Engineering Commons^™

Cloud Computing Data Breaches: A Socio-Technical Review Of Literature, David Kolevski, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

As more and more personal, enterprise and government data, services and infrastructure moves to the cloud for storage and processing, the potential for data breaches increases. Already major corporations that have outsourced some of their IT requirements to the cloud have become victims of cyber attacks. Who is responsible and how to respond to these data breaches are just two pertinent questions facing cloud computing stakeholders who have entered an agreement on cloud services. This paper reviews literature in the domain of cloud computing data breaches using a socio-technical approach. Socio-technical theory encapsulates three major dimensions- the social, the technical, …

The Impact Of Technology, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Consumer electronics have revolutionized the way we live and work. Most students that I know would rather forgo expensive clothing labels than do without their branded smartphone. In fact, some of them would forgo food altogether if it meant their phone could be “always on” and “always with them”, clipped onto the belt buckle, strapped into a pants or jacket sleeve or increasingly into the open palm of their hand. Something happens when our basic needs as humans are overtaken by some other need that was once a distant want at best- plainly confusion in our ability to rightly determine …

Perceived Barriers For Implanting Microchips In Humans: A Transnational Study, Christine Perakslis, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael, Robert Gable

Professor Katina Michael

This quantitative, descriptive study investigated if there was a relationship between countries of residence of small business owners (N = 453) within four countries (Australia, India, UK, and the USA) with respect to perceived barriers to RFID (radio frequency identification) transponders being implanted into humans for employee ID. Participants were asked what they believed were the greatest barriers in instituting chip implants for access control in organizations. Participants had six options from which to select. There were significant chi-square analyses reported relative to respondents’ countries and: 1) a perceived barrier of technological issues (χ2 = 11.86, df = 3, p …

We Got To Do Better, Katherine Albrecht, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Each year, thousands of film buffs gather at the Sundance International Film Festival in park City, UT, U.S.A., to see the offerings of the world’s brightest filmmakers. If it’s true that movies reflect the preoccupations and obsessions of the larger culture, it’s eye opening that three of the twelve contenders for international documentary film this year address the dark side of screen technology.

Love Child, looks at the tragic 2010 death by neglect of a three-month-old baby named “Sarang” (“Love” in Korean), when her parents spent up to twelve hours a day playing the game Prius, caring for their avatar …

No Limits To Watching?, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Little by little, the introduction of new body-worn technologies is transforming the way people interact with their environment and one another, and perhaps even with themselves. Social and environmental psychology studies of human-technology interaction pose as many questions as answers. We are learning as we go: 'learning by doing' through interaction and 'learning by being'. Steve Mann calls this practice existential learning; wearers become photoborgs, a type of cyborg (cybernetic organism) whose primary intent is image capture from the domains of the natural and artificial. This approach elides the distinction between the technology and the human; they coalesce into one.

Privacy- The Times They Are A-Changin', M.G. Michael, Katina Michael

Professor Katina Michael

This special section is dedicated to privacy in the information age. Since the rise of mobile social media in particular and the advent of cloud computing few can dispute that the times have changed. Privacy is now understood in context, and within a framework that is completely different to what it once was. The right to be let alone physically seemingly has been replaced by the right to give away as much information as you want virtually. What safeguards can be introduced into such a society? We cannot claim to wish for privacy as a right if we ourselves do …