SCRIPSIT : a model for establishing trustable privacies in online public spaces.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.This dissertation proposes a model supporting the creation of trustable privacies in public online spaces, with the model demonstrating the potential for supporting trustable data handling in the qualitative domain. Privacy and trust, from the pivotal perspective of the individual were identified as crucial intangibles in the qualitative research and personal trust domains. That both privacy and trust depend heavily upon credible mechanisms for privacy became clear during the literature review and interview processes. Privacy, in its many forms, is a concept requiring greatly varying degrees of anonymity, confidentiality and control (Rotenberg, 2001; Lessig, 1998) and this was position was validated by literature and by qualitative comments by academic interviewees. Facilitation of secondary users including academics, public and private organisations, communities, casual information browsers is a goal of this research. This goal of facilitation is supported by the model proposed, and is discussed in Chapter 6, where future work is discussed. The core requirement to address confidentiality, ethics, privacy, ownership and control of data (Corti, 2000) is satisfied by the model as proposed and discussed. Expected outcomes of this research project are summarised as: • Proposed model for the creation of trustable privacies in public spaces. [Primary outcome] • Promotion of collaboration amongst domains and disciplines through improved universal access to archived data [Secondary outcome] • Identification of application domains outside of the initially identified domain set [Secondary outcome]. Self-Contained ReposItory ProcesSIng Template (SCRIPSIT) describes a model supporting a decentralised, trustable set of structures and mechanisms. SCRIPSIT has its eponymous origin in the Latin word scripsit, meaning "he or she wrote"

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Experimental Evaluation of Growing and Pruning Hyper Basis Function Neural Networks Trained with Extended Information Filter

In this paper we test Extended Information Filter (EIF) for sequential training of Hyper Basis Function Neural Networks with growing and pruning ability (HBF-GP). The HBF neuron allows different scaling of input dimensions to provide better generalization property when dealing with complex nonlinear problems in engineering practice. The main intuition behind HBF is in generalization of Gaussian type of neuron that applies Mahalanobis-like distance as a distance metrics between input training sample and prototype vector. We exploit concept of neuron’s significance and allow growing and pruning of HBF neurons during sequential learning process. From engineer’s perspective, EIF is attractive for training of neural networks because it allows a designer to have scarce initial knowledge of the system/problem. Extensive experimental study shows that HBF neural network trained with EIF achieves same prediction error and compactness of network topology when compared to EKF, but without the need to know initial state uncertainty, which is its main advantage over EKF

Bioinspired metaheuristic algorithms for global optimization

This paper presents concise comparison study of newly developed bioinspired algorithms for global optimization problems. Three different metaheuristic techniques, namely Accelerated Particle Swarm Optimization (APSO), Firefly Algorithm (FA), and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) are investigated and implemented in Matlab environment. These methods are compared on four unimodal and multimodal nonlinear functions in order to find global optimum values. Computational results indicate that GWO outperforms other intelligent techniques, and that all aforementioned algorithms can be successfully used for optimization of continuous functions

Performing Continuity of/in Smart Infrastructure : Exploring Entanglements of Infrastructure and Actions

