Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity

Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century: For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car, from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad, for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world? How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication. The authors and institutions come from all continents. The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust! The book is a continuation of the volume “Cyber Ethics 4.0” published in 2018 by the same editors

Emerging Technologies

This monograph investigates a multitude of emerging technologies including 3D printing, 5G, blockchain, and many more to assess their potential for use to further humanity’s shared goal of sustainable development. Through case studies detailing how these technologies are already being used at companies worldwide, author Sinan Küfeoğlu explores how emerging technologies can be used to enhance progress toward each of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to guarantee economic growth even in the face of challenges such as climate change. To assemble this book, the author explored the business models of 650 companies in order to demonstrate how innovations can be converted into value to support sustainable development. To ensure practical application, only technologies currently on the market and in use actual companies were investigated. This volume will be of great use to academics, policymakers, innovators at the forefront of green business, and anyone else who is interested in novel and innovative business models and how they could help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This is an open access book

Externalities and complementarities in platforms and ecosystems: From structural solutions to endogenous failures

Platforms and ecosystems provide structures for constellations of economic actors to engage and interact as they seek to create and capture value. We consider how the constructs of platforms and ecosystems relate and explore why they have become more ubiquitous by focusing on the nature of their value-add. We propose that they emerge as a response to distinct market failures, which we identify, and we explain which specific externalities they help overcome. We also identify post-hoc endogenous functional and distributional failures that platforms and ecosystems, in turn, generate. We discuss implications for theory and practice

Digisprudence: the affordance of legitimacy in code-as-law

This multidisciplinary thesis is located at the intersection of legal theory and design. It synthesises the practical question of how code regulates (using theories including James Gibson’s/Donald Norman’s affordance, Don Ihde’s postphenomenology, and Madeleine Akrich’s inscription) with a legal-theoretical view of what constitutes legitimate regulation (using theories including Lon Fuller’s internal morality of law, Luc Wintgens’ legisprudence, and Mireille Hildebrandt’s legal protection by design). Proceeding from the notion that code is an a-legal normative order, I argue that even (and indeed especially) in the absence of suitable or sufficient legal regulation, the norms of that order ought to be legitimated. This is particularly true given the unique characteristics of code as a regulator, which include its ruleishness, opacity, immediacy, immutability, pervasiveness, and, perhaps most importantly, its production by private enterprise. Having set out how code regulates from the perspective of the design theories mentioned above, I explore these characteristics from a legal-theoretical perspective, developing the concept of computational legalism, a uniquely strong form of the undesirable ideological phenomenon of legalism. This is the first significant contribution of the thesis. Having set up the parallel between legal and technological normativity, I explore the extent to which ex ante mechanisms for ameliorating legalism in the creation of legal norms can be translated into the ‘legislature’ of the design environment, to be applied in the creation of code-based norms. The motivating idea is that the standards that make legal norms legitimate ought mutatis mutandis to be applicable to other normative orders that enable and constrain individual behaviour. The literature has so far tended to focus on ex post assessments of code’s operation, and to that extent it fails to account for computational legalism and the standards that must be met – by definition during the production process, ex ante – in order to mitigate or avoid it. Taking all of this into account, the second significant contribution of the thesis is a ‘constitutional’ framework of digisprudential affordances that I argue ought to be present in all user-facing code, in order to ensure that certain foundational capabilities are provided by the design. The affordances I identify are: contestability; transparency of provenance, purpose, and operation; choice; oversight; and delay. They act as a formal mechanism for constraining what substantive code can possibly do, imposing ‘thin’ constitutional design standards that ought to be met regardless of the ‘thick’ purposes or functionality of the digital artefact. I discuss how these might be implemented in practice through an analysis of two contemporary technologies, the Internet of Things and blockchain applications. This practical element of the thesis connects with the last significant novel contribution, namely an exploration of Cornelia Vismann and Markus Krajewski’s concept of the programmer of the programmer, and how this ‘constitutional actor’ can be used to impose digisprudential limits – analogous to HLA Hart’s secondary rules – within the code development process

Pyramidal deliberative democracy

This dissertation has two main objectives. First, to outline an ICT-facilitated model of democracy called ‘pyramidal democracy’ that reconciles deliberative democracy with mass engagement. Second, to suggest how this model of democracy might engender the democratisation of the global economy and thus the provision of a basic level of economic security for all global citizens. At the core of the model is the pyramidal deliberative network, a means of organising citizens into small online deliberative groups and linking these groups together by means of an iterative process of delegate-selection and group-formation. The pyramidal network enables citizens to aggregate their preferences in a deliberative manner, and then project social power by authorizing the delegates at the top-tier of the pyramidal network to communicate their social demands to elected officials or to other points of authority. The envisioned outcome is the democratisation of the public sphere by means of the proliferation of deliberative networks in the government, market, and civil society spheres. Transnational pyramidal networks may make it feasible to instantiate a new citizen-based schema of global governance and, thereby, facilitate the reform of the United Nations and enable a transition towards global peace, sustainability, and distributive justice. Distributive justice might be achieved by means of implementing the six components of a democratised economy: participatory budgeting, fee-and-dividend taxes, a basic income, monetary reform, workplace democracy, and the sharing economy. Taken together, these components might enable the universal provision of a social minimum – a universal basic income sufficient for basic security and real freedom. Taken to its logical conclusion, a democratised economy may also enable a transition towards a post-scarcity economic order characterised by a maximal stock of humanmade and natural capital that would not exceed the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth

