Reimaginando la humanidad: reflexiones sobre el futuro del transhumanismo

Purpose – Since the 1970s productivity growth in most economies slowed, while information and communication technology expenditures increased: the “information technology (IT) productivity paradox.” Some researchers reported an end to the paradox, but this is most likely due to IT industry growth approaching the Year 2000 phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to update IT productivity paradox research. Design/methodology/approach – For comparability this research replicates methods employed by previous studies but employs a two-level approach: first macroeconomic indicators; second labor and multi-factor productivity. Findings – Findings suggest IT investment has high positive correlation with gross domestic product growth, but not labor or multi-factor productivity. This ambiguity suggests the paradox is still poorly understood. Research limitations/implications – The findings are not conclusive; the authors cannot confirm or reject the existence of the productivity paradox. The global recession and banking crisis makes it prudent to wait until recovery before analyzing data from that period. Practical implications – Lack of convincing evidence supporting positive effects from IT investment suggests some firms benefit from IT investment, but not others, and that IT investment has questionable returns. Social implications – Firm level studies might find IT investment benefits some firms, but lack of convincing macroeconomic level evidence of positive effects of IT investment suggests the paradox still exists. Originality/value – This research updates the IT productivity paradox demonstrating the phenomenon is still poorly understood and thus worthy of further study, questioning the benefits of IT investment for industry and national economies.

Information technology (IT) products have played significant roles from both aspects of market development as well as technology growth. However, predicting technology acceptance toward the IT products is always challenging for marketers and designers. Also, the characteristics of and strategies for IT products at different stages of product life cycle are different. Therefore, the customers’ preference and needs change rapidly at different stages in product life cycle. However, very few scholars tried to explore how the technology can be accepted at various stages of a product life cycle was seldom discussed. But the issue is very important. Thus, this research aims to propose DEMATEL based Network Process for discovering the influential factors of the technology acceptance for introduction stage IT product. An empirical study based on the Smart TV for introduction stage will be used to verify the feasibility of this framework. Further, the Lead User Method will be applied to predict the preference and the purchase behavior of mass user and the result could be a reference for industrial marketing activities and design process.

This report defines the Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) Dictionary version 2.3 specification. The CPE Dictionary Specification is a part of a stack of CPE specifications that support a variety of use cases relating to information technology (IT) product description and naming. An individual CPE dictionary is a repository of IT product names, with each name in the repository identifying a unique class of IT product in the world. This specification defines the semantics of the CPE Dictionary data model and the rules associated with CPE dictionary creation and management. This report also defines and explains the requirements that IT products and services, including CPE dictionaries, must meet for conformance with the CPE Dictionary version 2.3 specification. Trademark Information CPE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation. All other registered trademarks or trademarks belong to their respective organizations. COMMON PLATFORM ENUMERATION (CPE): DICTIONARY SPECIFICATION VERSION 2.3 iv Table of

Today, information technology (IT) products are extensively used in everyday life; however, disabled people still experience difficulties in using them. To ensure the equal use of IT products by people with disabilities, various laws/guidelines/standards have been established. In particular, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, 21st-Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, the European Accessibility Act, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines strongly influence IT product sales and, hence, have been included in the scope of this research. This study analyzed the main accessibility provisions/guidelines from the user experience (UX) perspective and the IT device difficulties that are addressed by the provisions/guidelines. Accordingly, the study used the IT interaction disability concept, which analyzes the comprehensive difficulties associated with the use of an IT device from the perspective of interaction, to map each task–user interface–context factor. Finally, this study suggests the aspects to be considered while establishing accessibility provisions/guidelines. Moreover, it clarifies the provisions and guidelines for IT product designers and developers by analyzing them from the UX perspective.

In this study, a hybrid model using multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) and SVR is proposed for sales forecasting of information technology (IT) products. Support vector regression (SVR) has become a promising alternative for forecasting due to its generalization capability in obtaining a unique solution. However, one of the key problems is that SVR can not identify which forecasting variables are more important for building the forecasting model. For selecting an appropriate number of forecasting variables which can best improve the performance of the prediction model, a commonly discussed data mining technique, multivariate adaptive regression and splines (MARS), is adapted in this study. The proposed model first uses the MARS to select important forecasting variables. The obtained significant variables are then served as the inputs for the SVR model. Experimental results from three IT product sales data reveal that the obtained important variables from MARS can improve the forecasting performance of the SVR models. The proposed hybrid model outperforms the results using single SVR and single MARS models and hence provides an efficient alternative for IT product sales forecasting.

When genuine and branded Information Technology (IT) products flow through unauthorized channels, IT gray markets emerge. Gray markets for IT products represent a grave threat for many IT companies. Monetary losses in profits due to IT gray markets are estimated to be in the billions of dollars. Despite the importance of guidance in addressing the IT gray market threat, the paucity of IS research in gray markets is surprising. In this article, we discuss the IT gray market phenomenon, present the legal status of gray markets in several developed and developing nations, suggest some strategies to address the gray market problem, discuss implications, and call for future IS research in this important area.

