Slashdot, open news and informated media: exploring the intersection of imagined futures and web publishing technology

"In this essay, my interest is in how imagined media futures are implicated in the work of producing novel web publishing technology. I explore the issue through an account of the emergence of Slashdot, the tech news and discussion site that by 1999 had implemented a number of recommendation features now associated with social media and web 2.0 platforms. Specifically, I aim to understand the connection between the development of Slashdot’s influential content-management system (CMS) - an elaborate publishing infrastructure called “Slash” that allowed editors to choose reader submissions for publication and automatically distributed the work of moderating the comments sections among trusted users - and two distinct visions of a web-enabled transformation of media production.

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: NL

Proceedings ICPW'07: 2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg: N

Typing yourself healthy: Introduction to the special issue on language and health online

This chapter functions as an introduction to the special issue on Language and Health Online, which features 10 original research papers. It reviews the results of the papers and the joint emerging themes: the impact of technical and social affordances of computer-mediated interaction; discovering an emic perspective of health issues, uncovering health ideologies, and the theme of patient empowerment; the construction of identities, the construction of shared experiences, and the use of narratives. The diverse methodologies that are employed are introduced and a case is made for an open, versatile and mixed methodology when researching language and health online

Artificial Intelligence and the Ethics of Self-learning Robots

The convergence of robotics technology with the science of artificial intelligence ( or AI) is rapidly enabling the development of robots that emulate a wide range of intelligent human behaviors.1 Recent advances in machine learning techniques have produced significant gains in the ability of artificial agents to perform or even excel in activities formerly thought to be the exclusive province of human intelligence, including abstract problem-solving, perceptual recognition, social interaction, and natural language use. These developments raise a host of new ethical concerns about the responsible design, manufacture, and use of robots enabled with artificial intelligence-particularly those equipped with self-learning capacities. The potential public benefits of self-learning robots are immense. Driverless cars promise to vastly reduce human fatalities on the road while boosting transportation efficiency and reducing energy use. Robot medics with access to a virtual ocean of medical case data might one day be able to diagnose patients with far greater speed and reliability than even the best-trained human counterparts. Robots tasked with crowd control could predict the actions of a dangerous mob well before the signs are recognizable to law enforcement officers. Such applications, and many more that will emerge, have the potential to serve vital moral interests in protecting human life, health, and well-being. Yet as this chapter will show, the ethical risks posed by AI-enabled robots are equally serious-especially since self-learning systems behave in ways that cannot always be anticipated or folly understood, even by their programmers. Some warn of a future where Al escapes our control, or even turns against humanity (Standage 2016); but other, far less cinematic dangers are much nearer to hand and are virtually certain to cause great harms if not promptly addressed by technologists, lawmakers, and ocher stakeholders. The task of ensuring the ethical design, manufacture, use, and governance of AI-enabled robots and other artificial agents is thus as critically important as it is vast

A gentle transition from Java programming to Web Services using XML-RPC

Exposing students to leading edge vocational areas of relevance such as Web Services can be difficult. We show a lightweight approach by embedding a key component of Web Services within a Level 3 BSc module in Distributed Computing. We present a ready to use collection of lecture slides and student activities based on XML-RPC. In addition we show that this material addresses the central topics in the context of web services as identified by Draganova (2003)

A Virtual Global Festival of Activist Brass Bands during the COVID-19 Pandemic

UIDB/00472/2020 UIDP/00472/2020While many social activities abruptly went online due to the pandemic, the HONK! Festivals of Activist Brass Bands would seem an unlikely candidate for going virtual. The global network of HONK! Festivals that emerged in Boston in 2006 fills public spaces around the world with crowds and acoustic music, promoting live, “unmediated” musical experiences. As such gatherings became impossible in 2020, this global festival network conceived of a virtual festival that would connect the diffuse festivals, which had generally been limited to local, ephemeral events. In the course of fifty hours over eight days in October 2020, HONK!United brought together musicians and activists from all seven continents to share music videos, documentaries, live chats, workshops, and panels, providing an opportunity for these disparate communities to gain unprecedented self-consciousness as a global movement. Drawing on the works of Judith Butler and Anna Tsing, this article discusses the practical and conceptual implications of making an in-person event virtual, the politics of public assembly in a virtual format, and frictions between diverse musical communities in global conversation. We argue that although the pandemic presented tremendous challenges to the sustainability of live music cultures, it also provided previously unimaginable opportunities for musical movement building across the world.publishersversionpublishe

Library Quarterly - November 2019

In this issue: Getting Festive Database Trials Lynn Library\u27s First Commissioned Musical Work Event Recap Library Chat: Teachable Moments vs. Immediate Answers Mining Data: the Hidden Gems of the Online Library Amazing Images to Use for Papers & Presentations New Collections Open Educational Resources Where Are the Academic Catalogs? A Website for the Archives Cooking the Books How I Turned Imposter Syndrome into Success Fall 2019 Lectures & Programshttps://spiral.lynn.edu/libpubs/1020/thumbnail.jp