Positive Technology Journal

Planned publication date: September 2008

Call for Papers

PHYSICALITY AND INTERACTION
A Special Journal Issue of Interacting with Computers
Planned publication date: September 2008

Following the successful Physicality 2006 and Physicality 2007 International Workshops, which demonstrated the growing multi-disciplinary interest in this area of work, we invite submissions for this special issue on Physicality and Interaction for the interdisciplinary journal Interacting with Computers.

We live in an increasingly digital world yet our bodies and minds are naturally designed to interact with the physical. The products of the 21st century are and will be a synthesis of digital and physical elements embedded in new physical and social environments. As we design more hybrid physical/digital products, the distinctions for the user become blurred. It is therefore increasingly important that we understand what we gain, lose or confuse by the added digitality.

Augmented physical artefacts can be tailored and adapted to operate within a wide range of ecological settings. However, they also become more complex and require a fairly intensive design process to make them not simply practical and functional but also engaging. As a result, the need becomes even more pressing to comprehend the underlying computational intricacies, the physical form, properties and behaviour, the physical and social contexts, and the issues of aesthetics and creativity.

The issues in this field impact many areas of study: architecture, art, cognitive science, geography, human�computer interaction, philosophy, product design, sociology, tangible interface and ubiquitous computing.

We invite contributions that address physicality at various levels, including:

� design at the physical-digital frontier
� the philosophy of physicality
� artefact-focussed social interaction
� physically-inspired interaction in virtual worlds
� creativity and materiality
� interactive art and performance
� digital emulation of the physical
� the evolving role of digital artefacts in material culture

SUBMISSION DETAILS
Length guide: 4000 - 7000 words
Paper deadline: 1st April 2008
To expedite the reviewing process prospective authors are encouraged to send an abstract at their earliest convenience.
Detailed author guidelines can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/525445/authorinstructions
Note: For the initial submission a single PDF copy will suffice, i.e. text and figures need not be separate.
Any further queries, please contact Devina@physicality.org

GUEST EDITORS
Devina Ramduny-Ellis, InfoLab 21, Lancaster University, UK
Alan Dix, InfoLab 21, Lancaster University, UK
Joanna Hare, National Centre for Product Design & Development Research, UWIC, UK
Steve Gill, National Centre for Product Design & Development Research, UWIC, UK

Via Networked Performance

Submission Deadline: February 29, 2009 :: All research articles are refereed and should be between 7000 - 10000 words in length :: We also welcome submission of debates (1500 - 3000 words) or Feature Reports (3000 - 4000 words). This call invites submissions for a special issue related to Digital Cultures of California. Internationally, California is a phenomenon in terms of its relationship to creating, consuming and reflecting upon the era of digital technologies. From the legendary garage entrepreneurs, to the multi-billion dollar culture of venture capital, to stock back-dating scandals, to the epic exodus of California’s IT teams during the Burning Man Festival, this state plays an important role in the cultures of digital technologies.

The Bay Area of California (often referred to somewhat incorrectly as Northern California) is often perceived as a hot-bed of technology activity. Silicon Valley serves as a marker for the massive funding of enterprises that shape many aspects of digital culture. The new interaction rituals that have come to define what social life has become in many parts of the world can often be traced back to this part of the state. New forms of presence awareness and digital communication such as Twitter and Flickr have found a comfortable home in the Bay Area. Complimenting the Bay Area s activities in social software is Southern California - Los Angeles in particular - where Hollywood sensibilities bring together entertainment with technology through such things as video games and 3D cinema.

California is also the home of several colleges and universities where digital technologies are developed in engineering departments and reflected upon from social science and humanities departments. This curious relationship between production and analysis creates the promise of insightful interdisciplinary approaches to making culture. Many institutions have made efforts to combine engineering and social science practices to bolster technology design. Xerox PARC probably stands as the canonical example of interdisciplinary approaches to digital technology design. Similarly, combining arts practices with technology as a kind of exploratory research and development has important precedent at places like PARC and at the practice-based events such as the San Jose California-based Zero One Festival and Symposium.

