Catalonia: independent but united with Europe?

Tax laws and lack of financial autonomy have brought Catalan's disaffection towards the Spanish government to its fullest. And yet, the slogan of the march echoed a unionist aspiration "Catalonia, a new European state". With the prospect of an economic collapse looming large, the debate over a new hypothetical membership is quickly trespassing national borders

Reviews

Índex de les obres ressenyades: Liz CASTRO, What's up with Catalonia?: the causes which impel them to the separation. [Barcelona]: Catalonia Press, 2013; Xavier SERRA, Escrits de Xavier Serra, A peu de foto = Writings by Xavier Serra. At the foot of the picture. Catarroja: Ed. Afers, 2013

Introduction to Linked Data

This chapter presents Linked Data, a new form of distributed data on the web which is especially suitable to be manipulated by machines and to share knowledge. By adopting the linked data publication paradigm, anybody can publish data on the web, relate it to data resources published by others and run artificial intelligence algorithms in a smooth manner. Open linked data resources may democratize the future access to knowledge by the mass of internet users, either directly or mediated through algorithms. Governments have enthusiastically adopted these ideas, which is in harmony with the broader open data movement

Linked democracy : foundations, tools, and applications

Chapter 1Introduction to Linked DataAbstractThis chapter presents Linked Data, a new form of distributed data on theweb which is especially suitable to be manipulated by machines and to shareknowledge. By adopting the linked data publication paradigm, anybody can publishdata on the web, relate it to data resources published by others and run artificialintelligence algorithms in a smooth manner. Open linked data resources maydemocratize the future access to knowledge by the mass of internet users, eitherdirectly or mediated through algorithms. Governments have enthusiasticallyadopted these ideas, which is in harmony with the broader open data movement

Multilayered linked democracy

Although confidence in democracy to tackle societal problems is falling, new civic participation tools are appearing supported by modern ICT technologies. These tools implicitly assume different views on democracy and citizenship which have not been fully analysed, but their main fault is their isolated operation in non-communicated silos. We can conceive public knowledge, like in Karl Popper's World 3, as distributed and connected in different layers and by different connectors, much as it happens with the information in the web or the data in the linked data cloud. The interaction between people, technology and data is still to be defined before alternative institutions are founded, but the so called linked democracy should rest on different layers of interaction: linked data, linked platforms and linked ecosystems; a robust connectivity between democratic institutions is fundamental in order to enhance the way knowledge circulates and collective decisions are made

Relational justice: mediation and ODR through the World Wide Web

ODR means "Online Dispute Resolution". Dialogue, negotiation and mediation are coming back as sources of contemporary law. We introduce in this paper two concepts and two related projects. We define the concepts of "relational law" and "relational justice". And, at the same time, we describe how to put them in place from a social and technological point of view. Therefore, we introduce two concrete applications: (i) the Catalan White Book on Mediation, a large project to assemble the required social and legal knowledge to draft a general statute on mediation (Catalan Government); (ii) the Ontomedia Project, a semantically-driven platform allowing end-users to negotiate and mediate their conflicts in several domains (family, commerce, environment, health care, administration…). The paper describes the state of the art of ODR services, and proposes some strategies for legal electronic institutions. A middle-out theoretical approach and a mediation core-ontology are briefly described. We situate these two projects within the next generation of Semantic Web services, and the so-called Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 developments

Els Misteris dels productes de neteja

Embrutar i netejar són dos fenòmens quotidians. Explicar-los, però, no és feina fàcil. En aquest treball experimental es proposa als alumnes el fet d'investigar d'una manera qualitativa i mitjançant reaccions senzilles els principals responsables de l'acció netejadora d'alguns dels productes de neteja més coneguts i fins i tot més televisius.Washing and dirtying are two daily phenomena. Explaining them is not an easy task. In these laboratory practices, students are encouraged to investigate the main cleaning products in a qualitative way and by using simple chemical reaction

Linked Democracy

This open access book shows the factors linking information flow, social intelligence, rights management and modelling with epistemic democracy, offering licensed linked data along with information about the rights involved. This model of democracy for the web of data brings new challenges for the social organisation of knowledge, collective innovation, and the coordination of actions. Licensed linked data, licensed linguistic linked data, right expression languages, semantic web regulatory models, electronic institutions, artificial socio-cognitive systems are examples of regulatory and institutional design (regulations by design). The web has been massively populated with both data and services, and semantically structured data, the linked data cloud, facilitates and fosters human-machine interaction. Linked data aims to create ecosystems to make it possible to browse, discover, exploit and reuse data sets for applications. Rights Expression Languages semi-automatically regulate the use and reuse of content. ; Links information flow, social intelligence, rights management, and modelling with epistemic democracy Presents examples of regulatory and institutional desig