Designing graphical interface programming languages for the end user

This thesis sets out to answer three simple questions: What tools are available for novice programmers to program GUIs? Are those tools fulfilling their role? Can anything be done to make better tools? Despite being simple questions, the answers are not so easily constructed. In answering the first question, it was necessary to examine the range of tools available and decide upon criteria which could be used to identify tools aimed specifically at the novice programmer (there being no currently agreed criteria for their identification). Having identified these tools, it was then necessary to construct a framework within which they could be sensibly compared. The answering of the second question required an investigation of what were the successful features of current tools and which features were less successful. Success or failure of given features was determined by research in both programming language design and studies of programmer satisfaction. Having discovered what should be retained and discarded from current systems, the answering of the third question required the construction of new systems through blending elements from visual languages, program editors and fourth generation languages. These final prototypes illustrate a new way of thinking about and constructing the next generation of GUI programming languages for the novice

A quality of service based framework for dynamic, dependable systems

There is currently much UK government and industry interest towards the integration of complex computer-based systems, including those in the military domain. These systems can include both mission critical and safety critical applications, and therefore require the dependable communication of data. Current modular military systems requiring such performance guarantees are mostly based on parameters and system states fixed during design time, thus allowing a predictable estimate of performance. These systems can exhibit a limited degree of reconfiguration, but this is typically within the constraints of a predefined set of configurations. The ability to reconfigure systems more dynamically, could lead to further increased flexibility and adaptability, resulting in the better use of existing assets. Current software architecture models that are capable of providing this flexibility, however, tend to lack support for dependable performance. This thesis explores the benefits for the dependability of future dynamic systems, built on a publish/subscribe model, from using Quality of Service (QoS) methods to map application level data communication requirements to available network resources. Through this, original contributions to knowledge are created, including; the proposal of a QoS framework that specifies a way of defining flexible levels of QoS characteristics and their use in the negotiation of network resources, a simulation based evaluation of the QoS framework and specifically the choice of negotiation algorithm used, and a test-bed based feasibility study. Simulation experimentation conducted comparing different methods of QoS negotiation gives a clear indication that the use of the proposed QoS framework and flexible negotiation algorithm can provide a benefit in terms of system utility, resource utilisation, and system stability. The choice of negotiation algorithm has a particularly strong impact on these system properties. The cost of these benefits comes in terms of the processing power and execution time required to reach a decision on the acceptance of a subscriber. It is suggested, given this cost, that when computational resources are limited, a simpler priority based negotiation algorithm should be used. Where system resources are more abundant, however, the flexible negotiation algorithm proposed within the QoS framework can offer further benefits. Through the implementation of the QoS framework within an existing military avionics software architecture based emulator on a test-bed, both the technical challenges that will need to be overcome and, more importantly, the potential viability for the inclusion of the QoS framework have been demonstrated

The pharmacologically improved human. Performance-enhancing substances as a social challenge. Final Report

For some years now, in response to the rising challenges of global socioeconomic competition, both the scientific community and the public have been debating whether the improvement of individuals’ performance with the help of technical or biomedical interventions in the human body – termed enhancement – is a welcome, inevitable or undesirable vision of the future. The report on brain research by the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB) (Bundestagsdrucksache 16/7821) also presented evidence of a growing trend towards the use of pharmaceuticals and other medical interventions to specifically influence mental states and capacities. Following publication of the highly respected TAB report »Gene Doping«, an analysis of physical performance enhancement in sport, the Committee for Education, Research and Technology Assessment commissioned the TAB to undertake a technology assessment project on »pharmacological and technical interventions to improve performance – prospects for more widespread use in medicine and everyday life« (»Enhancement Project«). The TAB’s final report analyzes the areas of development and use with the greatest social and political relevance now and in the foreseeable future, i.e. current developments and plausible trends regarding the use of psychopharmaceuticals and other drugs to enhance performance in working and everyday life. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the current status of possibilities to influence human performance by pharmacological means and of the classification of those agents within the framework of laws regulating medicines, foods and healthcare. This will facilitate a realistic discussion of future developments that clearly stands out from previous hypothetical and visionary descriptions of enhancement. The report shows that the targeted development and use of pharmacological substances for nontherapeutic performance enhancement is incompatible with the current objectives of the medical innovation system and the remit of doctors. A change in this situation would require a far-reaching public and political opinion-forming process. At the same time, the systematic analysis of the scientific approach to the doping problem in elite and competitive sport undertaken in the TAB report points to the need for a thorough public debate on how to deal with growing demands for performance and innate differences in abilities among individuals. The report based on TAB report Nr. 143 »Pharmakologische Interventionen zur Leistungssteigerung als gesellschaftliche Herausforderung. Endbericht zum TA-Projekt« examines the options for action in the fields of research, regulation, healthcare consumer protection and prevention

The internet of ontological things: On symmetries between ubiquitous problems and their computational solutions in the age of smart objects

This dissertation is about an abstract form of computer network that has recently earned a new physical incarnation called “the Internet of Things.” It surveys the ontological transformations that have occurred over recent decades to the computational components of this network, objects—initially designed as abstract algorithmic agents in a source code of computer programming but now transplanted into real-world objects. Embodying the ideal of modularity, objects have provided computer programmers with more intuitive means to construct a software application with lots of simple and reusable functional building blocks. Their capability of being reassembled into many different networks for a variety of applications has also embodied another ideal of computing machines, namely general-purposiveness. In the algorithmic cultures of the past century, these objects existed as mere abstractions to help humans to understand electromagnetic signals that had infiltrated every corner of automatized spaces from private to public. As an instrumental means to domesticate these elusive signals into programmable architectures according to the goals imposed by professional programmers and amateur end-users, objects promised a universal language for any computable human activities. This utopian vision for the object-oriented domestication of the digital has had enough traction for the growth of the software industry as it has provided an alibi to hide another process of colonization occurring on the flipside of their interfacing between humans and machines: making programmable the highest number of online and offline human activities possible. A more recent media age, which this dissertation calls the age of the Internet of Things, refers to the second phase of this colonization of human cultures by the algorithmic objects, no longer trapped in the hard-wired circuit boards of personal computer, but now residing in real-life objects with new wireless communicability. Chapters of this dissertation examine each different computer application—a navigation system in a smart car, smart home, open-world video games, and neuro-prosthetics—as each particular case of this object-oriented redefinition of human cultures