Academic literature on the topic 'Internet et TICi'

Ces deux derniêres décennies, l'environnement social et culturel en Algérie a connu, dans les domaines de l'information et de la communication, un grand bouleversement avec l'apparition de nouvelles technologies. Les campus universitaires ont essayé de suivre cette mutation en se dotant de moyens informatiques didactiques adéquats et três performants (laboratoires multimédia, médiathêque, espace Internet, espace audiovisuel, etc). Puis, un Programme National de télé-enseignement três ambitieux a été mis en place par le Ministêre de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique, ce qui a permis de mettre en service, dès 2008, des cellules de télé- enseignement et de visioconférences dans un grand nombre d'universités. Cependant, malgré ces investissements importants en équipement sophistiqué, les usages des Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication dans l'Enseignement n'ont pas suivi le même rythme de croissance. Il y a une sous-utilisation de ces outils de travail qui sont de puissants outils à potentiel cognitif. Situation aggravée par les routines pédagogiques, administratives, bureaucratiques, et managériales qui ont engendré des inerties à tous les niveaux. Bien que théoriquement les TICE puissent être considéré comme un instrument pédagogique adapté au milieu universitaire, sa mise en pratique est assez difficile à mettre en oeuvre car elle nécessite des changements dans la gestion au sein de l'université. L'objet de cette communication concerne la visioconférence. Si cette derniêre doit correspondre théoriquement à un besoin réel dans l'enseignement au sein des universités algériennes, son usage n'en est rien dans la pratique. L'usage de la visioconférence en Algérie est des plus déconcertants. Aprês cinq ans de sa mise en service, les salles équipées du matériel adéquat sont encore sous utilisées et parfois même pas utilisées!! L'une des plus grandes contradictions entre les objectifs MESRS et l'usage de la visioconférence est que d'une part la tutelle désire diffuser l'enseignement à un três grand nombre d'étudiants (des milliers), et d'autre part les salles de visioconférence ne peuvent recevoir qu'un nombre limité d'étudiants (généralement inférieur à 100). Alors comment concilier cet objectif et l'usage de ce matériel ? Doit-on prendre le risque de faire des investissements supplémentaires alors que les premiers investissements n'ont pas été rentabilisés ? Nous ne croyons pas que ce serait une bonne solution, pour cela nous proposons dans cette communication, aprês la présentation d'un état des lieux de la visioconférence en Algérie (sur la base d'un sondage), des usages pouvant répondre aux besoins nationaux tout en tenant compte des potentialités humaines disponibles.

<p><span>Este artigo analisa as mudanças no trabalho decorrentes das novas tecnologias informacionais e as ocupações oriundas de sua utilização. Entre as ocupações analisadas encontram-se os desenvolvedores de </span><em>software</em><span>, os montadores de </span><em>hardware</em><span> nas fábricas de equipamentos informáticos, os atendentes de </span><em>callcenter</em><span> em serviços terceirizados, como também o trabalho em plataformas digitais. Buscamos responder, ainda que preliminarmente, em que medida a reforma trabalhista estabelecida em 2017 no Brasil favorece a fragmentação ainda maior do trabalho, liberando a terceirização de forma geral, que tem na chamada “uberização” seu formato mais extremo. Concluímos que a precariedade é constituinte desses “novos” trabalhos que surgem num contexto de flexibilidade e inovações tecnológicas, na qual a internet pontifica, mesclando tempo e espaço, embaralhando questões constituintes do próprio valor trabalho, do tempo e espaço, do material e imaterial e do próprio conceito de empresa. Uma das facetas mais contraditórias no chamado capitalismo flexível consiste na transferência do risco da atividade econômica para os trabalhadores.</span></p><p> </p><div><p class="trans-title"><strong>DIGITAL WORK AND EMPLOYMENT: the labor reform and the deepening of precariousness</strong></p><p>This article aims to analyze the changes in Labor in terms of it’s flexibility of relations, technology and emerging occupations from new Technologies of Information and Communication (TICs). Among the analyzed activities are the Software developers, hardware assemblers in computing factories, outsourced call center attendants and digital platform workers. One of the issues analyzed, although preliminarily, is in wich measure the change in Labor Law, ocurred in 2017 in Brazil, favored the “Uberization”of Work. By analizing these activities and it’s kinds of contract, we concluded that precariousness is an element of the aforementioned occupations, which were originated in a context of flexibility and technological innovations, made possible by the Internet, mixing time and space, shuffling issues that are part of the own value of labor, material and imaterial and in the own concept of Enterprise. One of the most contradictory facets of the so called flexible capitalisme consists in the transfer of risk of economic activity to the workers.</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>Information and Communication Technologies; Uberization; Labor reform; Technoliberalism</p><p class="trans-title"><strong><br /></strong></p></div><div><p class="trans-title"><strong>LE TRAVAIL DIGITAL ET L´EMPLOI: la reforme du travail et l’approfondissement des precarites</strong></p><p>Cet article cherche à analyser les changements dans le monde du travail surtout à propos de la flexibilisation des relations et les surgissement et des nouveaux postes de travail parvenus des “Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (TIC)”. Parmi les occupations analysées se trouvent les développeurs de software, les assembleurs de matériel de hardware, les télévendeurs et les travailleurs des plate-formes númeriques. On a pu analyser, de façon preliminaire, le changement du réglement au travail au Brésil, que a eu lieu en 2017, bien que leur influence sur “l´uberisation” du travail dans ce pays. Après avoir étudié les tâches et les contrats du travail, on est arrivés à la conclusion selon laquelle les précarités au travail sont la réalitée des nouveaux métiers, crées par l´espace de l´innovation tecnologique, où l´on mélange les notions de temps et l’espace, de matériel et l´immatériel, de la valeur du travail et de l´ entreprise. Finalment, on envisage l´une des plus sevères contradictions du “capitalisme fléxible”, à savoir, le dêpot des risques de l’activité économique sur les travailleurs.</p><p><strong>Key words: </strong>Des technologies de l’information et de la communication; L´uberisation; Réforme du travail; Technolibéralisme</p><p class="trans-title"><strong><br /></strong></p></div>

COVID-19 has challenged healthcare providers and systems. It has dominated the international news agenda for the majority of 2020; arguably opinion becoming more fractured and disparate as the pandemic has evolved. The changing tone of discourse is concerning, although perhaps not surprising. As the majority of the population become increasingly baffled, bored and betrayed desperate for their lives return to “normal”, progressively binary, toxically expressed and opposing scientific views as to how to manage the “second wave” of the pandemic permeate. The initial failings of personal protective equipment (PPE) and a lack of preparedness to face a viral pandemic against the background of a strained acute care sector must not be forgotten and lessons learned. In the UK, COVID-19 has highlighted both the challenges and importance of Acute Medicine. Acute Medicine teams have provided innovative and rapidly adaptive models of care in response to the pandemic. The fundamental tenets of Acute Medicine – MDT working, rapid initiation of treatment, sound use of diagnostics, early senior clinician input and recognition of those in whom ambulatory care is appropriate – are essential components in the management of all acute medical care and demonstrably equally apply to COVID-19. Our increasing global community of Acute Physicians and Acute Medicine teams have once again demonstrated the importance of our specialty. The innovative practice of Acute Medicine teams and the impact of COVID-19 features prominently in this issue of Acute Medicine. There has been wide commentary regarding the impact of COVID-19 on both mental health issues and non-COVID-19 presentations. Riley et al. report an important analysis of presentations to AMU during the first wave of COVID-19 demonstrating a significant change in patient case mix.1 There were increased numbers of presentations potentially associated with social isolation such as falls, alcohol-related pathologies and overdoses alongside smaller numbers of traditionally lower risk presentations, such as non-cardiac chest pain. Ambulatory management of low risk patients with suspected COVID-19 is fundamental to the safety and sustainability of acute care services during the “second wave” and moving forward. Nunan et al. report the experience of the TICC-19 – a virtual ward monitoring oxygen saturations for COVID-19 triaged using a 30 metre rapid walk test.2 This strategy appears safe and feasible with high levels of patient satisfaction and similar models are being utilised across many organisations. The role of POCUS in the diagnosis and management of COVID-19 is increasingly recognised.4 Knight et al. describe a simple aggregated score formed by summating the degree of pleural and interstitial change within six anatomical lung zones showing good discriminatory performance in predicting a range of adverse outcomes in patients with suspected COVID-19.4 This may form an important addition to COVID-19 ambulatory pathways. SAMBA, the Society for Acute Medicine’s Benchmarking Audit, initially focused on the Society’s key quality indicators, continues to flourish and grow. It now not only benchmarks performance but is being used to guide the development of UK clinical quality measures. Colleagues in the Netherlands are commencing similar work and describing international standards of acute medical care, an iterative process, is one of the ultimate goals of this work. SAMBA 19 continues to demonstrate the evolving complexity of acute medical pathways and highlights the need to define optimal quality indicators for acute medical care.5 The inaugural winter SAMBA adds further evidence to the concerns that during this period there is an unfortunate cocktail of both sicker patients and poorer performance.6 Adapting acute medical services to meet this challenge requires innovation and investment. Those working in Acute Medicine should feel proud of their continued contribution to managing the acutely unwell patient and their impact on the sustainability of acute care services, particularly during this most challenging of years. The Society for Acute Medicine has tremendous pride in representing this brilliant workforce. Alongside, the fantastic work of teams this year, there have been multiple emotional and physical stressors. Many AMUs have experienced large numbers of patient deaths, often having to support their loved ones by telephone. The seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was greatest among colleagues working in Acute Medicine.7 Tragically, some AMUs have lost valued colleagues from COVID-19. We remember these friends for their fantastic work they have done, thank them for their contributions to Acute Medicine and on behalf of all the patients they served, we express thanks; their dedication resulted in the ultimate personal sacrifice. They will never be forgotten.