Nearly everything we do in contemporary organizations and societies builds on some form of infrastructure. Our reliance on infrastructures underscores the importance of the continuity of these infrastructures. However, the infrastructures are inherently unreliable and unpredictable and achieve veneers of permanence and stability only through constant and ongoing efforts. In their functioning, they become established through complex and uncertain processes that involve a number of actors and factors. Consequently, understanding those processes is a key concern for organizations that are responsible for these infrastructures. Traditionally, the literature on the business continuity of organizational functions has emphasized the importance of planning and management approaches. Practitioners and academics have brought forth frameworks to aid organizations in planning and managing their continuity-related issues. The frameworks offer universally applicable processes and procedures that organizations should follow to improve their continuity. However, these frameworks tell little about continuity itself. Organizations rarely function as they document or as management describes organizational work. As such, the complex and uncertain processes of continuity cannot be directly inferred from the documents or from the managerial descriptions of work. If we wish to enact meaningful changes to those complex and uncertain processes through which infrastructure continuity becomes established, we need to understand how those processes unfold in practice. This dissertation focuses on infrastructure continuity in a smart infrastructure context. Smart infrastructures are traditional infrastructures that have been extended with digital technologies. In this research, infrastructure continuity is approached from the perspective of technicians working in the smart infrastructure context. The technicians’ work in these contexts is constitutively entangled with information systems and the technologies that form the infrastructures. As such, the smart infrastructures form an intriguing and fruitful yet rather unexplored context for information systems research. Theoretically, this research builds on sociomaterial theorizing and especially on Karen Barad’s agential realism. The purpose of this dissertation is to increase understanding on how the continuity of smart infrastructure becomes performed. This purpose is explored through six research articles that form the foundations of this dissertation. Methodologically, this research builds on conceptual and empirical research approaches. The conceptual research focuses on developing and clarifying business continuity- and sociomateriality-related concepts and approaches through argumentation and a literature review. The empirical research builds on a qualitative research approach and, more specifically, on ethnographic research. As is typical for ethnographic research, the empirical material was collected from a single organization that was studied extensively over a several-month participant observation. Reflecting the purpose of the study, the ethnography was conducted in a centralized operations center of a smart infrastructure (smart power grid) where technicians work with information systems and technologies. This dissertation contributes to the literature on infrastructure continuity and on sociomateriality. The primary contribution to the infrastructure continuity literature is a performative conceptualization of the infrastructure continuity. This conceptualization suggests that business continuity is not an attribute of any single measure but is an outcome of a joint accomplishment of sociomaterial networks of agencies that becomes established through recurrent actions. As such, the findings of this research challenge some of the taken-for-granted assumptions embedded in the literature but also extend the earlier literature. In addition, this dissertation extends discussions on sociomaterial agency. In the light of the findings, when agency is situated in the context of a smart infrastructure, agency becomes historic, polycentric, dynamic, and discontinuous.Lähes kaikki mitä me teemme nyky-yhteiskunnassa nojaa infrastruktuureihin. Voimmekin sanoa elävämme keskellä infrastruktuurien verkostoa. Riippuvaisuutemme infrastruktuureista korostaa niiden toiminnan jatkuvuuden tärkeyttä. Nämä infrastruktuurit ovat kuitenkin perustaltaan epäluotettavia ja arvaamattomia. Niiden toimivuus syntyy monimutkaisten ja epävarmojen prosessien kautta, jotka sisältävät moninaisia toimijoita ja tekijöitä. Näiden prosessien ymmärtäminen on keskeistä organisaatioille, jotka vastaavat näistä infrastruktuureista. Perinteisesti kirjallisuudessa, joka keskittyy toiminnan jatkuvuuteen (eng. business continuity), on korostettu suunnitelmien ja hallinnoinnin merkitystä. Suunnitteluun ja hallinnointiin on kehitetty useita johtamisen viitekehyksiä. Ne tarjoavat universaaleiksi tarkoitettuja määrämuotoisia prosesseja ja menettelytapoja, joita organisaatioiden tulisi noudattaa. Nämä viitekehykset kertovat kuitenkin hyvin vähän siitä mitä tai miten toiminnan jatkuvuus itsessään käytännössä ilmenee. Organisaatiot harvoin toimivat kuten dokumentoivat tai kuten organisaatioiden johto kuvailee toimintaa, joten näistä ei voida suoraan päätellä organisaation toimintaa. Kuitenkin jos haluamme toteuttaa merkityksellisiä muutoksia niihin monimutkaisiin ja epävarmoihin prosesseihin, joiden kautta toiminnan jatkuvuus syntyy, meidän tulee ymmärtää paremmin näitä prosesseja käytännössä. Tässä tietojärjestelmätieteisiin sijoittuvassa väitöskirjassa keskitytään toiminnan jatkuvuuteen älykkäiden infrastruktuurien (eng. smart infrastructure) kontekstissa. Älykkäillä infrastruktuureilla tarkoitetaan tässä tutkimuksessa perinteisiä infrastruktuureja, kuten sähköverkkoja, vedenjakelua, ja tieverkostoa, jotka ovat digitalisoitu. Aihetta lähestytään erityisesti infrastruktuurin parissa toimivien teknikoiden työn kautta. Teknikoiden työ näissä ympäristöissä on nivoutunut kiinteästi yhteen tietojärjestelmien ja teknologioiden kanssa, jotka muodostavat infrastruktuurin. Älykkäät infrastruktuurit muodostavatkin näin erityisesti tietojärjestelmätieteiden tutkimukselle kiinnostavan, mutta vähän tutkitun kontekstin. Tutkimus pohjautuu teoreettisesti sosiomateriaalisuuteen ja nojaa erityisesti Karen Baradin filosofiseen ja teoreettiseen viitekehykseen toimijarealismista (eng. agential realism). Tutkimuksen tavoite on tuottaa ymmärrystä siitä, miten infrastruktuurien jatkuvuus toteutuu käytännössä. Tätä tavoitetta on tässä väitöskirjassa tutkittu kuuden vertaisarvioidun artikkelin kautta. Menetelmällisesti tutkimuksessa on nojattu sekä konseptuaaliseen että empiiriseen tutkimukseen. Konseptuaalinen tutkimus keskittyy toiminnan jatkuvuuden ja sosiomateriaalisuuden käsitteiden ja lähestymistapojen kehittämiseen sekä selventämiseen argumentoinnin ja kirjallisuuskatsauksen avulla. Empiirinen tutkimuspohjautuu laadulliseen tutkimusotteeseen ja nojaa etnografiseen tutkimusmenetelmään. Kuten etnografiselle tutkimusmenetelmälle on luonnollista, aineisto pohjautuu pääosin osallistuvaan havainnointiin yhdessä organisaatiossa, jota on tutkittu intensiivisesti. Heijastaen tutkimuksen tavoitetta ja ongelmanasettelua, etnografinen tutkimus suoritettiin älykkään infrastruktuurin (sähköverkon) keskitetyssä valvomossa, jossa teknikoiden työtä tietojärjestelmien ja teknologioiden parissa seurattiin useiden kuukausien ajan. Tutkimuksen tulokset osallistuvat infrastruktuurien toiminnan jatkuvuuden ja sosiomaterialisuuden keskusteluihin. Tutkimuksen keskeisin tulos toiminnan jatkuvuuden tutkimukseen on toiminnan jatkuvuuden konseptualisointi suoritettuna toimintana. Tämän konseptualisoinnin mukaan toiminnan jatkuvuus ei ole jonkin menetelmän ominaisuus vaan jatkuvuus tuotetaan yhteisesti sosiomateriaalisessa toimijoiden verkossa toistuvien tekojen kautta. Tutkimuksen tulokset siis haastavat mutta myös edistävät aiempaa kirjallisuutta toiminnan jatkuvuudesta. Lisäksi, tutkimuksen tulokset edistävät keskusteluita toimijuuden sosiomateriaalisuudesta. Tulosten valossa, kun toimijuutta tarkastellaan infrastruktuurikontekstissa, on toimijuus historiallinen, polysentrinen, dynaaminen ja yllätyksellinen.Siirretty Doriast

