The civic potential of pervasive computing technologies has been increasingly explored within academic and urban planning communities. One vision is of communities and cities enriched with pervasive computing, where citizens can leverage the new technology and interfaces for their own purposes, and at the same time be empowered to be heard through the use of such technology. This article reports lessons learned from a project that created public human interfaces for interacting with city officials in Oulu, Finland. We focus on civic engagement and reflect on a deployment of public interactive crowdsourcing technologies that are openly available to everyone, right in the heart of the city. The series of field trials reported here involve public displays, mobile phones, and Internet technologies. We find differences in the performance of different kinds of input mechanisms, and present lessons learned from cooperating with officials in a joint civic engagement effort.
Facebook posts compete for human attention in a zero-sum game; this makes it a challenge for government organizations to engage with their citizens through this medium. In a large-scale longitudinal study we investigate what makes Facebook posts popular (seen by many) and effective (commented, liked, or shared by many) in a nonprofit context: the official Facebook page of a mid-sized city (Oulu, Finland). We model the competition dynamics that shape the fate of Facebook posts using Structural Equation Modeling. Our analysis reveals that audience demographics, the timing of posts, and the media type of post are significant factors in post reach and effectiveness, and argue that our method can be applied to other contexts to determine which factors can lead to improved government–citizen communication and engagement. Finally, we argue for more actionable research to be conducted on the use of social media by government.
AbstractWe present CARE, a context-aware tool for nurses in nursing homes. The system utilises a sensors infrastructure to quantify the behaviour and wellbeing (e.g.,activity, mood, social and nurse interactions) of elderly residents. The sensor data is offloaded, processed and analysed in the cloud, to generate daily and long-term summaries of residents' health. These insights are then presented to nurses via an Android tablet application. We aim to create a tool that can assist nurses and increase their awareness to residents' needs. We deployed CARE in a local nursing home for two months and evaluated the system through apost-hocexploratory analysis and interviews with the nurses. The results indicate that CARE can reveal essential insights on the wellbeing of elderly residents and improve the care service. In the discussion, we reflect on our understanding and potential impact of future integrated technology in elderly care environments.
We are witnessing an emerging digital revolution. For the past 25–30 years, at an increasing pace, digital technologies—especially the internet, mobile phones and smartphones—have transformed the everyday lives of human beings. The pace of change will increase, and new digital technologies will become even more tightly entangled in human everyday lives. Artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), 6G wireless solutions, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (XR), robots and various platforms for remote and hybrid communication will become embedded in our lives at home, work and school. Digitalisation has been identified as a megatrend, for example, by the OECD (2016; 2019). While digitalisation processes permeate all aspects of life, special attention has been paid to its impact on the ageing population, everyday communication practices, education and learning and working life. For example, it has been argued that digital solutions and technologies have the potential to improve quality of life, speed up processes and increase efficiency. At the same time, digitalisation is likely to bring with it unexpected trends and challenges. For example, AI and robots will doubtlessly speed up or take over many routine-based work tasks from humans, leading to the disappearance of certain occupations and the need for re-education. This, in turn, will lead to an increased demand for skills that are unique to humans and that technologies are not able to master. Thus, developing human competences in the emerging digital era will require not only the mastering of new technical skills, but also the advancement of interpersonal, emotional, literacy and problem-solving skills. It is important to identify and describe the digitalisation phenomena—pertaining to individuals and societies—and seek human-centric answers and solutions that advance the benefits of and mitigate the possible adverse effects of digitalisation (e.g. inequality, divisions, vulnerability and unemployment). This requires directing the focus on strengthening the human skills and competences that will be needed for a sustainable digital future. Digital technologies should be seen as possibilities, not as necessities. There is a need to call attention to the co-evolutionary processes between humans and emerging digital technologies—that is, the ways in which humans grow up with and live their lives alongside digital technologies. It is imperative to gain in-depth knowledge about the natural ways in which digital technologies are embedded in human everyday lives—for example, how people learn, interact and communicate in remote and hybrid settings or with artificial intelligence; how new digital technologies could be used to support continuous learning and understand learning processes better and how health and well-being can be promoted with the help of new digital solutions. Another significant consideration revolves around the co-creation of our digital futures. Important questions to be asked are as follows: Who are the ones to co-create digital solutions for the future? How can humans and human sciences better contribute to digitalisation and define how emerging technologies shape society and the future? Although academic and business actors have recently fostered inclusion and diversity in their co-creation processes, more must be done. The empowerment of ordinary people to start acting as active makers and shapers of our digital futures is required, as is giving voice to those who have traditionally been silenced or marginalised in the development of digital technology. In the emerging co-creation processes, emphasis should be placed on social sustainability and contextual sensitivity. Such processes are always value-laden and political and intimately intertwined with ethical issues. Constant and accelerating change characterises contemporary human systems, our everyday lives and the environment. Resilience thinking has become one of the major conceptual tools for understanding and dealing with change. It is a multi-scalar idea referring to the capacity of individuals and human systems to absorb disturbances and reorganise their functionality while undergoing a change. Based on the evolving new digital technologies, there is a pressing need to understand how these technologies could be utilised for human well-being, sustainable lifestyles and a better environment. This calls for analysing different scales and types of resilience in order to develop better technology-based solutions for human-centred development in the new digital era. This white paper is a collaborative effort by researchers from six faculties and groups working on questions related to digitalisation at the University of Oulu, Finland. We have identified questions and challenges related to the emerging digital era and suggest directions that will make possible a human-centric digital future and strengthen the competences of humans and humanity in this era.
