Virtuality and Capabilities in a World of Ambient Intelligence


Book Description

This book is about power and freedoms in our technological world and has two main objectives. The first is to demonstrate that a theoretical exploration of the algorithmic governmentality hypothesis combined with the capability approach is useful for a better understanding of power and freedoms in Ambient Intelligence, a world where information and communication technologies are invisible, interconnected, context aware, personalized, adaptive to humans and act autonomously. The second is to argue that these theories are useful for a better comprehension of privacy and data protection concepts and the evolution of their regulation. Having these objectives in mind, the book outlines a number of theses based on two threads: first, the elimination of the social effects of uncertainty and the risks to freedoms and, second, the vindication of rights. Inspired by and building on the outcomes of different philosophical and legal approaches, this book embodies an effort to better understand the challenges posed by Ambient Intelligence technologies, opening paths for more effective realization of rights and rooting legal norms in the preservation of the potentiality of human capabilities.




Progress in Science, Progress in Society


Book Description

This book addresses current societal debates around the globe. Written by respected researchers from France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Portugal and Italy, the chapters are based on presentations given at a conference organized by the European Academy of Sciences, in partnership with the Royal Academy of Belgium and French Academy of Sciences, in Brussels (Belgium) in November 2016. The book approaches science and society from a perspective of progress. Does progress in science ultimately translate into progress in society? How can we ensure that scientific progress becomes both materially and intellectually beneficial for society, including people who are far away from or socially excluded from it? Progress is a common feature of science and of human societies. There is no doubt that one of the driving forces of the material and intellectual progress of mankind has been science and technology. However, these are not the only forces acting on human history, so that the role of science and technology is not always fully recognized and sometimes even rejected. The various chapters of this book cover many aspects of these issues, arriving at valuable new insights.




Digital Data Collection and Information Privacy Law


Book Description

In Digital Data Collection and Information Privacy Law, Mark Burdon argues for the reformulation of information privacy law to regulate new power consequences of ubiquitous data collection. Examining developing business models, based on collections of sensor data - with a focus on the 'smart home' - Burdon demonstrates the challenges that are arising for information privacy's control-model and its application of principled protections of personal information exchange. By reformulating information privacy's primary role of individual control as an interrupter of modulated power, Burdon provides a foundation for future law reform and calls for stronger information privacy law protections. This book should be read by anyone interested in the role of privacy in a world of ubiquitous and pervasive data collection.




Services Computing – SCC 2022


Book Description

This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Services Computing 2022, SCC 2022, held as part of SCF 2022 during December 10-14, 2022 in Honolulu, USA. The 8 full papers and 1 short paper presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 15 submissions. It covers the science and technology of leveraging computing and information technology to model, create, operate, and manage business services.




From Technological Humanity to Bio-technical Existence


Book Description

From Technological Humanity to Bio-technical Existence can be framed as a metaphysics of the present. It starts from the current epoch, an era increasingly marked not only by technology but also by technics in the most general sense, and asks how this affects human existence. The book asks what is called technics, what is called humanity, how these relate to one another, and how changes in these notions oblige us to revise the philosophical notion of existence. It investigates how the idea of technological humanity—of technology as an extension and instrument of the human—is discovered and deconstructed by Martin Heidegger, Helmuth Plessner, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Bernard Stiegler, and Giorgio Agamben. Finally, the book presents a new idea of bio-technical existence, one that underlies these philosophers' works without being fully elaborated. This idea—of technics as a condition of humanity that humans share with other living and technical beings—is the author's own philosophical proposition and the final result of the book.




