Learning in a Landscape: Simulation-building as Reflexive Intervention

This article makes a dual contribution to scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) on simulation-building. It both documents a specific simulation-building project, and demonstrates a concrete contribution to interdisciplinary work of STS insights. The article analyses the struggles that arise in the course of determining what counts as theory, as model and even as a simulation. Such debates are especially decisive when working across disciplinary boundaries, and their resolution is an important part of the work involved in building simulations. In particular, we show how ontological arguments about the value of simulations tend to determine the direction of simulation-building. This dynamic makes it difficult to maintain an interest in the heterogeneity of simulations and a view of simulations as unfolding scientific objects. As an outcome of our analysis of the process and reflections about interdisciplinary work around simulations, we propose a chart, as a tool to facilitate discussions about simulations. This chart can be a means to create common ground among actors in a simulation-building project, and a support for discussions that address other features of simulations besides their ontological status. Rather than foregrounding the chart's classificatory potential, we stress its (past and potential) role in discussing and reflecting on simulation-building as interdisciplinary endeavor. This chart is a concrete instance of the kinds of contributions that STS can make to better, more reflexive practice of simulation-building.Comment: 37 page

Online games: a novel approach to explore how partial information influences human random searches

Many natural processes rely on optimizing the success ratio of a search process. We use an experimental setup consisting of a simple online game in which players have to find a target hidden on a board, to investigate the how the rounds are influenced by the detection of cues. We focus on the search duration and the statistics of the trajectories traced on the board. The experimental data are explained by a family of random-walk-based models and probabilistic analytical approximations. If no initial information is given to the players, the search is optimized for cues that cover an intermediate spatial scale. In addition, initial information about the extension of the cues results, in general, in faster searches. Finally, strategies used by informed players turn into non-stationary processes in which the length of each displacement evolves to show a well-defined characteristic scale that is not found in non-informed searches.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figure

Tourist product in experience economy

Przełom XX i XXI w. to rozwoju tzw. gospodarki doznań, w której podstawowym towarem stają się nie konkretne produkty, ale emocje, przeżycia i doświadczenia klientów. Turystyka była i jest swoistym "przemysłem wakacyjnych doświadczeń". W ostatnich latach jednak jeszcze wyraźniej niż do tej pory kładzie się nacisk na świadome kreowanie produktów turystycznych silnie nasyconych emocjami. Usilnie dąży się do multiplikowania oraz intensyfikacji wrażeń turystów. Do najważniejszych działań w tym zakresie zaliczono: przekształcanie infrastruktury turystycznej w unikatowe atrakcje turystyczne, wzbogacanie tradycyjnych usług/pakietów usług o dodatkowe elementy zapewniające dodatkowe doznania i satysfakcje, wykorzystanie nowoczesnych technologii wzbogacania realnej przestrzeni turystycznej o wirtualne byty (rozszerzona rzeczywistość), a także wygodnego zapisywania doświadczeń turystycznych oraz dzielenia się wrażeniami z masową publicznością.The turn of the 20th and 21st c. was marked by the development of experience economy, in which the basic commodities are not specific products, but the customers' emotions, impressions and experiences. Tourism has always been a particular "holiday experience industry". In recent years, however, the importance of the conscious creation of emotional tourist products has become even greater, we may observe continuous efforts to multiply and intensify tourism experience. The key activities to achieve this goal include transforming tourism infrastructure into unique tourism attractions, enlarging traditional services/service packages by elements providing additional emotions and satisfaction, using modern technologies in order to add virtual entities to real tourism space (augmented reality), as well as to conveniently record tourism experience and share it with the public

"Driven to distraction?" Children's experiences of car travel

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in volume, 4, issue 1, pages 59-76 in Mobilities 2009. Copyright @ 2009 Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17450100802657962.Cars have become increasingly significant features in the lives of many children and adults in the UK and elsewhere. Whilst there is a growing body of research considering how adults experience automobility, that is the increasingly central role of cars within societies, there has been little equivalent research exploring children's perspectives. Drawing upon a variety of methods including personal diaries, photographs, in‐depth interviews and surveys amongst schools within Buckinghamshire and North London, the paper contributes to filling this gap in existing research through exploring how cars are not only journey spaces for children, but are also sites for play, relaxation, homework, companionship, technology and the consumption of commodities. Using a Foucauldian analysis of power, insights into wider familial processes relating to mobility are provided by exploring how cars are sites of conflicting power relations between parents and children. The paper also explores how children's everyday experiences of cars were framed by wider sets of power relations, including car corporations which design and manufacture these spaces, and the role of capital which commodifies everyday activities in cars. In doing so, the paper challenges existing research on automobility for only focusing upon adults' experiences of cars and begins to theorise a more inclusive account of automobility which incorporates children and young people

Supporting aspect-based video browsing - analysis of a user study

In this paper, we present a novel video search interface based on the concept of aspect browsing. The proposed strategy is to assist the user in exploratory video search by actively suggesting new query terms and video shots. Our approach has the potential to narrow the "Semantic Gap" issue by allowing users to explore the data collection. First, we describe a clustering technique to identify potential aspects of a search. Then, we use the results to propose suggestions to the user to help them in their search task. Finally, we analyse this approach by exploiting the log files and the feedbacks of a user study

Looking through landscapes of technology: Impact of virtual worlds in children's lives

The new technologies are becoming more crucial in many areas of our lives. Everything that relates to technologies, telecommunications and information systems, may give us benefits, facilitating and speeding up many tasks, in a convenient way. Here, we highlight the impact of the virtual worlds in children’s lives and experiences, particularly, the role of computers in learning - as an essential tool that also facilitates interactivity between teachers and students. (The technological innovations can also be poorly used, due to ignorance or perversity, for instance, to disseminate misleading information or private images, online). We conducted an exploratory study, with a population of boys and girls, between 9 and 11 years old, attending the fourth year of schooling. We intended to verify the importance that children give to the computer in their personal, social and cognitive development - and how they use this technology, daily. The main goal was to identify the perceptions of children in relation to the importance of the computer in their learning, and in their lives. Most children said that can't live without the computer, emphasizing the help it gives them, mainly by the possibility to research on the internet, where they can learn, find help for their homework, and access (so often with no control) to information previously unknown. They also like to feel connected to friends. Children associate the use of computer with intelligence, because through it they can answer to questions and have access to information about everything happening on the world. Girls use the computer especially to perform research or homework, and to talk with friends, while boys use the computer mainly for entertainment and gaming (including online games). Children surf in the virtual worlds with ease and practical sense, searching for knowledge, emotions and experience. Yet, they run risks, especially in social networks (like Facebook).info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio