E-voting in Brazil - the risks to democracy

Literature has shown that countries with strong democratic traditions, such as the United States and Canada, are not yet using electronic voting systems intensively, due to the concern for and emphasis on security. It has revealed that there is no such thing as an error-free computer system, let alone an electronic voting system, and that existing technology does not offer the conditions necessary for a reliable, accurate and secure electronic voting system. In this context, then, what are the risks of e-voting to democracy? In what ways, if at all, can more fragile, less mature democracies be buttressed with e-voting systems? As a key component of e-democracy, it seems that e-voting technologies are to become more secure and increasingly reliable in the near future and will indeed be adopted in many countries. In what ways, if at all, will the introduction of such systems increase voter confidence in the political system, promote citizen engagement in political life, and nurture the evolution of democracy? If both e-voting and edemocracy are emerging based on popular demand - that is, as a demand-driven alternative to current processes, then there is no doubt that they are likely to enhance and improve the efficiency of traditional democracy. However, if e-voting technology is being introduced based on a supply-driven fashion - the technology exists therefore it should and must be implemented - then the implications for democracy should be considered. Brazil's introduction of e-voting offers a cautionary tale of supply-driven technological implication. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the introduction of e-voting in Brazil is highly risky to democracy due to the lack of emphasis on security and the lack of a sociallyinformed and socially driven approach to technological innovation. The Brazilian example illustrates the democratic implications of a market-driven approach. The lack of a technology strategy designed to promote and extend democratic principles is not surprising given the closed door, market-based negotiations that led to the adoption of e-voting in Brazil. The promise, and indeed, the imperative of a democratic, voter-centered approach as an alternative for the development of an electronic voting system, is explored in the paper

A participatory approach for digital documentation of Egyptian Bedouins intangible cultural heritage

The Bedouins of Egypt hold a unique intangible cultural heritage (ICH), with distinct cultural values and social practices that are rapidly changing as a consequence of having settled after having been nomadic for centuries. We present our attempt to develop a bottom-up approach to document Bedouin ICH. Grounded in participatory design practices, the project purpose was two-fold: engaging Egyptian Engineering undergraduates with culturally-distant technology users and introducing digital self-documentation of ICH to the Bedouin community. We report the design of a didactic model that deployed the students as research partners to co-design four prototypes of ICH documentation mobile applications with the community. The prototypes reflected an advanced understanding for the values to the Bedouins brought by digital documentation practices. Drawing from our experience, three recommendations were elicited for similar ICH projects. Namely, focusing on the community benefits; promoting motivation ownership, and authenticity; and pursuing a shared identity between designers and community members. These guidelines hold a strong value as they have been tested against local challenges that could have been detrimental to the project

Transdisciplinarity seen through Information, Communication, Computation, (Inter-)Action and Cognition

Similar to oil that acted as a basic raw material and key driving force of industrial society, information acts as a raw material and principal mover of knowledge society in the knowledge production, propagation and application. New developments in information processing and information communication technologies allow increasingly complex and accurate descriptions, representations and models, which are often multi-parameter, multi-perspective, multi-level and multidimensional. This leads to the necessity of collaborative work between different domains with corresponding specialist competences, sciences and research traditions. We present several major transdisciplinary unification projects for information and knowledge, which proceed on the descriptive, logical and the level of generative mechanisms. Parallel process of boundary crossing and transdisciplinary activity is going on in the applied domains. Technological artifacts are becoming increasingly complex and their design is strongly user-centered, which brings in not only the function and various technological qualities but also other aspects including esthetic, user experience, ethics and sustainability with social and environmental dimensions. When integrating knowledge from a variety of fields, with contributions from different groups of stakeholders, numerous challenges are met in establishing common view and common course of action. In this context, information is our environment, and informational ecology determines both epistemology and spaces for action. We present some insights into the current state of the art of transdisciplinary theory and practice of information studies and informatics. We depict different facets of transdisciplinarity as we see it from our different research fields that include information studies, computability, human-computer interaction, multi-operating-systems environments and philosophy.Comment: Chapter in a forthcoming book: Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity - Forthcoming book in World Scientific. Mark Burgin and Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Editor

Choosing friends carefully: allies for critical computing

In this paper, we argue firstly that researchers in critical computing should address the specific information and communication technology (ICT) needs and activities of those agencies concerned with emancipatory issues. Secondly, we argue that a critical perspective, explicitly foregrounding empowerment and emancipatory concerns, forms a basis for emphasising the practice of individuals, groups and organsations , rather than purely focusing on organisational form in social action. We discuss this context of social action, identifying some relevant ICT-related challenges. We identify three themes that highlight factors that differentiate ICT support for social action groups from the setting of conventional business and service organisations: Free / Libre Open- Source Software, techniques and technologies for engagement through storytelling, and learning and evaluation in social action.</p

The patterning of finance/security : a designerly walkthrough of challenger banking apps

Culture is being ‘appified’. Diverse, pre-existing everyday activities are being redesigned so they happen with and through apps. While apps are often encountered as equivalent icons in apps stores or digital devices, the processes of appification – that is, the actions required to turn something into an app – vary significantly. In this article, we offer a comparative analysis of a number of ‘challenger’ banking apps in the United Kingdom. As a retail service, banking is highly regulated and banks must take steps to identify and verify their customers before entering a retail relationship. Once established, this ‘secured’ financial identity underpins a lot of everyday economic activity. Adopting the method of the walkthrough analysis, we study the specific ways these processes of identifying and verifying the identity of the customer (now the user) occur through user onboarding. We argue that banking apps provide a unique way of binding the user to an identity, one that combines the affordances of smart phones with the techniques, knowledge and patterns of user experience design. With the appification of banking, we see new processes of security folded into the everyday experience of apps. Our analysis shows how these binding identities are achieved through what we refer to as the patterning of finance/security. This patterning is significant, moreover, given its availability for wider circulation beyond the context of retail banking apps