Blockchain-Based Ubiquitous Transport and Logistics Monitoring System

Logistics and transport have become an increasingly important topic in recent years. In this kind of scenario, being able to offer added value to users means an important improvement in the services offered by the different companies. Different actors take part in the process of sending, transportation and collection of the different products through roads, ports and airports. During this process different aspects of security must be taken into account, since an error in one of them can cause major problems for public health, nature or even the economy of a country. With all this in mind, this work proposes a new system that allows us, through the use of wireless technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification, Global Positioning System, Wi-Fi Direct and mobile communication technologies, to automate the process of authentication and tracking of different products and goods. The proposed scheme allows through the use of the cloud the creation of a ubiquitous communications system for monitoring, control and even automation of repositioning orders automatically. In addition, the use of a system based on blockchain allows to carry out the whole process in an optimal way that guarantees the privacy and immutability of the data referring to the transports and merchandise. This work allows to reduce costs and improve the quality of the processes of sending, transport and reception of products for the different companies involved in the supply chain.

'Visibility brings with it responsibility': Using a Pragmatic Performance Approach to Explore a Political Philosophy of Technology

With the emergence, suspicion and social acceptance of ubiquitous communications technology thoroughly plumbed and the digital age already wondering what it is going to rename itself in light of ever more fluid and complex technologies, this paper asks: what can theatre and performance provide to the production of a political philosophy of technology?� Using the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault and an analysis of a recent inter-cultural adaptation of Jean Genet's The Maids, this study examines the politics of visible theatre technologies in performance and offers a pragmatic, or instrumentalist, approach to developing a political philosophy of technology.

A Space for Place in Business Communication Research

Many corporate leaders believe that the physical environment of the workplace can play a major role in fostering the interdisciplinary collaboration they link to organizational innovation and in creating a brand that attracts and keeps highly talented employees. Their belief aligns with a recent materialist turn in scholarship that addresses the mutual creation of objects and subjects. Taking advantage of ubiquitous communications technology, the open plan design of these new workplaces offers a variety of settings, created more through furnishings than architecture, to support the four modes of 21st-century work: collaborate, socialize, learn, and focus. In this flexible, “mobile” workplace, people and things mutually reconfigure themselves as projects and preferences change. A tension exists, however, between group-oriented communication conducted face-to-face and private, individual thinking. Exploring the fit between the rhetoric of what space can do, especially enhancing collaboration and achieving innovation, and results on the ground, is an inviting, largely untapped, area for business communication research.