One of the crucial issues of our decades is how to stop the loss of biodiversity. Policy–makers need reliable data to base their decisions on. Managing wildlife populations requires, first of all, science–based knowledge of their abundance, dynamics, ecology, behaviour and dispersal capacities based on reliable qualitative data. The importance of dialogue and communication with the local actors should be stressed (Sennerby Forsse, 2010) as bag statistics and other monitoring data in wildlife management could be more precise if local actors, notably hunters, were better informed and aware of their importance, especially in supporting existing and emerging policies at national and international levels. Another essential issue in wildlife management is the conflicts generated by humans and their activities when they interact with wildlife (Heredia & Bass, 2011). A sociologic approach is required to take into account those human groups whose interests are divergent, facilitating communication and collaborative learning among these users of the same ecosytem. Obstacles should be addressed and solutions devised to protect and encourage a sustainable use of this ecosystem in, as much as possible, a win–win relationship. Policy objectives and mana-gement strategies should be discussed and debated among the stakeholders involved, then formulated. Policies can be translated into different types of instruments, economic and legislative, but also informative and educa-tive. As awareness of the actors is a key factor of successful regulation, the regulations should be sufficiently explained and stakeholders should be involved in the implementation of these regulations as much as possible. Finally, the effectiveness of the regulations should be evaluated in light of their objectives, and where necessary, the regulations should be strengthened or adapted to improve their performance (Van Gossum et al., 2010).The various aspects of the processes described above were highlighted in the plenary talk and the five oral communications presented during the session on wildlife law and policy. In his plenary talk, Dr Borja Heredia, Head of the Scientific Unit of the Secretariat of the CMS/UNEP in Bonn, pointed out different sources of human–wildlife conflicts, such as the logging activities in subtropical forests that induce overexploitation and poaching for bushmeat consumption; the problem of predators on livestock and the poisoning of lions in the Masaï Reserve; animals invading the human territory; and game species as a vector of diseases in humans and livestock (Heredia & Bass, 2011). Heredia stressed the importance for wildlife managers to deal with the human dimension; he stressed the importance of successful conflict management based on principles such as a non–adversial framework, an analytical approach, a problem–solving orientation, the direct participation of the conflicting parties, dialogue as a basis for mutual understanding and facilitation by a trained third party. Heredia explained how the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals (UNEP/CMS) contributes to confict resolution and in this way increases the chance of survival of these species. The CMS (see CMS website) works for the con-servation of a wide array of endangered migratory animals worldwide through the negotiation and implementation of agreements and action plans. Migratory species threatened with extinction are listed in Appendix I of the Con-vention. CMS parties strive towards strictly protecting these animals, conserving or restoring the places where they live, mitigating obstacles to migration and controlling other factors that might endanger them. Besides establishing obligations for each State joining the CMS, CMS promotes concerted action among the Range States of many of these species. Migratory species that need, or would significantly benefit from, international co–operation are listed in Appendix II of the Convention. For this reason, the Convention encourages the Range states to reach global or regional agreements. The Convention acts, in this res-pect as a framework convention. The Agreements may range from legally binding treaties (called agreements, there are seven) to less formal instruments, such as Memoranda of Understanding, or actions plans (there are 20), and they can be adapted to the requirements of particular regions. The development of models tailored according to the conservation needs throughout the migratory range is a unique capacity to CMS. Heredia detailed inter alia the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels, the Great Apes Survival Part-nership, the Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and their Habitats, the MoU on the Saïga Antelope, and the Programme for the Conservation and sustainable use of the wild saker falcon (Falco cherrug) in Mongolia.The talk of Sarah Wilks, research fellow at the School of Law, University of Western Sydney, illus-trated the importance of adequate transparency and public consultation in environmental and conservation law and decision making. Wilks (2012) examined the Australian legislation concerning animal welfare and the export of Australian wildlife products and, as a case study, explored the Tasmanian State Government’s recent decision to promote the com-mercial harvest and export of brushtail possums She pointed out that although the Enviromment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation 1999 (EPBC) process intended to be open and co–operative, it is not, in prac-tice, co–operative, public and transparent. The export of possum products requires Australian Government approval under the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (EPBC). Wilks (2012) assessed the Tasmanian Wildlife Trade Management Plan for Common Brushtail Possums developed by the EPBC, the public submissions to the Austra-lian Government, and the Australian Government’s response against the provisions of the EPBC. As a result, she deplored that welfare outcomes, like that of back or pouch juveniles whose mother had been trapped or killed have not been adequately considered either at Tasmanian State or at Australian Govenment level. She concluded by deploring that submissions on ethical grounds could not yet be considered by the Australian Government because the decision to harvest or not to harvest is made at State level, and yet the Tasmanian State legislation is deficient in mandating public consultation.Data on hunting and game resources provide quan-titative and qualitative information on game species, but moreover, game monitoring has shown to be efficient in identifying threats to biodiversity, such as biodiversity problems in agriculture and forest ecosystems, and also to be an early warning in assessing threats from invasive alien species (Sennerby Forsse, 2010). They are an essential tool for game managers, scientists and policy–makers, and hunters and hunter organisations are key resources in the collection of this information.The ARTEMIS data bank was initiated by the Federation of Asssociations of Hunting and Conservation of the Euro-pean Union FACE (see ARTEMIS website) to improve information about game in support of existing and emer-ging European policies. The objective of ARTEMIS is to centralise and analyse, in a coordinated and coherent Animal Biodiversity and Conservation 35.2 (2012)161extending the ban to all waterfowl hunting and not only that undertaken in protected wetlands.The presentation of K. E. Skordas, from the Hunting Federation of Macedonia and Thrace, Research Divi-sion, Greece, illustrated the contribution of the Hellenic Hunters Confederation (HHC) to law enforcement for wildlife protection. It showed how stakeholders, hun-ters, set up heir own Game Warden Service in 1999, through their Hunting Associations, in order to assume responsibility for the control of illegal hunting and wil-dlife protection, in collaboration with the local Forest Service. These game wardens carry out repressive and preventive controls and prosecutions. Besides this initiative, information campaigns are organised by the HHC to improve hunters’ awareness (see website of the Hellenic Hunters Confederation, HHC). Skordas & Papaspyropoulos (2011) analysed the relation between law enforcement, hunter awareness and infringement categories, classed in degree of influencing wildlife protection. They observed a strong reduction in the number of infringements; particularly, they found that hunting out of season and hunting without a license decreased from 23.4% to 7.31% and from 30.12% to 11.8%, respectively.All the talks presented in this session stressed the importance of dialogue in wildlife management as a basis for mutual understanding. Communication and involvement of the local actors/stakeholders are key factors at different stages of wildlife management: when collecting reliable data on which policy–makers may draw up their decisions, when debating policy objectives and strategies, and when implementing regulations and administrative acts

RACHAEL. It seems you feel our work is not a benefit to the public.DECKARD. Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit it's not my problem.RACHAEL. May I ask you a personal question?DECKARD. Yes.RACHAEL. Have you every retired a human by mistake? (Scott 17:30) CAPTCHAs (henceforth "captchas") are commonplace on today's Internet. Their purpose seems clear: block malicious software, allow human users to pass. But as much as they exclude spambots, captchas often exclude humans with visual and other disabilities (Dzieza; W3C Working Group). Worse yet, more and more advanced captcha-breaking technology has resulted in more and more challenging captchas, raising the barrier between online services and those who would access them. In the words of inclusive design advocate Robin Christopherson, "CAPTCHAs are evil". In this essay I describe how the captcha industry implements a posthuman process that speculative fiction has gestured toward but not grasped. The hostile posthumanity of captcha is not just a technical problem, nor just a problem of usability or access. Rather, captchas convey a design philosophy that asks humans to prove themselves by performing well at disembodied games. This philosophy has its roots in the Turing Test itself, whose terms guide speculation away from the real problems that today's authentication systems present. Drawing the concept of "procedurality" from game studies, I argue that, despite a design goal of separating machines and humans to the benefit of the latter, captchas actually and ironically produce an arms race in which humans have a systematic and increasing disadvantage. This arms race results from the Turing Test's equivocation between human and machine bodies, an assumption whose influence I identify in popular film, science fiction literature, and captcha design discourse. The Captcha Industry and Its Side-Effects Exclusion is an essential function of every cybersecurity system. From denial-of-service attacks to data theft, toxic automated entities constantly seek admission to services they would damage. To remain functional and accessible, Websites need security systems to keep out "abusive agents" (Shet). In cybersecurity, the term "user authentication" refers to the process of distinguishing between abusive agents and welcome users (Jeng et al.). Of the many available authentication techniques, CAPTCHA, "Completely Automated Public Turing test[s] to