On the Realm of Virtual Colloquium

Electronic messaging and communication effectiveness in an ongoing work group

Identity and face are each an imagining of the self, or of another, within a public sphere involving multiple actors. Because they have come into language and discourse research from different directions, researchers frame them in such a way that they can seem only tangentially related. This article examines what binds and distinguishes them, by approaching a set of conversational data – all from Scotland, yet crossing perceived cultural and linguistic boundaries – from the point of view of both the face work and the identity work undertaken by the participants. Identity and face are often taken as representing durative and punctual ways of looking at the same phenomena. Yet explanations of punctual actions and events always have recourse to durative characteristics of those who perform them; and evidence for those durative characteristics is drawn from the punctual actions and events interpreted as embodying and indexing them. This complexity is multiplied by that of the different scales on which face and identity are observed and indexed.

Designing for youth across the Gulf: Fishbowl on how today's methods, theory and findings can support tomorrow's designs

Families living apart - with relatives and loved ones in different cities or countries - is not unusual. However, even though multiple communication technologies exist, communicating emotions can still be difficult. In this paper we present Silka: a device that supports long-distance communication by sending "smiles" and communicating presence in between traditional modes of communication, with the goal of enhancing bonds between two individuals or households. Silka's design is based on findings from an online survey, interviews and observations conducted to better understand how people communicate with loved ones and how they feel before and after communication. It aims to address worry and anxiety, which we found characterise the period between regular weekly, fortnightly or monthly calls.

With the popularization of computer animation techniques in the application fields, traditional cultural communication modes are gradually combined with modern computer animation techniques to develop new communication modes. As a cultural brand of the Chinese nation and treasure of Chinese martial arts, Tai Chi, is a precious cultural resource in our country. Through the analysis of computer animation techniques and traditional cultural communication modes, a communication mode for Tai Chi culture based on computer animation techniques is proposed, which plays a certain guiding role in the communication of Tai Chi culture.

The modern state legal mechanism for combating crime conceptually developed on the ideas of the classical understanding of the state and law. When transitioning to a digital socio-economic formation, its conceptual framework is subject to revision. This methodological problem requires interdisciplinary efforts on the part of specialists from all branches of law. Meanwhile, since “proceduralism” is recognized as the dominant feature of the new legal regulation and the new legal organization in the fight against crime, proceduralism acquires methodological significance. The procedural doctrine of the lawsuit, as a universal legal means of legal self-defense, should be the basis for a new model for resolving criminal law disputes, which can be presented on the digital platform of the state. The digital transformation of state and law makes it possible, at a new stage in the development of civilization, to revive the forms and means of direct democracy that have already been tested in history. Based on non-classical ideas about state and law, the authors propose to restore the accusatory process, popular accusation, free proof, “customary law” (in the form of “wiki-law”) using digital information and communication technologies. It is proposed to make the transition from the traditional investigative type of application of criminal law to a new type of legal organization of the resolution of criminal disputes, based on self-defense subjects of their interests, the interaction of the police, prosecutors, the public and business. The article attempts to rethink some fundamental provisions of the general theory of law, criminal law and process in the context of the concepts of “procedural determinism”, “anthropocentricity”,“ecosystem”, “state-as-platform”. The authors believe that dogmatic and the dogmatic style of thinking that they cultivate are not capable of giving new knowledge about how the legal mechanism for protection against crime should be arranged and work in the digital age.

