Trust on the Web: Some Web Science Research Challenges

Web Science is the interdisciplinary study of the World Wide Web as a first-order object in order to understand its relationship with the wider societies in which it is embedded, and in order to facilitate its future engineering as a beneficial object. In this paper, research issues and challenges relating to the vital topic of trust are reviewed, showing how the Web Science agenda requires trust to be addressed, and how addressing the challenges requires a range of disciplinary skills applied in an integrated manner

The Crypto-democracy and the Trustworthy

In the current architecture of the Internet, there is a strong asymmetry in terms of power between the entities that gather and process personal data (e.g., major Internet companies, telecom operators, cloud providers, ...) and the individuals from which this personal data is issued. In particular, individuals have no choice but to blindly trust that these entities will respect their privacy and protect their personal data. In this position paper, we address this issue by proposing an utopian crypto-democracy model based on existing scientific achievements from the field of cryptography. More precisely, our main objective is to show that cryptographic primitives, including in particular secure multiparty computation, offer a practical solution to protect privacy while minimizing the trust assumptions. In the crypto-democracy envisioned, individuals do not have to trust a single physical entity with their personal data but rather their data is distributed among several institutions. Together these institutions form a virtual entity called the Trustworthy that is responsible for the storage of this data but which can also compute on it (provided first that all the institutions agree on this). Finally, we also propose a realistic proof-of-concept of the Trustworthy, in which the roles of institutions are played by universities. This proof-of-concept would have an important impact in demonstrating the possibilities offered by the crypto-democracy paradigm.Comment: DPM 201

A Metacognitive Approach to Trust and a Case Study: Artificial Agency

Trust is defined as a belief of a human H (‘the trustor’) about the ability of an agent A (the ‘trustee’) to perform future action(s). We adopt here dispositionalism and internalism about trust: H trusts A iff A has some internal dispositions as competences. The dispositional competences of A are high-level metacognitive requirements, in the line of a naturalized virtue epistemology. (Sosa, Carter) We advance a Bayesian model of two (i) confidence in the decision and (ii) model uncertainty. To trust A, H demands A to be self-assertive about confidence and able to self-correct its own models. In the Bayesian approach trust can be applied not only to humans, but to artificial agents (e.g. Machine Learning algorithms). We explain the advantage the metacognitive trust when compared to mainstream approaches and how it relates to virtue epistemology. The metacognitive ethics of trust is swiftly discussed

Dreaming of Big Data: a method for evaluating the use of data in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum.

This report evaluates the current undergraduate curriculum at WPI in the face of advances in data storage and processing capability. Large quantities of data are now widely accessible in nearly every industry, and we predict that all students will require data analysis skills to succeed in their future careers. In this report, we investigate the educational needs of all students concerning data. We consider the relationship between data and mathematics to determine if th

The apparatus of digital archaeology

Digital Archaeology is predicated upon an ever-changing set of apparatuses – technological, methodological, software, hardware, material, immaterial – which in their own ways and to varying degrees shape the nature of Digital Archaeology. Our attention, however, is perhaps inevitably more closely focussed on research questions, choice of data, and the kinds of analyses and outputs. In the process we tend to overlook the effects the tools themselves have on the archaeology we do beyond the immediate consequences of the digital. This paper introduces cognitive artefacts as a means of addressing the apparatus more directly within the context of the developing archaeological digital ecosystem. It argues that a critical appreciation of our computational cognitive artefacts is key to understanding their effects on both our own cognition and on the creation of archaeological knowledge. In the process, it defines a form of cognitive digital archaeology in terms of four distinct methods for extracting cognition from the digital apparatus layer by layer

Drawing Elena Ferrante's Profile. Workshop Proceedings, Padova, 7 September 2017

Elena Ferrante is an internationally acclaimed Italian novelist whose real identity has been kept secret by E/O publishing house for more than 25 years. Owing to her popularity, major Italian and foreign newspapers have long tried to discover her real identity. However, only a few attempts have been made to foster a scientific debate on her work. In 2016, Arjuna Tuzzi and Michele Cortelazzo led an Italian research team that conducted a preliminary study and collected a well-founded, large corpus of Italian novels comprising 150 works published in the last 30 years by 40 different authors. Moreover, they shared their data with a select group of international experts on authorship attribution, profiling, and analysis of textual data: Maciej Eder and Jan Rybicki (Poland), Patrick Juola (United States), Vittorio Loreto and his research team, Margherita Lalli and Francesca Tria (Italy), George Mikros (Greece), Pierre Ratinaud (France), and Jacques Savoy (Switzerland). The chapters of this volume report the results of this endeavour that were first presented during the international workshop Drawing Elena Ferrante's Profile in Padua on 7 September 2017 as part of the 3rd IQLA-GIAT Summer School in Quantitative Analysis of Textual Data. The fascinating research findings suggest that Elena Ferrante\u2019s work definitely deserves \u201cmany hands\u201d as well as an extensive effort to understand her distinct writing style and the reasons for her worldwide success

