The article considers the features of ensuring the economic security of enterprises in the conditions of intensive introduction of information technologies in their activities in the process of forming the digital economy. It is determined that digitalization creates important advantages for enterprises in terms of implementing a long-term strategy for their development, strengthening economic security, and achieving significant competitive advantages in doing business. It is studied that the system of economic security of the enterprise is an organized set (...) of elements of the management infrastructure of the enterprise, which are focused on ensuring stable and effective development of the business entity, neutralization, and elimination of internal and external threats. (shrink)

Information and communication technology has become the great technological fix of our time and not the least in the education system. There seems to be no end to the hype of ICT and the accompanying promises that education will be revolutionized—“smart” pupils will be made and the so-called knowledge society propelled. This master narrative has many co-authors, some of whom have the best intentions and realize the big challenge of educating the world population. In response to the (...) two insightful reviews of my article, I want to question this master narrative further and in doing so make clear where I agree and disagree with the reviewers. (shrink)

Despite the great expansion and many benefits of information and communication technologies in healthcare, the attitudes of Polish general practitioners to e-health have not been explored. The aim of this study was to determine the GPs’ perception of ICT use in healthcare and to identify barriers to the adoption of EMR in the Podlaskie Voivodeship. Online and telephone surveys were conducted between April and May 2013. Responses from 103 GP practices, 43% of all practices in the region, were (...) analysed. The results showed that 67% of the respondents agreed that IT systems improve quality of healthcare services. In the GP group who declared at least partial EMR implementation, 71.4% see the positive impact of IT on practice staff processes and 66.1% on personal working processes. In this group, more than three-quarters of GPs did not see any positive impact of ICT on the average number of patients treated per day, number of patients within the practice or scope of services. The four most common barriers to EMR implementation were: lack of funds, risk of a malfunction in the system, resistance to change, and lack of training and proper information. Although the use of ICT by Polish GPs is limited, their attitude to e-health is generally positive or neutral and resembles the overall pattern in Europe. Barriers identified by GPs need to be taken into account to ensure the effective implementation of e-health across the country. (shrink)

Socio-cultural reality of the present time is marked by quite significant events. First, the active penetration into society of the latest information and communication technologies, which arose as a result of the rapid development of electronics. And secondly, the formation and spread of a special type of worldview under the general name of "postmodernism". It is the need for a philosophical understanding of these two events and determined the main idea of this article. The article also shows the (...) role of information technology in the transformation of the cultural reality of postmodernism. Also the main directions of application of information systems and innovative technologies in the field of education and science in general, and at studying of disciplines of a natural cycle in particular are covered. Peculiarities of studying natural sciences by students are revealed, didactic potential of ICT and its realization in the process of studying natural disciplines is considered, methodical analysis of the problem of application of information technologies in natural education is carried out. The principle of integration, multimedia clarity, interactive interaction of participants of educational process at application of new information technologies at studying of natural disciplines is allocated. It is determined that ICT in the teaching of natural sciences can intensify the educational process, accelerate the transfer of knowledge and experience, as well as improve the quality of teaching and education. (shrink)

The construction of a secure and safe society using information and communication technology is recognised as an urgent issue in Japan. This recognition is based on public fear about crime related to manufactured risk caused by modernisation or industrial civilisation. This fear has created a social atmosphere that has led to the rapid development and implementation of security systems using ICT, such as security cameras, smart IC cards and mobile phones, to establish security and safety in Japanese society. (...) However, the never-ending quest for social security and safety with ICT will inevitably cause further manufactured risk, which could lead to serious problems in the future. We have to recognise such risk and control it appropriately. (shrink)

This contribution deals with taking up the challenge of sustainable development through human centred systems which aim at the creation and repatriation of global quality in each society, and which are seen to operate as a whole, on a local, regional or even a planetary scale. The paper argues that, particularly in a field such as information, communication, environment, technological processes and innovations, which have structurally revolutionised first of all manufacturing but also education and daily living at the (...) same time. However, producing new pathogenous structures require, by necessity, a political ecology in order to relate these fields to new figures of meditation/mediance and crossbreeding built up by associative networks. PRELUDE'S experience, as an international networking programme of scientists pursuing with other social factors objectives of codevelopments (in response to the failure of bad development in the North and in the South), and its contribution to the theme Global Perspective 2010 of the CE-FAST Programme suggest the actual relevance and, turning to the future, the decisive function of associative networks as a way of approaching more efficiently, because of their flexibility, complex, highly heterogeneous situations to be tackled in a systemic and global fashion. In complementing institutions and established companies these networks give their new performances and efficacity to institute, and so doing displace acquired balances, and increase their capacity to innovate. (shrink)

