Communication

Machine communication - to interact not just via but also with machines - has transformed contemporary communication. It puts us not just in conversation with one another but also with our current machinery. By analyzing the alienness of this computational communication, through a close reading of interfaces and a field study of software development, this volume uncovers what it means to "communicate" today

Managing a non-profit hospitality platform conversion: The case of Couchsurfing.com

Couchsurfing (CS) was founded in 2003 as a non-profit for those interested in creating a common resource for world-wide hospitality exchange and low cost tourism. Built around a non-market communal sharing model, it became a for-profit in August 2011. Applying a discourse relational model approach, this study characterizes how competing discursive articulations over the conversion led to a discursive strategy of moral justification as management sought to retain its non-profit, alternative, democratic imaginary. The study finds that the justifications gained initial appeal, but ultimately lost credibility due to a mismanaged conversion. By articulating the competing discourses through the sacred value protection model (SVPM), this study provides insights into the way in which a management strategy can be interpreted at a micro-analysis level. It recommends that management decisions need to start from the activities of the organizations members, groups and networks so as to account for their emotions, motivations and actions

Co-existence or displacement : do street trials of intelligent vehicles test society?

This paper examines recent street tests of autonomous vehicles (AV) in the UK and makes the case for an experimental approach in the sociology of intelligent technology. In recent years intelligent vehicle testing has moved from the laboratory to the street, raising the question of whether technology trials equally constitute tests of society. To adequately address this question, I argue, we need to move beyond analytic frameworks developed in 1990s Science and Technology Studies, which stipulated "a social deficit" of both intelligent technology and technology testing. This diagnosis no longer provides an effective starting point for sociological analysis, as real-world tests of intelligent technology explicitly seek to bring social phenomena within the remit of technology testing. I propose that we examine instead whether and how the introduction of intelligent vehicles into the street involves the qualification and re-qualification of relations and dynamics between social actors. I develop this proposal through a discussion of a field study of AV street trials in three cities in the UK - London, Milton Keynes and Coventry. These urban trials were accompanied by the claim that automotive testing on the open road will enable cars to operate in tune with the social environment, and I show how iterations of street testing undo this proposition and compel its reformulation. Current test designs are limited by their narrow conception of sociality in terms of interaction between cars and other road users. They exclude from consideration the relational capacities of vehicles and human road users alike - their ability to co-exist on the open road. I conclude by making the case for methodological innovation in social studies of intelligent technology: by combining social research and design methods, we can re-purpose real-world test environments in order to elucidate social issues and dynamics raised by intelligent vehicles in society by experimental means, and, possibly, test society

Marketing Planning of Small-Sized Farms by the Fuzzy Game Theory

Walking fosters self‐efficacy, empathy, and connection, and large and small democratic actions. Such capacity seems especially the case when walking is attended by certain spatial qualities that engender, for instance, physical accessibility, a capacity to socialise, a sense of safety, or a pleasing aesthetic. Sometimes, adverse spatial alternatives dominate and then – at very least – indifference seems to loom large and spatial injustices prevail. And in the worst conditions, indifference and injustice tip over into fear and danger. This paper's orientation is towards optimism, however. Our conceptual focus is on the relationship of walking to geography and philosophical pragmatism, and on small and effective antidotes to indifference and injustice. Our empirical contributions come from a qualitative research project in Wollongong, Australia, and specifically from conversations with 25 adult residents who shared with us their experiences of regular walks in the city centre. We interpret those experiences in pragmatic terms as transactions – or experiments in what to do and how – in relation to self, others, and environs. We show how participants are affected by walks and the transactional spaces created by them, and consider how they come to care for things that might not directly concern or affect them. In the process, we discern that they experience how their actions shape and can enrich life in the city – findings that have wider salience for those interested in spatial qualities, spatial justice, and democratising impulses

Jewish Museum of São Paulo: creating a dialogue between community and society

O presente trabalho pretende contribuir para a produção de um conhecimento museológico judaico-brasileiro, por meio da atuação na interface entre estudos judaicos e museologia. Nesse contexto, reflete a trajetória de vinte e um anos do Museu Judaico de São Paulo: da constituição da Associação de Amigos ao estabelecimento da sede; da requalificação do edifício sinagogal que lhe dá origem à incorporação do Arquivo Histórico Judaico Brasileiro; das primeiras exposições temporárias às incursões no universo virtual, para citar apenas alguns marcos. A pesquisa examina a criação de um museu judaico pela comunidade de São Paulo até os momentos finais que antecedem a abertura da exposição de longa duração, à luz dos conceitos de museu e museu judaico, visando responder às seguintes perguntas: que museu é esse, o que motivou sua fundação na virada do século, quem são os protagonistas e o que os inspirou, para quem é o museu e qual seu papel na contemporaneidade. A metodologia empregada incluiu pesquisa bibliográfica, voltada aos temas da presença judaica no país e às questões de patrimônio, museus e memória, associada à pesquisa documental relacionada às entidades Templo Beth-El e Museu Judaico de São Paulo e às entrevistas elaboradas junto a idealizadores, diretores, conselheiros, colaboradores e demais envolvidos no projeto. O Museu Judaico de São Paulo faz parte de uma iniciativa comunitária. Ao mesmo tempo, quer falar à sociedade maior, exercendo sua incumbência social e seu poder de humanização, atribuições potenciais dos equipamentos culturais nos dias de hoje.The present work intends to contribute to the production of a Jewish-Brazilian Museum knowledge, acting at the interface between Jewish studies and museology. Therefore, it reflects the twenty-one-year track of the Jewish Museum of São Paulo: from the constitution of the Association of Friends to the establishment of its headquarters; from the requalification of the original synagogal building to the incorporation of the Brazilian Jewish Historical Archive; from the first temporary exhibitions to incursions into the virtual universe, to name only a few milestones. The research examines the creation of a Jewish Museum by the community in São Paulo up to the final moments before the opening of the long-term exhibition, in light of the concepts of museums and Jewish museums, aiming to answer the following questions: which museum is this, what motivated its foundation at the turn of the century, who are the protagonists and what inspired them, who is the museum for and what is its role in contemporaneity. The methodology includes bibliographic research, focused on the themes of the Jewish presence in the country and on issues of heritage, museums and memory, in addition to documentary research related to the entities Temple Beth-El and Jewish Museum of São Paulo and to interviews conducted with founders, directors, advisors, associates and others involved in the project. The Jewish Museum of São Paulo is part of a community initiative. At the same time, the organization wants to speak to society at large, exercising its social responsibility and its humanizing power, potential attributions of cultural institutions today