The Coevolution of Network Structure and Perceived Ease of Use

Perceived Ease of Use (PEoU) is one of the most central constructs in IS research. However, it has been examined only from an individual perspective. This article conceptualizes PEoU as a network construct. Results indicate three things. Firstly, the higher a person\u27s PEoU, the more likely she or he is sought for advice. Secondly, there is a greater likelihood that a person seeks out another person for advice if the other person also seeks out the first person for advice. Thirdly, a person\u27s PEoU will become similar to that of other persons\u27 she or he seeks out for advice

Social norms and human normative psychology

Our primary aim in this paper is to sketch a cognitive evolutionary approach for developing explanations of social change that is anchored on the psychological mechanisms underlying normative cognition and the transmission of social norms. We throw the relevant features of this approach into relief by comparing it with the self-fulfilling social expectations account developed by Bicchieri and colleagues. After describing both accounts, we argue that the two approaches are largely compatible, but that the cognitive evolutionary approach is well- suited to encompass much of the social expectations view, whose focus on a narrow range of norms comes at the expense of the breadth the cognitive evolutionary approach can provide

Through a router darkly: how new American copyright enforcement initiatives may hinder economic development, net neutrality and creativity

On November 1, 2012, Russia enacted a law putatively aiming to protect Russian children from pedophiles. This law authorizes deep packet inspection (DPI), a method used for monitoring, filtering and shaping internet traffic, which has heightened concerns among many leading privacy groups. These groups are concerned with how the government will use such an intrusive method in prosecuting child predators. Central to this concern is DPI’s capability to allow the Russian government to peer into any citizens’ unencrypted internet traffic and monitor, copy, or even alter the traffic as it moves to its destination. The unresolved question is whether the government’s use of DPI will be restrained and utilized primarily to thwart child predators, or whether it will be expanded to lay the groundwork for a new era of national censorship. Although the United States has not yet adopted similar tactics in regulating its citizens’ internet use, Russia’s implementation of the new DPI monitoring and filtering system will provide an educational opportunity for both privacy advocates and policymakers

Coevolution of Firm Capabilities and Industry Competition

This paper proposes that rival firms not only search for new capabilities within their organization, but also for those that rest in their competitive environment. An integrated analysis of these search processes at both firm and industry levels of analysis shows how their interaction makes industries and firms coevolve over time. To contribute to an enhanced understanding of the concept of coevolution, a dynamic and integrative framework crossing meso and micro levels of analysis is constructed. This framework is applied to a longitudinal study of the music industry with a time-span of 120 years. The first part, a historical study, covers the period 1877 - 1990. The second part, a multiple-case study, covers the period 1990 - 1997. We conclude that search behavior drives coevolution through competitive dynamics among new entrants and incumbent firms and manifests itself in the simultaneous emergence of new business models and new organizational forms.coevolution;competitive regime;longitudinal research;multilevel research;music industry

Biological limits to reduction in rates of coronary heart disease: a punctuated equilibrium approach to immune cognition, chronic inflammation, and pathogenic social hierarchy

On both empirical and theoretical grounds we find that a particular form of social hierarchy, here characterized as 'pathogenic', can, from the earliest phases of life, exert a formal analog to evolutionary selection pressure, literally writing a permanent image of itself upon immune function as chronic vascular inflammation and its consequences. The staged nature of resulting disease emerges 'naturally' as an analog to punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory. Exposure differs according to the social constructs of race, class, and ethnicity, accounting in large measure for observed population-level differences in rates of coronary heart disease affecting industrialized societies. The system of American Apartheid, which enmeshes both majority and minority communities in a construct of pathogenic hierarchy, appears to present a severe biological limit to ultimate possible reductions in rates of coronary heart disease and related disorders for powerful as well as subordinate subgroups