Beyond Disability: Extraordinary Bodies in the Work of William Gibson

This dissertation conceptualizes figurations of disability in the work of contemporary U.S.-American writer William Gibson arguing that there is a distinct development in the representation of the manner and effect of corporeality from the Sprawl to the Bigend trilogy. In the Sprawl trilogy, prosthetic repair and rehabilitation are depicted as a common cultural practice, whereas in the Bigend trilogy the medical cure of the characters’ “deficiencies” for purposes of normative alignment is no longer a desired measure. By adopting a disability studies framework, I argue that this transition is not primarily related to a shift in genre, which does exist, but instead that it is motivated by a changing attitude toward the “broken” body that seeks restoration. A main concern of this book is, therefore, to understand the formal qualities of Gibson’s writing with regard to the forms and functions of the disabled figure, and to further demonstrate how this literary style and underlying ideology changes in parallel with the advancement of cultural conceptions of disability. This thesis distinguishes two major shifts over the course of the novels, one on the level of genre and the other on the conceptual level. I show how Gibson’s depiction of characters draws increasingly on a processual understanding of the human body, and decreasingly on traditional prosthetic technologies. This conceptual trajectory from prostheses to processes corresponds with the genre-specific shift in Gibson’s work that I classify as one from technoromanticism to new realism. The analysis is methodologically met with a theoretical triad that feeds on the socio-historical developments of the concept of disability, drawing specifically on the theory of intersectionality, new materialism, and actor-network theory

