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Questo articolo presenta il paesaggio come l'interfaccia continua tra la forma fisica della città e l'uso sempre crescente di dispositivi digitali e delle loro potenzialità. Indaga gli atteggiamenti contemporanei verso gli spazi pubblici digitali, come ad esempio le facciate tradizionali multimediali, installazioni d'arte interattive e le applicazioni mobili. I paesaggi permeati dai media potrebbero, se gestiti correttamente, restituire la paternità della gestione dello spazio pubblico all’autorità del singolo cittadino sottraendolo al controllo dei soggetti privati.

Heeding calls to generate a creative synthesis between business history and organisation studies, this article analyses the emergence, institutionalisation and digitalisation of record pooling practices through the lens of institutional work. By developing an ‘analytically structured history’, this article contributes to the field of business history by demonstrating the value of practice and boundary work as organising categories. Practice and boundary work capture the continuous, recursive relations between structure and agency when constructing narrative explanations. It also contributes to neo-institutionalist history by demonstrating the embeddedness of institutional work - the everyday motivations and actions to revise practices and boundaries are shown to be intimately shaped by the conditions and affordances of historically-situated technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 pandemic experiences have globally accelerated technology use in higher education, including in developing countries like South Africa. The advancements and use of technology during the COVID-19 lockdown led to increased access to knowledge relevant to educational, professional, and personal development. Nonetheless, difficulties with incorporating technology into teaching and learning remain in teacher education, and there are no real-world examples explaining solutions adapted to reflect South African post-pandemic teacher education. This research, conducted at a public university issues, high levels of plagiarism, and load shedding as challenges faced by pre-service teachers and teacher educators in post-pandemic teacher education. The results highlight the need in South Africa, aimed to understand and exemplify technology adaptations and challenges in post-pandemic teacher education through Vygotsky's social constructivist worldview. Data collected through observation and a focus-group interview session with participants in the Faculty of Education at a university in South Africa revealed technology incompatibility, ad-hoc solutions to socio-economic for continuous, interactive, and practically focused interactions between educators and policymakers, educators and educators, and educators and pre-service teachers to minimize or eradicate obstacles related to technology integration in post-pandemic teacher education programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the "sensor work" carried out in the development of autonomous vehicles which, without sensor data, would not and arguably still do not, have the capacity to decide on where, and how, to drive. I begin by discussing three aspects of sensor technologies considered to be the foundation for sensor work being carried out in autonomous vehicle settings, namely the distribution, processing, and sourcing of sensor technologies and sensor data. The article considers how that much of this sensor work aids not only the operation of autonomous vehicles but also their necessary "interoperation." In studying four specific sensing methods from an operational perspective, I consider how the interoperation between sensing devices and subsequent algorithmic, object-recognition, and motion planning procedures is fundamental to the development of autonomous vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Increasing computational power and improving deep learning methods have made computer vision technologies pervasively common in urban environments. Their applications in policing, traffic management, and documenting public spaces are increasingly common (Ridgeway 2018, Coifman et al. 1998, Sun et al. 2020). Despite the often-discussed biases in the algorithms' training and unequally borne benefits (Khosla et al. 2012), almost all applications similarly reduce urban experiences to simplistic, reductive, and mechanistic measures. There is a lack of context, depth, and specificity in these practices that enables semantic knowledge or analysis within urban contexts, especially within the context of using and occupying urban space. This paper will critique existing uses of artificial intelligence and computer vision in urban practices to propose a new framework for understanding people, action, and public space. This paper revisits Geertz's (1973) use of thick descriptions in generating interpretive theories of culture and activity and uses this lens to establish a framework to approach evaluating the varied uses of computer vision technologies that weigh meaning. By discussing cases of implemented examples of urban computer vision—from LinkNYC and Numina's urban measurements to the Detroit Police's use of DataWorks Plus's facial recognition technology—it proposes a framework for evaluating the thickness of the algorithm's conclusions against the computational method's complexity required to produce that outcome. Further, we discuss how the framework's positioning may differ (and conflict) between different users of the technology, from engineer to urban planner and policymaker, to citizen. This paper also discusses how the current use and training of deep learning algorithms and how this process limits semantic learning and proposes three potential methodologies toward gaining a more contextually specific, urban-semantic, description of urban space relevant to urbanists. This paper contributes to the critical conversations regarding the proliferation of artificial intelligence by challenging the current applications of these technologies in the urban environment by highlighting their failures within this context while also proposing an evolution of these algorithms that may ultimately make them sensitive and useful within this spatial and cultural milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Artnodes is the property of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Colombia, rural youth face multiple challenges and social gaps, so the main option is to leave rural areas and migrate to urban environments in search of better living conditions. Instigating collective processes that enhance prospects for rural permanence is crucial. The research gap that we face in this article is the limitation of research in knowledge co-creation dynamics based on the Citizen-Labs framework in rural environments located in the Global South. This article presents the systematisation of a LabCampesino, a space aimed at collaborative creating innovations for territorial management and alternatives to development from the rural youth in the Colombian countryside, as a new theoretical and methodological framework to examine knowledge generation. By applying a case study approach, this article explores the axes of agroecology, co-creation, and community organisation from a transdisciplinary and participatory action research lens. For this, sessions on exploration, experimentation, and prototyping were created in the province of Sumapaz, which led to learning around technologies and knowledge dialogue practices for the protection and reconstruction of peasant territories. The results demonstrate that the young participants can build, document and disseminate innovations at the community level related to situated technologies, processes and reflections on local socio-ecological processes. Thus, rural laboratories make possible practical, experimental, and situated rural education as a communal innovation experience in the territory, hand in hand with agroecological dynamics and political and social organisation, becoming places of articulation and advocacy for territorial actors and interests that seek a transformation of rurality.

