Meeting the information challenge: exploring partnerships with Africa

Africa suffers from the disadvantages of marginality within the global technical system and a legacy of externally driven infrastructure. Developments in information and communication technologies now offer the chance to redress these but the technologies require skills and capacities which are scarce. The technologies themselves can be used to leverage existing resources so that the necessary skills can be developed. However this process needs to take account of African priorities and requirements if the current inequitable situation is not to be reproduced in a new global infrastructure. The key to this is a balance between external partnership and internal collaboration. The African diaspora offers a means of moderating such relationships

Trust and Privacy Permissions for an Ambient World

Ambient intelligence (AmI) and ubiquitous computing allow us to consider a future where computation is embedded into our daily social lives. This vision raises its own important questions and augments the need to understand how people will trust such systems and at the same time achieve and maintain privacy. As a result, we have recently conducted a wide reaching study of people’s attitudes to potential AmI scenarios with a view to eliciting their privacy concerns. This chapter describes recent research related to privacy and trust with regard to ambient technology. The method used in the study is described and findings discussed

Twin Towers and Amoy Gardens: mobilities, risks and choices

About the book: Mobile communications technologies are taking off across the world, while urban transportation and surveillance systems are also being rebuilt and updated. Emergent practices of physical, informational and communicational mobility are reconfiguring patterns of movement, co-presence, social exclusion and security across many urban contexts. This book brings together a carefully selected group of innovative case studies of these mobile technologies of the city, tracing the emergence of both new socio-technical practices of the city and of a new theoretical paradigm for mobilities research

Models of development: finding relevance for Africa in China's experience of development

This chapter discusses the value of China as a source of models of development relevant to Africa. In addition to benefits of direct investment and trade engagement between China and key African economies, China's own appraoch to the problems of rapid growth and development should be of interest. Despite obvious and significant differences, the Chinese pattern of modernization and the problems it has uncovered offer lessons of potential value to African decision makers

Globalisation, Europeanisation and metagovernance: society, space and technology

The sovereign national state is in many respects a recent phenomenon. The settlements following both world wars in the twentieth century created and defined our current understanding of the nation. They also qualified the concept by creating supra-national levels of accountability for both governments and individuals. With advancing globalisation, both the freedom of action and the legitimacy of national states are under pressure from the supra-national regulators of the world economy, such as the WTO. Traditional means of protecting and developing sub-national regions and national interests though government support and intervention are no longer legitimate. Against decline in participation in local and national elections, individuals and regions can appeal directly to supra-national entities

The flow behaviour of non-Newtonian sludges

A large body of data is analysed of the flow of concentrated sewage sludge through straight pipes. Mathematical models are obtained of the laminar and turbulent flow of each main category of sewage sludge. The sludges are modelled as time-independent, non-Newtonian relations between shear stress, rate of shearing strain, and solids concentration. Due to the inhomogeneity of sewage sludge, error analysis becomes pivotal to the data analysis, and options are examined for reducing the error of each model with one or more user-fitted parameters. Parameter estimation is discussed for viscous, time-independent, non-Newtonian, laminar and turbulent flow models. Due to extensive requirements of the data analysis, the parameter estimation methods are robust, and generally suitable for any shear flow relation. The difficulties of estimating parameters of shear flow models from pipe flow data are addressed. Numerical algorithms are presented for modelling the flow of time-independent, non-Newtonian, viscous fluids through a straight pipe. Laminar, critical and turbulent flow algorithms are developed to offer predictions such as pressure gradient, mean cross-sectional velocity, and the velocity distribution. To handle the requirements of the data analysis, the algorithms impose few restrictions on the type of shear flow relation, the flow velocity, and the pipe diameter. Suitable pipe flow equations are chosen, and are manipulated mathematically into forms that would yield robust and efficient schemes. The appropriate use of numerical methods for the algorithms is investigated. Mathematical models of sludge are for use by the sewage industry to give an idea of the flow behaviour of sludges for any relevant application. The parameter estimation techniques and pipe flow algorithms are not constrained to any particular pipe, fluid or flow conditions, so they would be useful for any relevant application