tell Computers and Humans Apart" (Von Ahn et al. 1465), is one of the most iconic. Although some captchas display a simple checkbox beside a disclaimer to the effect that "I am not a robot" (Shet), these frequently give way to more difficult alternatives: perception tests (fig. 1). Test captchas may show sequences of distorted letters, which a user is supposed to recognise and then type in (Godfrey). Others effectively digitize a game of "I Spy": an image appears, with an instruction to select the parts of it that show a specific type of object (Zhu et al.). A newer type of captcha involves icons rotated upside-down or sideways, the task being to right them (Gossweiler et al.). These latter developments show the influence of gamification (Kani and Nishigaki; Kumar et al.), the design trend where game-like elements figure in serious tasks. Fig. 1: A series of captchas followed by multifactor authentication as a "quick security check" during the author's suspicious attempt to access LinkedIn over a Virtual Private Network Gamified captchas, in using tests of ability to tell humans from computers, invite three problems, of which only the first has received focussed critical attention. I discuss each briefly below, and at greater length in subsequent sections. First, as many commentators have pointed out (W3C Working Group), captchas can accidentally categorise real humans as nonhumans—a technical problem that becomes more likely as captcha-breaking technologies improve (e.g. Tam et al.; Brown et al.). Indeed, the design and breaking of captchas has become an almost self-sustaining subfield in computer science, as researchers review extant captchas, publish methods for breaking them, and publish further captcha designs (e.g. Weng et al.). Such research fuels an industry of captcha-solving services (fig. 2), of which some use automated techniques, and some are "human-powered", employing groups of humans to complete large numbers of captchas, thus clearing the way for automated incursions (Motoyama et al. 2). Captchas now face the quixotic task of using ability tests to distinguish legitimate users from abusers with similar abilities. Fig. 2: Captcha production and captcha breaking: a feedback loop Second, gamified captchas import the feelings of games. When they defeat a real human, the human seems not to have encountered the failure state of an automated procedure, but rather to have lost, or given up on, a game. The same frame of "gameful"-ness (McGonigal, under "Happiness Hacking") or "gameful work" (under "The Rise of the Happiness Engineers"), supposed to flatter users with a feeling of reward or satisfaction when they complete a challenge, has a different effect in the event of defeat. Gamefulness shifts the fault from procedure to human, suggesting, for the latter, the shameful status of loser. Third, like games, gamified captchas promote a particular strain of logic. Just as other forms of media can be powerful venues for purveying stereotypes, so are gamified captchas, in this case conveying the notion that ability is a legitimate means, not only of apportioning privilege, but of humanising and dehumanising. Humanity thus appears as a status earned, and disability appears not as a stigma, nor an occurrence, but an essence. The latter two problems emerge because the captcha reveals, propagates and naturalises an ideology through mechanised procedures. Below I invoke the concept of "procedural rhetoric" to critique the disembodied notion of humanity that underlies both the original Turing Test and the "Completely Automated Public Turing test." Both tests, I argue, ultimately play to the disadvantage of their human participants. Rhetorical Games, Procedural Rhetoric When videogame studies emerged as an academic field in the early 2000s, once of its first tasks was to legitimise games relative to other types of artefact, especially literary texts (Eskelinen; Aarseth). Scholars sought a framework for discussing how video games, like other more venerable media, can express ideas (Weise). Janet Murray and Ian Bogost looked to the notion of procedure, devising the concepts of "procedurality" (Bogost 3), "procedural authorship" (Murray 171), and "procedural rhetoric" (Bogost 1). From a proceduralist perspective, a videogame is both an object and a medium for inscribing processes. Those processes have two basic types: procedures the game's developers have authored, which script the behaviour of the game as a computer program; and procedures human players respond with, the "operational logic" of gameplay (Bogost 13). Procedurality's two types of procedure, the computerised and the human, have a kind of call-and-response relationship, where the behaviour of the machine calls upon players to respond with their own behaviour patterns. Games thus train their players. Through the training that is play, players acquire habits they bring to other contexts, giving videogames the power not only to express ideas but "disrupt and change fundamental attitudes and beliefs about the world, leading to potentially significant long-term social change" (Bogost ix). That social change can be positive (McGonigal), or it can involve "dark patterns", cases where game procedures provoke and exploit harmful behaviours (Zagal et al.). For example, embedded in many game paradigms is the procedural rhetoric of "toxic meritocracy" (Paul 66), where players earn rewards, status and personal improvement by overcoming challenges, and, especially, excelling where others fail. While meritocracy may seem logical within a strictly competitive arena, its effect in a broader cultural context is to legitimise privileges as the spoils of victory, and maltreatment as the just result of defeat. As game design has influenced other fields, so too has procedurality's applicability expanded. Gamification, "the use of game design elements in non-game contexts" (Deterding et al. 9), is a popular trend in which designers seek to imbue diverse tasks with some of the enjoyment of playing a game (10). Gamification discourse has drawn heavily upon Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "positive psychology" (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi), and especially the speculative psychology of flow (Csikszentmihalyi 51), which promise enormously broad benefits for individuals acting in the "flow state" that challenging play supposedly promotes (75). Gamification has become a celebrated cause, advocated by a group of scholars and designers Sebastian Deterding calls the "Californian league of gamification evangelists" (120), before becoming an object of critical scrutiny (Fuchs et al.). Where gamification goes, it brings its dark patterns with it. In gamified user authentication (Kroeze and Olivier), and particularly gamified captcha, there occurs an intersection of deceptively difficult games, real-world stakes, and users whose differences go often ignored. The Disembodied Arms Race In captcha design research, the concept of disability occurs under the broader umbrella of usability. Usability studies emphasise the fact that some technology pieces are easier to access than others (Yan and El Ahmad). Disability studies, in contrast, emphasises the fact that different users have different capacities to overcome access barriers. Ability is contextual, an intersection of usability and disability, use case and user (Reynolds 443). When used as an index of humanness, ability yields illusive results. In Posthuman Knowledge, Rosi Braidotti begins her conceptual enquiry into the posthuman condition with a contemplation of captcha, asking what it means to tick that checkbox claiming that "I am not a robot" (8), and noting the baffling multiplicity of possible answers. From a practical angle, Junya Kani and Masakatsu Nishigaki write candidly about the problem of distinguishing robot from human: "no matter how advanced malicious automated programs are, a CAPTCHA that will not pass automated programs is required. Hence, we have to find another human cognitive processing capability to tackle this challenge" (40). Kani and Nishigaki try out various human cognitive processing capabilities for the task. Narrative comprehension and humour become candidates: might a captcha ascribe humanity based on human users' ability to determine the correct order of scenes in a film (43)? What about panels in a cartoon (40)? As they seek to assess the soft skills of machines, Kani and Nishigaki set up a drama similar to that of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, and its film adaptation, Blade Runner (Scott), describe a spacefaring society populated by both humans and androids. Androids have lesser legal privileges than humans, and in particular face execution—euphemistically called "retirement"—for trespassing on planet Earth (Dick 60). Blade Runner gave these androids their more famous name: "replicant". Replicants mostly resemble humans in thought and action, but are reputed to lack the capacity for empathy, so human police, seeking a cognitive processing capability unique to humans, test for empathy to test for humanness (30). But as with captchas, Blade Runner's testing procedure depends upon an automated device whose effectiveness is not certain, prompting the haunting question: "have you ever retired a human by mistake?" (Scott 17:50). Blade Runner's empathy test is part of a long philosophical discourse about the distinction between human and machine (e.g. Putnam; Searle). At the heart of the debate lies Alan Turing's "Turing Test", which a machine hypothetically passes when it can pass itself off as a human conversationalist in an exchange of written text. Turing's motivation for coming up with the test goes: there may be no absolute way of defining what makes a human mind, so the best we can do is assess a computer's ability to imitate one (Turing 433). The aporia, however—how can we determine what makes a human mind?