This contribution deals with the impact of digitisation on what it means to educate and to be educated, especially in the wake of the massive switch to on-screen learning during the COVID-19 crisis. It is argued that we can only adequately relate to this phenomenon if it is based on a strong pedagogical and technocentric account of (school) education. Drawing from authors such as Arendt, Lahire, Stiegler and Serres, the argument is made that four basic pedagogical operations (sharing love for the world, showing newcomers that there is a common world, drawing attention to things that matter, creating the student experience and sense of belonging within a new generation) is under considerable threat. At least, this is the case if we don't try to conceive of new digital technologies in a pedagogically meaningful manner, instead of unreflectively relying on existing conferencing technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociedade e Estado is the property of Sociedade e Estado and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, lawsuits alleging the misclassification of workers as “independent contractors” rather than “employees” have become widespread in the United States. Determining employee status is important because such status is a gateway to many substantive legal rights. In response, some commentators have proposed an in-between hybrid category just for the gig economy. However, such an intermediate category is not new. In fact, it has existed in many countries for decades, producing successful results in some and misadventure in others. We use a comparative approach to analyze the experiences of Canada, Italy, and Spain with the intermediate category. In Italy, the quasi-subordinate category created an opportunity for arbitrage that resulted in less worker protection. The end result was confusion, and since 2015, the third category’s use has been extremely limited. Spain’s third category, the TRADE, was only made available to a small percentage of self-employed workers because of the burdensome nature of its regulations and the high dependency threshold required for inclusion. As for Canada, the practical result of the “dependent contractor” category was to expand the definition of employee and to bring more workers under the ambit of labor law protection. We ultimately conclude that workable proposals for a third category must also encompass other forms of precarious employment. Working within the existing framework, one solution would be to change the default presumptions regarding the two categories that already exist. Above a minimum threshold of hours worked or income earned, the default rule would be an employment relationship for most gig workers except those that may fit into a “safe harbor” for de minimis amateurs or volunteers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an empirical study that investigates crowdsourcing performance in a situated market. Unlike online markets, situated crowdsourcing markets consist of workers who become serendipitously available for work in a particular location and context. So far, the literature has lacked a systematic study of task performance and uptake in such markets under varying incentives. In a 3-week field study, we demonstrate that in a situated crowdsourcing market, task uptake and accuracy are generally comparable with online markets.We also show that increasing task rewards in situated crowdsourcing leads to increased task uptake but not accuracy, while decreasing task rewards leads to decreases in both task uptake and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arte y Políticas de Identidad is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

