Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Understanding lesbian fandom: a case study of the Xena: Warrior Princess (XSTT) lesbian internet fans

This thesis is written to promote and pursue an understanding of lesbian fandom and its function on the Internet. It will demonstrate how a particular television text Xena: Warrior Princess (X: WP) and a dedicated online fandom „xenasubtexttalk‟ (XSTT) of diverse lesbian fan membership gained empowerment and agency through their fan practices. Since the screening of the television fantasy series X: WP (1995-2001), there has been a marked increase in academic enquiry into lesbian fan culture on the Internet. This thesis contributes to the lesbian spectatorship of fandom with a specific interest in online fandom. This research suggests there are many readings of X: WP and the dedicated websites set up to discuss the series have increased during and post the series broadcast period. This study explores the contradictions, the gaps, and the differences between fan responses to the series, especially the lesbian discourse and fan fiction that developed during and after the television series ended. This investigation suggests that fan scholarship can obtain a new insight into lesbian Internet fan practices as a virtual space producing new lesbian fan online identities and discourses that challenge traditional forms of lesbian fandom. It does this by presenting three distinct, significant and interrelated layers of lesbian online textual engagement. While interrelated, these layers are separate and important as they each reveal new lesbian online fan performances of identity that challenge traditional performances of reading and writing habits of lesbian fans

Creative Management: Disciplining the Neoliberal Worker

This integrated article dissertation examines some of the new managerial practices that have emerged to handle cognitive capitalism’s ongoing need for creative, flexible labour power. The three articles included in this dissertation offer a glimpse into the widespread processes employed by management to regulate and discipline a workforce that must also be granted a degree of relative flexibility, creativity, and autonomy in order to be effective under post-Fordist conditions of production. The first chapter looks at the emergence of corporate improvisational training at the turn of the twenty-first century as an attempt to cultivate flexible and innovative workers, a move that ultimately succumbs to what Andre Spicer (2013) calls “organizational bullshit”—the deployment of cynical and self-serving discourse that functions to build confidence and legitimacy within workplaces where a clear sense of occupational purpose is lacking. Chapter two explores the recent trend of workplace mindfulness as a specific element of the now-prevalent \u27wellness\u27 discourses, which inevitably work to align workers\u27 personal values with those of their employer. The final chapter involves an analysis of the working conditions of voice-over and motion capture actors in the video game industry and the processes of rationalization and neo-taylorization to which they are subjected

"Be yourself or rather be your Brand"! care of the self as a control tool in a cosmetics firm

Care of the self, a technique for governing the individual in society, proves to be equally a control technique for the individual in the firm. In a firm dedicated to the cult of beauty, there is a blurring of the lines between employee and consumer individual. This blurring makes care of the self a control tool whose rising power over individuals is all the greater because it is nurtured and maintained by the individuals themselves.brand; marketing; individual behavior; human resources management

Rethinking copyright and the internet: a new model for users’ rights

The laws of copyright can be slower to adapt and evolve than the industries they regulate. As the landscape of how protected works are made and how the public views how those works should be treated changes, the law does not seamlessly follow in course. Rather, it typically slowly grows obsolete and then undergoes periodic points of drastic redefinition in order to adapt. Since the Statute of Anne, the foundation for modern copyright law across the globe, many nations have implemented subsequent reforms to their copyright acts to adapt both to the modern world and to previous failures of the law. The British Copyright Act of 1956 adapted the law to a world connected in trade by expanding protection for works whose initial publication was outside of Britain.1 In 1998, the United States enacted one of the most important pieces of copyright legislation as a reaction to the effects of the internet and technology on the enforceability of copyright law. This law is known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA,among its many alterations and additions to the law, created a safe-harbour provision so that online service providers could avoid vicarious liability for the actions of their members- moulding the law to the digital space.2 In 2012, Canada passed its groundbreaking Copyright Modernization Act which sought to address the rise of user-generated content by legitimising transformative works made for non-commercial purposes.3 Thus, the overarching trend in copyright law is for it to gradually grow obsolete or ineffective within the scope of the industrial or technological power of the market until a great force of legislation brings the law back in line. This thesis will argue that we have reached such a turning point. It asserts that an inability to adequately apply current law, seen through impotent enforcement mechanisms online, coupled with vague legal boundaries has brought about a need for redefinition within copyright law. Further, it hypothesises that the that the property-law model used as a basis for copyright law today is the root of issues with balancing user’s rights against creators' rights and is no longer the ideal means to protect creative works online. It will demonstrate how technology and global communication have changed the culture of creativity and creative dissemination in such a way that copyright law is no longer a competent tool in protecting and fostering the development of a large body of creative works. It will examine current would-be solutions to the problem of online infringements and analyse their inadequacies. In analysing the current relevant legal mechanisms, their failures and successes, as well as how the notion of property-like rules influence these failures and successes, it comes to the conclusion that stepping away from this property model and towards a system of liability rules online will not only help to foster new works, but will benefit those who own the rights to existing works as well. It concludes with a suggestion for a newly constructed system of liability rules, targeting areas previously discussed where the law is failing, to be applied in lieu of property rules for certain aspects of copyright protection. The overarching research question this thesis serves to answer is how can we appropriately balance author’s rights with the dissemination of information in a digital world in a way that leads to a system of copyright law that is practical, fair, and enforceable? It is intended to highlight and address the growing inefficacy of copyright law in the digital world, analyse the weaknesses of modern attempts to adapt the law to the digital space, and offer unique solutions to the problems it addresses. It analyses copyright law from a global perspective through the lens of online infringements. I adopt this global perspective for two reasons. First, while copyright law is strictly territorial, it serves at the behest of a global economy and has been largely unified through treaties with respect to minimum requirements for protection and framework standards.4 Second, a global perspective is important for the comparative analyses I employ. The comparisons target the successes and failures resulting from enacted solutions to online infringement in an attempt to offer a workable solution that may be applied anywhere. Thus, this thesis sets out to be a policy analysis that dissects copyright law and online infringement as a whole. 1 Copyright Act 1956 (UK) 2 Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998 (USA) 3 Copyright Modernisation Act 2012 (CA) 29.21 4 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Paris Text 1971