The Canonical Debate Today: Crossing Disciplinary and National Boundaries

In the ever-evolving tapestry of the digital age, the seamless flow of information across borders has become the lifeblood of global commerce and communication. At the heart of this digital symphony lies cyberspace; an expansive, borderless realm where traditional concepts of jurisdiction and territoriality are constantly being redefined. As we navigate this brave new world, the complexities of international data transfers emerge as a critical area of concern, demanding our attention and innovative thinking. The digital age has ushered in an era where data is often likened to the new oil, fueling the engines of the global economy. From multinational corporations orchestrating complex supply chains to individuals engaging in cross-border e-commerce, the ability to transfer data across international boundaries is indispensable. It is estimated that by 2025, the global data sphere will grow to 175 zettabytes, with a significant portion of this data crossing international borders. Yet, with this exponential growth comes a web of legal complexities, as data often traverses multiple jurisdictions, each with its own regulatory tapestry. Historically, jurisdiction has been a function of geography, with clear-cut boundaries delineating the reach of legal authority. However, in the digital realm, where information can be transmitted instantaneously across continents, these boundaries blur, posing significant challenges for legal frameworks that were designed for a pre-digital era. The inherent fluidity in data storage and transfer underscores the need to rethink how jurisdiction is determined and exercised in the digital age. As we delve deeper into the complexities of cyberspace, we will explore the historical context and traditional concepts of jurisdiction and territoriality, examine case studies and legal precedents, and analyze the challenges in determining applicable law for data transfers. We will also address the tautological issues that arise in international data transfers and propose both theoretical and practical solutions. Finally, we will discuss the role of sovereignty and the rule of law in data transfers, and offer recommendations for harmonizing international data protection laws to create a unified framework that balances data privacy with global data flows. In this brave new world of digital interconnectedness, the stakes are high, and the need for innovative legal solutions is paramount. Let us embark on this journey together, navigating the complexities of international data transfers and striving to create a more secure and compliant digital future.

The concept of diversity has become an issue at the forefront of discussions in all sectors of society. This includes the business centers and their workplaces, higher education, and non-profit institutions. As the world becomes more and more ethnically diverse, methods of communication also become even more relevant, critical even. One way in which organizations are finding it easier to engage with those within their walls and get their ideas across to one another is through technology and the availability of social media. Digital tools such as Facebook, Twitter, email, YouTube, smart phones, virtual conferencing, Skype, and an indispensible amount of downloadable software applications, have paved the way for easier communication and the ability to reach not only diverse groups but in a varied number of ways. Over the past couple of decades, the ability to communicate has rapidly transitioned away from traditional modes of communication in the vein of land-based telephone lines, written letters, and verbal communication. This chapter focuses on how two major areas of society communicate with their diverse constituencies utilizing these sundry technologies. Specifically, it examines successful strategies higher education and businesses employ to disseminate information to diverse groups.

Economic development has long acknowledged the significance of financial innovation and technological advancement. Communication technology increases the availability of information, generates new modes of communication, restructures production processes, and enhances the efficacy of a wide range of economic operations. This study investigates the effects of digital financial inclusion and information and communication technology (ICT) on economic growth in 38 OECD nations between 2004 and 2020, with a focus on the contributions of financial development and investments in non-financial assets. To this end, advanced econometric methodologies are employed to conduct an exhaustive empirical analysis utilizing second-generation panel unit root and cointegration techniques. The results demonstrate a positive correlation between digital financial inclusion, information and communication technology, population growth, and non-financial investments in OECD nations. It is recommended that OECD policymakers promote digital financial inclusion by utilizing cost-effective digital technologies to reach currently financially excluded and underserved populations. This can be achieved through a variety of formal financial services that are tailored to their needs and responsibly delivered at a cost that is affordable to customers and sustainable for providers. Moreover, policymakers are recommended to promote information and communication technologies that strengthen the means for implementing Sustainable Development Goals through international cooperation and coordination, technology transfer, capacity building, strengthening multi-stakeholder partnerships, and data monitoring and accountability. Finally, a detailed conclusion is provided to discuss the research limitations and future directions.

