The Playful Potential of Digital Commensality: Learning from Spontaneous Playful Remote Dining Practices

With one-person households being increasingly common and Covid-19 lockdown policies forcing people to stay home, remote dining has become common practice for many, who take it as an opportunity to connect with others in times of loneliness. Sharing meals online, also known as digital commensality, is a rich form of interaction, where people leverage technology to achieve a sense of connectedness and belonging while eating. In this paper, we look at digital commensality and we explore its inherent playful potential with the aim to inspire the design of engaging technologies that can support, enhance and augment this form of interaction. For this, we used a situated play design approach to document and analyze the behavior of 36 people (including pairs of friends and strangers) sharing meals online. Our analysis surfaced a set of play potentials of remote dining -- i.e., playful things people already do and enjoy spontaneously while sharing meals online. We present those play potentials as inspirational material: they can motivate and enrich the design of future digital commensality technologies by responding to people's desire for playful and social interaction with, through, and around food

The Future of Human-Food Interaction

There is an increasing interest in food within the HCI discipline, with many interactive prototypes emerging that augment, extend and challenge the various ways people engage with food, ranging from growing plants, cooking ingredients, serving dishes and eating together. Grounding theory is also emerging that in particular draws from embodied interactions, highlighting the need to consider not only instrumental, but also experiential factors specific to human-food interactions. Considering this, we are provided with an opportunity to extend human-food interactions through knowledge gained from designing novel systems emerging through technical advances. This workshop aims to explore the possibility of bringing practitioners, researchers and theorists together to discuss the future of human-food interaction with a particular highlight on the design of experiential aspects of human-food interactions beyond the instrumental. This workshop extends prior community building efforts in this area and hence explicitly invites submissions concerning the empirically-informed knowledge of how technologies can enrich eating experiences. In doing so, people will benefit not only from new technologies around food, but also incorporate the many rich benefits that are associated with eating, especially when eating with others

Looking Toward the Future : heritage Presentation and Interpretation and their Relation to ICT

Aquest article examina l'ús de les TIC en la presentació i la interpretació del conjunts de patrimoni cultural. Descriu les iniciatives actuals de desenvolupament d'aplicacions digitals per al registre i l'anàlisi de dades, la visualització i la interpretació pública. Suggereix que les TIC aplicades al patrimoni cultural han de continuar endavant amb els seus reptes tecnològics i científics, alhora que han de continuar reconeixent el patrimoni eminentment com una activitat social inserida en un context contemporani que canvia. Per això, el patrimoni digital ha de mirar més enllà del seu ús per a la divulgació de les dades científiques i reconèixer el seu major potencial com a propiciador de la reflexió i discussió del públic sobre el valor i el significat del passat.Este artículo examina el uso de las TIC en la presentación e interpretación de conjuntos del patrimonio cultural. Describe las actuales iniciativas de desarrollo de aplicaciones digitales para el registro y el análisis de datos, la visualización y la interpretación pública. Sugiere que las TIC aplicadas al Patrimonio Cultural han de seguir avanzando en sus retos tecnológicos y científicos, al tiempo que deben seguir reconociendo al patrimonio como, eminentemente una actividad social inserta en un contexto contemporáneo cambiante. Por ello, el patrimonio digital debe mirar más allá de su uso para la divulgación de los datos científicos y reconocer su mayor potencial como propiciador de la reflexión y discusión del público sobre el valor y el significado del pasado.This paper will examine use of ICT in the presentation and interpretation of cultural heritage sites. It will describe current initiatives in developing digital applications for data-collection and analysis, visualization, and public interpretation. It will suggest that Cultural Heritage ICT should continue to address its technological and scientific challenges, while also recognizing that heritage is, by its nature, a social activity embedded in a changing contemporary context. Thus digital heritage must look beyond its use for the dissemination of scientific data and recognize its wider potential for facilitating public reflection and discussion about the value and meaning of the Past