Manufacturing Execution System Interface for Process Industry Control Systems Implemented With Edge Computing

Reporting is an important part of any automation system. It allows for retrieving information on production. Some reports are mandatory while some are for the company’s own benefit. Ordinarily reports are used to provide information of the company’s performance, or to explain any given trend that has occurred. Forming a report is a multi-phase process consisting of data collection from the field, decision-making algorithms, databases, communication, and finally the report formulation. Main challenge of this study is to find a method for extracting just the specific process data needed for the reporting. Current approaches for collecting the reporting data are considered inefficient and time consuming. The study is motivated by the need to optimize and standardize the engineering process. The problem is approached by studying theory around the topic. Analy sis and design of the system is done based on the knowledge gained. The solution found is im plemented and demonstrated to prove its effectiveness. Previous implementations are considered and reflected on in the analysis phase. The system is modeled using Unified Modeling Language (UML) and designed using Collaborative Object Modeling and Design Method (COMET). Multiple solutions for the data collection are conceptual ized to find the best fit for the given problem. The benefits of implementing Edge computing as a part of the system are evaluated. As a result of the analysis and design chapter, Siemens’s TIA Portal’s new Cause Effect Matrix (CEM) programming language is chosen to be studied. Benefits of the CEM-based solution are evaluated to be its ease of implementation, universality, scalability, and modifiability. The solution developed is named as Centralized System-Wide Cause Effect Matrix (CSW-CEM) due to its nature. The whole algorithm for tracking the material flow in the system is packed into one centralized CEM. This CSW-CEM models the whole physical system consisting of tanks, valves, pumps, pipelines, and other instrumentation in the automation system. After defining the CSW-CEM itself, an instance of it is attached to each material source in the system. This allows for unambiguous reporting of every transfer in the system, regardless of it being automatic or manual. The findings of this thesis satisfied the requirements set for it. The solution proposal was successfully demonstrated. The CSW-CEM was tested to be able to handle multiple different scenarios that may occur in a real system implementation. Interface to upper-level systems was done with data blocks, written by the PLC configured as an OPC UA server. Communication and the communication interface was demonstrated by reading the data blocks with an OPC UA client. Unplanned advantages were also found in the process of development. These included the possibility to use the CEM language for visualization and routing purposes as well. The original idea of using Edge computing for the report formulation was questioned. Future development of the solution should consider this

The 4IR and teacher education in South Africa:

The 4IR has become an overarching framework within which education systems, including teacher education, are operating. Contingent upon the ideology of neo-liberalism, the 4IR seeks to transform societies in ways which respond to the relentless developments in technology, the Internet and digital capacities which, by design and intent, are purposed at increasing both productivity and the associated quality while at the same time reducing human intervention in the same processes. In teacher education, how we teach and train student teachers will be substantially influenced by the imperatives of the 4IR. There are multiple unresolved questions as the 4IR takes centre stage. For example, what will it mean for teaching and learning in schools that have severe technological and digital deficits; for teachers and students who have minimal technological literacies; for delivering high-quality teaching and learning; for transforming both the content and pedagogies of teacher education and, above all, for delivering socially just educational experiences for all our learners, regardless of class, race, and privilege. The discourse of the 4IR is contemporary and requires multiple perspectives to explore what it means in different contexts and settings, the understandings it engenders in people, what it implies across a wide range of educational decision-making levels, and that its fundamental assumptions cohere with national and societal assumptions about equality, equity and social justice. Multiple methodological approaches were utilised in the interrogation of the idea of the 4IR in teacher education in South Africa, including theoretical, empirical, and small-scale case studies, amongst others. The data these approaches provide are equally valued based on the purposes for which they have been derived

The 4IR and teacher education in South Africa:

The 4IR has become an overarching framework within which education systems, including teacher education, are operating. Contingent upon the ideology of neo-liberalism, the 4IR seeks to transform societies in ways which respond to the relentless developments in technology, the Internet and digital capacities which, by design and intent, are purposed at increasing both productivity and the associated quality while at the same time reducing human intervention in the same processes. In teacher education, how we teach and train student teachers will be substantially influenced by the imperatives of the 4IR. There are multiple unresolved questions as the 4IR takes centre stage. For example, what will it mean for teaching and learning in schools that have severe technological and digital deficits; for teachers and students who have minimal technological literacies; for delivering high-quality teaching and learning; for transforming both the content and pedagogies of teacher education and, above all, for delivering socially just educational experiences for all our learners, regardless of class, race, and privilege. The discourse of the 4IR is contemporary and requires multiple perspectives to explore what it means in different contexts and settings, the understandings it engenders in people, what it implies across a wide range of educational decision-making levels, and that its fundamental assumptions cohere with national and societal assumptions about equality, equity and social justice. Multiple methodological approaches were utilised in the interrogation of the idea of the 4IR in teacher education in South Africa, including theoretical, empirical, and small-scale case studies, amongst others. The data these approaches provide are equally valued based on the purposes for which they have been derived