Transition challenges for alternative fuel vehicle and transportation systems

Automakers are now developing alternatives to internal combustion engines (ICE), including hydrogen fuel cells and ICE-electric hybrids. Adoption dynamics for alternative vehicles are complex due to the enormous size and importance of the auto industry and vehicle fleet. Diffusion of alternative vehicles is both enabled and constrained by powerful positive feedbacks arising from scale and scope economies, R&D, learning by doing, driver experience, word of mouth, and complementary resources such as fueling infrastructure. We describe a dynamic model of the diffusion and competition among alternative fuel vehicles, including the coevolution of the fleet, technology, driver behavior, and complementary resources. Here we focus on the generation of consumer awareness of alternatives through feedback from driving experience, word of mouth and marketing, with a reduced form treatment of network effects and other positive feedbacks (which we treat in other papers). We demonstrate the existence of a critical threshold for sustained adoption of alternative technologies, and show how the threshold depends on economic and behavioral parameters. We show that word of mouth from those not driving an alternative vehicle is important in stimulating diffusion. Nevertheless, marketing and subsidies for alternatives to ICE must remain in place for long periods for diffusion to become self-sustaining. Expanding the model boundary to include endogenous learning, technological spillovers and spatial coevolution of fueling infrastructure adds additional feedbacks that further suppress the diffusion of alternative vehicles

`The frozen accident' as an evolutionary adaptation: A rate distortion theory perspective on the dynamics and symmetries of genetic coding mechanisms

We survey some interpretations and related issues concerning the frozen hypothesis due to F. Crick and how it can be explained in terms of several natural mechanisms involving error correction codes, spin glasses, symmetry breaking and the characteristic robustness of genetic networks. The approach to most of these questions involves using elements of Shannon's rate distortion theory incorporating a semantic system which is meaningful for the relevant alphabets and vocabulary implemented in transmission of the genetic code. We apply the fundamental homology between information source uncertainty with the free energy density of a thermodynamical system with respect to transcriptional regulators and the communication channels of sequence/structure in proteins. This leads to the suggestion that the frozen accident may have been a type of evolutionary adaptation

Using Social Network Analysis to Examine the Intersection of Adolescent Friendships and Health Behavior

Adolescence marks a vulnerable developmental period for health behavior, and research demonstrates that social context and interpersonal relationships impact the health behavior choices of adolescents. In addition, theories of adolescent development suggest a bidirectional relationship between environmental factors, including social relationships, and health. Friendships are one of the most salient relationships during adolescence, and new methods from the field of social network analysis allow researchers to explicitly examine the mechanisms through which friends influence health behavior, and simultaneously, how health and health behavior impacts the formation of friendships. Importantly, social network methods (e.g., stochastic actor-based models, exponential random graph models) overcome statistical limitations of alternative methodology. For example, methods from social network analysis incorporate interdependencies between individuals in a social network (e.g., adolescents within a school) into the statistical modeling framework, and are capable of simultaneously estimating social and behavioral outcomes. Through a sequence of three distinct studies, this project applies rigorous methods from social network analysis to investigate: (1) the differential impact of adolescent friendships on health-risk (e.g., alcohol use) and health-protective (e.g., physical activity) behaviors; (2) the role of perceived social acceptability and peer influence in shaping adolescent cigarette use; and (3) the social consequences, including social withdrawal and social marginalization, of adolescents with chronic illness

Are Opinions Based on Science: Modelling Social Response to Scientific Facts

As scientists we like to think that modern societies and their members base their views, opinions and behaviour on scientific facts. This is not necessarily the case, even though we are all (over-) exposed to information flow through various channels of media, i.e. newspapers, television, radio, internet, and web. It is thought that this is mainly due to the conflicting information on the mass media and to the individual attitude (formed by cultural, educational and environmental factors), that is, one external factor and another personal factor. In this paper we will investigate the dynamical development of opinion in a small population of agents by means of a computational model of opinion formation in a co-evolving network of socially linked agents. The personal and external factors are taken into account by assigning an individual attitude parameter to each agent, and by subjecting all to an external but homogeneous field to simulate the effect of the media. We then adjust the field strength in the model by using actual data on scientific perception surveys carried out in two different populations, which allow us to compare two different societies. We interpret the model findings with the aid of simple mean field calculations. Our results suggest that scientifically sound concepts are more difficult to acquire than concepts not validated by science, since opposing individuals organize themselves in close communities that prevent opinion consensus.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to PLoS ON