ESD Summer Reading Lists 2003–2013

Back in 2003, when ESD was a toddler of about 4 1⁄2, we were preparing for our spring semester offsite traditionally held at the end of the academic year in late May or early June. I had the idea of preparing a short list of books with relevance to the ESD mission-the study of complex sociotechnical systems-and presented that idea to the then (and founding) ESD director Prof. Daniel Roos. He agreed it would be worthwhile as an experiment, and so I did create the first ESD Summer Faculty Reading List. A “summer” reading list carries the suggestion of books you can take to “the beach”. So no “text books” were included. The books were treatments of critical contemporary issues that the world faces, important methods and perspectives germane to these issues and the complex sociotechnical systems in general, and relevant history. In retrospect, the beach would likely be too distracting a venue for many of these books! I got some “attaboys” on the 2003 list. A number of my colleagues said it was nice to take a look at my ideas about what books might be interesting reading. So with that positive feedback, I began to do this ESD Faculty Summer Reading List each year. When I did it the second year, I noted that this had now become a “tradition” and with an organization as young as ESD, we needed all the traditions we could get. You can see where it has gone from here. The tradition has continued to the present day, with now eleven years of history for this reading list. In the early days, the commentary on the books was largely my own. As years wore on we would include materials that others-the publisher or book reviewers-had prepared with some supplementary comments from me. And in later years my comments became less and less prevalent and even non-existent. Another thing we did regularly was to include books that had been published during that current academic year by ESD faculty, so this served as a mechanism for highlighting the scholarly work of my ESD colleagues and in 2012, the four books in the MIT Press Engineering Systems book series were all included. In any case, we have these reading lists encompassing books over this eleven-year period and thought it would be helpful to publish it as an ESD working paper to give our colleagues at MIT and outside the Institute access in one document to this eclectic potpourri of books. You may even find something you want to read that you missed the first time around. We hope the reader finds this compendium to be useful and we look forward to any feedback that you may have including suggestions for 2014 and forward

Platform rules : a case study of Samsung’s failure in the smartphone platform industry

By investigating Samsung’s platform strategies, organizational culture and control mechanisms in the Android ecosystem, this research provides a balanced view on the global smartphone platform industry. In addition, this dissertation provides both empirical evidence and critical explanations by exploring the challenges of global leading manufacturer Samsung, especially Samsung’s Media Solution Center (hereinafter, MSC) which was in charge of software and platform services of the company. In the literature review and methodology chapter, this study reviews 1) how successful platform providers actually control other platform participants, 2) how they develop platform ecosystems and extend their businesses, 3) how a fast follower strategy which is considered a typical strategy of Samsung Electronics affects business performance, and 4) how cultural elements of organizations affect the performance of a company, especially an ICT firm. This research poses three research questions: RQ 1: How did Samsung’s platform strategies such as the fast follower strategy affect MSC’s platform services? RQ 2: How did the platform governance and control mechanisms in the global smartphone industry influence Samsung’s platform services? And RQ 3: How did the organizational culture of Samsung and MSC influence Samsung’s platform businesses? The research relies on interviews with 25 platform experts who once designed and worked on platform services such as Samsung Apps or Bada in Samsung’s MSC. This study basically explores business experiences of Samsung’s MSC whose challenges were not successful. Since Samsung’s attempts to control a platform failed, this research is in part a study of failure. In this it deviates from the typical study that pays much attention to the winner’s position or experience rather than that of a loser. Based on the interview data, this research provides significant findings. First, Samsung’s strategy of being the fastest follower generated positive network effects for the Google Play Store instead of Samsung’s platforms. Second, Google tightly controlled its competitors’ platform services in diverse (somewhat unfair) ways in order to maintain its dominance. Lastly, Samsung’s hierarchical and micromanaging organizational culture exerted negative influence on MSC’s platform services.Radio-Television-Fil

Analyzing the Rhetorics of Wine: Ethnographic Research of Wine Community Narratives

In this dissertation, I explore the effective communication and rhetorical practices of sommeliers and wine professionals. Using interdisciplinary work and ethnographic study, I analyze the general narrative of the wine community in order to draw conclusions about the rhetorics of wine. Specifically, I argue that professionals in the wine community utilize a unique expertise founded on managing relationships between the wines, the experiences, and the wine community, and that these rhetorics are crucial to the industry\u27s success. To support my argument, I conducted personal interviews with seven wine professionals during the summer of 2022. These primary sources inform my rhetorical analysis of the general narrative of the post- 2020s industry. Through my analysis, I demonstrate that individuals in the wine community are reshaping the industry to be more accessible, inclusive, and sustainable. They are achieving this by balancing tradition, innovation, and community-oriented goals. Overall, my research highlights the importance of understanding the rhetorical situation of wine culture, which is quickly evolving in response to changing societal values and technological advancements. My work contributes to both the fields of wine communication and the humanities and underscores the need for research that establishes intersectional connections between rhetoric, the digital humanities, and the wine industry