Back to the future : the networked household in the global economy

Developed nations have promoted a modernist view of the nuclear family functioning in spatially separate public and private spheres of production and consumption. However, in these countries, the coalescence of communications and information technologies has given rise to ‘office automation' and ‘business process re-engineering’ which have destablilised employment. These technologies have also problematised the concept of organisational boundaries by enabling networked alternatives to conventional forms, and have challenged established relationships between size and performance. Currently emergent technologies are allowing small homebased businesses to confront much larger competitors beyond their immediate vicinity, while the same technologies are allowing the state to relocate functions such as hospital care and confinement to the home. Economic globalisation is opening communities in both ‘under' and ‘over' developed economies to direct competition from across national and cultural boundaries and making access to appropriate information and communication technologies as significant as physical location.Australian Policy Online (APO)'s Linked Data II project, funded by the Australian Research Council, with partners at the ANU Library, Swinburne University and RMIT

Knowledge generation in developing countries: a theoretical framework for exploring dynamic learning in high technology firms

In the case of events such as fundamental regulatory reforms or radical technological advances, firms have to undertake discontinuous or dynamic learning. Such learning involves the generation of new capacity through the acquisition of new knowledge and the combination of it with the firm's existing accumulated knowledge. In developing countries the challenge for firms to develop new competencies through dynamic learning is more complex due to political and economic complexities. This paper discusses the limitations of existing frameworks for analysing the process aspect of transformation and proposes a theoretical framework with which to explore dynamic learning in firms from developing countries. The proposed theoretical framework is based on a constructivist approach to organisational knowledge and uses the concept of absorptive capacity. The responses of large pharmaceutical firms to biotechnological change are used to illustrate the areas under investigation. The theoretical framework is used to explore the responses of Indian pharmaceutical firms to changes in patent law required by that country's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The cases show that the theoretical framework is comprehensive and useful for exploring firm level knowledge processes within firms from developing countries. However a broader analysis of firm-level learning in developing countries should include an analysis of the institutional environment as this plays an important role in creating environment for firm based learning

Electronic stepping stones: a mosaic metaphor for the production and re-distribution of communicative skill in an electric mode

About the book: In this book the relation between architecture, management and organization theory, a relation much under-explored and long overdue for reconsideration, is explored. By looking at processes of organizing from a spatial perspective, the authors reveal interesting insights into how power, culture, change, and identity are embedded, enacted and played out in and through space. Not only do we shape buildings but buildings also shape us. The interaction between how we design our environments, how these environments influence our behavior and by extension, who we are, is the key issue that provides the coherent focus for this volume. Combining both theoretically inspiring as well as practically relevant contributions, the book will be of interest for people studying architecture, design, sociology, and anthropology as well as management and organization theory

Changing track: repositioning the Irish and Australian railways in the national consciousness

This paper explores the development of rail systems in Ireland and Australia. The paper highlights the different trajectories of both systems and charts the experiences and influences of Empire and Commonwealth on both. In Australia the rail system was developed as a way to promote nation building and overcome isolation while in Ireland both prior to after partition the system enabled access to ports thereby not only fuelling migration but improving levels of accessibility between different parts of rural Ireland and town and country. The paper also describes the role of the rail system in making travel to new worlds possible and the way in which systems developed in both 'new' and 'old' worlds to encourage population movements and dispersal and social cohesion. Growing levels of car dependence since the 1960s and the movement of freight from rail to road has had a significant impact on how public transport is used. This is illustrated by comparison between Northern Ireland and Australia. Deregulation and privatisation have also meant that commercial pressures have had a significant impact on the operation of rail in the days of post Empire. The paper also highlights the ways in which this redefinition of public communication technology and infrastructure, not only confined to the rail industry, has impacted on travel culture and the perception of public transport infrastructure