10,043 research outputs found

    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

    Financial and Economic Review 22.

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    Understanding the Potential of Sport for Promoting Physical Activity and Psychological Well-Being in Middle-Aged and Older Adults

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    Insufficient physical activity is considered a global public health challenge. This thesis highlights that, for middle-aged and older adults, sport participation is associated with a wide range of psychosocial benefits. Then, the thesis offers insight into the potential of walking sport programmes to promote health-enhancing physical activity in middle-aged and older adults. Recommendations are provided to promote the appeal, feasibility, and sustainability of walking sport programmes in community-based settings

    Eating Behavior In-The-Wild and Its Relationship to Mental Well-Being

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    The motivation for eating is beyond survival. Eating serves as means for socializing, exploring cultures, etc. Computing researchers have developed various eating detection technologies that can leverage passive sensors available on smart devices to automatically infer when and, to some extent, what an individual is eating. However, despite their significance in eating literature, crucial contextual information such as meal company, type of food, location of meals, the motivation of eating episodes, the timing of meals, etc., are difficult to detect through passive means. More importantly, the applications of currently developed automated eating detection systems are limited. My dissertation addresses several of these challenges by combining the strengths of passive sensing technologies and EMAs (Ecological Momentary Assessment). EMAs are a widely adopted tool used across a variety of disciplines that can gather in-situ information about individual experiences. In my dissertation, I demonstrate the relationship between various eating contexts and the mental well-being of college students and information workers through naturalistic studies. The contributions of my dissertation are four-fold. First, I develop a real-time meal detection system that can detect meal-level episodes and trigger EMAs to gather contextual data about one’s eating episode. Second, I deploy this system in a college student population to understand their eating behavior during day-to-day life and investigate the relationship of these eating behaviors with various mental well-being outcomes. Third, based on the limitations of passive sensing systems to detect short and sporadic chewing episodes present in snacking, I develop a snacking detection system and operationalize the definition of snacking in this thesis. Finally, I investigate the causal relationship between stress levels experienced by remote information workers during their workdays and its effect on lunchtime. This dissertation situates the findings in an interdisciplinary context, including ubiquitous computing, psychology, and nutrition.Ph.D

    Soundscape in Urban Forests

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    This Special Issue of Forests explores the role of soundscapes in urban forested areas. It is comprised of 11 papers involving soundscape studies conducted in urban forests from Asia and Africa. This collection contains six research fields: (1) the ecological patterns and processes of forest soundscapes; (2) the boundary effects and perceptual topology; (3) natural soundscapes and human health; (4) the experience of multi-sensory interactions; (5) environmental behavior and cognitive disposition; and (6) soundscape resource management in forests

    International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022

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    This conference proceedings gathers work and research presented at the International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022 (IASSC2022) held on July 3, 2022, in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia. The conference was jointly organized by the Faculty of Information Management of Universiti Teknologi MARA Kelantan Branch, Malaysia; University of Malaya, Malaysia; Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta, Indonesia; Universitas Ngudi Waluyo, Indonesia; Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines; and UCSI University, Malaysia. Featuring experienced keynote speakers from Malaysia, Australia, and England, this proceeding provides an opportunity for researchers, postgraduate students, and industry practitioners to gain knowledge and understanding of advanced topics concerning digital transformations in the perspective of the social sciences and information systems, focusing on issues, challenges, impacts, and theoretical foundations. This conference proceedings will assist in shaping the future of the academy and industry by compiling state-of-the-art works and future trends in the digital transformation of the social sciences and the field of information systems. It is also considered an interactive platform that enables academicians, practitioners and students from various institutions and industries to collaborate

    Voicing Kinship with Machines: Diffractive Empathetic Listening to Synthetic Voices in Performance.

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    This thesis contributes to the field of voice studies by analyzing the design and production of synthetic voices in performance. The work explores six case studies, consisting of different performative experiences of the last decade (2010- 2020) that featured synthetic voice design. It focusses on the political and social impact of synthetic voices, starting from yet challenging the concepts of voice in the machine and voice of the machine. The synthetic voices explored are often playing the role of simulated artificial intelligences, therefore this thesis expands its questions towards technology at large. The analysis of the case studies follows new materialist and posthumanist premises, yet it tries to confute the patriarchal and neoliberal approach towards technological development through feminist and de-colonial approaches, developing a taxonomy for synthetic voices in performance. Chapter 1 introduces terms and explains the taxonomy. Chapter 2 looks at familiar representations of fictional AI. Chapter 3 introduces headphone theatre exploring immersive practices. Chapters 4 and 5 engage with chatbots. Chapter 6 goes in depth exploring Human and Artificial Intelligence interaction, whereas chapter 7 moves slightly towards music production and live art. The body of the thesis includes the work of Pipeline Theatre, Rimini Protokoll, Annie Dorsen, Begüm Erciyas, and Holly Herndon. The analysis is informed by posthumanism, feminism, and performance studies, starting from my own practice as sound designer and singer, looking at aesthetics of reproduction, audience engagement, and voice composition. This thesis has been designed to inspire and provoke practitioners and scholars to explore synthetic voices further, question predominant biases of binarism and acknowledge their importance in redefining technology

