On the emergent Semantic Web and overlooked issues

The emergent Semantic Web, despite being in its infancy, has already received a lotof attention from academia and industry. This resulted in an abundance of prototype systems and discussion most of which are centred around the underlying infrastructure. However, when we critically review the work done to date we realise that there is little discussion with respect to the vision of the Semantic Web. In particular, there is an observed dearth of discussion on how to deliver knowledge sharing in an environment such as the Semantic Web in effective and efficient manners. There are a lot of overlooked issues, associated with agents and trust to hidden assumptions made with respect to knowledge representation and robust reasoning in a distributed environment. These issues could potentially hinder further development if not considered at the early stages of designing Semantic Web systems. In this perspectives paper, we aim to help engineers and practitioners of the Semantic Web by raising awareness of these issues

Technology Sharing Decisions Digital Technologies and Sharing Economy

As the conversation regarding sharing as well as economic alliance has heightened around the phrase “sharing economy”, the concept of digital sharing economy emanates more and more significantly. The objective of the paper is to support sharing of digital technologies and forums in order to achieve a sustainable shared economy. In addition, the research uses qualitative research methodology that relies extensively on literature review from assembled academic, peer – reviewed journal articles to improve comprehensive understanding on the impact of digital technologies on sharing economy. The research findings indicate that utilization of digital technologies enhances sharing economy and that the rising of digital sharing forums implies more individuals will be linked to resources closer to them as well as connected to each other. In conclusion, digital technologies in sharing economy offers significance collective solutions to areas such as employment and income generation; natural resources stewardship; asset sharing; knowledge exchange, education and professional establishment; crowd funding; new community – driven technological revolutions; disaster relief; and civic engagement. Keywords: Sharing Economy, Digital Technologies, Digital Platforms, Collective consumption, Collective Economy DOI: 10.7176/ISDE/12-1-04 Publication date: January 31st 202

Collaborative Networks as a Mechanism for Strengthening Competitiveness: Small and Medium Enterprises and Non-state Actors in Tanzania as Cases

Industrial organizations are increasingly facing more challenges in the market and society. These challenges include the scarcity of resources, short delivery time requirement, frequent emergence of new technologies, demand for wide variety of competencies, and limited availability of up-to-date experts. Coping with these challenges requires continuous restructuring and managing changes in organizations. However, only large organizations can afford to institute these changes. It also requires continuous innovation in deployment of emerging technologies and management concepts. Thus, due to their small size, lack of competitive capital and inability to acquire complex opportunities, majority of SMEs and non state actors (NSA) find it difficult to cope with the required speed of change. However, both research and practice have shown that dynamic time/cost-effective and fluid creation of temporary collaborative networks wrought by ICTs is an enabler for the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and NSAs in quest of enhancing competitiveness in the marketplace. This article contributes to the understanding of the challenges related to the establishment of collaborative networks of organizations in developing economies and proposes a customizable model for establishing those networks.   Key Terms: Collaborative networks, developing economies, ICTs, SMEs, non state actors, collaborative capital &#160

From MANET to people-centric networking: Milestones and open research challenges

In this paper, we discuss the state of the art of (mobile) multi-hop ad hoc networking with the aim to present the current status of the research activities and identify the consolidated research areas, with limited research opportunities, and the hot and emerging research areas for which further research is required. We start by briefly discussing the MANET paradigm, and why the research on MANET protocols is now a cold research topic. Then we analyze the active research areas. Specifically, after discussing the wireless-network technologies, we analyze four successful ad hoc networking paradigms, mesh networks, opportunistic networks, vehicular networks, and sensor networks that emerged from the MANET world. We also present an emerging research direction in the multi-hop ad hoc networking field: people centric networking, triggered by the increasing penetration of the smartphones in everyday life, which is generating a people-centric revolution in computing and communications

Social Debt in Software Engineering: Insights from Industry

Social debt is analogous to technical debt in many ways: it represents the state of software development organisations as the result of “accumulated” decisions. In the case of social debt, decisions are about people and their interactions. Our objective was to study the causality around social debt in practice. In so doing, we conducted exploratory qualitative research in a large software company. We found many forces together causing social debt; we represented them in a framework, and captured anti-patterns that led to the debt in the first place. Finally, we elicited best practices that technicians adopted to pay back some of the accumulated debt. We learned that social debt is strongly correlated with technical debt and both forces should be reckoned with together during the software process

Platforms, scales and networks: meshing a local sustainable sharing economy

The “sharing economy” has promised more sustainable use of the world’s finite resources, exploiting latency and promoting renting rather than ownership through digital networks. But do the digital brokers that use networks at global scale offer the same care for the planet as more traditional forms of sharing? We contrast the sustainability of managing idle capacity with the merits of collective local agency bred by caring-based sharing in a locality. Drawing on two studies of neighbourhood sharing in London and analysis of the meshing of local sharing initiatives, we ask how ‘relational assets’ form and build up over time in a neighbourhood, and how a platform of platforms might act as local socio-technical infrastructure to sustain alternative economies and different models of trust to those found in the scaling sharing economy. We close by proposing digital networks of support for local solidarity and resourcefulness, showing how CSCW knowledge on coordination and collaboration has a role in achieving these ends