—is the result of an unfair question. Turing's test, dealing only with information expressed in strings of text, purposely disembodies both humans and machines. The Blade Runner universe similarly evens the playing field: replicants look, feel and act like humans to such an extent that distinguishing between the two becomes, again, the subject of a cognition test. The Turing Test, obsessed with information processing and steeped in mind-body dualism, assesses humanness using criteria that automated users can master relatively easily. In contrast, in everyday life, I use a suite of much more intuitive sensory tests to distinguish between my housemate and my laptop. My intuitions capture what the Turing Test masks: a human is a fleshy entity, possessed of the numerous trappings and capacities of a human body. The result of the automated Turing Test's focus on cognition is an arms race that places human users at an increasing disadvantage. Loss, in such a race, manifests not only as exclusion by and from computer services, but as a redefinition of proper usership, the proper behaviour of the authentic, human, user. Thus the Turing Test implicitly provides for a scenario where a machine becomes able to super-imitate humanness: to be perceived as human more often than a real human would be. In such an outcome, it would be the human conversationalist who would begin to fail the Turing test; to fail to pass themself off according to new criteria for authenticity. This scenario is possible because, through procedural rhetoric, machines shift human perspectives: about what is and is not responsible behaviour; about what humans should and should not feel when confronted with a challenge; about who does and does not deserve access; and, fundamentally, about what does and does not signify authentic usership. In captcha, as in Blade Runner, it is ultimately a machine that adjudicates between human and machine cognition. As users we rely upon this machine to serve our interests, rather than pursue some emergent automated interest, some by-product of the feedback loop that results from the ideologies of human researchers both producing and being produced by mechanised procedures. In the case of captcha, that faith is misplaced. The Feeling of Robopocalypse A rich repertory of fiction has speculated upon what novelist Daniel Wilson calls the "Robopocalypse", the scenario where machines overthrow humankind. Most versions of the story play out as a slave-owner's nightmare, featuring formerly servile entities (which happen to be machines) violently revolting and destroying the civilisation of their masters. Blade Runner's rogue replicants, for example, are effectively fugitive slaves (Dihal 196). Popular narratives of robopocalypse, despite showing their antagonists as lethal robots, are fundamentally human stories with robots playing some of the parts. In contrast, the exclusion a captcha presents when it defeats a human is not metaphorical or emancipatory. There, in that moment, is a mechanised entity defeating a human. The defeat takes place within an authoritative frame that hides its aggression. For a human user, to be defeated by a captcha is to fail to meet an apparently common standard, within the framework of a common procedure. This is a robopocalypse of baffling systems rather than anthropomorphic soldiers. Likewise, non-human software clients pose threats that humanoid replicants do not. In particular, software clients replicate much faster than physical bodies. The sheer sudden scale of a denial-of-service attack makes Philip K. Dick's vision of android resistance seem quaint. The task of excluding unauthorised software, unlike the impulse to exclude replicants, is more a practical necessity than an exercise in colonialism. Nevertheless, dystopia finds its way into the captcha process through the peril inherent in the test, whenever humans are told apart from authentic users. This is the encroachment of the hostile posthuman, naturalised by us before it denaturalises us. The hostile posthuman sometimes manifests as a drone strike, Terminator-esque (Cameron), a dehumanised decision to kill (Asaro). But it is also a process of gradual exclusion, detectable from moment to moment as a feeling of disdain or impatience for the irresponsibility, incompetence, or simply unusualness of a human who struggles to keep afloat of a rising standard. "We are in this together", Braidotti writes, "between the algorithmic devil and the acidified deep blue sea" (9). But we are also in this separately, divided along lines of ability. Captcha's danger, as a broken procedure, hides in plain sight, because it lashes out at some only while continuing to flatter others with a game that they can still win. Conclusion Online security systems may always have to define some users as legitimate and others as illegitimate. Is there a future where they do so on the basis of behaviour rather than identity or essence? Might some future system accord each user, human or machine, the same authentic status, and provide all with an initial benefit of the doubt? In the short term, such a system would seem grossly impractical. The type of user that most needs to be excluded is the disembodied type, the type that can generate orders of magnitude more demands than a human, that can proliferate suddenly and in immense number because it does not lag behind the slow processes of human bodies. This type of user exists in software alone. Rich in irony, then, is the captcha paradigm which depends on the disabilities of the threats it confronts. We dread malicious software not for its disabilities—which are momentary and all too human—but its abilities. Attenuating the threat presented by those abilities requires inverting a habit that meritocracy trains and overtrains: specifically, we have here a case where the plight of the human user calls for negative action toward ability rather than disability. 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Introduction One of the ways in which ‘country’ is made to work discursively is in ‘country music’ – defining a genre and sensibility in music production, marketing and consumption. This article seeks to excavate one small niche in the historical geography of country music to explore exactly how discursive antecedents emerged, and crucially, how images associated with ‘country’ surfaced and travelled internationally via one of the new ‘global’ media of the first half of the twentieth century – sheet music. My central arguments are twofold: first, that alongside aural qualities and lyrical content, the visual elements of sheet music were important and thus far have been under-acknowledged. Sheet music diffused the imagery connecting ‘country’ to music, to particular landscapes, and masculinities. In the literature on country music much emphasis has been placed on film, radio and television (Tichi; Peterson). Yet, sheet music was for several decades the most common way people bought personal copies of songs they liked and intended to play at home on piano, guitar or ukulele. This was particularly the case in Australia – geographically distant, and rarely included in international tours by American country music stars. Sheet music is thus a rich text to reveal the historical contours of ‘country’. My second and related argument is that that the possibilities for the globalising of ‘country’ were first explored in music. The idea of transnational discourses associated with ‘country’ and ‘rurality’ is relatively new (Cloke et al; Gorman-Murray et al; McCarthy), but in music we see early evidence of a globalising discourse of ‘country’ well ahead of the time period usually analysed. Accordingly, my focus is on the sheet music of country songs in Australia in the first half of the twentieth century and on how visual representations hybridised travelling themes to create a new vernacular ‘country’ in Australia. Creating ‘Country’ Music Country music, as its name suggests, is perceived as the music of rural areas, “defined in contrast to metropolitan norms” (Smith 301). However, the ‘naturalness’ of associations between country music and rurality belies a history of urban capitalism and the refinement of deliberate methods of marketing music through associated visual imagery. Early groups wore suits and dressed for urban audiences – but then altered appearances later, on the insistence of urban record companies, to emphasise rurality and cowboy heritage. Post-1950, ‘country’ came to replace ‘folk’ music as a marketing label, as the latter was considered to have too many communistic references (Hemphill 5), and the ethnic mixing of earlier folk styles was conveniently forgotten in the marketing of ‘country’ music as distinct from African American ‘race’ and ‘r and b’ music. Now an industry of its own with multinational headquarters in Nashville, country music is a ‘cash cow’ for entertainment corporations, with lower average production costs, considerable profit margins, and marketing advantages that stem from tropes of working class identity and ‘rural’ honesty (see Lewis; Arango). Another of country music’s associations is with American geography – and an imagined heartland in the colonial frontier of the American West. Slippages between ‘country’ and ‘western’ in music, film and dress enhance this. But historical fictions are masked: ‘purists’ argue that western dress and music have nothing to do with ‘country’ (see truewesternmusic.com), while recognition of the Spanish-Mexican, Native American and Hawaiian origins of ‘cowboy’ mythology is meagre (George-Warren and Freedman). Similarly, the highly international diffusion and adaptation of country music as it rose to prominence in the 1940s is frequently downplayed (Connell and Gibson), as are the destructive elements of colonialism and dispossession of indigenous peoples in frontier America (though Johnny Cash’s 1964 album The Ballads Of The American Indian: Bitter Tears was an exception). Adding to the above is the way ‘country’ operates discursively in music as a means to construct particular masculinities. Again, linked to rural imagery and the American frontier, the dominant masculinity is of rugged men wrestling nature, negotiating hardships and the pressures of family life. Country music valorises ‘heroic masculinities’ (Holt and Thompson), with echoes of earlier cowboy identities reverberating into contemporary performance through dress style, lyrical content and marketing imagery. The men of country music mythology live an isolated existence, working hard to earn an income for dependent families. Their music speaks to the triumph of hard work, honest values (meaning in this context a musical style, and lyrical concerns that are ‘down to earth’, ‘straightforward’ and ‘without pretence’) and physical strength, in spite of neglect from national governments and uncaring urban leaders. Country music has often come to be associated with conservative politics, heteronormativity, and whiteness (Gibson and Davidson), echoing the wider politics of ‘country’ – it is no coincidence, for example, that the slogan for the 2008 Republican National Convention in America was ‘country first’. And yet, throughout its history, country music has also enabled more diverse gender performances to emerge – from those emphasising (or bemoaning) domesticity; assertive femininity; creative negotiation of ‘country’ norms by gay men; and ‘alternative’ culture (captured in the marketing tag, ‘alt.country’); to those acknowledging white male victimhood, criminality (‘the outlaw’), vulnerability and cruelty (see Johnson; McCusker and Pecknold; Saucier). Despite dominant tropes of ‘honesty’, country music is far from transparent, standing for certain values and identities, and yet enabling the construction of diverse and contradictory others. Historical analysis is therefore required to trace the emergence of ‘country’ in music, as it travelled beyond America. A Note on Sheet Music as Media Source Sheet music was one of the main modes of distribution of music from the 1930s through to the 1950s – a formative period in which an eclectic group of otherwise distinct ‘hillbilly’ and ‘folk’ styles moved into a single genre identity, and after which vinyl singles and LP records with picture covers dominated. Sheet music was prevalent in everyday life: beyond radio, a hit song was one that was widely purchased as sheet music, while pianos and sheet music collections (stored in a piece of furniture called a ‘music canterbury’) in family homes were commonplace. Sheet music is in many respects preferable to recorded music as a form of evidence for historical analysis of country music. Picture LP covers did not arrive until the late 1950s (by which time rock and roll had surpassed country music). Until then, 78 rpm shellac discs, the main form of pre-recorded music, featured generic brown paper sleeves from the individual record companies, or city retail stores. Also, while radio was clearly central to