Keywords: Blockchain; Smart City; Smart Contracts; Digital Transformation;
This paper analyses the impact of the digital transformation of cities affected by rapid urbanization that tend to endanger their environmental and economic sustainability. Such a transformation is possible through the concept of a smart city. We investigate the opportunities of using blockchain technologies in the realm of smart cities. The paper’s main goal is to propose a new business model for blockchain use in the smart city ecosystem that will provide a solution for a sustainable urban environment and improve citizens’ life. Smart city ecosystem consists of building blocks: infrastructure, development and self-sustainability, stakeholders and their relationships. Stakeholders can be different subjects, but most often they are government authorities, service providers, blockchain technology providers, IoT device manufacturers, and citizens. Blockchain-based systems facilitate increased citizen engagement and participation. Citizens can provide feedback, contribute data, and interact with smart city services through decentralized applications. The ecosystem operates in an iterative and adaptive manner continuously learning and improving based on the data and feedback received. Insights gained from the blockchain data and citizen interactions drive ongoing enhancements to the smart city infrastructure and applications. The proposed model will, on the other hand, show sustainability by citizens through a reward system using a digital wallet. Citizens actively engaged in energy management or ridesharing platforms can be rewarded with tokens to use for discounts or health check-up services. The proposed ecosystem could serve as a ground for the adoption of blockchain in smart city ecosystems in different countries.
HOW MUCH DO WE TRUST IN AI? EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON USER TRUST LEVELS
Author(s): Antun Biloš,Bruno Budimir / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 6/2023
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence; Trust; Willingness to Accept Technology; AI;
Artificial intelligence is a broad branch of computer science that deals with the development and study of smart machines and programs, which are increasingly used in private and business environments. Considering that artificial intelligence is in a relatively early stage of wide-range application, it is necessary to investigate the readiness of users to accept it. Given that no more extensive research has been conducted in Croatia on the level of readiness to accept artificial intelligence technologies, nor on the potential implications of its increase, this research provides answers to related questions to a certain extent. Internet users were chosen as the target audience because they are considered to be potential users or users of artificial intelligence. The survey was conducted on 1036 respondents. The research compares respondents’ trust in humans, artificial intelligence and humans with the assistance of artificial intelligence, depending on whether they perform on low or high level stakes and risks in different areas of personal and professional life. The assumptions predicting greater trust in humans compared to artificial intelligence were confirmed, but also the assumption that trust in humans with the assistance of artificial intelligence will be greater than in humans alone. The results show that the respondents are aware that artificial intelligence is entering their private and business lives, but they are still very cautious and ready to trust it more significantly only when artificial intelligence has a role of supporting tool.
Keywords: Open Innovation; Crowdsourcing; DevOps; Digital Services;
This article considers concepts, models, achieved results and emerging trends of the open innovation approach to organizing and conducting research and development activities in companies. The goal is to perform a comprehensive systematic analysis of literature that considers the open innovation models that focus on the collaboration of various stakeholders, including companies, academia, government, startups, individuals, and others, in the context of design and development of innovative digital services, through integration of crowdsourcing and DevOps. As a result, we propose a new framework for organizing open innovation activities using DevOps practices for digitals service development. Finally, we present examples of implementing crowd-based open innovation models in various contexts.
Author(s): Nuša Erman,Katarina Rojko / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 6/2023
Keywords: Covid-19; Robotization; Industrial output; Industry 4.0; Industry 5.0;
The advancement in technological developments and recent Covid-19 impacts lead to continuous robotization in industries, especially in the manufacturing sector. As we were interested in impacts on the economy (and society), we analysed some economic indicators in comparison with data on industrial robots installations to present recent developments in the industry. We focused on changes due to Covid-19 as we expected that the pandemic had positive impacts on the manufacturing sector in terms of accelerating progress to the next level of industry development - to Industry 4.0 and even to some extent to Industry 5.0 stage. After the strong robotization of industry in the pre-Covid-19 period, a hindered demand was observed during the pandemic, as also a decline in manufacturing output and employment. Nonetheless, trends quickly regained growth, while the vector autoregression model forecast shows, that the manufacturing sector has a bright future ahead since robotization will be able to increase employment and output of workers, which is also a goal of Industry 4.0 and 5.0. This implies that investments in industrial robots proved to be beneficial also during the pandemic periods and that the Covid-19 pandemic did not have negative impacts on the ongoing transformation of industry. Robotization thus led to recent positive developments in the manufacturing sector, despite some negative impacts were observed in the pre-Covid-19 period.
