Automations, Technological and Nervous: Addiction Epidemics from Athens to Fake News

Building on work by Bertrand Gille (1978), Bernard Stiegler argues that waves of technological automation tend to be characterised by periods of social ‘disadjustment’, when the rapid pace of change leaves political and social support systems inadequate to the task of ensuring societal cohesion. In the absence of adequate rules for the government of consumption, we can see this technological disadjustment symptomatised in a phenomenon of ‘generalised addiction’. We are living through one such period, struggling in the wake of disintegrating older social norms, and prior to the birth of new ones better able to mitigate the toxic potential of our technological pharmaka. But emerging work in addiction research facilitates the argument, made here, that epidemics of generalised addiction are not unique to the digital era. The works of Plato can be interpreted as a response to an addiction epidemic in fifth-century Athens, which was attributable, in turn, to the technological revolution of alphabetic writing. The comparison of then and now, two periods of technological change bringing political turmoil, throws up multiple parallels with the ongoing transformations of digital culture. Athenian symposia functioned as sanctuaries where aristocrats, displaced from their traditional position at the heart of an increasingly chaotic city, retreated to experiment with religious, poetic and pharmaceutical oblivion. They accordingly bring to mind both the anxiety-relieving ‘zones’ of escape and disavowal sought out by addicts in using, and the internet echo chambers into which we retreat from an increasingly fragmented public sphere. In a move that hints at an exit strategy for our own period of generalised addiction, Plato builds on the logical thinking made possible by the new technology of writing to reinvent and readjust a dislocated political morality

Privacy Intelligence: A Survey on Image Sharing on Online Social Networks

Image sharing on online social networks (OSNs) has become an indispensable part of daily social activities, but it has also led to an increased risk of privacy invasion. The recent image leaks from popular OSN services and the abuse of personal photos using advanced algorithms (e.g. DeepFake) have prompted the public to rethink individual privacy needs when sharing images on OSNs. However, OSN image sharing itself is relatively complicated, and systems currently in place to manage privacy in practice are labor-intensive yet fail to provide personalized, accurate and flexible privacy protection. As a result, an more intelligent environment for privacy-friendly OSN image sharing is in demand. To fill the gap, we contribute a systematic survey of 'privacy intelligence' solutions that target modern privacy issues related to OSN image sharing. Specifically, we present a high-level analysis framework based on the entire lifecycle of OSN image sharing to address the various privacy issues and solutions facing this interdisciplinary field. The framework is divided into three main stages: local management, online management and social experience. At each stage, we identify typical sharing-related user behaviors, the privacy issues generated by those behaviors, and review representative intelligent solutions. The resulting analysis describes an intelligent privacy-enhancing chain for closed-loop privacy management. We also discuss the challenges and future directions existing at each stage, as well as in publicly available datasets.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures. Under revie

Optimising Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks Using Interference Alignment and Space-Time Coding

