In the past, for universities, the suggestion that they rather than other, commercial, actors should seek to control and profit from the results of research was hardly entertained at all, not least as in many cases these institutions jealously guarded their relative unconnectedness from the market.However, two political economic shifts have transformed this situation and the previous benign neglect of intellectual property in universities is unlikely to continue. On the commercial side, the increased share of value-added in many products has (...) focussed corporate managers on the issue of the ownership and exploitation of knowledge and information.On the other side, universities have themselves have been suffering varying, and in some cases quite extensive, pressure as regards their publicly funded budgets. Thus, in many developed and developing countries, encouraged by their own governments, and in the case of developing countries by international financial institutions, many universities have started to examine new ways of capitalising on their activities through market activities. This has led to many universities finding themselves torn between a norm of scientific community and the requirements to utilise their research-related resources as sources of income.This article explores this issues and concludes that the university’s most obvious competitive advantage is in the provision of publicly available knowledge and research; to become too like the corporate sector is to invite conversion into commercial actors. We already have quite enough commercial actors in the global information society; our attention must be focussed on maintaining and even expanding the realm of the public research institution by building on the many centuries of success universities have enjoyed in providing social goods. (shrink)

The term information has become a universal and omnipresent keyword in almost all areas of our modern world—be it in science or society in general. This is not only obvious from the naming of whole scientific branches like Information Theory, Information Science or Informatics but even more from common speaking—characterising our present time and society as information age viz. information society. However, what information might mean, is by no means clear and (...) there is a wide range of interpretations covering, among others, its technical, communicational, educational, mental, and scientific aspects. But is the use of the same term justified when adopted in Biology, Physics, Archaeology, Law, Communication Technology, and Informatics (to list just a few of the involved scientific branches) or do its different uses at least have some common characteristics—some sort of common denominator? Is information natural, e.g. manifesting itself as a material phenomenon residing in organisms, stars, atoms, or genes, or is it just a cultural product of human communication, thinking, and interpretation? In this article, we try to clarify some of the most important interpretations, discuss and contrast them with the Informatics point of view. Interpretations range from taking information as material, transferable signals (following Shannon’s Information Theory or the genetic approaches), treating it as a sign (following a semiotic approach), as a commercial product (now common in Web-based Information Business) to considering it a pure mental phenomenon bound to humans or human-like individuals or even to groups and societies. Based on these interpretations, we shall throw a critical glance on current trends in human science and society—focusing on the now popular concept of information society —and then derive some theses and guidelines for further research escorting the growth and dispersal of information technology. As it will turn out, an information society which defines itself through the number of computers, internet connections and network links is based on a very narrow, techno-centric concept of information. However, a reflection on the educational and cultural aspects of information might lead to a better-qualified society consisting of responsible and critical citizens. (shrink)

The paper examines how the current evolution and growth of ICTs enables a greater number of individuals to communicate and interact with each other on a larger scale: this phenomenon enables people to cross the conventional boundaries set up across modernity. The presence of diverse barriers does not however disappear, and we therefore still experience cultural, political, legal and moral boundaries in the globalised Information Society. The paper suggests that the issue of boundaries is to be understood, primarily, (...) in philosophical terms, in order to explain in what sense the fundamental historicity and situatedness of human beings does not necessarily prevent them from being able to cross the boundaries of their own experiences and to communicate with other human beings. Our line of reasoning is based on the idea that the epistemic and moral subject is neither a pure universal subject always transcending the limits of its experience nor the mere product of the context in which it find itself embedded. By virtue of its continued existence and experience of any given context, the epistemic and moral subject is asked to respond to the constraining affordances of data and to account for the moral calls of the other. This intertwinement of responsiveness and accountability towards what is "over there" confers us an original understanding of what is "here". (shrink)

The practice of informed consent in biomedicine is so widely spread that it must be considered the most important principle within bioethics, and the most universally appealed to within recent legislation. There seems to be a consensus as to its value in research on autonomous persons, but also a problem concerning its application when dealing with people having a serious mental, social or even physical disability. Within the field of artificial procreation there are even more problems. Informed written consent is (...) often demanded from anonymous donors of gametes in order to ensure their consent to the legal and moral consequences of their anonymity. The child resulting from the artificial procreation, on the contrary, cannot consent to, nor be informed before being conceived, of the secrecy laid on the identity of its genetic parents. Some countries resolve this problem by allowing the children, when they reach their majority, to obtain some information pertaining to the health or the identity of their genetic parents. This presents ethical problems. It can be argued that the anonymity of the parents chiefly affects the children, so that an agreement on this point among parents, doctors and others must be regarded as invalid. The paper will argue that a law ensuring the complete anonymity of the parents is disregarding the informed consent and the interests of the children resulting from artificial procreation, and is thus doing more damage to society than good. (shrink)

The paper argues that the human-centred approach should be considered as an alternative to the techno-economic model of the EC information society. This alternative approach should be based on the principles of democratic participation of citizens and social cohesion. Using a community development based approach the paper introduces concepts of partnership, tripartite collaboration and universal participation. Having evaluated a human-centred approach to the information society this is then applied to the results of four case studies of (...) Danish and Swedish community teleservice centres (CTSCs), and the subsequent lessons drawn. (shrink)

The technical advances that have enabled the development of "the cloud" have resulted in an exponential increase in the speed of information dissemination. Policy makers, sponsors of IT infrastructure and users of information and communication technologies, while being aware of the benefits of "the Cloud" as a mechanism to facilitate more efficient access to information, do not always appreciate that these developments may not always have the positive outcomes intended. University courses such as those in Social (...) Informatics have managed to keep pace with this rapid evolution of information and communication technologies and their societal impacts, but within the secondary education sector this has not always been possible, potentially creating a knowledge gap for tomorrow's policy makers. (shrink)