In this world of competitive business environment where every thing is getting supersonic speed, the old business trends are not finding them to provide the most suitable business solutions. Business world is becoming global market and the business rules, business processes and techniques are also required to be updated. The new threats and challenges are emerged as the outcome of globalization though the opportunities are also enhanced. The one of the major challenges of the business world is handling of huge data volumes to find relevant data and then to extract relevant and meaningful information to design planning and strategy to get the maximum benefit in any business domain. Although it seems to be Electronic commerce (e-Commerce) is a general concept which covers any form of business transaction or information exchange executed using information and communication technologies (ICT's).E-Commerce includes electronic trading of goods, services and electronic material e-Commerce systems include commercial transactions on the Internet but their scope is much wider than this e.g Electronic Market, Electronic Data Exchange (EDI), Internet Commerce. It is the commercialization and popularization of the Internet that has put e-Commerce towards the top of the public and political agenda but e-Commerce using electronic markets and EDI have been an established part of the business scene for at least a decade prior to the 'Internet era'. This article is provides an account of electronic commerce with respect to the link with various stake holders.

If I find out that you have bought a $90 red light sabre, Tara, well there's going to be trouble. -- Kevin Brabazon A few Saturdays ago, my 71-year old father tried to convince me of imminent responsibilities. As I am considering the purchase of a house, there are mortgages, bank fees and years of misery to endure. Unfortunately, I am not an effective Big Picture Person. The lure of the light sabre is almost too great. For 30 year old Generation Xers like myself, it is more than a cultural object. It is a textual anchor, and a necessary component to any future history of the present. Revelling in the aura of the Australian release for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, this paper investigates popular memory, an undertheorised affiliation between popular culture and cultural studies.1 The excitement encircling the Star Wars prequel has been justified in terms of 'hype' or marketing. Such judgements frame the men and women cuing for tickets, talking Yodas and light sabres as fools or duped souls who need to get out more. My analysis explores why Star Wars has generated this enthusiasm, and how cultural studies can mobilise this passionate commitment to consider notions of popularity, preservation and ephemerality. We'll always have Tattooine. Star Wars has been a primary popular cultural social formation for a generation. The stories of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Darth Vader, Yoda, C-3PO and R2D2 offer an alternative narrative for the late 1970s and 1980s. It was a comfort to have the Royal Shakespearian tones of Alec Guinness confirming that the Force would be with us, through economic rationalism, unemployment, Pauline Hanson and Madonna discovering yoga. The Star Wars Trilogy, encompassing A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, was released between 1977 and 1983. These films have rarely slipped from public attention, being periodically 'brought back' through new cinematic and video releases. The currency of Star Wars is matched with the other great popular cultural formations of the post-war period: the James Bond series and Star Trek. One reason for the continued success of these programmes is that other writers, film makers and producers cannot leave these texts alone. Bond survives not only through Pierce Brosnan's good looks, but the 'Hey Baby' antics of Austin Powers. Star Trek, through four distinct series, has become an industry that will last longer than Voyager's passage back from the Delta Quadrant. Star Wars, perhaps even more effectively than the other popular cultural heavyweights, has enmeshed itself into other filmic and televisual programming. Films like Spaceballs and television quizzes on Good News Week keep the knowledge system and language current and pertinent.2 Like Umberto Eco realised of Casablanca, Star Wars is "a living example of living textuality" (199). Both films are popular because of imperfections and intertextual archetypes, forming a filmic quilt of sensations and affectivities. Viewers are aware that "the cliches are talking among themselves" (Eco 209). As these cinematic texts move through time, the depth and commitment of these (con)textual dialogues are repeated and reinscribed. To hold on to a memory is to isolate a moment or an image and encircle it with meaning. Each day we experience millions of texts: some are remembered, but most are lost. Some popular cultural texts move from ephemera to popular memory to history. In moving beyond individual reminiscences -- the personal experiences of our lifetime -- we enter the sphere of popular culture. Collective or popular memory is a group or community experience of a textualised reality. For example, during the Second World War, there were many private experiences, but certain moments arch beyond the individual. Songs by Vera Lynn are fully textualised experiences that become the fodder for collective memory. Similarly, Star Wars provides a sense-making mechanism for the 1980s. Like all popular culture, these texts allow myriad readership strategies, but there is collective recognition of relevance and importance. Popular memory is