Sensor networks are typically purpose-built, designed to support a single running application. As the demand for applications that can harness the capabilities of a sensor-rich environment increases, and the availability of sensing infrastructure put in place to monitor various quantities soars, there are clear benefits in a model where infrastructure can be shared amongst multiple applications...

The impact of new technologies is hard to predict. We suggest the value of theories of performativity in understanding dynamics around the convergence of biomedical and information technology. Drawing on the ideas of Butler and Foucault, we discuss a new, internal, context for HCI and raise potentially disturbing issues with monitoring health. We argue that by adopting explicitly social framing...

The then-modern panopticon, in its subtle and unseen exercise of voyeurism and power, was to be sure an improvement over the crowded, stale prisons that preceded it. Which already incarcerated individual would not give up some personal freedom for such improved conditions? The same line of reasoning is used in modern surveillance systems. Just last week, in a New York Times article on Chicago’s...

Abstract This Article explores the similarities between principles which guide judiciary nowadays and those typical for functioning of Communist justice system, particularly susceptibility to obedience requests, orders, or meeting anticipations. The habitus judges authoritarian regime has persisted until these days was main reason judicial corruption revealed in “Threema scandal.” Article’s arg...

These last years, main IT companies have build software solutions and change management plans promoting data quality management within organizations concerned by the enhancement of their business intelligence system. These offers are closely similar data governance schemes based on a common paradigm called Master Data Management. These schemes appear generally inappropriate to the context of co...

As governments increasingly deliver services over the Internet, the opportunities for monitoring and surveillance of society increase. In public services to support the vulnerable, such as welfare, monitoring and surveillance functionality is often regarded by system designers as important components in defences against fraud and system misuse. However, the responses from the participants in th...

Panopticism is concerned with the idea that in particular institutions and situations it is possible for people to be constantly observed, and be aware of same. Foucault adapted Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon prison model, where all prisoners could be viewed from one central location of a circular structure without ever knowing if they were actually being viewed at any point. The notion here is th...

This article reflects on the meaning of the words “control” and “privacy” in light of the intensive diffusion of user generated content on the web. It presents some results of an empirical research based on 145 essays written by Italian students. The data were analysed from a qualitative point of view to understand how young people frame the topic of control on the web 2.0. The attention is foc...

These last years, main IT companies have build software solutions and change management plans promoting data quality management within organizations concerned by the enhancement of their business intelligence system. These offers are closely similar data governance schemes based on a common paradigm called Master Data Management. These schemes appear generally inappropriate to the context of co...