Same old story: On non-use and resistance to the telephone and social media

The growing resistance to social media is not a unique story. The telephone, which today is embraced almost completely, was a matter of concern for many. Most people that resisted the phone had privacy concerns and seemed to have intuited the breakdown between distinct spaces like established private space and public space as a threat to psychological integrity. By zooming in on the particular concerns people had at the dawn of the telephone's birth and its early development new light can be shed on the contemporary discussion surrounding social media today.     

TrendPerceptor: A property-function based technology intelligence system for identifying technology trends from patents

Technology intelligence systems are vital components for planning of technology development and formulation of technology strategies. Although such systems provide computation supports for technology analysis, much effort and intervention of experts, who may be expensive or unavailable, is required in gathering processes of information for analysis. As a remedy, this paper proposes TrendPerceptor, a system that uses a property-function based approach. The proposed system assists experts (1) to identify trends in invention concepts from patents, and (2) to perform evolution trend analysis of patents for technology forecasting. For this purpose, a module of the system uses grammatical analysis of textual information to automatically extract properties and functions, which show innovation directions in a given technology. Using the identified properties and functions, a module for invention concept analysis based on network analysis and a module for evolution trend analysis based on TRIZ (Russian acronym of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) trends are suggested. This paper describes the architecture of a system composed of these three modules, and illustrates two case studies using the system.     

Workplace injuries in the developing countries

Transfer of technology and industrial development without consideration for the characteristics of the local users and the environmental conditions of the recipient countries has proved to be not only socially destructive but economically expensive in terms of human suffering and material losses

Most developing countries (DC) are paying an unacceptably high price in terms of suffering, sickness and also loss of production due to work-related accidents

Poor working conditions and non-existence of an effective injury prevention programme in many DCs has resulted in a very high sickness and accident rate. In such circumstances, the salary and social benefits of the worker are low, because productivity is well below its capacity. This vicious cycle also results in the worker's malnutrition and low working capacity, resulting in turn in greater vulnerability to disease and job-related accidents

A greater awareness is needed among employers and the workforce of such common problems as increased health hazards, poor organization of work, increased night shifts, and a low level of implementing standards and safety regulations

Unfortunately, no reliable statistics are available on work-related injuries in DCs. CEDC has started a databank on the ergonomics of developing countries with some limited information on injuries in the workplaces in developing countries.     

非线性表现——浅析数字时代建筑创作的新表现主义倾向

当今社会已经步入21世纪的数字化信息时代,＂复杂性科学＂的兴起转变了大众的审美意识。在虚拟现实的数字技术的催化作用下,新表现主义建筑应运而生,呈现出＂非线性＂美学特征。这带来的不仅是建筑设计的创新,还将是建筑产业的深度变革。     

中国美容医疗设备及其技术进展

近些年随着人们生活水平的提高,中国人在美容方面的需求不断加大,使得医学美容行业的发展极具活力,与之相应的美容医疗设备及技术的未来市场容量将非常可观。     

Researching instructional use and the technology acceptation of learning management systems by secondary school teachers

The aim of this large-scale study was to understand the technology acceptation of learning management systems (LMS) by secondary school teachers and to investigate the instructional use of LMS, distinguishing between informational use and communicational use. The predictive model further includes: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology, experience and internal ICT support at school level. Data were collected from 505 Flemish secondary school teachers. After performing satisfactory reliability and validity checks, the study was able to support all relationships among the 9 variables. Informational use was found to be a precursor for communicational use, perceived ease of use of the LMS is the strongest predictor in LMS-acceptation. Internal ICT support has a direct effect on the informational use of the LMS and on subjective norm. Implications stress that secondary school managers in education should take into account the importance of a teachers’ efforts and performance perceptions and the direct and indirect impact of internal ICT support on LMS adoption.     

Decisions on optimal adoption time for new technology

The rapid development of science and technology has brought a lot of convenience to the industry, and allowed companies to enhance their competitive advantages in the market. However, at some point in the growth stage, companies often reach a bottle neck of efficiency and effectiveness in production due to a saturated scale of economy, leading managers to face a decision of adopting more advanced technologies with consideration of market requirements and related costs. In this study, the adoption of a new technology is modeled as a decision problem in which related uncertain factors are considered to determine the optimal adoption time for the new technology. Bayesian decision analysis is used to integrate the subjective judgment of the decision maker and the objective information of the market. A practical case from a food and beverage company is illustrated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

College students’ disclosure of location-related information on Facebook

This study drew on existing research and three behavioral intention models to develop the beginning of a new model to explain why college students share their locations on Facebook. Findings showed that students were more likely to disclose their location on Facebook if their friends did so, a concept called subjective norm. Results also showed that subjective norm had an indirect effect on whether people disclosed their location, mediated through people’s attitude toward disclosure, while controlling for usefulness of disclosing. Collectively, this model explained 61% of the variance in why college students share locations on Facebook. Findings are discussed in relation to behavioral-intention models, and practical implications for social media companies are offered.     

Household Adoption of Technology: The Case of High-Speed Broadband Adoption in Australia

Within the home context a high-speed broadband Internet connection is seen as a key enabler for effective access to and use of the Internet. This article examines the factors contributing to household adoption of high speed broadband in Australia. Building on the Theory of Reasoned Action and seminal research on technology adoption in the home and the workplace, the article presents and evaluates a hypothesized model of Household Adoption of Technology.     

The acceptance of Tablet-PCs in classroom instruction: The teachers’ perspectives

Limited research has been conducted on the integration of Tablet-PCs in classroom instruction. This paper reports a qualitative study which investigates the acceptance of Tablet-PCs, seen as technological innovation, amongst teachers. The research approach intends to complement research on the acceptance of technology through a more detailed qualitative examination. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 teachers during a pilot project introducing Tablet-PCs to classroom instruction at three different schools. The findings indicate diversity in the attitude of teachers towards the technology, but also with regards to the performance expectancy and the facilitating conditions.