Place and Space: Community in the Internet Economy and What This Will Mean for Property

By 2020 Australia‟s National Digital Economy Strategy aims to increase household online participation and engage 12 per cent of all employees in teleworking arrangements. Achieving these goals is generally perceived as positive due to the reduced impact on the natural environment from less use of transport. However, this also will enable greater flexibility as to where people live and thus will impact upon the maintenance and formation of communities and on property use. This paper commences by clarifying what is Australia‟s internet economy before highlighting the impact of the internet on community formation and maintenance. The paper concludes by identifying what the achievement of these goals will mean for property use in the future.

Space, place and power : the spatial turn in literacy research

Place matters to literacy because the meanings of our language and actions are always materially and socially placed in the world (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). We cannot interpret signs, whether an icon, symbol, gesture, word, or action, without taking into account their associations with other meanings and objects in places. This chapter maps an emergent strand of literacy research that foregrounds place and space as constitutive, rather than a backdrop for the real action. Space and place are seen as relational and dynamic, not as fixed and unchanging. Space and place are socially produced, and hence, can be contested, re-imagined and re-made. In bringing space and place into the frame of literacy studies we see a subtle shift – a rebalancing of the semiotic with the materiality of lived, embodied, and situated experience. ...

Context-Based Vision System for Place and Object Recognition

While navigating in an environment, a vision system has to be able to recognize where it is and what the main objects in the scene are. In this paper we present a context-based vision system for place and object recognition. The goal is to identify familiar locations (e.g., office 610, conference room 941, Main Street), to categorize new environments (office, corridor, street) and to use that information to provide contextual priors for object recognition (e.g., table, chair, car, computer). We present a low-dimensional global image representation that provides relevant information for place recognition and categorization, and how such contextual information introduces strong priors that simplify object recognition. We have trained the system to recognize over 60 locations (indoors and outdoors) and to suggest the presence and locations of more than 20 different object types. The algorithm has been integrated into a mobile system that provides real-time feedback to the user.

Place and Special Places: Innovations in Conservation Practice in Northern Ireland

The sense of place that relates human beings to their environment is under threat from the rising tide of placelessness which can result from potentially positive forces such as urban regeneration as well as negative ones such as incremental degradation. The concept of sense of place, and the need to protect and enhance special places, has underpinned UK conservation legislation and policy in the post-war era. In Northern Ireland, due to its distinctive settlement tradition, its troubled political circumstances and its centralised administrative system, a unique hierarchy of special places has evolved, involving areas of townscape and village character as well as conventional conservation areas. For the first time a comprehensive comparative survey of the townscape quality of most of these areas has been carried out in order to test the hypothesis that too many conservation area designations may devalue the conservation coinage. It also assesses the contribution that areas of townscape character can make in this situation, as potential conservation areas or as second-level local amenity designations. Its findings support the initial hypothesis: assessment of townscape quality on the basis of consistent criteria demonstrates a decline in the quality of more recent conservation area designations, and hence some devaluation of the coinage. However, the need for local discretion in the protection of local amenity supports the concept of areas of townscape and village character as an additional and distinct designation. This contradicts recent policy recommendations from the Northern Ireland Planning Commission and contains valuable lessons for conservation policy and practice in other parts of the UK.