The Ethos of Digital Environments


Book Description

While self-driving cars and autonomous weapon systems have received a great deal of attention in media and research, the general requirements of ethical life in today’s digitalizing reality have not been made sufficiently visible and evaluable. This collection of articles from both distinguished and emerging authors working at the intersections of philosophy, literary theory, media, and technology does not intend to fix new moral rules. Instead, the volume explores the ethos of digital environments, asking how we can orient ourselves in them and inviting us to renewed moral reflection in the face of dilemmas they entail. The authors show how contemporary digital technologies model our perception, narration as well as our conceptions of truth, and investigate the ethical, moral, and juridical consequences of making public and societal infrastructures computational. They argue that we must make the structures of the digital environments visible and learn to care for them.




Ambient Intelligence– Software and Applications – 8th International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (ISAmI 2017)


Book Description

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a recent paradigm emerging from Artificial Intelligence, in which computers are used as proactive tools to assist people with their day-to-day activities, making their lives more comfortable. Another main goal of AmI originates from the human/computer interaction domain and focuses on offering ways to interact with systems in a more natural way by means of user-friendly interfaces. This field is evolving quickly, as can be witnessed by the emerging natural-language-based and gesture-based types of interaction. The inclusion of computational power and communication technologies in everyday objects is growing, and their embeddedness in our environments should be as invisible as possible. In order for AmI to be successful, human interaction with computing power and embedded systems in the surroundings should be smooth and take place without people actually noticing it. The only things people should notice in connection with AmI are more safety, comfort and wellbeing, emerging in a natural and inherent way. ISAmI is the International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence and aims to bring together researchers from the various disciplines that constitute the scientific field of Ambient Intelligence to present and discuss the latest results, new ideas, projects and lessons learned, especially in terms of software and applications.




Multimedia Techniques for Device and Ambient Intelligence


Book Description

Ambient Intelligence is a vision of the future where the world will be surrounded by electronic environments sensitive and responsive to people, wherein devices work in concert to support people in carrying out their everyday life activities, in an easy and natural way. This edited volume is based on the workshop Multimedia Techniques for Ambient Intelligence (MTDAI08), held in Mogliano Veneto, Italy in March 2008. Contributed by world renowned leaders in the field from academia and industry, this volume is dedicated to research on technologies used to improve the intelligence capability of multimedia devices for imaging, image processing and computer vision. Focuses on recent developments in digital signal processing, including evolutions in audiovisual signal processing, analysis, coding and authentication, and retrieval techniques. Designed for researchers and professionals, this book is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science and electrical engineering.




Ambient Intelligence – Software and Applications –,10th International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence


Book Description

This book presents the latest research on Ambient Intelligence including software and applications. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a paradigm emerging from Artificial Intelligence, in which computers are used as proactive tools for assisting people with their day-to-day activities, making everyone’s lives more comfortable. Another main concern of AmI originates from the human–computer interaction domain and focuses on offering ways to interact with systems in a more natural way by means of user-friendly interfaces. This field is evolving rapidly, as can be seen in emerging natural language and gesture-based types of interaction. This symposium was jointly organized by the Universidade do Minho, Technical University of Valencia, Hiroshima University, and University of Salamanca. The latest installment was held in Ávila, Spain, from 26th to 28th June 2019. The authors wish to thank the sponsors: IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Society, Spain Section Chapter and the IEEE Spain Section (Technical Co-Sponsor), IBM, Indra, Viewnext, Global Exchange, AEPIA, APPIA and AIR Institute.




Ambient Intelligence – Software and Applications – 14th International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence


Book Description

This book presents the latest research on Ambient Intelligence (AmI) presented in the 14th International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (ISAmI 2023). Among others, interested researchers can find works on the recognition of emotions and life conditions; smart applications for improving people’s quality of life and safety; smart cities and territories; as well as advances in data semantics, organization, and privacy, among others. The symposium was organized by the Universidade do Minho (Portugal), the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain), the University of Granada (Spain), the National Institute of Informatics (Japan), the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (Portugal), the Universidad de Salamanca (Spain), and with the AIR Institute (Spain) as sponsor. The present edition was hosted by the LASI and Centro Algoritmi of the University of Minho in Guimarães (Portugal) from July 12 to 14, 2023.