Aesthetics in Digital Worlds

Aesthetics is often seen as a philosophical academic discipline focusing on questions about art, beauty, the nature of aesthetic experiences, and many other related issues. However, there is another, non-academic side of aesthetics where similar issues are addressed. Non-academic cases of aesthetics, on the internet and elsewhere, far outnumber anything academic aestheticians can ever produce. However, how the picture of aesthetics looks like outside academia is not necessarily very actively considered in academic contexts, as professors, lecturers, and students tend to form their understanding of the field through scholarly literature and academic datasets. In this essay, we explore how close to or far away from each other the two environments presently are, especially in digital environments. For this, we applied computational text-mining techniques on Wikipedia, Google Trends, YouTube, Open Library books and Web of Science data. Results allowed us to compare both areas and describe differences and relations between the two. This article shows that there are various contexts where issues related to aesthetics are addressed, and that the overall picture of aesthetics is created by different kinds of actors and documents. Additionally, we suggest that digital tools can and should be used in disciplines such as aesthetics to create a more comprehensible and many-sided picture of the field, while taking into consideration the risk of using these tools too narrowly and over trusting them

The Role of ICT in the Value Co-Creation Process

Value co-creation and the tools facilitating value co-creation activities have gained increasing interest from both information systems (IS) scholars and business practitioners. Based on extensive literature review and empirical research, this study investigates the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in value co-creation process. This study aims to answer the main research question – "how does ICT affect the value co-creation process", by addressing three topical issues: (1) type of information and communication technologies and their impact within co-creation activities; (2) co-creation approach and tools used for implementation of these activities within organizations; (3) ICTs usage for supporting outcomes of co-creation activities. These issues are examined in four separate essays included in this dissertation. First, the study draws a broad picture of co-creation and its tools, highlighting its benefits for the stakeholders. Second, exploring product development processes and various viewpoints of social media experts, this study describes the practices used in companies to adjust its organizational structure for implementing co-creation activities through social media. Finally, this research discusses the design of co-creation tools for their users to support the outcomes of value co-creation by collecting and analysing previous findings with meta-analytical structural equation modelling and case study analysis.This study makes several contributions to theory and practice. Overall, it adds to the understanding of how IS is used, designed and implemented in the value co-creation process to achieve various benefits. Also, based on the analysis, this study showcases that ICT used in co-creation works strengthens the processes, support individuals' creativity and affect products adoption

How Companies Can Modify R&D for Integrating Social Media Activities into the New Products Development

Through past decade open innovation achieved enormous amount of attention from scholars and practitioners as well. We took one part of open innovation – customer innovation through social media, and looked into companies‟ practices to more efficiently integrate information from social media into New Product Development (NPD). We used mechanism of coordination method to explore how moving from traditional product development to open one, affects changes in R&D. We found three types of changes, that affects product development related processes, and four important factors to which companies are paying attention while integrating social media into NPD process: (1) frequent interaction with customers, (2) open information flow, (3) building a unit for coordinating activities, and (4) dividing R&D into units for tackling with ideation, concept development, and actual product building separately

Changes in the fine-scale genetic structure of Finland through the 20(th) century

Information about individual-level genetic ancestry is central to population genetics, forensics and genomic medicine. So far, studies have typically considered genetic ancestry on a broad continental level, and there is much less understanding of how more detailed genetic ancestry profiles can be generated and how accurate and reliable they are. Here, we assess these questions by developing a framework for individual-level ancestry estimation within a single European country, Finland, and we apply the framework to track changes in the fine-scale genetic structure throughout the 20(th) century. We estimate the genetic ancestry for 18,463 individuals from the National FINRISK Study with respect to up to 10 genetically and geographically motivated Finnish reference groups and illustrate the annual changes in the fine-scale genetic structure over the decades from 1920s to 1980s for 12 geographic regions of Finland. We detected major changes after a sudden, internal migration related to World War II from the region of ceded Karelia to the other parts of the country as well as the effect of urbanization starting from the 1950s. We also show that while the level of genetic heterogeneity in general increases towards the present day, its rate of change has considerable differences between the regions. To our knowledge, this is the first study that estimates annual changes in the fine-scale ancestry profiles within a relatively homogeneous European country and demonstrates how such information captures a detailed spatial and temporal history of a population. We provide an interactive website for the general public to examine our results. Author summary We have inherited our genomes from our parents, who, in turn, inherited their genomes from their parents, etc. Hence, a comparison between genomes of present day individuals reveals genetic population structure due to the varying levels of genetic relatedness among the individuals. We have utilized over 18,000 Finnish samples to characterize the fine-scale genetic population structure in Finland starting from a binary East-West division and ending up with 10 Finnish source populations. Furthermore, we have applied the resulting ancestry information to generate records of how the population structure has evolved each year between 1923 and 1987 in 12 geographical regions of Finland. For example, the war-related evacuation of Karelians from Southeast Finland to other parts of the country show up as a clear, sudden increase in the Evacuated ancestry elsewhere in Finland between 1939 and 1945. Additionally, different regions of Finland show very different levels of genetic mixing in 1900s, from little mixed regions like Ostrobothnia to highly mixed regions like Southwestern Finland. To distribute the results among general public, we provide an interactive website for browsing the municipality and region-level genetic ancestry profiles atPeer reviewe