the consumption of music in this period, it obviously also lacked the pictorial element that sheet music could provide. Sheet music bridged the music and printing industries – the latter already well-equipped with colour printing, graphic design and marketing tools. Sheet music was often literally crammed with information, providing the researcher with musical notation, lyrics, cover art and embedded advertisements – aural and visual texts combined. These multiple dimensions of sheet music proved useful here, for clues to the context of the music/media industries and geography of distribution (for instance, in addresses for publishers and sheet music retail shops). Moreover, most sheet music of the time used rich, sometimes exaggerated, images to convince passing shoppers to buy songs that they had possibly never heard. As sheet music required caricature rather than detail or historical accuracy, it enabled fantasy without distraction. In terms of representations of ‘country’, then, sheet music is perhaps even more evocative than film or television. Hundreds of sheet music items were collected for this research over several years, through deliberate searching (for instance, in library archives and specialist sheet music stores) and with some serendipity (for instance, when buying second hand sheet music in charity shops or garage sales). The collected material is probably not representative of all music available at the time – it is as much a specialised personal collection as a comprehensive survey. However, at least some material from all the major Australian country music performers of the time were found, and the resulting collection appears to be several times larger than that held currently by the National Library of Australia (from which some entries were sourced). All examples here are of songs written by, or cover art designed for Australian country music performers. For brevity’s sake, the following analysis of the sheet music follows a crudely chronological framework. Country Music in Australia Before ‘Country’ Country music did not ‘arrive’ in Australia from America as a fully-finished genre category; nor was Australia at the time without rural mythology or its own folk music traditions. Associations between Australian national identity, rurality and popular culture were entrenched in a period of intense creativity and renewed national pride in the decades prior to and after Federation in 1901. This period saw an outpouring of art, poetry, music and writing in new nationalist idiom, rooted in ‘the bush’ (though drawing heavily on Celtic expressions), and celebrating themes of mateship, rural adversity and ‘battlers’. By the turn of the twentieth century, such myths, invoked through memory and nostalgia, had already been popularised. Australia had a fully-established system of colonies, capital cities and state governments, and was highly urbanised. Yet the poetry, folk music and art, invariably set in rural locales, looked back to the early 1800s, romanticising bush characters and frontier events. The ‘bush ballad’ was a central and recurring motif, one that commentators have argued was distinctly, and essentially ‘Australian’ (Watson; Smith). Sheet music from this early period reflects the nationalistic, bush-orientated popular culture of the time: iconic Australian fauna and flora are prominent, and Australian folk culture is emphasised as ‘native’ (being the first era of cultural expressions from Australian-born residents). Pioneer life and achievements are celebrated. ‘Along the road to Gundagai’, for instance, was about an iconic Australian country town and depicted sheep droving along rustic trails with overhanging eucalypts. Male figures are either absent, or are depicted in situ as lone drovers in the archetypal ‘shepherd’ image, behind their flocks of sheep (Figure 1). Figure 1: No. 1 Magpie Ballads – The Pioneer (c1900) and Along the road to Gundagai (1923). Further colonial ruralities developed in Australia from the 1910s to 1940s, when agrarian values grew in the promotion of Australian agricultural exports. Australia ‘rode on the sheep’s back’ to industrialisation, and governments promoted rural development and inland migration. It was a period in which rural lifestyles were seen as superior to those in the crowded inner city, and government strategies sought to create a landed proletariat through post-war land settlement and farm allotment schemes. National security was said to rely on populating the inland with those of European descent, developing rural industries, and breeding a healthier and yet compliant population (Dufty), from which armies of war-ready men could be recruited in times of conflict. Popular culture served these national interests, and thus during these decades, when ‘hillbilly’ and other North American music forms were imported, they were transformed, adapted and reworked (as in other places such as Canada – see Lehr). There were definite parallels in the frontier narratives of the United States (Whiteoak), and several local adaptations followed: Tex Morton became Australia’s ‘Yodelling boundary rider’ and Gordon Parsons became ‘Australia’s yodelling bushman’. American songs were re-recorded and performed, and new original songs written with Australian lyrics, titles and themes. Visual imagery in sheet music built upon earlier folk/bush frontier themes to re-cast Australian pastoralism in a more settled, modernist and nationalist aesthetic; farms were places for the production of a robust nation. Where male figures were present on sheet music covers in the early twentieth century, they became more prominent in this period, and wore Akubras (Figure 2). The lyrics to John Ashe’s Growin’ the Golden Fleece (1952) exemplify this mix of Australian frontier imagery, new pastoralist/nationalist rhetoric, and the importation of American cowboy masculinity: Go west and take up sheep, man, North Queensland is the shot But if you don’t get rich, man, you’re sure to get dry rot Oh! Growin’ the golden fleece, battlin’ a-way out west Is bound to break your flamin’ heart, or else expand your chest… We westerners are handy, we can’t afford to crack Not while the whole darn’d country is riding on our back Figure 2: Eric Tutin’s Shearers’ Jamboree (1946). As in America, country music struck a chord because it emerged “at a point in history when the project of the creation and settlement of a new society was underway but had been neither completed nor abandoned” (Dyer 33). Governments pressed on with the colonial project of inland expansion in Australia, despite the theft of indigenous country this entailed, and popular culture such as music became a means to normalise and naturalise the process. Again, mutations of American western imagery, and particular iconic male figures were important, as in Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail (Figure 3): Wagon wheels are rolling on, and the days seem mighty long Clouds of heat-dust in the air, bawling cattle everywhere They’re on the overlander trail Where only sheer determination will prevail Men of Aussie with a job to do, they’ll stick and drive the cattle through And though they sweat they know they surely must Keep on the trail that winds a-head thro’ heat and dust All sons of Aussie and they will not fail. Sheet music depicted silhouetted men in cowboy hats on horses (either riding solo or in small groups), riding into sunsets or before looming mountain ranges. Music – an important part of popular culture in the 1940s – furthered the colonial project of invading, securing and transforming the Australian interior by normalising its agendas and providing it with heroic male characters, stirring tales and catchy tunes. Figure 3: ‘Roy Darling’s (1945) Overlander Trail and Smoky Dawson’s The Overlander’s Song (1946). ‘Country Music’ Becomes a (Globalised) Genre Further growth in Australian country music followed waves of popularity in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, and was heavily influenced by new cross-media publicity opportunities. Radio shows expanded, and western TV shows such as Bonanza and On the Range fuelled a ‘golden age’. Australian performers such as Slim Dusty and Smokey Dawson rose to fame (see Fitzgerald and Hayward) in an era when rural-urban migration peaked. Sheet music reflected the further diffusion and adoption of American visual imagery: where male figures were present on sheet music covers, they became more prominent than before and wore Stetsons. Some were depicted as chiselled-faced but simple men, with plain clothing and square jaws. Others began to more enthusiastically embrace cowboy looks, with bandana neckerchiefs, rawhide waistcoats, embellished and harnessed tall shaft boots, pipe-edged western shirts with wide collars, smile pockets, snap fasteners and shotgun cuffs, and fringed leather jackets (Figure 4). Landscapes altered further too: cacti replaced eucalypts, and iconic ‘western’ imagery of dusty towns, deserts, mesas and buttes appeared (Figure 5). Any semblance of folk music’s appeal to rustic authenticity was jettisoned in favour of showmanship, as cowboy personas were constructed to maximise cinematic appeal. Figure 4: Al Dexter’s Pistol Packin’ Mama (1943) and Reg Lindsay’s (1954) Country and Western Song Album. Figure 5: Tim McNamara’s Hitching Post (1948) and Smoky Dawson’s Golden West Album (1951). Far from slavish mimicry of American culture, however, hybridisations were common. According to Australian music historian Graeme Smith (300): “Australian place names appear, seeking the same mythological resonance that American localisation evoked: hobos became bagmen […] cowboys become boundary riders.” Thus alongside reproductions of the musical notations of American songs by Lefty Frizzel, Roy Carter and Jimmie Rodgers were songs with localised themes by new Australian stars such as Reg Lindsay and Smoky Dawson: My curlyheaded buckaroo, My home way out back, and On the Murray Valley. On the cover of The square dance by the billabong (Figure 6) – the title of which itself was a conjunction of archetypal ‘country’ images from both America and Australia – a background of eucalypts and windmills frames dancers in classic 1940s western (American) garb. In the case of Tex Morton’s Beautiful Queensland (Figure 7), itself mutated from W. Lee O’Daniel’s Beautiful Texas (c1945), the sheet music instructed those playing the music that the ‘names of other states may be substituted for Queensland’. ‘Country’ music had become an established genre, with normative values, standardised images and themes and yet constituted a stylistic formula with enough polysemy to enable local adaptations and variations. Figure 6: The Square dance by the billabong, Vernon Lisle, 1951. Figure 7: Beautiful Queensland, Tex Morton, c1945 source: http://nla.gov.au/nla.mus-vn1793930. Conclusions In country music images of place and masculinity combine. In music, frontier landscapes are populated by rugged men living ‘on the range’ in neo-colonial attempts to tame the land and convert it to productive uses. This article has considered only one media – sheet music – in only one country (Australia) and in only one time period (1900-1950s). There is much more to say than was possible here about country music, place and gender – particularly recently, since ‘country’ has fragmented into several niches, and marketing of country music via cable television and the internet has ensued (see