Thanatechnology: Designing for Death

Thanatechnology, or the study of death technology, is based within the human need to “figure out” death. Through the ages, humans have used technology to further our understanding of what it means to die and what it means to mourn as a way of figuring out what it means to live. Digital data is a huge part of recent digital technology and includes social media data which is a part of many peoples’ daily lives. This leads to many questions including what happens to social media pages when someone dies. These “digital graveyards” leave a lasting impact on many social media sites, whether it be through the “clutter” they add to the site, confusion to its users, or trauma to the families. In many realms, the idea of a “digital death” has not been explored, nor have the implications of digital technology been studied widely in the modern death. Technology is expanding all sectors of the death industry, from the burial process to the remembrance aspect. Social media sites, personal cloud drives, and communal video games the deceased may have played are all aspects of death that should be designed for. Looking at what the technological implications of the modern death is vital to the future of designing digital technologies. This thesis explores current approaches companies are taking when it comes to a user’s death and explores potential other options. This is important to ensure that the future of a persons’ technological presence is preserved in a way they choose and want. KEYWORDS: thanatechnology; grieving; mourning; digital death; ritual; death technology; digital graveyards; digital footprint; etc

Pestana CR7: brand concept case study

Tourism is an attractive market segment in expansion and continues to show diversity, turning out one of the largest fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. On the other hand, travel behaviors, factors that influence accommodation booking, the hotel services and features that guests value the most about are evolving which creates new opportunity to be explored. Pestana Group, major international Portuguese hotel chain, enlarged its portfolio and announced in 2016 the launch of its new brand: Pestana CR7 Lifestyle Hotels. A universe in which hotel units are based on a contemporary boutique lifestyle concept where the purpose is the affirmation of these new units as trendsetters in their prestigious locations to appeal to the modern-day Millennial traveler. A JointVenture between Pestana Group and Cristiano Ronaldo which developed as associates the brand concept inspired by the set of values and personality of Cristiano Ronaldo aligned with Pestana Group service experience. The case study provides an overview of Pestana CR7 brand identity and positioning as well as the spectrum of the tourism and hospitality sector in order to apply academic knowledge to a real practical case study for future academic interest. In this case, the project aims to provide concepts of Marketing and Branding specifically applied to the tourism field, mainly to a hotel brand concept. More precisely, it will amplify the knowledge about Pestana Hotel Group and CR7 brand, while it introduces the environment in which Pestana CR7 is perceived. The main goal was collect insights, reactions, and expectations from Millennials about the implementation of a Lifestyle Hotel concept and understand the unique value proposition of the brand Pestana CR7 in order to analyze the essence of the brand and test concept and target compatibility.O turismo é um segmento de mercado atrativo em expansão e que continua a mostrar diversidade, tornando-se um dos maiores setores econômicos e de mais rápido crescimento do mundo. Por outro lado, os comportamentos das pessoas numa viagem, os respetivos fatores que influenciam a reserva da sua estadia, e os serviços e características dos hotéis que os clientes mais valorizam estão em evolução, criando novas oportunidades a serem exploradas. O Grupo Pestana, principal cadeia hoteleira portuguesa a nível internacional, ampliou o seu portfólio e anunciou em 2016 o lançamento da sua nova marca: Pestana CR7 Lifestyle Hotels. Um universo cujas unidades hoteleiras são baseadas num conceito de boutique e num estilo de vida contemporâneo onde o objetivo é a afirmação dessas unidades como trendsetters nas localizações de prestígio onde se encontram, para atrair o viajante moderno Millennial. É uma JointVenture entre o Grupo Pestana e Cristiano Ronaldo, que em parceria desenvolveram o conceito da marca inspirado no conjunto de valores e personalidade de Cristiano Ronaldo alinhados à experiência de serviço do Grupo Pestana. O caso de estudo proporciona uma visão geral da identidade e posicionamento da marca Pestana CR7, bem como o espectro do setor do turismo e hotelaria. Neste caso, o projeto visa aprofundar conceitos de Marketing e Branding especificamente aplicados ao campo do turismo sobre um conceito de marca hoteleira. Mais precisamente, ampliará o conhecimento sobre o Grupo Pestana e a marca CR7, enquanto introduz o meio envolvente onde a marca Pestana CR7 está inserida, a fim de aplicar conhecimento acadêmico num verdadeiro caso prático para futuro interesse acadêmico