The importance of web designs for commercial and informational use has been a focus of research for over a decade and a half. At present, findings concerning the influence of news website designs on the perception and recall of information are rather contradictory. This study aims to identify how the basic web designs aesthetically affect users. A total of 214 students from Arab universities were shown three news sites with different designs and asked to complete two tests to determine (...) their levels of perception and recall. The results revealed that interactive sites with multiple aesthetic elements representing the message of the news item enable users to perceive and remember the information better. The findings of this study can be useful in creating news website templates that improve user comprehension and recall. (shrink)

Virtuosity and the early Royal Society of London Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9506-0 Authors Jessica Ratcliff, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 501 E. Daniel St, Champaign, II 61820, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Since the nineteenth century, the debate around the process of professionalization of higher education has been characterized by two extreme positions. For some critics the process carries the risks of instrumentalizing knowledge and of leading the university to succumb under the demands of the market or the state; for other theorists it represents a concrete opportunity for the university to open up to the real needs of society and for reorienting theoretical and fragmented disciplines towards the resolution (...) of concrete and challenging problems. This article pursues three objectives. Firstly, we show that the debate is usefully informed not only by ideas of what a university is, but also by ideas of a profession. We suggest that both ideas help to overcome the conflict between the two afore-mentioned antagonist perspectives. Secondly, we demonstrate that a certain understanding of a profession can prevent the risk of viewing knowledge exclusively as scientific expertise and reducing training to the acquisition of technical skills. The position on professions adopted here is inspired by the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, whose work is instructive in understanding professions as “rational practical activities”, embedded in a social context with their own internal goods. Our third objective, therefore, is to argue, with MacIntyre, that the presence of professions within the university opens up the opportunity to rescue forms of rationality that are oriented towards action and, by implication, promotes spaces of training that are resistant to exclusively corporate or governmental interests and criteria of mere effectiveness. (shrink)

Since the nineteenth century, the debate around the process of professionalization of higher education has been characterized by two extreme positions. For some critics the process carries the risks of instrumentalizing knowledge and of leading the university to succumb under the demands of the market or the state; for other theorists it represents a concrete opportunity for the university to open up to the real needs of society and for reorienting theoretical and fragmented disciplines towards the resolution (...) of concrete and challenging problems. This article pursues three objectives. Firstly, we show that the debate is usefully informed not only by ideas of what a university is, but also by ideas of a profession. We suggest that both ideas help to overcome the conflict between the two afore-mentioned antagonist perspectives. Secondly, we demonstrate that a certain understanding of a profession can prevent the risk of viewing knowledge exclusively as scientific expertise and reducing training to the acquisition of technical skills. The position on professions adopted here is inspired by the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, whose work is instructive in understanding professions as “rational practical activities”, embedded in a social context with their own internal goods. Our third objective, therefore, is to argue, with MacIntyre, that the presence of professions within the university opens up the opportunity to rescue forms of rationality that are oriented towards action and, by implication, promotes spaces of training that are resistant to exclusively corporate or governmental interests and criteria of mere effectiveness. (shrink)

This paper shall give a review of some recently published and some older books, which were published as second or third edition, on Information Ethics and Internet related topics: - Brennan, Linda L. & Victoria E. Johnson : Social, Ethical, and Policy Implications of Information Technology. Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing, 2004. – 304 pages, paperback, $59.95 - Capurro, Rafael: Ethik im Netz. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 2003. 278 pages, paperback, €26.00 - Cavalier, Robert J. : The impact (...) of the Internet on our moral lives. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005. – 249 pages, paperback, $26.95 - Johnson, Deborah G.: Computer Ethics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, third edition, 2001. – 240 pages, paperback, $40.67 - Kuhlen, Rainer: Informationsethik. Umgang mit Wissen und Informationen in elektronischen Räumen. Konstanz: UVK , 2004. – 444 pages, paperback, €24.95 - Nyíri, Kristóf: Vernetztes Wissen. Philosophie im Zeitalter des Internets. Wien: Passagen Verlag, 2004. – 179 pages, paperback, €19.95 - Spinello, Richard A.: Case Studies in Information Technology Ethics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, second edition, 2003. – 252 pages, paperback, $54.67 - Spinello, Richard A. & Herman T. Tavani : Readings in Cyberethics. Sudbury, NJ: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, second edition, 2004. – 697 pages, paperback, $54.95 - Tavani, Herman T.: Ethics & Technology. Ethical Issues in an Age of Information and Communication Technology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2004. 344 pages, paperback, $53.95. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the managerial template that has become the normative model for the organization of the university. In the first part of the paper I explain the corporatization of academic life in terms of the functional relationships that make up the organizational components of the commercial enterprise and their inappropriateness for the life of the academy. Although there is at present a significant body of literature devoted to this issue, the goal of this paper is to (...) explain the genesis of this phenomenon through a reference to the ideology that characterizes our modern secular age. This is the subject of the second part of the paper. Most texts seek to explain this ideological development either through the ever increasing dominance of economic rationalism, perceived conservatism of collegial forms of governance, the necessity to transfer fiscal responsibility in tight budgetary periods, the decline of the Keynesian ‘welfare consensus’, or the legacy of the power regimes that began to take shape in the liberal societies of the 19th century. I trace this development to the beginnings of Modernity and the Cartesian bifurcation that separated the material world from its spiritual and intellectual source and thereby overthrew the hierarchy of related values that informed both nature and human organization. In articulating this argument I make reference to the thought of Jacques Maritain, Charles Taylor and René Guénon. (shrink)