Time Caught by the Tail: Fast Forward: Pause

This thesis examines the effect of the new technology and the virtual time on the visual language, production and consumption of image, and in particular image of alterity. By revisiting works of 1960s artists and their relationship to the technological growth in post WWII, I examine the anxious subjectivity evident in their work in order to draw parallel with contemporary works of art, and their relationship to the new technology and notion of time. Relying on key debates, thesis explores the Modernist aesthetic dislike for representing the image of worker as political subject in Fordist mode of production (which measured time in blocks of production and cycle of consumption). It then addresses works of art that attempt to bring back the image of worker as political subject in recent years but face the shift from Fordist to Post-Fordist (with the new technology, time that it takes to produce an idea or the immaterial labor can not be measured). Therefore, the museums have become the new factories and viewers are producing unpaid immaterial labor (“meaning” making). With images readily available on Internet from the new global unrest, it is evident that there is a search for the image of the next political subject. With this in mind, I examine the representation of the image of alterity through cinema and visual arts. I conclude that production of image of alterity, or image as evidence, is more of a factory production than a human production, with camera and new technology used by the military and Hollywood. Again relying on key debates, this thesis revisits the art produced by the Futurists and their obsession with the production of aerial images of cities, and their similarities to our everyday exposure to areal images (Google Earth) and how these images in general have shifted our view from a horizontal point of reference to earth, and stability, to a vertical and unstable position, which historically is associated with time of war and conflict. Finally, this thesis explores the use of special effect in video editing, which turns aerial images of city of Tehran, into an intricate tapestry. This special effect signifies the similarities between baroque quality of Islamic art of 12th century and the fragmentation of image and information in our present time, urging us to re-examine the fast forward idea of technology and make an effort for a pause

Going mobile: the domestication of the cell phone by teens in a rural east Texas town

This thesis explores the use of the cell phone among US teens. The research was conducted in a rural east Texas town, with two student groups, 13-14 year-olds (middle school) and 18-20 year-olds (university), between 2007 and 2008, at a time when 2G cell phones were the norm. The analysis adopts and applies the domestication framework developed by Silverstone and Hirsch (1992) within work on the social shaping of technology (Haddon, 2004; Berker, 2006; Selwyn, 2012), and points to some limitations and areas for further development within this approach. The thesis explores the extent to which teens use of the cell phone serves as a vehicle for self-expression and collective identity. It considers their emotional investment and connection with the cell phone as an extension of the self ; as well as its role as a focus for, and a means of, regulation of young people both by adults and by peers. The analysis suggests that, far from being a matter of free choice and autonomy, teens use of cell phones may be restricted by cost (of texting, calling plan), features (of particular phones), and by parental or institutional rules about how, where and when cell phones may be used. Use may also be regulated by peers in terms of when and with whom to talk or text, enabling peer groups to exclude others. Through the lens of the domestication framework this thesis concludes that teens in this context are not an homogenous group: the ways they incorporate the cell phone into their everyday lives may differ to a degree, not least as a result of parental and institutional regulation. The research does, however, identify broad areas of consensus among teens, partly linked to the geographical and socio-economic context of the participants, which provides a useful comparison with research undertaken on teens elsewhere in the world