Music and Digital Media

Anthropology has neglected the study of music. Music and Digital Media shows how and why this should be redressed. It does so by enabling music to expand the horizons of digital anthropology, demonstrating how the field can build interdisciplinary links to music and sound studies, digital/media studies, and science and technology studies. Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital assume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of anextra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory. Praise for Music and Digital Media ‘Music and Digital Media is a groundbreaking update to our understandings of sound, media, digitization, and music. Truly transdisciplinary and transnational in scope, it innovates methodologically through new models for collaboration, multi-sited ethnography, and comparative work. It also offers an important defense of—and advancement of—theories of mediation.’ Jonathan Sterne, Communication Studies and Art History, McGill University 'Music and Digital Media is a nuanced exploration of the burgeoning digital music scene across both the global North and the global South. Ethnographically rich and theoretically sophisticated, this collection will become the new standard for this field.' Anna Tsing, Anthropology, University of California at Santa Cruz 'The global drama of music's digitisation elicits extreme responses – from catastrophe to piratical opportunism – but between them lie more nuanced perspectives. This timely, absolutely necessary collection applies anthropological understanding to a deliriously immersive field, bringing welcome clarity to complex processes whose impact is felt far beyond what we call music.' David Toop, London College of Communication, musician and writer ‘Spanning continents and academic disciplines, the rich ethnographies contained in Music and Digital Media makes it obligatory reading for anyone wishing to understand the complex, contradictory, and momentous effects that digitization is having on musical cultures.’ Eric Drott, Music, University of Texas, Austin ‘This superb collection, with an authoritative overview as its introduction, represents the state of the art in studies of the digitalisation of music. It is also a testament to what anthropology at its reflexive best can offer the rest of the social sciences and humanities.’ David Hesmondhalgh, Media and Communication, University of Leeds ‘This exciting volume forges new ground in the study of local conditions, institutions, and sounds of digital music in the Global South and North. The book’s planetary scope and its commitment to the “messiness” of ethnographic sites and concepts amplifies emergent configurations and meanings of music, the digital, and the aesthetic.’ Marina Peterson, Anthropology, University of Texas, Austi

Music and Digital Media: A planetary anthropology

Anthropology has neglected the study of music. Music and Digital Media shows how and why this should be redressed. It does so by enabling music to expand the horizons of digital anthropology, demonstrating how the field can build interdisciplinary links to music and sound studies, digital/media studies, and science and technology studies. Music and Digital Media is the first comparative ethnographic study of the impact of digital media on music worldwide. It offers a radical and lucid new theoretical framework for understanding digital media through music, showing that music is today where the promises and problems of the digital assume clamouring audibility. The book contains ten chapters, eight of which present comprehensive original ethnographies; they are bookended by an authoritative introduction and a comparative postlude. Five chapters address popular, folk, art and crossover musics in the global South and North, including Kenya, Argentina, India, Canada and the UK. Three chapters bring the digital experimentally to the fore, presenting pioneering ethnographies of an extra-legal peer-to-peer site and the streaming platform Spotify, a series of prominent internet-mediated music genres, and the first ethnography of a global software package, the interactive music platform Max. The book is unique in bringing ethnographic research on popular, folk, art and crossover musics from the global North and South into a comparative framework on a large scale, and creates an innovative new paradigm for comparative anthropology. It shows how music enlarges anthropology while demanding to be understood with reference to classic themes of anthropological theory