Resumen: La presente investigación tuvo por objetivo analizar los usos del discurso institucional de universidades chilenas autodefinidas como complejas en relación con la organización del conocimiento e iniciativas intertransdisciplinarias relevantes informadas a nivel de estructuras estáticas y noticias en sitios web oficiales de cada una de ellas. En este contexto y mediante un Análisis Crítico del Discurso, se indaga en el despliegue de estrategias comunicativas, la producción y difusión del discurso institucional, como asimismo, su exposición y disposición en las páginas (...) web. Desde esta base se contribuye con información cualitativa a la discusión en torno a los formatos y dispositivos de comunicación social referidos a las nociones de inter y transdisciplina en el contexto de la educación superior en el país. Los resultados dan cuenta de la emergencia, centralidad y valor comunicacional de la prospectiva inter y transdisciplinaria en el contexto universitario chileno, no obstante, también evidencian las condicionantes epistemológicas y metodológicas para su despliegue organizacional crítico y sostenible.: The following investigation had as an objective to analyse the usages of the Institutional Discourse from Chilean universities self-described as complex, in relation to the Knowledge Organization and relevant inter-disciplinaries initiatives that are informed at the level of static structures and pieces of news published on each official website. In this context, and, through a Critical Discourse Analysis, the communicative strategies deployment is explored, as well as the production and broadcasting of their institutional discourse. Likewise, their exposure and disposal on web pages. On this basis, the qualitative information is contributed to the discussion around the formats and social communication devices, referred to the concepts of inter and trans-disciplines in the context of higher education in the nation. The results, reflect the emergency, centrality and communicational value of the inter and trans-disciplinary prospective in the Chilean university context. However, the epistemological and methodological conditions are evidenced for its organizational, critical, and sustainable deployment. (shrink)

Purpose Online education can facilitate inclusive societal development. In emerging countries with low investment per capita in school and universities, it helps students overcome infrastructure constraints to continue their learning and reach their full potential, and it helps educational institutes to save costs and improve quality of learning. This study aims to develop and empirically evaluate a conceptual model for predicting digital loyalty (DL) among participants in online accounting courses, as a key lever to execute an inclusive societal development agenda (...) and ensure sustainability of education in an emerging country. Design/methodology/approach The study used quantitative primary data collected from survey questionnaires administered to 167 respondents in India and employed partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS SEM) to analyse the data. Findings We observed that perceived learning (PL) significantly mediated the relationship between learning performance (LP) and digital loyalty to an online accounting programme. Research limitations/implications Students’ attitudes and preferences have changed remarkably in recent years. Online education encourages participants to complete their courses, learn new and relevant skills, improve their quality of life and recommend online education to others. This facilitates an inclusive, open society with opportunities for all. The results of this study have certain implications. First, as a novel extension of Abrantes et al.’s (2007) work, the DL construct added a new key dimension to the model. Second, the use of PLS Predict introduced methodological rigour to measures such as R2 and blindfolding processes, improving the understanding of the PLS Predict algorithm’s application to prediction studies. Practical implications The study established PL as a mediating variable in the associations between LP and DL and between pedagogical affect (PA) and DL. These findings have practical implications for course design and execution programmes in educational institutes, especially those aiming to democratise education and ensure inclusivity. Online education service providers should focus on equipping students with updated, cross-functional and integrated skills. Originality/value Online education can foster an inclusive and open society by overcoming the twin limitations of geographical distance and infrastructure constraints resulting from scarce learning resources, especially in emerging markets, such as India. The study makes an original contribution by collecting participant data for online accounting courses in India to establish clearly the antecedents of DL. This study empirically demonstrates the role of LP as the most significant antecedent of PL and DL. (shrink)

This article discusses a new program for collaborative study of information technology, commercialization intellectual property and transformations of education research practives in universities. Three themes define the program. First, the authors investigate the ways that information technologies shape content, organization, and delivery of faculty work. Second, they examine the interplay of issues of intellectually property, technology, commercialization, and academic research. Third, ethical issues information raise and the values they embody are explored. The research and training undertaken brings (...) together problems usually treated by sepatate disciplines and focuses on technologies used by researchers and advanced students in various disciplines who shape and even create communications technologies. The intent is to explore these questions through research and teaching and in the process develop a new generation of scholars who are cognizant of changing patterns in the social relations of science and technology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic UniversityIra HarkavyThinking begins in... a forked-road situation, a situation that is ambiguous, that presents a dilemma, that poses alternatives.—John Dewey (How We Think 122)The social philosopher, dwelling in the region of his concepts, “solves” problems by showing the relationship of ideas, instead of helping men solve problems in the concrete by supplying them hypotheses to be used and tested in projects of (...) reform.—John Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy 192)Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.—John Dewey (The Public and Its Problems 213)democracy, as we all know, is seriously threatened throughout the world (Fisher). In the United States, the chasm-like inequities laid bare by COVID-19, the ongoing killing of black Americans, the violent insurrection at the Capitol, and the continuing attempt to subvert the electoral process are powerful indicators of a system under severe strain (Guardian Staff; Rubin). These developments are also a sign of deep and chronic problems, including the following:1. Increasing economic, political, social, educational, and health inequalities2. Increasing racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia3. Increasing attacks on science, knowledge, and democracy itself4. Declining trust in nearly all major institutionsMany things, obviously, contribute to the present situation. Among them is the failure of universities to successfully do what they are supposed to do: educate students to be ethical, empathetic, engaged, democratic citizens, and [End Page 49] advance knowledge for the continuous betterment of the human condition (Benson et al., Knowledge). To use a Marxian framework, but to reject its economic determinism, universities, in my judgment, are not a part of society’s superstructure. They are, to the contrary, a core component of its base (Marx, “Preface”). What they do matters enormously, significantly determining the kind of society we have now and will have in the future.Universities, as former Harvard president Derek Bok and others have emphasized, have become the central societal institutions in the world (Bok, Universities and the Future 3). Research universities, in my judgment, are the most central. They develop new ideas and technologies, incubate businesses, serve as cultural and artistic centers, and are engines of local, national, and global economies. As anchor institutions, they often engage in partnerships with government, the private sector, and community-based organizations to revitalize local neighborhoods and schools (“Anchor Institutions Task Force”). It is the university’s role as an educational institution, however, that is most important.The schooling system increasingly functions as the core subsystem—the strategic subsystem—of modern information societies. Schooling, more than any other subsystem, as John Dewey claimed, influences the functioning of the societal system as a whole. Viewed systemically, it has on balance the greatest “multiplier” effects, direct and indirect, short-term and long-term. Restating these points somewhat differently, I strongly agree with the Chilean sociologist Eugenio Tironi that the answer to the question “What kind of education do we need?” is to be found in the answer to the question “What kind of society do we want?” (Tironi). Education and society are dynamically interactive and interdependent. If human beings hope to maintain and develop a particular type of society, they must develop and maintain the particular type of education system conducive to it. As Dewey in effect argued: No effective democratic schooling system, no democratic society.1For William Rainey Harper, who, as the first president of the University of Chicago, brought Dewey to Chicago, universities are the primary shapers of the American schooling system. In an 1899 speech at the University of California, he perceptively observed that “[t]he school system, the character of which, in spite of itself, the university determines and in a large measure controls.... [T]hrough the school system every family in this entire broad land of ours is brought into touch with the university; for from it proceed the teachers or the teachers’ teachers” (Harper 25). Agreeing with Harper, I contend that higher education institutions powerfully shape the learning, values, and aspirations of students from kindergarten through graduate school. [End Page 50]Given the university’s societal role and influence, creating and sustaining an inclusive, just democratic society requires a... (shrink)

