Inertia in Sociotechnical Systems
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Sociotechnical Systems and Ethics in the Large
Sociotechnical Systems and Ethics in the Large Amit K. Chopra Munindar P. Singh Lancaster University North Carolina State University Lancaster LA1 4WA, UK Raleigh, NC 27695-8206, USA [email protected] [email protected] Abstract question has inspired various versions of “do no harm to hu- mans” maxims, from Asimov to Bostrom and Yudkowsky Advances in AI techniques and computing platforms have (2014). And, partly this interest stems from imagining that triggered a lively and expanding discourse on ethical decision-making by autonomous agents. Much recent work agents are deliberative entities who will make choices much in AI concentrates on the challenges of moral decision mak- in the same way humans do: faced with a situation that de- ing from a decision-theoretic perspective, and especially the mands deliberation, an agent will line up its choices and representation of various ethical dilemmas. Such approaches make the best one that is also the most ethical. The trol- may be useful but in general are not productive because moral ley problem, a moral dilemma that has been the subject of decision making is as context-driven as other forms of deci- extensive philosophical discussion, has been discussed ex- sion making, if not more. In contrast, we consider ethics not tensively in the context of self-driving vehicles (Bonnefon, from the standpoint of an individual agent but of the wider Shariff, and Rahwan 2016). sociotechnical systems (STS) in which the agent operates. Concurrently, there has been an expanding body of work Our contribution in this paper is the conception of ethical STS in the broad AI tradition that investigates designing and governance founded on that takes into account stakeholder verifying, not individual agents, but sociotechnical systems values, normative constraints on agents, and outcomes (states of the STS) that obtain due to actions taken by agents. -
Energy Research & Social Science
Energy Research & Social Science 70 (2020) 101617 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Research & Social Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/erss Review Sociotechnical agendas: Reviewing future directions for energy and climate T research ⁎ Benjamin K. Sovacoola, , David J. Hessb, Sulfikar Amirc, Frank W. Geelsd, Richard Hirshe, Leandro Rodriguez Medinaf, Clark Millerg, Carla Alvial Palavicinoh, Roopali Phadkei, Marianne Ryghaugj, Johan Schoth, Antti Silvastj, Jennie Stephensk, Andy Stirlingl, Bruno Turnheimm, Erik van der Vleutenn, Harro van Lenteo, Steven Yearleyp a University of Sussex, United Kingdom and Aarhus University, Denmark b Vanderbilt University, United States c Nanyang Technological University, Singapore d The University of Manchester, United Kingdom e Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States f Universidad de las Americas Puebla, Mexico g Arizona State University, United States h Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands i Macalester College, United States j Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway k Northeastern University, United States l University of Sussex, United Kingdom m Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés, France n Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands o Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands p The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: The field of science and technology studies (STS) has introduced and developed a “sociotechnical” perspective Science and technology studies that has been taken up by many disciplines and areas of inquiry. The aims and objectives of this study are Sociotechnical systems threefold: to interrogate which sociotechnical concepts or tools from STS are useful at better understanding Science technology and society energy-related social science, to reflect on prominent themes and topics within those approaches, and to identify Sociology of scientific knowledge current research gaps and directions for the future. -
SOLITUDE INERTIA and DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS 1 Getting Stuck in Social Isolation
SOLITUDE INERTIA AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS 1 Getting stuck in social isolation: Solitude inertia and depressive symptoms Timon Elmer1, Nicole Geschwind2, Frenk Peeters2, Marieke Wichers3, & Laura Bringmann3,4 1 Chair of Social Networks, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich, Switzerland 2 Maastricht University, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht, The Netherlands 3 University of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen, Department of Psychiatry, Interdisciplinary Center Psychopathology and Emotion regulation (ICPE), Groningen, The Netherlands 4 University of Groningen, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Department of Psychometrics and Statistics, Groningen, The Netherlands In press in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology Author Note. The data collection was funded by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO, VENI Grant Nr. 916.76.147 for M. Wichers. The data collection and intended uses were approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Maastricht University Medical Centre (trial number NTR1084, Netherlands Trial Register). Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Timon Elmer, Chair of Social Networks, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, Weinbergstrasse 109, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland. Email: timon.elmer[at]gess.ethz.ch © 2020, American Psychological Association. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the final, authoritative version of the article. Please do not copy or cite without authors' permission. The final article will be available, upon publication, via its DOI: 10.1037/abn0000588 SOLITUDE INERTIA AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS 2 Abstract Social isolation and depression are tightly linked and can reinforce each other in a vicious cycle. Yet, the antecedents of this complex cycle are not well understood. -
