scholarly journals Corona pan(dem)ic: gateway to global surveillance

Author(s):  
Regina Sibylle Surber

Abstract The essay reviews the digital emergency measures many governments have adopted in an attempt to curb Covid-19. It argues that those ‘virologically legitimized’ measures may infringe the human right to privacy and mark the transition into a world of global surveillance. At this possible turning point in human history, panic and latent fear seem to fog much needed farsightedness. Leaving the current state of emotional paralysis and restarting to critically assess the digital pandemic management can serve as an emergency break against drifting into a new era of digital monitoring.

1995 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Manga Fombad

Freedom of expression is not only a fundamental human right but also constitutes one of the essential elements in the establishment of a democratic society. No country can seriously profess to be a democracy, or pretend to be making efforts towards this, if its citizens cannot freely express their opinions. Recent moves to introduce freedom of expression in Cameroon have come at a particularly difficult time. Like most African countries, it is on the horns of a dilemma. As it struggles to cope with an ever deepening economic crisis, it has come under strong internal and external pressure to democratise. The winds of change which blew into Africa at the end of the 1980s, when former communist-block single-party régimes collapsed, appeared to herald the beginning of a new era. But as leaders are increasingly pressed by impatient citizens to unfreeze their political, social, and economic rights, tyrants and dictators posing as democrats seem to be determining the nature and guiding principles of the new order.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 198-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green ◽  
Anthea Tinker ◽  
Jill Manthorpe

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss evidence of good practice in respecting care home residents’ right to privacy. The right to privacy is a fundamental human right as enshrined in international and domestic law and standards. In the context of increasing interest in using a human rights approach to social care in care homes for older people, this literature review summarises research evidence on what respecting the human right to privacy of care home residents entails in practice. Design/methodology/approach This literature review followed a rigorous systematic approach to the scoping review, inspired by the Joanna Biggs Institute’s guidelines for conducting systematic reviews. A total of 12 articles were included in the review. Findings The research took a multidimensional understanding of privacy in their studies. The dimensions can be categorised as physical, inter-relational or related to personal data. The review highlights three good practice points. First, it is good privacy practice in care homes to make available single-occupancy bedrooms to residents since this offers the opportunity to personalising this physical space with furniture and web belongings, adding a sense of ownership over the space. Second, residents appreciate being able to choose when and how they spend their time in their own bedrooms. Third, it is good practice to respect residents’ private physical space and private choices, for example by knocking on doors before entering or agreeing with the resident when it is permissible to enter. The review also found that in some studies privacy considerations were relevant to communal living areas within care homes, including the use of surveillance cameras and the sharing of personal data. Originality/value This literature review adds to the body of academic literature on human rights and social care in practice. It also highlights areas for future research relating to the right to privacy in care homes.


2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Suarez-Villa

The rise of technocapitalism involves the commodification of knowledge in faster and more diverse ways than at any previous time in human history. This article provides insights from a macro-analytical perspective on the phenomena that mark the emergence of technocapitalism as a new form of market capitalism, and their influence on the commodification of knowledge for invention and innovation. The phenomena in question involve the rapid accumulation of inventions and of knowledge-sensitive infrastructure. The rapid reproduction of creativity and a faster diffusion of knowledge, both of which have been supported by a massification of technical education, are also important for the emergence of the new era. Their contribution to the commodification of technological knowledge is most obvious in the pervasive corporatization of invention and innovation, and even more so in the emergence of continuous invention and innovation as a standard component of corporate strategy.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Moss

This final chapter returns to Ford, Dagenham to analyse the second strike that was organised by female sewing-machinists for skill recognition in the winter of 1984-1985. Whilst the 1968 strike analysed in chapter 2 was optimistically hailed as a turning point symbolising a new era of gender equality, the sewing-machinists were dissatisfied because the skilled nature of their work was not recognised. For the women at Ford, the underlying grading grievance and the sense of injustice that led to the 1968 dispute continued to shape their experiences of work and trade unionism for the next 17 years. This dispute marks an appropriate place to begin to draw some broader conclusions about women’s experiences of workplace activism between 1968 and 1985. The Ford sewing-machinists’ eventual success in winning their grading intimates a transition had occurred in the way women’s work was valued in the intervening 17 years between the strikes – at least within the Ford factory. Drawing upon contemporary representations of the dispute and interviews with women involved, this final chapter considers whether the women themselves believed the strike represented a change in attitudes towards female workers.


