Making sense of our connected world
How Blockchain can foster innovation in science
Academia is stuck in an analogue thinking. Blockchain technology, a decentral storage system, has the capacity to make digital goods immutable, transparent, and provable and it could solve many of the issues…
Mountain or Molehill? The next step in e-education in Kenya is just about to begin
Starting last Monday, school life for students in 150 primary schools in Kenya is supposed to change significantly. They will be part of the first 12 week roll-out phase of the Digital…
Misconceptions about academic data sharing
Written by Benedikt Fecher & Gert Wagner. In a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors Longo and Drazen critically assessed the concept of data sharing in…
The pain will pass, yet, the title might stay. PhD-ing in six stages (to be continued)
This blog post is dedicated to the experiences HIIG doctoral researcher Martina made during the first two years of her PhD research. With a slightly ironic tone, Martina describes six…
Big data: from the doom of sociology to its method
This article was published first by the Internet Policy Review. Once, Mike Savage predicted the downfall of sociology – but now, he revises his pessimism. In 2007, his famous essay…
Seizing the Moment – Is Our Understanding of Open Access Too Shortsighted?
Two weeks ago, the entire editorial board of the journal Lingua quit and announced they would launch a new journal named Glossa. Lingua’s executive editor Johan Rooryck said the reason for the…
How COVID-19 impacts digital technologies
The current lockdown is boosting online activity – everything is increasingly shifting to the digital sphere. In this dossier we ask if, how and why the Corona pandemic will affect key subjects of digital technologies. What does this mean for the regulation of content on digital platforms? How is Covid-19 activating the digital society? How does it transform our online culture? How safe are tracing apps? What lessons can be learned regarding cyber security? Busy times for our researchers!
How metaphors shape the digital society
Cloud, Big Data, Piracy, Virus are common terms in the debates about digital technologies. At the same time they are methaphors that originate from other fields than technology. What normative or political baggage do they therefore carry? How does this vocabulary shape the emerging digital society? In the series of articles on the How metaphors shape the digital society different authors analyse the assumptions and meanings of metaphors in the digital era.
