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This paper explores the potential of Henri Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis to understand data as an appearance assumed by the quantitative abstraction of everyday life, which negates a qualitative disjuncture between different natural and social rhythms – specifically those between embodied circadian and biological rhythms and the rhythms of working life. It takes as a case study a prototype performance research method investigating the methodological and practical potential of quantified self technologies to reconnect the body to its forms of abstraction in a digital age by means of the collection, interpretation and sonification of data using wearable tech, mobile apps, synthesised music and modes of visual communication. Quantitative data were selectively ‘sonified’ with synthesisers and drum machines to produce a 40-minute electronic symphony performed to a public audience. The paper theorises the project as an intervention reconnecting quantitative data with the qualitative experience it abstracts from, exploring the potential for these technologies to be used as tools of remediation that recover the embodied social subject from its abstraction in data for critical self-knowledge and understanding.

Purpose – The main objective of the chapter is to map out some of the most significant possible political consequences of the Internet for the state, citizenship, human rights, and other areas.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter analyzes the phenomena at the level of sociological theory. Its theoretical scope extends to political theory.

Findings – The Internet offers immense potential toward improving the nation state in terms of human rights yet in a manner that may well be foiled by several cultural, political, and economic factors. By transforming national boundaries into nongeographic borders that operate transnationally and subnationally, and by abstracting from the cybernaut's physical body, the Internet may challenge prevailing notions of state, private property, bodily autonomy, and political personhood, all of which connect discrete bodies with bounded territories. It might free citizenship rights and protections from state capture and denationalize the connection between membership in a particular political community and the enjoyment of rights. It might advance human rights by changing civil society by generating, first, a space where subjugated groups and individuals could agitate for their interests online without putting their bodies on the line and, second, critical public opinion in place of merely mass opinion. It would contribute to a post-national identity where it multiplied local practices to generate global awareness and identified normatively universal human rights in local, particular communities while still recognizing individuals’ special obligations to those local communities.

Research limitations/implications – This speculative trajectory remains all too vulnerable to nondigital settings beholden to particular values, cultures, power systems, inequality, hierarchy, and institutional orders; to market forces and controls; to governmental authority and censorship; and to the global maldistribution of wealth and technology. Liberal democratic political communities should monitor and control the cultural, political, and economic factors that threaten to undermine the Internet's potential toward improving the nation state in terms of human rights. Those committed to promoting the Internet's potential have the task of specifying these factors at the various relevant empirical micro-levels of social organization.

Originality value – Most analyses of the Internet either overestimate or underestimate its potential. Here the analysis strives for a balance uncommon in the literature. That balance may be of value primarily to other scholars working in related areas and secondarily to persons involved in public policy and other forms of politics.

The aim of this research is to provide insights for future display design through understanding the processes of sensemaking of retail displays in digitised retail.

The research applies media elicited interviews and engages thematic analysis to understand agency and advance mental models of retail display. Actor Network Theory (ANT) is engaged to flatten the ontology to traverse digital and physical realms as well as more semiotic sources.

The article presents a system comprising sensemaking processes of displays in digitised retail and traces the blending traits of physical and digital displays labelling an emerging display terminology applicable across realms.

The participating retail concepts' limited resources for technological innovations plus the customers all being local and recruited through the physical store represent this study's limitations.

The developed system reveals a process for abandoning the familiar but obsolete understanding of retail displays to replace it with new insights to support the judgement and decision process for designing innovative future displays with a customer centric logic.

The article is novel in flattening the ontology of retail displays to fit an organisational interface perception of the link between customer and retailer.

Mediated trauma pumped through information and communication technologies (ICTs), in highlighting the shared vulnerabilities and precarity of human lives, is also invested in the re-distribution and re-articulation of wounding and violence. This chapter examines what is transacted in the dissemination of human trauma through ICTs and how, within this affective architecture, we can come to understand the notions of wounding and woundedness as a pervasive condition of modernity invoking the human figure as continuously transgressed with the enlargement of trauma as a site of the political, visceral and commemorative whilst raising questions over our human qualities to feel as a community of affect through technologies which transmute trauma as part of their material commodification. The transmuting of trauma through technologies in the digital age means that trauma is re-absorbed as data and altered through its platform economics. Equally, trauma can be refracted through the digital terrain as banal content in which the wounded human becomes a transacted form within an incongruous spectrum ranging from the politics of pity to voyeurism. In the digital economy, trauma imagery enters another realm of disorientation in which it is pulled into typologies and vast ahistorical image repertories that hold non-contextual image as data. The digital economy re-modulates trauma through its own modes of (il)logic and turbulence, patterning trauma through its own modes of violence.

This paper aims to explore the transformative influence of social media applications on the digital evolution of banks. Using a multiple case study approach, this study investigates how Italian banks have adopted social media in their digital transformation. The study seeks to uncover strategies used by banks to maximise the benefits of social media platforms and assess the outcomes and challenges faced during this process. The results provide valuable insights for banks navigating digital transformation, emphasising the importance of organisational culture, client engagement, financial innovation and proactive response to fintech disruptions.

This study uses a multiple case study approach to investigate the influence of social media applications on the digital transformation of banks. Six Italian banks that integrated social media into their digital transformation efforts are analysed. The research examines the strategies used by these banks to effectively leverage social media platforms. The outcomes and implications of these initiatives are scrutinised to discern both positive impacts and challenges faced by banks and customers. The research methodology involves in-depth analysis of case studies, incorporating insights from managerial interviews to underscore key aspects essential for successful digital adaptation in the banking sector.