POSSIBLE USE OF THE NIST CYBER SECURITY FRAMEWORK IN HEALTHCARE INSTITUTIONS IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Author(s): Haris Hamidović,Jasmina Kabil-Hamidović,Amina Buljubašić,Edina Šehić / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 6/2023
Keywords: NIST CSF; NIST Cybersecurity Framework; Health Data; Personal Data; Information Security; Risk Assessment;
In all business sectors, choosing the right security framework is critical to help define an organization’s security posture, identify gaps, and develop strategies for improvement. The increasing reliance of healthcare organizations brings numerous benefits, but also exposes them to a greater number of malicious attacks from cyberspace. In this paper, we present the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which can be of help to healthcare institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina in determining priorities in solving cyber security challenges. While the NIST Cybersecurity Framework will not protect digital assets and data by itself, it can provide a guide for healthcare organizations to manage their own assets, gaining a complete view of their organization and its vulnerabilities. Using the NIST Cybersecurity Framework as a framework can also be helpful in protecting personal data that is processed in healthcare systems.
According to Rosi Braidotti, insects are determined by their in-between-ness and continuous becoming. The paper analyses the assemblage of insect figurations on two levels: non-human technology and unnatural narrative in stories about a transformation. Following Jussi Parikka’s media archaeology research, becoming-insect is examined on transmedial examples from literaturę (Franz Kafka—The Metamorphosis), film (David Cronenberg—The Fly), video games and VR (All in! Games—Metamorphosis) and networked media. According to Jan Alber, exploration beyond human stances and defamiliarization in narrative fiction leads to the shift of cognitive frameworks. Radically Other insects transgress the anthropocentric paradigm and execute posthuman assumptions by a hybrid entanglement with humans and machines.
Practicing Belonging Through Religious Institutions: Ukrainian Migrants in Warsaw
Author(s): Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 2/2023
Keywords: Mark Davis; Jack Palmer; Dariusz Brzezinski; Thomas P. Campbell;
The article foregrounds Ukrainian migrants’ perception of their social situation as followers of various Christian denominations—Roman Catholicism, Eastern Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodox—who live in Warsaw. I analyze their narratives through theories of belonging and anchoring. Based on interviews with Ukrainian religious activists I analyze the Ukrainian migrants’ challenges regarding their religious and national loyalties. The article shows how religious divisions in Ukrainian society entered Poland along with the migrants and how Ukrainian national identity and place in Polish society are negotiated at the intersection of the three Christian denominations’ activities, which thus creates a triangle of religious-national-political relations, in which Ukrainian migrants constantly negotiate belonging to the Polish society, the Ukrainian nation, and the religious communities.
Inequality Concerns, Social Location,
and Perception of Opportunities for Social Advancement: Czechia and Slovakia in a Comparative Perspective
Author(s): Miloslav Bahna,Oľga Gyárfášová / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 2/2023
Keywords: social inequality; concerns; social location; social advancement; Czechia; Slovakia;
The analytical puzzle of this study is straightforward: how do people’s concerns about inequality and social location affect their beliefs about the opportunities for advancement? This study compares Czechia and Slovakia, two states with very low objective levels of inequality but quite different levels of concern about it. In both countries, social welfare expectations derive from the state-run economy in the pre-1989 period. However, in Slovakia the economic changes caused social difficulties and considerable discontent, whereas Czech society demonstrated more free-market friendly attitudes, and the perception of social inequalities was less critical. Based on the ISSP data we analyze what factors are seen as important for “getting ahead” and whether perceptions of inequality and social location reflect meritocratic beliefs or their opposite—corrupt advancement strategies. While there is a stronger feeling in Slovakia that corrupt strategies are necessary in Slovakia, in both societies preferences in regard to strategies for social advancement are better explained by socioeconomic position than by attitudes toward inequalities.
