1,721,009 research outputs found
Concluding Remarks: Current Algorithmic Times, AI and STS
Full text linkThis book provides a fully-fledged exploration of science and technology studies (STS) perspective applied to algorithms developed to support care processes. By concentrating on algorithmic technologies for supporting processes of social and health care, the book intersects topics connected to technoscientific innovation and specifically digital transformation for health care. By offering different attempts of deconstructing algorithmic technologies, the book provides a landmark reference for those interested in undertaking research focused on areas connected to algorithmic decision-making for health care. The book will be an invaluable reference for scholars interested in the STS debate and related fields (e.g.,human–computer interaction, computer supported cooperative work, participatory design, and sociology of health and medicine). This book responds to a growing interest in the application of algorithms’ to local and national care systems. The book balances theoretical and empirical analysis bringing together experienced and early-career scholars.
This book will be of interest to researchers in STS as well as healthcare professionals and managers as some of the topics covered help to critically reconsider some facets of planning through algorithmic technologies supporting the practice of healthcare and decision-making
Theoretical Inputs for Empirical Outputs: The Lenses of Science and Technology Studies from Digital Media for Exploring Algorithms in Healthcare
No full textPersonal health data and organizational constraints in new health infrastructures: some practices to go through fruitfully
No full textDecomposing and Reassembling Energy Grids as Socio–Technical Apparatuses
No full textThis contribution is aimed to provide a deeper and more complex frame
for the energy smart grid implementation. To accomplish this task, we use
two main perspectives. The first one is to conceive energy grids as
technological zones, in which standard metering, communication
infrastructures, and social evaluation assemble. The second one is to conceive
energy grids as an apparatus in which asymmetries of many kinds constitute
the ontology of the grid itself
The Encounters of Science and Technology Studies with Algorithms in the Analysis of Healthcare
No full textThis chapter introduces the main goal of the book “Reframing Algorithms”, which is to offer a comprehensive exploration of the encounters between Science and Technology Studies (STS) and a less-covered topic in the STS debate: the design and use of algorithmic technologies in healthcare. The debate about algorithmic technologies in healthcare tend to polarised between enthusiastic and critical positions. Although they might differences, these opposed outlooks tend to share as common ground a deterministic perspective on algorithms, conceiving them as invisible and autonomous “entities”. In contrast this edited book, the contributions gathered for this edited book aim to shed light on the social processes through which algorithms are enacted. Different authors, as briefly anticipated in this chapter, provide theoretical and empirically informed about how algorithms are being incorporated into healthcare settings
A National Law as an Actor–network: How Guatemala’s General Electricity Law of 1996 Shaped the Country’s Environmental Conflicts over Hydroelectricity
Full text linkThis paper uses controversy mapping to study the history of Guatemala’s General Electricity Law (GGEL, 1996). Particular attention is paid to the impact of the GGEL on social conflicts related to hydroelectricity. This article discusses how an array of actors –right–wing political parties and influencers, the ‘El Niño’ Phenomenon, the international wave of neoliberalism and a malfunctioning dam– coalesced to promote a law intended to modernize Guatemala’s energy market and expand its electrical grid. Twenty years later, GGEL remains a relevant actor in the conflicts around new hydroelectricity projects. However, counter to the intentions of its promoters, this law has helped to fuel controversy. First, it indirectly imposes restrictions on negotiations among project stakeholders by forbidding the sale of energy to third parties; thus, it deprives actors of their strongest bargaining asset. Second, GGEL makes territorial interdependence invisible, shifting the costs and responsibilities from the government and companies to communities. Finally, while other studies have simply portrayed GGEL as a result of neoliberalism, an Actor–network theory (ANT) approach provides a broader picture of its origin and impact by taking into account the GGEL’s role as a non–human actor
Interesting Worlds to Come. Science & Technology Studies Facing More-than-Human Challenges
Full text linkThis editorial by the board of STS Italia (The Italian Society for Social Studies of Science and Technology) introduces a Special Section of the Journal collecting a set of contributions to the IX STS Italia Conference, held in June 2023. The Special Section features an invited Lecture by Huub Dijstelbloem followed by a short commentary by Annalisa Pelizza. In addition, the Section includes the Crossing Boundaries “Drawing Bruno Together” and the Scenario “Bruno Latour and Artificial Intelligence” dedicated to Bruno Latour and both written by long-term colleagues, friends and exegetes of his work
"Being Informed About My Health Without Going to a Doctor’s Appointment”:Doctors’ and Patients’ Narratives About a Future with AI
Full text linkThis chapter aims to address an important issue that has been overshadowed in the social sciences: how the expectations of users transmit attitudes about algorithmic technologies in healthcare, generating different and competing ways of thinking about what algorithms are and affecting how these systems are used. To overcome the widespread deterministic perspective on algorithms, we will focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies able to create and move data, learn from them, and make decisions without any human intervention. This chapter draws on a qualitative study on the expectations of doctors and patients towards intelligent machines applied to the monitoring of Parkinson’s disease (PD) in the Italian context. Adopting the concept of socio-technical imaginary, the empirical section will investigate how these actors negotiate a future scenario characterised by a central role for intelligent algorithm machines. First, we will focus on the dissatisfaction of doctors and patients with the current ways in which people with PD are managed in the Italian healthcare system. Second, we will describe the main characteristics of the emerging socio-technical imaginary, which we have called “the AI-driven monitoring hospital.” Third, we will explore the various tensions that have emerged around this imaginary, mainly concerning the specific ways through which patients’ data should be gathered, analysed, and transmitted
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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