Code, Culture, and Concrete: Self-Driving Vehicles and the Rules of the Road

Behaviour on the road is ordered by a range of norms, rules, laws, and infrastructures. The introduction of self-driving vehicles onto the road opens a debate about the rules that should govern their actions and how these should be integrated with, or lead to the modification of, existing road rules. In this paper, we analyse the current rules of the road, with a particular focus on the UK's Highway Code, in order to inform future rulemaking. We consider the full range of laws, norms, infrastructures, and technologies that govern interactions on the road and where these came from. The rules have a long history and they contribute to a social order that privileges some modes of mobility over others, reinforcing a culture of automobility that shapes lives, livelihoods and places. The introduction of self-driving vehicles, and the digital code on which they depend, could reorder the culture and concrete of our roads, by flattening the multidimensional rules of the road, hardening rules that are currently soft and standardising across diverse contexts. Future rule changes to accommodate self-driving vehicles may enable increases in safety and accessibility, but the trade-offs demand democratic debate.

Data-driven prognosis for COVID-19 patients based on symptoms and age

In this article, we develop an algorithm and a computational code to extract, analyze and compress the relevant information from the publicly available database of Canadian COVID-19 patients. We digitize the symptoms, that is, we assign a label/code as an integer variable for all possible combinations of various symptoms. We introduce a digital code for individual patient and divide all patients into a myriad of groups based on symptoms and age. In addition, we develop an electronic application (app) that allows for a rapid digital prognosis of COVID-19 patients, and provides individual patient prognosis on chance of recovery, average recovery period, etc. using the information, extracted from the database. This tool is aimed to assist health specialists in their decision regarding COVID-19 patients, based on symptoms and age of the patient. This novel approach can be used to develop similar applications for other diseases.

Man‐Machine and Machine‐Man in Art: Meeting in Digital

Digitalization has given rise to a substantially new civilizational and existential situation. The mankind development was associated with the creation of collective memory in the form of culture as a system for generating, storing and transmitting social experience, including the creation of an artificial environment. For the main part of history, man likened the world to himself, which made the world understandable. However, over time, the tools and means became less and less anthropomorphic. The world has increasingly become like complex mechanisms. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the relationship between man and machine has become one of the main themes in art. They gave rise to a wide horizon of aesthetic comprehension of this topic: from the pathos of transforming reality (including the person himself) to alarm and horror. However, modern digitalization creates an artificial environment that involves not only the natural environment, but also the biological nature of man. The person himself turns into an artifact. Moreover, under the conditions of digitalization, culture turns into a kind of machine, when reality appears as the realization of a “transcendental” digital code, which acts as an original source for any number of artifacts as its copies. This situation cannot but affect art and aestheticization, which are reduced to the flow of processing digitized data. It is not about new digital technologies in art. It is about changing the format of the entire process of artistic creation and aesthetic reception. A person is transformed from a user of consumption and creativity options into one of the options for a digital mega-machine.

Applications

Chapter Four asks what happens when the physical markers of identity are rendered in the language of digital code. In the contemporary moment, fingerprints and DNA profiles are stored and matched through networked databases rather than paper records, while iris scans and facial recognition technology have produced radically new modes of reading identity in the body. This digitization of identification is accentuated still further when the more mundane means of identifying oneself in the contemporary period (through the use of credit cards or in ‘checking in’ to a workplace) are considered. Taking place within an essentially surveillant contemporary culture, these validations of identity create a retrievable record of one’s movements and activities and place the citizen’s body in the ‘non-place’ of networked databases in which a direct checking of what Haggerty and Ericson describe as ‘data doubles’ takes place. As with Chapter Three, much of the significance that is attached to this development in recent identificatory practice will be developed via Powers’s The Gold Bug Variations. This explication will cede into a more thorough analysis of Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1984) and Cosmopolis (2003) and Jennifer Egan’s Look at Me (2001). While DeLillo’s earlier text represents some of the archetypal modes of contemporary surveillance, both Cosmopolis and Look at Me depict a complete internalization of its logic. Thus, just as DeLillo and Egan’s central characters voluntarily place themselves under surveillant monitoring, so too their representation as, in effect, data doubles requires a decidedly anti-realist form of narration.

The Code and Politics of Drupal and the Pirate Bay: Alternative Horizons of Web2.0

Code politics investigates the implications of digital code to contemporary politics. Recent developments on the web, known as web2.0, have attracted the attention of the field. The thesis contributes to the literature by developing a theoretical approach to web2.0 platforms as social structures and by contributing two cases of web2.0 structurations: Drupal, a content management platform, and The Pirate Bay, a file sharing website and political movement. Adapting the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe on articulation theory, the thesis studies the code and politics of the two cases. The Drupal case studies the complex interactions between humans and code, and addresses how Drupal functions as an empty platform allowing its users to reconstitute its digital code. The Pirate Bay case demonstrates how a political movement uses code as part of their political platform. Not only does the group advocate file sharing, they allow thousands of people across the world to share information freely. At a time, when most web2.0 platforms act as forces of capitalism, the two cases demonstrate alternative, commons-based structurations of web2.0.

The Code and Politics of Drupal and the Pirate Bay: Alternative Horizons of Web2.0

Code politics investigates the implications of digital code to contemporary politics. Recent developments on the web, known as web2.0, have attracted the attention of the field. The thesis contributes to the literature by developing a theoretical approach to web2.0 platforms as social structures and by contributing two cases of web2.0 structurations: Drupal, a content management platform, and The Pirate Bay, a file sharing website and political movement. Adapting the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe on articulation theory, the thesis studies the code and politics of the two cases. The Drupal case studies the complex interactions between humans and code, and addresses how Drupal functions as an empty platform allowing its users to reconstitute its digital code. The Pirate Bay case demonstrates how a political movement uses code as part of their political platform. Not only does the group advocate file sharing, they allow thousands of people across the world to share information freely. At a time, when most web2.0 platforms act as forces of capitalism, the two cases demonstrate alternative, commons-based structurations of web2.0.

FEATURES AND PROSPECTS OF USING DIGITAL DESIGN OF INTERIORS USING THE EXAMPLE OF FORMING A PRIVATE SPACE

Statement of the problem. The issue of the role of modern digital methods in the design of private living space is explored. Results. The digital era has witnessed a loss of the traditional, individual approach to interior design with technical work replaced by creativity, individuality by a system of codes, and personality by a software interpreter. Conclusions. The role of digital design methods should be limited exclusively to the area of technical support for project implementation. A person must not become a part of a digital code system, i.e., an interpreter.

Fostering inclusive economic growth: the case of the Digital Code of Benin

This policy note seeks to elucidate the opportunities for development in Republic of Benin’s digital code, as the country attempts to become a regional example of progress in the digital sphere. The note examines the Digital Code of Benin which sets out a comprehensive set of laws and regulations aimed at providing a secure and conducive environment for digital transformation and innovation. By assessing the key strengths and opportunities for development, this policy note can also inform regional approaches to regulation of the digital economy, especially since Benin is seen as a model for the region.