This article attempts to identify, describe, and explain the main historically shaped social factors that have influenced the post-communist transition in Bulgaria. Three groups of interrelated factors are of particular interest: the specific features of the former totalitarian regime, Bulgaria’s social structure, and the cultural characteristics of Bulgarian society.
This study offers a sociological contribution to the literature on coping strategies on the labor market, with an explicit emphasis on the crisis context and the resulting job insecurity. The COVID-19 pandemic has narrowed employment opportunities and worsened working conditions for many individuals who, in response, needed to cope with the unfolding changes. Based on a qualitative dataset comprising 70 in-depth interviews collected in 2021 in Poland, this paper sheds light on the two main types of coping strategies, namely emotional and problem-solving coping. Juxtaposing coping strategies with age, we discuss how younger and older workers in Poland handle work uncertainty. The paper contributes new data on coping strategies in the context of work-lives and offers evidence on the coping processes emerging in response to the pandemic.
The aim of the presented study is to conceptualize and regulate the meaning of the term social cyberdeviation. The analysis carried out in the first part was based on the etymological and inductive methods, as well as contextual analysis with the definitions of cross-border cybercrime. To achieve the aim of the work and indicate the contents of the concept, it turned out to be necessary to determine whether it is possible to indicate the exis- tence of standards among the online virtual community that are recognized by most of its members. The nominal definition of cyberdeviation as a violation of the norms prevailing in the virtual community is the starting point for the second part of the article, the purpose of which is to classify activities that violate the norms in cyberspace. The gradation of behavior indicates that the situations on the Internet are: low-intensity activities that focus pri- marily on social norms, not legal norms; medium intensity, where the criterion is a violation of a legal norm; high intensity acts that are legally penalized nor accepted in the entire community, which clearly violate social norms.
Disintermediation and/or Neointermediation?
The “Fourth Power” of Small and Large Intermediaries in Digital Public Sphere
Author(s): GABRIELE GIACOMINI / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 2/2023
Keywords: disintermediation; neointermediation; opinion leader; infomediaries; digital platform; public sphere;
The concept of “disintermediation” is one of the instruments used to interpret recent developments in politics and communication, especially in digital media. Our thesis is that the concept of “disintermediation” can be considered from two different perspectives. On the one hand, it can be interpreted in the strict historically established sense. On this basis it may be argued that the internet has contributed to “disintermediate” traditional intermediaries, surpassing in part the traditional intermediaries of the twentieth century (such as journalists). On the other, “disintermediation” can be seen in broader, etymological, absolute and non-relative terms. In this sense, the concept of “disintermediation” is no longer appropriate and consequently, based on experimental results and a theoretical analysis of small and large digital intermediaries, we shall propose the concept of “neointermediation.” This article presents the characteristics of neointermediaries, which are concentrating more and more power and are of two sizes: small and large.
Governance in Peer Production Communities: the Case of Debian Project Leader Elections
Author(s): Mikołaj Rogiński / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 2/2023
Keywords: text mining; virtual community; quantitative approach; management practices; FLOSS (free/libre and open source software); commons-based peer production;
The purpose of this article is to explore the Debian Project, which is a peer production organization, and to answer the main research question of what topics were discussed in Project Leader candidates’ program statements.One of the organizational solutions, voting for the Project Leader, was subjected to detailed analysis. According to the usual practice, candidates for the leadership position each publish a program declaration. The study collected all such declarations from 1999–2020 and analyzed them using quantitative text analysis methods. As a result, it was possible to define the most important topics appearing in the declarations, and to track changes in their proportions over time. It was found that management has always been an important topic for candidates. In turn, analysis using Structural Topic Modeling showed at a detailed level which sub-topics related to management were discussed, and how their share changed over time.
