AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)最新文献

{"title":"Innovations in Monitoring Vital Events. Mobile Phone SMS Support to Improve Coverage of Birth and Death Registration.A Scalable Solution (From Tanzania) - A Review","authors":"J. van der Straaten","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3895851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3895851","url":null,"abstract":"Civil registration in developing countries is only slowly improving, and least so in Sub-Saharan Africa. An important reason why this is the case has been identified across countries: the problematic and costly access for the public to civil registration services. When early in the 2010s mobile phone use became ubiquitous and connectivity surpassed Internet coverage it did not take long for an understanding to set in that mobile phones may offer a way out of the cul-de-sac in which civil registration was and still is stuck in many low-income countries. Close to, we estimate, a hundred mobile phone projects were conducted (over 70% of which in the WHO MOVE-IT- and Millennium Villages projects) during the 2010s. An evaluation of the early use of the mobile phone for vital event reporting is a 2013 study of a project of birth- and death notification (and birth and death registration) by mobile phone conducted in Tanzania. Project design was of disappointing quality. The pilot led to the increase of birth and death registration only to underwhelming extent. The authors claim that it was not clear why: “[n]o overwhelming reason [was] provided by families for the low reporting rate.” But the reasons why are so obvious that it is astounding that the authors did not even speculate what they could be. This short paper review makes good for that glaring omission. The here reviewed pilot was infused with the “Enterprise Architecture” fad, in the world of for-profit business long discarded. It excels in the study in minute detail of the “as-is”. It fails spectacularly in the “to-be”, and has commonly (in over 90% of its application according to one study) resulted in “not-to-be”. Worse still, indications are that the aid industry has set Africa up for another decade of “worse than useless advice” and quack science to solve the continent’s intricate identity management problems. In addition a short lead-in is given to our forthcoming paper on the mobile phone-based Tanzania’s Under-Five Birth Registration Initiative (U5BRI). The project, while widely communicated as a success, is in trouble, as shown in this paper. An in-depth study of its performance will be reviewed in a forthcoming paper.","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134023781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Deep Origins of Innovation (Part II/III): Memes of Novelty","authors":"Bouke J.G. van der Kooij","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3854553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3854553","url":null,"abstract":"After having explored the mental processes around creation of novelty (Part I) as part of human’s adaptive behaviour to environmental change, in this second article about the deep origins of innovation we focus on the transfer of novelty by cultural replication. Applying Dawkins’ meme-concept for cultural replication in an analogy with biological replication, human’s mental processes in relation to observing his environment, and his subsequent actions, are the focus of our attention. Using a conceptual model of the complex reality of brains and behaviour—the Biological Information Processor (BIP)—mental processes of the existential brain and cognitive brain are identified. Next, the generic meme-concept is refined in procedural memes (P-memes) and factual memes (F-memes), the basic units of the cultural replication of procedural and factual experiences. In addition, we distinguish the I-meme for the cultural replication of ideas conceptualized in the cognitive brain, as well as the A-meme for the arts. Arts expressed in the physical form of artefacts, and the non-physical form of mental constructs. <br><br>This working paper is the second of three papers into the Deep Origin of Innovation. It is based on the case study ’Discovery of Innovation, Historic (R)evolutions in Perpective.’<br><br>","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133749274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Elinor Ostrom: Case Studies, Academic Careers, and a Nobel Prize","authors":"Marianne Johnson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3848128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3848128","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, I examine the strategies by which Elinor Ostrom carved out a successful career as a woman in the social sciences with a particular emphasis on her engagement with the discipline of economics. The methodology is guided by Ostrom’s work with small-N case studies. Layers of analysis include (i) individual behavioral choices, (ii) the micro (community) situation, and (iii) the larger socio-ecological context. Ostrom’s career choices and publishing patterns are examined as are the structure and functioning of the Ostrom Workshop and Ostrom’s engagement with the field of economics. By considering each level, we can see how Ostrom successfully leveraged collaboration, while still differentiating and protecting her work from appropriation. Considered in combination with sociological and institutional features that determine Nobel prizes, it becomes much less surprising that Ostrom’s name would sift to the top of consideration.","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115987980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"It Is Time for Regulators to Open the ‘Black Box’ of Technology","authors":"M. Fenwick, E. Vermeulen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3379205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3379205","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, we utilize our personal experience with two “data points” (namely policymakers and students) to argue that all levels of government need to re-evaluate current approaches to the regulation of emerging technologies. More specifically, governments need to delegate much of the “heavy lifting” and focus on community-driven regulatory design in which government and all of the stakeholders