such an important site because it provides us, as cultural critics, with a map of emotionally resonant sites of the past, moments that are linked with specific subjectivities and a commonality of expression. While Star Wars, like all popular cultural formations, has a wide audience, there are specific readings that are pertinent for particular groups. To unify a generation around cultural texts is an act of collective memory. As Harris has suggested, "sometimes, youth does interesting things with its legacy and creatively adapts its problematic into seemingly autonomous cultural forms" (79). Generation X refers to an age cohort born between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. Finally cultural studies theorists have found a Grail subculture. Being depthless, ambivalent, sexually repressed and social failures, Xers are a cultural studies dream come true. They were the children of the media revolution. Star Wars is integral to this textualised database. A fan on the night of the first screening corrected a journalist: "we aren't Generation X, we are the Star Wars generation" (Brendon, in Miller 9). An infatuation and reflexivity with the media is the single framework of knowledge in which Xers operate. This shared understanding is the basis for comedy, and particularly revealed (in Australia) in programmes like The Panel and Good News Week. Television themes, lines of film dialogue and contemporary news broadcasts are the basis of the game show. The aesthetics of life transforms television into a real. Or, put another way, "individual lives may be fragmented and confused but McDonald's is universal" (Hopkins 17). A group of textual readers share a literacy, a new way of reading the word and world of texts. Nostalgia is a weapon. The 1990s has been a decade of revivals: from Abba to skateboards, an era of retro reinscription has challenged linear theories of history and popular culture. As Timothy Carter reveals, "we all loved the Star Wars movies when we were younger, and so we naturally look forward to a continuation of those films" (9). The 1980s has often been portrayed as a bad time, of Thatcher and Reagan, cold war brinkmanship, youth unemployment and HIV. For those who were children and (amorphously phrased) 'young adults' of this era, the popular memory is of fluorescent fingerless gloves, Ray Bans, 'Choose Life' t-shirts and bubble skirts. It was an era of styling mousse, big hair, the Wham tan, Kylie and Jason and Rick Astley's dancing. Star Wars action figures gave the films a tangibility, holding the future of the rebellion in our hands (literally). These memories clumsily slop into the cup of the present. The problem with 'youth' is that it is semiotically too rich: the expression is understood, but not explained, by discourses as varied as the educational system, family structures, leisure industries and legal, medical and psychological institutions. It is a term of saturation, where normality is taught, and deviance is monitored. All cultural studies theorists carry the baggage of the Birmingham Centre into any history of youth culture. The taken-for-granted 'youth as resistance' mantra, embodied in Resistance through Rituals and Subculture: The Meaning of Style, transformed young people into the ventriloquist's puppet of cultural studies. The strings of the dancing, smoking, swearing and drinking puppet took many years to cut. The feminist blade of Angela McRobbie did some damage to the fraying filaments, as did Dick Hebdige's reflexive corrections in Hiding in the Light. However, the publications, promotion and pedagogy of Gen X ended the theoretical charade. Gen X, the media sophisticates, played with popular culture, rather than 'proper politics.' In Coupland's Generation X, Claire, one of the main characters believed that "Either our lives become stories, or there's just no way to get through them." ... We know that this is why the three of us left our lives behind us and came to the desert -- to tell stories and to make our own lives worthwhile tales in the process. (8) Television and film are part of this story telling process. This intense connection generated an ironic and reflexive literacy in the media. Television became the basis for personal pleasures and local resistances, resulting in a disciplined mobilisation of popular cultural surfaces. Even better than the real thing. As the youngest of Generation Xers are now in their late twenties, they have moved from McJobs to careers. Robert Kizlik, a teacher trainer at an American community college expressed horror as the lack of 'commonsensical knowledge' from his new students. He conducted a survey for teachers training in the social sciences, assessing their grasp of history. There was one hundred percent recognition of such names as Madonna, Mike Tyson, and Sharon Stone, but they hardly qualify as important social studies content ... . I wondered silently just what it is that these students are going to teach when they become employed ... . The deeper question is not that we have so many high school graduates and third and fourth year college students who are devoid of basic information about American history and culture, but rather, how, in the first place, these students came to have the expectations that they could become teachers. (n. pag.) Kizlik's fear is that the students, regardless of their enthusiasm, had poor recognition of knowledge he deemed significant and worthy. His teaching task, to convince students of the need for non-popular cultural knowledges, has resulted in his course being termed 'boring' or 'hard'. He has been unable to reconcile the convoluted connections between personal stories and televisual n