Denialism: Organized Opposition to Climate Change Action in the United States
See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341162159 Denialism: organized opposition to climate change action in the United States Preprint · May 2020 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14299.18723 CITATIONS READS 0 208 1 author: Robert J Brulle Drexel University 57 PUBLICATIONS 2,770 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Green Money and the Environment View project Aggregate Public Concern over Climate Change View project All content following this page was uploaded by Robert J Brulle on 05 May 2020. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Brulle, Robert J. 2020. Denialism: organized opposition to climate change action in the United States, pp. 328 - 341 in David Konisky (Ed.) Handbook of Environmental Policy. Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton MA. 24. Denialism: organized opposition to climate change action in the United States Robert J. Brulle Despite extreme weather events and urgent warnings from the scientific community, action to mitigate carbon emissions is stalled. Following the dramatic Congressional testimony in 1988 of Dr. James E. Hansen (Hansen 1988: 40), climate change emerged as a global issue. Since that time a broad range of actors with divergent interests have entered into the public arena and engaged in a struggle to control public discussion and understanding of climate change, and thus define appropriate policy responses. In this political struggle, efforts to take action on climate change have encountered substantial social inertia in the form of cultural, institutional, and individual resistance (Brulle and Norgaard 2019). -
Science & Technology Studies
ALEXANDRA HOFMÄNNER SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES ELSEWHERE A Postcolonial Programme SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES In April 2017, scientists took to the streets in a historically unprecedented Global March for Science. The event was seen as symbolic of a crisis in the relationship of science and society. This book considers the Global March ELSEWHERE for Science from a postcolonial perspective to inquire into the toolkit that the academic field of Science & Technology Studies (STS) has to offer. It HOFMÄNNER ALEXANDRA argues that new concepts and analytical approaches are necessary to in- A POSTCOLONIAL vestigate current global dynamics in science, technology and society, so as to deliver insights that the recent expansion of STS scholars beyond PROGRAMME Western Europe and North America alone is unlikely to provide. The book presents a Programme in Science Studies Elsewhere (SSE) to demonstrate the urgent need to carry postcolonial issues right into the centre of STS’s intellectual programme. Hofmänner possesses a potent antidote for the field’s inability to see science and technology outside of European or North American experiences. Rayvon Fouché, Professor and Director, American Studies, Purdue University, USA A compelling case for revisiting some of the traditional assumptions in the field of STS. Prof. Dr. Sabine Maasen, Director of the Munich Center for Technology in Society Alexandra Hofmänner is assistant professor in Science & Technology ELSEWHERE STUDIES TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE Studies ( ST S) at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She received a PhD at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ( ETH Zürich ) and has carried out extensive research in Switzerland and South Africa. www.schwabeverlag.de Alexandra Hofmänner Science & Technology Studies Elsewhere A Postcolonial Programme Schwabe Verlag Published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft. -
An Application of BS ISO 27500:2016
USER EXPERIENCE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN COM CITIZEN SCIENCE A sociotechnical system approach to virtual citizen J science: an application of BS ISO 27500:2016 Robert J. Houghton, James Sprinks, Jessica Wardlaw, Steven Bamford and Stuart Marsh Abstract We discuss the potential application to virtual citizen science of a recent standard (BS ISO 27500:2016 “The human-centred organisation”) which encourages the adoption of a sociotechnical systems perspective across a wide range of businesses, organizations and ventures. Key tenets of the standard concern taking a total systems approach, capitalizing on individual differences as a strength, making usability and accessibility strategic objectives, valuing personnel and paying attention to ethical and values-led elements of the project in terms of being open and trustworthy, social responsibility and health and wellbeing. Drawing upon our experience of projects in our laboratory and the wider literature, we outline the principles identified in the standard and offer citizen science themed interpretations and examples of possible responses. Keywords Citizen science; Participation and science governance DOI https://doi.org/10.22323/2.18010201 Submitted: 4th April 2018 Accepted: 20th November 2018 Published: 17th January 2019 Introduction There is an increasing interest in citizen science as an object of study in its own right and in investigations concerned with how to improve the implementation of citizen science projects in the future [Jordan et al., 2015]. Amongst the key issues are maximizing the quality of volunteer performance [Sprinks et al., 2017], motivating participants to sustain their contributions and to facilitate meeting other project aims also dependent on engagement, typically in terms of scientific outreach and education [e.g., Constant and Roberts, 2017; Dickerson-Lange et al., 2016]. -