in technology companies work together in partnership to co-create robust and flexible regulatory architectures suitable for a fast-changing digital world. Such a shift in approach requires a new “digital mindset” amongst all participants in the policymaking process and, consequently, reforming education to ensure a greater degree of digital literacy is a vital first step in building durable long-term solutions to the urgent challenges of a digital age.","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"332 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122989001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Innovation Acceleration, Digitization, and the Arms Control Imperative","authors":"Amy J. Nelson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3382956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3382956","url":null,"abstract":"The integrity of arms control regimes as a tool for lowering the risks associated with the stockpiling, use and spread of dangerous weapons and technologies is in jeopardy today. Simultaneously, several factors concerning the way military technologies are developed and acquired are converging to further augment the risk of their spread, enabling a next-generation proliferation problem that is far from manageable. This paper first argues that arms control regimes are designed to manage specific security risks, and new technologies are exacerbating these risks by perforating controls and eluding regulation. It then explains why this is poised to worsen: new drivers of this risk are converging to create unmanageable conditions. These drivers include: 1) the increased rate of production of novel technologies; 2) the digitization of existing weapons technologies, platforms and systems, as well as the digital format of newer technologies; and 3) the diffusion and latency they facilitate. Finally, it speaks to next steps, describing how previous and ongoing efforts to “modernize” arms control have borne little fruit in terms of managing newer threats from emerging and evolving technologies due a failure to update control lists — the list of items and technologies regulated by any regime — at a pace consistent with the rate of innovation, as well as political setbacks, and tension with the private sector. Based on data analysis of technology-driven treat behaviors, the paper recommends that we should, nevertheless, endeavor to preserve the arms control regimes we do have in place in order to avoid proliferation rollback (establish measures and timelines for moving potential threats back to a latent state), while simultaneously pursuing additional measures to broaden regimes.","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116569370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Equality and Privacy by Design’: Ensuring Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Properly Trained & Fed: A New Model of AI Data Transparency & Certification As Safe Harbor Procedures","authors":"S. Yanisky-Ravid, Sean Hallisey","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3278490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3278490","url":null,"abstract":"Artificial Intelligence systems (“AI”) are often described as a technological breakthrough that will completely transform our society and economy. AI systems have been implemented in all facets of the economy, from medicine to transportation, finance, art, legal, social, and weapons; making decisions previously determined by humans. While this article recognizes that AI systems promise benefits, it also identifies urgent challenges to our everyday life. Just as the technology has become prolific, so has the literature concerning its legal implications. However, the literature suffers from a lack of solutions that address the legal and engineering perspectives. This leaves technology firms without guidelines and increases the risk of societal harm. Policymakers, including judges, operate without a regulatory regime to turn to when addressing these novel and unpredictable outcomes. This article tries to fill the void by focusing on the use of data by these systems, rather than on the software and software programmers. It suggests a new Model that stems from a recognition of the significant role that the data plays in the development and functioning of AI systems. \u0000 \u0000One of the most important phases of teaching AI systems to operate starts with a preexisting massive dataset that the data providers use to train the system. The data providers are programmers, trainers; the stakeholders who enable access to data or the systems’ users. In this article, we analyze and discuss the threats the use of data by AI systems pose in terms of producing discriminatory outcomes as well as violations of privacy. \u0000 \u0000The data can be illegal, discriminatory, manufacture, unreliable, or simply incomplete. The more data that AI systems “swallow,” the likelihood increases that AI systems could produce biased, discriminatory decisions and/or violate privacy. The article discusses how discrimination can arise, even inadvertently, from the operation of “trusted” and \"objective\" AI systems. The article addresses, on the one hand, the hurdles and challenges behind the use of big data by AI systems, and on the other, suggests a possible, new solution. \u0000 \u0000We propose a new AI data transparency Model that focuses on disclosure of the data being used by AI systems, when necessary. To perfect the Model we recommend an auditing regime and a certification program, either by governmental body or, in the absence of such entity, by private institutes. This Model will encourage the industry to take steps, proactively, to ensure that the dataset is trustworthy and then, to publicly exhibit the quality of the data (that their AI systems rely on). By receiving and publicizing a quality “stamp” the firms will fairly build their competitive reputation and will strengthen the public control of the systems. \u0000 \u0000We envision that the implementation of this Model will help firms and individuals become educated about the potential issues concerning AI, discrimination and the continued weakening of so","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"385 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133557920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"AI Powered