Knowledge society arguments revisited in the semantic technologies era

In the light of high profile governmental and international efforts to realise the knowledge society, I review the arguments made for and against it from a technology standpoint. I focus on advanced knowledge technologies with applications on a large scale and in open- ended environments like the World Wide Web and its ambitious extension, the Semantic Web. I argue for a greater role of social networks in a knowledge society and I explore the recent developments in mechanised trust, knowledge certification, and speculate on their blending with traditional societal institutions. These form the basis of a sketched roadmap for enabling technologies for a knowledge society

Changing Light: a plethora of digital tools as slides gasp their last?

The title 'Changing Light' reflects the enormous changeover from analogue slides to digital images, both a cultural shift and a physical shift down to the change in light from the smoky beams of dual slide projectors piercing the dark of a classroom, to the bright white classrooms of the digital age. The evidence for the 'death of slides' has been mounting for a number of years and reported by visual resources curators in the US and the UK. In 2005 JISC funded AHDS Visual Arts to report on 'the effects of the digital image revolution on the UK arts education community'; the Association of Curators of Art and Design Images (ACADI), the Association of Art Historians (AAH), and the Art Libraries Society (ARLIS/UK & Ireland) contributed significantly to the Digital Picture initiative. However some of the issues highlighted by the final report are yet to be addressed such as provision of copyright-cleared digital images for use in education. This paper considers what arts education stands to lose from the 'death of slides' in the context of digital images and the plethora of digital presentation tools. As well as a change in light, there is a change from the physical tangible slide technology to the virtual digital image and computing in the cloud

Coping with a changing world: the UK Open University approach to teaching ICT

The rapid pace of change in the ICT field has affected all HE providers, but for the UK Open University (UKOU), used to print-based courses lasting eight years or more, it has been a particular challenge. This paper will present some of the ways the UKOU has been coping with this problem by discussing the design of three courses, the first developed almost a decade ago. All three are distance learning courses that are either core or optional in a variety of bachelors' degrees, including the BSc programmes in: Information and Communication Technology; IT and Computing; and Technology; as well as the BEng (Hons) engineering programme. The first course, Information and Communication Technology: people and interactions is a level 2 (second year undergraduate) course first presented in 2002. It is predominately a print-based course with an eight year lifetime. The second course Networked Living: exploring information and communication technologies is a level 1 (first year undergraduate) course first presented some three-and-a-half years later in 2005. It is expected to have a course life of five years, and uses a mix of print-based (60%) and computer-based (40%) material. Both these courses use assignments as key tools for annual updating. The third course, Keeping ahead in ICT is aimed primarily at equipping students with advanced information searching and evaluation skills that will serve them well in professional life, and is presented at level 3 (final year undergraduate). It was first presented in 2007 and has an expected course life of 8 years. It uses much less print than in most OU courses, and has a greater reliance on third-party resources such as newspaper, conference and journal articles, websites, and other electronic resources. Some elements in each block are designed to change from year to year, in order to retain currency. Finally, the paper will look forward to the development of a new level 2 course with an expected first presentation in 2010, drawing out the lessons learned about course updating, and predicting the approach that the course team may tak

Shifting the Focus: The Role of Presence in Reconceptualising the Design Process

In this paper the relationship between presence and imaging is examined with the view to establish how our understanding of imaging, and subsequently the design process, may be reconceptualised to give greater focus to its experiential potential. First, the paper outlines the research project contributing to the discussion. Then, it provides brief overviews of research on both imaging and presence in the process highlighting the narrow conceptions of imaging (and the recognition of the need for further research) compared to the more holistic and experiential understandings of presence. The paper concludes with an argument and proposed study for exploring the role of digital technology and presence in extending the potential of imaging and its role in the design process. As indicated in the DRS Conference Theme, this paper focuses “…on what people experience and the systems and actions that create those experiences.” Interface designers, information architects and interactive media artists understand the powerful influence of experience in design. ‘Experience design’ is a community of practice driven by individuals within digital based disciplines where the belief is that understanding people is essential to any successful design in any medium and that “…experience is the personal connection with the moment and… every aspect of living is an experience, whether we are the creators or simply chance participants” (Shedroff, 2001, p. 5). Keywords: Design, Design Process, Presence, Imaging, Grounded Theory</p

SciTech News Volume 71, No. 3 (2017)

Columns and Reports From the Editor.........................3 Division News Science-Technology Division....5 Chemistry Division....................8 Conference Report, Marion E, Sparks Professional Development Award Recipient..9 Engineering Division................10 Engineering Division Award, Winners Reflect on their Conference Experience..15 Aerospace Section of the Engineering Division .....18 Architecture, Building Engineering, Construction, and Design Section of the Engineering Division................20 Reviews Sci-Tech Book News Reviews...22 Advertisements IEEE..........................................

Collaboration Enabling Internet Resource Collection-Building Software and Technologies

Over the last decade the Library of the University of California, Riverside and its collaborators have developed a number of systems, service designs, and projects that utilize innovative technologies to foster better Internet finding tools in libraries and more cooperative and efficient effort in Internet link and metadata collection building. The open-source software and projects discussed represent appropriate technologies and sustainable strategies that we believe will help Internet portals, digital libraries, virtual libraries, library catalogs-with-portal-like-capabilities (IPDVLCs), and related collection-building efforts in academia to better scale and more accurately anticipate and meet the needs of scholarly and educational users.published or submitted for publicatio