Digital Twins, Virtual Devices, and Augmentations for Self-Organising Cyber-Physical Collectives

The engineering of large-scale cyber-physical systems (CPS) increasingly relies on principles from self-organisation and collective computing, enabling these systems to cooperate and adapt in dynamic environments. CPS engineering also often leverages digital twins that provide synchronised logical counterparts of physical entities. In contrast, sensor networks rely on the different but related concept of virtual device that provides an abstraction of a group of sensors. In this work, we study how such concepts can contribute to the engineering of self-organising CPSs. To that end, we analyse the concepts and devise modelling constructs, distinguishing between identity correspondence and execution relationships. Based on this analysis, we then contribute to the novel concept of “collective digital twin” (CDT) that captures the logical counterpart of a collection of physical devices. A CDT can also be “augmented” with purely virtual devices, which may be exploited to steer the self-organisation process of the CDT and its physical counterpart. We underpin the novel concept with experiments in the context of the pulverisation framework of aggregate computing, showing how augmented CDTs provide a holistic, modular, and cyber-physically integrated system view that can foster the engineering of self-organising CPSs.

Near-Epoch Dependence

Near‐epoch dependence (NED) is a generalized dependence concept for functions of mixing processes. This chapter gives definitions and examples, and considers the application to nonlinear dynamic processes. The relation to mixingales is the key theoretical result. Results on the preservation of NED under various transformations and a special result for the adapted sequence case are considered next. Finally, the related concept of approximability is defined which, unlike NED, can hold in the absence of integer moments.

From Poacher to Protector of Attention: The Therapeutic Turn of Persuasive Technology and Ethics of a Smartphone Habit-breaking Application

This paper critically investigates the ethical perspectives and practices of individuals and organizations who make persuasive technologies (“persuasive technologists”). An organization that claims to be at the forefront of ethical persuasion is behavioral software company Boundless Mind. Yet Boundless Mind sells ostensibly oxymoronic software products: an Application Programming Interface for third-party applications that optimizes the capture of end user attention, and an application for end users on how to make third-party applications less persuasive. Drawing upon Foucault’s interpretation of ethics as an “aesthetics of existence” and the related concept of “therapeutic authority,” I argue Boundless Mind justify the “poaching” and “protecting” of user attention based on a view of the human subject as fixable and their capability to instrumentalize user subjectivity to socially desirable ends. I walkthrough Boundless Mind’s technology-habit-breaking application Space and highlight a behavioral technique administered by Space called stimulus devaluation, which enables the user to develop a transformative relationship with their technology habits and persuasive applications. I conclude the paper by arguing that a persuasive technology ethics based on fixing the user obfuscates the power of persuasive technologists by limiting the scope of ethical inquiry to the activities of the user.

Truth and Closure in Cyprus: An Assessment of the Committee on Missing Persons

There are two key limitations to the literature that explores the relationship between truth and closure in post-violence societies. The first is that this relationship has been assessed mostly as part of a larger debate focusing on the links between the truth and the seemingly related concept of reconciliation. The second is that to the extent that the literature has addressed the connections between truth and closure as such, it has focused almost exclusively on the operations and effects of courts and truth commissions. The article addresses both limitations by examining the relationship between truth and closure through the prism of a different institution, the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus. Relying on 34 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, including relatives of missing persons on the island, it argues that the Committee's delivery of the truth has promoted closure in three distinct ways. At the same time it acknowledges that the type of truth and the way in which it is delivered can have detrimental consequences for the promotion of closure. A short video summarising the findings of this article is available here.

Prosocial behavior and altruism: A review of concepts and definitions

The field of prosociality is flourishing, yet researchers disagree about how to define prosocial behavior and often neglect defining it altogether. In this review, we provide an overview about the breadth of definitions of prosocial behavior and the related concept of altruism. Common to almost all definitions is an emphasis on the promotion of welfare in agents other than the actor. However, definitions of the two concepts differ in terms of whether they emphasize intentions and motives, costs and benefits, and the societal context. In order to improve on the conceptual ambiguity surrounding the study of prosociality, we urge researchers to provide definitions, to use operationalizations that match their definitions, and to acknowledge the diversity of prosocial behavior.

The Working Alliance and Cross-Cultural Competence

The purpose of this chapter it to review the research-based concept of the working alliance, characterized by the forming of an emotional bond, worker/client goal consensus, and task collaboration, and to illustrate how it can be established and monitored by social workers. A related concept, that of cross-cultural competence, is also discussed. It refers to a social worker’s capacity and willingness to be attuned to a client’s culturally imbedded experiences, investigate the relevant details of that client’s experiences, and share with the client some of the social worker’s own relevant cultural experiences, to create mutual understanding. Cross-cultural competence facilitates the establishment of a working alliance.

Butler, Chakrabarty and the possibilities of radical postsecular politics

This article interprets critiques of secularity and the related concept of history as progress in the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty and Judith Butler. At the same time, it defends their approach against the criticism voiced by Gregor McLennan. It shows that the postsecular conception of the politics of both authors is not just an attempt to open public space to a wider range of religious and cultural voices. Rather, it is a critique of the way in which political secularism and the ideology of progress are used by the modern state to legitimize the exercise of its own power. Butler and Chakrabarty's postsecular policy is thus based primarily on coalition building against these legitimization frameworks, which opens up the possibility of forming new postsecular political subjects. It illustrates the theoretical approach of both authors with an example of the church sanctuary movement in Germany.

Administrative Measures Against Far-Right Protesters: An Example of Japan’s Social Control

Japan’s pre-emptive approach to far-right demonstrations has had a significant impact. Far-right street protests accompanied by hate speech have been rapidly decreasing, although Japan has not introduced penalties. Why did the Japanese approach have such an effect? While the regulation of hate speech in Japan has been discussed mainly in legal studies, Japan’s use of administrative measures against hate speech has not been emphasized. Focusing on the implementation of the 2016 Hate Speech Law, this article examines administrative measures against far-right protestors as an example of Japan’s ‘soft’ approach to social control: not directly banning but discouraging social activities that are deemed harmful to social harmony. These measures have a pre-emptive character and are implemented based on a prior consensus between local officials and far-right activists about appropriate ways to use public spaces and possible expressions. This article also shows that Japan’s treatment of both far-right protesters and counterdemonstrators is guided by the harmony-related concept of kenka ryōseibai, which imposes punishment on both parties in a private quarrel, whether right or wrong. Japan’s approach to far-right protests thereby differs from the conventional American and European approaches in terms of both forms of regulation and central values.

On Defining “Reliance” and “Trust”: Purposes, Conditions of Adequacy, and New Definitions

Trust is often perceived as having great value. For example, there is a strong belief that trust will bring different sorts of public goods and help us preserve common resources. A related concept which is just as important, but perhaps not explicitly discussed to the same extent as “trust”, is “reliance” or “confidence”. To be able to rely on some agent is often seen as a prerequisite for being able to trust this agent. Up to now, the conceptual discussion about the definition of trust and reliance has been rational in the sense that most people involved have offered arguments for their respective views, or against competing views. While these arguments rely on some criterion or other, these criteria are rarely explicitly stated, and to our knowledge, no systematic account of such criteria has been offered. In this paper we give an account of what criteria we should use to assess tentative definitions of “trust” and “reliance”. We will also offer our own well-founded definitions of “trust” and “reliance”. Trust should be regarded as a kind of reliance and we defend what we call “the accountability view” of trust, by appealing to the desiderata we identify in the first parts of the paper.