This article examines the fairness of business competition in the field of information and communication technologies. In the era of "postcontemporary society" economy, the dominant factor of development is the use of information. The share of business in the field of information and communication technologies in the economy is constantly growing. For businesses, its integration into the Internet, which has become an important market for the sale and promotion of goods and services, is becoming increasingly (...) important. Various digital innovations, social networks, mobile applications, information and communication technologies have become commonplace in today's society, which affects the need to study their impact on business. Technology transfer is the basis of innovative activities of small businesses and a means of their sustainable development, a guarantee of profit and social impact. It is noted that in order to win in the competition, personal brand and trademarks, strategic management and balanced business plans are of special importance. A characteristic feature of leading high-tech companies is the use of digital platforms through which they provide their services. Digital platforms are used for interaction in social networks, use of search and payment systems, exchange of information materials. The need for high start-up costs leads to the difficulty of entering this market and the concentration of large amounts of data in the hands of a small number of players, which carries the threat of monopolization in the market of digital platforms. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of teaching Russian speaking. Chinese students of philology at the pre-university stage of preparation. The author approaches the solution of the problem through practice-oriented learning using information and communication technologies. The article discusses the possibilities of interactive exercises for teaching speaking, implemented on the basis of information and communication technologies, presents examples of exercises and ways of working with them. The author analyzes the motivational preferences of students for tasks in (...) an interactive mode, examines the influence of using an interactive electronic system of exercises on the level of development of students' speaking skills. (shrink)

More companies are understanding the benefits of designing work to enhance, rather than minimise, the contributions of their employees within human-centred systems. To do this, they require their supportive subsystems (such as training, job, and team design, performance measurement and information) to provide people with the ability, motivation and opportunity to become increasingly involved. Opportunity for involvement will require different communication interfaces, providing data and background information both personally and at the work site or process. In the (...) past few years, the media available for visualisation and communication have become much more numerous and have much greater capabilities. This paper examines the information requirements of certain features of modern manufacturing enterprises—local control, skills, knowledge and training, function allocation and team communications. It then assesses the utility of three broad types of information display—Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), Multimedia/Closed-circuit Television (CCTV) and Virtual Environments (VEs)—for shopfloor systems. (shrink)

Discovering the meaning of novel communicative cues is challenging and amounts to navigating an unbounded hypothesis space. Several theories posit that this problem can be simplified by relying on positive expectations about the cognitive utility of communicated information. These theories imply that learners should assume that novel communicative cues tend to have low processing costs and high cognitive benefits. We tested this hypothesis in three studies in which toddlers (N = 90) searched for a reward hidden in one of (...) several containers. In all studies, an adult communicated the reward's location with an unfamiliar and ambiguous cue. We manipulated the processing costs (operationalized as inferential chain length) and cognitive benefits (operationalized as informativeness) of the possible interpretations of the cues. Toddlers processing of novel communicative cues were guided by expectations of low processing costs (Study 1) and high cognitive benefits (Studies 2 and 3). More specifically, toddlers treated novel cues as if they were easy to process, informative, and accurate, even when provided with repeated evidence to the contrary. These results indicate that, from toddlerhood onward, expectations of cognitive utility shape the processing of novel communicative cues. These data also reveal that toddlers, who are in the process of learning the language and communicative conventions of people around them, exert a pressure favoring cognitive efficiency in communicative systems. (shrink)

We present a framework for verifying systems composed of heterogeneous reasoning agents, in which each agent may have differing knowledge and inferential capabilities, and where the resources each agent is prepared to commit to a goal (time, memory and communication bandwidth) are bounded. The framework allows us to investigate, for example, whether a goal can be achieved if a particular agent, perhaps possessing key information or inferential capabilities, is unable (or unwilling) to contribute more than a given portion (...) of its available computational resources or bandwidth to the problem. We present a novel temporal epistemic logic, BMCL-CTL , which allows us to describe a set of reasoning agents with bounds on time, memory and the number of messages they can exchange. The bounds on memory and communication are expressed as axioms in the logic. As an example, we show how to axiomatise a system of agents which reason using resolution and prove that the resulting logic is sound and complete. We then show how to encode a simple system of reasoning agents specified in BMCL-CTL in the description language of the Mocha model checker (Alur et al., Proceedings of the tenth international conference on computer-aided verification (CAV) , 1998), and verify that the agents can achieve a goal only if they are prepared to commit certain time, memory and communication resources. (shrink)

