This online STS muhabbet, friendly but critically engaging conversation that took place between Yetiskin and Lovink will walk you through the stages of identifying the problems, threats, and possibilities that media technologies have brought to the table of not only users but also social science researchers who are mostly outside the current modes of technical knowledge production. It is a frank discussion on the biases of codes and algorithms upon which social media platforms have been built, the lack of technological awareness in academia, and the effect of this lack in terms of centralizing governance structures. Yetiskin and Lovink not only elaborate on the embeddedness of the political, economic and cultural in the technical but also the embeddedness of technical means in the way that we think and express ourselves. They also discuss the ways of politicizing the contemporary technologies, making them the matter of concern for both the users and the social scientists, and opening the black boxes of them i.e. making visible the invisible: media infrastructures, biased filters, the firewalls against the democratization of technologies. Enjoy your STS muhabbet!
MULTIFILE
The central thesis of this book is that access to information represents a vital aspect of contemporary society, encompassing participation, accountability, governance, transparency, the production of products, and the delivery of services. This view is widely shared, with commentators and scholars agreeing that access to information is a key factor in maintaining societal and economic stability. However, having access to information does not guarantee its accessibility. Assuming that information is (cognitively) interpretable is incorrect, as many practical examples illustrate. In the first chapter, this book offers insights into the challenge of access to information in a digitalized world. The concepts of access and accessibility are addressed, elucidating their meanings and delineating the ways in which they are influenced by the exponential growth of information. It examines how information technology introduces a novel access paradox. The second chapter examines the challenges to access to and accessibility of information in a digitalized, hybrid world where code may be law, where there is an inescapable loss of privacy, where doing business opens and restricts access, where literacy is a necessity to survive ‘digital divides,’ and where environmental concerns may have an adverse effect on high expectations. The third chapter presents a review of theoretical approaches to access and accessibility from seven different research perspectives: information access disparity, information seeking, information retrieval, information quality, information security, information management, and archives management. Six approaches to information access and accessibility are identified: [1] social, economic, and political participation; [2] ‘smart’ and evolving technology; [3] power and control; [4] sense-making; [5] knowledge representations, and [6] information survival. The fourth chapter addresses the bottlenecks and requirements for information access and accessibility, culminating in a checklist for organizations to assess these requirements within their own business processes. In the fifth chapter, some perspectives on artificial intelligence and the future of information access are presented. The sixth chapter represents an attempt to draw conclusions and to bring this book to a close.
CRYPTOPOLIS is a project supported by EU which focuses on the financial management knowledge of teachers and the emerging field of risk management and risk analysis of cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency has shown to be a vital and rapidly growing component in today’s digital economy therefore there is a need to include not just financial but also crypto literacy into the schools. Beside multiple investors and traders the market is attracting an increasing number of young individuals, viewing it as an easy way to make money. A large pool of teenagers and young adults want to hop on this train, but a lack of cryptocurrency literacy, as well as financial literacy in general amongst youth, together with their inexperience with investing makes them even more vulnerable to an already high-risk investment.Therefore, we aim to increase the capacity and readiness of secondary schools and higher educational institutions to manage an effective shift towards digital education in the field of crypto and financial literacy. The project will develop the purposeful use of digital technologies in financial and crypto education for teaching, learning, assessment and engagement.