Digital Crossroads Research Articles

Potential Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Spine Surgery Across the Continuum of Care.

The worlds of spinal surgery and computational science are intersecting at the nexus of the operating room and across the continuum of patient care. As medicine moves toward digitizing all aspects of a patient's care, immense amounts of patient data generated and aggregated across surgeons, procedures, and institutions will enable previously inaccessible computationally driven insights. These early insights from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-enabled technologies are beginning to transform medicine and surgery. The complex pathologies facing spine surgeons and their patients require integrative, multimodal, data-driven management strategies. As these data and the technological tools to computationally process them become increasingly available to spine surgeons, AI and ML methods will inform patient selection, preoperatively risk-stratify patients based on myriad factors, and inform interoperative surgical decisions. Once these tools enter early clinical practice, their use creates a virtual flywheel whereby the use of these tools generates additional data that further accelerate the evolution of computational "knowledge" systems. At this digital crossroads, interested and motivated surgeons have an opportunity to understand these technologies, guide their application toward optimal care, and advocate for opportunities where these powerful new tools can deliver step changes in efficiency, accuracy, and intelligence. In the present article, we review the nomenclature and basics of AI and ML and highlight the current and future applications of these technologies across the care continuum of spinal surgery.

Digital Crossroads: The Intersection of Competition Law and Data Privacy

Antitrust and data privacy law are powerful forces shaping our economy. Scarcely a day goes by without headline-making enforcement from one regime or the other. The result is a wealth of new interactions between these areas of law—particularly in the digital economy. This report, Digital Crossroads: The Intersection of Competition Law and Data Privacy, was written for the Global Privacy Assembly (GPA) Digital Citizen and Consumer Working Group. It seeks to identify and understand the interactions between antitrust and data privacy law around the world, drawing on the public perspectives of the agencies who enforce each area of law. It is based on a review of over 200 agency-related documents, including the relevant law, policy reports, guidance, speeches, market studies and litigation filings from numerous jurisdictions. The Report describes the nascent, varied and complex interactions appearing between these two legal realms. Though often described simply as complementary, the relationship between antitrust law, competition itself and data privacy is often much more nuanced and multi-faceted. In some areas, like merger review, new theories are taking hold that account for data privacy. In others, like antitrust remedies, there is only a nascent sense that the two realms may intersect. There remains significant room for development of theory and practice across this landscape of antitrust law and data privacy. The goal of this Report is to deepen the shared understanding of antitrust and data privacy authorities regarding the many interactions between their domains. This is a rapidly evolving area of law and policy, with great significance to consumers. It demands attention and cooperation across agency bounds to develop cohesive, effective digital enforcement strategies. The hope is that this Report will contribute to that cross-doctrinal understanding, and prompt agencies to develop shared theories, collaboration and best practices at this new digital crossroads.

The African Writer at Digital Cross-Roads: A Preliminary Interrogation of Literary Production in Nigeria/the Global South within 21st Century Media Convergence

The African Writer at Digital Cross-Roads: A Preliminary Interrogation of Literary Production in Nigeria/the Global South within 21st Century Media Convergence

Political Agency at the Digital Crossroads?

This thematic issue presents the outcome of the 2015 ECREA Communication and Democracy Section Conference “Political Agency in the Digital Age” that was held at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. It problematizes changes in the configurations of political agency in the context of digital media. The articles represent a shift from an exclusive focus on political elites to the interrelation between institutionalised politics and political processes in other societal spheres in the field of media and politics research. Political agency as the main notion of the thematic issue draws attention at the (media) practices through which social actors reproduce, reorganise and challenge politics. At the same time, the issue poses questions about the structures—economic, political and social—that allow for, define and also limit these practices. The contributions gathered here suggest an understanding of agency as constituted through the use of knowledge and resources, themselves embedded within structural contexts; at the same time, agency is transformative of the structures within which it is embedded by making use of knowledge and resources in creative and often radical ways. In that context the development of digital media marks a rupture or critical juncture that allows and requires a rethinking of conditions of political agency. Accordingly the contributions critically scrutinize the role of digital media moving beyond celebratory accounts of democratizing potential of digital media. The rethinking of the grammar of political agency is at the heart of this thematic issue.

Ethnicity in digital crossroads. Understanding processes of cultural thickening in a mediatized world

Abstract This article discusses existing approaches to ethnic community building in diaspora and suggests that the concept of ‘cultural thickening’ can be useful for the understanding of ethnicity in a ‘mediatized world’. It is argued that in everyday life, ethnicity is continuously being (re-)constructed through repetitive practices of mediated and non-mediated communication, through which ethnic boundary-making takes place. This theoretical framework is then discussed through the cases of four diasporic websites of the Moroccan and Turkish diaspora that are analysed through media ethnography. It is argued, firstly, that communication spaces for negotiations about ethnicity are expanded by these websites. Through debates on ‘banal’ practices of everyday life relating to different fields such as cooking, sports or education among others, the users of the websites discuss who belongs to their community and what it means to belong to the community. Second, using these diasporic websites becomes a shared characteristic of the ethnic community in the eyes of the members of diasporas.