This book develops a view of logic as a theory of information-driven agency and intelligent interaction between many agents - with conversation, argumentation and games as guiding examples. It provides one uniform account of dynamic logics for acts of inference, observation, questions and communication, that can handle both update of knowledge and revision of beliefs. It then extends the dynamic style of analysis to include changing preferences and goals, temporal processes, group action and strategic interaction in games. Throughout, (...) the book develops a mathematical theory unifying all these systems, and positioning them at the interface of logic, philosophy, computer science and game theory. A series of further chapters explores repercussions of the 'dynamic stance' for these areas, as well as cognitive science. (shrink)

Amartya Sen’s capability approach has become increasingly popular in development studies. This paper identifies controllability and operationalisability as two key stumbling blocks which prevent the capability approach from being used even more widely in development practice. It discusses the origins and application of the Choice Framework, a conceptual tool designed to help operationalise the approach. The framework can be used to deconstruct embedded ideologies and analyse the appropriateness of development goals, to map development as a systemic process, and to plan (...) interventions which can result in increased freedom of choice for people. Three examples of the application of the Choice Framework in the field of information and communication for development (ICT4D) are given. The three technologies which are examined, telecentres (Infocentros), Chilecompra and Fair Tracing, can be placed at different places of a determinism continuum, some reducing the spectrum of choices a user has. The paper argues that while frameworks such as the Choice Framework can be developed further to increase the operationalisability of the capability approach, it is up to development funders to accept the fact that people’s choices are never fully predictable and thus Sen’s ‘development as freedom’ will inevitably be a dynamic and open-ended process. (shrink)

Shanker & King (S&K) trumpet the adoption of a “new paradigm” in communication studies, exemplified by ape language research. Though cautiously sympathetic, I maintain that their argument relies on a false dichotomy between “information” and “dynamical systems” theory, and that the resulting confusion prevents them from recognizing the main chance their line of thinking suggests.

How do communities establish shared communication systems? The Common Knowledge view assumes that symbolic conventions develop through the accumulation of common knowledge regarding communication practices among the members of a community. In contrast with this view, it is proposed that coordinated communication emerges a by‐product of local interactions among dyads. A set of multi‐agent computer simulations show that a population of “egocentric” agents can establish and maintain symbolic conventions without common knowledge. In the simulations, convergence to a (...) single conventional system was most likely and most efficient when agents updated their behavior on the basis of local rather than global, system‐level information. The massive feedback and parallelism present in the simulations gave rise to phenomena that are often assumed to result from complex strategic processing on the part of individual agents. The implications of these findings for the development of theories of language use are discussed. (shrink)

The development of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system has generated new possibilities for the use of gene drive constructs to reduce or suppress mosquito populations to levels that do not support disease transmission. Despite this prospect, social resistance to genetically modified organisms remains high. Gene drive open field research thus raises important questions regarding what is owed to those who may not consent to such research, or those could be affected by the proposed research, but whose consent is not (...) solicited. The precise circumstances under which informed consent must be obtained, and from whom, requires careful consideration. Furthermore, appropriate engagement processes should be central to any introduction of genetically modified mosquitos in proposed target settings. In this work, international guidance documents on informed consent and engagement are reviewed and applied to the genetically modified mosquito research context. Five analogous research endeavours that involve area-wide / open field experiments are reviewed. The approach of each in respect to the solicitation of individual informed consent and community engagement are highlighted. While the solicitation of individual informed consent in host settings of gene drive field trials may not be possible or feasible in some instances, local community and stakeholder engagement will be key to building trust towards the proposed conduct of such research. In this regard, the approaches taken by investigators and sponsors of political science field research and weather modification field research should be avoided. Rather, proponents of gene drive field research should look to the Eliminate Dengue field trials, cluster randomised trials, and pragmatic clinical trials for guidance regarding how the solicitation of individual informed consent of host communities ought to be managed, and how these communities ought to be engaged. (shrink)

