Blood,Sweat, and Tears: Navigating Creepy versus Cool in Wearable Biotech

ABSTRACT

This paper considers how personal data protections figure into the design process of wearable technology. The data question is becoming especially important in the face of recent innovations in biotechnology that capitalize on the new fungibility of biology and electronics, in which new biotech wearables capitalize on the ability to analyze and track changes in blood, sweat, and tears. Interviews and participant observation with wearable tech designers, data scientists, fashion tech entrepreneurs, and select experts in cybersecurity and intellectual property law, reveal a range of approaches to data protection in design within the culture where wearables are beginning to merge with biotech. While a few respondents were extremely vigilant about protecting consumer’s privacy, the majority felt that when consumers ‘opt in’ to data sharing, they should be cognizant of the risks. From their perspective, it is not necessarily the producer’s responsibility to protect user's personal data. These attitudes present a problematic logic, which leaves users vulnerable to data exploitation. The paper concludes by arguing that this laissez-faire culture is the environment in which wearable biotech is being developed and will be deployed. This emerging technology raises issues about bodies, data, and ownership in crucial need of analysis and critique to push its move into the mainstream toward more equitable and inclusive ends.     

The disenchantment of Bitcoin: unveiling the myth of a digital currency

Bitcoin and its peculiar, decentralized transaction system, have already ignited interest by professional and retail traders in search for profits and by economists and legal experts, looking for possible regulation to contain illegal uses. We instead examine the unexpected and ongoing success of Bitcoin from a sociological perspective, first questioning its unusual legitimation system, backed by the so called ‘blockchain technology’, instead of by governmental authorities. Then we collect data and elements to reconstruct Bitcoin’s history as a cryptocurrency, starting from the mysterious story surrounding its birth. We then follow its spread and development through social networks and words of mouth, together with its sudden booms and bursts, finally to suggest that both users and institutional regulators should be aware of the risks of Bitcoin and of its alleged power to challenge our very notion of money.     

Assistive technology for disabled visual artists: exploring the impact of digital technologies on artistic practice

Abstract

Disabled artists with physical impairments can experience significant barriers in producing creative work. Digital technologies offer alternative opportunities to support artistic practice, but there has been a lack of research investigating the impact of assistive digital tools in this context. This article explores the current practice of physically impaired visual artists and their experiences around the use of digital technologies. An online survey was conducted with professional disabled artists and followed up by face-to-face interviews with 10 invited artists. The findings illustrate the issues disabled artists experience in their practice and highlight how they are commonly using mainstream digital technologies as part of their practice. However, there is little awareness around novel forms of technology (e.g. eye gaze tracking) that present new creative opportunities. The importance of digital tools for supporting wider practice (i.e. administrative and business tasks) was also highlighted as a key area where further work is required.     

Then press enter: digital payment technology and the history of telephone interface

The internet and other digital networks in the U.S. (and beyond) remain essentially an upgrade of the national telephone network built by AT&T over the first half of the twentieth century, and digital payment remains tethered to telephony at the level of infrastructure. Telephone history also continues to inform digital payment at the level of interface. Debit card readers feature a keypad nearly identical to those introduced (also by AT&T) to the dialling public a half-century ago on touch-tone telephones. In this essay I highlight the development of the touch-tone keypad as a transformative payment technology. There have been three great leaps forward in the history of telephone interface: the dial, the keypad and the touch screen. Each corresponds to a period of technological transformation in the telephone industry and society more broadly: the rotary dial and automation, touch-tone keypads and digitization, and touch screens and computerization. The successful careers of the dial and the keypad, especially when read in tandem, suggest that touch screens will alter the everyday economics of retail payment even more radically than its predecessors. I also describe a broader trajectory of digital naturalization, whereby telephone numbers have proliferated into a personal identification number, passwords and a plethora of personalized information. Payments increasingly circulate today as subsets of personal information within the vast sea of big data. Payment apps are demonstrating a capacity to reorganize retail transactions on a scale as vast as any technology since the cash register. The history of retail payment finds the point of sale heading from the till into shoppers’ pockets. As a result, consumers are increasingly shouldering the costs of purchasing, maintaining, upgrading and securing the technology used for everyday transactions.     

信息技术如何实现契约治理与关系治理的平衡——基于D公司供应链治理案例

运用纵向案例研究,通过过程模型来解析基于契约和关系二元治理平衡的形成路径,打开信息技术与契约和关系的二元治理平衡之间的"黑箱"。研究发现,促进长期跨组织协同的关键在于实现基于关系和契约的治理机制平衡;信息技术能够在跨组织治理过程中实现治理机制的动态叠加,在治理机制不断优化的过程中实现治理机制之间的平衡。这一研究进一步丰富了跨组织治理理论,对中国企业在互联网环境下的长期合作具有启发和指导意义。     

A note on “Coordinating a supply chain for deteriorating items with a revenue sharing and cooperative investment contract”

In this short note, we first improve the proof in Zhang et al. [1] to show the strict concavity of the unit time total profit of the whole supply chain with respect to preservation technology investment without approximation. We then generalize the model of Zhang et al. [1] to a broader class of market demand functions. Additionally, theoretical results are provided to illustrate the features of the proposed model.     

桌面云技术在高校计算机类实验室建设中的应用

计算机软硬件技术更新换代速度越来越快.各学校计算机实验室拥有大量计算机，每年需要不少实验运行经费进行软硬件升级换代，因此应构建全新的实验室建设方案，降低实验室建设及维护成本，减轻教师工作强度，提高实验教学效果.通过桌面云技术把各种教学资源放到云平台上，师生用多种终端设备通过网络访问云端资源，可有效改善教学的时空环境，解决了传统实验室计算机更新换代快、实验环境扩展性差、维护管理复杂等问题.     

Is Nature‐Oriented Tourism a Pro‐Environmental Practice?: Examining Tourism–Environmentalism Alignments Through Discourse Networks and Intersectoral Relationships

A key tenet of ecotourism is that interacting with nature through tourism cultivates environmental awareness and responsibility. We examine this assumption by analyzing discourse networks and organizational networks that connect tourism and environmentalism in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Using a combination of interviews, field observation, and web‐based data, we ask: Is there an alignment of tourism and environmental discourse regarding human interaction with and use of coastal environments? Are there meaningful organizational ties between tourism and environmental organizations? We conclude that there is little indication that nature‐oriented tourism is working to produce substantial changes to our broader political ecology.     

农村科技扶贫开发与创新路径：重庆例证

依靠科技进步,变＂输血式＂救济扶贫为＂造血式＂开发式扶贫,有助于切实解决欠发达地区的贫困问题。重庆市石柱县将扶贫开发与产业发展紧密结合,将科学技术引入特色产业开发过程,遵循开发式扶贫的内在规律,创造了农村扶贫开发的＂石柱实践＂,服务＂三农＂和促进统筹城乡发展提供了有益启示。完善和推广＂石柱实践＂,要进一步强化对扶贫开发中科技作用的认识,持续不断地抓好对农民培训教育工程,不断调动当地人力资源参与开发促进发展,建立健全农业社会化服务体系。