4,738 research outputs found

    Digital self-evaluation and the cybernetic regime: A sketch for a materialist apparatus analysis

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    Building on an exemplary analysis of self-tracking applications, this paper develops a materialist approach to the methodology of apparatus analysis. It builds on the Foucauldian concept of the apparatus, which it then subdivides into a micro apparatus, as a concrete digital technology, and a macro apparatus, as the superordinate regime to which the micro apparatus contributes. To bridge these two concepts, the term “urgent need” is used to ask to which broader social problems a given apparatus reacts. Contrary to the approaches of “new mate-rialism”, this paper insists on an analytical divide between discourse and matter on the one hand and action structure on the other hand, in order to consider politico-economic power relations. Using this methodology, the relationship between the techno-practice of self-tracking and a broader cybernetic regime is illustrated

    An "All Hands" Call to the Social Science Community: Establishing a Community Framework for Complexity Modeling Using Agent Based Models and Cyberinfrastructure

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    To date, many communities of practice (COP) in the social sciences have been struggling with how to deal with rapidly growing bodies of information. Many CoPs across broad disciplines have turned to community frameworks for complexity modeling (CFCMs) but this strategy has been slow to be discussed let alone adopted by the social sciences communities of practice (SS-CoPs). In this paper we urge the SS-CoPs that it is timely to develop and establish a CBCF for the social sciences for two major reasons: the rapid acquisition of data and the emergence of critical cybertools which can facilitate agent-based, spatially-explicit models. The goal of this paper is not to prescribe how a CFCM might be set up but to suggest of what components it might consist and what its advantages would be. Agent based models serve the establishment of a CFCM because they allow robust and diverse inputs and are amenable to output-driven modifications. In other words, as phenomena are resolved by a SS-CoP it is possible to adjust and refine ABMs (and their predictive ability) as a recursive and collective process. Existing and emerging cybertools such as computer networks, digital data collections and advances in programming languages mean the SS-CoP must now carefully consider committing the human organization to enabling a cyberinfrastructure tool. The combination of technologies with human interfaces can allow scenarios to be incorporated through 'if' 'then' rules and provide a powerful basis for addressing the dynamics of coupled and complex social ecological systems (cSESs). The need for social scientists to be more engaged participants in the growing challenges of characterizing chaotic, self-organizing social systems and predicting emergent patterns makes the application of ABMs timely. The enabling of a SS-CoP CFCM human-cyberinfrastructure represents an unprecedented opportunity to synthesize, compare and evaluate diverse sociological phenomena as a cohesive and recursive community-driven process.Community-Based Complex Models, Mathematics, Social Sciences

    A generalized exploratory method for managerial analysis and business communication

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    Contemporary managerial processes are focused on communication and negotiation, where efficiency acquires an essential importance and its variation related to the managerial programme, with its time or space details, respectively related to the effectiveness of management, statistics, mathematics, etc. All these sciences and their methods meant to identify regularities and to generalize the alternatives, emphasizing their fundamental contribution to the majority of the results of the organizations, regions and national economies. This paper illustrates cybernetic communication’s theories based on information (with special stress being laid on the notions of data, language, message and decoding/encoding), and also underlines the functions and models of communication, the kind of form, and expression relationship human communication intends to achieve, the types of information with relation to communication, knowledge and creation, semantic, statistical and mathematical aspects woven into communication, the levels of theoretical approach of communication (with respect to the accuracy of symbol transmission, the accuracy of signification conveyed through symbols, and the efficacy of its influence on the recipient). The latter analysis (belonging to Warren Weaver) is specifically dwelt on, with special emphasis on the managerial activities. Initially the author proposes six solutions of using some methods of analysis, out of which one is strictly logical, then four distinct methods mainly statistical and mathematical in nature, and, in the end, one that is mainly sociological (the method of the flattened networks of internet type). The methods briefly presented easily characterize the communication, negotiation, and, finally, the decision-making processes, but especially their aggregation in an ample process, the managerial one. The frame method of the four “E” becomes the expression of the statistical way of thinking through effects and efforts of the economic activities, but it does not exclusively belong to them, it initiates a chain of efficaciousness-degree of economy-efficiency-effectiveness type, a chain that allows the interpretation, the placement in hierarchical order and the comparison of the processes and systems, whereas mathematics through the richness of the solutions, from using the probabilities of occurrence of the effects, to the informational energy, complete and generalize the entirety. Thus, there results a new economic paradigm of Homo Effectus, able to substitute the already contested Homo Rationalis.information, language, communication, message, decoding /encoding, negotiation, the method of the four “E”, efficaciousness, degree of economy, efficiency and effectiveness

