Social Aspects Of Technology Research Articles

An Experiential Learning Opportunity in Norway: Computation for Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering Students.

The global learning initiative at Northeastern University is focused on fostering intercultural communication skills. The Dialogue of Civilization (DOC) program serves as a mechanism to achieve such a goal by offering faculty-led international experiences. In this paper, we have presented a detailed account of a DOC program that took place in Norway. The primary objective of the program was to teach mechanical engineering and bio-engineering students computational skills while stimulating critical thinking about the cultural and social aspects of technology and engineering in Norway. The program focused on two courses: a technical course and a special topics course. The technical course introduced students to finite element analysis, with practical applications and site visits in Norway to enhance experiential learning. In the special topics course, the interplay between modern technologies, like green energy, state policies, and the rights and traditions of the indigenous Sámi people was explored. The course highlighted both the progressive social policies in Norway and the historical discrimination against the Sámi. Student feedback was positive and experiential learning components such as guest lectures and site visits were particularly appreciated. Additional surveys showed that students' self-confidence was higher following the DOC program. In addition, female-identifying students had higher confidence in their future success after completion of this program as compared to their male-identifying counterparts. Our paper is expected to serve as a resource for educators seeking to integrate technical education with intercultural experiences and discussions on social and cultural impacts in engineering.

Advancing understanding of digital well-being at the intersection of technology and leisure

As new technologies emerge and are inserted within peoples’ lives each day, scholarly examination of the intersections between these innovations and leisure is increasingly vital. Researchers and their methods must continue to advance, in order to better anticipate and inform theory, industry, and society. This closing article of the Journal of Leisure Research special issue on technology, innovation, and leisure (TIL) provides a brief targeted bibliometric review of recent Web of Science (WoS) indexed research related to TIL, identifying research co-occurrence trends for 111 recent articles. These trends, along with commonalities within keyword co-occurrence clusters, and contributions from the seven special issue articles, informed ten proposed areas of TIL research priority that will often interact and overlap: Technology enhanced travel behavior; Psychology of social networks/media; Game-based educational innovation; Aging and digital leisure; Health and well-being technological design; Gender considerations; ICT attitudes, adoption, and literacy; Youth and adolescent technology and leisure; Social aspects of technology and leisure in urban settings; and Digital leisure DEI. Specific research needs within these ten areas are identified, based on the insights and recommendations of the special issue contributors.

Constructing Structured Content on WordPress: Emerging Paradigms in Web Content Management

Web content management systems (WCMSs) are widely used technologies that, like previous writing tools, shape how people think about and create documents. Despite their influence and ubiquity, however, WCMSs have received exceedingly little attention from scholars interested in social aspects of technology. I begin to address this gap by analyzing the development of WordPress's content creation experience through the lens of structured content. Based on this analysis, I contribute to ongoing discussions of content management by first suggesting that concepts such as structured content need to be understood as the contingent products of technical lineages and technical and social relationships and by second drawing attention to emerging paradigms of content creation, such as the merging of content creation and arrangement and the conflation of visual and abstract representations of content objects.

Environmental Values and Technology Preferences of First-Year University Students

Environmental and technological preferences correlate. Both are empirically accessible via established instruments such as the Two Major Environmental Value model (2-MEV) with “preservation” (PRE) and “utilization” (UTL), and the technology questionnaire with “interest in technology” (INT) and “social aspects of technology” (SOC). Additionally, “appreciation of nature” (APR) was monitored with a seven-item scale. We used these instruments to assess the preferences of freshmen in five different areas of study (law, economics, science, pedagogy, cultural studies). All subsequent analyses unveiled positive relations between appreciation and preservation, between the two technology subscales, as well as between utilization and social aspects of technology. Negative relationships appeared between preservation and utilization, preservation and both technology factors, as well as appreciation and social aspects of technology. In all subsamples, preservers (individuals with preservation preferences) showed little interest in technology or its social aspects; utilizers scored high in social aspects of technology, whereas appreciators displayed no interest in it. The freshmen’s areas of study seem to predict consistent tendencies to (biocentric) preservation or (anthropocentric) utilization. Moreover, females were more likely to preserve and appreciate nature whereas males preferred utilization along with interest in technology as well as in the social implications of technology. The observed differences can be used to develop new and improve existing educational programs; recommendations are discussed.

