Globalisation, Entrepreneurship and the South Pacific: Reframing Australian Colonial Architecture, 1800-1850

In 1957, Clinton Hartley Grattan, one of Australia’s most important foreign observers, wrote of the shadow of the “urban” in legends of the Australian “bush”.1 He argued that the early frontiers of Australian settlement were frontiers of men with private capital, or entrepreneurs, and those frontiers thus carried more elements of the urban than is commonly realised. Such early colonial enterprises around Australia’s south and southeastern coasts, and across the Tasman included sealing, whaling, milling and pastoralism, as well as missionary, trading and finance ventures. In advance of official settlements in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, entrepreneurs mapped coastlines, pioneered trade routes and colonised lands. Backed by private capital they established colonial infrastructural architecture effecting urban expansion in the Australian colonies, New Zealand and beyond. Yet this architecture is rarely a subject of architectural histories

MoMoWo - Women’s Creativity since the Modern Movement: An European Cultural Heritage

Nella prospettiva di svelare quel mondo di donne professioniste del Novecento che hanno avuto un ruolo nell’architettura, nel design e nella costruzione, ma che sono rimaste ‘invisibili’, è nato il progetto “MoMoWo - Women’s Creativity since the Modern Movement (1918-2018)” co-finanziato dall’Unione Europea (coordinatrici: E. Garda e C. Franchini). Il presente volume riflette la struttura metodologico-operativa di tale progetto che ha guidato i ricercatori e le ricercatrici delle diverse università e centri di ricerca partner in Europa. Ciò ha reso possibile la creazione di un database per salvaguardare il patrimonio di informazioni emerso nel corso dei quattro anni del progetto. Nelle descrizioni delle voci del MoMoWo database si palesa l’acuirsi delle specificità della ricerca storica di genere soprattutto negli ambiti dell’architettura e della costruzione che sono stati, e in parte restano, prevalentemente di prerogativa maschile. Tale specificità, che si manifesta anche attraverso ostacoli culturali nell’individuazione e reperimento delle fonti documentarie e archivistiche, prefigura nuove narrazioni a cui aspirare. Il volume è corredato da allegati e casi studio che sono un’applicazione operativa del percorso concettuale che l’arricchimento documentale ha via via prodotto. Da esso, si dischiudono prospettive future per delineare, attraverso la raccolta work-in-progress di dati omogenei, genealogie e crono-geografie che restituirebbero alla Storia dell’architettura, nelle sue declinazioni, quel grado di complessità necessario al riconoscimento del patrimonio materiale e immateriale europeo tramandatoci dalle progettiste

MoMoWo - Women’s Creativity since the Modern Movement: An European Cultural Heritage

This book presents the ‘conceptual architecture’ of the MoMoWo Database for mapping women’s cultural legacy and heritage in Architecture, Construction and Design, and includes annexes on some of the most significant practices, outputs and deliverables so far achieved, resulting from the cooperative research activity between all MoMoWo’s international partners whom we directed at the Polytechnic of Turin (Polito). A collection of case studies enriches the volume by providing the reader with examples of specific thematic approaches at several geographical scales

Enterprise 2.0: Collaboration and Knowledge Emergence as a Business Web Strategy Enabler

The Web is becoming in many respects a powerful tool for supporting business strategy as companies are quickly becoming more and more reliant on new Web-based technologies to capitalize on new business opportunities. However, this introduces additional managerial problems and risks that have to be taken into consideration, if they are not to be left behind. In this chapter we explore the Web’s present and future potential in relation to information sharing, knowledge management, innovation management, and the automation of cross-organizational business transactions. The suggested approach will provide entrepreneurs, managers, and IT leaders with guidance on how to adopt the latest Web 2.0-based technologies in their everyday work with a view to setting up a business Web strategy. Specifically, Enterprise 2.0 is presented as a key enabler for businesses to expand their ecosystems and partnerships. Enterprise 2.0 also acts as a catalyst for improving innovation processes and knowledge work

Leisure Commons: Spatial History of Web 2.0

__Abstract__ The Internet has matured. It is now characterized by a new generation of websites popularly termed as Web 2.0. The nature of this transformation is predominantly social versus technical in nature, and is marked by the rise of social network sites and user generated content. In particular, Web 2.0 is defined by its leisure properties. These leisure properties, this book will argue, are by no means completely novel. In the coming pages we will explore how these leisure properties are deeply rooted in historical, socio-economic and cultural spaces. They are intrinsically tied to offline practices. In essence, to understand the nature of cyberleisure spaces, we need to examine closely their offline/online, transnational/transcultural and historic/contemporary relationships. This book proposes to use the metaphor of ‘public parks’ and its multiple forms to illustrate different dimensions of the digital commons. This metaphorical tool is used as a critical and comprehensive instrument of analysis. It is used to make the argument that public parks share the rhetoric of Web 2.0 spaces–that of being open, democratic, non-utilitarian, and free for all. However, rhetoric confronts a reality that always comes with a rich and contentious historical struggle. By revealing the spectrum of tensions in the makings of the public park, this book draws parallels to persistent political and socio-economic challenges surrounding digital leisure architectures

The leisure commons: A spatial history of web 2.0

There is much excitement about Web 2.0 as an unprecedented, novel, community-building space for experiencing, producing, and consuming leisure, particularly through social network sites. What is needed is a perspective that is invested in neither a utopian or dystopian posture but sees historical continuity to this cyber leisure geography. This book investigates the digital public sphere by drawing parallels to another leisure space that shares its rhetoric of being open, democratic, and free for all: the urban park. It makes the case that the history and politics of public parks as an urban commons provides fresh insight into contemporary debates on corporatization, democratization and privatization of the digital commons. This book takes the reader on a metaphorical journey through multiple forms of public parks such as Protest Parks, Walled Gardens, Corporate Parks, Fantasy Parks, and Global Parks, addressing issues such as virtual activism, online privacy/surveillance, digital labor, branding, and globalization of digital networks. Ranging from the 19th century British factory garden to Tokyo Disneyland, this book offers numerous spatial metaphors to bring to life aspects of new media spaces. Readers looking for an interdisciplinary, historical and spatial approach to staid Web 2.0 discourses will undoubtedly benefit from this text

Appraisal of Cashless Policy on the Nigerian Financial System

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has been active in the inauguration of policies and schemes to foster the implementation of the cashless policy in Nigeria. However the current transition to cashless economy raises a lot of concerns with no substantial evidence yet to justify its implementation. This study was carried out in order to appraise the implementation of the cashless policy since its introduction into the Nigerian financial system in 2012 and also to examine the persistent challenges facing its implementation. In view of the above stated objective, primary data were collected with the aid of the questionnaire, which was randomly administered to 120 respondents ranging from First Bank, Zenith Bank and United Bank for Africa. The banks were selected based on their total assets and the information collected covered the activities of the CBN and that of these banks towards implementation of the cashless policy from 2012 till date.The data collected were presented and analyzed with the aid of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) using descriptive statistics and one-sample t-test. The results led to the conclusion that despite the need to operate cashless transactions dominating the modern Nigerian economy, the cashless policy will have the desired impact only if a lot is done to ensure the implementation of an effective cashless system