    Program of Policy Studies in Science and Technology Semiannual Report, 1 Sep. 1969 - 15 Apr. 1970

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    Review of program and project activities in policy studie

    Beyond Cybernetic Federalism in Community Development

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    Cybernetic federalism is the order of the day. But can the enormously diverse and politically fluid American federal system be understood and dealt with in this way ? How much federal assistance to allocate to a local jurisdiction for community development activities might be more preferably based on analysis of such diverse economic factors as changing city tax bases and shifting locations of economic activity, demographic considerations such as white flight and differential fertility ratios of child bearing women, and political considerations including the existence or non-existence of political machines, political corruption, and political ideologies favorable or unfavorable to publicly-assisted development

    Rules of Engagement: Architecture Theory and the Social Sciences in Frank Duffy’s 1974 Thesis on Office Planning

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    This paper addresses the broad shift that took place in architectural theory and education in the 70s, where models of the discipline asserting the autonomy of architecture eclipsed models privileging architecture’s ties to other disciplines, particularly technology and the social sciences. With Frank Duffy's Princeton thesis on open office planning (1974) as a focus, the paper explores the theoretical and institutional contexts of this shift and offers a critical reappraisal in light of contemporary issues facing architecture.architectural theory, office space, planning, architectural education

    Seeing through the logical framework

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    Situation Modeling of Regional Development in the Republic of Kazakhstan

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    The methodology of situation modeling was based on the application of fuzzy cognitive maps, indistinct regional data and indistinct time horizon. Based on indistinct number of involved concepts, the model enables users to create their own situations with fuzzy quantity of available concepts including both the existing and the added ones. The added concepts are characterized by the set properties and database related to no less than three fuzzy time horizons. The number of set impulses is fuzzy as well. Cognitive map training was based on the artificial intelligence element – the active Hebb learning rule. The impact of concepts was defined in the course of training. Fine adjustment of the fuzzy cognitive map was achieved by changing the training order using a rank scale and Saati’s sorting algorithm. The developed computer software was used in simulation modeling of regional socio-economic processes related to the project aiming at tourism development of the Alacol Lake in Almaty region. Research results are shown in the form of a fuzzy cognitive map reflecting internal and external relations within the region, graphs reflecting socio-economic development and the Bossel criterion. Simulation of allocations had a positive effect: GRP (Gross Regional Product) growth along with increase in employment and environmental improvement. The proposed approach provides a tool for forecasting of regional development and solution of different regional problems. This approach can be used with regard to any administrative-territorial entity, provided relevant statistical data

    Management control systems in enabling university research performance

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    The purpose of this study is to investigate how management control systems (MCS) are used to enable university research performance at the operating level. At the sector level, institutionally framed research within New Public Management literature has observed the more uniform use of managerialist and programmed approaches to university research management. However, empirical contingent studies within a private sector R&D setting have evidenced how such approaches are ineffective in enabling operating level research performance. Drawing on both literatures, as well as wider MCS package research, the research uses an exploratory case study to examine two high performing faculties with contrasting research characteristics. From these micro-level accounts, the paper develops a conceptual model demonstrating how a combination of institutional and technical factors contributes to the use of MCS. More specifically, while a similar complementary package of socio-ideological, administrative and incentive controls is used to satisfy the diverging managerial and collegial institutional interests, within each operating unit managers tailor the use of these categories of controls to suit their respective research cultures and contexts in order to enable university research performance

    Situation Modeling of Regional Development in the Republic of Kazakhstan

    Get PDF
    The methodology of situation modeling was based on the application of fuzzy cognitive maps, indistinct regional data and indistinct time horizon. Based on indistinct number of involved concepts, the model enables users to create their own situations with fuzzy quantity of available concepts including both the existing and the added ones. The added concepts are characterized by the set properties and database related to no less than three fuzzy time horizons. The number of set impulses is fuzzy as well. Cognitive map training was based on the artificial intelligence element – the active Hebb learning rule. The impact of concepts was defined in the course of training. Fine adjustment of the fuzzy cognitive map was achieved by changing the training order using a rank scale and Saati’s sorting algorithm. The developed computer software was used in simulation modeling of regional socio-economic processes related to the project aiming at tourism development of the Alacol Lake in Almaty region. Research results are shown in the form of a fuzzy cognitive map reflecting internal and external relations within the region, graphs reflecting socio-economic development and the Bossel criterion. Simulation of allocations had a positive effect: GRP (Gross Regional Product) growth along with increase in employment and environmental improvement. The proposed approach provides a tool for forecasting of regional development and solution of different regional problems. This approach can be used with regard to any administrative-territorial entity, provided relevant statistical data
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