cooperation

“In fighting against resistance, we will become more focused on getting rid of the problem than on understanding what it is; by contrast, when working with resistance we want to suspend frustration at being blocked, and instead engage with the problem in its own right”. Richard Sennett (2013). Together. The Rituals, Pleasures & Politics of Cooperation. Photo by Monica Pinheiro CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

May

"In categorical thinking the boundaries are drawn. But mystery is open-ended, messy, full of promise, and lacking in certainty. (...) What if we could free ourselves from the confines of certainty - to learn to dance with the fact that reality zigs and zags across shifting ground? (...) The effect is to create a fresh canvas onto which entirely new, more relational ways of thinking can be painted." Gary Ferguson, 2019. Eight Master Lessons of Nature. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Biodiversity-rich areas

"Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) refers to the strategically managed network of urban green spaces and natural and semi-natural ecosystems situated within the boundary of an urban ecosystem. These high-quality, biodiversity-rich areas can help make cities more sustainable and contribute to solve many challenges, such as air pollution, noise, climate change impacts, heat waves, floods and public health concerns. As cities grow and develop, it is vital to improve the availability, quality and accessibility of UGI." MAES Joachim, ZULIAN Grazia, GUENTHER Susann,THIJSSEN Martijn, RAYNAL Julie, 2019. Enhancing Resilience Of Urban Ecosystems through Green Infrastructure (EnRoute). Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Stillness in a mobile world

Stillness:"an ethical choice between stillness as first aid for an overactive world, and stillness as a real slowing down". Bissell, David, and Gillian Fuller (2013). Stillness in a mobile world. London New York: Routledge. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

search for meaning

"If you don't recognize a young man's will to meaning, a men's search for meaning, you'll make him worse, you'll make him doll, you'll make him frustrated." (video below)

"Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast." (wishlist)

"Viktor Emil Frankl, M.D., PhD (26 March 1905, Leopoldstadt, Vienna – 2 September 1997, Vienna) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy". His best-selling book, Man's Search for Meaning (published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism, and originally published in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager), chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate which led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. Frankl became one of the key figures in existential therapy and a prominent source of inspiration for humanistic psychologists." (link)

Beyond borders

European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), ECIS 2013, June 5-8, Utrecht University, Utrecht Science Park 'de Uithof': 

"The transition to a more inter-dependent and connected world is ongoing, and offers up a range of new complex research challenges. A further challenge is that the way research is conducted is changing and requires greater collaboration between researchers, as well as between researchers and industry, to integrate capabilities to face today’s challenges.

(...)

 “Beyond Borders”. It suggests having an open mind towards new ways of doing research and establishing novel partnerships for conducting research. It also refers to the multi-disciplinary nature of the field of Information Systems where we often work outside IS and collaborate with researchers in diverse disciplines."

infrastructure of experience

"By 'the experience of infrastructure', we point to the ways in which infrastructure, rather than being hidden from view, becomes visible through our increasing dependence upon it for the practice of everyday life. By 'the infrastructure of experience', we want to draw attention to the ways in which, in turn, the embedding of a range of infrastructures into everyday space shapes our experience of that space and provides a framework through which our encounters with space take on meaning. (...) The first, and most fundamental, conclusion is that space is organized not just physically but culturally; cultural understandings provide a frame for encountering space as meaningful and coherent, and for relating it to human activities. (...) The second conclusion is that architecture is all about boundaries and transitions, and their intersection with human and social practice. (...) The third conclusion is that new technologies inherently cause people to reencounter spaces. This is not a question of mediation, but rather one of simultaneous layering. (...) Finally, there is already a complex interaction between space, infrastructure, culture, and experience. The spaces into which new technologies are deployed are not stable, not uniform, and not given." P. Dourish & G. Bell (2007). The infrastructure of experience and the experience of infrastructure: meaning and structure in everyday encounters with space. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, vol. 34(3), pp.414-430.

ecotone

Uma boa metáfora para explicar espaços de transição. Neste caso, a palavra «ecotone» serviria para explicar espaços de transição próximos. Notei que as palavras «edge» e «boundary» também são utilizadas como sinónimos em algumas das definições.

Define: ecotone

"A narrow and fairly sharply defined transition zone between two or more different communities. Such edge communities are typically species-rich. (Allaby 1998)" www.oup.com.au/orc/demo_glossary.aspx

crossing organizational spaces

Efimova, L. & Grudin, J. (2007). Crossing boundaries: A case study of employee blogging. Proceedings of the Fortieth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-40). Los Alamitos: IEEE Press:

"Editors, email, and instant messaging were first widely used by students who later brought knowledge of their uses and effective practices into workplaces. Weblogs may make such a transition more quickly. We present a study of emergent blogging practices in a corporate setting. We attended meetings, read email, documents, and Weblogs, and interviewed 38 people loggers, infrastructure administrators, attorneys, public relations specialists, and executives. We found an experimental, rapidly-evolving terrain marked by growing sophistication about balancing personal, team, and corporate incentives and issues"

Europe cross-border transitions

A case study (1) that run between 2004 & 205, illustrates other information needs that occur during the cross border transitions faced by mobile European workers. The case under analysis concerns geographic terrestrial mobility and mobility formalities for different countries, hence legal and process country frameworks (Government Level).

In order to solve bureaucratic workers loss of time, the study managed to elicit the needed requirements for civil data information about individuals to «move» between countries. More details on the project in
IDABC - Case Study in the Euregio: Reducing the administrative burden:

"The study examined the administrative processes and requirements which had to be completed by the mobile citizens in these border areas. In doing this, it adopted the customers’ perspective, who wanted to reduce paper work and contacts with administrations. This study prepared the ground for the implementation of the trans-border eGovernment services that were able to improve the life of citizens wishing to move or take up activities in another Member State."

(1) "The Mobility Case Study focused on municipalities of the Euregio Maas-Rhine, located at the point where the three countries Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands meet, on an area of nearly 11 000 km² and with a population of 3.7 million"

mobile work practices

Kakihara, M., Sørensen, C. and Wiberg, M.(2002). Fluid Interaction in Mobile Work Practices. 1st Tokyo Mobile Roundtable, Mobile Innovation Research Program, Institute of Innovation Research, Hitotsubashi University. Tokyo, Japan. 30th-31st May:

"This is clearly the world of the contemporary mobile work mode. Mobile workers engage themselves in getting their job done not only at their formal offices but at various sites such as home, clients’ offices, hotels, moving vehicles and so on. Looking at their nature of work, there is no rigid boundary that determines whether inside or outside the office: anywhere can be their office. They permeate across “regions” and “networks.” In this sense, we can argue that mobile work is the fluid mode of working."