One of the enduring problems of researching and designing digital technologies for the home is that both media technologies and uses tend to be dispersed spatially and temporally throughout the environment and routines of home. This raises a number of methodologically challenging issues: how digital media technologies are situated amongst other technologies; how materialities and textures shape the experience of home; the ways in which practices of media use are entangled with the other activities and practices that are part of the routines of home; and how digital media content and communications create part of a wider ecology of communication and interaction in home environments. In this article, we outline a methodological and practical response to these questions and describe its application through the development of tailored interdisciplinary research methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of energy in building communities and to what extent are communities invested in particular energy practices? The hypothesis of this paper is that energy is embedded in the everyday life of urban communities in multiple ways. The assemblage of shared understandings within the community and the material elements that mediate the provision of energy and its use constitute an urban energy landscape. While this energy landscape is embedded in wider political economies, communities also shape it both through discursive and material engagements with energy. This hypothesis is examined with reference to an urban energy landscape in the neighbourhood Chamanculo C, in Maputo, Mozambique. For this study, we conducted a participatory mapping workshop in which a representative group of local residents discussed the use of energy and mapped different elements of the energy system in their neighbourhood using walking as a research tool. The case study reveals multiple understandings of energy in the community and how energy is embedded in different forms of living and in livelihoods. The community shares a complex energy landscape in which multiple fuels and forms of energy co-exist. These findings question current energy policies for urban development focused exclusively on the extension of the electricity network and street lighting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leading-edge creation and development of technologies including those for the children with special learning needs found common place in the educational system. Allowably, this study's focal point engages in the integration of technologies in the educational environments where students with special learning needs are housed. Respondents include 53 teachers employed in the special education schools in Baguio City, who were to determine the availability and effectiveness of technology in their schools and the problems encountered in the integration of technologies. Results indicate that availability and effectiveness of technologies are at limited level and that there are problems encountered in technology integration. This is significant for the achievement of the aim of students with special learning needs for they would be guided appropriately in the development of their skills with the challenges of educational attainment and life itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health information technology can save lives, cut costs, and expand access to care. But its full promise will only be realized if policymakers broker a "grand bargain" between providers, patients, and administrative agencies. In exchange for subsidizing systems designed to protect intellectual property and secure personally identifiable information, health regulators should have full access to key data those systems collect. Successful data-mining programs at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ("CMS") provide one model. By requiring standardized collection of billing data and hiring private contractors to analyze it, CMS pioneered innovative techniques for punishing fraud. Now it must move beyond deterring illegal conduct and move toward data-driven promotion of best practices. With this aim in mind, CMS is already subsidizing technology, but more than money is needed to optimize the collection, analysis, and use of data. Policymakers need to navigate intellectual property and privacy rights skillfully. They must condition current (and future) government support for providers and insurers on better collection and dissemination of health information. If they succeed, the law of health information might better incorporate public values than information law generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview is presented with research & development expert John Seely Brown, Chief Scientist at the Xerox Corporation. He discusses his work with the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), describes the role of innovation in creating new technology industries, and explores the connections between technological innovation and social systems.

How do technologies such as webcams influence health care and what concepts may describe this? This article explores the literature and analyses what people looking through webcams do within a particular health care practice in the Netherlands, that is, within the rehabilitation of people suffering from severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma. Several ways to describe the activities webcams support and perform are identified. The webcam is (1) concentrating the activities of its users, by making them focus on the task at hand and (2) magnifies the characteristics of the already existing relationships between webcam users by imposing a relational distance that fits best with intimate contacts. (3) Although webcams shift notions of space and distance, their working appears to be related, to a great extent, to their location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the ideals of the Society for the History of Technology in the U.S. Influence of the Cold War ideology on technology; Impact of the participation of women; Examples of research conducted by the organization.

Despite the fact that policy makers and governments are promoting the development of diverse agro-bio food systems to push and promote sustainability, they are challenging to implement because of a series of obstacles that hinder a successful transition from a conventional to an agro-ecological model of agriculture. Produce is extremely heterogeneous and agricultural technology is often not standard, rather alternative, and knowledge is contextual, tacit and place-specific. However, information about the characteristics of these systems is still sparse and difficult to analyse because of the complexity and multidimensionality. As a result, the aim of this paper is to review the existing literature in order to identify a coding system that allows for the creation of a meta-database of case studies on agroecological transitions. This coding system will be piloted in six case studies dealing with agrobiodiversity along cereal food systems producing grains, bread and pasta in France, Italy and the UK. In this analysis, we found that both the transition towards sustainable agriculture and the reduction of transaction costs require social innovation, which benefits from strong social capital. In the conclusions, we discuss the efficacy of the proposed coding scheme and its ability to capture in-depth information contained in similar case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are now at least 80–90 proposed alternatives to the term "the Anthropocene", following critique mainly from the social sciences. The most popular seem to be Moore's Capitalocene and Haraway's Chthulucene, but there are others, such as: Hornborg's Technocene, Mann's Homogenocene, Wilson's Eremocene, Stiegler's neganthropocene, Parikka's Anthrobscene... Furthermore, similar recognitions and critiques have been made in urban studies (Urban Age, Planetary Urbanization...). What should we make of this multiplicity? Those propositions are approached here from the philosophical and cultural studies perspectives, in the spirit of Galison's trading zones and Bal's travelling concepts. They are treated with engaged pluralism (introduced through geography and urban studies) and, because of their eschatological dimension, with (secular) negative theology. The Urbanocene is also outlined using Nowak's ontological imagination. None of the propositions are sufficient on their own. Most contribute to a better understanding of the Anthropocene. Those concerning the role of cities and urbanization (Astycene, Urbanocene, Urbicene, Metropocene) are insufficient. This entails that there is a need for an Urbanocene proposition to be formulated. This proposition draft is briefly outlined here by linking an example of exceeded planetary boundaries (levels of phosphorus and nitrogen) with urbanization, drawing on the works of Mumford and Gandy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]