350 research outputs found
Algorithmic Management in Food Delivery Platforms: Between Digital Neo-Taylorism and Enhanced Subjectivity
No full textTin Hat Games: Producing, Funding, and Consuming an Independent Role-Playing Game in the Age of the Interactive Spectacle
No full textSpectacle 2.0 recasts Debord's theory of spectacle within the frame of 21st century digital capitalism. It offers a reassessment of Debord’s original notion of Spectacle from the late 1960s, of its posterior revisitation in the 1990s, and it presents a reinterpretation of the concept within the scenario of contemporary informational capitalism and more specifically of digital and media labour. It is argued that the Spectacle 2.0 form operates as the interactive network that links through one singular (but contradictory) language and various imaginaries, uniting diverse productive contexts such as logistics, finance, new media and urbanism. Spectacle 2.0 thus colonizes most spheres of social life by processes of commodification, exploitation and reification. Diverse contributors consider the topic within the book’s two main sections: Part I conceptualizes and historicizes the Spectacle in the context of informational capitalism; contributions in Part II offer empirical cases that historicise the Spectacle in relation to the present (and recent past) showing how a Spectacle 2.0 approach can illuminate and deconstruct specific aspects of contemporary social reality. All contributions included in this book rework the category of the Spectacle to present a stimulating compendium of theoretical critical literature in the fields of media and labour studies. In the era of the gig-economy, highly mediated content and President Trump, Debord’s concept is arguably more relevant than ever
RISONANZA, ATTRITO ED EMOZIONI NELLE COMUNITÀ IMMAGINATE ONLINE
No full textIn this paper, the author introduces a methodology applied to online ethnographic research.
In particular, the Author applies classical anthropological concepts to an online cultural analysis
in relationship to Italian mothers that talk about problems link to the daily management of
maternity and job. In this way, the Author can understand how, in general, people create imagined
online communities that share particular cultural values and social experiences
A text classification framework based on optimized error correcting output code
No full textIn recent years, there has been increasing interest in using text classifiers for retrieving and filtering infomation from web sources. As the numbers of categories in this kind of software applications can be high, Error correcting Output Coding (ECOC) can be a valid approach to perform multi-class classification. This paper explores the use of ECOC for learning text classifiers using two kinds of dichotomizers and compares them to each corresponding monolithic classifier. We propose a simulated annealing approach to calculate the coding matrix using an energy function similar to the electrostatic potential energy of a system of charges, which allows to maximize the average distance between codewords |with low variance. In addition, we use a new criterion for selecting features, a feature (in this specific context) being any term that may occur in a document. This criterion defines a measure of discriminant capability and allows to order terms according to it. Three different measures have been experimented to perform feature ranking/selection, in a comparative setting. Experimental results show that reducing the set of features used to train classifiers does not affect classification performance. Notably, feature selection is not a preprocessing activity valid for all dichotomizers. In fact, features are selected for each dichotomizer that occurs in the matrix coding, typically giving rise to a different subset of features depending on the dichotomizers at hand
Perception of similarity: a model for social networks dynamics
No full textSome properties of social networks (e.g., the mixing patterns and the community structure) appear deeply influenced by the individual perception of people. In this work we map behaviors by considering similarity and popularity of people, also assuming that each person has his/her proper perception and interpretation of similarity. Although investigated in different ways (depending on the specific scientific framework), from a computational perspective similarity is typically calculated as a distance measure. In accordance with this view, to represent social network dynamics we developed an agent-based model on top of a hyperbolic space on which individual distance measures are calculated. Simulations, performed in accordance with the proposed model, generate small-world networks that exhibit a community structure. We deem this model to be valuable for analyzing the relevant properties of real social networks
Indigenous Digital Technologies. The Taicho and Yelloknives Dene’s Web-Site and Cultural Online Archives
No full textCyberspace is only one of the many metaphors used to describe the Internet. While there is a
growing body of literature on identity formation in cyberspace, there are important gaps in this
field. One of these is related to the analysis of the use of digital technologies by the Northern
Canadian Indigenous people. Precisely, the author, focusing her attention on Tåîchô and
Yellowknives Dene communities in Northwest Territories of Canada analyzes the contents of their
websites and online archives in order to understand how these native groups promote their culture
and spread out their knowledge through digital technologies for working toward decolonizatio
Emergence of acronyms in a community of language users
No full textLanguage is a complex system that evolves over time, due to several phenomena. In recent years, new communication media are affecting interpersonal written communication. In particular, mobile phones and internet-based communication media are leading people to use a small number of characters when writing messages. Hence, acronyms or abbreviations are used in most cases. In particular, a mobile phone message is usually composed by short phrases, the social network Twitter only allows 140 characters per message and in many online forums users have limited space for questions and answers. Although the use of acronyms dates back to ancient times, nowadays this type of linguistic sign is gaining prestige. In this work, we study the introduction of acronyms in social systems. In particular, we define a simple game for the purpose of analyzing how the use of an acronym spreads in a population, considering its ability to create a shared meaning. We performed many numerical simulations according to the proposed model, showing the creation of acronyms to be the result of collective dynamics in a population
A Flexible Software Development Process for Emergent Organizations
No full textMost of the changes in software development appear to be caused and driven by the need of controlling
some form of entropy. According to the above point of view, important events that occurred in the
classical software era could be revisited. In particular, we deem that the transition from code-and-fix to
the waterfall process has been driven by the attempt of controlling increasing communication entropy.
On the other hand, the transition towards iterative processes has been mainly driven by the need of
controlling changing or ambiguous requirements. Nowadays, another important change is probably
approaching, due to the need of organizations to adapt to the rapid development of commercial
technology and global markets. To anticipate such a change, before being actually compelled to do that
by environmental constraints, we believe that (i) a fine-grained iterative development, (ii) a teamoriented
approach, and (iii) an augmented focus on reviews and tests should be largely adopted by
object-oriented software development methodologies. Recently, Extreme Programming (XP) has been
proposed as an alternative to design-oriented approaches, and appears suited to promote the above
practices. On the other hand, the Unified Process (UP) has been adopted by most of the software
companies as a customizable object-oriented software process. UP is built on top of UML, the standard
language for describing a software system at different levels of detail and from different views.
After comparing XP with UP, in this paper we briefly outline a software process strongly biased towards
refactoring, which follows XP recommendations by adopting UML and suitably customizing UP
activities
The Beneficial Role of Mobility for the Emergence of Innovation
No full textInnovation is a key ingredient for the evolution of several systems, including social and biological ones. Focused investigations and lateral thinking may lead to innovation, as well as serendipity and other random discovery processes. Some individuals are talented at proposing innovation (say innovators), while others at deeply exploring proposed novelties, at getting further insights on a theory, or at developing products, services, and so on (say developers). This separation in terms of innovators and developers raises an issue of paramount importance: under which conditions a system is able to maintain innovators? According to a simple model, this work investigates the evolutionary dynamics that characterize the emergence of innovation. In particular, we consider a population of innovators and developers, in which agents form small groups whose composition is crucial for their payoff. The latter depends on the heterogeneity of the formed groups, on the amount of innovators they include, and on an award-factor that represents the policy of the system for promoting innovation. Under the hypothesis that a "mobility" effect may support the emergence of innovation, we compare the equilibria reached by our population in different cases. Results confirm the beneficial role of "mobility", and the emergence of further interesting phenomena
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