Should democracts value the freedom to choose? Do people value facing distinct choices when they make collective decisions? ‘Autonomy’ – the ability to participate in the making of collective decisions – is a paltry notion of freedom. True, democrats must be prepared that their preferences may not be realized as the outcome of the collective choice. Yet democracy is impoverished when many peopl...

Resource Federations aim at providing access to information and communication technology (ICT) resources across the boundaries of administrative domains. This is of interest today as modern societies are concerned about ICT infrastructure energy consumption and need to improve the way ICT resources are provisioned and maintained. This paper describes a concept and prototype implementation for r...

This study explores awareness and visitation of e-government websites among techno-disadvantaged citizens in the United States. Following up on on a community-based initiative, designed to stimulate computer literacy and access to information and communication technologies for residents and neighbors of an underserved public housing community, a survey of egovernment website awareness and visit...

Many countries throughout the world are undertaking some forms of decentralization by shifting fiscal, political, and administrative responsibilities to lower levels of government. Decentralization is driven by unique circumstances in each setting. In some countries it is linked to recent democratization, while in others it is spurred by the failure of central government to deliver basic public...

Scattering probe particles from a quantum system can provide experimental access to information about the system’s state. However, measurement backaction and momentum transfer during scattering changes the state of the system, potentially destroying the state we wish to probe. Here we investigate how to probe the system’s initial state even in the presence of backaction and momentum transfer. W...

Virtual Communities (VCs) offer ubiquitous access to information and exchange possibilities for people in similar situations. This is especially valuable for patients with chronic / life-threatening diseases as they have strong needs for information and interaction with peers. It is seldom considered possible to create VCs systematically. Grounded on previous findings, systematic design of the ...

Libraries, telecenters, and cybercafés offer opportunities for wider public access to information and communication technologies (ICT). This paper presents findings of a global exploratory study on the landscape public access venues in 25 countries around the world. The goal of the project was to better understand the users of public access venues and their needs, this being one of several pape...

This work is part of a research project whose main objective is to understand the impact that the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has on the teaching and learning process on the subject of Physics. We will show that, with the use of a storm simulator, physics students improve their learning process on one hand they understand storm phenomenon, and on the other hand they as...

In the age of globalisation and the information society, access to technology is one of the most critical and controversial subjects. Young people everywhere are faced with the challenge of attempting to broaden their horizons and become global citizens yet often their governments and domestic infrastructure do not support this requirement. Due to financial restrictions, development priorities ...

While information is a crucial part of people’s everyday lives, many people find that access to information via today’s technologies is awkward, stressful, and overly intrusive in their lives. The problem is not with the information itself, but rather with its volume and the unwieldy ways currently provided for interacting with digital content. My research focus is to create interactive informa...