Producing the internet and development: an ethnography of internet café use in Accra, Ghana

The United Nation's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), that took place between 2003 and 2005, elevated the 'information society' to the level of 'gender equality' 'environmental sustainability' and 'human rights' as one of the central Development tropes of our time. The concept of the network has come to figure heavily in the political discourse of both developed and developing nations and transnational agencies. These organizations employ statistics, academic theories, popular wisdom, and utopian visions shaped by Western experiences to extrapolate an expected impact of new technologies on the developing world. However, to date there has been very little on-the-ground research on the diffusion and appropriation of these technologies as it is taking place in developing nations and how this might challenge and reorient the expectations of traditional Development perspectives. This thesis seeks to provide such a response drawing on the experiences of Internet café users in Accra, the capital city of Ghana where an estimated 500 to 1000 of these small businesses were in operation. Departing from the categories and hierarchies favoured within Development circles, my approach is to look holistically at the way the Internet was produced as a meaningful and useful tool through the practices of users. The practices that defined the Internet in Accra encompassed not only individual activities at the computer interface, but also other formal and informal, collective and everyday rituals such as story-telling, religious practices, and play and socializing among youth. A similar production process was observable in the activities of the Development experts and government officials who arrived in Accra in February 2005 to discuss the role of networking technologies in socio-economic development at the WSIS Africa regional conference. The activities of both groups reconstituted the Internet, Development and the relationship between the two, but along very divergent pathways

Making Waves: Intra-actions with Educational Media at the National Film Board of Canada from 1960-2016

This dissertation aims to excavate the narrative of educational programming at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) from 1960 to 2016. The producers and creative staff of Studio G the epicentre of educational programming at the NFB for over thirty years produced extraordinarily diverse and innovative multimedia for the classroom. Multimedia is here understood as any media form that was not film, including filmstrips, slides, overhead projecturals, laserdiscs and CDs. To date, there have been no attempts to document the history of educational programming at the NFB generally, nor to situate the history of Studio G within that tradition. Over the course of five years, I have interviewed thirty-four NFB technicians, administrators, producers and directors in the service of creating a unique collective narrative tracing the development of educational media and programming at the NFB over the past fifty-six years and began to piece together an archive of work that has largely been forgotten. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that the forms of media engagement pioneered by Studio G and its descendants fostered a desire for, and eventually an expectation for specific media affordances, namely the ability to sequence or navigate media content, to pace ones progress through media, to access media on demand and to modify media content. As new waves of mediated practices emerge throughout the time-period here covered, the complex interconnections between media innovation and pedagogical practice are revealed to be deeply interwoven within the political, social and economic pressures of particular historical moments. The first of these waves focuses on the media produced by Studio G primarily during the tumultuous 1960s to the mid-1980s. The second wave (early-1980s to mid-1990s) marks the shifts in practices and social expectations with the rise of the PC computer. The third wave (mid-1990s to 2004) recognizes yet another shift as Internet technologies and the privileging of consumer expectation eclipsed what were by then seen as dated practices. In the fourth wave (2004 to 2016), the NFBs focus on interactivity is co-opted as a strategy of audience engagement in an ever-more competitive media landscape. The four affordances are realized to a greater and lesser degree in each of these waves. The narrative of the NFBs production of educational multimedia provides an ideal lens through which to identify and more deeply understand the nuanced and complex intra-action between technology, practice and society in which the interface is revealed to be far from neutral

Youth, Creativity, and Copyright in the Digital Age

New digital networked technologies enable users to participate in the consumption, distribution, and creation of content in ways that are revolutionary for both culture and industry. As a result, "Digital Natives"—young people growing up in the digital world with access to the technologies and the skills to use them in sophisticated ways—are now confronting copyright law on a regular basis. This article presents qualitative research conducted with students age 12-22 that explores youth understanding, attitudes, and discourse on the topic of digital creativity and copyright law. Our findings suggest that young people operate in the digital realm overwhelmingly ignorant of the rights, and to a lesser degree the restrictions, established in copyright law. They often engage in unlawful behavior, such as illegal peer-to-peer music downloading, yet they nevertheless demonstrate an interest in the rights and livelihoods of creators. Building upon our findings of the disconnect between technical, legal, and social norms as pertaining to copyright law, we present the initial stages of the development of an educational intervention that posits students as creators: the Creative Rights copyright curriculum. Educating youth about copyright law is important for empowering young people as actors in society, both in terms of their ability to contribute to cultural knowledge with creative practices and to engage with the laws that govern society