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Geographies of digital exclusion : data power and inequality
\"Today's urban environments are layered with data and algorithms that fundamentally shape how we perceive and move through space. Now that over half of humanity is connected to the internet, are our digitally dense environments continuing to amplify inequalities rather than alleviate them? This book looks at the key contours of information inequality, and who, what, and where gets left out when space becomes digital. Platforms like Google Maps and Wikipedia have become important gateways to understanding the world. This book reveals how these platforms are characterised by significant gaps and biases, often driven by processes of exclusion. As a consequence, their digital augmentations tend to be refractions rather than reflections: they highlight only some facets of the world at the expense of others. However, this doesn't mean that more equitable futures aren't possible. By outlining the mechanisms through which our digital and material worlds intersect, the authors conclude with a roadmap for what alternative digital geographies might look like.\"--Back cover.
Book
Geographies of Digital Exclusion
Today's urban environments are layered with data and algorithms that fundamentally shape how we perceive and move through space. But are our digitally dense environments continuing to amplify inequalities rather than alleviate them? This book looks at the key contours of information inequality, and who, what and where gets left out. Platforms like Google Maps and Wikipedia have become important gateways to understanding the world, and yet they are characterised by significant gaps and biases, often driven by processes of exclusion. As a result, their digital augmentations tend to be refractions rather than reflections: they highlight only some facets of the world at the expense of others. This doesn't mean that more equitable futures aren't possible. By outlining the mechanisms through which our digital and material worlds intersect, the authors conclude with a roadmap for what alternative digital geographies might look like.
eBook
The reference guide to data sources
Questions about statistics have long been a staple at library reference desks. The rise of the Internet and the spread of statistical software packages have blurred the line between statistics reference and data reference. This guide is designed to help you answer basic data reference questions without having to refer to a dedicated data services librarian. This concise sourcebook takes the guesswork out of locating the best sources of data, a process more important than ever as the data landscape grows increasingly cluttered. This thoroughly annotated guide cuts through the data jargon to help librarians and researchers find exactly what they're looking for.
eBook
Networked
Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, pictures and videos to post and discuss. Our perpetual connectedness gives us endless opportunities to be part of the give-and-take of networking. Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked , Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making, and personal interaction. The new social operating system of \"networked individualism\" liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks. Rainie and Wellman outline the \"triple revolution\" that has brought on this transformation: the rise of social networking, the capacity of the Internet to empower individuals, and the always-on connectivity of mobile devices. Drawing on extensive evidence, they examine how the move to networked individualism has expanded personal relationships beyond households and neighborhoods; transformed work into less hierarchical, more team-driven enterprises; encouraged individuals to create and share content; and changed the way people obtain information. Rainie and Wellman guide us through the challenges and opportunities of living in the evolving world of networked individuals.
eBook
Digital humanities
A visionary report on the revitalization of the liberal arts tradition in the electronically inflected, design-driven, multimedia language of the twenty-first century. Digital_Humanities is a compact, game-changing report on the state of contemporary knowledge production. Answering the question “Whatis digital humanities?,” it provides an in-depth examination of an emerging field. This collaboratively authored and visually compelling volume explores methodologies and techniques unfamiliar to traditional modes of humanistic inquiry—including geospatial analysis, data mining, corpus linguistics, visualization, and simulation—to show their relevance for contemporary culture. Written by five leading practitioner-theorists whose varied backgrounds embody the intellectual and creative diversity of the field, Digital_Humanities is a vision statement for the future, an invitation to engage, and a critical tool for understanding the shape of new scholarship.