Navigating equity work in engineering: contradicting messages encountered by minority faculty

ABSTRACTThe lack of diversity in engineering and perpetuation of inequities through engineering designs have motivated the rise of new curricula centred on the integration of traditional technical content with social aspects of technology. However, the ‘revolutionizing’ of curricula has primarily been spearheaded by junior faculty, women and faculty of colour. This article uses an autoethnographic approach to explore the development of social justice-oriented curricula within engineering from the perspectives of junior women and faculty of colour. Drawing on feminist and critical race theory, we discuss how power dynamics within the school, university and engineering more broadly have shaped the development and teaching of justice-oriented engineering. Through the lens of our experiences, we show that, despite the support from some institutional allies and administrators, stereotypes, hegemonic norms and microaggressions can undermine efforts for social and structural change in engineering education, even as such changes are supported and promoted by the institution.

Influences on the Implementation of Mobile Learning for Medical and Nursing Education: Qualitative Systematic Review by the Digital Health Education Collaboration.

BackgroundIn the past 5 decades, digital education has increasingly been used in health professional education. Mobile learning (mLearning), an emerging form of educational technology using mobile devices, has been used to supplement learning outcomes through enabling conversations, sharing information and knowledge with other learners, and aiding support from peers and instructors regardless of geographic distance.ObjectiveThis review aimed to synthesize findings from qualitative or mixed-methods studies to provide insight into factors facilitating or hindering implementation of mLearning strategies for medical and nursing education.MethodsA systematic search was conducted across a range of databases. Studies with the following criteria were selected: examined mLearning in medical and nursing education, employed a mixed-methods or qualitative approach, and published in English after 1994. Findings were synthesized using a framework approach.ResultsA total of 1946 citations were screened, resulting in 47 studies being selected for inclusion. Most studies evaluated pilot mLearning interventions. The synthesis identified views on valued aspects of mobile devices in terms of efficiency and personalization but concerns over vigilance and poor device functionality; emphasis on the social aspects of technology, especially in a clinical setting; the value of interaction learning for clinical practice; mLearning as a process, including learning how to use a device; and the importance of institutional infrastructure and policies.ConclusionsThe portability of mobile devices can enable interactions between learners and educational material, fellow learners, and educators in the health professions. However, devices need to be incorporated institutionally, and learners and educators need additional support to fully comprehend device or app functions. The strategic support of mLearning is likely to require procedural guidance for practice settings and device training and maintenance services on campus.

Monitoring a gender gap in interest and social aspects of technology in different age groups

Although technology determines our everyday life, many of us still have neither special knowledge nor interest. Our study focused on a reliable and valid empirical monitoring of interest in and social implications of technology by applying an existing scale to 610 participants. First, we confirmed the factor structure for the school student subsample which was the age-group of the originally applied scale (n = 369). Second, we were able to extract the same structure for both other subsamples: university freshmen (n = 125) and in-service teachers (n = 116). Interestingly a gender gap occurred in all age-groups for both factors (interest in technology and social aspects of technology). Not surprisingly, male participants showed significantly higher interest and social adjustment to technology. Only in the social context for male and female in-service teachers did no gender difference appeared. Consequently, technology in schools needs an introduction at young ages, where interest in both technology and its social aspects develops and needs support.

A stochastic fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making model for optimal selection of clean technologies

Abstract Selection of clean technology options requires systematic evaluation based on multiple criteria which are often conflicting. The optimal choice should consider not just technical performance but also the economic, environmental and social aspects of technologies. Furthermore, the interdependencies of these aspects should also be considered. The decision-maker often needs to make explicit trade-offs while ranking the alternatives. In addition, data gaps and imprecise information that are typical when dealing with emerging technologies make conventional methods ineffective. This work thus proposes a Stochastic Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchical Network Process decision model to address the complexity and uncertainty involved in the clean technology selection process. This method first decomposes the problem into a hierarchical network structure, and then derives the probability distribution of the priority weights needed for ranking. The capabilities of the methodology are demonstrated with three case studies, involving the comparison of different carbon nanotube synthesis methods, nutrient removal treatment technology options for municipal wastewater, and low-carbon electricity sources in the Philippines.