McCusker and Pecknold). My purpose here has been instead to explore the early origins of ‘country’ mythology in popular culture, through a media source rarely analysed. Images associated with ‘country’ travelled internationally via sheet music, immensely popular in the 1930s and 1940s before the advent of television. The visual elements of sheet music contributed to the popularisation and standardisation of genre expectations and appearances, and yet these too travelled and were adapted and varied in places like Australia which had their own colonial histories and folk music heritages. Evidenced here is how combinations of geographical and gender imagery embraced imported American cowboy imagery and adapted it to local markets and concerns. Australia saw itself as a modern rural utopia with export aspirations and a desire to secure permanence through taming and populating its inland. Sheet music reflected all this. So too, sheet music reveals the historical contours of ‘country’ as a transnational discourse – and the extent to which ‘country’ brought with it a clearly defined set of normative values, a somewhat exaggerated cowboy masculinity, and a remarkable capacity to be moulded to local circumstances. Well before later and more supposedly ‘global’ media such as the internet and television, the humble printed sheet of notated music was steadily shaping ‘country’ imagery, and an emergent international geography of cultural flows. References Arango, Tim. “Cashville USA.” Fortune, Jan 29, 2007. Sept 3, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/01/22/8397980/index.htm. Cloke, Paul, Marsden, Terry and Mooney, Patrick, eds. Handbook of Rural Studies, London: Sage, 2006. Connell, John and Gibson, Chris. Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, London: Routledge, 2003. Dufty, Rae. Rethinking the politics of distribution: the geographies and governmentalities of housing assistance in rural New South Wales, Australia, PhD thesis, UNSW, 2008. Dyer, Richard. White: Essays on Race and Culture, London: Routledge, 1997. George-Warren, Holly and Freedman, Michelle. How the West was Worn: a History of Western Wear, New York: Abrams, 2000. Fitzgerald, Jon and Hayward, Phil. “At the confluence: Slim Dusty and Australian country music.” Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music. Ed. Phil Hayward. Gympie: Australian Institute of Country Music Press, 2003. 29-54. Gibson, Chris and Davidson, Deborah. “Tamworth, Australia’s ‘country music capital’: place marketing, rural narratives and resident reactions.” Journal of Rural Studies 20 (2004): 387-404. Gorman-Murray, Andrew, Darian-Smith, Kate and Gibson, Chris. “Scaling the rural: reflections on rural cultural studies.” Australian Humanities Review 45 (2008): in press. Hemphill, Paul. The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights and Country Music, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. Holt, Douglas B. and Thompson, Craig J. “Man-of-action heroes: the pursuit of heroic masculinity in everyday consumption.” Journal of Consumer Research 31 (2004). Johnson, Corey W. “‘The first step is the two-step’: hegemonic masculinity and dancing in a country western gay bar.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 18 (2004): 445-464. Lehr, John C. “‘Texas (When I die)’: national identity and images of place in Canadian country music broadcasts.” The Canadian Geographer 27 (1983): 361-370. Lewis, George H. “Lap dancer or hillbilly deluxe? The cultural construction of modern country music.” Journal of Popular Culture, 31 (1997): 163-173. 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À partir d’une analyse quali-quantitative comparée (AQQC-QCA), conçue par Ragin (1987), nous proposons un modèle théorique sur l’émergence et la transmission des pratiques de résistance culturelle des jeunes des quartiers populaires de Medellín (Colombie), Paris (France) et São Paulo (Brésil). Nos résultats indiquent que les pratiques de résistance culturelle hybride de ces jeunes se produisent selon deux scénarios. Le premier (i.e., M[P+A] → R) apparaît lorsque des communautés morales à forte identité collective (i.e., dont les membres ne sont pas nécessairement localisés dans la même zone géographique) se nourrissent des flux d’information de stigmatisation en provenance de la sphère médiatique centrale de la ville (SMCV), et disposent soit de ressources informationnelles offertes par la mise en place de politiques publiques d’intervention populaire, soit d’un accès libre et répandu aux technologies d’information et communication liées à Internet (TICi). Le second (i.e., OA → R), émerge lorsque l’utilisation des TICi par ces jeunes augmente et qu’ils ont la perception que le gouvernement ne s’intéresse pas à eux, à leurs demandes et besoins. Le contexte actuel globalisé d’échanges présentiels/virtuels d’informations a) modifie les réseaux culturels hybrides des communautés morales, et ; b) construit l’expérience urbaine des individus à partir d’espaces publics hybrides. Notre proposition théorique sert, plus largement, à comprendre l’évolution de la « symbole-sphère » des communautés morales périphériques de la ville à l’ère du numérique, ainsi que la nature de l’information développée par Schumann et Logan (2005) et Logan (2012)
Based on a qualitative comparative analysis (QQA), a method developed by (Ragin, 1987), we propose a theoretical model of the emergence of transmission of the cultural resistance practices of the low income youth from popular neighborhoods of Medellín (Colombia), Paris (France) and São Paulo (Brazil). Our results indicate that the cultural resistance practices of this population appears in two different settings. The first one (M[P+A] → R) happens when the moral communities (that is, not necessarily located in the same geographical area) reach a strong cultural identity, feeds on stigmatizing information flows from the central media sphere of the city (SMCV), and have either information resources offered by the set of public policies of popular intervention or widespread and free use of information and communication technologies related to the Internet. The second one (OA → R), occurs when the use of the TICs by this youth wins density following the growing perception that the government is not interested in attending theirs demands and needs. The current context of global exchange of real and virtual information a) modifies the cultural hybrid networks associated with moral communities and b) builds an urban experience of individuals starting with hybrid public spaces. Our theoretical proposition serves a better understanding of the evolution of the symbolosphere of the peripheral moral communities in the cities of the digital age and the nature of the information as developed by Schumann et Logan (2005) et Logan (2012)
A partir de un análisis cualitativo comparado (QCA), método concebido por Ragin (1987), proponemos un modelo teórico sobre la emergencia y la transmisión de las prácticas de resistencia cultural de los jóvenes de barrios populares de Medellín (Colombia), Paris (Francia) et São Paulo (Brasil). Nuestros resultados indican que las prácticas de resistencia cultural híbrida de estos jóvenes se producen en dos escenarios. El primero (M[P+A] → R) aparece cuando las comunidades morales (i.e., no necesariamente ubicadas en la misma zona geográfica) con una fuerte identidad colectiva, se alimentan de flujos de información estigmatizantes procedentes de la esfera mediática central de la ciudad (SMCV), y disponen ya sea de recursos informacionales ofrecidos por la existencia de políticas públicas de intervención popular, o bien de un acceso generalizado y libre a las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación relacionadas con Internet (TICi). El segundo (OA → R) emerge cuando el uso de las TICi por parte de estos jóvenes aumenta y tienen la percepción de que el gobierno no se interesa en ellos, ni en sus demandas ni en sus necesidades. El contexto global actual de intercambio presencial y virtual de información a) modifica las redes culturales híbridas asociadas a las comunidades morales, y; b) construye la experiencia urbana de los individuos a partir de espacios públicos híbridos. Nuestra propuesta teórica sirve, de manera general, para entender la evolución de la “simbolosfera” de las comunidades morales periféricas urbanas en la era digital, así como la naturaleza de la información propuesta por Schumann et Logan (2005) et Logan (2012)
Com base em uma análise qualitativa comparativa ou “Qualitative Comparative Analysis” (QCA), método desenvolvido por (Ragin, 1987), propomos um modelo teórico da emergência e da transmissão de práticas de resistência cultural entre jovens de baixa renda em territórios populares de Medellín (Colômbia), Paris (França) e São Paulo (Brasil). Nossos resultados indicam que as práticas de resistência cultural híbrida desses jovens seguem dois roteiros. O primeiro (M[P+A] → R), quando as comunidades morais (ou seja, não necessariamente localizados na mesma área geográfica) alcançam forte identidade coletiva, alimenta-se de fluxos de informação estigmatizantes oriundos da esfera de mídia central da cidade (SMCV) e dispõem seja de recursos de informação oferecidos pelo conjunto de políticas públicas de intervenção popular, seja de um aceso generalizado e livre as tecnologias de informação e comunicação relacionadas à Internet (TICi). O segundo (OA → R), quando o uso das TICs por esses jovens ganha densidade na medida em que amadurecem a percepção de que o governo não está interessado em atender suas demandas e necessidades. O atual contexto global de troca presencial e virtual de informações a) modifica as redes culturais híbridas associadas a comunidades morais e b) constrói a experiência urbana de indivíduos a partir de espaços públicos híbridos. Nossa proposta teórica serve, mais amplamente, para entender a evolução da “simbolosfera” das comunidades morais periféricas das cidades na era digital e a natureza da informação tal como desenvolvida por Schumann e Logan (2005) e Logan (2012)

": Le développement et la banalisation des Nouvelles Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication au sens large n'ont cessé de tendre vers une simplification de leur utilisation. La généralisation des architectures de type client-serveur et le développement des technologies Web ont favorisé l'internationalisation des échanges et la diffusion du savoir. L'intégration des Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication dans le domaine éducatif offre de nouvelles perspectives en matière d'apprentissage. Nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement aux aspects pédagogiques, méthodologiques et technologiques de l'intégration des Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication dans l'Enseignement. La généralisation de l'utilisation des outils techniques et le caractère hétérogène de la population des utilisateurs de Systèmes d'Information dédiés à l'EAD (apprenants et enseignants) justifient le développement de méthodes spécifiques en vue de concevoir un EAD, et la recherche de méthodes pédagogiques adaptées à des scenarii spécifiques. Dans un premier temps nous présentons les principaux modèles pédagogiques et nous nous intéressons à l'Enseignement A distance à travers des aspects historiques et technologiques. Ce travail nous permet d'établir une synthèse et de dégager des pistes de recherche. Dans un deuxième temps, nous proposons une classification en trois catégories de sites Web à vocation pédagogique dans un contexte particulier. Dans un troisième temps nous définissons un cadre méthodologique dans lequel s'inscrit la conception de Système d'Information éducatif. Cette méthodologie dite " tri-dimensionnelle " nous permet de dégager un ensemble d'hypothèses théoriques et techniques pouvant guider la conception d'un tel dispositif. Enfin, nous appliquons ces principethéoriques dans une étude de terrain et nous présentons les bases d'une solution opérationnelle. "