In this thesis, the process of optimizing Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio has been investigated in fast-fading environments where simulation results have shown that its performance is limited by the Probability of Reporting Errors. By proposing a transmit diversity scheme using Differential space-time block codes (D-STBC) where channel state information (CSI) is not required and regarding multiple pairs of Cognitive Radios (CR’s) with single antennas as a virtual MIMO antenna arrays in multiple clusters, Differential space-time coding is applied for the purpose of decision reporting over Rayleigh channels. Both Hard and Soft combination schemes were investigated at the fusion center to reveal performance advantages for Hard combination schemes due to their minimal bandwidth requirements and simplistic implementation. The simulations results show that this optimization process achieves full transmit diversity, albeit with slight performance degradation in terms of power with improvements in performance when compared to conventional Cooperative Spectrum Sensing over non-ideal reporting channels. Further research carried out in this thesis shows performance deficits of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing due to interference on sensing channels of Cognitive Radio. Interference Alignment (IA) being a revolutionary wireless transmission strategy that reduces the impact of interference seems well suited as a strategy that can be used to optimize the performance of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing. The idea of IA is to coordinate multiple transmitters so that their mutual interference aligns at their receivers, facilitating simple interference cancellation techniques. Since its inception, research efforts have primarily been focused on verifying IA’s ability to achieve the maximum degrees of freedom (an approximation of sum capacity), developing algorithms for determining alignment solutions and designing transmission strategies that relax the need for perfect alignment but yield better performance. With the increased deployment of wireless services, CR’s ability to opportunistically sense and access the unused licensed frequency spectrum, without causing harmful interference to the licensed users becomes increasingly diminished, making the concept of introducing IA in CR a very attractive proposition. For a multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) overlay CR network, a space-time opportunistic IA (ST-OIA) technique has been proposed that allows spectrum sharing between a single primary user (PU) and multiple secondary users (SU) while ensuring zero interference to the PUs. With local CSI available at both the transmitters and receivers of SUs, the PU employs a space-time WF (STWF) algorithm to optimize its transmission and in the process, frees up unused eigenmodes that can be exploited by the SU. STWF achieves higher performance than other WF algorithms at low to moderate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes, which makes it ideal for implementation in CR networks. The SUs align their transmitted signals in such a way their interference impairs only the PU’s unused eigenmodes. For the multiple SUs to further exploit the benefits of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing, it was shown in this thesis that IA would only work when a set of conditions were met. The first condition ensures that the SUs satisfy a zero interference constraint at the PU’s receiver by designing their post-processing matrices such that they are orthogonal to the received signal from the PU link. The second condition ensures a zero interference constraint at both the PU and SUs receivers i.e. the constraint ensures that no interference from the SU transmitters is present at the output of the post-processing matrices of its unintended receivers. The third condition caters for the multiple SUs scenario to ensure interference from multiple SUs are aligned along unused eigenmodes. The SU system is assumed to employ a time division multiple access (TDMA) system such that the Principle of Reciprocity is employed towards optimizing the SUs transmission rates. Since aligning multiple SU transmissions at the PU is always limited by availability of spatial dimensions as well as typical user loads, the third condition proposes a user selection algorithm by the fusion centre (FC), where the SUs are grouped into clusters based on their numbers (i.e. two SUs per cluster) and their proximity to the FC, so that they can be aligned at each PU-Rx. This converts the cognitive IA problem into an unconstrained standard IA problem for a general cognitive system. Given the fact that the optimal power allocation algorithms used to optimize the SUs transmission rates turns out to be an optimal beamformer with multiple eigenbeams, this work initially proposes combining the diversity gain property of STBC, the zero-forcing function of IA and beamforming to optimize the SUs transmission rates. However, this solution requires availability of CSI, and to eliminate the need for this, this work then combines the D-STBC scheme with optimal IA precoders (consisting of beamforming and zero-forcing) to maximize the SUs data rates

The phenomenology of social institutions in the Schutzian tradition

Tere is a broad consensus that the study of social institutions is one of the fundamental concerns of the social sciences. Te idea that phenomenology has ignored this topic is also widely accepted. As against this view, the present paper aims at demonstrating that especially Schutzian phenomenology—that is, the social-phenomenological tradition started by Alfred Schutz and continued by Tomas Luckmann and Peter Berger, among others—provides rich insights on the nature and workings of social institutions that could contribute to enriching the current social-scientifc debate on the issue. In order to show this, the authors attempt to unearth and systematically reconstruct Schutz’s and Berger and Luckmann’s insights on social institutions and to confront them with current approaches.Fil: Belvedere, Carlos Daniel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Instituto de Investigaciones "Gino Germani"; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento; ArgentinaFil: Gros, Alexis Emanuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales. Instituto de Investigaciones "Gino Germani"; Argentina. Universitat Jena; Alemani

The Contemporary Framework of Marketing Regulations applicable to the Gambling Industry and its sway on Children : An analysis of Sweden, Malta and the United Kingdom as regulated markets

