The report, "SMART 2020: Enabling the Low Carbon Economy in the Information Age," was developed by The Climate Group in partnership with the Global e-Sustainbility Initiative (GeSI), and looks at how information technology can play a positive role in fighting climate change.
Central to Web 2.0 is the requirement for interactive systems to enable the participation of users in production and social interaction. Consequently, in order to critically explore the Web 2.0 phenomenon it is important to explore the relationship of interactivity to social power. This study firstly characterises interactivity in these media using Barry's (2001) framework differentiating interactivity from disciplining technologies as defined by Foucault. Contrary to Barry's model though, the analysis goes on to explore how interactivity may indeed function as a disciplining technology within the framework of a neoliberal political economy.
The Future of the Internet - a federating theme for activities on future networks, software and service architectures, networked media systems and the Internet of Things.
Over the last 20 years society, economy and technology evolved in many directions and into new areas. Many of these evolutions have created opportunities which must be taken into account when crafting future Networks.
CollabRx applies collaborative science to slash the time, cost and risk of therapy development.
CollabRx builds and operates Virtual Biotechs for foundations and patients who urgently seek cures for their diseases. Working with these foundations and research institutions, CollabRx
* builds teams of top researchers
* facilitates planning of a strategic road map
* brings best practices to therapy development
* manages the execution of the plan
The CollabRx research platform connects researchers to one another and to a network of scientific services, providing unprecedented opportunities for knowledge sharing and economies of scale.
Complexity grows as technology, environment and economy become more interconnected.
Complex Reasoning considers how each element affects and is affected by others.
Seed™ models your theories of how a change in one element of a system creates changes in other elements. It then simulates their dynamic behavior and communicates your learning.
With the economy in a slump and budgets being cut in traditional print and TV advertising campaigns many will be looking to the Web 2.0 world to reach their constituents. So what should be on your Web 2.0 radar for 2009? Web 2.0 gurus give you the low down.
The global spread of the H5N1 avian influenza has already extensively damaged economies worldwide and food security in developing countries. The spread of infection to new ecosystems results in viral adaptation to new hosts, including humans, which inevitably amplifies the potential for pandemic flu. H5N1 represents an unprecedented model of how influenza infections may become widespread. It is recognized that avian influenza viruses may be the progenitors of the next human pandemic virus, and for this reason their genetic evolution should be monitored and investigated in a timely manner. The full support of the international scientific community is therefore urgently required to better understand the spread and evolution of the virus, and the determinants of its transmissibility and pathogenicity in humans. This in turn demands that scientists with different fields of expertise have full access to comprehensive genetic sequence, clinical, and epidemiological data from both animal and human virus isolates.
Biophysical economics is a basis for economic analysis that acknowledges, analyzes and uses
the biological and physical (as opposed to social) properties, structures and processes of real
economic systems as its conceptual base and fundamental model. It acknowledges that the basis
for nearly all wealth is nature, and views most human economic activity as a means to increase
(directly or indirectly) the exploitation of nature to generate more wealth. As such, it focuses on the
structure and function of real economies from an energy and material perspective, but often
considers the relation of this structure and function to human welfare and to the money (i.e. dollar)
flows that tend to go in the opposite direction to energy (Odum 1972).
So far, most investments in EI have been driven by a focus on an increase in efficiency and topdown change of business processes in relatively static value chains. Typical deployment of EI has been based on the idea of an enterprise-wide "big bang" transition to a new "best way of working", pre-conceived largely by a corporate elite of engineers and analysts. The resulting system and the related procedures were supposed to enforce this way of working and make sure that the enterprise would reap the benefits (of efficiency) for some time to come, by discouraging subsequent unofficial forms of smaller-scale and/or bottom-up change. This approach was very much enterprise centric and typically weak in accommodating subsequent change. It is however no longer adequate, because enterprises increasingly need to rely on bottom-up initiative, emergence and flexibility, in order to remain competitive. Due to fierce global competition, enterprises can no longer survive with
a focus on efficiency and producing more of the same (for a lower price). Instead, enterprises need to concentrate on value innovation and producing more of not the same (with higher margins). To this end enterprises operate increasingly in dynamic value networks.Therefore EI should be geared towards leveraging creativity, collaboration and change in more dynamic networks to release its full potential as an instrument for value creation. A new objective for EI should be: To stimulate value creation based on innovation and co-creation in a context of networked enterprises that is very much defined bottom-up, by creative, committed workers.
From the start of the 21st century, a new form of employment has emerged in developing countries. It employs hundreds of thousands of people and earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet it has been almost invisible to both the academic and development communities. It is the phenomenon of "gold farming": the production of virtual goods and services for players of online games. China is the employment epicentre but the sub-sector has spread to other Asian nations and will spread further as online games-playing grows. It is the first example of a likely future development trend in online employment. It is also one of a few emerging examples in developing countries of "liminal ICT work"; jobs associated with digital technologies that are around or just below the threshold of what is deemed socially-acceptable and/or formally-legal.