Understanding space, place and leisure of women over 85 living in the community

There is an increase in the number of older adults 85 and over, who are choosing to live alone within the community. Moreover, older adults who live alone are reportedly spending an extensive amount of time alone within the home environment. In an effort to provide additional support and resources to older adults living in the community, a compliment of services are being offered through public and private organizations. These in-home supports focus on the instrumental or functional tasks of daily living, such as personal and rehabilitative care, nourishment, maintenance and upkeep of the home, as well as volunteer social visitation. However leisure resources and programs are not included among these services. Consequently, this creates a gap in leisure provision among this segment of the population. Throughout the life course, an individual's identity, role and purpose are developed and sustained through instrumental work roles in the formal and informal sector, as well as through personally meaningful leisure pastimes and experiences. Although roles shift post retirement, participation in instrumental and expressive activities can provide opportunities through which older adults are able to fulfill their need for agency (individuality and autonomy) and affiliation (social relatedness). Therefore barriers that inhibit instrumental or leisure experiences can negatively impact older adults' quality of life. This study explored the leisure lifestyles of four older adults, all of whom were over 85, lived alone within the community and were oriented to person, time and place. It became apparent that participants ordered their lives around a routine that consisted of instrumental, expressive and socially integrated tasks and activities. Moreover participants purposely chose to remain at home because their home environment facilitated freedom, choice and independence. As a result all four participants viewed their independence within the home as a critical determinant to their overall quality of life. Challenges associated with the home environment, participants' personal capacities and relationships were negotiated on a daily basis. Failure to positively adapt to these challenges inhibited meaningful engagement and personal fulfillment. Traditionally, leisure service delivery has been offered within institutions and through various community based venues. As a result leisure provision has been focused on the needs of the frail elderly who reside in institutions or the well elderly who are able to access leisure amenities within the community. However the growing number of older adults electing to live alone is on the rise. As individuals age the home becomes the preferred context for leisure experiences. If older adults are choosing to live alone, then both their instrumental and leisure needs must be addressed. As a result, it is imperative that leisure professionals extend the scope of service delivery to include home centered older adults.

‘Being in a womb’ or ‘playing musical chairs’ : the impact of place and space on infant feeding in NICUs

Background: Becoming a parent of a preterm baby requiring neonatal care constitutes an extraordinary life situation in which parenting begins and evolves in a medical and unfamiliar setting. Although there is increasing emphasis within maternity and neonatal care on the influence of place and space upon the experiences of staff and service users, there is a lack of research on how space and place influence relationships and care in the neonatal environment. The aim of this study was to explore, in-depth, the impact of place and space on parents’ experiences and practices related to feeding their preterm babies in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) in Sweden and England. Methods: An ethnographic approach was utilised in two NICUs in Sweden and two comparable units in England, UK. Over an eleven month period, a total of 52 mothers, 19 fathers and 102 staff were observed and interviewed. A grounded theory approach was utilised throughout data collection and analysis. Results: The core category of ‘the room as a conveyance for an attuned feeding’ was underpinned by four categories: the level of ‘ownership’ of space and place; the feeling of ‘at-homeness’; the experience of ‘the door or a shield’ against people entering, for privacy, for enabling a focus within, and for regulating socialising and the; ‘window of opportunity’. Findings showed that the construction and design of space and place was strongly influential on the developing parent-infant relationship and for experiencing a sense of connectedness and a shared awareness with the baby during feeding, an attuned feeding. Conclusions: If our proposed model is valid, it is vital that these findings are considered when developing or reconfiguring NICUs so that account is taken of the influences of spatiality upon parent’s experiences. Even without redesign there are measures that may be taken to make a positive difference for parents and their preterm babies.

Stich`n bitch: cyberfeminism, a third place and the new materiality

We discuss the emergence of a new craft movement known as Stitch'nBitch. Prevalent around the globe, particularly among women, this movement is based locally in places such as hotels and cafes, and virtually using the internet. The women meet to knit, stitch and talk. The groups use new technologies as an enabler and resource exchange. At the same time, their presence can be seen, in part, as a negative response to major political, social and technological changes including globalization, terrorism, damage to the environment and the dislocation of the Information Society. We introduce five themes to assist in the development of a research agenda into this new form of material culture, discussing (1) remedial, (2) progressive, (3) resistance, (4) nostalgic and (5) ironic possibilities. Each is considered in terms of their respective foci on community, cyberfeminism, craft, conservation and comment.