The development of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system has generated new possibilities for the use of gene drive constructs to reduce or suppress mosquito populations to levels that do not support disease transmission. Despite this prospect, social resistance to genetically modified organisms remains high. Gene drive open field research thus raises important questions regarding what is owed to those who may not consent to such research, or those could be affected by the proposed research, but whose consent is not (...) solicited. The precise circumstances under which informed consent must be obtained, and from whom, requires careful consideration. Furthermore, appropriate engagement processes should be central to any introduction of genetically modified mosquitos in proposed target settings. In this work, international guidance documents on informed consent and engagement are reviewed and applied to the genetically modified mosquito research context. Five analogous research endeavours that involve area-wide / open field experiments are reviewed. The approach of each in respect to the solicitation of individual informed consent and community engagement are highlighted. While the solicitation of individual informed consent in host settings of gene drive field trials may not be possible or feasible in some instances, local community and stakeholder engagement will be key to building trust towards the proposed conduct of such research. In this regard, the approaches taken by investigators and sponsors of political science field research and weather modification field research should be avoided. Rather, proponents of gene drive field research should look to the Eliminate Dengue field trials, cluster randomised trials, and pragmatic clinical trials for guidance regarding how the solicitation of individual informed consent of host communities ought to be managed, and how these communities ought to be engaged. (shrink)

Individuals of some animal species have been taught simple versions of human language despite their natural communication systems failing to rise to the level of a simple language. How is it, then, that some animals can master a version of language, yet none of them deploy this capacity in their own communication system? I first examine the key design features that are often used to evaluate language-like properties of natural animal communication systems. I then consider one (...) candidate animal system, bird song, because it has several of the key design features or their precursors, including social learning and cultural transmission of their vocal signals. I conclude that although bird song communication is nuanced and complex, and has the acoustic potential for productivity, it is not productive – it cannot be used to say many different things. Finally, I discuss the debate over whether animal communication should be viewed as a cooperative information transmission process, as we typically view human language, or as a competitive process where signaler and receiver vie for control. The debate points to a necessary condition for the evolution of a simple language that has generally been overlooked: the degree of to which the interests of the signaler and receiver align. While strong cognitive and signal production mechanisms are necessary pre-adaptations for a simple language, they are not sufficient. Also necessary is the existence of identical or near-identical interests of signaler and receiver and a socio-ecology that requires high-level cooperation across a range of contexts. In the case of our hominid ancestors, these contexts included hunting, gathering, child care and, perhaps, warfare. I argue that the key condition for the evolution of human language was the extreme interdependency that existed among unrelated individuals in the hunter-gatherer societies of our hominid ancestors. This extreme interdependency produced multiple prosocial adaptations for effective intragroup cooperation, which in partnership with advanced cognitive abilities, set the stage for the evolution of language. (shrink)

This essay examines the contemporary approaches to systems theory, the strengths and limitations of these approaches, and how communication researchers can apply them creatively. It points out that using system approaches requires communication scholars to study the mutual interaction of both information inputs and matter/energy inputs. Overloads of these inputs coupled with storage problems could engender positive feedback loops and move the system away from the linear region of stability toward the edge of chaos. It (...) could then self-organize as a more complex system in a new phase space of its trajectory. This complexity approach could be used to trace the trajectory of the global mass communication system or to conduct empirical research on all or any of the information-processing subsystems within the eight hierarchical levels of nested systems ranging from cell to supranational systems. Although systems thinking is writ large in the onto-cosmology of Eastern philosophies, its epistemological and methodological refinements did not occur until quantum physics challenged the ‘atomism’ of the dominant Newtonian-Cartesian model. (shrink)

Residual categories are those which cannot be formally represented within a given classification system. We examine the forms that residuality takes within our information systems today, and explore some silences which form around those inhabiting particular residual categories. We argue that there is significant ethical and political work to be done in exploring residuality.