Drawing on struggles within academe between faculty that promote critical education and advocates of New Public Management (NPM) who endorse instrumental learning, I reimagine the university as a counter-space that positions it as a counter-power to informational capitalism. Initially, I outline its twin threats: ethical, as self-entrepreneurial academics are valorised by NPM; and political, with informationalisation conflating spaces of thinking. I then detail Scott Lash’s specific account of how the info-comm society negates critique. However, his monistic understanding of (...) informationalisation means Lash’s alternative of Informationskritik risks subsumption by it. I therefore defer to Jacques Derrida’s idea of the university. To ensure the autonomy of the principle of reason in a world of info-comm flows, the university is a supplementary body to society, yet intimately linked to it by its critical reflexivity, which is on behalf of society. Because Derrida does not elaborate the requisite institutional architecture, I conclude with Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a quasi-illicit site that is different and other. Such an institutional design enables the university as a counter-space that is a bank of reason and an archive of its manifestation in social practices. It also upholds a space for thinking, which in the form of nominalist critical history proffers a counter-power to society as an informational homotopia. (shrink)

Nowadays, the modern management is promoted to resolve the issue of unreliable information transmission and to provide work efficiency. The basic aim of the modern management is to be more effective in the role of the school to train talents and serve the society. This article focuses on the application of data mining (DM) in the development of information management system (IMS) in universities and colleges. DM provides powerful approaches for a variety of educational areas. Due to (...) the large amount of student information that can be used to design valuable patterns relevant to student learning behavior, research in the field of education is continuously expanding. Educational data mining can be used by educational institutions to assess student performance, assisting the institution in recognizing the student’s accomplishments. In DM, classification is a well-known technique that has been regularly used to determine student achievement. In this study, the process of DM and the application research of association rules is introduced in the development of IMS in universities and colleges. The results show that the curriculum covers the whole field and the minimum transaction support count be 2, minconf = 70%. The results also suggested that students who choose one course also tend to choose the other course. The application of DM theory in university information will greatly upsurge the data analysis capability of administrators and improve the management level. (shrink)

The article discusses the so-called university crisis showing that, simultaneously to this crisis and the unstructuring process, we are facing a reconversion of the institution on the frame of the contemporary information society that models it as a potential enterprise. Nowadays, universities are being inserted in the cognitive capitalism, which makes a business activity out of the production of knowledge, thus subjected to every mechanism of capitalist production and dependent of the marketing of its items/services. As a (...) conclusion, the article reviews the various strategies displayed to face the university crisis: the official strategies of the academic institutions, the proposals of the teaching profession and the student's proposals; each of them analyses this process from different. (shrink)

The book presents investigations into the world of info-computational nature, in which information constitutes the structure, while computational process amounts to its change. Information and computation are inextricably bound: There is no computation without informational structure, and there is no information without computational process. Those two complementary ideas are used to build a conceptual net, which according to Novalis is a theoretical way of capturing reality. We apprehend the reality within a framework known as natural computationalism, the (...) view that the whole universe can be understood as a computational system at many different levels - from quantum mechanical world, to biological organisms including intelligent minds and their societies. Questions about nature of information and computation and their unified view are addressed along with application of info- computational approach to knowledge generation. (shrink)

In an era marked by rapid information flows, search engine use often precedes online exploration. Search engines like Google function through reliance on over 200 signals that fine tune consumer behavior and provide ordered results. This process "adds a little something extra" to the idea of results ordered by pure conceptual relationships between keywords and phrases, and may stifle critical reflection. The search interface we test, ThoughtShuffler, designed using principles of Gordon Pask's cybernetics, reorders Google's results based on the (...) degree to which they contain varied co-occurring keywords both inputted by the user, and suggested by the tool; giving preference to sources that may pique the curiosity of the user to explore other sources and critically analyze them. We conducted an experimental mixed methods study to analyze argumentative essays written by 39 adult participants using ThoughtShuffler and Google, about universal and privatized healthcare models. We used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) tool to calculate word frequencies for emotional tone, and moralization/argumentation in the essays. We analyze these dimensions owing to the strong ties between morality, emotion, and critical thinking. Through t-tests of LIWC scores, and narrative inquiry of essays with high anger and moralization frequencies, we firstly found essays using ThoughtShuffler were marked by lower levels of anger-related words and less frustration related to the limitations of universal and privatized healthcare. Secondly, we found that the essays written using ThoughtShuffler contained more morality-related words, and featured more humanistic moral rationale about why a certain model of healthcare would be more viable. We suggest that tools like ThoughtShuffler, through their capacity to spur user's critical thinking and concept development, may contribute towards creating an informationally healthy society. (shrink)

The Council for Education in World Citizenship has been working with Kingston University and the UK National Commission for UNESCO, taking advantage of global information technology developments in order to build new programmes for global citizenship education. The paper reports on practical experience, inviting new network partners. The IST-Africa 2007 conference provided an opportunity to build on these foundations, with initiatives in primary, secondary, further, adult and higher education, and continuing professional development for teachers.

