745 research outputs found

    Mapping the Focal Points of WordPress: A Software and Critical Code Analysis

    Get PDF
    Programming languages or code can be examined through numerous analytical lenses. This project is a critical analysis of WordPress, a prevalent web content management system, applying four modes of inquiry. The project draws on theoretical perspectives and areas of study in media, software, platforms, code, language, and power structures. The applied research is based on Critical Code Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that holds the potential as a theoretical lens and methodological toolkit to understand computational code beyond its function. The project begins with a critical code analysis of WordPress, examining its origins and source code and mapping selected vulnerabilities. An examination of the influence of digital and computational thinking follows this. The work also explores the intersection of code patching and vulnerability management and how code shapes our sense of control, trust, and empathy, ultimately arguing that a rhetorical-cultural lens can be used to better understand code\u27s controlling influence. Recurring themes throughout these analyses and observations are the connections to power and vulnerability in WordPress\u27 code and how cultural, processual, rhetorical, and ethical implications can be expressed through its code, creating a particular worldview. Code\u27s emergent properties help illustrate how human values and practices (e.g., empathy, aesthetics, language, and trust) become encoded in software design and how people perceive the software through its worldview. These connected analyses reveal cultural, processual, and vulnerability focal points and the influence these entanglements have concerning WordPress as code, software, and platform. WordPress is a complex sociotechnical platform worthy of further study, as is the interdisciplinary merging of theoretical perspectives and disciplines to critically examine code. Ultimately, this project helps further enrich the field by introducing focal points in code, examining sociocultural phenomena within the code, and offering techniques to apply critical code methods

    Data ethics : building trust : how digital technologies can serve humanity

    Get PDF
    Data is the magic word of the 21st century. As oil in the 20th century and electricity in the 19th century: For citizens, data means support in daily life in almost all activities, from watch to laptop, from kitchen to car, from mobile phone to politics. For business and politics, data means power, dominance, winning the race. Data can be used for good and bad, for services and hacking, for medicine and arms race. How can we build trust in this complex and ambiguous data world? How can digital technologies serve humanity? The 45 articles in this book represent a broad range of ethical reflections and recommendations in eight sections: a) Values, Trust and Law, b) AI, Robots and Humans, c) Health and Neuroscience, d) Religions for Digital Justice, e) Farming, Business, Finance, f) Security, War, Peace, g) Data Governance, Geopolitics, h) Media, Education, Communication. The authors and institutions come from all continents. The book serves as reading material for teachers, students, policy makers, politicians, business, hospitals, NGOs and religious organisations alike. It is an invitation for dialogue, debate and building trust! The book is a continuation of the volume “Cyber Ethics 4.0” published in 2018 by the same editors

    Connecting to make a difference : social learning and radical collective change in prefigurative online communities

    Get PDF
    In view of the current global social and ecological predicament, what might constitute relevant forms of radical collective change? What role can processes of social learning play in facilitating such change? And to what extent are online networks able to support the unfolding of such processes? This thesis addresses these questions. I first present the results of two participatory action research projects, taking place in two different prefigurative online communities attempting to bring about very different forms of collective change. The first focuses on building a transnational, decentralised grassroots economic system as an alternative to global capitalism, but struggles to shake free from the toxic influence of global financial markets, and from unhelpful ways of relating and organising. The second aims to foster self-organisation and new forms of relationality between humans and with the rest of the living world, but struggles to address the heritage of historical violence and injustice, or to bring about visible political change. With the help of the Wenger-Trayner social learning theory and evaluation framework, I consider what processes of social learning have been taking place (or not) in these networks, and their outcomes; and what other social change efforts may learn from these experiments and their limitations. Finally, I present a reflexive account of my own process of learning and unlearning through my involvement with these projects and others, with regards to the question of what may constitute radical collective change. This critical assessment of my own thinking and aspirations leads me to argue in favour of decolonial approaches to social change as potentially relevant responses to the global predicament. This thesis contributes to the understanding of social learning processes within prefigurative online communities, and to the practice of social change efforts in such contexts

    2023- The Twenty-seventh Annual Symposium of Student Scholars

    Get PDF
    The full program book from the Twenty-seventh Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 18-21, 2023. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/sssprograms/1027/thumbnail.jp

    Breaking together: a freedom-loving response to collapse

    Get PDF
    The collapse of modern societies has already begun. That is the conclusion of two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind the book 'Breaking Together'. How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to harm each other and nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of our societies. So what can we do? This book describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, not apart, in this era of collapse. Professor Jem Bendell argues that reclaiming our freedoms is essential to soften the fall and regenerate the natural world. Escaping the efforts of panicking elites, we can advance an ecolibertarian agenda for both politics and practical action in a broken world. Endorsing the text, the founder of Schumacher College, Satish Kumar, remarked: “this is a prophetic book.

    The future of liquified natural gas (LNG) in the energy transition: options and implications for the LNG industry in a decarbonising world

    Get PDF
    A global energy transition is currently taking place, driven primarily by the need to combat climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the current trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions is not consistent with limiting global warming to below 1.5 or 2 °C, relative to pre-industrial levels, a threshold that could lead to severe economic damage and instability for the coming decades. Fossil fuel combustion, industry, transport, and electricity production contribute to approximately 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Energy systems must therefore decarbonise at dramatic rates to move towards a more sustainable environmental development path, but also to cater for population and economic growth in many parts of the world. Natural gas, a fuel with superior environmental credentials than other fossil fuels, has been touted as a “transition fuel” to support the low-carbon transition by promoting fuel-switching and supporting hard-to-abate sectors until largescale electrification with renewable resources and other solutions such as largescale batteries and hydrogen are developed and deployed. Utilising a bespoke meta-framework grounded in institutional theory, combining elements of techno-economic and socio-technical approaches, this study examines how institutional, political, and resource characteristics affect the use of liquified natural gas (LNG), the fastest growing sector within natural gas. Methodology includes the analysis of three country cases (UK, Japan, China). In addition, an in-depth analysis of the LNG industry is conducted, with a focus on the decarbonisation options and implications for the industry, including the impact of development of the hydrogen economy on LNG. The synthesis presents conclusions and findings on LNG’s role in future potential pathways in energy systems in various stages of the energy transition

    Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad: actas de las VIII Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en ciberseguridad: Vigo, 21 a 23 de junio de 2023

    Get PDF
    Jornadas Nacionales de Investigación en Ciberseguridad (8ª. 2023. Vigo)atlanTTicAMTEGA: Axencia para a modernización tecnolóxica de GaliciaINCIBE: Instituto Nacional de Cibersegurida

    Feebly Interacting Particles: FIPs 2022 workshop report

    Get PDF
    Particle physics today faces the challenge of explaining the mystery of dark matter, the origin of matter over anti-matter in the Universe, the origin of the neutrino masses, the apparent fine-tuning of the electro-weak scale, and many other aspects of fundamental physics. Perhaps the most striking frontier to emerge in the search for answers involves new physics at mass scales comparable to familiar matter, below the GeV-scale, or even radically below, down to sub-eV scales, and with very feeble interaction strength. New theoretical ideas to address dark matter and other fundamental questions predict such feebly interacting particles (FIPs) at these scales, and indeed, existing data provide numerous hints for such possibility. A vibrant experimental program to discover such physics is under way, guided by a systematic theoretical approach firmly grounded on the underlying principles of the Standard Model. This document represents the report of the FIPs 2022 workshop, held at CERN between the 17 and 21 October 2022 and aims to give an overview of these efforts, their motivations, and the decadal goals that animate the community involved in the search for FIPs
    corecore