital hermeneutics, particularly in relation to ethics and the loss of individual agency. Romele's book is a significant contribution to the field of philosophy and ethics of technology, offering a new perspective on the impacts of technology for practitioners in various fields. While the book is valuable, the author offers some critiques regarding certain digressions, lack of context in examples, and the need for further unpacking of arguments. Despite these critiques, the book is an impressive resource for understanding the hermeneutic aspects of digital technologies and will be valuable for students and researchers in related fields. Future research can explore the sociological aspects of digital hermeneutics, develop a method for investigating hermeneutical aspects of digital technologies, and explore the contribution of digital hermeneutics to ethics of technology and responsible innovation. [Extracted from the article]

Networked service organisations are increasingly adopting a 'smarter networking' philosophy in their design of more agile and customer-focused supply models. Changing consumer behaviours and the emergence of transformative technologies—industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the Internet of Things—are driving a series of innovations, in terms of 'products' and business models, with major implications for the industrial enterprise, in their design of more 'digitalised' supply chains. For B2B systems, emerging 'product-service' offerings are requiring greater visibility, alignment and integration across an increasingly complex network of multiple partners and collaborators, in order to deliver a better service and customer 'experience'. To support the design and operation of these multi-organisational service networks, we outline a concept of operations architecture here, underpinned by the literature and network theory, and demonstrate application using a series of exemplar case studies. Focusing on relational elements and the processes key to network integration within service supply networks, the cases inform a set of operating principles and protocols—applicable to all stakeholders 'cooperating', within a 'shared' environment. Equally critical is to understand how digital technologies may influence future operating philosophies. This article extends our theoretical understanding of network organisations, from a traditional 'product' perspective to that of 'services', and presents the case for developing a common, unified approach to designing diverse forms of multi-partner service networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presence research can tell us why we feel present in the real world and can experience presence while using virtual reality technology (and movies and games) but has strikingly less to say on why we feel present in the scenes described in a book. Just how is it that the wonderful tangible detail of the real world or the complexity of digital technology can be matched and even surpassed by a story in a paperback book? This paper identifies a range of potential neurological solutions to this problem (and the 'real world' and 'dream' problems for good measure). We consider Jeannerod's neural simulation of action, Grush's emulation theory of representation and Rizzolatti's work on mirror neurons as being candidate solutions to the 'book problem'. We conclude by observing that these potential solutions further underline the 'purpose' of presence is to act in the world whether it is real, virtual or solely in our imaginations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue proposes that repetition, iteration, and digital sharing should be considered in a wider sense than simply as an individual choice to decide, knowingly, to repeat some I thing i . The aim of this special issue is to explore how social processes driven by repetition, such as cultural memory, belief-creation, labelling, advocacy and ideas of consensus need urgent reconsideration in digital contexts. The third section of this special issue, "Persuasive Affordances", provides empirical examples from various cultural contexts of how digital iteration is pre-eminently socially persuasive, and explores the agency of end-users in digitally mediated political environments. Yet persuasion and iteration currently play little part in scholarly discussions of how the digital era impacts society, and more important, in public understandings of the nature of digitally-mediated social environments. [Extracted from the article]

Freud puts the verse of Virgil as an epigraph to his book on the interpretation of dreams. It is the exclamation of Juno who, after having tried in every way to defeat Aeneas, witnesses his landing on the coast of Lazio and the birth of Rome. She cannot give a reason for her defeat and then:she sought the earth: and summoned Allecto, the grief-bringer, from the house of the Fatal Furies, from the infernal shadows: in whose mind are sad wars, angers and deceits, and guilty crimes (VII, 323–325)(The Italian version of the Aeneid by Vittorio Sermonti, Rizzoli, 2007). In the transforming world of cyber space, we ask whether we can bring into interplay our conscious and unconscious parts to dream and interpret the world of digital sociality and of seemingly total knowledge. We further ask whether we can build upon our deeply rooted mechanisms of resistance and rebellion to cultivate the growth of social and individual awareness of the danger of social fragmentation arising from the utopian fantasies of individualism and mobility, and thus confront the dilemmas of surveillance capitalism and autocratic automaton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms like Facebook offer marginalized individuals an appealing opportunity: to connect with others like them on a global scale. Transgender and nonbinary individuals, for example, can join 'support groups'. However, these individuals also risk being 'outed' or targeted with hate-speech on a platform that offers visibility and connection. Excellent scholarship has critiqued the ways platforms perpetuate inequalities. However, few have examined the labor of human administrators who build support groups for gender identity minorities, despite these inequalities. This article asks how admin labor processes, both tangible and emotional, expose the cost of constructing a community on Facebook. Using a queer studies lens, it explores how administrators construct felt-belonging, sustain support, and defend members from being outed or targeted. Vetting new members and moderating group content act as repetitive labor processes which reiterate shared cultural ideologies of the community. This research finds something paradoxical: the feeling of disappointment fuels administrators' commitment to continue difficult emotional labor. Paying attention to labor, especially emotional labor, reveals new tools for theorizing digital subjects and digitally-mediated social life. These tools refocus scholarly attention on why users turn to digital spaces and the human cost of sustaining community processes online. The case of gender identity support groups reveal that emotion, particularly disappointment, serves as an important lens with which to critique the sort of community digital contexts can offer "Normative conventions and our own creative repetitions are there along the way to help quell the panic we might feel at the prospect of becoming exhausted or dead before we can make sense of ourselves."-Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (2011) p.125. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of AI-powered social media platforms on young minds. It highlights two examples of children who can only eat in peace if they are watching specific digital content. The authors express concern about the sensory overload and potential negative effects on mental development, self-worth, and social connections. They call for envisioning a society where smart technologies promote lifelong learning and neurodiversity, and where traditional human experiences are valued. The article emphasizes the need for further research and a conversation between technology and society to address these concerns. [Extracted from the article]

