Search results for "Cybernetics"
showing 10 items of 331 documents
Cybernetics of Value Co-creation
2014
The paradigm shift from value creation to value "co-creation" calls for a deeper grasp of organizational learning in marketing theory. This paper adopts a cybernetic view of the process of value co-creation to shed light on its relevant aspects and to supply a framework to implement operations and strategies to foster this process. Can cybernetics help to better understand the process of value co-creation? Can the Viable System Model (Beer, 1979) be a sound approach to shape a more effective value co-creation process able to achieve higher satisfaction and value? In this theoretical paper we will show how cybernetic can be effectively used to give a positive answer to both questions above
Simulating mechanical consequences of voluntary movement upon whole-body equilibrium: the arm-raising paradigm revisited.
2001
Voluntary arm-raising movement performed during the upright human stance position imposes a perturbation to an already unstable bipedal posture characterised by a high body centre of mass (CoM). Inertial forces due to arm acceleration and displacement of the CoM of the arm which alters the CoM position of the whole body represent the two sources of disequilibrium. A current model of postural control explains equilibrium maintenance through the action of anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs) that would offset any destabilising effect of the voluntary movement. The purpose of this paper was to quantify, using computer simulation, the postural perturbation due to arm raising movement. The m…
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE VS DESIGNER: THE IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON DESIGN PRACTICE
2021
Technological advances, including the use of possibilities offered by artificial intelligence (AI), have become an area of strategic importance and a key driver of economic development. AI today has been integrated into a variety of economies, the design industry is no exception: AI is being increasingly applied in the development of design products and services. However, as technological breakthroughs rapidly shift the borders between the work tasks performed by humans and those performed by machines and algorithms, global labor markets are undergoing major transformations. This raises the question: how are these changes affecting and will continue to affect designers’ work in the future? …
Collective behaviours: from biochemical kinetics to electronic circuits
2013
In this work we aim to highlight a close analogy between cooperative behaviors in chemical kinetics and cybernetics; this is realized by using a common language for their description, that is mean-field statistical mechanics. First, we perform a one-to-one mapping between paradigmatic behaviors in chemical kinetics (i.e., non-cooperative, cooperative, ultra-sensitive, anti-cooperative) and in mean-field statistical mechanics (i.e., paramagnetic, high and low temperature ferromagnetic, anti-ferromagnetic). Interestingly, the statistical mechanics approach allows a unified, broad theory for all scenarios and, in particular, Michaelis-Menten, Hill and Adair equations are consistently recovered…
The Multifaceted Nature of Agency and Professional Learning
2017
The present volume has aimed to cover a broad range of approaches to agency at work, exploring its relationship with professional learning and development. Thus, the chapters included in this book have discussed the role of agency in learning and development, considering a variety of working life contexts and applying both conceptual and empirical perspectives. This final chapter provides an overview of both the conceptual approaches and the empirical implementations. We see the perspectives as complementary. From the content of the book, we discern the phenomena as falling on two main dimensions, clustering at opposite ends of these dimensions. Thus, the following contrasts are evidenced: …
Between school and working life: Vocational teachers’ agency in boundary-crossing settings
2009
Abstract This paper investigates agency among vocational teachers with reference to boundary-crossing between school and working life. Our study utilised interviews with sixteen Finnish vocational teachers. Adopting a narrative analysis approach, we found that the teachers had a variety of forms of exercising agency in terms of decisions deliberately taken, and the discourse and actions following these decisions. These forms were: (i) restricted agency, (ii) extensive agency, (iii) multifaceted balancing agency, (iv) situationally diverse agency, and (v) relationally emergent agency. The exercising of agency was intertwined with the main resources and constraints emerging from the teachers’…
Towards the definitive evaluation framework for cross-platform app development approaches
2019
Abstract Mobile app development is hindered by device fragmentation and vendor-specific modifications. Boundaries between devices blur with PC-tablet hybrids on the one side and wearables on the other. Future apps need to support a host of app-enabled devices with differing capabilities, along with their software ecosystems. Prior work on cross-platform app development concerned concepts and prototypes, and compared approaches that target smartphones. To aid choosing an appropriate framework and to support the scientific assessment of approaches, an up-to-date comparison framework is needed. Extending work on a holistic, weighted set of assessment criteria, we propose what could become the …
A learning model for the dual evolution of human social behaviors
2003
In this work we modelize, with an abstract mathematical model by computer simulation, the processes that have made to appear in the world a strong duality between orient and occident, by combining changes in conditions of initialization, natural system and the opposition gregarious/individualism of the social behaviors. Finally we present a statistical study of the influence of the repression adaptability, resignation and recycling on the ecological destruction and social evolution. This model can help us to analyze if the current capitalist globalization can be stopped, changed or regulated, and if it is possible to overcome it towards a Free Scientific Society.
Accountable to Whom? : The Use of Media to Communicate Educational Accountability to Latino Families in a California Middle School
2018
This paper explores how one Title I middle school in California responds to high-stakes accountability during an era of educational reform, and how one first-generation Latino immigrant family comes to understand the school’s focus on test scores, high expectations, and academic achievement. Drawing from a larger Language Socialization study that utilizes participation observation and interview data, the paper provides ethnographic snapshots to demonstrate the ways in which one school communicated under, with, and through high stakes educational reform policies via a variety of media while functioning under Program Improvement status, and how the focal family participated in and negotiated …
Government policies and services: an approach to the international context
2009
This special issue analyses the relationship between services and industrial policy. Such a relationship covers a wide variety of aspects, going from measures designed to ensure the competential framework within which business activities are carried out, up to actions aimed at enabling structural change in service industries, with the incorporation of innovation as the essential factor for competitiveness. Two trends can currently be discerned. On the one hand, there is a growing tendency towards the decentralisation and specificity of public policy related to service industries. On the other, indirect actions aimed at strengthening the institutional context (technological infrastructures, …