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and (...) guided by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

Too often, advocates of domain-specific belief systems overlook the implications of their beliefs when choosing communications technologies and strategies, although they rarely overlook the importance of content. This essay argues that both environmentalism and sustainable agriculture, as systems of belief, favor certain strategies of generating and distributing information over others; that is, the essay argues that both the content and form of communications imply certain value preferences, hence both are subject to value-relevant choices. An additional purpose of the essay (...) is to set a context for this special edition of Agriculture and Human Values. Collectively the articles in this edition discuss a wide variety of issues, including but not limited to questions connected to information generation, access to information and information technologies, and the value systems conveyed by communications vehicles, including what is conveyed and different discussions of what should be conveyed. This essay looks at the importance of four sets of domain-specific value systems (environmentalism, sustainable agriculture, and the conventionalism counters to both of these) for two different sets of value systems connected to information generation, and further discusses each of these value sets in connection to choosing asymmetrical or symmetrical communications. It is hoped that this discussion of the flow of information, from generation to distribution, will provide a context for reading the edition as a whole. (shrink)

Les évolutions sociales et techniques qui affectent la communication aujourd'hui demandent un travail de pensée, pour étudier les enjeux de fond que soulève la communication sociale, qui ne doivent pas être confondus avec l'efficience des systèmes, mais renvoient aux relations entre les cultures et aux conditions de la démocratie. Dominique Wolton dessine des perspectives pour cette recherche.To understand the social and technical evolutions affecting communication today considerable thought is required for the study of the fundamental stakes of (...) social communication. This should not be confused with the efficiency of systems, linked with the relationship between cultures and the conditions required of democracy. Dominique Wolton suggests prospective approaches for this research. (shrink)

This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being tested by the (...) cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children’s acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF. This document, produced in May 2007, is a L ATEX version of Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, August 1989), with slightly.. (shrink)

With an aim to develop a public theology for an age of information media (or media theology), this article proposes a new God-concept: God is a communicative system sui generis that autopoietically processes meaning/information in the supratemporal realm via perfect divine media ad intra (Word/Spirit). For this task, Niklas Luhmann's systems theory is critically appropriated in dialogue with theology. First, my working postmetaphysical/epistemological stance is articulated as realistic operational constructivism and functionalism. Second, a series of arguments are (...) advanced to substantiate the thesis: (1) God is an observing system sui generis ; (2) self-referential communication is divine operation; (3) unsurpassable complexity is divine mystery; (4) supratemporal autopoiesis of meaning is divine processing; (5) agape is the symbolic medium of divine communication. Third, this communicative model of God is developed into a trinitarian theology, with a claim that this model offers a viable alternative beyond the standard (psychic, social, process) models. Finally, some implications of this model are explored for constructive theology (conceiving creation as divine mediatization) and for science-and-religion in terms of derivative models: (1) God as a living system sui generis and (2) God as a meaning system sui generis. (shrink)

Cyberspace relies on information technologies to mediate relations between different people, across different communication networks and is reliant on the supporting technology. These interactions typically occur without physical proximity and those working depending on cybersystems must be able to trust the overall human–technical systems that support cyberspace. As such, detailed discussion of cybersecurity policy would be improved by including trust as a key value to help guide policy discussions. Moreover, effective cybersystems must have resilience designed into them. This (...) paper argues that trustworthy cybersystems are a key element to resilient systems, and thus are core to cybersecurity policy. The paper highlights the importance of trustworthiness for resilient cybersystems. The importance of trustworthiness is shown through a discussion of three events where trustworthiness was the target or casualty of cyberattacks: Stuxnet, hacking of communications and the Edward Snowden revelations. The impact of losing trust is highlighted, to underpin the argument that a resilient cybersystem ought to design in trustworthiness. The paper closes off by presenting a general set of policy implications arising from recognition of the interplay between trust, trustworthiness and resilience for effective cybersecurity. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different (...) approaches to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

The surprising aspects of quantum information are due to two distinctly non-classical features of the quantum world: first, different quantum states need not be orthogonal and, second, quantum states may be entangled. Non-orthogonality leads to the blurring of classical distinctions. On the other hand, entanglement leads via non-locality to teleportation and other ``entanglement-assisted'' forms of communication that go beyond what is classically possible. In this article we attempt to understand these new possibilities via an analysis of the significance (...) of entanglement for the basic physical concepts of a ``particle'' and a ``localized physical system''. Classical particles can be individuated on the basis of qualitative differences in their sets of properties. But in entangled states the ``particle labels'' of the quantum formalism usually do not pick out such sets of individuating particle properties. It is sometimes nevertheless possible to think in terms of individual particles, which may be localized; but we argue that in general the structure of quantum mechanics is at odds with such a particle interpretation. This finally leads us to the conclusion that quantum mechanics is best seen as not belonging to the category of space-time theories, in which physical quantities are functions on space-time points. The resulting picture of the quantum world is relevant for our understanding of the way in which quantum theory is non-local, and it sheds light on the novel aspects of quantum information. (shrink)