In the contemporary digital age, recommender systems (RSs) play a fundamental role in managing information on online platforms: from social media to e-commerce, from travels to cultural consumptions, automated recommendations influence the everyday choices of users at an unprecedented scale. RSs are trained on users' data to make targeted suggestions to individuals according to their expected preference, but their ultimate impact concerns all the multiple stakeholders involved in the recommendation process. Therefore, whilst RSs are useful to reduce information overload, their deployment comes with significant ethical challenges, which are still largely unaddressed because of proprietary constraints and regulatory gaps that limit the effects of standard approaches to explainability and transparency. In this context, I address the ethical and social implications of automated recommendations by proposing a pro-ethical design framework aimed at reorienting the influence of RSs towards societal interest. In particular, after highlighting the problem of explanation for RSs, I discuss the application of beneficent informational nudging to the case of conversational recommender systems (CRSs), which rely on user-system dialogic interactions. Subsequently, through a comparison with standard recommendations, I outline the incentives for platforms and providers in adopting this approach and its benefits for both individual users and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social machines are systems formed by material and human elements interacting in a structured way. The use of digital platforms as mediators allows large numbers of humans to participate in such machines, which have interconnected AI and human components operating as a single system capable of highly sophisticated behaviour. Under certain conditions, such systems can be understood as autonomous goal-driven agents. Many popular online platforms can be regarded as instances of this class of agent. We argue that autonomous social machines provide a new paradigm for the design of intelligent systems, marking a new phase in AI. After describing the characteristics of goal-driven social machines, we discuss the consequences of their adoption, for the practice of artificial intelligence as well as for its regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments with recognizing sensitive data in email message corpora have demonstrated the importance of context in such models. The temptation to use AI to perpetuate an obsolete principle Faced with the reality of the uncontrollable flow of born-digital records, archivists have pinned their hopes on AI-powered appraisal. It is high time we started developing humanity's long-term digital memory. [Extracted from the article]

The organizational theory literature is reasonably unanimous that team autonomy is a key factor for employee well-being and motivation as well as organizational performance. However, team autonomy is challenged when its processes and outputs need to be aligned with actors and factors external to a team. There are likely challenges and conflicts between team autonomy and the need for coherence in the wider system. Team autonomy has a range of implications and is challenged by a number of factors, such as knowledge complexity and decision-making, learning, large-scale problems, product and technical interdependencies, the use of platforms, virtual collaboration and diversity. Alignment with the external is particularly necessary in multi-team environments with many technical interdependencies, where a single team's failure to deliver a sufficient level of quality may lead to system-wide consequences. Therefore, teams in complex environments increasingly need to regulate and manage their work in cooperation with internal and external partners and systems. Such dependencies challenge team autonomy. In this special issue of AI&S, we want to address these topics in more detail, particularly in the context of software-intensive organizations and digital transformations. The scope and, thus, the consequences of a team's work can be far-reaching when the team's effort and output take place partially or completely in fully digitized contexts and processes. The articles in this special issue show various ways of dealing with the challenge of balancing autonomy and alignment with the external. A key focus is to show the buffering function: how teams, with the help of processes, technology, new organizational forms and time and space are able to find the buffer needed for maintaining team autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'AI & Law' research has been around since the 1970s, even though with shifting emphasis. This is an overview of the contributions of digital technologies, both artificial intelligence and non-AI smart tools, to both the legal professions and the police. For example, we briefly consider text mining and case-automated summarization, tools supporting argumentation, tools concerning sentencing based on the technique of case-based reasoning, the role of abductive reasoning, research into applying AI to legal evidence, tools for fighting crime and tools for identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appropriation of digital artefacts involves their use, which has changed, evolved or developed beyond their original design. Thus, to understand appropriation, we must understand use. We define use as the active, purposive exploitation of the affordances offered by the technology and from this perspective; appropriation emerges as a natural consequence of this enactive use. Enaction tells us that perception is an active process. It is something we do, and not something that happens to us. From this reading, use then becomes the active exploitation of the affordances offered us by the artefact, system or service. In turn, we define appropriation as the engagement with these actively disclosed affordances-disclosed as a consequence of, not just, seeing but of seeing as. We present a small case study that highlights instances of perception as an actively engaged skill. We conclude that appropriation is a simple consequence of enactive perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engagement is important to the success of applications, systems and artefacts as diverse as robotics, pedagogy, games, interactive installations, and virtual reality applications. Yet engagement has proved to be remarkably difficult to define as it can take many forms, so many that it is difficult to isolate what these different instantiations have in common. Instead of pursuing an empirical perspective, the human side of engagement, namely, involvement is considered from a broadly Heideggerian perspective. As Heidegger has a deserved reputation for philosophical obscurity, all of the concepts adopted from his work are mapped onto the more familiar languages and vocabularies of psychology, human-computer interaction and cognitive science. It is argued that technology is engaging and our response to it is to be involved (with it). This resulting involvement- engagement dyad is thus an explicitly holistic account recognising roles for affordance, purpose, identity, affect and embodiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]