Remembering the Neoliberal Turn Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989 Edited by Veronika Pehe, Joanna Wawrzyniak London: Routledge 2023
Author(s): . Miscellaneous / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 2/2023
Keywords: book review; Veronika Pehe; Joanna Wawrzyniak;
Remembering the Neoliberal Turn Economic Change and Collective Memory in Eastern Europe after 1989Edited by Veronika Pehe, Joanna Wawrzyniak London: Routledge 2023, 352 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations ISBN 9781032553337
Neo-militant Democracies in Post-communist Member States of the European Union Edited by Joanna Rak, Roman Bäcker London: Routledge 2022
Author(s): . Miscellaneous / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 2/2023
Keywords: book review; Joanna Rak; Roman Bäcker;
Neo-militant Democracies in Post-communist Member States of the European Union Edited by Joanna Rak, Roman Bäcker London: Routledge 2022, 268 Pages ISBN 9781032156347
The Importance of Rhetoric in Leadership Formation
Author(s): Thomas A. Michaud / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 31/1/2021
Keywords: Rhetoric; leadership;
Contrary to much academic, public and businesspersons’ opinion, education in rhetoric is definitely important for leadership formation. Leaders who are uneducated in the art of persuasive communications are severely handicapped. This article argues this claim 1) By defining what and who a leader is. 2) By describing the intrinsic relationship between leadership and rhetoric. 3) By identifying aspects of rhetoric that are central to practicing good leadership. 4) And, finally, by concluding with some observations on leadership, rhetoric and the current “cancel culture” movement.
Author(s): Curtis L. Hancock / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 31/1/2021
Keywords: Jerry DeWoody; analysis of the nature of friendship; vice and virtue in human relationships;
Leaping ahead to my high school experience, it was marked by many close friendships, some of whom are still a part of my life—such as my close friendship with Jasper Biddy, Alan Lacer, and my former track coach, Gary Lower. But I would like to single out for reflection my defining friendship with a mercurial personality named Jerry DeWoody.
Digital piracy, i.e., large-scale commercial copyright infringement online, is a constantly evolving phenomenon. Following the enactment and expansion of online intermediary liability rules, professional pirates have shifted away from easily blockable websites and services. Streaming piracy on dedicated platforms, monetised through embedded services, has become the prevalent model in Europe, as is well illustrated by the Mobdro case study analysed in this article. These dedicated platforms are supported by embedded service providers who, as they are not online intermediaries, can avoid the online intermediary liability regime. One potential solution to this issue could be the application of contributory copyright infringement rules, which are well-established in US copyright law but absent in EU law, to all parties that contribute to digital piracy. The CJEU has opened expressly this path in the recent C-682/18 YouTube and C-683/18 Cyando cases. Based on the CJEU's initiative and the existing precedent of harmonising intellectual property tort rules within EU law, further contributory liability rules could be modelled after US rules by updating the Enforcement Directive 2004/48/EC. Addressing this gap in EU copyright law is crucial for enhancing the effectiveness of digital copyright enforcement against evolving digital piracy.
Artificial Intelligence and its subfield, Machine Learning are areas of computer science; thus, they rely on algorithms, models, computer programs and software applicable in numerous areas. Since respective creations involve resources and shift from hardware to software, there is an incentive to protect them legally. Due to their dual nature, the algorithms, models, computer programs, and software might be too “technical” to avail copyright protection but not “technical” enough for a patent. Whereas trade secret protection might not be sufficient means of protection in all cases.The article explores the issues and, as its main argument, builds further on the academic proposals on the sui generis mechanism. It also suggests certification as the potential approach to avail the desired protection instead of diluting the existing protection frameworks. An alternative would be to lie on the complete availability or trade secret protection, none of which would be an adequate balance.
Cybersecurity: Notorious, but Often Misused and Confused Terms
Author(s): Jan Kolouch,Daniel Továrňák,Michal Javorník,Tomáš Plesník / Language(s): English
/ Issue: 2/2023
Keywords: Cybersecurity; Information security; Event; Threat; Asset; Vulnerability; Risk; Control; Information Security Management System; Security Terminology
The article deals with the issue of the terminology used in the implementation and provision of cyber and information security. Although this terminology is understood as notoriety, practice shows that there are different perspectives on defining "the same". Nowadays, mainly in the context of the adoption of Directive (EU) 2022/2555 of the European Parliament and of the Council on measures to ensure a high common level of cybersecurity in the Union (NIS 2), there is a need for a consistent interpretation and, in particular, understanding of the terminology used so that cybersecurity and information security can be truly ensured. After analyzing and comparing the various definitions, the paper presents clear, general but universally applicable definitions of key terms. The relationship of these terms is presented within a conceptual model and also through a practical example.
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