This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This volume discusses the prospects and evolution of informatics (or computer science), which has become the operating system of our world, and is today seen as the science of the information society. Its artifacts change the world and its methods have an impact on how we think about and perceive the world. Classical computer science is built on the notion of an "abstract" machine, which can be instantiated by software to any concrete problem-solving machine, changing its behavior in response to external and internal states, allowing for self-reflective and "intelligent" behavior. However, current phenomena such as the Web, cyber physical systems or the Internet of Things show us that we might already have gone beyond this idea, exemplifying a metamorphosis from a stand-alone calculator to the global operating system of our society. Thus computer scientists will need to reconsider the foundations of their discipline to realize the full potential of our field. Taking often contradictory developments into consideration, researchers will not be able to tackle specific technological or methodological problems in the future without also a broader reflection on their field. The papers in this book take a first step forward and reflect on these issues from different perspectives. The broad spectrum of topics includes Informatics: a discipline with a (short) history and a high impact Interdisciplinarity: how to do research Ethics: what is our responsibility Diversity: why are there so few women in informatics Combining informatics, history and art: a special contribution. This book is intended for all informatics researchers, in academia as well as in industry. It is our responsibility - not only as scientists but also as citizens - to make the public aware of the dichotomies and dialectic relationships of computer science.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies, EC-Web 2006, held in conjunction with DEXA 2006. The book presents 24 revised full papers together with 1 invited talk, organized in topical sections on recommender systems, business process/design aspects, mobile commerce, security and e-payment, Web services computing/semantic Web, e-negotiation and agent mediated systems, and issues in Web advertising.

For the third time now, experts in tourism from all over the world come to Innsbruck in order to exchange ideas, inform themselves and others about current developments and build a network of personal relations. The main topics of ENTER 96 are business engineering and standardisation, covering a wide area of subjects like the redesign of touristic products and the processes of their production. This covers, however, not only single business processes but also the entire value chain in tourism, ending up in redesign of distribution channel and changing relations among principals, tour operators, travel agents and customers. Standardisation increasingly becomes a prerequisite for interorganisational coordination and cooperation, EDI is slowly being introduced in tourism and Internet related standards like HTML and VRML. will have a major impact on the future development of electronic distribution platforms for services in tourism. As the proceedings underscore, ENTER has been established as an international platform for scientific and practical discourse on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism. The close interdisciplinary link between technological and economic questions in tourism opens up new, promising threads for applied research and development likewise.

Due to the great success of the First International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism which took place in January 1994 there was common agreement among the participants as well as among the Programme Commit tee to organize the second Conference, contrary to the original intention, as soon as 1995 instead of 1996. A two year break in an area of rapid technological development might otherwise result in a completely different landscape of telecommunication with hardly any connection to the first Conference. The recent development as well as the publicity with regard to the so-called informa tion highway has justified this decision far beyond our expectations. The Programme Committee has decided to choose "Electronic Marketing" as the central topic of this Conference. The international network is opening up entirely new information and booking chan nels. Printed information is not disappearing from the scene, but is acquiring competi tion in the form of electronic media. That means new dimensions in the presentation of the selection, new ideas as to informative contents, new, direct paths from suppliers to potential clients - making their choice at home in front of their screen and able to book immediately - and, finally, a new form of democracy. The small economic units which shape tourism thus acquire more interesting opportunities. Information that can be published fast and easily updated, effective alliance and networking make it possible for the small to participate with the great and to safeguard their own interests."

The book provides a survey about the field of Qualitative Reasoning, it contrasts and classifies its approaches and puts them into a common framework. Qualitative Reasoning represents an approach of Artificial Intelligence to model dynamic systems, about which little information is available, and to derive statements about the potential behavior of these systems, putting emphasis on a causal explanation of the behavior. Both variables and relationships between variables are described by means of qualitative terms such as small and large or positive and negative. Since this approach also takes into consideration the way how humans reason about physical systems, it can be stated that Qualitative Reasoning participates in the creation of a cognitive theory of non-numerical process descriptions which can be mapped onto a digital computer. This approach can be used for simulation, diagnosis, design, structure identification and interpretation. Areas of application are physics, medicine, the field of ecology, process control, etc. In addition to the classification of existing methods, the book presents a new approach based on fuzzy sets. And the work relates Qualitative Reasoning with such fields of Expert Systems, System Theory and Cognitive Science.

The conference ENTER * International Conference on However, the tourist market has several specific characteristics Information and Communications Technologies in Tourism with regard to the use of technological infrastructure: represents a fll'St attempt * On the demand side computerized reservation and general * to provide an international forum for the discussion of the distribution systems (eRS and GDS), managed by big role of telecommunication and information systems in airlines, are well organized and technological pioneers. In tourism, the past they typically focused on the business traveller, * to inform potential users and people concerned with the nowadays they also try to cover the vacation sector. These importance of such technologies and to explain their systems work on a world-wide level and are highly functioning sophisticated. However, it should be added that the * to give an opportunity to the research community, nowadays information provided is rather poor and also selective, scattered into different areas of research, to discuss their which may restrict its usefulness for the promotion of an results on a common platform, and, fmally, entire tourist region. * to intensify the contact and the communication between * Similar to CRSlGDS several tour operators have begun to develop their own systems, although with varying success. researchers, system developers and users.

This open access book aims to set an agenda for research and action in the field of Digital Humanism through short essays written by selected thinkers from a variety of disciplines, including computer science, philosophy, education, law, economics, history, anthropology, political science, and sociology. This initiative emerged from the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism and the associated lecture series. Digital Humanism deals with the complex relationships between people and machines in digital times. It acknowledges the potential of information technology. At the same time, it points to societal threats such as privacy violations and ethical concerns around artificial intelligence, automation and loss of jobs, ongoing monopolization on the Web, and sovereignty. Digital Humanism aims to address these topics with a sense of urgency but with a constructive mindset. The book argues for a Digital Humanism that analyses and, most importantly, influences the complex interplay of technology and humankind toward a better society and life while fully respecting universal human rights. It is a call to shaping technologies in accordance with human values and needs.

This open access book aims to set an agenda for research and action in the field of Digital Humanism through short essays written by selected thinkers from a variety of disciplines, including computer science, philosophy, education, law, economics, history, anthropology, political science, and sociology. This initiative emerged from the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism and the associated lecture series. Digital Humanism deals with the complex relationships between people and machines in digital times. It acknowledges the potential of information technology. At the same time, it points to societal threats such as privacy violations and ethical concerns around artificial intelligence, automation and loss of jobs, ongoing monopolization on the Web, and sovereignty. Digital Humanism aims to address these topics with a sense of urgency but with a constructive mindset. The book argues for a Digital Humanism that analyses and, most importantly, influences the complex interplay of technology and humankind toward a better society and life while fully respecting universal human rights. It is a call to shaping technologies in accordance with human values and needs.

Although only a few years old, electronic commerce offers new ways of doing business that no business can afford to ignore. This book is a collection of selected contributions from renowned researchers who specialize in the various facets of electronic commerce, namely economics, finance, information technology, and education. The basic goal is to give an overview of some of the most relevant topics in E-Commerce.

An emerging area of study within technology and tourism focuses on the development of technologies which enable Internet users to quickly and effectively find relevant information about selected topics including travel destination and transportation. This area of tourism research and development is generally referred to as destination marketing systems (DMSs) and brings together both applied and academic interests ranging from marketing and management to psychology, mathematics and computer sciences. This book provides a comprehensive synthesis of the current status of research, representing the contributions of some of the leading researchers in destination marketing systems.