A Wikipedia Literature Review

This paper was originally designed as a literature review for a doctoral dissertation focusing on Wikipedia. This exposition gives the structure of Wikipedia and the latest trends in Wikipedia research

Taking Blockchain Seriously

In the present techno-political moment it is clear that ignoring or dismissing the hype surrounding blockchain is unwise, and certainly for regulatory authorities and governments who must keep a grip on the technology and those promoting it, in order to ensure democratic accountability and regulatory legitimacy within the blockchain ecosystem and beyond. Blockchain is telling (and showing) us something very important about the evolution of capital and neoliberal economic reason, and the likely impact in the near future on forms and patterns of work, social organization, and, crucially, on communities and individuals who lack influence over the technologies and data that increasingly shape and control their lives. In this short essay I introduce some of the problems in the regulation of blockchain and offer counter-narratives aimed at cutting through the hype fuelling the ascendency of this most contemporary of technologies

An architecture for integrating distributed and cooperating knowledge-based Air Force decision aids

MITRE has been developing a Knowledge-Based Battle Management Testbed for evaluating the viability of integrating independently-developed knowledge-based decision aids in the Air Force tactical domain. The primary goal for the testbed architecture is to permit a new system to be added to a testbed with little change to the system's software. Each system that connects to the testbed network declares that it can provide a number of services to other systems. When a system wants to use another system's service, it does not address the server system by name, but instead transmits a request to the testbed network asking for a particular service to be performed. A key component of the testbed architecture is a common database which uses a relational database management system (RDBMS). The RDBMS provides a database update notification service to requesting systems. Normally, each system is expected to monitor data relations of interest to it. Alternatively, a system may broadcast an announcement message to inform other systems that an event of potential interest has occurred. Current research is aimed at dealing with issues resulting from integration efforts, such as dealing with potential mismatches of each system's assumptions about the common database, decentralizing network control, and coordinating multiple agents

Public ubiquitous computing systems:lessons from the e-campus display deployments

In this paper we reflect on our experiences of deploying ubiquitous computing systems in public spaces and present a series of lessons that we feel will be of benefit to researchers planning similar public deployments. We focus on experiences gained from building and deploying three experimental public display systems as part of the e-campus pro ject. However, we believe the lessons are likely to be generally applicable to many different types of public ubicomp deployment

Blockchain For Food: Making Sense of Technology and the Impact on Biofortified Seeds

The global food system is under pressure and is in the early stages of a major transition towards more transparency, circularity, and personalisation. In the coming decades, there is an increasing need for more food production with fewer resources. Thus, increasing crop yields and nutritional value per crop is arguably an important factor in this global food transition. Biofortification can play an important role in feeding the world. Biofortified seeds create produce with increased nutritional values, mainly minerals and vitamins, while using the same or less resources as non-biofortified variants. However, a farmer cannot distinguish a biofortified seed from a regular seed. Due to the invisible nature of the enhanced seeds, counterfeit products are common, limiting wide-scale adoption of biofortified crops. Fraudulent seeds pose a major obstacle in the adoption of biofortified crops. A system that could guarantee the origin of the biofortified seeds is therefore required to ensure widespread adoption. This trust-ensuring immutable proof for the biofortified seeds, can be provided via blockchain technology

Web 3.0: Are We Building a True Consensual Internet or Yet Another Strategic Platform?

This study employs Habermas’ theory of communicative action to scrutinize the behavior of web service providers (WSPs) in both Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. In the first phase, we uncover the strategic nature of Web 2.0 WSPs. In the context of Web 3.0, we discern a shift towards a consensual, decentralized paradigm, with Web 3.0 WSPs predominantly facilitating participation and consensus-building. Acknowledging that Web 3.0 is in its infancy with a smaller user base compared to Web 2.0, we have applied Web 3.0 principles to derive our insights, offering an initial exploration into the intentions of Web 3.0 WSPs. While recognizing the study’s limitations, including the nascent stage of Web 3.0, this research lays the groundwork for understanding the evolving landscape of Web 3.0. This pioneering investigation, guided by Habermas’ communicative action theory, is poised to be a valuable resource for comprehending the dynamic terrain of Web 3.0

A Systematic Overview of Blockchain Research

Blockchain has been receiving growing attention from both academia and practices. This paper aims to investigate the research status of blockchain-related studies and to analyze the development and evolution of this latest hot area via bibliometric analysis. We selected and explored 2451 papers published between 2013 and 2019 from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The analysis considers different dimensions, including annual publications and citation trends, author distribution, popular research themes, collaboration of countries (regions) and institutions, top papers, major publication journals (conferences), supportive funding agencies, and emerging research trends. The results show that the number of blockchain literature is still increasing, and the research priorities in blockchain-related research shift during the observation period from bitcoin, cryptocurrency, blockchain, smart contract, internet of thing, to the distributed ledger, and challenge and the inefficiency of blockchain. The findings of this research deliver a holistic picture of blockchain research, which illuminates the future direction of research, and provides implications for both academic research and enterprise practice.publishedVersio

Policing organized crime : a new direction

Recent criminological research in the Netherlands underscores the fact that organized crime is embedded in society and the overall picture makes it clear that police emphasis on a crime fighting model of the police, based solely on criminal law will not be entirely effective. Therefore, the Twente police force developed a new strategy of policing organized crime in their region. This strategy is based on criminological knowledge and on the approach of community policing: preventive, pro-active and integrated actions taken by various partners of the police in order to reduce illegal activities of organized crime groups. This strategy, however, can only succeed when two conditions are satisfied. First, this approach can only function in an open democratic society in which numerous public and private organizations and the public feel responsible for the emergence of organized crime in their environment. Secondly, the police force and their partners must be (relatively) free of corruption. This implies that this strategy can only be effective in societies in which organized crime has not deeply penetrated democratic institutions and business organizations