5,557 research outputs found

    Conversations on Empathy

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    In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice

    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum

    The Globalization of Artificial Intelligence: African Imaginaries of Technoscientific Futures

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    Imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) have transcended geographies of the Global North and become increasingly entangled with narratives of economic growth, progress, and modernity in Africa. This raises several issues such as the entanglement of AI with global technoscientific capitalism and its impact on the dissemination of AI in Africa. The lack of African perspectives on the development of AI exacerbates concerns of raciality and inclusion in the scientific research, circulation, and adoption of AI. My argument in this dissertation is that innovation in AI, in both its sociotechnical imaginaries and political economies, excludes marginalized countries, nations and communities in ways that not only bar their participation in the reception of AI, but also as being part and parcel of its creation. Underpinned by decolonial thinking, and perspectives from science and technology studies and African studies, this dissertation looks at how AI is reconfiguring the debate about development and modernization in Africa and the implications for local sociotechnical practices of AI innovation and governance. I examined AI in international development and industry across Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria, by tracing Canada’s AI4D Africa program and following AI start-ups at AfriLabs. I used multi-sited case studies and discourse analysis to examine the data collected from interviews, participant observations, and documents. In the empirical chapters, I first examine how local actors understand the notion of decolonizing AI and show that it has become a sociotechnical imaginary. I then investigate the political economy of AI in Africa and argue that despite Western efforts to integrate the African AI ecosystem globally, the AI epistemic communities in the continent continue to be excluded from dominant AI innovation spaces. Finally, I examine the emergence of a Pan-African AI imaginary and argue that AI governance can be understood as a state-building experiment in post-colonial Africa. The main issue at stake is that the lack of African perspectives in AI leads to negative impacts on innovation and limits the fair distribution of the benefits of AI across nations, countries, and communities, while at the same time excludes globally marginalized epistemic communities from the imagination and creation of AI

    Fuzzy Natural Logic in IFSA-EUSFLAT 2021

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    The present book contains five papers accepted and published in the Special Issue, “Fuzzy Natural Logic in IFSA-EUSFLAT 2021”, of the journal Mathematics (MDPI). These papers are extended versions of the contributions presented in the conference “The 19th World Congress of the International Fuzzy Systems Association and the 12th Conference of the European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology jointly with the AGOP, IJCRS, and FQAS conferences”, which took place in Bratislava (Slovakia) from September 19 to September 24, 2021. Fuzzy Natural Logic (FNL) is a system of mathematical fuzzy logic theories that enables us to model natural language terms and rules while accounting for their inherent vagueness and allows us to reason and argue using the tools developed in them. FNL includes, among others, the theory of evaluative linguistic expressions (e.g., small, very large, etc.), the theory of fuzzy and intermediate quantifiers (e.g., most, few, many, etc.), and the theory of fuzzy/linguistic IF–THEN rules and logical inference. The papers in this Special Issue use the various aspects and concepts of FNL mentioned above and apply them to a wide range of problems both theoretically and practically oriented. This book will be of interest for researchers working in the areas of fuzzy logic, applied linguistics, generalized quantifiers, and their applications

    Transforming electrical energy systems towards sustainability in a complex world: the cases of Ontario and Costa Rica

