Orientador: Maria Conceição da Costa / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Geociências / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T02:49:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Spiess_MaikoRafael_M.pdf: 1612116 bytes, checksum: dafd3889b9bef336e11fccac86775f7b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: As Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TICs) estão cada vez mais presentes no cotidiano de uma grande parcela da população, influenciando em diversas áreas da vida social. Estas tecnologias são constantemente aprimoradas, recebendo novos usos e funcionalidades, tornando-se cada vez mais flexíveis e interativas. Com isso, se alteram também a relação entre o usuário e o produto, e a delimitação de papéis entre produtores e consumidores. Um dos maiores exemplos deste fenômeno é a produção de software livre/aberto: desde meados dos anos 1980, sua cultura colaborativa de elaboração de sistemas operacionais e programas aplicativos possibilitou o surgimento de novos modelos de distribuição e novas tecnologias de software, de certo modo antecipando a produção colaborativa dos tempos atuais, das plataformas wiki e da web 2.0. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar uma parcela deste fenômeno, através do estudo de caso do BrOffice.org e do emprego de referenciais teóricos dos Estudos Sociais da Ciência e da Tecnologia (ESCT). Em um sentido estrito, o termo BrOffice.org refere-se a um pacote de programas para a automação de escritório, derivado de uma iniciativa de software livre/aberto internacional (o OpenOffice.org). No entanto, o termo é também empregado para identificar uma comunidade de desenvolvedores, usuários e ativistas, e uma Organização Não-Governamental, associados ao produto. Para analisar estas duas dimensões do objeto, o trabalho está dividido em quatro capítulos. O primeiro capítulo procura familiarizar o leitor com o tema do software livre/aberto, apresentando uma contextualização geral sobre este movimento, procurando evidenciar alguns elementos históricos, seu estado e importância atuais. O capítulo dois é destinado aos Estudos Sociais da Ciência e da Tecnologia, destacando a emergência e estabelecimento deste campo multidisciplinar e algumas de suas principais vertentes teóricas e metodológicas, como a Teoria Ator-Rede. Sobretudo, procura apresentar os elementos conceituais que possibilitaram a realização do estudo de caso do BrOffice.org, descrito no terceiro capítulo. Neste sentido, o terceiro capítulo apresenta os procedimentos metodológicos empregados no estudo de caso, uma revisão histórica sobre o produto e sobre o coletivo e, finalmente, a aplicação do referencial da Teoria Ator-Rede. Mais especificamente, descreve o objeto e o coletivo BrOffice.org como sendo componentes de uma rede tecnoeconômica, composta por diversos elementos heterogêneos. Por um lado, descreve o processo de constituição do artefato técnico, através do arranjo simultâneo de elementos técnicos e sociais, e sua importância na definição do relacionamento entre os diversos atores envolvidos na rede, através de um processo de tradução de interesses. Por outro lado, o estudo de caso procura descrever a dinâmica desta rede, através da análise de alguns de seus processos de convergência e irreversibilidade. Por fim, o quarto capítulo procura sistematizar algumas das conclusões do estudo de caso, apontando algumas de suas especificidades e indicações para estudos futuros / Abstract: The Information and Communication Technologies are constantly becoming more present in the everyday lives of a great part of the population, influencing many different aspects of social life. These Technologies are being constantly modified, receiving new usages and functionalities, becoming more and more flexible and interactive. As a result, the user and artifact relation and also the roles imputed to producers and consumers are changed as well. One of the most expressive examples of this phenomenon is the production of free/open source softwares: since mid 1980's, its collaborative culture of operational systems and application softwares development made possible the outspring of new models of distribution and new software technologies, in a certain way foretelling the collaborative production currently know from wiki platforms and web 2.0. The objective of this work is to analyze one aspect of this phenomenon throughout the case study of the BrOffice.org and the application of frameworks from the Social Studies of Science and Technology. In a strict sense, the BrOffice.org is a software package for office automation, derived from a international free/open source software initiative. However, this term is also used to identify a community of developers, users and activists, and a Non Governmental Organization associated to the software. In order to analyze these two dimensions of the object the work is divided in four chapters. The first chapter searches to familiarize the reader with the free/open source software subject. It shows a general contextualization of this movement trying to highlight some historical elements, its state of art and current importance. Chapter two is devoted to the Social Studies of Science and Technology (SSST), highlighting the emergence and establishment of this multidisciplinary field as well as its main theoretical and methodological approaches, like the Actor Network Theory. Above all, it tries to present the conceptual elements which guided the case study of BrOffice.org, described in the third chapter. The third chapter presents the methodological procedures used in the case study, a historical revision of the product and the collective and, finally, the application of the Actor Network Theory. It describes the object and the BrOffice's collective as components of a Techno-Economic Network, constituted from heterogeneous elements. On the one hand, it describes the process of constitution of the technical artifact from the simultaneous assemblage of technical and social elements, its importance for the definition of the relation among the many actors involved in the network by a translation of interests process. On the other hand, the case study tries to describe the dynamics of the network throughout the analysis of its convergence and irreversibility processes. In the end, the fourth chapter tries to summarize a few conclusions from the case study, pointing some of its specificities and indicating some possibilities of future studies / Mestrado / Mestre em Política Científica e Tecnológica