2007 ◽  
Vol 362 (1480) ◽  
pp. 705-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Mithen

The origins of farming is the defining event of human history—the one turning point that has resulted in modern humans having a quite different type of lifestyle and cognition to all other animals and past types of humans. With the economic basis provided by farming, human individuals and societies have developed types of material culture that greatly augment powers of memory and computation, extending the human mental capacity far beyond that which the brain alone can provide. Archaeologists have long debated and discussed why people began living in settled communities and became dependent on cultivated plants and animals, which soon evolved into domesticated forms. One of the most intriguing explanations was proposed more than 20 years ago not by an archaeologist but by a psychologist: Nicholas Humphrey suggested that farming arose from the ‘misapplication of social intelligence’. I explore this idea in relation to recent discoveries and archaeological interpretations in the Near East, arguing that social intelligence has indeed played a key role in the origin of farming and hence the emergence of the modern world.


Author(s):  
Katharine A. Nicholson ◽  
James D. Berry

The current state of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) trial design is best understood within the context of ALS research over the past quarter century. Before the early 1990s, trials in ALS were typically small and clinical trial methodology was less rigorous than it is today. With the discovery of the SOD1 gene mutation in the early 1990s, a new era of excitement and innovation for ALS research began. Since then, the number of ALS trials has steadily increased and trial design and methodology has become increasingly sophisticated.


Arabica ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier

AbstractThe year 922/1516-7 is usually treated as an important turning point in the history of Bilād al-Šām. The Ottoman conquest initiated change in various fields which has been the focus of much scholarly attention. However, it is still difficult to understand in what ways the new Ottoman subjects perceived these changes, especially in terms of allegiance to the ruling dynasties. To trace the attitudes of different persons and groups, scholars have often turned to the rich body of contemporary historical writing and used it as a source of information. In this article, which is centred on Ottoman Damascus, I argue that chronicles and biographical collections themselves are important witnesses of change and worth to be studied in their own right. As a step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the social uses of knowledge, I suggest that we need to enquire further into the significance of melancholy and solitude in Ottoman historical writing.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (11) ◽  
pp. 31-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank C. Butler ◽  
John A. Martin

Purpose This paper aims to examine the automotive industry and how it ripe for disruption. By examining the current state of the industry and how technology will shape the future of the car, this paper outlines why the automotive industry is ready to be disrupted and provides insights as to whom the major players may be in the future and why. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses examples from companies and the media to identify how the automotive industry is ready to be disrupted. Findings This paper identifies that the automotive industry is ready to be disrupted. With Tesla having secured over 400,000 pre-orders for its new Model 3 sedan, there is a movement that will pave the way to a new era of the automobile. Practical implications This paper demonstrates that a new way of thinking is needed for top managers at traditional automakers. In this paper, a new way of thinking about the future of the car is presented. Originality/value This paper takes a new perspective on what the future of the automobile may resemble and the companies that will likely be involved as a result of the disruption in the industry.


2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1095-1105 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.R. Rich

Keilin's classic paper of 1925 [Keilin (1925) Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B 100, 129–151], achieved with simple, but elegant, techniques, describes the cytochrome components of the respiratory chain and their roles in intracellular respiration and oxygen consumption. Since that time, a tremendous amount of work has clarified the intricate details of the prosthetic groups, cofactors and proteins that comprise the respiratory chain and associated machinery for ATP synthesis. The work has culminated in advanced crystallographic and spectroscopic methods that provide structural and mechanistic details of this mitochondrial molecular machinery, in many instances to atomic level. I review here the current state of understanding of the mitochondrial respiratory chain in terms of structures and dynamics of the component proteins and their roles in the biological electron and proton transfer processes that result in ATP synthesis. These advances, together with emerging evidence of further diverse roles of mitochondria in health and disease, have prompted a new era of interest in mitochondrial function.


2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard S. Saver

As a result of health care reform, medicine has entered a new era of comparative effectiveness. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) created the nation’s first comprehensive comparative effectiveness research (CER) program, investing in CER at record levels and establishing a new regulatory framework for oversight of the research. CER attracts considerable enthusiasm as a tool for reform because it compares competing interventions to determine which works best, supplying critical information for medical decision-making and health policy. In theory, better evidence of how treatments fare relative to one another will translate to better medical care. According to some optimistic accounts, CER can lead to a “revolution” in clinical practice, has transformative power “to reshape major portions of the practice of medicine,” and represents a major “turning point” for the health care system.


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