Hyvinvointiteknologiahype kohtaa hoivan käytännöt

Joni Jaakola: Welfare Technologies in Finland: An Ethico-Politics of Hype, Hope and Experimentation. Turku: Turun yliopisto, 2023, 172 s. ISBN 978-951-29-9516-

The gift of waste : The diversity of gift practices among dumpster divers

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Weber and Simmel’s philosophical and political stances : a dialogue in three acts

This article is an imagined dialogue between Weber and Simmel which makes a modest use of some of the resources of theatrical play in order to provide an overall portrait of both thinkers and to bring their thought to bear on our present. The dialogue consists of three acts focused on three central problematics in as many critical moments in Weber and Simmel’s lives: Act I takes place during the preparations for the first conference of the German Sociological Association and thus deals with the constitution of sociology as a socio-cultural science. Act II takes place amidst the First World War and its theme is evidently politics. Finally, Act III, where our two characters correspond instead of maintaining a face-to-face dialogue, is situated towards the end of the war and focuses on the attitude to life and indeed to death, as Simmel’s tragic yet admirable death takes place then. A brief introduction explains how we tried to use the possibilities of the dialogical form to expound Weber’s and Simmel’s thought, to compel them to confront their own blind spots and ‘unthoughts’, as well as to explore new ways of teaching the classics and transmitting their thought

A User-Centered Lens into Digital Excess : Exploring the Superfluity and Environmental Burden of the Digital World

null ; Conference date: 14-06-2023 Through 15-06-2023This article seeks to take a new view on the environmental burden of information and communication technology through the concept of digital excess. Our notion of digital excess draws from Georges Batailleʼs argument that the main problem of any economy is excess rather than scarcity. We take a user-centric lens into this concept and discuss various aspects of our digital lives that could be perceived not to carry meaningful value but appear as wasteful and superAluous, while also harming individuals, society, or the planet. We provide examples from digital media services where digital excess may be regarded as, for example, accumulation of self-created content with redundant copies or inattentive consumption of highbandwidth streaming services. In consonance with related work in the Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction community, we encourage follow-up empirical investigations of the practical manifestations of this concept, which could help to further understand, problematize, and possibly also mitigate the growing energy use of ICT. For the design of digital services, focusing on digital excess offers a lens through which designers could simultaneously optimize multiple quality criteria that conventionally require trade-offs (e.g., environmental sustainability vs. lively user experience vs. economic viability)