Public policy issues around access to networked information are explored and examined. Long viewed as the quintessential public good, information has evolved into a critically important market commodity in little more than a generation. New technologies and a political climate in which the meaning of universal access to information is no longer commonly understood and in which its importance is no longer taken for granted pose significant challenges for American society. Libraries, as information commons, offer (...) the means of meeting those challenges. Historical, economical, and professional factors that shape the conflict are described and discussed. (shrink)

This book is devoted to discussion of the views of Pierre Musso and starts with a central chapter written by Musso, entitled Network Ideology: from Saint-Simonianism to the Internet. Pierre Musso is a French philosopher and is one of the most original thinkers in the history of the network society. His thought develops a critique of information and communication technologies through their imaginary and social representations and of the information society, based on the network metaphor. The (...) main question on which Musso has focused his attention is how the network metaphor is one of the most powerful ways of understanding the complex societies in which we live. Showing characteristic attention to detail, and drawing on the history of ideas, political philosophy and sociology, Musso traces the genealogy of the network imaginary, and points out that it did not emerge with the Internet. He shows how its modern roots can be found in Henri de Saint-Simon and his disciples, engineers and entrepreneurs such as Michel de Chevalier, and Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin, who developed channel networks, railroads, and the telegraphic network in France in the nineteenth century. In addition to the central piece written by Musso, the book includes a general introduction and six commentaries from experts on information technologies and networks. It displays a wide range of perspectives from a diverse set of authors in terms of nationalities and universities, as well as disciplinary backgrounds. (shrink)

ICT for development projects often focus on integrating social factors in information systems design. A well-designed ICT4D solution must be tailored to the needs of the people who will use them and subsequently, requires an extensive understanding of the context and constraints in people’s lives. With an objective to explore how context-specific issues influence the conveyance of appropriate agricultural information to women, this paper uses PROTIC, a 5-year collaborative project between Monash University and Oxfam, as a case. (...) PROTIC was implemented in three climate vulnerable ecological zones of Bangladesh with an aim to overcome the agricultural information gap for rural women. Based on a study in mixed research method and triangulation, this paper brings evidence on the significance of considering context-specific attributes in designing effective and sustainable information services for marginalized women farmers in developing countries. The paper upfolds some significant recommendations which is expected to contribute to the domain of context-specific information system design in resolving socio-economic problems to pave the way of sustainable development. (shrink)

How is technology changing the way people remember? This book explores the interplay of memory stored in the brain and outside of the brain, providing a thorough interdisciplinary review of the current literature, including relevant theoretical frameworks from across a variety of disciplines in the sciences, arts, and humanities. It also presents the findings of a rich and novel empirical data set, based on a comprehensive survey on the shifting interplay of internal and external memory in the 21st century. Results (...) reveal a growing symbiosis between the two forms of memory in our everyday lives. The book presents a new theoretical framework for understanding the interplay of internal and external memory, and their complementary strengths. It concludes with a guide to important dimensions, questions, and methods for future research. Memory and Technology will be of interest to researchers, professors, and students across the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, library and information science, human factors, media and cultural studies, anthropology and archaeology, photography, and cognitive rehabilitation, as well as anyone interested in how technology is affecting human memory. _____ "This is a novel book, with interesting and valuable data on an important, meaningful topic, as well as a gathering of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary ideas...The research is accurately represented and inclusive. As a teaching tool, I can envision graduate seminars in different disciplines drawing on the material as the basis for teaching and discussions." Dr. Linda A. Henkel, Fairfield University "This book documents the achievements of a vibrant scientific project – you feel the enthusiasm of the authors for their research. The organization of the manuscript introduces the reader into a comparatively new field the same way as pioneering authors have approached it." Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schönpflug, Freie Universität Berlin. (shrink)

Bank customers are not financial experts, and yet they make high-stakes decisions that can substantively affect personal wealth. Sooner or later, every individual has to take relevant investment decisions. Using data collected from financial advisors, bank customers and university students in Italy, this paper aims to reveal new insights about the decision processes of average non-expert investors: their investment goals, the information sets they consider, and the factors that ultimately influence decisions about investment products. Using four portfolio choice (...) tasks based on data collected directly from financial advisors and their clients, we find that most subjects used a limited set of information, ignoring factors that conventional economic models usually assume drive investor behavior. Furthermore, we suggest that non-compensatory decision-tree models, which make no trade-offs among investment features, are parsimonious descriptions of investor behavior useful for improving the organization of financial institutions and in policy contexts alike. (shrink)

The large-scale change of Czech society since 1989 has involved the democratic transformation of the health system. To empower the patient was one important goal of the healthcare reform launched immediately after the Velvet Revolution. The process has been enhanced by the accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union and the adoption of important European conventions regulating the area. The concept of informed consent and a culture of negotiation are being inserted into a traditionally paternalistic culture. Our (...) article describes the current situation on the issue of the communication of information on state of health and treatment, and on the question of the participation of the patient in decisions on treatment. We present empirical results of a public opinion survey on this issue. The results show a still prevailing submissive attitude towards the physicians, despite the fact that the concept of informed consent has become more and more publicly familiar . The impact of age, education and sex on answers to the questionnaire was analysed. Men, younger and more educated respondents were more likely to show the autonomous attitude, whereas women, older and less educated people tended to show the traditional submissive attitude. Further, our article raises the question of the cultural and historical background within which the current ethically and legally binding norms are interpreted. The question is how far cultural modifications are tolerable in the practical implementation of universal ethical constructs. (shrink)

