Suchergebnisse

Many of what we think of as Information Age tools and media – computers, cell phones, the internet, encryption, and more – evolved directly out of modern warfare. These tools started with World War I (which began not with arms, but with England cutting off underwater cables to Germany and isolating it), accelerated through World War II and the Cold War, and now play a center role in both declared and non-declared conflicts like election interference and cyberbattles. We buy phones and smart speakers because they are new and unlock great potential. Voice assistants like Siri and Alexa help us do our work and answer that one piece of trivia that bugs us. Yet these devices are data gatherers. They collect, repackage, and monetize our questions, purchases, photographs, web surfing to form a data industry now larger than the oil industry. Well over 100 years ago the data industry put in place a business model that trades our attention for news and entertainment. That model has evolved into a complex art and science of message targeting and content ownership that has splintered communities while simultaneously concentrating media ownership to a few massive corporations. Forged in War takes a critical look at the systems we use and how we ended up in a society that values data over personal liberty and commerce over the public good. It tells a compelling and previously story of how our ideas of information and knowledge reflect the century of war that has militarized our worldview. Author David Lankes's work has been funded by organizations such as The MacArthur Foundation, The Institute for Library and Museum Services, NASA, The U.S. Department of Education, The U.S. Department of Defense, The National Science Foundation, and The U.S. State Department. This, his latest book will help all of us learn how war has shaped our world and how to begin to create an agenda to stand down weaponized data and a media that seeks to own our personal, even intimate data like one owns a gold mine.

A growing body of literature confirms the existence of different social models, identified according to different combinations of policies and institutions. Knogler and Lankes aim to contribute to this literature by exploring characteristics of social policies in the enlarged European Union. The analysis is based on a set of social policy indicators with a focus on labour markets. By means of Principal Component Analysis they identify four major dimensions of social models. The dimensions are used as a basis for clustering countries into social models, which significantly differ from the commonly proposed regional classification of social models prior to enlargement.

Labour market performance as measured by employment rates conceals significant differences among EU countries. In 2014 the variation was between 48.8% in Greece and 74.4% in Sweden. Average employment rate for the EU28 was at 64.8% in 2014, perceptibly below the Lisbon goal of 70 percent. Inequality in income distribution as measured by S80/S20 income quintile share ratio ranges in 2013 from 3.4 in Czech Republic to 6.6 in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece and has risen especially in Southeast European countries during the last years. To some extent, labour market and social institutions may account for these differences. Implemented social models in Europe differ from each other by different combinations of policies and institutions showing the dimensions of social models. We use these dimensions to develop two indices which capture the employment and income distribution efficiency of social models i.e. shows how institutions impact on employment and income distribution. Both indices can be used to rank and compare the institutional quality of social models across EU countries.

"Social cohesion, reducing poverty, and broad participation in the labor market are essential elements of the European social models. With the EU membership of the Central and Eastern European reform states (EU 10) a new landscape of European social models has emerged in which the EU 10 are integrated according to their respective paths of national development. Following its successful referendum, Croatia has become the 28th member of the European Union on July 1, 2013. This paper examines the Croatian social model with reference to four dimensions: labor market security, social inequality, institutional influence on the labor market and wage formation, and personal responsibility. It also describes the model's position within the landscape of European social models. The Croatian social model is characterized by low level of labor market security and by limited institutional influence on labor markets and wage formation." (author's abstract)