    Coworking through the Pandemic: Flexibly Yours

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    Coworking can be defined as a paid for service (usually) providing shared workspace and amenities to users. When the pandemic hit, owing to the business model’s in-person foundations of physical proximity and shared amenities, the coworking industry was expected to be seriously impacted. Yet fast forward, and as the pandemic has played out, coworking businesses are uniquely positioned in this uncertain and changing workscape. This dissertation presents one of the first academic explorations into how independent coworking businesses fared in the initial year of the pandemic. Specifically, the research explores the following questions: 1. How did independent coworking businesses manage and adapt to the pandemic? 2. What is virtual coworking and what are the experiences of workers in these virtual coworking spaces? 3. How does coworking flexibility affect social support and connection? Using a critically interpretive poststructural approach, this ethnography included virtual fieldwork and interviews. Sixty hours of virtual participant observation and 30 loosely structured interviews were conducted with coworking stakeholders (i.e., owner-operators, managers, and users) over videoconferencing platforms. Secondary data included written fieldnotes and coworking documents. Results capture the strategies used by coworking business owner-operators and managers to sustain their businesses and the attendant relationships with coworking users, irrespective of whether or not a physical location could be provided under pandemic lockdowns. Given the expansion of coworking businesses into virtual service offerings, a key contribution of my research is the finding that co-location in a physical coworking space is not necessary to cultivate vibes and a sense of community. By removing the physical infrastructure of coworking, the virtual coworking product in which I participated points to both a reinforcement of and an emphasis on the centrality of social connection, support, and community. By de-centering the priority of a physical co-location, I conceptualize coworking businesses as commodified support infrastructures—affective atmospheres produced through the entanglement of human bodies, other living things, objects, and technologies in a space. In viewing coworking businesses as fluid affective atmospheres of support, my research adds to the emerging coworking scholarship that attends to the atmospheric qualities of coworking, the role of affective labour, and the possibilities of encounters and interactions as bodies, objects, and technologies interconnect. My results reinforce the deep ambivalence of coworking, capturing tensions between productivity and sociality, and a blurring of boundaries between professional and private, and work and leisure. The analysis also suggests that the inherent flexibility, informality, turnover, and autonomy in coworking practices can make creating stable social connections and support difficult. Finally, the COVID-19 crisis brought to light how coworking lies primarily outside the scope of current employment legislation, which includes occupational health and safety, employment standards, and workers’ compensation. In the absence of well-defined policy directions, coworking business owner-operators and managers made individualized decisions, thereby ultimately downloading further risk and responsibility onto their coworking users

    More Than Machines?

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    We know that robots are just machines. Why then do we often talk about them as if they were alive? Laura Voss explores this fascinating phenomenon, providing a rich insight into practices of animacy (and inanimacy) attribution to robot technology: from science-fiction to robotics R&D, from science communication to media discourse, and from the theoretical perspectives of STS to the cognitive sciences. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, and backed by a wealth of empirical material, Voss shows how scientists, engineers, journalists - and everyone else - can face the challenge of robot technology appearing »a little bit alive« with a reflexive and yet pragmatic stance

    Classifying the Characteristics of Effective Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for Computer Science Teachers in the 16-18 Sector

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    As technology and curricula continue to evolve and develop, the prevalence and effectiveness of continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities for computer science teachers is becoming increasingly more important. However, key questions remain about what the characteristics are for effective CPD in this context. Through the presentation of existing literature and the qualitative analysis of interviews with 32 employees from 13 English colleges (n = 14 computer science lecturers, 10 course leaders, and 8 members of senior leadership) this article answers the following question: ‘What are the characteristics of effective continuing professional development for computer science teachers in the 16-18 sector?’ Existing literature indicates how CPD benefits from: (1) knowledge development and application to classroom teaching, (2) self-efficacy development and measurement, (3) observation, feedback and reflection, (4) collaboration and communities of practice, (5) sufficient time, and (6) institution support. Meanwhile, the thematic analysis of interview data led to the creation of five overarching themes: (1) computer science CPD should address various knowledge domains, (2) CPD requires institutional support, (3) CPD should be engaging, (4) computer science CPD should involve a combination of activities, and (5) CPD should be measurable. This qualitative article also presents interview excerpts and contributes to computing education research and practice by presenting a set of thirty guidelines which outlines the characteristics of effective CPD in the context of computer science teachers in the 16-18 sector. These guidelines could be beneficial for both CPD providers and educators in ensuring CPD opportunities are designed more effectively, and with an understanding of both parties’ needs
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