This paper revisits the historiography of seventeenth-century scientific academies by analyzing an informal academy established in Coimbra (Portugal) by André de Almada, a nobleman and professor of theology at the University of Coimbra. By promoting this academy and sponsoring the publication of science books, Almada stimulated research on astronomy and animated links of patronage, which included not only members of the universities but also the community of astronomers and astrologers active in Lisbon. This paper challenges the traditional view of (...) academic societies as innovative institutions opposed to the old-fashioned universities and provides an insight into the complex relationship established between patronage, the institutional settings, and the practices of science in a country wherein science was poorly institutionalized and political power increasingly centralized. (shrink)

Religions, ideologies try to give a complete vision of the world a vision containing both its origin, explanation and a “normative kit”: a collection of precepts and rules, which should regulate human activities and behavior. Their synergetic meaning is clear: if embraced by all they allow for development of strong synergetic effects on the social macro scales. These in turn may lead to creation of order and beauty, of intellectual, spiritual and moral development within men and in society. In (...) this consist the elements of their natural—i.e. not explicitly reasoned out—wisdom. However, as they contain also some elements of harmful consequences—at least if they are literally accepted and in a fundamentalist manner practiced—they cannot be universally accepted. But—rejecting them we lose also the important sourcesof natural—or should we say instinctive—wisdom.Could the solution of this contradiction, of this one of the basic human sources of suffering be looked for in the modern science of complexity?Synergetics and the sciences of complex systems in general offer a solid scientific base for a meta-philosophical, universalist intellectual framework. Its offspring the social synergetics offers concrete propositions of optimized social structures. Optimized in the sense of espousing the main synergetic effects with being at the same time free of the negative “side effects” happening when religions or ideologies are the source of synergism.Finally a connection is discussed between the presented ideas and the concept of “love of wisdom”. The term “love of wisdom” may be understood as striving not only to possess a “sound and serene judgment regarding the conduct of life” but also a practical ability to act according to that judgment.This ability may be also expressed using the information-thermodynamic concepts of synergetics. Indeed without the ever continuing negentropy transformation neither survival of a complex system like man or society nor its continuing development—uncovering of all his “hidden potentials” is possible.To assure maximization of this transformation process creation of strong synergetic effects—of reinforcement, of positive feedback—between all human beings—i.e. not excluding any nations, any social groups, and any individuals—are necessary. Acting towards local and global realization of such a structure everywhere on our planet constitutes the essence of social wisdom.Removing all obstacles towards this goal—obstacles existing on the intellectual, emotional and spiritual level—should be one of the most important tasks of various institutions, of state structures, of purified from mythical elements ideologies, of man oriented sciences and above all of the modern universalism.Thus striving towards its realization is an expression of the love of wisdom. Of wisdom once based on the elements of mythos and now regained in the full light of Logos. (shrink)

The present moment in human history is marked by the ever-accelerating movement across the world of materials, peoples, and information, creating various problems but also opportunities as well –especially for the movement of people. Such demographic movement makes multiculturalism a major issue for many societies. Differences between immigrants and the society receiving them tend to create conflict, as another culture encroaching upon one’s own culture is often felt as a threatening challenge to one’s identity. Within any society, (...) identity is constructed in the subjective process of culture. But where two or more cultures come into close contact, a dominance–subordination struggle frequently develops between their respective subjectivities. One solution to such conflict might be found in the legal provision of equality of rights for all members of society, including cultural minorities. But if the legal solution alone is considered, the resources accumulated in cultures as enabling agents for amenable social coexistence would go unused, and tension and conflict will frequently persist. As an intermediate position, cultural subjectivities, whether personal or collective, could be induced to constitute a complex system of federated subjectivities within the general society. Even such a system may not, however, be completely effective. The adoption by all parties of an ethic universally conceived on the minimal basis could meet the urgent need to prevent escalation of conflict, but its ultimate goal would be to prepare a common ground for the development of a global culture incorporating multiple cultures as historically inherited resources for the enrichment of human life. Ethical awareness is what reveals the otherness of the other and also the ontological ground of human life on earth; as ethics and epistemology coincide, a human reason would emerge as the ground of a new global culture, and the world would hopefully become a single Lebensraum for the whole of humanity. (shrink)

In the words of Aristotle, "The state is a union of families and villagers having for an end, a perfect and self-sufficing life by which we mean a happy and honourable life. A state exists for the sake of good life and not for the sake of life only". This definition has given a clear vision on the relationship between man and the state. The state, in modern times is regarded as an important agency or in other words a human (...) organization for maintaining disciplined and a well-arranged environment for education. In contemporary world, the functions to be performed by a state are going wide day by day. So, one of the functions of a state is to give proper education and to create a proper environment for imparting knowledge among people. In a democratic country the role of state in spreading education is very much important. These states provide educational aims and objectives, open schools and colleges; arrange the syllabus and curriculum, plan, control and direct educational activities for their citizens. Performing these functions the modern states can create such an environment in every society where every citizen can be made educated enough to understand the complexities of modern world. Besides these, the modern world can make proper arrangements for research and experiments in various fields of education. For this a state should establish such institutions and organisations to inspire the eligible individuals. In a big country like India, the state makes educational policies based on needs, ideals and aspirations of the people. For this there are various administrative unites are established. Each such unites maintain an educational department of it’s own for providing liberal and vocational education up to highest standard. States also maintain one or more universities for higher education. Thus, it can be said that a state exerts it’s direct and indirect influences on all aspects of education. (shrink)