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    Electrical energy systems have been major contributors to sustainability-associated effects, positive and negative, and therefore are considered as key components in pursuing overall sustainability objectives. Conventional electrical energy systems have delivered essential services for human well-being and can play a key role in tackling ongoing threats including growing poverty, climate change effects, and the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, some participants in electrical energy systems at national and local scales have stressed that the conventional design of electrical energy systems requires change to ensure the positive contributions and to reduce socioeconomic and environmental risks. Continuing negative trends including significant contributions to climate change, rising energy costs, deepening inequities, and long-term environmental degradation, have raised concerns and prompted calls for transforming conventional electrical energy systems rapidly and safely. However, due in part to the complexity of electrical energy systems, national and local authorities have struggled to steer their systems towards delivering more consistently positive sustainability-associated effects. Usual approaches to electrical energy system management have sought to improve efficiency, reliability and capacity to meet anticipated demand. They have seldom treated electrical energy systems as potentially important contributors to overall sustainability in principle and in practice. Doing so would entail recognizing electrical energy systems as complex systems with interlinked effects and aiming to maximize the systems’ positive and transformative effects to deliver multiple, mutually reinforcing and overall sustainability gains. The research reported here considered whether and how sustainability-based assessments can be useful tools to fill this gap and advance sustainability objectives in particular plans, projects, and initiatives carried out in electrical energy systems. To aid in responding the main research questions, this dissertation builds and proposes a sustainability-based assessment framework for electrical energy systems that is suitable for application with further specification to the context of different jurisdictions. Use of the framework is illustrated and tested through two case applications – to the electrical energy systems of Ontario and Costa Rica. Building the proposed framework involved a literature review and synthesis of three foundational bodies of knowledge: sustainability in complexity, electrical energy systems and sustainability, and transformations towards sustainability. Further specifying and applying the framework to the context of the two case studies involved carrying out document research and semi-structured interviews with key participants in the electrical energy systems of the two jurisdictions. The resulting sustainability-based assessment framework from this dissertation proposes six main criteria categories that are mutually reinforcing and emphasize minimizing trade-offs scenarios. These are divided into a set of criteria for specification and application to electrical energy system-related projects, plans, and initiatives in different regions. The proposed criteria categories are 1) Climate safety and social-ecological integrity; 2) Intra- and inter-generational equity, accessibility, reliability, and affordability; 3) Cost-effectiveness, resource efficiency and conservation; 4) Democratic and participatory governance; 5) Precaution, modularity and resiliency; and 6) Transformation, integration of multiple positive effects, and minimization of adverse effects. Ontario’s electrical energy system has significant sustainability-related challenges to overcome. The case study has shown that there is little provincial interest in following national net-zero commitments and authorities have removed official requirements for long-term energy planning to pursue climate goals and related sustainability objectives. Rising electricity prices have also raised concerns for many years and have been accompanied by limited willingness to engage in democratic and participatory processes for public review of electrical energy system undertakings. Additionally, recent commitments to highly expensive and risky options can further aggravate long-term socioeconomic and environmental negative impacts. In the Costa Rica case, adopting technocentric approaches to electrical energy system management led to a path dependency on large hydroelectricity development. This background of development of large hydroelectricity projects, without public consultation, has also created a sustained context of tension between governments, Indigenous groups and local communities, and private actors. Since the country is expected to experience changes in natural systems’ patterns including intensified periods of hurricane, storm, flood, and drought, the strong reliance on hydroelectricity has at the same time raised concerns regarding the reliability of the national electrical energy system. Both Ontario and Costa Rica have electrical energy systems that require rapid responses to contribute more positively to sustainability, and to help to reduce and reverse ongoing social and environmental crises. The two cases are also suitably contrasting venues for specification and application of the sustainability-based assessment framework developed in this work. The findings showed that while Ontario and Costa Rica have different contextual characteristics (e.g., geographical, socioeconomic, and political), overall lessons can be learned for best designing electrical energy systems in different jurisdictions. The findings also revealed that context-specific sustainability approaches do not necessarily undermine the viability for comparing multiple cases. In fact, specification to context can support comparisons by facilitating the identification of similarities and differences that are closely tied to contextual characteristics. Overall, the study of the two cases indicates significant potential for future works that focus on the specification to context and application of sustainability-based assessments specified to electrical energy systems that seek for barriers and opportunities for unlocking transformative effects. Three key learnings were revealed by building, specifying to context, and applying the sustainability-based assessment framework in a comparative analysis of the electrical energy systems of Ontario and Costa Rica. First, the two jurisdictions require implementation of more effective options to minimize costs in electrical energy system operations and avoid economic risks that undermine the capacity of the system to provide affordable electricity for all. Second, efforts to meet democratic and participatory governance requirements have been insufficient in Ontario and Costa Rica. Both jurisdictions need to demonstrate the capacity to respect official processes for public approval and to ensure adequate representation of different actors’ interests. Particularly, Indigenous people, local communities, and other groups with limited influence need more meaningful inclusion in official decision-making. Third, the two jurisdictions would benefit from implementing strategies to identify and assess possible combinations of policy and technical pathways that could help to unlock an existing dependency on options that support system rigidity. The core overall conclusion is that application of the proposed sustainability-based assessment framework can inform better design electrical energy systems to deliver broader sustainability-related effects and advance transformations towards sustainability. However, the framework could be further developed by including insights from more key participants in electrical energy systems. The criteria set can be honed with specification to context and application to different jurisdictions, and to more particular initiatives that reflect evolving energy scenarios. Inclusion of transformation, integration of multiple positive effects, and minimization of adverse effects as a criteria category has been helpful to recognize political contexts, promote just transitions, and emphasize the interlinked effects of applying the rest of the criteria. Since this is a new component in sustainability-based assessment frameworks, the transformation criteria category will require particular attention in future applications. Among other matters, further work in the field of electrical energy systems transformation towards sustainability should also address continuing and emerging phenomena, including adverse political trends such as right-wing populism and post-truth politics, that would maintain gaps between current practices and the steps needed for progress towards sustainability. Generally, however, while there are many needs and opportunities for more applications of the framework and additional research into the barriers to and openings for energy system transition and transformation, the sustainability-based assessment framework proposed and tested in this dissertation research should be a useful tool for directing change in complex electrical energy systems towards broader contributions to sustainability

