BACKGROUND Primary biodiversity records (PBR) are essential in many areas of scientific research as they document the biodiversity through time and space. However, concerns about PBR quality and fitness-for-use have grown, especially as derived from taxonomical, geographical and sampling effort biases. Nonetheless, the temporal bias stemming from data ageing has received less attention. We exam...

By adapting theories for the decline of mutualism developed in evolution and natural sciences, we put forward an explanation for the decline of social capital based on its obsolescence. In our economy, agents with specific knowledge are “held up” by their principals. Inside communities, agents learn about each other and thereby engage in mutual aid, preventing the hold-up. As they learn about e...

A dominant narrative surrounding smartphone lifespans suggests that their objective functional capabilities deteriorate rapidly and if only devices were more repairable consumers would use them longer thereby reducing demand for new production e-waste generation. Here we a big-data approach to help unpack this examine two related yet distinct aspects: performance obsolescence, interest in repai...

The technological obsolescence of a unit is characterized by the existence of challenger units displaying identical functionalities, but with higher performances. This paper aims to define and model in a realistic way, possible maintenance policies of a system including replacement strategies when one type of challenger unit is available. The comparison of these possible strategies is performed...

The English-language literature of technological change is one of the few areas of economic writing in which Joseph Schumpeter has maintained a following and in which he has been accorded some modicum of the attention he deserves. There has grown up within this literature a standard interpretation of Schumpeter’s famous assertion that progress will eventually come to be ’mechanized’. The conven...

tually represses creative ways of understanding and taking responsibility for ourselves and our lives. The medical model stands for constricted consciousness and the standardization of behavior. Here is the question I would like to see addressed in public debates: Is an extra degree of social control, one that often hurts and humiliates people, worth the price of endarkenment and enfeeblement? ...