PurposeBeginning with the initial premise that the internet has a global character, the purpose of this paper is to argue that the normative evaluation of digital information on the internet necessitates an evaluative model that is itself universal and global in character. To this end, the paper aims to demonstrate and support a universal model for the normative evaluation of information on the internet.Design/methodology/approachThe design and application of a dual normative model of information show how such a (...) model commits all disseminators of information to universal epistemological and ethical norms.FindingsBased on the dual normative characterization of information, the paper demonstrates that information and internet information specifically, have an inherent normative structure that commits its disseminators to certain mandatory epistemological and ethical commitments; and that the negligent or purposeful abuse of information in violation of those commitments is also a violation of universal rights to freedom and wellbeing to which all agents are entitled by virtue of being agents, and in particular informational agents.Research limitations/implicationsOwing to space constraints it is impractical to provide in this paper a detailed account of how the argument for informational universal rights can deal with other competing moral obligations.Originality/valueThe findings based on an innovative dual normative model of information demonstrate and support the initial thesis of the paper, namely, that the dissemination of internet information due to its global nature commits all informational agents to universal epistemological and ethical principles. (shrink)

Universities must transmit technically exploitable knowledge. That is, they must meet an industrial society's need for qualified new generations and at the same time be concerned with the expanded reproduction of education itself. In addition, universities must not only transmit technically exploitable knowledge, but also produce it. This includes both information flowing from research into the channels of industrial utilization, armament, and social welfare, and advisory knowledge that enters into strategies of administration, government, and other decision-making powers, such (...) as private enterprises. Thus, through instruction and research the university is immediately connected with functions of the economic process. (shrink)

In 1937 Joseph Grinnell founded the University of California’s first biological field station, the Hastings Natural History Reservation. Hastings became a center for field biology on the West Coast, and by 1960 it was serving as a model for the creation of additional U.C. reserves. Today, the U.C. Natural Reserve System is the largest and most diverse network of university-based biological field stations in the world, with 36 sites covering more than 135,000 acres. This essay examines the founding (...) of the Hastings Reservation, and asks how it managed to grow and develop, in the 1940s and 1950s, during a time of declining support for natural history research. It shows how faculty and staff courted the support of key institutional allies, presented themselves as the guardians of a venerable tradition in nature study, and emphasized the station’s capacity to document ecological change and inform environmental policy and management. In the years since, Hastings and other U.C. reserves have played crucial roles in California environmental politics. Biological field stations in the post-war era deserve more attention not only from historians of biology, but also from environmental historians and other scholars interested in the role of science in society. (shrink)

Horkheimer and Adorno make claims that imply a complete rejection of the idea of a universal history developed in classical German philosophy. Using Kant’s account of universal history, I argue that some features of the idea of a universal history can nevertheless be detected in the Dialectic of Enlightenment and some of Adorno’s remarks on freedom and history. This is done in connection with the kind of rational self-mastery that they associate with the story of Odysseus. Some claims made by (...) Adorno in particular will be shown to imply that this self-mastery is a necessary condition of a better, freer society, especially in relation to this society’s material conditions. On the other hand, certain essential features of the idea of a universal history are clearly absent in virtue of the ultimate contingency of events and states of affairs that Adorno seeks to preserve. I show that the absence of these features and the preservation of contingency are, in fact, the means of saving the notion of the possibility of progress which informs the idea of a universal history. (shrink)

ABSTRACT How should physicians act when faced with corporal punishment, such as amputation, or torture? In most cases, the answer is clear: international law, UN resolutions and universal codes of medical ethics absolutely forbid physicians from countenancing torture and corporal punishment in any form. An acute problem arises, however, in decent societies, but not necessarily liberal states, that are, nonetheless, welcome in the world community. The decent society is often governed, in whole or in part, by religious laws, and (...) while these states abridge various human rights they are peace loving, generally tolerant, and offer their citizens wide avenues for political participation. Under these circumstances the prohibition against corporal punishment and torture weakens, often compelling physicians to participate. This is true in two cases. In Rawls’ hypothetical nation of Kazanistan, Islamic law is the order of the day, and amputations and corporal punishment play an integral part in the execution of traditional Islamic justice. In Israel, torture is sometimes used to elicit the information needed to thwart impending terror attacks. In each case, a physician's participation is essential. In light of the near universal condemnation that accompanies torture and corporal punishment, physicians can only appeal to norms anchored in collective well‐being and concern for life that override respect for human dignity in these societies. Western societies have consistently rejected this reasoning, but it is part and parcel of life in the decent society. (shrink)

The article discusses the so-called university crisis showing that, simultaneously to this crisis and the unstructuring process, we are facing a reconversion of the institution on the frame of the contemporary information society that models it as a potential enterprise. Nowadays, universities are being inserted in the cognitive capitalism, which makes a business activity out of the production of knowledge, thus subjected to every mechanism of capitalist production and dependent of the marketing of its items/services. As a (...) conclusion, the article reviews the various strategies displayed to face the university crisis: the official strategies of the academic institutions, the proposals of the teaching profession and the student's proposals; each of them analyses this process from different. (shrink)

The impact of digital devices and the Internet has generated various changes at social, political, and economic levels, the repercussion of which is a great challenge characterized by the changing and globalized nature of today's society. This demands the development of new skills and new learning models in relation to information and communication technologies. Universities must respond to these social demands in the training of their future professionals. This paper aims to analyze the empirical evidence provided by international (...) studies in the last eleven years, related to the digital literacy of university students, including those pursuing degrees related to the field of education. Our findings highlight the fact that the digital literacy that is offered in universities to graduate/postgraduate students, in addition to treating digital literacy as a central theme, also focuses on perceived and developed self-efficacy. This is done by strengthening competencies related to digital writing and reading, the use of databases, the digital design of content and materials, and the skills to edit, publish or share them on the web, or applications aimed at treating digital literacy as emerging pedagogies and educational innovation. Secondly, we found studies related to digital competencies and use of the Internet, social networks, web 2.0, or the treatment of digital risks and their relationship with digital literacy. Thirdly, we found works that, in addition to focusing on digital literacy, also focused on different psychological constructs such as motivation, commitment, attitudes, or satisfaction.Systematic review registration:https://www.scopus.com/home.uri; https://www.recursoscientificos.fecyt.es/. (shrink)