The emergence of human communication systems is typically investigated via 2 approaches with complementary strengths and weaknesses: naturalistic studies and computer simulations. This study was conducted with a method that combines these approaches. Pairs of participants played video games requiring communication. Members of a pair were physically separated but exchanged graphic signals through a medium that prevented the use of standard symbols (e.g., letters). Communication systems emerged and developed rapidly during the games, integrating the use of explicit (...) signs with information implicitly available to players and silent behavior-coordinating procedures. The systems that emerged suggest 3 conclusions: (a) signs originate from different mappings; (b) sign systems develop parsimoniously; (c) sign forms are perceptually distinct, easy to produce, and tolerant to variations. (shrink)

Background Outbreaks of infectious disease cause serious and costly health and social problems. Two new technologies – pathogen whole genome sequencing and Big Data analytics – promise to improve our capacity to detect and control outbreaks earlier, saving lives and resources. However, routinely using these technologies to capture more detailed and specific personal information could be perceived as intrusive and a threat to privacy. Method Four community juries were convened in two demographically different Sydney municipalities and two regional cities (...) in New South Wales, Australia to elicit the views of well-informed community members on the acceptability and legitimacy of: making pathogen WGS and linked administrative data available for public health researchusing this information in concert with data linkage and machine learning to enhance communicable disease surveillance systems Fifty participants of diverse backgrounds, mixed genders and ages were recruited by random-digit-dialling and topic-blinded social-media advertising. Each jury was presented with balanced factual evidence supporting different expert perspectives on the potential benefits and costs of technologically enhanced public health research and communicable disease surveillance and given the opportunity to question experts. Results Almost all jurors supported data linkage and WGS on routinely collected patient isolates for the purposes of public health research, provided standard de-identification practices were applied. However, allowing this information to be operationalised as a syndromic surveillance system was highly contentious with three juries voting in favour, and one against by narrow margins. For those in favour, support depended on several conditions related to system oversight and security being met. Those against were concerned about loss of privacy and did not trust Australian governments to run secure and effective systems. Conclusions Participants across all four events strongly supported the introduction of data linkage and pathogenomics to public health research under current research governance structures. Combining pathogen WGS with event-based data surveillance systems, however, is likely to be controversial because of a lack of public trust, even when the potential public health benefits are clear. Any suggestion of private sector involvement or commercialisation of WGS or surveillance data was unanimously rejected. (shrink)

Purpose Privacy has been understood as about one’s own information, information that is not one’s own is not typically considered with regards to an individual’s privacy. This paper aims to draw attention to this issue for conceptualizing privacy when one’s privacy is breached by others’ information. Design/methodology/approach To illustrate the issue that others' information can breach one's own privacy, this paper uses real-world applications of forensic genealogy and recommender systems to motivate the discussion. Findings In both (...) forensic genealogy and recommender systems, the individual’s privacy is breached by information that is not one’s own. The information that breached one’s privacy, by its nature, is beyond the scope of an individual, which is a phenomenon that has already been captured by emerging discussions about group privacy. This paper further argues that the underlying issue reflected by the examples of forensic genealogy is an extreme case even under the consideration of group privacy. This is because, unlike recommender systems that rely on large amounts of data to make inferences about an individual, forensic genealogy exposes one’s identity by using only one other individual’s information. This paper echoes existing discussions that this peculiar situation where others’ information breaches one’s own privacy reveals the problematic nature of conceptualizing privacy relying only on individualistic assumptions. Moreover, this paper suggests a relational perspective as an alternative for theorizing privacy. Originality/value This situation that others’ information breached one’s own privacy calls for an updated understanding of not only privacy but also the relationship between the person and their information. Privacy scholars need to renew their ethical language and vocabularies to properly understand the issue, which recent privacy conceptualizations are already doing (e.g. group privacy). (shrink)