In this special issue we welcome submissions which investigate, provoke and explicate the California digital cultures from a variety of perspectives. We are interested in papers that approach this phenomenon in scholarly and practice-based ways.

* What are the ways that social networks have been shaped by digital techniques?

* How has the phenomenon of the digital entrepreneur evolved in the age of DIY sensibilities?

* What are the ways that new ideas succeed or fail based on their dissemination amongst the elite, connected digerati, as opposed to their dissemination amongst less more quotidian communities?

* What is the nature of the matrix of relationships between Hollywood entertainment, the military and digital technology?

* Can the DIY culture explored in the pages of Make magazine produce its own markets?

* How does the Apple Inc. culture of product design and development shape and inform popular culture?

* How have the various interdisciplinary approaches undertaken at corporate research centers connected to universities such as Intel Berkeley Labs shaped digital cultures?

Contact for further information: Julian Bleecker - julian [at] nearfuturelaboratory.com

Via NeuroBot

5-7 November 2007, Piscataway, NJ, USA

Seventh International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems

http://www.epigenetic-robotics.org

Email: epirob07@epigenetic-robotics.org

Location:
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey,
Piscataway, NJ, USA

*Extended* Submission Deadline: 1 August 2007

Via Networked performance

• Everyday uses: sharing our lives via the mobile (text, voice, video)
• Civic engagement, activism and mobile technologies
• Wireless services and emergency communication
• Privacy, surveillance and mobile phones
• Community Wireless Networks
• Policy: CRTC regulations and spectrum policy
• Mobility, Labour: new conditions of work
• Shifting notions of space, place and time in a mobile world
• Rhetoric and discourses on mobility and wireless worlds
• Art, design and mobile technologies
• Mobile genres and cellular convergence
• Global and international perspectives on mobile technologies

Full-length papers (@ 7000-9000 words) should be submitted electronically following the guidelines laid out on the CJC submissions website.

From Usability News

Learning technologies have been taking an increasing role in almost all learning environments. They are used in a variety of informal and formal educational environments, from early years to university level and throughout adulthood, as well as in many commercial, industrial, and governmental settings. With the greater use of learning technologies it is critical to better understand how they interact with human cognition. Both in terms of how they may facilitate and enhance (as well as hinder) learning, and also in terms of how they affect the way we learn and acquire information, and the nature of cognition.

These issues pertain to specific technologies and to learning objectives. Specific technologies (and their usage) are important to understand in their own right; for example, how the use of electronic boards and visualization tools, e-learning, synchronic vs. a-synchronic remote learning, blackboard, simulation, virtual realities, and other technological learning environments affect learning and the learner. But also the learning technologies need to be considered and understood in light of learning objectives: not only the acquisition of information, but also the ability to retain and use it and the assessment of the effectiveness of the learning process. When considering how best to use learning technologies (and their vulnerabilities) one needs to be able to determine which learning materials and objectives are best suited for these technologies, which learning tools are most appropriate, and how to best use them. Furthermore, a fundamental issue to address is if and when learning technologies should replace traditional learning and when and how should learning technologies be blended with traditional learning.

Original and high quality papers that examine learning technologies either from an academic or from a practical perspective will be considered for publication. The first special issue of Pragmatics & Cognition devoted to Cognitive Technologies is now going to be published as a book. It is hoped that the Learning Technologies special issue will also appear in book form in the future.

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2007 Publication: Summer 2008

More info here 

Enterprises have turned to explicit - and even conceptualising on tacit - knowledge management to elaborate a systematic approach to develop and sustain the intellectual capital needed to succeed, the knowledge normally attributed to knowledge workers. This is complemented by structural capital, i.e. the structures, technologies, practices put in place by an organisation as an attempt to manage their specialist knowledge. Mobile learning would equally come under such an umbrella, enticing knowledge workers and managers within organisations to conduct work in a mobile manner.

