Personalized Digital Services: Power, Equity and Transparency in "Digital Familiars"

A brief working paper prepared for "New Approaches to Research on the Social Implications of Emerging Technologies." Oxford Internet Institute. University of Oxford. April 15-16, 2005.National Science Foundation IGERT Progra

Beyond the Web: integrated digital communities

This paper details two case studies exploring integration within digital communities. Three types of integration are introduced – information, technological and online-offline integration. These concepts are explored through two online fan communities and through a mobile web based system. This paper addresses the idea of balance between offline and online spaces; a key research interest of Sillence’s. It tackles the issue of how design can affect the social use of a system and focuses upon the natural use of multiple communication media. The way in which people use and adapt technology to suit their needs is of interest to Sillence in all her work. She was asked to write this paper by the chair of the Web-based Communities Conference: Sillence, E. (2004a). Media Integration within Web Based Communities. In Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities 2004. Lisbon, Portugal 24-26 March 2004, p175-182. Several papers have argued that involvement in online environments is having a negative social impact. However, her research argues that methodological flaws have encouraged these findings and overlooked the fact that natural settings provide opportunities for the integration of media across an online-offline boundary. Other related publications by her include: Kostakos, V. O’Neill, E., Little, L. & Sillence, E. (2005). The social implications of emerging technologies. Interacting with Computers, 17 (5) 475-483. Sillence, E. & Baber, C. (2004). Integrated Digital Communities: Combining Web-based Interaction with Text Messaging to Develop a System for Encouraging Group Communication and Competition. Interacting with Computers, 16 (1) 93-113 Also edited: Special edition of Interacting with Computers. “The social impact of emerging technologies” 17, 5 (2005

Human data interaction through design:An explorative step from theory to practice using design as a vehicle

The increasing use of personal data and AI in everyday technologies has resulted in the amplification of complex and intertwined socio-technical challenges. These, often exemplified by data abuse, breaches, and exploitation, must be alleviated to support sustainable, resilient and human-centred data economies and positive global innovation. Here, we turn towards Human-Data Interaction, an interdisciplinary branch of research, inspired by HCI, that brings together diverse siloed perspectives to present three holistic response principles: data legibility, negotiability and agency. But, the emergent nature of this field calls for refinement of these theoretical tenets to help them translate into practical and tangible responses that are embedded in the technologies we create. We propose this workshop as a foundational step towards this agenda by opening these principles to the CHI community to encourage critique and dialogue about the strengths, weaknesses, value and opportunities of incorporating HDI into the design and evaluation of technology. The outcomes of this workshop, by engaging with HDI through Design, will form the basis for the next stages of research within HDI by contributing to foundational texts within academia and implementing HDI-infused systems within industry

Mediated intimacy in families: understanding the relation between children and parents

Mediating intimacy between children and their parents is still limited investigated and at the same time, we find that, emerging technologies are about to change and affect the way we interact with each other. In this paper, we report from an empirical study where we investigated the social interaction phenomena that unfold between children and their parents. We used cultural probes and contextual interviews to investigate the intimate acts between children and parents in three families. Our findings show that the intimate act between children and parents share a number of similarities with other types of intimate relations such as strong-tie intimacy (couples cohabiting). However, we also identified several issues of intimacy unique to the special relation between children and their parents. These unique acts of intimacy propose challenges when designing technologies for mediated intimacy in families. Author Keywords Children, parents, cultural probes, mediated intimac

Participation in Social Media : Studying Explicit and Implicit Forms of Participation in Communicative Social Networks

Peer reviewe

Multispeed cities and the logistics of living in the Information Age

We now have a wealth of data on how the use of information and digital technologies (ICTs) is unevenly mapped onto different income, gender and ethnic groups. However we remain poorly equipped to understand how ICTs, with their intrinsic abilities to transcend barriers of space and time, relate to the fine grain of people’s lives on the ground in cities and neighbourhoods. ICTs contract space in enabling us to contact distant friends, pick up voice mail and order goods. Mobile phones on the move short-circuit time to an instant. But what are the effects of these space and time manipulations on the actual logistics of our interaction with other people? And what does it mean for people and neighbourhoods who do not have access to ICTs to live in a world that is being restructured to suit those who do? This project helps to fill these and allied gaps in our knowledge by simultaneously examining how ICTs relate to social inequalities through their use in orchestrati! ng the social time-space worlds both of a privileged and of a marginalized neighbourhood in Newcastle upon Tyne. Key Findings • Measures of the “digital divide” based on ICT ownership are inadequate to depict the complex patterns of use and access to a variety of technologies. For example, respondents in the poorer area may not have had access to, say, the Internet nor used online services, but they often relied on neighbours, family or friends to provide access. ICT use is often more collective and collaborative, beyond the household level, which suggests some caution over widely used official, individualistic measures. • In the richer area ICTs formed pervasive infrastructures underpinning everyday life, to such an extent that respondents could not say when they specifically used a technology because it was on all the time. In the poorer area, ICT use tended to be for specific purposes, which were recalled as discrete events marked out by their use of advanced technology. • Research on ICTs can profitably use a conceptual framework which emphasises the way in which interactions that do and do not use ICTs inter-relate to shape the detail of subjects’ everyday life. Such an approach allows research to address the ways in which multiple ICTs are used simultaneously and in subtle and continuous combination. • The relaxing of restrictions imposed by time and space that ICTs can give offers new possibilities for structuring the rhythms of daily life. Crucially, this leads not to a disembedding from local life but to forging new interactions within cities. Other Findings • By having ICTs as an “always on” background, affluent and ICT literate groups benefitted from accelerating lifestyles and mobility patterns and are enabled to cram extremely dense and flexible patterns of transaction, communication and information exchange into the logistical framework of their lives. • ICT use in the more marginalized neighbourhood tended to offer occasional support to existing patterns of everyday life. About the Study The project deployed an innovative cascade of methods to establish how ICT- mediated and place-based activities intersect to define together the logistics of everyday life for the affluent Jesmond and a relatively marginalized “off line” Blakelaw neighbourhood in Newcastle upon Tyne

The Future of the Internet III

Presents survey results on technology experts' predictions on the Internet's social, political, and economic impact as of 2020, including its effects on integrity and tolerance, intellectual property law, and the division between personal and work lives

Plausability and probability in scenario planning

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore extant distinctions between plausibility and probability in scenario planning and re-frame the either/or stance in the literature within a broader set of methodological choice possibilities. Design/methodology/approach – The paper surveys the history of both terms in both the English language and more narrowly within scenario planning, critically assessing the confusions that have arisen. The paper questions the distinctions that have been made and offers a richer set of combinations to open up the methodological space available. Findings – The paper suggests that the either/or stances that have been dominant in the literature – and even shaped distinctions between different schools of scenario planning – must be surpassed by a richer set of combinations that open up new methodological approaches and possibilities. Research limitations/implications – This is a conceptual and exploratory paper. Therefore the findings are propositions and tentative. Practical implications – The paper opens up new ways of producing scenarios and may dissolve some of the infertile distinctions that have plagued the field to now. Originality/value – The paper dilutes distinctions that have been accepted for decades and opens up new possibilities in the scenarios field, which is growing and is now producing some 2,200 peer-reviewed articles/year in English alone as per the EBSCO database