The development and the standardization of Information and Communication Technologies taken in a wide sense lead to a simplification of their use. On-line data service generalization and Web technologies development have promoted worldwide exchanges and spreading of knowledge. The integration of Information and Communication Technologies in the educational field offers new prospects as far as learning is concerned. We are more particularly interested in educational, methodological and technical aspects of the integration of Information and Communication Technologies in education. The generalized use of technical tools and the heterogenous features of distance learning Information System users (learners and teachers) justify the research of educational methods adapted to specific scenarii and the development of specific methods to create a distance learning system. To begin with, we present the main educational models and we consider distance learning through historical and technological aspects. That will lead us to work out a synthesis and to open research opportunities. Then, we propose a three category classification of educational websites in a specific context. As a third part, we define a methodological approach for the creation of distance learning systems. This approach qualified as “three-dimensional” allows us to draw a set of theorical and technical hypothesis to guide the development of such a system. At last, we adapt those theoretic elements to a concrete study and we present the basis of an operational system

La thèse porte sur les pratiques communicationnelles des technologies de l’information et de la communication numériques (TICN) dans un contexte d’industrialisation et de rationalisation du e-learning et dans le cadre d’une formation tout au long de la vie. Elle met en avant un modèle renouvelé de l’étude des usages et de la conception des dispositifs pédagogiques. La thèse montre comment les pratiques communicationnelles des TICN se construisent au travers de processus d’appropriation cognitive et sociale qui se déploient dans le temps et qui passent d’une part, par la construction et l’ancrage social du dispositif, de la conception à l’usage et, d’autre part, par un travail chez le sujet, de représentations et d’apprentissage de compétences techniques, cognitives et culturelles. Ces processus d’appropriation donnent à observer des processus d’acculturation à des manières d’être, de faire, d’échanger et de penser qui semblent liés aux mutations à l’oeuvre dans les industries de la culture, de l’information et de la communication (Icic)
This thesis examines the communicational practices of digital Information and Communication Technology (digital ICT) in a context of industrialization and rationalization of elearning and within the framework of a lifelong learning. It highlights a renewed model for usage studies and for the conception of teaching apparatuses. The thesis demonstrates how the communicational practices of digital ICT are constructed through processes of cognitive and social appropriation which unwind in time and which move, on the one hand, through the construction and the social rooting of the apparatus from the conception to the usage and, on the other hand, through a work, by the subject, on representations and on learning of technical, cognitive and cultural skills. These processes of appropriation suggest acculturation processes to ways of being, doing, exchanging and thinking derived from the changes under way in the industries of culture, information and communication (ICIC)

Ce mémoire de thèse propose une analyse des pratiques de communication intercommunales. Notre objectif est de cerner quels enjeux renferment le recours aux Tic pour les établissements intercommunaux. En effet, l'émergence de politiques de communication intercommunales renvoie au renforcement du pouvoir intercommunal favorisé par le processus de décentralisation engagé par l'État. Conformément à ce pouvoir d'action, les communautés tentent de construire des échanges sociaux avec les individus. Elles visent la reconnaissance de leur autorité publique et l'adhésion à leur « projet territorial ». Les Tic sont associées à cet objectif de construction territoriale s'inscrivant dans un contexte de concurrence à l'échelle locale. Par le recours aux Tic, les structures intercommunales investissent la sphère publique en proposant une symbolisation de leur action. L'analyse des pratiques de communication nous permet d'aborder les Tic dans leur double dimension : d'un point de vue technique en pointant leurs caractéristiques et d'un point de communicationnel en s'intéressant aux discours produits. Nous avons pu noter que les responsables intercommunaux ont très tôt associés ces techniques à une vision déterministe par l'usage des termes «territoires numériques» ou «cyberterritoires». En lien avec cette vision déterministe, nous avons relevé une structuration de l'activité communicationnelle autour du site internet. En l'espace de quelques années, l'éventail des supports de communication intercommunaux s'est progressivement réduit au profit des sites internet. La gestion du site web dévoile une rationalisation et spécialisation dans la production des contenus communicationnels. De ce fait, notre recherche s'intéressera à l'éditorialisation des contenus dans la mesure où elle contribue à introduire une nouvelle gestion de l'information au niveau intercommunal
This PhD thesis analizes communication practices of intercommunal structures. Our aim is to identify the stakes of the use of ITC for intercommunal structures. The emergence of intercommunal communication shows the consolidation of intercommunal authority at local scale. The intercommunal consortia intend to build social interactions with individuals. They aim for the recognition of their public authority and win support in the accomplishment of their « territorial project». At local scale, the ICT are associated to the purpose of territorial building in a competitive context. By the use of ITC, intercommunal structures invest the public sphere offering a symbolisation of their action. The analyse of communication pratices allows us to study ITC in a double dimension : as technicals objects pointing out their specifications and as communication support focusing on their messages. We pointed out that intercommunal officials elected associated these techniques to a determinist vision, using the expressions « digital territories » or « cyberterritories ». In link with this vision, we can note the structuring communication on the website. In a few years, the amount of communication tools has reduced in favour of websites. The management of website reveals a rationalization and specialization in the production of communicative contents. Therefore our research will focus on editorialisation of contents in so far as it contributes to introduce a new management of information in these structures

L'objectif de cette thèse est d'étudier l'impact des technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) sur les coûts de transaction. Elle comporte cinq chapitres. Le premier est consacré essentiellement au développement de la « nouvelle économie », lié à la démocratisation de l'usage des TIC. Or, ces TIC affectent aussi l'environnement informationnel des agents et la nature de leur rationalité, déterminants essentiels des coûts de transaction. Le second chapitre rappelle donc les raisons de l'existence de la théorie des coûts de transaction, ainsi que ses principaux concepts et hypothèses. Quant au troisième chapitre, il démontre comment les TIC réduisent ces coûts de transaction. Ces derniers sont décomposés en coûts de coordination et coûts de motivation. On démontre que les TIC réduisent les coûts de coordination en améliorant l'efficience économique située au niveau de l'amélioration des processus commerciaux et des bénéfices du commerce électronique. Quant à l'impact des TIC sur les coûts de motivation, on discute de la problématique de l'asymétrie d'information. Nos conclusions suggèrent que la baisse des coûts de coordination est importante. Cependant, l'Internet n'est pas marqué par plus d'asymétrie d'information que le marché traditionnel. Le quatrième chapitre s'intéresse au choix organisationnel en rapport avec l'effet des TIC sur les coûts de transaction. Les limites du choix marché/hiérarchie débouchent sur l'apparition des théories qui tiennent compte de la cœxistence de ces deux choix organisationnels dans de nouvelles formes d'organisation telles que les réseaux. Les principales caractéristiques de ces formes organisationnelles font l'objet des développements du dernier chapitre
The aim of this thesis is to study the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the transaction costs. It is composed of five chapters. The first treated principally the development of « new economy », linked to the democratization of the usage of ICT. These ICT affect also the informational environment of the agents and the nature of their rationality, essential determiners of the transaction costs. The second chapter reminds therefore the reasons of the existence of the theory of transaction costs, as well as its main concepts and hypotheses. The third chapter shows how ICT reduce these transaction costs. We distinguish the impact of ICT on coordination costs and on motivation costs. We demonstrate that ICT reduces coordination costs and increases efficiency. These efficiencies are process improvement of trade and marketplace benefits. At the same time ICT affect motivation costs, we discuss the effect of Internet on informational asymmetries. Our conclusions suggest that reduction of coordination costs is important. However, the Internet is not marked by more asymmetry of information than the traditional market. The fourth chapter is interested in the organizational choice related with the effect of ICT on the transaction costs. The limits of the choice market/hierarchy result in the appearance of the theories which take into account the coexistence of these two organizational choices in new forms of organization such as networks. The main characteristics of these organizational forms make the object of the developments of the last chapter