Presbyterian ethos and environment in the novels of John Buchan : a religious and historical study

The aim of this thesis is to establish, from a historical and religious perspective, that the Presbyterian ethos and environment in which John Buchan was reared was the predominating influence in the writing of his novels. Presbyterianism was not the only influence on Buchan that determined the character of his stories. Buchan was by temperament a romantic, and this had considerable influence on his literature. His novels are romances, peopled by romantic figures who pursue romantic adventures. There are the signs of Buchan's romantic nature in the contents of the novels: creative imagination, sensitivity to nature, and expectations of the intrusion of other worlds, with destiny-determining events to follow. But Buchan had also an acquired classicism. His studies at Glasgow and Oxford Universities brought him in touch with a whole range of the master-pieces of classical literature, especially the works of Plato and Virgil. This discipline gave him clarity and conciseness in style, and balanced the romantic element in him, keeping his work within the bounds of reason. At the heart of Buchan's life and work, however, was his deeply religious nature and this, while influenced by romanticism and classicism, was the dominant force behind his work. Buchan did not accept in its entirety the Presbyterian doctrine conveyed to him by his father and his Church. He was moderate by temperament and shrank from excesses in religious matters, and, being a romantic, he shied away from any fixed creeds. He did embrace the fundamentals of Christianity, however, which he learned from his father and his Church, even if he did put aside the Rev. John's orthodox Calvinism. The basic Christianity which underlies all Buchan's novels has the stamp of Presbyterianism upon it, and that stamp is evident in his characters and their adventures. The expression of Christianity which Buchan embraced was the Christian Platonism of seventeenth century theologians, who taught and preached at Cambridge University, They gave prominence to the place of reason and conscience in man's search for God, They believed that reason and conscience were the ‘candle of the Lord’ which was existed every one. It was their conviction that, if that light was followed, it would lead men and women to God. They were against superstition and fanaticism in religion, against all forms of persecution for religious beliefs, and insisted that God could only be known by renouncing evil and setting oneself to live according to God’s will. This teaching Buchan received, but the stamp of his Presbyterianism was not obliterated. The basic doctrines which arose from his father's Presbyterianism and are to be found in Buchan's novels are as follows: a. the fear (or awe) of God, as life's basic religious attitude; b. the Providence of God as the ultimate determinative force in the outcome of events; c. the reality, malignity and universality of evil which must be forcefully and constantly resisted; d. the dignity of human beings in bearing God's image; e. the conviction that life has meaning and that its ultimate goal, therefore, is a spiritual one - as opposed to the accumulation of wealth, the achieving of recognition from society, and the gaining access to power; f. the necessity of challenge in life for growth and fulfilment, and the importance of fortitude in successfully meeting such challenge; g. the belief that, in the purpose of God, the weak confound the strong. These emphases of Presbyterianism are to be found in all Buchan's novels, to a greater or lesser degree. All his characters are serious people, with a moral purpose in life. Like the pilgrims of the Bible, they seek a country: true fulfilment. This quest becomes more spiritual and more dearly defined as Buchan grows in age and maturity. The progress is to be traced from his early novels, where fulfilment is sought in honour and self-approving competence, as advocated by classicism; to the novels of his middle years, where fulfilment is sought in adventures suggested by romanticism. In his final novel Sick Heart River. Buchan appears to have moved somewhat from his earlier classicism and his romanticism as the road to fulfilment. In this novel, Buchan expresses what, for him, is ultimate fulfilment: a conversion to God that produces self-sacrificing love for others. The terminally-ill Edward Leithen sets out on a romantic adventure that will enable him to die with dignity, and so, in classic style, justify his existence. He has a belief in God, but in a God who is almighty, distant and largely irrelevant to Leithen's life. In the frozen North of Canada, where he expects to find his meagre beliefs in God's absolute power confirmed by the icy majesty of mountain and plain, he finds instead God's mercy and it melts his heart. In a Christ-like way, he brings life to others through his death, believing that, through death, he will find life. There is sufficient evidence to give plausibility to the view that Buchan is describing in Leithen his own pilgrimage. If so, it means that Buchan found his way back to the fundamental experience of the Christian life, conversion, so strongly emphasised in his orthodox Presbyterianism home and Church. However, Buchan reaches this conclusion in a Christian Platonist way, through the natural world, rather than through the more orthodox pathway of Scripture.