Tiivistelmä – Referat – Abstract Gambling is a staple in cultures around the world. As society and technology evolved, so did gambling – going from brick-and-mortar venues to mobile applications. However, gambling is a service that is currently not subject to harmonization within Member States of the European Union. This makes for a very different set of rules on how to regulate gambling, especially its online gambling category and the steps gambling operators have to take to ensure that its services are, and remain, a safe environment and also protect children and other vulnerable persons. This work will analyze online gambling, but only through the lenses of its marketing effects on children and how different Member States (or former Member State in the case of the United Kingdom) approach the matter. The aim is to find out if there is currently a system capable of successfully achieving the protection of children on its marketing regulations. Besides issues concerning consumer law, gambling also has a direct effect on the protection of children – a core value of the European Union. In Chapter 1, the goal and reasons for this study will be introduced, as well as the methodology chosen to conduct this research. Chapter 2 will look back to the origins of Gambling, how it became a legitimate business and set out the current gambling scenario in the European Union. Chapter 3 will analyze the types of marketing used by online gambling websites and how children interact with advertisement in general and how they are firstly introduced to gambling. Following on Chapter 4, the duality between children’s right and gambling will be examined. In Chapter 5, a comparison between the current regulations set out by Malta, Sweden, and the United Kingdom will be made, and Chapter 6 will bring examples of decisions by advertisement agencies that upheld citizen’s complaints for being aimed at children. Chapter 7 evaluates new features in videogames that could be equal to gambling and how the European Union is dealing with it. Followed by a quick look into the additional protection for gamblers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, taking everything into account we recommend that at least in the respect of protection of children (especially via marketing) gambling should be harmonized in the Internal Market, and proposes a hybrid model taking the best parts of the regulations examined in this study. However, further research is recommended

A Framework for Games Literacy and Understanding Games

Based on research that studied the challenges and difficulties faced by students taking games studies and game design courses, this paper proposes that while many students enrolled in games education programs are adept at playing games, they are usually neither games literate nor do they have a deep understanding of games. This article provides a framework that can be used to evaluate and assess games literacy. Using Gee’s notion of literacy, I propose that a deep understanding of games involves having the ability to explain, discuss, describe, frame, situate, interpret, and/or position games (1) in the context of human culture (games as a cultural artifacts), (2) in the context of other games, (3) in the context of the technological platform on which they are executed, (4) and by deconstructing them and understanding their components, how they interact, and how they facilitate certain experiences in players. I describe each of these aspects and also discuss two educational lenses that can be used to help contextualize what it means to understand and learn about games as well as support games literacy in students

Corporate social responsibility and corporate tax aggressiveness: a scientometric analysis of the existing literature to map the future

Using data from 2003 to 2020, this study uses a scientometric approach to investigate the nexus between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and corporate tax aggressiveness research. The objective is to identify under-explored regions, variables, citation patterns, theories, and unexplored topics in the body of knowledge to establish trends in publications on issues about corporate social responsibility and corporate tax aggressiveness. In addition, the study also considers publication journal areas of focus. Research linking CSR and tax avoidance using VOSviewer and triangulating with CiteSpace, by way of approach, is not found in the literature. The findings suggest that CSR and corporate tax aggressiveness researchers do not use far-reaching relevant theories and applicable findings from studies beyond their clusters. Another finding is that African countries remain under-explored due to the absence of institutional representation and an adequate number of investigators regarding CSR and corporate tax aggressiveness research. Finally, the study reveals a number of research topics to be explored. Governments, particularly in developing economies, should create policies that define taxes as part of an entity’s CSR narrative to enhance transparency and legitimacy. In addition, the study is of immense significance to master and PhD students since it provides an agenda for future research.This paper was financed by National Funds of the FCT-Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the project “UIDB/03182/2020”

One Foot in the Door:Evidence-based Limits on the Legislative Mandate

Legislative entrenchment or the long-term persistence of legislation has been associated with ineffective and obsolete laws. This position has nonetheless underestimated the natural bias towards the status quo that characterizes our legal order and the difficulty to terminate existing policies and laws. In this Article, I argue that the long-term stability of legislation only becomes a problem when it impedes the passage of new—and, in many cases, more effective—legislation. This Article aims to make two central contributions. First, it scrutinizes the legal and non-legal forces behind this problem. Second, it explains how temporary legislative measures should be employed to correct for the negative effects of legislative entrenchment. This Article suggests two ways in which these instruments may facilitate legislative reform. First, temporary legislative instruments (e.g., sunset clauses) can be employed as consensus-gathering mechanisms regarding legislative changes that might face initial opposition. Second, they can be employed as evidence-based mechanisms which promote research on available legislative alternatives. I contend that temporary legislative instruments such as sunset clauses, pilot programs, and state policy experiments should be used to produce evidence of the effectiveness of new legislation and rationalize the lawmaking process. This evidence-based approach can contribute to the disentrenchment of ineffective legislation and operate as a counterweight against certain de facto entrenchment force