An Alternative Learning Platform to Facilitate Usability and Synchronization of Learning Resources

2009 ◽  
pp. 21-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenia M.W. Ng
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Data Communication ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Bulletin Board ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Technology Tool

The Internet was initially set up in the 1960s and 1970s for supporting research in the military. It was then developed in 1981 in the academic community to connect university computers to enhance communications between academic researchers so that they could efficiently exchange ideas about the ongoing research (Coyle, 1997). Files transfer protocol was frequently used for transferring of files and computer-mediated communication (CMC) was also popular in the education context. Formats of CMC include e-mail, bulletin board, and list servers. With the decreasing hardware and data communication costs and increasing bandwidth, the Internet has altered our options for living, studying, working, and entertainment. It appears to be the most powerful information technology tool for education in the 21st century. There are many reasons for its popularity, and the main reasons can be attributed to accessing information easily, freely, and speedily. It provides powerful search functions, enables synchronized communication such as video, audio conference, and chat, and enables multiple presentation formats such as animation and video streaming without any add-on software or hardware. In fact, the Internet is more than technology, it is a Web of social relations imaginatively constructed by symbolic processes initiated and sustained by individuals and groups.

Application Service Provision for Intelligent Enterprises

2011 ◽  
pp. 182-187
Author(s):  
Matthew W. Guah ◽  
Wendy L. Currie
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gasoline Engines ◽  
Application Service ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S

Several historical shifts in information systems (IS) involved strategies from a mainframe to a client server, and now to application service provision (ASP) for intelligent enterprises. Just as the steam, electric, and gasoline engines became the driving forces behind the industrial revolution of the early 1900s, so the Internet and high-speed telecommunications infrastructure are making ASP a reality today. The current problem with the ASP model involves redefining success in the business environment of the 21st century. Central to this discussion is the idea of adding value at each stage of the IS life cycle. The challenge for business professionals is to find ways to improve business processes by using Web services. It took mainframe computers a decade or two to become central to most firms. When IBM marketed its first mainframe computer, it estimated that 20 of these machines would fulfil the world’s need for computation! Minicomputers moved into companies and schools a little faster than mainframes, but at considerably less costs. When the first computers were applied to business problems in the 1950s, there were so few users that they had almost total influence over their systems. That situation changed during the 1960s and 1970s as the number of users grew. During the 1980s the situation became even tighter when a new player entered the picture—the enterprise (McLeord, 1993). In the 21st century, information systems are developed in an enterprise environment (see Diagram 1). Beniger (1986) puts forth a seemingly influential argument that the origin of the information society may be found in the advancing industrialisation of the late nineteenth century. The Internet is simply a global network of networks that has become a necessity in the way people in enterprises access information, communicate with others, and do business in the 21st century. The initial stage of e-commerce ensured that all large enterprises have computer-to-computer connections with their suppliers via electronic data interchange (EDI), thereby facilitating orders completed by the click of a mouse. Unfortunately, most small companies still cannot afford such direct connections. ASPs ensure access to this service costing little, and usually having a standard PC is sufficient to enter this marketplace. The emergence of the ASP model suggested an answer to prevailing question: Why should small businesses and non-IT organisations spend substantial resources on continuously upgrading their IT? Many scholars believed that outsourcing might be the solution to information needs for 21st century enterprises (Hagel, 2002; Kern, Lacity & Willcocks, 2002; Kakabadse & Kakabadse, 2002). In particular, the emergence of the ASP model provided a viable strategy to surmount the economic obstacles and facilitate various EPR systems adoption (Guah & Currie, 2004). Application service provision— or application service provider—represents a business model of supplying and consuming software-based services over computer networks. An ASP assumes responsibility of buying, hosting, and maintaining a software application on its own facilities; publishes its user interfaces over the networks; and provides its clients with shared access to the published interfaces. The customer only has to subscribe and receive the application services through an Internet or dedicated intranet connection as an alternative to hosting the same application in-house (Guah & Currie, 2004). ASP is an IT-enabled change, a different and recent form of organisational change, evidenced by the specific information systems area (Orlikowski & Tyre, 1994). ASP has its foundations in the organisational behaviour and analysis area (Kern et al., 2002).