Clustering Architectures: The Role of Materialities for Emerging Collectives in the Public Domain

This thesis is a study of social life, addressing issues concerning how and by what means people meet in urban public space. The main aim of this thesis is to is to investigate how certain artefacts and architectural features support the formation and temporal stabilisation of heterogeneous clusters and collectives, and thus, in order to the development of conceptual tools that can contribute to a more refined description and analysis of the role of architecture and artefacts for urban public life [a very long sentence…]. An important basis for this thesis is the conception of public life as an agglomeration of multiple, coexisting clusters of humans and nonhumans. Thus, urban public life can here be seen here as an effect of adding and losing parts of collectives – through the production and re-production of associations between human and nonhuman entities.The work has been carried out by the application and further development of concepts and methods mainly taken from territorology and actor-network theory (ANT). Affordance theory constitutes an additional theoretical approach that is included in the this thesis, however albeit to a less significant extent. Key questions related to the main objectives and the theoretical framework are for example: what What kind of competences, regarding territorial production and social exchange, can be associated to with material artefacts and to spatial configurations? Who and what constitutes actions and events that facilitate human co-existence in urban domains, ; i.e. how is urban public life produced?The empirical investigations consist of field studies of consumption spaces (open-air markets in London), leisure and play (playgrounds in Amsterdam) and spaces characterised by managed and curated activities (leisure spaces in Paris). The study sites were primarily selected because of their potential richness and diversity of socio-material exchanges. They also constitute intense gatherings of people, doing things together and individually, in close proximity of to fairly unknown others. The field study techniques employed in this thesis – guided by participant observation and photographic documentation – are mainly inspired by ‘visual ethnography’ as it is outlined by Sarah Pink and others, paired with public life studies executed by for example William H. Whyte and Jan Gehl.The studies explore how human interactions in urban spaces are dependent on networks that include artefacts, time, local policies and situated public cultures and practices. The main empirical findings were are successively conceptualised, tried in the empirical analysis and developed into a framework. The main themes – or actant categories – where materialities were found to be important for social interactions are: Anchors, Base Camps, Tickets and Rides; Monocore and Multitcore Spaces; Punctiform, Linear and Field Seating; and Ladders.These six actant categories, constituting the major outcomes of this thesis, can be seen as parts of a conceptual toolbox for investigating socio-material exchange and clustering in public domains. The conceptual tools suggest a particular attention to artefacts and architecture as significant social mediators, potentially facilitating encounters and exchanges between strangers. The actants are intended to supplement the terminology with which issues of social life in urban space are discussed and deconstructed. The actants are also intended to contribute more directly to planning and urban design practices, as operative tools, framing a relational, performative and processual approach to urban public domains.In this thesis, I have tried to show that the particular design and distribution of materialities in public domains have major strategic implications for questions regarding concerning co-existence, communality and collaboration. The proposed actants thus also represent an attempt to approach the challenges of segregation and polarisation through planning and urban design; not in an instrumental respect, or as recipes for a particular design concept, but as analytical keys that may support a more comprehensive understanding of actors and forces that profoundly affect social life in the public domain

Corporate Influence in the Post-2015 Process

This working paper examines the role and influence of business actors in the process towards the Post-2015 agenda of the UN, with particular attention to the influence of large transnational corporations. The business sector certainly has an important role to play in the implementation process of the Post-2015 agenda, as sustainable development will require large-scale changes in business practices. Some pioneering companies are already on the path towards sustainable development solutions (for instance in the area of renewable energies). However, acknowledging corporations' role must not mean giving them undue influence on policymaking and ignoring their responsibility in creating and exacerbating many of the problems that the Post-2015 agenda is supposed to tackle.This working paper starts with a brief overview of the current process towards the Post-2015 agenda and assesses its political relevance. The second part maps out the key business players involved in various processes surrounding the post-2015 consultations. The third part of the paper analyzes the key messages and policy recommendations of business actors in the post-2015 process. The fourth part explores the problems, risks and side-effects of the corporate influence on the Post-2015 agenda. They relate, on the one hand, to the key messages, on the other hand to the promoted governance models. The final part draws some conclusions, provides policy recommendations for the UN, member states, civil society and academia, and highlights potential paths for future research and policy work