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Newman v. Google

3rd amended complain

Case Study: Porting Qt to Windows Runtime

With the abundance of operating system choices available to end-users, particularly for mobile devices, application developers look for ways to cut development time while increasing the portability and maintainability of their source code. One solution to this challenge can be found through use of cross-platform frameworks. Cross-platform frameworks function by abstracting the system-specific details of incompatible platforms into a common programming interface which developers can use to target many different devices and operating systems. This thesis studies the abstraction architecture of Qt, a leading cross-platform C++ graphical user interface framework, with the goal of bringing a new platform, Windows Runtime, to the framework's set of supported targets. Windows Runtime is a collective programming interface for the Microsoft Windows 8 family of operating systems, including Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Windows RT. While Qt already supports a range of desktop and mobile operating systems -- including Windows, Mac OSX, Linux/X11, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Sailfish -- support for Windows Runtime is a new feature of the framework brought forth by this case study. Current trends in cross-platform frameworks, particularly declarative user interface frameworks with a mobile emphasis, are assessed and compared to Qt's offering, and the implementation of Qt for Windows Runtime is prepared with these trends in mind. The implementation contributes to the open-source Qt Project, with the contributions included in the official Qt 5.3 release. Using the released version of Qt 5.3, a canonical Qt application is ported to the new platform and is certified and published in the Windows Store. Through this porting and publication process, an evaluation of the project's success is constructed within a cross-platform context. The outlook for Windows Runtime as a growing platform is positive, as is the outlook for the uptake of Qt (and cross-platform frameworks in general) within modern device ecosystems. Moving forward, the quality and feature parity of Qt for Windows Runtime (as compared to competing frameworks) is expected to improve as users and open-source contributors make this new offering part of their respective development workflows and software projects

The impact of end user computing carbon footprint information on human behavioural change and greenhouse gas emission abatement

End user computing generates 1% (0.56 GtCO2e) of global greenhouse gas emissions due to annual production of 460 million new devices and electricity consumed by 4.2bn active users. The United Nations suggests combining existing technology with human behavioural changes has the potential to reduce societal greenhouse gas emissions. In context, improving human-computer interaction to lower both manufacturing and use emissions has the potential to support this strategy. Such changes would align with Sustainable Development Goal 12, responsible consumption and production and ultimately goal 13, climate action. However, this research hypothesises that current information used to select and use computing devices based upon sustainability criteria is potentially inaccurate and limited, therefore creating a barrier to success. Generating eight published papers, the three field experiments, a survey and exploratory research prove the speculation to be correct. Three specific issues are identified. Firstly, exclusion of the influence of human-interaction upon computer power draw within current energy consumption benchmarks. Secondly, mixed methodologies used to present use-phase emissions in product carbon footprint reports. Thirdly, information presented to stakeholders to promote information technology abatement strategies lacks business and tangible context to appeal to role-based interests and needs. Three solutions are developed to overcome these barriers and are subsequently tested in five impact case studies. The findings determine that the creation of meaningful end user computing carbon footprint information is capable of positive impact upon human behavioural changes and greenhouse gas emissions abatement. Specifically, the case studies determine 9.3 million kgCO2e of emissions to be avoided by adopting sustainable device selection and displacement (2.1 million kgCO2e), computer repurposing (1.4 million kgCO2e) and remote working enabled by information technology (5.8 million kgCO2e). This indicates that if adopted at scale, the newly proposed approach to end user computing emissions quantification and presentation is capable of contributing to the United Nations’ strategy and goals to utilise existing technology to support climate action

Sharing our digital aura through social and physical proximity

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-160).People are quite good at establishing a social style and using it in different communications contexts, but they do less well when the communication is mediated by computer networks. It is hard to control what information is revealed and how one's digital persona will be presented or interpreted. In this thesis, we ameliorate this problem by creating a "Virtual Private Milieu", a "VPM", that allows networked devices to act on our behalf and project a "digital aura" to other people and devices around us in a manner analogous to the way humans naturally interact with one another. The dynamic aggregation of the different auras and facets that the devices expose to one another creates social spheres of interaction between sets of active devices, and consequently between people. We focus on the subset of networking that deals with proximate communication, which we dub Face-to-Face Networking (FtFN). Network interaction in this space is often analogous to human face-to-face interaction, and increasingly, our devices are being used in local situations. We describe a VPM framework, key features of which include the incorporation of trust and context parameters into the discovery and communication process, incorporation of multiple contextunique identities, and also the support for multiple degrees of security and privacy. We also present the "Social Dashboard", a readily usable control for one's aura. Finally, we review "Comm.unity", a software package that allows developers and researchers easy implementation and deployment of local and distant social applications, and present two applications developed over this platform.Nadav Aharony.S.M

Epigenetics in Society

Would you take a potentially life-saving drug if you knew that your children and grandchildren might suffer the side effects? Would you change your lifestyle if it meant you could reverse disadvantages built into your genes? Would you be comfortable if corporations could infer intimate details about your life history without asking? What if that data could improve your quality of life? Epigenetics - our epigenome - controls how our genes behave without altering their sequence. Just about everything affects it, from nutrition, drugs, and toxins to child rearing, culture, and society. Many diseases, from obesity to addiction to cancer, can be linked to epigenetic modifications. Furthermore, throughout development and life, from conception to death, the exposures you have will not only affect your own epigenome, but potentially also your child’s, and your grandchild’s. This rapidly expanding field of biological, physiological, sociological, and psychological research could be key to discovering why, and more importantly how, we are the way we are. Epigenetics has consequences for medicine, pregnancy, childcare, law and how we live on an everyday basis. This book will provide a comprehensive introduction to the mechanisms and real-life consequences of epigenetics, and will arm the reader with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions about the future of epigenetics in modern society. This is a call for serious consideration about the effects of epigenetics on society. Epigenetics has been independently peer-reviewed for accuracy by international experts. It is written by students of diverse disciplines, and intended for students and educated lay people.https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/emergingscholarspress/1000/thumbnail.jp