Social presence, or the subjective experience of being present with another existing person, varies with the interaction medium. In general, social presence research has mainly focused on uni-directional aspects of each exchanged message, not on bidirectional interactions. Our primary purpose is to introduce such bidirectional evaluation by quantifying the degree of social presence with a few statistical measures. To this end, we developed a software called “TypeTrace” that records all keystrokes of online chat interactants and reenacts their typing actions and (...) analyzed the results from different chat conditions, mainly focusing on the characterization of bi-directional interactions. We also compared the chat interaction patterns with the patterns from phone call datasets to investigate the difference of live communication in different media. The hypothesis of the experiment was that either richness or concurrency of communication is important for organizing social presence. Richness is defined by the variety of information at a time in communication and the concurrency is the number of temporal thread being processed at the same time. Our results show that when we merely increase the richness of information by presenting the typing process, the cognition of others' presence does not significantly increase. However, when the information concurrency is augmented by introducing the transmission of realtime text, we found that the transfer entropy between the interactants becomes considerably higher, and the social presence and emotional arousal, intimacy increased. High transfer entropy was also observed in the phone call dataset. This result shows that the mere augmentation of information richness does not necessarily lead to increased social presence, and concurrent communication is another critical factor for fostering vivid conversation in digital environments. (shrink)

Communication is a multichannel, multiunit process that works on different levels. It is sequential with specific information carriers on a cognitive accessible level, and dynamic for the regulation of relationships at the same time. One function of communication is the broadcasting of internal states that can be assessed by inferential communication.

Civil Protection and disaster risk specific agencies legally responsible to enhance individual and community resilience, still utilize in their risk and crisis communication efforts, the “deficit model” even though its basic assumption and approach have been criticized. Recent studies indicate that information seeking behavior is not necessarily a measure of enhanced individual preparedness. A qualitative change from “blindly” following directions to practicing emergency planning and becoming your own disaster risk manager is required. For pandemics, the challenge is even (...) more complicated due to their unique characteristics. Community based exercises, a framework concept encompassing a variety of interactive activities, have recently started being utilized to develop resilience amongst citizens. Existing models of resilience can pinpoint to the required knowledge, skills and attitude. Research in the factors influencing behavioral change could offer new understanding of the interplay between cognitive and demographic drivers/factors of resilience. Such knowledge could be utilized for setting targeted objectives, developing appropriate activities and the corresponding training for the CBEx facilitators. Despite the importance of preparation, the current covid-19 crisis indicates that high levels of adaptive resilience can be displayed even in the absence of any risk communication effort beforehand by utilizing a pre-existing collective understanding of the system situation. (shrink)

In the context of technology development and systems engineering, knowledge is typically treated as a complex information structure. In this view, knowledge can be stored in highly sophisticated data systems and processed by explicitly intelligent, software-based technologies. This paper argues that the current emphasis upon knowledge as information (or even data) is based upon a form of rationalism which is inappropriate for any comprehensive treatment of knowledge in the context of human-centred systems thinking. A human-centred perspective requires us (...) to treat knowledge in human terms. The paper sets out the particular importance of tacit knowledge in this regard. It sets out two case studies which reveal the critical importance of a careful treatment of tacit knowledge for success in two complex, technology-driven projects. (shrink)

The goal of philosophy of information is to understand what information is, how it operates, and how to put it to work. But unlike ‘information’ in the technical sense of information theory, what we are interested in is meaningful information. To understand the nature and dynamics of information in this sense we have to understand meaning. What we offer here are simple computational models that show emergence of meaning and information transfer in randomized (...) arrays of neural nets. These we take to be formal instantiations of a tradition of theories of meaning as use. What they offer, we propose, is a glimpse into the origin and dynamics of at least simple forms of meaning and information transfer as properties inherent in behavioral coordination across a community. (shrink)