One of the challenges for future mobile organisations will deal with how they can enhance communication channels and collaborate within and between their employees, customers and stakeholders. According to Liebowitz (Liebowitz, 2006), one technique that can help address this issue is social network analysis. Mobile organisations also need to develop new knowledge and learning strategies possibly under the umbrella of a knowledge exchange or sharing system, and especially as related to recognition and reward systems. Uden (Uden, 2006) suggests that activity theory, as a social and cultural psychological theory, can be used to design a mobile learning environment.

Existing theoretical work has paid limited attention to the role of intellectual proximity in facilitating knowledge exchange within clusters of organisations that operate within the same domain of knowledge.

A consensus suggests that users build a mental model from their interactions with artificial systems. Design of mobile devices needs tp to take into consideration the existence of a gap between the user’s viewpoint [interaction-oriented] and the designer’s viewpoint [development-oriented]. Enhancing mobile learning effectiveness requires narrowing this gap between execution and conception. Implementing new solutions for improving the effective use of mobile systems needs new methodological tools and a better understanding of the complexity of user’s mental construction, in line with their containment of the domain knowledge.

The purpose of this special issue is to expose writers and the eventual readership to topics aiming at the facilitation of mobile learning for knowledge workers, from differing and multidisciplinary perspectives.

• Knowledge management and mobile learning
• Knowledge flow and mobile learning
• Dissemination of practice and mobile learning
• Currently implemented applications for mobile learning
• Technologies that directly support mobile learning systems (devices, networks, tools etc.)
• Studies of mobile learning in practice
• Reviews of the application of mobile learning in multiple contexts
• Uses of mobile learning in professional learning environments, e.g., mobile health, mobile commerce
• Constraints in the delivery of mobile learning, e.g., human-computer interaction issues in mobile learning environments
• Mobile games for learning
• The role of Wikis, blogs, podcasts, messaging, other on-line tools and Web 2.0 components in mobile learning systems and as mechanisms to exchange/distribute knowledge
• Support for learner interaction and mobile collaborative learning
• Privacy and security issues in mobile learning
• Knowledge expropriation or hoarding issues in mobile learning
• The role of location based services in learning and sharing knowledge
• Organisational structures and mobile learning
• Management issues from mobile learning
• Design of user-friendly mobile devices
• Mental models emerging from interactions with mobile systems
• User's characteristics (age, gender, culture, expertise, etc.) and mobile learning
• Graphic user interface (GUI) design and mobile learning
• Mobile learning interactions and cognitive modeling
•  

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Recent progress in brain science, especially in non-invasive methods, has enabled quantitative evaluation of human behavior and operation of electronic communication devices by direct brain-derived signals. Neural activities in cerebral cortex and peripheral nerves have been analyzed using imaging techniques, providing us with several models associated with human recognition and action. These advancements have lowered the barrier to realize the seamless communication between human and machine. In view of these circumstances, an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach incorporating basic research is important to develop future brain-communication networks and to facilitate human communication effectively. The approach should include biosignal-based communication network technology, novel intelligent device technology, and preference-based neuromarketing technology. This special section on Brain Communication is planned to review and mine for relevant research in the IEICE Transactions on Communications.

Topics

• Multiunit recording and analysis technology and its applications to interface
  
• Brain-machine interface and neural prosthesis
  
• Biofeedback control in biomechanical system
  
• Brain functional imaging and signal processing techniques
  
• Communication of thoughts and kansei
  
• Memory and learning models in cerebral cortex and its application to information communication
  
• Analysis of human behavior and its application to information communication engineering
  
• Neurodecoding and its application to communication
  
• Sensor network and its fusion technology
  
• Sensor technology and biomechanics
  
• Neuroinfomatics and retrieval methods
  
• Network management and control incorporating brain computation 
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Via Usability News 

Call for Papers: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Special Issue on Mobility: Understanding Mobile Use and Users

Via Usability News 

This Special issue of the Journal of Computers in Human Behavior is a consequence of a UbiComp 06 workshop and looks at understanding crucial design issues of incoming scenarios of pervasive networked systems for elderly people