A Qualitative Evaluation of Experiences Using eHealth for Weight Loss

To better understand aspects of existing eHealth technology that aid individuals in weight loss, researchers conducted a pilot study evaluating individual’s experiences using eHealth technology such as apps, wearables, podcasts, and web-based interventions to aid in weight loss. Participants (n=6) who reported using eHealth technology to lose weight (≥2 pounds) were recruited to participant in a 30-60 minute semi-structured interview based on a conceptual model developed from a review of existing literature. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Two researchers independently read, coded, and analyzed interviews for themes using Nvivo 11. Researchers used a phenomenology approach to assess themes, and had round-table discussions to assess adequacy and overlap of emergent themes. Popular technology included the MyFitnessPal app and FitBit wearables, among others. Emergent themes about technology acquisition included affordability, environmental exposure, and evaluation of others’ ratings. Themes concerning interaction included timing of use, social aspects of technology, and competition. Themes associated with evaluation were categorized as positive: energy balance, feedback, and prompting; or negative: forgetfulness/inconsistency, tracking fatigue, and guilt. Emerging eHealth technology provides promise for large-scale dissemination of nutrition information and programming. Approximately 52% of American adults use Smartphones to obtain health-related information, and 24% look online for weight loss or weight management information. While the area of eHealth intervention research is growing, little work has been done to understand the interactions of eHealth users with this technology. Future directions entail recruitment of additional diverse participants to understand broader experiences of people who attribute weight loss to eHealth technology.

Questioning the ontology of sociomateriality: a critical realist perspective

Purpose– The author join Orlikowski (2007) in seeking the “reconfiguration of our conventional assumptions and considerations of materiality.” In her sociomaterial approach, Orlikowski combines what is social and what is material into a “sociomaterial assemblage” in considering material and social aspects of technology. However, the author thinks this conflation creates a number of analytical and phenomenological problems for the understanding of technology in organizing. Rather than considering materiality with a primacy, the author argue that the proposed approach may reduce what is material into a social essence and makes materiality of a technology impossible to perceive separate from the social aspects. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach– Empirical examples of “Information Search” and “Mobile Communication” in Orlikowski (2007) are further employed to discuss the grounds of the criticism.Findings– The author propose a critical realist perspective to technology both as social and material recursively.Research limitations/implications– The analysis is primarily ontological and meta-theoretical. In future, extensive reviews can be performed on what questions have been asked and what questions have been omitted by researchers employing different versions of sociomaterial perspective.Practical implications– The perspective offered by this paper enables asking new questions and necessary empirical leverage to analyze how one technology becomes materialized and successful in the social realm and not the other. The author also discusses strategic conditions of how one successful technology can be replaced by another.Social implications– Understanding the state of the art in theory in understanding material and social aspects of technology would help us develop novel strategies to contest, complement and adapt to material and social issues of technologies.Originality/value– This paper is among the few critical papers that meta-theoretically question the relatively recent sociomaterial turn in organization studies and information systems fields.

Beyond Innovation: Technology, Institution, and Change as Categories for Social Analysis by Thomas Kaiserfeld (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond Innovation: Technology, Institution, and Change as Categories for Social Analysis by Thomas Kaiserfeld Benoît Godin (bio) Beyond Innovation: Technology, Institution, and Change as Categories for Social Analysis. By Thomas Kaiserfeld. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Pp. 174. $67.50. In recent years, a few students of technology have begun to question the rhetoric of “innovation studies.” The phrase comes from scholars of European origin, who have worked to develop a disciplinary discourse related to technological innovation under that rubric. According to scholars in this field, innovation studies originated at the Science Policy Research Unit in Brighton, England, and the forefather of such studies is the economist Joseph Schumpeter. To its practitioners, the notion of a National System of Innovation provides the best framework for the study of technological innovation. Beyond Innovation is one of several recent works contesting the field. The purpose of the book, writes Thomas Kaiserfeld, “is to demonstrate the multitude of ideas about technology, institution and change … beyond what is usually offered in innovation studies” (pp. 4–5). Kaiserfeld starts by discussing the concepts of technology, institution, and change. He then proceeds, chapter after chapter (no chapter has more than ten pages), to look at studies produced in STS whose analysis of technological change differs from that of “innovation studies.” While innovation studies places great importance on market forces and entrepreneurship, these STS-based studies bring many factors and analytic techniques into the study of technology, including evolutionary perspectives on technological change, social construction as an analytic mode, the study of technology in relation to performativity, the examination of agencies other than the entrepreneur, and more contextual studies of resistance to change. Kaiserfeld’s book is certainly a long-due beginning of the criticism of this now-dominant framework for the study of technological innovation. As the author points out, innovation studies and studies of technological innovation or of technology are quite different things. Studies of technology in an STS mode have a far greater scope than innovation studies do. Innovation studies is firm-centric and policy-oriented. It has very little to say on the social aspects of technology or the history of technology. At the same time, one may wonder: to what extent is Beyond Innovation really criticizing “innovation studies?” I am far from convinced that Kaiserfeld succeeds in this enterprise. Many of the concepts he discusses, such as knowledge, system, and evolutionism, are central to the work of scholars in innovation studies. Kaiserfeld does point to STS literature that covers these same issues in different ways, hoping to make us notice other literature on technology, not just that on innovation studies. All in all, Beyond Innovation is certainly a book that STS scholars will appreciate. Year after year, these scholars ask themselves, in workshops and conferences, how can one obtain more “relevance” and be heard more [End Page 244] by policymakers. Kaiserfeld makes some links between the two fields (STS and innovation studies). But it remains to others, namely historians, to do the same between innovation studies and the history of technology. Benoît Godin Benoît Godin is professor of science and technology studies, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Montreal, Canada. He conducts research on the history of statistics on science and technology (Measurement and Statistics on Science and Technology: 1920 to the Present, 2005) and the intellectual history of innovation (Innovation Contested: The Idea of Innovation over the Centuries, 2015). Copyright © 2016 Society for the History of Technology