Fundamentación: la educación integral del estudiante de Medicina incluye el desarrollo de las habilidades comunicativas y lingüísticas en idioma Inglés, que le posibiliten mantenerse informado y comunicarse en medios anglófonos. La prensa escrita es un medio de información que permite que los estudiantes reflexionen, valoren, interpreten y se comuniquen. Objetivo: Contribuir al desarrollo de las habilidades lingüísticas y comunicativas con la prensa escrita en clases de inglés. Método: Se realizó un estudio pre-experimental que consistió en elaborar ejercicios a partir de (...) la utilización de artículos de la prensa escrita relacionados con medicina y salud pública, como medios de enseñanza. El estudio se realizó con 40 estudiantes del quinto año de Medicina y 15 profesionales matriculados en un curso de posgrado de la Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de Mayabeque. Resultados: La información sobre aspectos de medicina y salud pública publicados en la prensa y los hábitos de lectura de la prensa de los estudiantes del quinto año era baja antes de la intervención y después de la puesta en práctica de la experiencia mejoró significativamente. Los resultados de los cuatro cortes evaluativos muestran la eficacia de la experiencia, por cuanto el desarrollo de las habilidades se comportó de manera ascendente. Conclusiones: Este sistema de trabajo facilitó la motivación de las clases, se desarrollaron habilidades lingüísticas y comunicativas y sirvió de base para fomentar el trabajo educativo, aumentó el vocabulario general y técnico de los estudiantes. Foundation: the medical students’ integral education includes the development of linguistic and communicative abilities in the English language, in such a way, they have the possibility to be informed and communicate properly in English-speaking contexts. The printing press is a means of information which allows them to reflect, valuate interpretate and communicate properly. Objective: to contribute to the development of linguistic and communicative abilities with the printing press in the English lessons Method: it was carried out a pre-experimental study which consisted in the elaboration of exercises related to the content of medical articles taken from the printing press. The study was carried out with 40 5th year medical students and 15 health professionals registered for a post graduated course of English in the Faculty of medicine from Mayabeque. Results: the information concerning medicine and public health published in the printing press and the 5th year medical students reading habits before putting into practice the didactic experience were low. Meanwhile, it improved considerably after its implementation. The results of the four evaluative breaks show the effectiveness of the didactic experience. The development of reading abilities was increased. Conclusions: this system of work facilitated motivation during the learning activities, linguistic and communicative abilities were developed considerably; it served as a base to promote educative work, and to increase the students general and technical vocabulary. (shrink)

This paper offers a revised political conception of human rights informed by legal pluralism and epistemic considerations. In the first part, I present the political conception of human rights. I then argue for four desiderata that such a conception should meet to be functionally applicable. In the rest of the first section and in the second section, I explain how abstract human rights norms and the practice of specification prevent the political conception from meeting these four desiderata. In the last (...) part of the paper, I argue that full-fledged tolerance in the international order – that is tolerance-as-non-intervention and tolerance-as-respect – should be attached to (1) compliance with jus cogens norms and to; (2a) a political community recognizably organized as a community of inquiry that is; (2b) committed to the specification and incorporation or expression of the idea of human rights within its local legal system. (shrink)

Many who speak glowingly about the possibilities for human relations in cyberspace, or virtual communities, laud them precisely because such communities are to a great extent free of the real spatial-temporal restrictions rooted in the limitations of our bodies. In this paper I investigate the importance of the body in establishing and maintaining human relations by considering the thought of the twentieth century French philosopher Gabriel Marcel. Because Marcel emphasized the central importance of the body in one's personal self-identity as (...) well as in initiating and maintaining intersubjective bonds in human communities, he is able to offer some interesting reflections on the character of virtual communities. I suggest that a number of the features of cyberspace and its communities that make it attractive to many are precisely the characteristics that Marcel would consider detrimental to establishing intimate lasting human communities. I conclude by indicating why I think that Marcel would be concerned that certain trends in our high tech culture may well lead many to prefer ``living'' in virtual, rather than real communities. (shrink)

Collaborative filtering is being used within organizations and in community contexts for knowledge management and decision support as well as the facilitation of interactions among individuals. This article analyzes rhetorical and technical efforts to establish trust in the constructions of individual opinions, reputations, and tastes provided by these systems. These initiatives have some important parallels with early efforts to support quantitative opinion polling and construct the notion of “public opinion.” The article explores specific ways to increase trust in these systems, (...) albeit a “guarded trust” in which individuals actively seek information about system foibles and analyze the reputations of participants. (shrink)

Following a synthesis of naturalistic and experimental studies of language creation, we propose a theoretical model that describes the process through which human communication systems might arise and evolve. Three key processes are proposed that give rise to effective, efficient and shared human communication systems: motivated signs that directly resemble their meaning facilitate cognitive alignment, improving communication success; behavioral alignment onto an inventory of shared sign-to-meaning mappings bolsters cognitive alignment between interacting partners; sign refinement, through interactive feedback, (...) enhances the efficiency of the evolving communication system. By integrating the findings across a range of diverse studies, we propose a theoretical model of the process through which the earliest human communication systems might have arisen and evolved. Importantly, because our model is not bound to a single modality it can describe the creation of shared sign systems across a range of contexts, informing theories of language creation and evolution. (shrink)