User Trust in BBS Comunities

2011 ◽  
pp. 474-477
Author(s):  
Hung Chim
Keyword(s):  
Information Dissemination ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Bulletin Board ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
The World ◽  
User Trust

The Bulletin Board System (BBS), when it first appeared in the middle 1970s, was essentially “a personal computer, not necessarily an expensive one, running inexpensive BBS software, plugged into an ordinary telephone line via a small electronic device called modem” (Rheingold, 1993). The networked computers used to create these parallel worlds and facilitate communication between human beings constitute the technical foundations of computer-mediated communication (CMC) (Nancy, 1998). CMC systems link people around the world into public discussions. While CMC can exist solely between two people or between one person and an anonymous group, increasingly, virtual communities of many people are being formed. With advent of the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW) brought more new technologies to the BBS. Thousands of BBSs sprang up across the world. Many turned out tremendously successful and evolved into lively virtual communities. These communities provided forums with increasing importance for individuals and groups that share a professional interest or share common activities. Online BBS communities now play an important role in information dissemination and knowledge collaboration on the Internet. On one hand, online forums enable people to disseminate information in an extremely efficient way without geographical restriction. On the other hand, the freedom also comes with uncertainty. Any information can be released and the content is almost beyond control, or even unreliable. To understand the content and quality of the information in BBSs, we would split the task into two subjects: one is to assess the information sources; another is to assess the information providers, people themselves in the virtual communities. Most BBSs are anonymous, because people usually use a pseudonym rather than their real name when registering. A user does not need to provide real personal information to the system, either. Thus, how to assess the trust of the users in a BBS community and attract more trustful and worthy users to participate in the activities of the community have become crucial topics to establish a successful community. Two subjects are important for establishing user trust in a BBS community: First, a BBS system must be able to identify a user and provide efficient security protection for each user and his/her privacy. Second, the value and the trustworthiness of a user should be assessed according to that user’s behavior and contribution to the community in comparison to peers.

Introducing internet pragmatics

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaoqun Xie ◽  
Francisco Yus
Keyword(s):  
Research Area ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Number Of Layers ◽  
Set Up ◽  
New Research

Abstract The internet and internet-mediated life have presented new issues and challenges for research on pragmatics. When analyzing the application of pragmatics to internet-mediated communication, a possibility is to set up a number of layers and study the contributions that traditional pragmatic schools can make to this new research area. These layers include, but are not limited to, user and contextual constraints, user to user by means of discourse, user to user in interaction, user to audience, user in a group of users and, user and non-intended no-propositional effects. Research on internet pragmatics, we believe, can, should and will extend and expand the scope of pragmatics. Ultimately, internet pragmatics, capturing and elucidating the order of things and the order of life more extensively, deeply and fully, seeks to explore and expound, from the perspective of pragmatics, ways of living, ways of doing, ways of seeing, and ways of (re)discovering.

Gender insurgency and neoliberal reform: the academy twice transformed?

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-91
Author(s):  
Richard Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Considerable Change ◽  
The Public ◽  
Neoliberal Reform ◽  
Social Theories ◽  
Internal Relations ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Neoliberal Restructuring

English higher education, like other parts of the public sector and higher education in other countries, is currently undergoing considerable change as it is being restructured as if it were a market in which universities, departments and academics compete against one another. This restructuring is producing new processes of subjectivity that discipline those who work and study in higher education institutions. Feminist poststructuralists have suggested that this restructuring is enabled partly through new forms of accountability that seemingly offer the 'carrot' of self-realisation alongside the 'stick' of greater management surveillance of the burgeoning number of tasks that academics, amongst others, must perform. This paper, located in the context of these changes, builds on Judith Butler's insight that processes of subjection to the dominant order through which the self is produced entail both mastery and subjection. That is, submission requires mastery of the underlying assumptions of the dominant order, In this paper I adopt an auto/biographical method and a critique of abstract social theories to explore how the neoliberal restructuring of universities interacts with the gender order. Many universities are being remoulded as businesses for other businesses, with profound effects on internal relations, the subjectivities of academics and students, and practices of education and scholarship. Yet I doubt if we can understand this, nor resist the deep corruption, through grasping neoliberalism's dynamics alone. A longer memory and a more concrete analysis are needed. Today's intense individualisation impacts on pre-existing social relations, which inflect it unpredictably. From my own experience, I evoke the baseline of an older academy, gender-segregated, explicitly patriarchal and privileged in class and ethnic terms. I stress the feminist and democratic gains of the 1960s and 1970s. I sketch the (neoliberal) strategies that undermine or redirect them. I write this, hoping that the next episode can be written differently.