Coping with a Premaritally-Conceived Birth
Center for Demography and Ecology University of Wisconsin-Madison Coping with a Premaritally-Conceived Birth Steven T. Cook Enilda Delgado Gary D. Sandefur CDE Working Paper No. 98-18 Coping with a Premaritally-Conceived Birth Steven T. Cook Enilda Delgado Gary D. Sandefur University of Wisconsin-Madison August 11, 1998 Acknowledgments: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America in Chicago. We thank Larry Wu for his helpful comments. Work on this paper was supported by grants to the Institute for Research on Poverty from the Department of Health and Human Services—Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and to the Center for Demography and Ecology from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. Contact: Steven T. Cook, Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706; email: [email protected]. Coping with a Premaritally-Conceived Birth Abstract Births that are conceived before a first marriage result in difficult decisions about where and with whom the mother should live, and how she should support herself and her child. These decisions are influenced by personal characteristics of the young mother and by her living arrangements and activities before the conception. We use data from the 1979-1992 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to examine the distributions of living arrangements and the economic wellbeing of young women after a birth that results from a premarital pregnancy. Our findings show that approximately 37 percent of the young women who have such births live with their husbands in the year following the birth, while 1/3 live with their parents, 12 percent cohabit, and 18 percent are on their own and unmarried. -
Explaining Sociotechnical Transitions a Critical Realist Perspective
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sussex Research Online Research Policy 47 (2018) 1267–1282 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Research Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/respol Explaining sociotechnical transitions: A critical realist perspective T Steve Sorrell Centre on Innovation and Energy Demand, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SL, UK ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: This paper identifies and evaluates the explicit and implicit philosophical assumptions underlying the so-called Multilevel perspective multilevel perspective on sociotechnical transitions (MLP). These include assumptions about the nature of reality Critical realism (ontology), the status of claims about that reality (epistemology) and the appropriate choice of research methods Emergence The paper assesses the consistency of these assumptions with the philosophical tradition of critical realism and Process theory uses this tradition to highlight a number of potential weaknesses of the MLP. These include: the problematic conception of social structure and the misleading priority given to intangible rules; the tendency to use theory as a heuristic device rather than causal explanation; the ambition to develop an extremely versatile framework rather than testing competing explanations; the relative neglect of the necessity or contingency of particular causal mechanisms; and the reliance upon single, historical case studies with insufficient use of comparative methods. However, the paper also concludes that the flexibility of the MLP allows room for reconciliation, and provides some suggestions on how that could be achieved – including proposing an alternative, critical realist interpretation of sociotechnical systems. 1. Introduction foundational assumptions (e.g. -
Transition to Sustainable Cities a Sociotechnical Approach for Transformative Innovation
Transition to sustainable cities a sociotechnical approach for transformative innovation Fred Steward Sustainable Innovation 2014, Copenhagen New focus on cities & climate change • engagement of cities throughout the world in the promotion and pursuit of climate mitigating innovations • expanding commitments to create city level climate change policy • The growth of extensive transnational learning networks between cities such as ICLEI, the Covenant of Mayors, C40 etc • increasing range and diversity of climate change experiments at city level which are ‘purposive interventions which attempt to reconfigure urban sociotechnical systems in the name of climate change City wide sociotechnical systems • the presence at city level of the key sociotechnical systems of buildings, mobility and urban infrastructure (energy, waste & water) which are critical contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, along with local political and business responsibilities and influence on these • key sectors for mitigation initiatives • built environment • transportation • urban infrastructure (energy, waste, water) • urban form/spatial planning Subnational political dynamics • the continued initiation of climate mitigation actions at city level which suggests a persistence of political enthusiasm at the subnational levels of governance in contrast with some faltering by national governments Bulkeley (2010): 627 climate change Experiments in 100 global cities Impact on global policy unclear • Although this is an impressive range of achievements, if we take stock -
An Attempt to Use the Heuristics of the Multi-Level Perspective of Transitio