    Making Connections: A Handbook for Effective Formal Mentoring Programs in Academia

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    This book, Making Connections: A Handbook for Effective Formal Mentoring Programs in Academia, makes a unique and needed contribution to the mentoring field as it focuses solely on mentoring in academia. This handbook is a collaborative institutional effort between Utah State University’s (USU) Empowering Teaching Open Access Book Series and the Mentoring Institute at the University of New Mexico (UNM). This book is available through (a) an e-book through Pressbooks, (b) a downloadable PDF version on USU’s Open Access Book Series website), and (c) a print version available for purchase on the USU Empower Teaching Open Access page, and on Amazon

    The Politics of Platformization: Amsterdam Dialogues on Platform Theory

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    What is platformization and why is it a relevant category in the contemporary political landscape? How is it related to cybernetics and the history of computation? This book tries to answer such questions by engaging in multidisciplinary dialogues about the first ten years of the emerging fields of platform studies and platform theory. It deploys a narrative and playful approach that makes use of anecdotes, personal histories, etymologies, and futurable speculations to investigate both the fragmented genealogy that led to platformization and the organizational and economic trends that guide nowadays platform sociotechnical imaginaries

    Current issues of the management of socio-economic systems in terms of globalization challenges

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    The authors of the scientific monograph have come to the conclusion that the management of socio-economic systems in the terms of global challenges requires the use of mechanisms to ensure security, optimise the use of resource potential, increase competitiveness, and provide state support to economic entities. Basic research focuses on assessment of economic entities in the terms of global challenges, analysis of the financial system, migration flows, logistics and product exports, territorial development. The research results have been implemented in the different decision-making models in the context of global challenges, strategic planning, financial and food security, education management, information technology and innovation. The results of the study can be used in the developing of directions, programmes and strategies for sustainable development of economic entities and regions, increasing the competitiveness of products and services, decision-making at the level of ministries and agencies that regulate the processes of managing socio-economic systems. The results can also be used by students and young scientists in the educational process and conducting scientific research on the management of socio-economic systems in the terms of global challenges
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