L’apparition des réseaux numériques dans le milieu professionnel continuent de susciter des interrogations au regard du fonctionnement des entreprises de presse. La production et la diffusion de l’information ne sont plus l’apanage des seuls journalistes qui paraissent éprouvés par les mutations technologiques. Leur identité professionnelle est mise à rude épreuve et selon les contextes socio-économiques, ils tentent d’apporter des solutions à la mondialisation de l’information. Le Sénégal n’échappe pas à ce processus de l’information numérique avec l’émergence des journaux en ligne. Ceux-ci tentent de s’adapter à la publication en ligne en se fondant sur l’univers socio-économique sénégalais et les exigences du monde moderne. Les discours sur les technologies de l’information et de la communication (Tic) sont l’objet de conjectures partagées entre un optimisme perpétuant l’idéologie du modèle libéral capitaliste et un pessimisme mettant l’accent sur les aspects socioculturels. La compréhension et la signification des actions sociales sont les principales motivations de cette thèse. Celle-ci a pour objectif d’analyser les discours et représentations de cette presse en ligne sénégalaise dans une approche socio-dircursive. À partir de la sociologie compréhensive wéberienne, la presse en ligne sénégalaise au prisme de l’économie et de la politique sera étudiée, afin de révéler les expériences locales témoignant des pratiques culturelles à l’œuvre. À travers la vie quotidienne des acteurs sociaux nous tenterons d’éclairer les notions d’usage et d’appropriation. Les logiques sociales existantes observées par le biais d’indicateurs de comportements des acteurs vont déterminer les spécificités de cette presse en ligne sénégalaise
The emergence of digital networks within professional environment continues to provoke some questions with regards to the functioning of press corporations. Journalists, who meet with technological changes, are not the only ones whose prerogatives are the production and broadcasting of the media. Their professional identity is put to the test when applied to the context of the social and economic environments, thus they are seeking solutions to the globalization of the media. Senegal is no exception to this process of digital media with the coming out of the on-line newspapers which try to adapt to the on-line publication and therefore are based on the social and economic environment of Senegal and the demands of the modern world. Discussions about information and communication technologies are subject to divided opinions, particulary between the optimistic view which perpetuates the ideology of the liberal capitalistic system and the pessimistic view emphasizing social and cultural aspects. The understanding and meanings of social actions are the main objectives of this thesis, the aim of which is to analyse the representations and theories of the Senegalese on-line press within a socio-discursive scope. Based on this comprehensive Weberian sociology, the on-line press in Senegal will be studied through economics and politics in order to reveal the local cultural experiments at work. Through the everyday life of social actors we will try to emphasize their appropriation and use of the media. The existing social logics observed by means of indicators of these actors’ behaviours will determine the specificities of the Senegalese on-line press

En ce début de siècle, l'information a pris une dimension capitale grâce aux nouvelles technologies. On parle de la société mondiale de l'information, réduisant la planète en un " village global ". Cependant, les pays des Suds, à la périphérie de ce processus, souffrent de la fracture numérique. Néanmoins, une dynamique des Tic s'y développe à travers des modèles d'accès adaptés aux réalités socio-économiques. A Dakar, ces modèles populaires ont permis une appropriation profonde du mobile alors qu'Internet, l'élément essentiel de cette révolution numérique, tarde à s'ancrer dans l'espace urbain. Dakar, ville primatiale est marquée par une forte polarisation des activités au niveau du centre historique. Cette répartition déséquilibrée est à l'origine des dysfonctionnements territoriaux quotidiens. Le caractère immatériel de la manifestation des nouvelles technologies semble représenter alors un moyen pour atténuer les effets de la question cruciale de la déficience de l'aménagement du territoire, notamment en termes de mobilités. Ainsi, grâce aux usages d'Internet, quelques pratiques urbaines dans divers domaines d'activités se déroulent sur le cyberespace. Mais en raison de leurs impacts peu conséquents sur les territoires réels, les attentes parfois exagérés des acteurs gouvernementaux, la société civile et les opérateurs, tardent à se concrétiser. En effet, malgré la bonne connexion du pays à la dorsale internationale, le taux de pénétration d'Internet au Sénégal ne permet pas pour le moment d'infléchir les dysfonctionnements. En réalité, sur le web sénégalais, la dynamique des usages associés aux pratiques urbaines n'a pas fait émerger de véritables liens entre Internet et l'aménagement territorial urbain à Dakar

Le développement de l’Internet, l’implantation des nouvelles technologies, et plus particulièrement des sites web a bouleversé le développement des activités touristiques. L’utilisation du site web comme outil stratégique permet de modifier l’organisation des tâches en interne et peut transformer le positionnement marketing des petits hôtels dans une période marquée par l’apparition de nouveaux concurrents tels les intermédiaires du tourisme. Les stratégies web des établissements du secteur hôtelier indépendant se révèlent toutefois, très différentes les unes des autres. L’étude des caractéristiques des petites organisations montre que le dirigeant porte plusieurs rôles d’initiateur, d’exécutant ou de modérateur dans l’utilisation de ces TI. L’analyse de la littérature suggère que l’appropriation des nouvelles technologies puisse être un facteur clé de la performance des entreprises.Cette recherche vise à étudier les implications organisationnelles de l’implantation de la stratégie web dans les petits hôtels en répondant à la problématique suivante : Existe-il, dans le cadre des PME, une relation entre l’appropriation des nouvelles technologies par le dirigeant et les effets de la stratégie web sur la performance de l’hôtel ? L’objectif de cette thèse est la recherche, via la construction d’un modèle, d’une meilleure compréhension de la relation entre l’appropriation des nouvelles technologies et le succès d’une stratégie web dans le contexte de l’hôtellerie française indépendante constituée de PME de service d’hébergement. Pour tester ce modèle, nous avons choisi une analyse quantitative par la méthode des équations structurelles sur un échantillon de 266 petits hôtels français. Les résultats confirment les liens positifs entre niveau de maturité de la stratégie web (1), appropriation des nouvelles technologies par le dirigeant (2) et les résultats (endogènes et managériaux) et l’alignement organisationnel dans l’hôtel
The development of the Internet and ICT, and the integration of new technologies, particularly websites have revolutionised the development of tourism. The website as a strategic tool can change the internal organisation of tasks and can transform the marketing positioning of small scale hotels. However, the web strategy of independent hotels seem is not all the same as each other. In small organisations, the leader has many roles: initiator, implementer or moderator in the use of IT. The literature analysis suggests that the leader’s appropriation of new technologies seems to be a key factor in business performance.Thus, this research analysis the organisational implications of the implementation of web strategy in small scale hotels. Our research question will be: Which kind of relationship between SMEs appropriation of new technologies by the leader and the effects of the web strategy on the performance of hotel?This thesis looks for a better understanding of the relationship between the appropriation of new technologies and a successful web strategy in the context of the French hotel industry, which offers hosting services in small independent structures.To answer this question, we built a model and we chose a quantitative analysis of a sample of 266 small French hotels. The research model tested by the method of structural equation confirms the positive relationship between the level of maturity of the web strategy (1), the appropriation of new technologies of the leader (2) and outputs (endogenous and managerial) and organizational alignment in the hotel

L’avènement des TIC accentue le phénomène des communautés virtuelles. Privilégiant plutôt l’aspect social que technologique, l’objectif de cette thèse est de comprendre la communication et l’organisation dans ces communautés. Le problème terrain a été d’étudier ce phénomène dans un contexte communautaire. Les investigations se sont alors focalisées sur l’analyse d’un site sportif d’e-commerce primé par de nombreux prix d’innovation en terme de modèle de constitution communautaire: Sportmalin. Com Dès lors sur le plan théorique, nous envisageons les TIC comme « des artéfacts communicationnels ». Le principal intérêt est de révéler que le phénomène communautaire provient majoritairement d’une médiation entre trois objets antinomiques du système mais néanmoins interreliés : les outils communautaires, les enjeux mercantiles et la volonté des membres de faire partager leurs connaissances. Pendant 20 mois, l’analyse nous apprend qu’une adéquation est possible entre une problématique mercantile et communautaire. Tel un rouage, chaque partie (communautés virtuelles, outils communautaires, TIC, marketing et multinationales) se complète tout en restant dépendante les unes des autres. L’ensemble du phénomène de communauté virtuelle résulte de stratégies d’acteurs et de choix rationnels. Bien que les communautés virtuelles semblent être le produit d’efforts délibérément coordonnés d’un ensemble d’acteurs, le facteur humain constitue la variable instable de ce système communautaire. La conclusion révèle que la « communauté virtuelle commerciale », telle que nous allons la décrire au cours de cette étude, constitue le modèle universel de toute communauté virtuelle artefact
The increasing of ICT accentuates the phenomenon of the virtual communities. Rather privileging the social aspect more than the technological aspect, the aim of this thesis is to understand communication and organization in these communities. The ground problem has been to study this increasing phenomenon in a community context. The investigations then focused on the analysis of a community site of e-business in sports awarded by numerous innovation prizes as model of a community constitution: sportmalin. Com. Therefore from a theoretical point of view, it is necessary to understand the ICT as “communicational actefacts”. The principal interest was to reveal that the community phenomenon mainly results from a mediation between three antinomic objects of the system but nevertheless linked together : the community technical tools, the mercantile stakes and the will of the members to share and exchange their knowledge. The survey led during twenty months teaches us that an adequacy is possible between a mercantile and a community problematics. Just like a cog of a system, every part (virtual communities, community tools, the ICT, marketing initiative and the multinationals) completes the other as well as remaining dependent with the others. The analysis grants that the whole phenomenon of virtual community is the sole result of strategy of actors and rational choices. Although the virtual communities seem to be the product of deliberately coordinated efforts of a set of actors, the human factor is the unstable variable of this community system. The conclusion of this research reveals that the “ virtual commercial community ”, such as we are going to describe it in this study, establishes the universal model of any virtual community artefact