Digital aesthetics: the discrete and the continuous

Aesthetic investigations of computation are stuck in an impasse, caused by the difficulty of accounting for the ontological discrepancy between the continuity of sensation and the discreteness of digital technology. This article proposes a theoretical position intended to overcome that deadlock. It highlights how an ontological focus on continuity has entered media studies via readings of Deleuze, which attempt to build a ‘digital aisthesis’ (that is, a theory of digital sensation) by ascribing a ‘virtuality’ to computation. This underpins, in part, the affective turn in digital theory. In contrast to such positions, this article argues for a reconceptualization of formal abstraction in computation, in order to find, within the discreteness of computational formalisms (and not via the coupling of the latter with virtual sensation), an indeterminacy that would make computing aesthetic qua inherently generative. This indeterminacy, it is argued here, can be found by reconsidering, philosophically, Turing’s notion of ‘incomputability’

Interview with Prof. Jeroen van den Hoven on Why do Ethics and Values Matter in Business and Information Systems Engineering?

Svrha ovog rada je prepoznati zašto je važno da organizacije uvedu poslovnu etiku u svoje poslovanje, jer ona se može okarakterizirati kao jedan od preduvjeta za uspjeh. Prvi dio rada definira etiku, jer ona je opći okvir za razmatranje poslovne i menadžerske etike. Budući da se etika bavi moralom, u radu je opisan odnos etike i morala, te po čemu se ta dva pojma razlikuju. Kada se dobije jasna slika o tome što je etika, na red dolazi poslovna etika i menadžerska etika, koje su bit ovoga rada. Odnose se na ponašanje, poštivanje pravila i načela neke organizacije, i poslovanje te organizacije. Želi li neko poduzeće biti konkurentno, uspješno i efikasno na tržištu mora imati sređenu situaciju između svojih menadžera, zaposlenika i suradnika. Kako bi takav odnos što bolje funkcionirao; pravila ponašanja, temeljne vrijednosti te načela organizacije jasno su navedeni u etičkom kodeksu. Menadžerska etika daje jasne upute i pravila te smjernice kako bi se jedan menadžer trebao ponašati u poduzeću kojim on upravlja. Rezultat toga su etični pristupi, a svaki ima svoje kriterije i standarde. Najpoznatiji etički pristupi su utilitarni pristup, pristup moralnih prava te pristup pravednosti. Rad završava primjerom etičkog kodeksa Generali Grupe, koja obuhvaća interese i očekivanja široke javnosti: djelatnika, investitora, klijenata, dobavljača, i lokalne zajednice. Svoj Etički kodeks su oblikovali sa svrhom uređenja cjelovitih i skladnih odnosa između lokalnih Generali kompanija i zemalja u kojima Grupa posluje.The purpose of this work is to identify why it is important for organizations to introduce their business ethics as it can be characterized as one of the preconditions for success. The first part of this work defines ethics as it is the general framework for considering business and management ethics. Since ethics deals with morality, the relationship between ethics and morality is described in this work, and how these two concepts differ. When we get a clear picture of what ethics is, then we have to understand what business and management ethics are, which are the essence of this work. They are related to the behavior, compliance with the rules and principles of an organization, and the business of that organization. If a company wants to be competing successfully and efficiently on the market, they have to have a good relationship between managers, employees, and associates. The rules of conduct, the fundamental values and the principles of organization are clearly stated in the Code of Ethics to make this relationship work better. The Management ethics gives clears instruction and rules for a manager how to behave in a company he manages. The result of this is an ethical approach and each of them has its own criteria and standards. The best known ethical approaches are the utilitarian approach, access to moral rights, and access to justice. The final work ends with the example of the ethics code of Generali Group, that includes interests and expectations of the general public: employees, investors, clients, suppliers and the local community. Their code of ethics has shaped the purpose of arranging complete and harmonious relationship between local Generali companies and the countries where the group operates

Archivists and Thespians: A Case Study and Reflections on Context and Authenticity in a Digitization Project

During a recent digitization project between archivists and theater faculty at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC), different assumptions and perspectives revealed competing ideas about context and authenticity of primary sources. This article discusses these points of contention by framing them within similar concerns expressed in the archival and humanities literature. It then examines theater literature to understand performance studies research needs and to conceptualize notions of context and authenticity in theater scholarship. The article supports prior assertions that notions of context and authenticity are not absolute but are rooted in the perspectives of different disciplines. It also argues that when collaborating with other disciplines on digital projects, archivists should be considerate of their perspectives, research needs, and intended audiences to create a product that best meets user needs