In Search for (the Lost) Smartness in the Evolution of the Smart Cities: Consumers or Citizens?

The paper develops a systematic reflection about the future of smart cites at the time of Covid-19, starting from an original periodization about the evolution of the concept of smartness, declined through a four fold analytical tool (technological, human-social, institutional and spatial-environmental dimensions). Focusing on the role of smart citizens and on the “right to the city” concept, we list and critically appraise the emerging trends made visible by the worldwide sanitary crisis

The Open Data Movement: Young Activists between Data Disclosure and Digital Reputation

Young citizens show an increasing interest for direct democracy tools and for the building of a new relationship with public administration through the use of digital platforms. The Open Data issue is part of this transformation. The paper analyzes the Open Data issue from the perspective of a spontaneous and informal group of digital activists with the aim of promoting data disclosure. The study is focused mainly on the case of a specific local movement, named Open Data Sicilia (ODS), combining traditional ethnographic observation with an ethnographic approach. The aim of the study is to detect the social pro-file of the Open Data movement activists, understanding how is it organized their network, what are the common purposes and solidarity models embodied by this type of movement, what are the resources mo-bilized and their strategies between on-line and off-line. The ODS case appears interesting for its evolu-tion, its strategy and organizational structure: an elitist and technocratic movement that aspires to a broad constituency. It is an expressive or a reformist movement, rather than an anti-system actor, with features that are similar to a lobby. The case study also shows all the typical characteristics of digital activism, with its fluid boundaries between ethical inspiration of civic engagement and individual interest

Platform Work: From Digital Promises to Labor Challenges

The pervasiveness of the digital ecosystem reconfigures the organization of work. The new industrial revolution is increasingly based on the platform as a new productive paradigm. Platforms are more than a technical device and they produce huge effects in the labour market: lowering access credentials and empowering casualization of work, dis/re-intermediation labour demand and supply, affecting motivations and rewarding systems, reconfiguring process of control and risks transfer, renewing regulative standards, or re-organize representativeness and welfare protection. Fragmentation, precariousness, flexibility and instability become permanent traits of the workforce fostering the emergence of the cybertariat. Moreover, connectivity, evaluation and surveillance determine new working conditions tested on workers outside any bargaining process or institutional work arrangement. Platform workers (both high skilled and low skilled) are still largely unorganized and isolated. Similarly to other non-standard workers, they are exposed to the risk of exploitation and free work in a fast evolving economy based on reputation. Despite platform workers are highly differentiated and heterogeneous and difficult to organize collectively, forms of collective action are emerging at local and cross-national level

Assessing Inclusivity Through Job Quality in Digital Plat‐Firms

A great deal of the literature has underlined how job quality is a key element in individual well‐being. However, the rise in platform work challenges this issue, since not only do “plat‐firms” play an increasingly important role in job matching, work organization, and industrial relations, but they also increase the risks of a poorly inclusive socio‐technical system in terms of the quality of working conditions and accessibility. In this sense, the platform economy is intertwined with multiple forms of social exclusion by acting on pre‐existing inequalities that stratify workers within the labor market. This is particularly true in Italy, a country with a strongly dualistic labor market, which leads to a remarkable gap between insider and outsider workers. Therefore, the goal of our analysis is to evaluate the impact of the platform model on job quality in the Italian context. This will be accomplished by adopting an integrated and multidimensional perspective through the application of the OECD Job Quality Framework. The analysis identifies how job quality is differently affected by the type of platform work involved in terms of creating differentiated patterns of social inclusion/exclusion in the case of platform workers

Simulations of ELT-GMCAO performance for deep field observations

The Global-Multi Conjugated Adaptive Optics (GMCAO) approach offers an alternative way to correct an adequate scientific Field of View (FoV) using only natural guide stars (NGSs) to extremely large ground-based telescopes. Thus, even in the absence of laser guide stars, a GMCAO-equipped ELT-like telescope can achieve optimal performance in terms of Strehl Ratio (SR), retrieving impressive results in studying star-poor fields, as in the cases of the deep field observations. The benefits and usability of GMCAO have been demonstrated by studying 6000 mock high redshift galaxies in the Chandra Deep Field South region. However, a systematic study simulating observations in several portions of the sky is mandatory to have a robust statistic of the GMCAO performance. Technical, tomographic and astrophysical parameters, discussed here, are given as inputs to GIUSTO, an IDL-based code that estimates the SR over the considered field, and the results are analyzed with statistical considerations. The best performance is obtained using stars that are relatively close to the Scientific FoV; therefore, the SR correlates with the mean off-axis position of NGSs, as expected, while their magnitude plays a secondary role. This study concludes that the SRs correlate linearly with the galactic latitude, as also expected. Because of the lack of natural guide stars needed for low-order aberration sensing, the GMCAO confirms as a promising technique to observe regions that can not be studied without the use of laser beacons. It represents a robust alternative way or a risk mitigation strategy for laser approaches on the ELTs.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication on PAS

Solidarity Purchasing Groups as social innovators : an analysis of alternative food networks in Italy

The marketisation of food and the rise of mass retailers have created an unbalanced supply chain where, above all, small producers and customers are weaker. In contrast to this scenario, in the last twenty years agriculture and food markets have become an increasingly relevant space for the experimentation of innovative social practice in order to fix this anomaly and try to rebalance the distribution of value in the whole supply chain. Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) are one of these innovations and they could represent one of the most relevant tools to combat the buying power of mass retailers. However, the analysis in the paper shows that SPGs are social innovations that only partially achieve this goal of reducing the economic marginalisation of their suppliers by setting up an alternative distribution channel.La mercantilización del sector de la comida y la creciente importancia de los minoristas de masas han creado una cadena de suministro desequilibrada donde, sobre todo, los pequeños productores y los consumidores son más débiles. En contra de este escenario, en los últimos veinte años la agricultura y los mercados de proximidad se han ido situando como espacios relevantes de experimentación de prácticas sociales innovadoras con el objetivo de solucionar esta anomalía y de reequilibrar la distribución del valor en el conjunto de cadena de suministro. Las cooperativas de consumo solidario forman parte de estas experiencias innovadoras y pueden representar una de las medidas más relevantes para contrastar el poder de negociación de los minoristas de masa. No obstante, el análisis en este artículo muestra como las cooperativas de consumo solidario son innovaciones sociales que sólo consiguen parcialmente el objetivo de reducir la marginalización económica de sus proveedores al crear una cadena de suministro alternativa

Open Data Movement: young activists between data disclosure and digital reputation

The article analize the open data movement in a specific social contex