The study sought to explore technology challenges faced by some rural women in Intsika-Yethu and Emalahleni local municipalities, under the Chris Hani District Municipality, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Available literature reveals that some rural women in South Africa and other developing parts of the world face technology challenges. The study is qualitative and focuses on two municipalities. Thirty-two women participated in the study. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus group interviews. Data were presented, analysed and discussed according to the themes derived from the sub-research questions. It emerged from the study that while most women in both municipalities were aware of ICT, they are however facing ICT access challenges in most areas of the municipalities. The findings do not depict the South African government national ICT policy goals which realises the importance of technology in the integration of services for the development of rural areas. Designing intervention programs for secondary school girls and some rural women, as well as monitoring and evaluating ICT programs in rural areas are recommended. / Communication Science / MA ( Communication)

The study sought to explore technology challenges faced by some rural women in Intsika-Yethu and Emalahleni local municipalities, under the Chris Hani District Municipality, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Available literature reveals that some rural women in South Africa and other developing parts of the world face technology challenges. The study is qualitative and focuses on two municipalities. Thirty-two women participated in the study. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and focus group interviews. Data were presented, analysed and discussed according to the themes derived from the sub-research questions. It emerged from the study that while most women in both municipalities were aware of ICT, they are however facing ICT access challenges in most areas of the municipalities. The findings do not depict the South African government national ICT policy goals which realises the importance of technology in the integration of services for the development of rural areas. Designing intervention programs for secondary school girls and some rural women, as well as monitoring and evaluating ICT programs in rural areas are recommended. / Communication Science / MA ( Communication)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In today's fast paced world, people have become increasingly interested in online communication to facilitate their lives and make it faster. This goes on from simple social interactions to more advanced actions like shopping on the internet. The presence of such activities makes it crucial for people to use their common sense and judgment to process all this information and evaluate what/who they trust and what/whom they do not. This process would have been much easier if the number of people in such networks is really small and manageable. However, there are millions of users who are hooked online every day. This makes the person very overwhelmed with his trusting decision, especially when it comes to interacting with strangers over the internet, and/or buying personal items, especially expensive ones. Therefore, many trust models have been proposed by computer scientists trying to evaluate and manage the trust between users using different techniques and combining many factors. What these computer scientists basically do is coming up with mathematical formulas and models to express trust in online networks and capture its parameters. However, social scientists are the people better trained to deal with concepts related to human behaviors and their cognitive thinking such as trust. Thus, in order for computer scientists to support their ideas and get a better insight about how to direct their research, people like social scientists should contribute. With this in mind, we realized in our group work the importance of such contribution, so we came up with the idea of my research work. In my search, I tried to find how these social scientists think and tackle a dynamic notion like trust, so we can use their findings in order to enhance our work and trust model. Through the chapters, I will discuss an already developed trust model that uses measurement theory in modeling trust. I will refer back to this model and see how other social scientists dealt with some of the issues encountered by the model and its functionality. Some small experiments have been done to show and compare our results with social scientists results for the same matter. One of the most important and controversial points to be discussed from social scientists' point of view is whether trust is transitive or not. Other points to be discussed and supported by social scientists' research include aggregation, reputation, timing effects on trust, reciprocity, and experience effects on trust. Some of these points are classified into trust mapping categories and others are related to trust management or decision making stages. In sum, this work is a multidisciplinary study of trust whose overall goal is to enhance our work and results, as computer scientists.