Higher education has a dual responsibility, both to the academy and to society at large, to effectively confront racism on campus. And yet, in the United States and perhaps elsewhere, it fails to effectively confront racism as the result of systemic flaws, expressed as organizational intransigence, even as new “supportive and protective” structures are created. Thus, the central question raised by the anonymized, composite narrative case study at the core of this paper is as follows: To what extent, if (...) any, do the familiar organizational structures of higher education, encompassing both leadership and management processes, reinforce or resist racism on campus? Consistent with other social science researchers, the authors believe that richly contextualized narrative cases help to bridge the world of ideas and conjecture and actual situations. We used an iterative process spanning three months for drawing our case, involving a back-and-forth communication of actual experiences involving campus racism. The resulting composite narrative provides a richly contextualized situation drawn from real life, while still preserving anonymity. We regarded this later aspect as crucial for making possible the close examination of an ethically challenging situation that might otherwise remain invisible due to sensitive information. Our analysis focused on campus responsiveness to the challenge of racism within a mechanistic organization, rooted in structuralism, versus an organic organization, rooted in post-structuralism. Four aspects of a more organic university design are identified as key to bringing about meaningful, ethically sound change within the academy: deep, reflective listening; a more horizontal, consensus-based leadership structure that empowers professionals at various ranks; freedom within a framework; and a broadly shared, continually reinforced focus on overarching principles, goals, and ideals. (shrink)

Realities of the formed information society made actual for inclusive education a problem of formation of professionals of the new directions capable to apply information technologies to improvement of interaction between participants of process of distance learning. Until recent time the institute of distance learning had no analogs in our educational system. It has to become one of the most important elements of the organization of remote education. Inclusive education becomes the new strategic direction of modern education (...) in Russia, its program of development to 2020 is designated by the Federal law ‘About the education in the Russian Federation‘ which has come into force on September 1, 2013. Ideas of inclusive training were born from a pressing need of society to help children to be integrated with features of development into society. Without it a creation of a new civilized society, the education system that meets the requirements of the humanistic principles is not possible. In this connection, creation of a substantial and technological basis of the organization of inclusive education of children in the mode of distance learning is an extremely important for today social, moral and pedagogical problem. In its center are the development of the subject, granting equal opportunities to each pupil to build the individual educational trajectory, culturological cultivation of the person capable to take an independent position in relation to external conditions. Distance learning serves as strong and active technology of socialization of such children. However, in the theory and a technique of training, the problem of distance learning of children with disabilities is insufficiently solved that is caused by unavailability of most of teachers to apply these technologies. There is a contradiction between objective practical need of distance learning for children with disabilities and insufficient readiness of a theoretical and technological basis. This is a main problem discussed in the study. In theoretical plan, it is a problem of development of the practical-focused theoretical and technological basis of distance learning of children with disabilities. On the practical level, it is a problem of formation of the subject information and education environment, designing of the contents, definition of methods, pedagogical technologies, the conditions of formation promoting achievement of the planned educational results and development of cognitive independent activity without prejudice to health of children on the basis of the accounting of their individual abilities. Technological effectiveness of the purposes is provided with prediction of educational results, their expression through requirements to actions of pupils. Recent time, children only start studying and mastering remote technologies therefore, first of all, they have to seize rational ways of educational activity and learn to work with information, i.e. priority value has to be allocated for formation of informative and logical and informative and information universal educational actions. (shrink)

Our world is not simply religious or simply secular but complexly both. A wide range of issues for universities arise from this, such as the need to have such issues widely discussed and also to develop the field of theology and religious studies. Five key responsibilities are: towards future generations; for the formation of people in wisdom as well as through information, knowledge, practices and skills; for uniting teaching and research; for contributing to religious and secular society; and (...) for the fostering of collegiality and good governance. If these are to be fulfilled well the best of religious and secular wisdom is needed. The final sections of the paper outline a Christian wisdom theology with reference to the responsibilities of universities, concluding with a case study of the relevance of Scriptural Reasoning (the mutual study of their scriptures by a group of Jewish, Christian and Muslim text scholars, philosophers and theologians) to the responsibilities of universities towards the flourishing of our religious and secular world. (shrink)

The article provides the general opinion of philosophers, scientists, and engineers heading institutes and centers of Samara National Research University regarding the issues of scientific and technological progress, social management problems under the condition of digital reality, human functions in new artificial environments. The technology is classically understood as satisfaction of human needs through the ability to apply knowledge of the laws of universe or nature in the broad sense. With advances in technology, the artificial human environment, the metacosmos, (...) emerges. It is formed by technologies: by energy conversion machines, information processing machines, and presently by artificial intelligence. The evolution of the artificial environment, caused by scientific and technological development, entails social transformations, changes in the goals and methods of management system in human communities. Nowadays, the accumulated amount of contradictions of the information society testifies to the need of the search for a new form of organization of social structure, for new goals that would include human development, its creative potential growth, increase of the role of man in scientific and technological development. The authors discuss what the artificial intelligence technologies creating a new artificial human environment should be like to meet those goals. The article analyzes the impact of the fourth industrial revolution on the transformation of society. The question is raised from what philosophical positions one should understand man, society, technology, social development, and its goals. Analyzing the fundament for the philosophy of technology concepts of human, space, evolution, technology, artificial nature, the principles of the society 5.0 are introduced, which were formulated by Noritsugu Uemura. The authors conclude that the development of the artificial intelligence technologies provides opportunities for consistent unlocking the human potential, for advancement in personal growth, and finally for overcoming the crisis of the imbalance between the technological and the human, which characterizes contemporary information society. (shrink)