Hölsgens et al. Energy, Sustainability and Society (2018) 8:8 Energy, Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1186/s13705-018-0150-7 and Society ORIGINAL ARTICLE Open Access Social innovations in the German energy transition: an attempt to use the heuristics of the multi-level perspective of transitions to analyze the diffusion process of social innovations Rick Hölsgens1* , Stephanie Lübke1 and Marco Hasselkuß2 Abstract Background: For a successful transition to a sustainable energy system, not only technical but also social innovations are required. A major challenge to social innovation research is how to translate the social innovation from a novelty with big potential into a mainstream practice. The multilevel perspective (MLP) of socio-technical transitions provides a heuristic to understand how niches can potentially break through to the regime level. In this paper, we examine in how far a multilevel perspective approach is suited to analyze and better understand diffusion trajectories of social rather than technological innovations, taking a social practice theory perspective. Five example projects, selected among the top social innovations for the Energiewende in North Rhine-Westphalia, are analyzed. We discuss to what extend the MLP provides a helpful tool to understand the transition processes. Results: Social innovations can be very divers. We find that the MLP does not offer a one-size-fits-all framework for the analysis of the diffusion of social innovations. The MLP proves applicable only in those cases where the social innovation (1) can lead to a system change and (2) has a clear competing or symbiotic relationship with an existing regime. Conclusions: Social innovations that aim to be transformative in the sense that they have the goal to be system changing (rather than incremental) can be analyzed along the heuristics of the MLP. -
Sociotechnical Approaches to Information Systems Development
Sociotechnical Approaches to Information Systems Development The British Computer Society Sociotechnical Group Archive Publications about the soci-technical approach (1986) "Designing a Sociotechnical System", Agricultural Engineering, 67 (7), pp. 41-41. (1996) "Introducing and Managing IT in a Civil Engineering Business - Reply", Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Civil Engineering, 114 (1), pp. 39-39. Aarts, J. (2001) "On Articulation and Localization - Some Sociotechnical Issues of Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Knowledge Based Systems" in Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Proceedings, , pp. 16-19. Abbott, A. (1995) "Sequence-Analysis - New Methods for Old Ideas", Annual Review of Sociology, 21 pp. 93-113. Abraham, J. and J. Sheppard (1999) "Complacent and Conflicting Scientific Expertise in British and American Drug Regulation: Clinical Risk Assessment of Triazolam", Social Studies of Science, 29 (6), pp. 803-843. Adams, M. L. (1994) "Quality 1st - a Model for Tqm Implementation and Planning", Ieee Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, 9 (2), pp. 25-27. Adler, P. S. (1991) "Workers and Flexible Manufacturing Systems - 3 Installations Compared", Journal of Organizational Behavior, 12 (5), pp. 447-460. Adler, N. and P. Docherty (1998) "Bringing Business into Sociotechnical Theory and Practice", Human Relations, 51 (3), pp. 319-345. Adman, P. and L. Warren (2000) "Participatory Sociotechnical Design of Organizations and Information Systems - an Adaptation of Ethics Methodology", Journal of Information Technology, 15 (1), pp. 39-51. Ahire, S. L. and T. Ravichandran (2001) "An Innovation Diffusion Model of Tqm Implementation", Ieee Transactions on Engineering Management, 48 (4), pp. 445-464. Aibar, E. (1997) "Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs. Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change - Bijker,We", Arbor-Ciencia Pensamiento Y Cultura, 156 (615), pp. -
SOCIALISM and SOCIAL PROGRESS José Félix Tezanos
SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL PROGRESS José Félix Tezanos Socialism was not born in a vacuum. Nor has it farms of democracy ( common law states) and arisen from the social and economic conditions later social democracy (welfare states). We now resulting from the industrial revolution. Rather are reaching the most advanced stages of social socialism as an ideal of emancipation has a more equality and democratic participation. far-reaching historical perspective, through which Beyond the specific historical events and actual the civilised people of the world have worked to socialist political projects, there are many move organise their societies in accordance with the ments which farm part of this general line of principies of personal dignity, freedom and equal progress in history, each with its own momentary ity. breakdowns and setbacks. What can the people of our era do to contribute to this progress in history? Are the European countries at present HISTORICAL PROGRESS in a position to take another giant step in the advancement of civilisation? Despite sorne nega Toe history of Western civilisation is far the tive pronouncements, the truth is that never most part the history of a people intent on putting befare in the history of humanity has there been the democratic ideal into practice. Since the birth such a strong ethical awareness in the world, due of this concept in Greek civilisation to the devel precisely to the immediacy with which televised opment of the principies of law in classical Rome, infarmation reaches our homes. This ethical to the establishment of bases far democratic awareness increasingly acts as a brake and a representation in the French Revolution and the limitation on violence and oppression.