eBook
Cloud-edge hybrid deep learning framework for scalable IoT resource optimization
In the dynamic environment of the Internet of Things (IoT), edge and cloud computing play critical roles in analysing and storing data from numerous connected devices to produce valuable insights. Efficient resource allocation and workload distribution are vital to ensuring continuous and reliable service in growing IoT ecosystems with increasing data volumes and changing application demands. This study proposes a novel optimisation approach utilising deep learning to tackle these challenges. The integration of Deep Q-Networks (DQN) and Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) offers a practical approach to addressing the dynamic characteristics of IoT applications. The hybrid algorithm's primary characteristic is its capacity to simultaneously fulfil multiple objectives, including reducing response times, enhancing resource efficiency, and decreasing operational costs. DQN facilitates the formulation of optimal resource allocation strategies in intricate and unpredictable environments. PPO enhances policies in continuous action spaces to guarantee reliable performance in real-time, dynamic IoT settings. This method achieves an optimal equilibrium between policy learning and optimisation, rendering it suitable for contemporary IoT systems. This method improves numerous IoT applications, including smart cities, industrial automation, and healthcare. The hybrid DQN-PPO-GNN-RL model addresses bottlenecks by dynamically managing computing and network resources, allowing for efficient operations in low-latency, high-demand environments such as autonomous systems, sensor networks, and real-time monitoring. The use of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) improves the accuracy of resource representation, while reinforcement learning-based scheduling allows for seamless adaptation to changing workloads. Simulations using real-world IoT data on the iFogSim platform showed significant improvements: task scheduling time was reduced by 21%, operational costs by 17%, and energy consumption by 22%. The method reliably provided equitable resource distribution, with values between 0.93 and 0.99, guaranteeing efficient allocation throughout the network. This hybrid methodology establishes a novel benchmark for scalable, real-time resource management in extensive, data-centric IoT ecosystems, consequently enhancing system performance and operational efficiency.
Journal Article
Social capital and Internet use in an age-comparative perspective with a focus on later life
Older adults (aged 65+) are still less likely to adopt the Internet when compared to other age groups, although their usage is increasing. To explore the societal effects of Internet usage, scholars have been using social capital as an analytical tool. Social capital pertains to the resources that are potentially available in one's social ties. As the Internet becomes a prominent source of information, communication, and participation in industrialized countries, it is critical to study how it affects social resources from an age-comparative perspective. Research has found a positive association between Internet use and social capital, though limited attention has been paid to older adults. Studies have also found a positive association between social capital and wellbeing, health, sociability, and social support amongst older adults. However, little is known about how Internet usage or lack thereof relates to their social capital. To address this gap, we used a mixed-methods approach to examine the relationship between Internet usage and social capital and whether and how it differs by age. For this, we surveyed a representative sample of 417 adults (18+) living in Lisbon, Portugal, of which 118 are older adults. Social capital was measured through bonding, bridging, and specific resources, and analyzed with Latent Class Modeling and logistic regressions. Internet usage was measured through frequency and type of use. Fourteen follow-up semi-structured interviews helped contextualize the survey data. Our findings show that social capital decreased with age but varied for each type of Internet user. Older adults were less likely to have a high level of social capital; yet within this age group, frequent Internet users had higher levels than other users and non-users. On the one hand, the Internet seems to help maintain, accrue, and even mobilize social capital. On the other hand, it also seems to reinforce social inequality and accumulated advantage (known as the Matthew effect).
Journal Article
Mapping, intensities and future prediction of land use/land cover dynamics using google earth engine and CA- artificial neural network model
Mapping of land use/ land cover (LULC) dynamics has gained significant attention in the past decades. This is due to the role played by LULC change in assessing climate, various ecosystem functions, natural resource activities and livelihoods in general. In Gedaref landscape of Eastern Sudan, there is limited or no knowledge of LULC structure and size, degree of change, transition, intensity and future outlook. Therefore, the aims of the current study were to (1) evaluate LULC changes in the Gedaref state, Sudan for the past thirty years (1988–2018) using Landsat imageries and the random forest classifier, (2) determine the underlying dynamics that caused the changes in the landscape structure using intensity analysis, and (3) predict future LULC outlook for the years 2028 and 2048 using cellular automata-artificial neural network (CA-ANN). The results exhibited drastic LULC dynamics driven mainly by cropland and settlement expansions, which increased by 13.92% and 319.61%, respectively, between 1988 and 2018. In contrast, forest and grassland declined by 56.47% and 56.23%, respectively. Moreover, the study shows that the gains in cropland coverage in Gedaref state over the studied period were at the expense of grassland and forest acreage, whereas the gains in settlements partially targeted cropland. Future LULC predictions showed a slight increase in cropland area from 89.59% to 90.43% and a considerable decrease in forest area (0.47% to 0.41%) between 2018 and 2048. Our findings provide reliable information on LULC patterns in Gedaref region that could be used for designing land use and environmental conservation frameworks for monitoring crop produce and grassland condition. In addition, the result could help in managing other natural resources and mitigating landscape fragmentation and degradation.
Journal Article