A firm with a new Information Technology (IT) product may consider licensing it to firms in the same industry or other industries. The impact of the new product on the operating costs of the firms is usually uncertain. The costs may increase or decrease as a result of the new product. Once the new IT product is used for some time, however, firms come to know the actual cost impact. WE develop a duopoly two-period model with one firm owning a new IT product. We consider two licensing options: (1) one-time licensing for both periods at the beginning of the first period, (2) period-by-period licensing. With the first option, no licensing occurs for very low and very high expected values of cost reduction; otherwise, licensing may occur. For high expected values of cost reduction, the licensor prefers period-by-period licensing to licensing only once at the beginning of the first period for both periods. For low expected values, the licensor is indifferent between the two options and for very low expected values, the licensor again uses the second option, i.e., it licenses at the beginning of each, period. >

Balancing collective and individual interests in transactive energy management of interconnected micro-grid clusters

New European environmental legislation requiring producers to recycle electrical and electronics products at so‐called “end‐of‐life” is likely to introduce new areas of competition to the global market for information technology (IT) products. This paper presents the findings of a study investigating the use and disposal of IT equipment by 151 companies in the UK. Although 71 per cent of companies disposed of their equipment as waste, other “disposal” routes were found to be of greater significance, such as charitable donations, transfer to employees, and resale to second‐hand dealers. Therefore it is argued that the current legal definition of “waste” may be too restrictive to be applied to end‐of‐life IT equipment within the commercial sector. In addition, it is argued that the provision of product “end‐of‐life management” services to commercial customers (in compliance with legislation or otherwise) could help IT producers add value to their existing support services beyond the immediate production and consumption of new technologies. Where only 5 per cent of companies replaced IT products within two years, 76 per cent of respondents identified a need for such services. Specific details of the type of services that would be required have also been investigated and evaluated.

There are more and more applications of sensors in today’s world. Moreover, sensor systems are getting more complex and they are used for many high-risk security-critical purposes. Security assurance is a key issue for sensors and for other information technology (IT) products. Still, sensor security facilities and methodologies are relatively poor compared to other IT products. That is why a methodical approach to the sensor IT security is needed, i.e., risk management, implementation of countermeasures, vulnerability removal, and security evaluation and certification. The author proposes to apply the main security assurance methodology specified in ISO/IEC 15408 Common Criteria to solve specific security problems of sensors. A new Common Criteria compliant method is developed which specifies the vulnerability assessment process and related data in a structured way. The input/output data of the introduced elementary evaluation processes are modeled as ontology classes to work out knowledge bases. The validation shows that sensor-specific knowledge can be acquired during the vulnerability assessment process and then placed in knowledge bases and used. The method can be applied in different IT products, especially those with few certifications, such as sensors. The presented methodology will be implemented in a software tool in the future.

The accurate and timely measurement of an organisation’s information technology (IT) productivity is a critical tool to control the strategic and operational aspects of any firm. This chapter describes the validation and integration of productivity measures through the application of the Balanced Scorecard. Developing measures of IT productivity that are not skewed by methodological or data collection anomalies, shifting usage of communication and work-flow channels, negated utility of knowledge management, quality versus quantity trade-offs, and differences in individual skill levels and performance is difficult yet essential. The Balanced Scorecard as a strategic measurement framework is applied to assist in determining the appropriate matching of what we intend to measure and to what we assign numerical values.

In this paper we describe the design and implementation of evaluation process management software which is developed as a web-based tool for simplifying the security evaluation of information technology (IT) products based on common criteria (CC) standard. There are three main roles in the system: developer, evaluator and the system administrator. Evaluation process on the IT products is applied by these three main roles. The IT products registered in the system are called target of evaluation (TOE) in the CC terminology.

An IT Capability Approach to Informatization Construction of Higer Education Institutions

PurposeThis paper seeks to establish an extraction system for an information technology (IT) product specification named ITSIES which combines the natural language process (NLP) with the ontology concept and also to evaluate the system's effectiveness in advance.Design/methodology/approachThe development of the system is based on a prototype design and performance validation. This study adopts four classes of IT specification (PC, Unix server, Monitor, and Printer) that follow IBM's and HP's product lines as the baseline information in order to construct the extraction system in GATE (General Architecture for Text Engineering) tools and to examine the IT product specification with other brands and patterns. Additionally indices are adopted such as precision, recall, and F‐measure as the matrices for evaluating system performance.FindingsThe performance shows that the average recall, precision, and F‐measure are all over 90 per cent, revealing that the JAPE (Java Annotation Patterns Engine) grammar rules in the IT domain are reasonably good and generally in line with expectations.Originality/valueThe paper proposes an integrative framework to examine IT product specification information and demonstrates that the system is effective for IT application.

Researchers have widely postulated that the adoption of information technology (IT) products enhances global competitiveness and production efficiency as successful technological innovation replaces and improves traditional inputs and modes of production. This study suggests that when IT products are traded across borders, IT investment in an economy has a positive influence on the productivity of its import partner country. We provide empirical evidence for the positive effect of global IT diffusion on productivity through international trading of IT products. The results show a positive effect of foreign IT transfer on the recipient country’s productivity. In addition, we find that the effect of transferred IT is only significant when the source country is an IT-intensive or hi-tech export country. The results and implications are robust, even controlling for other important factors such as openness, innovative capacity, and IT infrastructure in addition to the transferred IT. Finally, a panel cointegration test—a recently developed advanced econometric method—is used to address the common problems of spurious relations that arise in regressions with nonstationary time-series data.