Society","authors":"R. Bera","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3256873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3256873","url":null,"abstract":"To understand the post-industrial world of the millennials and the challenges and opportunities it presents is yet another chapter in the evolution of Homo sapiens. It will force humanity to reassess the meaning of life, its place and significance in the Universe, and above all its ability to survive in a world that includes its own creative creation – the super-intelligent, human-machine hybrid – the humanoid. The role of natural humans and humanity’s faith in spirituality if humanoids take charge will undergo a sea-change. The millennials’ ability to adapt to the new world by competing against the humanoids will face severe limitations and may even lead to Homo sapiens becoming an endangered species within a century. A biological evolution of intelligent life is waiting to happen, triggered by the Homo sapiens’ curiosity-driven quest to understand the Universe within a rational, axiomatized framework.","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127064959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"China's Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control","authors":"Rogier Creemers","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3175792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3175792","url":null,"abstract":"The Social Credit System (SCS) is perhaps the most prominent manifestation of the Chinese government's intention to reinforce legal, regulatory and policy processes through the application of information technology. Yet its organizational specifics have not yet received academic scrutiny. This paper will identify the objectives, perspectives and mechanisms through which the Chinese government has sought to realise its vision of \"social credit\". Reviewing the system's historical evolution, institutional structure, central and local implementation, and relationship with the private sector, this paper concludes that it is perhaps more accurate to conceive of the SCS as an ecosystem of initiatives broadly sharing a similar underlying logic, than a fully unified and integrated machine for social control. It also finds that, intentions with regards to big data and artificial intelligence notwithstanding, the SCS remains a relatively crude tool. This may change in the future, and this paper suggests the dimensions to be studied in order to assess this evolution.","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125437075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Statistics in Islamic Scriptures and Legacy","authors":"Q. Ali, M. Farooq","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3036341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3036341","url":null,"abstract":"Statistics as a modern discipline has emerged and developed as part of the development of scientific inquiry. While Islamic civilization has contributed to many key areas of modern knowledge, one of the areas that has rarely been explored in this context is statistics. This paper examines the concept of statistics in Islamic scriptures, particularly the Qur’an, and how the concept has evolved in the history of Islamic civilisation. Evidences presented in the paper shed important light on how close the modern concept of statistics is to the term al-ahsa in the Qur’an.","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134621021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Foundational Issues of ‘Technosphere Science’ – The Case for a New Scientific Discipline","authors":"Carsten Herrmann-Pillath","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3034099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3034099","url":null,"abstract":"This paper submits the case for establishing ‘technosphere science’ as an independent scientific discipline that draws on results of many other disciplines, reaching from physics to the humanities, with economics as a major contributing discipline. My argument is ontological, that is I posit several fundamental assumptions about the type of entities that are studied by technosphere science and their causal relationships. This is motivated by the recognition that in the Anthropocene, the technosphere has emerged as encompassing also the biosphere, thus rendering the ontological distinction between ‘nature’ and the artificial obsolete. This requires a thorough reconsideration of the concept of ‘technology’ that combines engineering approaches with the humanities and philosophy, resulting in a new concept of ‘artefact’. This concept provides the foundation for a central ontological notion of technosphere science, distributed agency or ‘agencement’, following Actor-Network-Theory. Agency is no longer seen as a property exclusive to humans, but as emerging from networks of entities, including humans, artefacts and living systems. Hence, technosphere science draws on many general and abstract insights of various uses of the concept of ‘networks’ across many disciplines, which allows for positing distinct forms of causal processes: prominent examples include the concept of autocatalytic cycles (building on their conceptual role in explaining the transition from non-life to life) or power laws and scaling laws. On a most general level, technosphere science establishes a universal evolutionary framework that generalizes over biological evolution, and approaches technology as an evolutionary phenomenon. In this general framework, thermodynamics assumes a foundational role in approaching both the technosphere and the biosphere as consisting of entities that accumulate information that enables the utilization and expansion of energetic throughputs. This follows from the ontological determination of the technosphere as an open, non-linear and non-equilibrium system feeding on energetic throughputs. In this perspective, the human economy is the central medium by which human action is functional relative to the reproduction and growth of the technosphere. I conclude with considerations about human autonomy and ethics in the technosphere.","PeriodicalId":218558,"journal":{"name":"AARN: Science & Technology Studies (Sub-Topic)","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133806324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}