In Blockchain Regulation and Governance in Europe, Michele Finck examines the relationship between blockchain technology and EU law and introduces the theme of blockchain governance. The book provides a general introduction to blockchains as both a regulatable and a regulatory technology and outlines the interaction between distributed ledger technology and specific areas of EU law, such as the General Data Protection Regulation. It should be read by anyone interested in EU law, the relationship between law, innovation and technology, and technology governance.

This book constitutes the revised and selected papers from the 5th International Workshop on Engineering Multi-Agent Systems held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in May 2018, in conjunction with AAMAS 2018. The 11 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 18 submissions. The book contains also the best paper of the workshop that has been published previously in another LNCS volume. The EMAS workshop focusses on the cross-fertilisation of ideas and experiences in the various fields with the aim to enhance knowledge and expertise in MAS engineering , to improve the state-of-the-art, to define new directions for MAS engineering, to investigate how established methodologies for engineering and large-scale and open MAS can be adapted.

Controversies in Digital Ethics explores ethical frameworks within digital culture. Through a combination of theoretical examination and specific case studies, the essays in this volume provide a vigorous examination of ethics in a highly individualistic and mediated world. Focusing on specific controversies-privacy, surveillance, identity politics, participatory culture-the authors in this volume provide a roadmap for navigating the thorny ethical issues in new media. Paul Booth and Amber Davisson bring together multiple writers working from different theoretical traditions to represent the multiplicity of ethics in the 21st century. Each essay has been chosen to focus on a particular issue in contemporary ethical thinking in order to both facilitate classroom discussion and further scholarship in digital media ethics. Accessible for students, but with a robust analysis providing contemporary scholarship in media ethics, this collection unites theory, case studies, and practice within one volume.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment, DIMVA 2018, held in Saclay, France, in June 2018. The 17 revised full papers and 1 short paper included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. They present topics such as malware analysis; mobile and embedded security; attacks; detection and containment; web and browser security; and reverse engineering.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Social, Cultural, and Behavioral Modeling, SBP-BRiMS 2018, held in Washington, DC, USA, in July 2018. The total of 27 short and 18 full papers presented in this volume was carefully reviewed and selected from 85 submissions. The contributions were organized in topical sections named: advances in sociocultural and behavioral process modeling; information, systems, and network science; applications for health and well-being; military and intelligence applications; cybersecurity.

This edited book is the first of its kind to systematically address the intersection of e-democracy and European politics. It contributes to an improved understanding of the role that new media technologies play in European politics and the potential impact that Internet-based political participation processes may have on modern-day representative democracy in Europe. A unique, holistic approach is taken to examine e-democracy's current state and prospects in Europe from three, partially overlapping and interlocking perspectives: e-public, e-participation and e-voting. The authors provide both theory-inspired reflections on e-democracy's contribution to the formation of the European public sphere, as well as rich empirical analyses of contemporary e-participation phenomena such as the European Citizens' Initiative or e-voting practices in Estonia. Based on the presented findings, the concluding chapter combines a prospective outlook with recommendations for future paths towards meaningful integration of e-democracy in European politics and governance.

This book collects multiple research articles studying the factors influencing wearable device usage. Based on multiple empirical studies, which research different kinds of wearable devices such as smartwatches, activity trackers, and smartglasses, potential drivers of wearable device usage are identified and evaluated. Overall, the book provides novel and important insights for both practitioners and academics, highlights their various practical implications for the development and marketing of wearable devices and offers outlooks on further research directions.

The author first introduces the basic framework for cultural algorithms and he then explains the social structure of a cultural system as a mechanism for the distribution of problem-solving information throughout a population. Three different models for social organizations are presented: the homogeneous (nuclear family), heterogeneous (expanded family), and subculture (descent groups) social models. The chapters that follow compare the learning capabilities of these social organizations relative to problems of varying complexity. The book concludes with a discussion of how the results can impact our understanding of social evolution.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2018, held in Waterloo, ON, Canada, in April 2018. The 21 revised full papers and 4 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. The papers demonstrate how persuasive technologies can help solve societal issues. They explore new frontiers for persuasive technology, such as personalized persuasion, new sensor usage, uses of big data, and new ways of creating engagement through gaming or social connection, focusing on a variety of technologies (e.g., web, wearables, AI, and smart environments). The papers are organized in the following topical sections: social means to persuasion; nudging and just-in-time interventions; design principles and practices; persuasive games; personalization and tailoring; and theoretical reflections.