Digital crossroads: telecommunications law and policy in the Internet age

In Digital Crossroads, two experts on telecommunications policy offer a comprehensive and accessible analysis of the regulation of competition in the U.S. telecommunications industry. The first edition of Digital Crossroads (MIT Press, 2005) became an essential and uniquely readable guide for policymakers, lawyers, scholars, and students in a fast-moving and complex policy field. In this second edition, the authors have revised every section of every chapter to reflect the evolution in industry structure, technology, and regulatory strategy since 2005. The book features entirely new discussions of such topics as the explosive development of the mobile broadband ecosystem; incentive auctions and other recent spectrum policy initiatives; the FCC's net neutrality rules; the National Broadband Plan; the declining relevance of the traditional public switched telephone network; and the policy response to online video services and their potential to transform the way Americans watch television. Like its predecessor, this new edition of Digital Crossroads not only helps nonspecialists climb this field's formidable learning curve, but also makes substantive contributions to ongoing policy debates.

Digital Crossroads: New Directions in 3D Architectural Modeling in the Humanities—Overview

This special issue of Visual Resources examines disparate methodologies and approaches to integrating innovative technologies with research and pedagogy in archaeology and art history. Over the past decade, technology, art history, and archaeology have combined their respective disciplines to develop digital models of ancient monuments and civic spaces. The results range from Web‐based panoramas and static two‐dimensional models to interactive reconstructions of urban environments in three dimensions. Virtual reconstructions allow scholars to consider theoretical issues including sight lines, the function of space, urban interaction, and experimental architectural and engineering problems, including lighting, drainage, and ventilation. Virtual models also provide extraordinary opportunities for collaborative interdisciplinary research among teachers and students in the humanities with computer science, graphic design, and Web design.

Reforming Telecom Regulation: An Essay Review of Nuechterlein and Weiser's Digital Crossroads

The U.S. telecom industry has long been evolving from regulated monopoly to competition in various services such as telephony and video. This trend is accelerating with the spread of digital transmission and the Internet. Digital Crossroads provides a timely and sweeping treatment of the entire industry, focusing on the interaction between regulatory policy and competition – lessons from the past, and the challenges ahead. This essay review synthesizes and extends the book's contributions around two central policy prescriptions: adopt a high intervention threshold before mandating "nondiscriminatory" access to perceived bottleneck facilities, and eliminate a host of outdated and arbitrary regulatory distinctions.

Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age

Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age

Digital crossroads: American telecommunications policy in the Internet age

Telecommunications policy profoundly affects the economy and our everyday lives. Yet accounts of important telecommunications issues tend to be either superficial (and inaccurate) or mired in jargon and technical esoterica. In Digital Crossroads, Jonathan Nuechterlein and Philip Weiser offer a clear, balanced, and accessible analysis of competition policy issues in the telecommunications industry. After giving a big picture overview of the field, they present sharply reasoned analyses of the major technological, economic, and legal developments confronting communications policymakers in the twenty-first century.Since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, when Congress fundamentally reoriented the existing regulatory scheme, no book has cogently explained the intricacies of telecommunications competition policy in the Internet age for general readers, students, and practitioners alike. Digital Crossroads meets this need, focusing on the regulatory dimensions of competition in wireline and wireless telephone service; competition among rival platforms for broadband Internet service and video distribution; and the Internet's transformation of every aspect of the telecommunications industry, particularly through the emergence of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). The authors explain not just the complicated legal issues governing the industry, but also the rapidly changing technological and economic context in which these issues arise. The book includes extensive endnotes and tables that cover relevant court decisions, FCC orders, and academic commentaries; a glossary of acronyms; a statutory addendum containing the most important provisions of federal telecommunications law; and two appendixes with information on more specialized topics. Supplementary materials for students are available at http://spot.colorado.edu/ weiserpj.

Libraries as digital crossroads: a report on the 10th Annual Collection Development Symposium

Libraries as digital crossroads: a report on the 10th Annual Collection Development Symposium

Libraries as digital crossroads: a report on the 10th Annual Collection Development Symposium

The 10th Annual Collection Development Symposium, titled Libraries as Digital Crossroads, took place at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus on May 19th, 2003. Over 160 people registered for this full-day conference, sponsored by the University of Minnesota Libraries and the MINITEX Library Information Network. The program description read as follows: Libraries and librarians are serving an increasingly central role in connecting our user community and digital resources. Words such as intersection, hub, junction, and link are used to describe the path libraries are taking to identify, locate, organize, preserve, and make available intellectual resources in digital format. Speakers at the 10th annual symposium will explore this goal from various perspectives.

Public service television at the digital crossroads ‐the case of Austria

The present article examines the impact of new digital technologies, services and markets on changes to television in Austria from a media‐economics perspective. This article started form the assumption that the process of transformation towards digital distribution modes would make questions about the role and legitimacy of public service television in Austria more prominent than ever before. Since the technical development of digitisation steps up competition in the programming, advertising and viewer markets, the continued existence of public service broadcasting in Austria is at risk. Already facing strong competition from private cross‐border analogue television, private digital services promise increased competition for the ORF, will take away advertising volume and accelerate the cost spiral for rights. The ORF will have to face these challenges as the regulator has assigned it the role of a chief enabler of digital television in the market segments for satellite and terrestrial transmission. This article argues that programme universality as leading principle for public service broadcasting faces a legitimacy crisis as digital competitors may better target minority demands in fragmented audience environments. It remains to be seen how far the ORF is able to being both distinctive and attractive to its target audiences, so to ensure its position into the next millennium. Affordability and reliability of technology comes as another critical success factor. For the time being, the continuous confusion about lasting, stable and interoperable receivers in viewer homes is the main cause for the poor development of digital TV in Austria. This is aggravated by excessive prices and the current difficulty in seeing any added value in new digital content. To conclude, much hope is put into the Digitale Plattform Austria, a working group of experts to produce a coherent and evaluable digitisation concept, that will take up these challenges in a competent way.