scholarly journals Models of Modernization and geopolitical changes in Latin America

2016 ◽  
pp. 68-76
Author(s):  
István Szilágy
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Military ◽  
Radical Transformation

In South America in the 1960s and 1970s the contradictions of economic, social and political structures were deepening. In order to surmount the structural crisis the different political forces, tendencies and governments elaborated various strategies. These attempts aiming at reorganizing the society led to undermining the hegemony of ruling governing block and radical transformation of state apparatus. Progressive and regressi-ve forms of military dictatorship and excepcional states of the new militarism appeared on the continent because of the Brazilian military takeover of April, 1964. Formally these state systems were set up by the institutional takeover of the armed forces. The military governments strove for the total reorganization and modernization of the societies in their all - economic, political and ideological - territories. The study aims at analizing the diffe-rent models of modernization during the past sixty years.

scholarly journals Re-orienting the ‘West’? The Transnational Debate on the Status of the ‘West’ in the Debates among Islamist Intellectuals and Students from the 1970s to the Present

2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
Farish A. Noor
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Developmental Model ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Status ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The 1960S

This paper will look at the process of transnational transfer of ideas, beliefs and value-systems, with a special emphasis on the transfer of Islamist ideas and ideals through the vector of student movements and organisations that were set up in Western Europe and North America as well as the rise of a new generation of Islamist intellectuals in Malaysia in the late 1960s for whom the idea of the ‘West’ was turned on its head and re-cast in negative terms. It begins by looking at how the ‘West’ was initially cast in positive terms as the ideal developmental model by the first generation of post-colonial elites in Malaysia, and how – as a result of the crisis of governance and the gradual decline in popularity of the ruling political coalition – the ‘West’ was subsequently re-cast in negative terms by the Islamists of the 1960s and 1970s who sought instead to turn Malaysia into an Islamic society from below. As a consequence of this dialectical confrontation between the ruling statist elite and the nascent Islamist opposition in Malaysia, the idea of the ‘West’ has remained as the central constitutive Other to Islam and Muslim identity, and this would suggest that the Islamist project of the1970s to the present remains locked in a mode of oppositional dialectics that nonetheless requires the presence of the ‘West’ as its constitutive Other, be it in positive or negative terms.

Public Architecture in Ancient Mesoamerica

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takeshi Inomata
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Public Buildings ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Diverse Groups ◽  
Public Architecture

The study of temple-pyramids and other public buildings has long been an important focus in Mesoamerican archaeology. Scholars generally use the term public architecture to refer to structures for use, visitations, and gatherings beyond individual households, but the term public needs to be examined more critically. Public buildings are tied to the formation and transformation of the public sphere, a social field shaped in specific historical contexts that enables and restrains the political action of people. Traditional studies commonly viewed public buildings as reflections of society, political organization, or worldviews. Investigations before the 1960s often focused on the descriptions of public buildings or used them to define cultural areas and traditions. The rise of processual archaeology in the 1960s and 1970s encouraged researchers to examine social processes through the analysis of buildings. Some scholars assumed that the size of public buildings and the labor investments in their constructions reflected the levels of political centralization. At the same time, the symbolic aspect of buildings continued to be an important theme in Mesoamerican archaeology. The underlying assumption was that public buildings, through their shapes and orientations, or associated images and texts, represented worldviews or cosmologies. While these approaches continue to be common, various Mesoamerican archaeologists have begun to examine the recursive processes in which buildings shaped, and were shaped by, society. In this framework, some scholars focus on people’s actions and perceptions, whereas others view buildings as active agents in social processes. Sensory perceptions, particularly visibility, are examined as critical media, through which the recursive relations between buildings and people unfolded. Construction events are also viewed as critical processes, in which collective identities and social relations are created, negotiated, and transformed. The meanings of buildings still represent an important focus, but instead of searching for fixed, homogeneous meanings, the new theoretical perspectives have urged scholars to analyze how diverse groups negotiated multiple meanings. In the early 21st century, public buildings at archaeological sites continue to be a subject of negotiation among diverse groups, including the governments, descendant communities, archaeologists, developers, and the general public.

