Search results
1 – 10 of over 14000Norberto Patrignani and Diane Whitehouse
The purpose of this paper is to examine how Slow Tech can support the celebration of the 20-year series of ETHICOMP conferences, with its ethical and societal focus, building on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how Slow Tech can support the celebration of the 20-year series of ETHICOMP conferences, with its ethical and societal focus, building on earlier descriptions of Slow Tech. The paper takes Slow Tech’s ideas a step further to explore how a roadmap and concrete checklist of activities can be developed.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is a thought leadership or conceptual piece. Its approach is based on a normative, qualitative discourse. It, nevertheless, indicates a shift towards concrete actions.
Findings
Extracting from a brief historical overview, the paper lays out the means of building a Slow Tech roadmap and a Slow Tech checklist of actions. It also investigates a number of the challenges that might face Slow Tech in the future.
Research limitations/implications
The paper has implications for stakeholder fields as far-ranging as corporations, computing professional associations, universities and research institutions and end-users.
Originality/value
As with other investigations of Slow Tech, the value of this paper is in its call for reflection followed by action. It provides a useful complement and counterbalance to an earlier paper by the same authors: “Slow Tech: a quest for good, clean and fair ICT” published in Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society (Vol. 12, issue 2, pp. 78-92).
Norberto Patrignani and Diane Whitehouse
This discussion paper focuses on a notion of information and communication technology (ICT) that is good, clean and fair that the authors call Slow Tech. The purpose of this paper…
Abstract
Purpose
This discussion paper focuses on a notion of information and communication technology (ICT) that is good, clean and fair that the authors call Slow Tech. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Slow Tech approach in order to explain how to create a suitable bridge between business ethics and computer ethics.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper’s approach is discursive. It provides a viewpoint. Its arguments are based in an examination of literature relevant to both business ethics and computer ethics. Justification is produced for the use of Slow Tech approach. A number of potential future research and application issues still to be investigated are also provided.
Findings
Slow Tech can be proposed, and used, as a bridging mechanism between companies’ strategies regarding computer ethics and business ethics. Three case studies illustrate the kind of challenges that companies have to tackle when trying to implement Slow Tech in concrete business context. Further study need to be undertaken to make progress on Slow Tech in applied, corporate settings.
Practical implications
ICT companies need to look for innovative, new approaches to producing, selling and recycling their services and products. A Slow Tech approach can provide such insights.
Social implications
Today’s challenges to the production and use of good, clean, and fair ICT, both conceptual and concrete, can act as incentives for action: they can further applied research or encourage social activism. Encouraging the study, and the application, of Slow Tech provides a first step in the potential improvement of a society in which information technology is totally embedded.
Originality/value
The value of this paper in not only for academics and researchers, but also for practitioners: especially for personnel working in ICT companies and for those involved with designing, developing and applying codes of conduct at both European and globally.
Details
Keywords
Norberto Patrignani and Diane Whitehouse
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term Slow Tech as a way of describing information and communication technology (ICT) that is good, clean and fair. These are…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term Slow Tech as a way of describing information and communication technology (ICT) that is good, clean and fair. These are technologies that are human centred, environmentally sustainable and socially desirable.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper's approach is based on a qualitative discourse that justifies the introduction of Slow Tech as a new design paradigm.
Findings
The limits of the human body, and the need to take into account human wellbeing, the limits of the planet and stakeholders' interests in decision making, all suggest the need for a new paradigm, Slow Tech, in the design of ICT and ICT systems. Three scenarios are described as case studies.
Practical implications
In order to prepare the next generation of researchers and computer professionals, many different actions need to be taken. Universities and colleges need to redesign education programmes for computer scientists and engineers by introducing subjects related to the social and ethical implications of computing (currently, only few countries, like the UK, have already done this), and computer professionals' associations need to introduce a code of ethics or ethical analysis into their members' career development. As a result, future computer professionals who are familiar with the Slow Tech approach will be able to collaborate much more easily across the kind of cross disciplinary teams suited to design human centred, sustainable and desirable technologies.
Social implications
Rather than simply focusing on the role of computer professionals, all members of society are called to play a new role in the design of future ICT scenarios. Starting a societal dialogue that involves computer professionals, users, researchers, designers, ICT industrialists, and policy makers is very much needed.
Originality/value
The value of this paper is in its call for reflection followed by action. Based on an holistic approach to the design of new ICT systems, the paper advocates a new starting point for systems design: it should be based on a long-term view of the desirability and social importance of technologies, their environmental impact and sustainability, and the fairness and equity of the conditions of workers involved in the computing manufacturing processes.
Details
Keywords
Norberto Patrignani and Diane Whitehouse
This paper aims to provide an overview of clean information and communication technology (ICT), including a brief review of recent developments in the field and a lengthy set of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to provide an overview of clean information and communication technology (ICT), including a brief review of recent developments in the field and a lengthy set of possible reading matter. The need to rethink the impact of ICTs on people’s lives and the survival of the planet is beginning to be addressed by a Slow Tech approach. Among Slow Tech’s main questions are these two: Is ICT sustainable in the long term? What should be done by computer ethics scholars, computer professionals, policy makers and society in general to ensure that clean ICT can be produced, used and appropriately disposed of?
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a comprehensive review of clean tech-related literature and an investigation of progress made in the clean tech field.