Internet marketing algorithms in the area of personal finance

Šis darbas apima internetinės rinkodaros algoritmų apžvalgą ir pritaikymą verslui naudingose internetiniuose projektuose, palaikančiuose įmonės verslo ir organizacinius procesus ar sudarant konkurencingus produktus. Darbo pagrindas remiasi internetinės rinkodaros algoritmų pritaikymu asmeninių finansų srityje kurtame internetiniame projekte. Siekiant išsiaiškinti algoritmų naudą Lietuvoje atliktas eksperimentas ir stebėti vartotojų veiksmai naršant tinklapiuose ir paieškos sistemose atspindintys rezultatai.This work includes internet marketing algorithms for review and adaptation to business interest in projects to support business and organisational processes or the competitive products. The work is based on personal finance online project is implemented on the basis of an internet marketing algorithms. In order to clarify the algorithms benefits in Lithuania, the experiment was conducted to monitor the actions of consumers surfing the Web sites and reflect search engines results.Vytauto Didžiojo universiteta

Finnish Aesthetics in Academic Databases

The academic databases such as Scopus or Web of Science are commonly used to measure performance of universities, departments, and even single researchers. However, to what extent such databases can represent real outcomes of aforementioned units especially in the field of art and humanities where local languages and cultural phenomena play an important role is not clear. This article focuses on understanding how research in this field, as seen through the case of aesthetics in non-English speaking countries, Finland in particular, is represented through major academic databases. This question is tackled by applying a data mining approach. First, we identify major academic databases, and afterwards test what is the proportion of Finnish aesthetics presented in those databases. Our approach allows us to critically look into representation of local art or humanities related research in general academic databases, and understand to what extent we can trust those sources in representing real pictures of the field. Results strengthen the well-known fact that most common academic databases draw a rather poor picture. In more particular this article shows that there are certain factors that influence analysis of the field: (1) spread data, (2) multilingual content, (3) non-standard categorization, (4) variability of venues, (5) different publishing patterns, and (6) unsuitable impact metrics. However, our results propose that alternative databases can be formed from university or meta-data databases. We also provide further directions for designing of such databases.Peer reviewe

Information system users’ creativity

Purpose: Information technology has been recognized as one of the keys to improved productivity in organizations. Yet, existing research has not paid sufficient attention to how information systems (ISs) influence the creative performance of individual users. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: This study draws on the theories of flow and cognitive load to establish a model of the predicted influences. The authors hypothesize that the information technology supports creativity by engaging individuals in a creative process and by lowering their cognitive load related to the process. To test these hypotheses, the authors employ a meta-analytical structural equation modeling approach using 24 previous studies on creativity and ISs use. Findings: The results suggest that factors that help the user to maintain an interest in the performed task, immerse the user in a state of flow, and lower a person’s cognitive load during IS use can affect the user’s creative performance. Research limitations/implications: The findings imply that a combination of the theories of flow and cognitive load complements the understanding of how ISs influence creativity. Originality/value: This paper proposes an explanation on why ISs affect creativity, which can be used by scholars to position further research, and by practitioners to implement creativity support systems.Peer reviewe

Nusipelnęs mokslo veikėjas : prof. V. Ruokiui - 85 metai

Vytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij

Nuostabus gyvenimas : [prof. V. Ruokio 85-ąsias gimimo metines minint]

Vytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij

Galinės morenos sąrangos vaizdinė medžiaga

Vytauto Didžiojo universitetasŽemės ūkio akademij