Towards a spatial understanding of trade-offs in sustainable development: A meso-scale analysis of the nexus between land use, poverty, and environment in the Lao PDR

In land systems, equitably managing trade-offs between planetary boundaries and human development needs represents a grand challenge in sustainability oriented initiatives. Informing such initiatives requires knowledge about the nexus between land use, poverty, and environment. This paper presents results from Lao PDR, where we combined nationwide spatial data on land use types and the environmental state of landscapes with village-level poverty indicators. Our analysis reveals two general but contrasting trends. First, landscapes with paddy or permanent agriculture allow a greater number of people to live in less poverty but come at the price of a decrease in natural vegetation cover. Second, people practising extensive swidden agriculture and living in intact environments are often better off than people in degraded paddy or permanent agriculture. As poverty rates within different landscape types vary more than between landscape types, we cannot stipulate a land use–poverty–environment nexus. However, the distinct spatial patterns or configurations of these rates point to other important factors at play. Drawing on ethnicity as a proximate factor for endogenous development potentials and accessibility as a proximate factor for external influences, we further explore these linkages. Ethnicity is strongly related to poverty in all land use types almost independently of accessibility, implying that social distance outweighs geographic or physical distance. In turn, accessibility, almost a precondition for poverty alleviation, is mainly beneficial to ethnic majority groups and people living in paddy or permanent agriculture. These groups are able to translate improved accessibility into poverty alleviation. Our results show that the concurrence of external influences with local—highly contextual—development potentials is key to shaping outcomes of the land use–poverty–environment nexus. By addressing such leverage points, these findings help guide more effective development interventions. At the same time, they point to the need in land change science to better integrate the understanding of place-based land indicators with process-based drivers of land use change.

Transforming people, place, and technology : towards re-creative city

This session is titled TRANSFORM! Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Content for Creative Economy. Some of the key concepts for this session include: 1. City / Economy 2. Creativity 3. Digital content 4. Transformation All of us would agree that these terms describe pertinent characteristics of contemporary world, the epithet of which is the ‘network era.’ I was thinking about what I would like to discuss here and what you, leading experts in divergent fields, would be interested to hear about. As the keynote for this session and as one of the first speakers for the entire conference, I see my role as an initiator for imagination, the wilder the better, posing questions rather than answers. Also given the session title Transform!, I wish to change this slightly to Transforming People, Place, and Technology: Towards Re-­creative City in an attempt to take us away a little from the usual image depicted by the given topic. Instead, I intend to sketch a more holistic picture by reflecting on and extrapolating the four key concepts from the urban informatics point of view. To do so, I use ‘city’ as the primary guiding concept for my talk rather than probably more expected ‘digital media’ or ‘creative economy.’ You may wonder what I mean by re-­creative city. I will explain this in time by looking at the key concepts from these four respective angles: 1. Living city 2. Creative city 3. Re-­‐creative city 4. Opportunities and Challenges to arrive at a speculative yet probable image of the city that we may aspire to transform our current cities into. First let us start by considering the ‘living city.’

Ceremony and cybrary : Digital libraries and the dialectic of place and space

This article examines social, cultural and technological change in the systems and economies of educational information management. Since the Sumerians first collected, organized and supervised administrative and religious records some six millennia ago, libraries have been key physical depositories and cultural signifiers in the production and mediation of social capital and power through education. To date, the textual, archival and discursive practices perpetuating libraries have remained exempt from inquiry. My aim here is to remedy this hiatus by making the library itself the terrain and object of critical analysis and investigation. The paper argues that in the three dominant communications eras—namely, oral, print and digital cultures—society’s centres of knowledge and learning have resided in the ceremony, the library and the cybrary respectively. In a broad-brush historical grid, each of these key educational institutions—the ceremony in oral culture, the library in print culture and the cybrary in digital culture—are mapped against social, cultural and technological orders pertaining to their era. Following a description of these shifts in society’s collective cultural memory, the paper then examines the question of what the development of global information systems and economies mean for schools and libraries of today, and for teachers and learners as knowledge consumers and producers?