Institutionalising ELSA in the moment of breakdown?

This article discusses outcomes of a dialogue conference on ‘The road ahead for ELSA in Norway: Issues of quality, influence and network cooperation’ held in Oslo in December 2012. Norwegian researchers in the field of ethical, legal and social aspects of technologies (ELSA) were invited to discuss conceptual and strategic issues, as well as the setup of a researcher network. In the article I take an institutionalist approach and discuss challenges in institutionalising an ELSA network at a time when a designated ELSA funding programme is coming to an end. The research question is how the Norwegian ELSA network can succeed as a persistent network in times of greater uncertainties. The article claims that the network needs to gain legitimacy, outlines different dimensions of legitimacy and interprets the conference discussions in light of these dimensions. Central challenges and success factors facing the ELSA network are discussed and the article concludes with reflections on the potential future of ELSA in Norway. Although the article has a Norwegian context, the discussions in the article are likely to be relevant for researchers all across Europe, as similar developments are taking place also elsewhere in the European research funding context.

Narcissism in the Age of Technology

Narcissism in the Age of Technology

Addressing plagiarism and IPR violation

This paper presents some ideas about fighting plagiarism and what we can do about preserving Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). It will highlight interesting findings arising from our investigations on the topic – some of which are actually quite shocking. The last part of this paper presents an overview of upcoming technology while shedding light on its implications on the quality of life. As emerging technology is expected to drastically transform our lives, due consideration on social aspects of technology is necessary.

Teaching sustainable entrepreneurship to engineering students: the case of Delft University of Technology

Sustainability, enhancement of personal skills, social aspects of technology, management and entrepreneurship are of increasing concern for engineers and therefore for engineering education. In 1996 at Delft University of Technology this led to the introduction of a subject on sustainable entrepreneurship and technology in the course programmes of Chemical Engineering and Materials Sciences Engineering. This subject combines lectures, project work in which a business plan is written, sustainability and presentation training. This paper shows that it has been possible to combine entrepreneurship, sustainability and project education successfully in a subject for undergraduate engineering students and describes background, assumptions, outline, results and recent adjustments of this subject. It includes a discussion on how to integrate sustainability and entrepreneurship in terms of triple P (People, Profit, Planet) and how to incorporate it pragmatically in the key elements of a business plan: (1) business idea, mission and strategy; (2) context, stakeholder and market analysis; (3) marketing; (4) production; (5) organisation and management; (6) finance and reporting. Attention is paid to results regarding the business plan, spin-off like start-ups and also to the learning results of both students and lecturers. It ends drawing some lessons derived from the subject’s results and the learning experiences of both students and lecturers.