Findings
This opening paper of a Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society special session aims to provide an overview of clean ICT, including a brief review of recent developments in the field and a lengthy set of possible reading matter. As a result, it is anticipated that Slow Tech – and in this case, its second component of clean ICT – can provide a compass to steer research, development and the use and reuse of environmentally friendly, sustainable ICT.
Originality/value
This conceptual paper emphasises that, until only recently, no one questioned the potential long-term sustainability of ICT. This issue is, however, now very much a matter that is on the research and teaching, and action, agenda.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the broad phases of web development: the read-only Web 1.0, the read-write Web 2.0, and the collaborative and Internet of Things Web 3.0…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the broad phases of web development: the read-only Web 1.0, the read-write Web 2.0, and the collaborative and Internet of Things Web 3.0, are examined for the theoretical lenses through which they have been understood and critiqued.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual piece, in the tradition of drawing on theorising from outside the Information Systems field, to shed light on developments in information communication technologies (ICTs).
Findings
Along with a summary of approaches to Webs 1.0 and 2.0, the authors contend that a more complex and poststructuralist theoretical approach to the notion of, and the phenomenon of Web 3.0, offers a more interesting and appropriate theoretical grounding for understanding its particularities.
Originality/value
The discussion presages five further papers engaged with ICTs in a changing society, each of which similarly addresses novel theoretical understandings.
Details
Keywords
CHINA: US tech investment barriers could slow catch-up
Details
DOI: 10.1108/OXAN-ES221508
ISSN: 2633-304X
Keywords
Geographic
Topical
Technology sector outlook.
Details
DOI: 10.1108/OXAN-DB235338
ISSN: 2633-304X
Keywords
Geographic
Topical
Information and communications technology (ICT) offers a peculiar twenty-first century conundrum, as it offers both a cause and solution to rising carbon emissions. The growth in…
Abstract
Purpose
Information and communications technology (ICT) offers a peculiar twenty-first century conundrum, as it offers both a cause and solution to rising carbon emissions. The growth in the digital economy is fueling increased energy consumption while affording new opportunities for reducing the environmental impacts of our daily lives. This paper responds and builds on Patrignani and Whitehouse’s overview of Slow Tech by providing examples of how ICT can be used to reduce energy. Encouraging examples are provided from the field of energy and buildings and implications for wider society are raised.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper builds on the previous overview “The Clean Side of Slow Tech”, based on a comprehensive knowledge of literature of the latest developments in the field of digital economy, energy and sustainability.
Findings
This paper provides clear and encouraging signs of how ICT can be used to contribute to sustainability through controlling systems more efficiently, facilitating behavioural changes and reducing energy consumption. Future challenges and recommendations for future research are presented.
Originality/value
This conceptual paper presents the latest research into the use of ICT in energy reduction and offers cautious, but encouraging signs that while the environmental impact of ICT must not be overlooked, there are benefits to be had from the digital economy.
Details
Keywords
Robert E. Cole and Tsuyoshi Matsumiya
The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible impediments to radical innovation created by the pursuit of quality improvement in the dynamic hi‐tech sector.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the possible impediments to radical innovation created by the pursuit of quality improvement in the dynamic hi‐tech sector.
Design/methodology/approach
First examines contributions and limitations of extant literature. Then analyzes three cases from the Japanese hi‐tech sector, dynamic random access memory chips , network equipment, and system integration, to understand the conditions under which the pursuit of quality creates impediments for radical innovation.
Findings
Identifies a number of mechanisms, beyond the existing literature, through which the quality culture of Japanese hi‐tech firms can inhibit innovation. Particular attention is paid to the risk averse culture that may be created, thereby damaging the potential to develop radical innovation. Some exploratory strategies are offered through which firms might minimize these problems.
Originality/value
The ways in which the quality culture of Japanese hi‐tech firms poses a challenge for innovation are explored and some exploratory views on how Japanese firms might meet this challenge are offered. Above all, the paper calls for firms to think more strategically and flexibly about the role of quality at the early stages of the product cycle for hi‐tech products.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this article is to provide a commentary to the conceptual article by Norberto Patrignani and Diane Whitehouse, The Clean Side of Slow Tech. This article explores…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to provide a commentary to the conceptual article by Norberto Patrignani and Diane Whitehouse, The Clean Side of Slow Tech. This article explores what can be easily overlooked in Information Communication Technology (ICT): the uncomfortable truth relating to the production, use and disposal of modern communication technology.
Design/methodology/approach
In it, the author picks up on the main ideas that were argued, specifically that there is a need to take a closer look at the production, use and disposal of modern communication technology.
Findings
Connecting resource production, use and disposal and its affect on climate change will require those who are in the position to make changes to come up with solutions that also consider values, beliefs and norms that lead to particular types of behaviour.
Research limitations/implications
ICT has had an enormous impact on people’s lives. However, there has been primarily focus on its life-accelerating attributes. Slowing down the process of production may open up possibilities for sustainable ICT development.
Practical implications
The commentary, combined with Patrignani and Whitehouse’s paper may provide a resource for those responsible in training future ICT professionals.
Social implications
If today’s society, and this includes users and producers of ICT, intends to go beyond the mere rhetoric about sustainability, individuals will need to take on a new kind of responsibility that covers the entire life cycle of technology.
Originality/value
This commentary is intended to provide an additional viewpoint to the topic of sustainable ICT production.
Details