Når jentene må inn i skapet: Seksuell trakassering og kjønnsfrihet i online dataspill

This article presents findings from a Norwegian research project on sexual harassment in online gaming. Based on an online survey (N=935) and expert interviews (N=8) with players, the authors examine sexual harassment, how it is performed, explained and with what consequences. The survey shows that sexually harassing language and behaviour is prevalent in games, but is also subject to controversy as many players code their activity as part of gameplay and not as a marginalizing process.Denne artikkelen presenterer funn fra et forskningsprosjekt om holdninger til kjønn, seksualitet og online-spill hos norske spillere. Forfatterne diskuterer spilleres forståelser av betydningen av trakasserende språkbruk og oppførsel i spill, og konsekvensene av seksuell trakassering på spillkulturnivå og aktørnivå gjennom en spørreundersøkelse og kvalitative intervju. Undersøkelsen viste at potensielt seksuelt trakasserende språkbruk er utbredt i spill, men også at det er stor uenighet blant spillere om hvorvidt slik språkbruk faktisk virker trakasserende, og hvorvidt det utgjør et problem. I artikkelen presenterer og diskuterer vi de to ulike synspunktene informantene har på seksuell trakassering i spill, og analyserer betydningen av at mange kvinnelige spillere holder skjuler informasjon om kjønn for å unngå seksuell trakassering.This article is downloaded from www.idunn.no. © 2015 Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for non-commercial use, provided the original author and source are credited

Cyberspace, Blockchain, Governance:How Technology Implies Normative Power and Regulation

Technologies and their inherent design choices create normative structures that affect governance. This chapter aims to illustrate how blockchain technology in particular introduces new norms into a legal framework. We first analyze the different forms of governance by distinguishing between old and new governance. With a view to code that functions as legal norms, Blockchain technology is particularly suited to create governance structures and mechanisms. However, one needs to be aware of the norms that are implicitly introduced into the legal system by a specific blockchain technology. We look at the blockchain technology that underlies cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. This blockchain introduces a decentralized, transparent, cryptographically locked and thus immutable shared ledger. In summary, these design choices have normative powers over the user and over user interaction. If this is indeed the case, then regulators have to actively assess newly introduced digital ledger technology and other technologies for their effect on the normative and legal system.</p

Digital Art as ‘Monetised Graphics:’ Enforcing Intellectual Property on the Blockchain

In a global economic landscape of hyper-commodification and financialisation, efforts to assimilate digital art into the high-stakes commercial art market have so far been rather unsuccessful, presumably because digital art works cannot easily assume the status of precious object worthy of collection. This essay explores the use of blockchain technologies in attempts to create proprietary digital art markets in which uncommodifiable digital art works are financialised as artificially scarce commodities. Using the decentralisation techniques and distributed database protocols underlying current cryptocurrency technologies, such efforts, exemplified here by the platform Monegraph, tend to be presented as concerns with the interest of digital artists and with shifting ontologies of the contemporary work of art. I challenge this characterisation, and argue, in a discussion that combines aesthetic theory, legal and philosophical theories of intellectual property, rhetorical analysis, and research in the political economy of new media, that the formation of proprietary digital art markets by emerging commercial platforms such as Monegraph constitutes a worrisome amplification of long-established, on-going efforts to fence in creative expression as private property. As I argue, the combination of blockchain-based protocols with established ambitions of intellectual property policy yields hybrid conceptual-computational financial technologies (such as self-enforcing smart contracts attached to digital artefacts) that are unlikely to empower artists, but which serve to financialise digital creative practices as a whole, curtailing the critical potential of the digital as an inherently dynamic and potentially uncommodifiable mode of production and artistic expression

Towards Smart Meter Energy Analysis and Profiling to Support Low Carbon Emissions

Efforts of electrical utilities to respond to climate change require the development of increasingly sophisticated, integrated electrical grids referred to as the “smart grids”. Much of the smart grid effort focuses on integration of renewable generation into the electricity grid and on increased monitoring and automation of electrical transmission functions. However, a key component of smart grid development is the introduction of the smart electrical meter for all residential electrical customers. Smart meter (SM) deployment is the corner stone of the smart grid. In addition to adding new functionality to support system reliability, SMs provide the technological means for utilities to institute new programs to allow their customers to better manage and reduce their electricity use and to support increased renewable generation to reduce greenhouse emissions from electricity use. As such, this paper presents our research towards the study of a smart home environment and how the data produced is used to profile energy usage in homes. The validity of the data is justified through analysis of the profiles generated while consumers use energy during off peak and peak periods. By learning, understanding and feeding patterns of home behaviour, it is possible to educate the consumer regarding their energy usage, helping them to reduce costs but also the emissions from their home