Woman Is Boss: Music and Gender in Trinidad’s Cultural History

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hope Munro
Keyword(s):  
Trinidad And Tobago ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Music And Gender

This chapter situates Afro-Trinidadian women within the complex ethno-history of the nation and highlights their roles as cultural agents over time. In the Caribbean, the music world and public culture in general has been male-dominated, and for the most part this continues to be the case. In the music scene of Trinidad and Tobago, however, there has been remarkable progress in achieving gender equality within certain expressive realms. Over the course of the cultural history of Trinidad and Tobago, musical practices that were based in communal spaces such as the gayelle and drum dances changed with the emergence of the professional calypsonians and became essentially male-dominated art forms. This chapter examines the ways in which gender and music intersected in Trinidad's cultural history, showing in particular how the prosperity, optimism, and relative liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s set up the conditions for women to (re)emerge in the country's expressive culture.

scholarly journals Serviço Social em Portugal no fascismo: oposição, resistência e ação sindical

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (40) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alcina Martins
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Union Action ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Trade Union Organization

Resumo – Partilha-se a concepção de que o Serviço Social, enquanto profissão, é indissociável do desenvolvimento das relações sociais capitalistas, não se constituindo num bloco homogêneo. Na senda de Netto, os projectos societários em disputa pela manutenção ou transformação das estruturas sociais vigentes têm expressão nos projectos profissionais. Desse modo, com este trabalho procura-se contribuir para a análise da construção do Serviço Social em Portugal, apreendendo o significado atribuído pelo fascismo à profissão no processo de institucionalização, de 1930 a 1950. Pretende-se também identificar assistentes sociais[1] que se foram envolvendo em movimentos de oposição e resistência ao regime e perceber como, nos anos 1960 e 1970, a profissão se foi distanciando do significado inicialmente atribuído, a partir da organização sindical corporativista. Palavras-Chave: fascismo; Portugal; oposição; resistência; Serviço Social; distanciamento; ação sindical; assistentes sociais.  Abstract – The concept of social work as a profession is inseparable from the development of capitalist social relations, and does not constitute a homogeneous bloc. According to Netto, the corporate projects in dispute for the maintenance or transformation of the existing social structures are expressed in professional projects. In this way, this work seeks to contribute to the analysis of the construction of social work in Portugal, grasping the meaning attributed by fascism to the profession in the process of institutionalization, from 1930 to 1950. It is also intended to identify social workers[2] who have been involved in movements of opposition and resistance to the regime and to perceive how, in the 1960s and 1970s, the profession was distanced of the initially attributed meaning, from the corporatist trade union organization. Keywords: fascism in Portugal; opposition; resistance; social work; distancing; union action; social workers. [1] Entrevistas realizadas pela autora a: Maria Eugénia Varela Gomes (26 de junho de 2000), Maria Gabriela Figueiredo Ferreira (15 e 22 de janeiro de 2001) e Maria Teresa Abrantes Pereira Ávila (20 de junho de 2000). [2] Interviews conducted by the author to: Maria Eugénia Varela Gomes (June 26, 2000), Maria Gabriela Figueiredo Ferreira (January 15 and 22, 2001) and Maria Teresa Abrantes Pereira Avila (June 20, 2000).

The Reconceptualisation of social work in Chile and Argentina: the centrality of the profession’s relationship with social struggles

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katia Marro ◽  
María Lucia Duriguetto ◽  
Alexander Panez ◽  
Víctor Orellana
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Context ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article addresses the relationship of social work with the movements and processes of popular organisation in Chile and Argentina in the context of the Latin American Reconceptualisation movement in the 1960s and 1970s. We will analyse the current context of the class struggle in these countries and the relationship that was established between social work and the social organisations and movements of the subaltern classes. Our hypothesis is that the relationship between the profession and the struggles developed by the subaltern classes, in their peculiarities in Chile and Argentina, was the central mediation for social work to question its social function in the reproduction of social relations and, as a result, erode its traditionalist and conservative bases.

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