Institutions and Technology

The paper offers a fresh approach to the analysis of technology in organization through a critique of Orlikowski and Barley's assessment that institutional theory has the potential to bridge the social and material facets of organizational change when greater emphasis is placed on the materiality of technology. Through analysis of a major information and communication technologies outsourcing contract between UK Inland Revenue and Electronic Data Services, the authors follow institutional theory in problematizing studies in which technology is treated as a material cause or independent variable. But the approach commended by Orlikowski and Barley, they argue, is flawed by its unproblematized assumption of a separation between the physical and social aspects of technology. Drawing on the thinking of Laclau and Mouffe, the authors advocate an alternative framework that unsettles the commonsense, naturalized differentiation of the materiality of technology and the discursive field through which it is articulated and given meaning.

The Web of Technology and People: Challenges for Economic and Social Research

The study of technology and people has gained acceptance as a field for social inquiry, but it has remained outside the mainstream of the major disciplines and is dealt with as an interdisciplinary area of specialization across the social and economic sciences. In addition, this field has been fragmented further by particular technologies and issues, creating journals focused on privacy issues, others focused on education, for example, with a gulf remaining between social scientists on the one hand, and engineers and computer scientists on the other. There are also major regional divides, with academics in one part of the world often knowing little about work underway elsewhere. The world-wide push for technological innovation, therefore, demands that the social sciences build a more intensive and internationally networked effort to sustain research on the social aspects of technology, and bring it to bear on policy and practice.Enthusiasm over the Internet and other emerging technologies should not lull the social science research community into complacency. Ironically, unbridled optimism in the coming digital age, or biotech century, and trends in technological innovation and related research and development (R&D) could undermine the vitality of social and economic research. Any agenda for future social science research needs to place a higher priority on the study of technology, to better integrate work on a wider range of technologies, and to attend to a broad array of issues concerning how people produce, utilize, consume, and govern technologies. Otherwise, technical and social choices are likely to escape critical analysis in a wave of next generation enthusiasm.

A Confluence of Feedback Loops in Social and Educational Structure: (in the Context of Developing and Developed Countries)

The evolution of the feedback phenomenon has inherently been associated with the evolution and growth of nature and man. The closed-loop feedback is an inherent aspect of the human, social and educational structure of the society. It is well known to system scientists and cyberneticians that a net negative feedback in a closed-loop system produces a stable response while the confluence of positive feedback loops makes the system response unstable. These stable and unstable responses have been observed in the nature as well as in human social structure; positive feedback has caused catastrophies in the nature (floods, storms, droughts, earthquakes, famine, etc.) and it has brought disasters in the societal systems (pollution and population explosion, strikes, unemployment, inflation, recession and depression, wars, depletion of earth’s non-renewable resources, and political and other social and educational crisis).Automation, a man created feedback in machines, is approaching an exponential growth. No doubt in a machine this feedback is negative, otherwise the machine itself will break down, but the interaction between automation and our socio-economic system has generated a positive feedback; if this positive feedback exceeds the limits and is not controlled in time it will bring excessive leisure in human life, it will generate unemployment, unrest and crimes in our society, and it will lead to a state of crisis, and then perhaps will induce a catastrophic breakdown of our human race. All these events are highly interrelated, and have interregional dependence. The developed and the developing countries may follow the separate paths during the evolution phases of these catastrophic events but will have the same end result - a total catastrophe. In other words, automation and mechanization which is thought to be very efficient technically but may have negative impact on our socio-economic systems if it is adopted naively.Perhaps control scientists and cyberneticians will recognize that we are passing through a glorious period of utter ignorance, and consequently, not knowing enough about the complex social net, it is deceptively easy for political and social scientists to say that it must be observable and controllable. The author’s thinking on this paper was motivated by many factors including some recent world near-catastrophic events. No doubt our political and social institutions and economists have analyzed these events but the control scientists have recognized the increasing importance of analyzing and under- This work is supported by the National Research Council of Canada Grant A-5625.The author is grateful to his wife, Suman, who is a social scientist and has a great interest in the social aspects of technology and education for stimulating discussion and providing a provoking feedback on the contents of this essay.

Note on Technological Trends and Social Planning

While certain parts of the report on technological trends and national policy represent distinct contributions, the section "Social Aspects of Technology" is deficient in the followin respects: insuficient treatment of the scientific predictability of inventions, of their social consequences and their social preconditions, serious gaps as to relevant socio-economic problems, and lack of clarity concerning the relationships between "technique" and "Planning." Especially the conception of social planning as merely a onesided adjustment of social activities and institutions to allegedly objective technological trends-a notion which seems to underly some contributions-is both unsatisfactory and dangerous.