This study reveals profound impacts of digital transformation on the banking sector, emphasising key implementation areas. Insights gleaned from case studies of six Italian banks underscore the transformative influence of social media applications. Results highlight positive impacts, including enhanced customer service, engagement, financial literacy and community building. Managerial interviews underscore five critical aspects: the imperative for a new organisational culture, a focus on millennial clients, understanding and offering new financial instruments and proactive responses to challenges posed by emerging fintech companies. Successful adaptation necessitates attention to organisational culture, client engagement, financial innovation and proactive response to fintech disruptions. The findings contribute to the evolving understanding of the transformative role of social media in reshaping the banking industry.

This paper fills a critical research gap by delving into the challenges specific to banking institutions during the implementation of social media strategies amid digital transformation. While existing literature predominantly highlights positive impacts, this study pioneers a comprehensive exploration of unique hurdles faced by banks. The multiple case study approach, focusing on six Italian banks, contributes original insights into the strategies used to maximise social media benefits. The research provides a nuanced understanding of both positive impacts and challenges encountered, offering valuable guidance for refining social media approaches in the ever-evolving digital landscape. This contributes to the existing body of knowledge and aids banks in navigating their digital transformation journey effectively.

To reconstruct the way in which the difference of analog vs digital was introduced in the 1940s and to investigate why this difference was so fundamental to the whole cybernetic epistemology.

A close reading of the discussions about the terms “analog” and “digital” at the Macy‐Conferences (held during 1946‐1953) reveals how cybernetic discourse is founded on a suppression of the “real” (i.e. the physical, continuous, material, analog) by the “symbolic” (i.e. the artificial, discrete, logical, digital).

First, the difference between “analog” and “digital” resembles the Kantian difference of “senses” and “reason”. Together they form the “illusionary” function, which a digital‐oriented cybernetics tries to abandon. Second, the attempt to get rid of this illusion produces itself a “cybernetic illusion”, that replaces the anthropological illusion established (according to Michel Foucault) in late 18th century.

Showing that Heinz von Foerster's work could be seen as an attempt to establish a balance of power between analog and digital, and to respect the illusionary function of cybernetic knowledge.

Aims to bridge the gap between grid computing and semantic exploitation of information commonly met in digital library infrastructures.

This paper introduces a semantic digital library framework based on grid technology. It follows the OGSA specifications for the development of grid infrastructures capable of efficiently handling such information. It is a service‐oriented approach based on common web technologies such as the web browser and web server. The design principles of the proposed framework take into account the emerging need to exploit the semantics of its underlying information through the employment of adequate open standard technologies such as RDF and OWL.

Although semantic exploitation of large data sets used to be a difficult and resource‐consuming activity usually taking place in specialized, highly equipped laboratories, this work demonstrates that emerging technologies like the grid and emerging standards like RDF/OWL are capable of bringing such research closer to the average workstation.

The lack of a working prototype based on the proposed framework limits the usefulness of the results deriving from this paper.

This paper can serve as a starting point to researchers wishing to conduct research in the area of the semantic grid as applied to digital library infrastructures.

Drawing on anthropological perspectives, this paper argues that the fungibility of objects and the ability to exchange them for money is a defining characteristic of capitalist markets. In contrast, other systems of reckoning value emphasize the unique relationships within which objects are embedded and their inability to stand for just any other thing. This paper further highlights the role of slavery in the origins and continued dominance of capitalism and the existence of alternative systems such as cooperativism and sharing that are often overlooked. This paper then examines the Saussurean and Peircean semiotics underlying the concept of money as an abstract sign and argues that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in blockchain technology contradict these theories by emphasizing pure uniqueness and rendering objects non-transformable or inconvertible. This paper concludes by warning against the dangers of a future where fungibility is absent, as it is necessary for life and the generation of new and different possibilities.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new benchmarking framework on the factors that influence digital library (DL) adoption by aligning them with the constructs of DL models to establish the likely critical success factors (CSFs) for DL implementation.

Concept mapping is used to illustrate the relationship between the information systems success model and DL frameworks. Technology organisation and environment (TOE) framework was chosen as the central theme and was mapped with the three DL frameworks reviewed (5S framework; the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture and the DELOS DL reference model) to come up with the likely success dimensions for DLs. A set of possible success factors was assembled from the literature on previous studies relating to factors that are critical to the success of information systems and DLs. The description of each DL potential success factors was finally developed as an item statement with verification from the literature review.

A total of 53 success factors items were assembled from literature represented by the final ten constructs of the CSFs; 16 items characterise DL technology, 13 items denote DL organisation and 24 items symbolise DL environment. Findings show that these factors may be good determinants for an effective implementation of DLs.

The outcome can positively influence the implementation of DLs worldwide.

This is the first study in library science that incorporates TOE with DL frameworks to come up with the success factors of DL implementation.

This article presents the semantic information theory, formulated by the philosopher Fred I. Dretske, as a contribution to the discussion of metatheories and their practical implications in the field of library and information science. Dretske’s theory is described in Knowledge and the flow of information. It is founded on mathematical communication theory but developed and elaborated into a cognitive, functionalistic theory, is individually oriented, and deals with the content of information. The topics are: the information process from perception to cognition, and how concept formation takes place in terms of digitisation. Other important issues are the concepts of information and knowledge, truth and meaning. Semantic information theory can be used as a frame of reference in order to explain, clarify and refute concepts currently used in library and information science, and as the basis for critical reviews of elements of the cognitive viewpoint in IR, primarily the notion of “potential information”. The main contribution of the theory lies in a clarification of concepts, but there are still problems regarding the practical applications. More research is needed to combine philosophical discussions with the practice of information and library science.