In this Q&A, the Review talks to Delphine van Solinge and Massimo Marelli of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Van Solinge is the ICRC's focal point for understanding how digital technologies and the spread of harmful information affect populations living in conflict environments, and what this means for humanitarian action. To this end, her portfolio is focused on exploring, on behalf of the ICRC and through partnerships, how to mitigate the risks that digital technologies bring in humanitarian settings and ensure relevant protection responses in the digital age. Marelli is Head of the ICRC's Data Protection Office (DPO). During his tenure with the ICRC, the organization has chartered new pathways for how it can carry out its operational work, while ensuring that the data of the affected people which it serves, as well those of its employees, are well protected.During this conversation, van Solinge and Marelli discuss how their areas of work complement and reinforce each other, forming two halves of the same coin with regard to how digital information and data can both be used for positive change and misused in humanitarian settings. Marelli highlights how humanitarian organizations process, protect and use data and digital information. Van Solinge discusses how through misinformation, disinformation and hate speech, information can be manipulated and spread using digital technologies – particularly in the age of the COVID-19, when populations are more reliant on digital communication technologies. Among the issues they discuss are how digital technologies can be used positively, the ethical considerations that humanitarian organizations should take into account, and the possible paths forward for public–private sector collaborations on this theme.

In the digital age, managing urban heritage sites presents unique challenges that necessitate the integration of smart technologies. This review assesses the integration and impact of smart city initiatives on sustainable environmental management in urban heritage sites. Through a comprehensive literature review of 84 papers from ScienceDirect and Scopus, this study categorizes the findings into three themes: Smart City Initiative Analysis, Heritage Site Considerations, and Smart Technology Integration Models. The review highlights the significant contributions of smart technologies, such as digital analysis, 3D documentation, and Information and communication technology, in enhancing sustainability and preserving cultural values. Case studies from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Seville, and Uzbek illustrate these initiatives’ practical applications and outcomes. The paper underscores the need for robust policies, public awareness, and multidisciplinary collaboration to maximize the benefits of smart city initiatives. Finally, the study identifies gaps in current research and suggests further research directions for integrating smart technologies into urban heritage site management.

The digital revolution is bringing about rapid changes across society based on the development of information and communication technology (ICT), and this is demanding changes in the role and function of traditional social safety nets. The digital social safety net is a system that helps individuals and communities protect themselves from economic and social shocks, and aims to improve accessibility, increase efficiency, and strengthen inclusiveness of social services by utilizing digital technology. This paper analyzes the major legal tasks for establishing a digital social safety net, including personal information protection, resolving the digital divide, digital financial regulation, e-government operation, and reorganizing laws related to information and communication. Personal information protection is a key element for enhancing the reliability of the digital social safety net, and legal measures are required to minimize data security and privacy infringement risks. In addition, legal measures for expanding the Internet infrastructure and digital literacy education are important to resolve the digital divide. We explore the legal approaches of each country through Estonia's e-government and digital ID system, Finland's basic income experiment, and Korea's digital new deal and personal information protection cases, and examine the importance of international cooperation and legal harmonization through these cases. The cases of each country provide various implications for the legal implementation of the digital social safety net, and emphasize the need to establish international standards and a cooperative system for the development of a digital social safety net at a global level. The successful implementation of a digital social safety net is possible through the establishment of a legal and institutional foundation and continuous review and improvement. This will ensure that all citizens can enjoy the benefits of the digital age fairly and contribute to strengthening social inclusion and stability. Through these efforts, we can build an inclusive and sustainable society, which will be an essential direction for the development of a social safety net suitable for the digital age. Such development will play an important role in laying the foundation for the stability and prosperity of the future society.