Methodology for Measuring the Impact of the Privacy Protection Law on the Use of Big Data

The ICT revolution triggered by the emergence of smart devices, typically represented by the iPhone and the iPad, is migrating into the new domain of ‘big data’ after passing the turning point of ‘SNS Life,’ which is represented by Twitter and FaceBook among others. These developments have brought significant changes in all areas of politics, economy and culture. The stock prices of Apple, Samsung Electronics, FaceBook and Google fluctuate depending on who takes the hegemony in the changes. Meanwhile, such a reform of the ICT sector has generated some new undesirable sideeffects, including online disclosure of personal information, malicious comments, Smishing or other forms of financial scams. As we cannot abandon either big data or privacy protection, it is critical to find a compromise. It seems both evident and selfexplanatory that the use of big data, which is attributable to technical innovation, conflicts with privacy protection based on the idea that individuals should be allowed to determine the disclosure or not of their personal information. Yet, the problem here is that the discussion of countermeasures remains at the level of catching the wind with a net. Therefore, this paper intends to present a framework that can objectively verify what impact the enhanced legal regulation concerning privacy protection has on the use of big data as the first step in exploring a compromise between the use of big data and privacy protection.

Exploring, browsing and interacting with multi-level and multi-scale dynamics of knowledge

The ICT revolution has given birth to a world of digital traces. A wide number of knowledge-driven domains like science are daily fueled by unlimited flows of textual contents. In order to navigate across these growing constellations of words, interdisciplinary innovations are emerging at the crossroad between social and computational sciences. In particular, complex systems approaches make it now possible to reconstruct multi-level and multi-scale dynamics of knowledge by means of inheritance networks of elements of knowledge called phylomemies. In this article, we will introduce an endogenous way to visualize the multi-level and multi-scale properties of phylomemies. The resulting system will enrich a state-of-the-art tree like representation with the possibility to browse through the evolution of a corpus of documents at different level of observation, to interact with various scales of description, to reconstruct a hierarchical clustering of elements of knowledge and to navigate across complex semantic lineages. We will then formalize a generic macro-to-micro methodology of exploration and implement our system as a free software called the Memiescape. Our system will be illustrated by three use cases that will respectively reconstruct the scientific landscape of the top cited publications of the French CNRS, the evolution of the state of the art of knowledge dynamics visualization and the ongoing discovery process of Covid-19 vaccines.

Multi-scale methods for reconstructing collective shapes of digital diasporas

The ICT revolution has impacted the way diasporic groups and individuals communicate and interact with one another. Diasporas are now fueled by unlimited flows of digital contents generated by daily activities or sudden historical events. As a natural result, the science of migration has evolved just as much as its own subject of research. Thus, dedicated branches of research like digital diasporas emerge at the crossroad between fields of social and computational sciences. Thereupon, new types of multi-scale reconstruction methods are developed to investigate the collective shapes of digital diasporas. They allow the researchers to focus on individual interactions before visualizing their global structures and dynamics. In this paper, we present three different multi-scale reconstruction methods applied to reveal the scientific landscape of digital diasporas and to explore the history of an extinct online collective of Moroccan migrants.

From a Society of Knowledge to a Society of Consciousness a Call for Awareness Is on Its Way

The convergence of today’s critical sanitary environmental and socio-economic crises is pressing humanity towards a shifting point from which a new paradigm could emerge, where accelerated scientific-technological innovations transforming social relations may enable a leap of conscience with the improvement appreciation of human life conditions and better caring for the planet as a whole, opening for a more fraternal cooperation and sustainability mind set. The crisis is systemic and has moral roots, so the solutions are asking for a change in human values and human consciousness that may already be found in initiatives like a new socio-economic models such as the Economy of Francisco, the Society 5.0 that are emerging and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Moreover, there is already a humanity awareness movement that defines patterns for levels of global consciousness that together with other development systems models may help to follow up the process of the transition from the society of knowledge to the society of consciousness. This close global monitoring would give us chance for a better global and local management showing signs of improvement, and give calls for alerts. This paper presents advances in this direction and shows how the ICT revolution on its way may already give support to collectively on-line monitoring with already existing important synthetic indicators that represent basic sensors for the process, showing what may be the way for the future, and what kind of metamorphose we may be emerging.

Digitalising Public Employment Services: Benefit to Social Justice in the Labour Market?

A basic strand in the mission of Public Employment Services is promoting labour market transparency, which is considered of importance for reducing unemployment and for improving patterns of labour allocation in several other ways. Self-evidently therefore, always a strong connection existed between PES operations and information and communication technology. Already the organization itself can be considered a social specimen of such technology. The ICT revolution of recent decades positively influenced general market transparency with a variety of easily accessible market places on the Internet. It also brought innovations to the PES. It changed the content of its services and the formats of their delivery. These things happened around Europe. Here the Dutch case is presented in more detail. ICT-induced innovations are followed over three subsequent stages from mid ‘80s onward. While the transformation of services was impressive and PES played a part in the increasing labour market transparency, its role in labour allocation has not noticeably strengthened. Its market share did not really increase. Neither did its contribution to less unemployment and/or a more equitably distributed entrance to job opportunities. Nevertheless, unexploited opportunities for the latter may still exist. Some are suggested for further exploration.

China’s Grand Design of People’s Smart Courts

While online dispute resolution (ODR) and online courts have become a global phenomenon, China is unique in its way of constructing a “smart-courts” system. This paper argues that the Chinese smart courts are embedded in China’s larger strategy of capturing new opportunities offered by the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution. Adoption of cutting-edge ICT by courts is not an initiative taken by the courts themselves; rather, it is a call from the party-state with strong policy push. The paper also makes two observations on the nature of smart courts in China. One is that Chinese courts are using ICT, especially artificial intelligence, both to enhance hierarchical control and to improve the formal quality of law. Another is that the “Internet courts” are established to solve disputes arising from online transactions, rather than serve as piloting courts with general implications for the shape of future courts in China. Therefore, while boldly experimenting new technologies (such as blockchains) in the judicial process, Internet courts in China are also charged with the responsibility of developing legal doctrines in cases within their jurisdictions. The case of China thus shows the profound interaction between law and technology. Whether technology is disruptive depends on human design and efforts.

RELEVANCE OF THE BOLOGNA PROCESS ACHIEVEMENTS FOR THE CREATIVE CLASS DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEMPORARY ICT REVOLUTION OF POST- INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

Article is devoted the processes of creative class development in pandemic crisis and contemporary ICT revolution of post-industrial society. Article is analysed the opportunities of European qualification system (EQF and OC) via the relevance of practical application in the new global off-line and on-line labor market.

‘Mobile’izing Agricultural Advice Technology Adoption Diffusion and Sustainability

Mobile phones promise to bring the ICT revolution to previously unconnected populations. A two-year study evaluates an innovative voice-based ICT advisory service for smallholder cotton farmers in India, demonstrating significant demand for, and trust in, new information. Farmers substantially alter their sources of information and consistently adopt inputs for cotton farming recommended by the service. Willingness to pay is, on average, less than the per-farmer cost of operating the service for our study, but likely exceeds the cost at scale. We do not find systematic evidence of gains in yields or profitability, suggesting the need for further research.