This volume contains a selection of authoritative essays exploring the central questions raised by the conjectured technological singularity. In informed yet jargon-free contributions written by active research scientists, philosophers and sociologists, it goes beyond philosophical discussion to provide a detailed account of the risks that the singularity poses to human society and, perhaps most usefully, the possible actions that society and technologists can take to manage the journey to any singularity in a way that ensures a positive rather than a negative impact on society. The discussions provide perspectives that cover technological, political and business issues. The aim is to bring clarity and rigor to the debate in a way that will inform and stimulate both experts and interested general readers.

In this book readers will find technological discussions on the existing and emerging technologies across the different stages of the big data value chain. They will learn about legal aspects of big data, the social impact, and about education needs and requirements. And they will discover the business perspective and how big data technology can be exploited to deliver value within different sectors of the economy. The book is structured in four parts: Part I "The Big Data Opportunity" explores the value potential of big data with a particular focus on the European context. It also describes the legal, business and social dimensions that need to be addressed, and briefly introduces the European Commission's BIG project. Part II "The Big Data Value Chain" details the complete big data lifecycle from a technical point of view, ranging from data acquisition, analysis, curation and storage, to data usage and exploitation. Next, Part III "Usage and Exploitation of Big Data" illustrates the value creation possibilities of big data applications in various sectors, including industry, healthcare, finance, energy, media and public services. Finally, Part IV "A Roadmap for Big Data Research" identifies and prioritizes the cross-sectorial requirements for big data research, and outlines the most urgent and challenging technological, economic, political and societal issues for big data in Europe. This compendium summarizes more than two years of work performed by a leading group of major European research centers and industries in the context of the BIG project. It brings together research findings, forecasts and estimates related to this challenging technological context that is becoming the major axis of the new digitally transformed business environment.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Love and Sex with Robots, LSR 2017, held in December 2017, in London, UK. The 12 revised papers presented together with 2 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 83 submissions. One of the biggest challenges of the Love and Sex with Robots conference is to engage a wider scientific community in the discussions of the multifaceted topic, which has only recently established itself as an academic research topic within, but not limited to, the disciplines of artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, robotics, biomedical science and robot ethics etc.

This book constitutes the refereed conference proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, ACE 2017, held in London, UK, in December 2017. The 59 full papers presented were selected from a total of 229 submissions. ACE is by nature a multi-disciplinary conference, therefore attracting people across a wide spectrum of interests and disciplines including computer science, design, arts, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and marketing. The main goal is to stimulate discussion in the development of new and compelling entertainment computing and interactive art concepts and applications. The chapter 'eSport vs irlSport' is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

Systemic-structural activity theory (SSAT), founded by Gregory Bedny, is a relatively new unified framework for the study of efficiency of human performance, equipment, and software design. This book presents new recently obtained data in the field of SSAT that can be used in the study of efficiency and complexity of human performance. With increased cognitive demands to task performance, psychological methods of study of human activity play an important role. New principles and revised methods for the study of human work are supplemented by practical examples in manufacturing, construction industry, aviation, and human-computer interaction. Features: Presents new SSAT data Offers, for the first time, comparative analysis of studying efficiency and productivity from the perspective of ergonomics, psychology, and economics Includes examples of evaluation of economic efficiency of ergonomic innovations Provides advanced self-regulative models of activity and of all cognitive processes that describe strategies of task performance Introduces a new efficient method of morphological and analytical quantitative analysis Discusses new methods of evaluation of complexity and reliability of highly variable computerized and computer-based tasks Work Activity Studies Within the Framework of Ergonomics, Psychology, and Economics presents a comprehensive unified psychological theory that can be utilized as a general approach to the study of human activity not only for ergonomists and psychologists, but also for economists that study the efficiency of human performance.

This book discusses key ethical and deontological problems concerning the use of the most common information and communication devices. It focuses on the challenges of the new environments we now find ourselves in thanks to these technologies, and the issues arising from the newly established relationship between the virtual sphere and the real world. Each aspect is analysed by starting from a very specific example or a case study presenting a dilemma that can only be resolved by making a reasoned ethical choice. Rather than thematically addressing only one of the many aspects mentioned above (for example, computer ethics or social network ethics), the book presents a comprehensive introduction to, and a co-ordinated overview of, the various deontological and ethical issues regarding the spread of the most common information and communication technologies.

Multilayer networks, in particular multilayer social networks, where users belong to and interact on different networks at the same time, are an active research area in social network analysis, computer science, and physics. These networks have traditionally been studied within these separate research communities, leading to the development of several independent models and methods to deal with the same set of problems. This book unifies and consolidates existing practical and theoretical knowledge on multilayer networks including data collection and analysis, modeling, and mining of multilayer social network systems, the evolution of interconnected social networks, and dynamic processes such as information spreading. A single real dataset is used to illustrate the concepts presented throughout the book, demonstrating both the practical utility and the potential shortcomings of the various methods. Researchers from all areas of network analysis will learn new aspects and future directions of this emerging field.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Digital Transformation and Global Society, DTGS 2017, held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in June 2017. The 34 revised full papers and three revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 134 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on eSociety: social media analysis; eSociety: ICTs in education and science; eSociety: legal, security and usability issues; ePolity: electronic governance and electronic participation; ePolity: politics of cyberspace; eCity: urban planning and smart cities; eHealth: ICTs in public health management; eEconomy and eFinance: finance and knowledge management.

This book constitutes the post-conference proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Critical Information Infrastructures Security, CRITIS 2016, held in Paris, France, in October 2016. The 22 full papers and 8 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 58 submissions. They present the most recent innovations, trends, results, experiences and concerns in selected perspectives of critical information infrastructure protection covering the range from small-scale cyber-physical systems security via information infrastructures and their interaction with national and international infrastructures.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on e-Infrastructure and e-Services for Developing Countries, AFRICOMM 2016, held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in December 2016. The 44 papers were carefully selected from 57 submissions and cover topics such as: mobile and social networks; cloud, VPN and overlays; IoT, water, land, agriculture; networks, TVWS; learning; crypto and services.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on E-Democracy, E-Democracy 2017, held in Athens, Greece, in December 2017. The 18 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from 44 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on e-democracy; privacy; information dissemination and freedom of expression; social networks; electronic identity authentication; ICT in government and in the economy.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 6th National Conference of Social Media Processing, SMP 2017, held in Beijing, China, in September 2017. The 28 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 140 submissions. The papers address issues such as: knowledge discovery for data; natural language processing; text mining and sentiment analysis; social network analysis and social computing.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Multimedia Communications, Services and Security, MCSS 2017, held in Krakow, Poland, in November 2017. The 16 full papers included in the volume were selected from 38 submissions. The papers cover ongoing research activities in the following topics: multimedia services; intelligent monitoring; audio-visual systems; biometric applications; experiments and deployments.

Big Data, gathered together and re-analysed, can be used to form endless variations of our persons - so-called 'data doubles'. Whilst never a precise portrayal of who we are, they unarguably contain glimpses of details about us that, when deployed into various routines (such as management, policing and advertising) can affect us in many ways. How are we to deal with Big Data? When is it beneficial to us? When is it harmful? How might we regulate it? Offering careful and critical analyses, this timely volume aims to broaden well-informed, unprejudiced discourse, focusing on: the tenets of Big Data, the politics of governance and regulation; and Big Data practices, performance and resistance. An interdisciplinary volume, The Politics of Big Data will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral and senior researchers interested in fields such as Technology, Politics and Surveillance.

In The Digital Hand, James W. Cortada combines detailed analysis with narrative history to provide a broad overview of computing's role in sixteen industries, accounting for nearly half of the U.S. economy. Beginning in 1950, when commercial applications of digital technology began to appear, Cortada examines the ways different industries adopted new technologies, as well as the ways their innovative applications influenced other industries and the U.S economy. In addition, to this account of computers' impact on industry, Cortada also demonstrates how industries themselves influenced the nature of digital technology. Managers, economists, and anyone interested in the history of modern business will appreciate this historical analysis of digital technology's many roles and its future possibilities in a wide array of industries. A detailed picture of what the infrastructure of the Information Age really looks like and how we got there, The Digital Hand is a sweeping survey of how computers transformed the American economy.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8thScandinavian Conference on Information Systems, SCIS 2017, held in Halden, Norway, in August 2017. The 11 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 24 submissions. They focus on so-called "smart" systems that prevail in many areas and influence work processes, communication, leasure activities and lifelong learning, and they deal with questions in design, implementation and adaptation in organizations.