Track within the IS4IS Summit Vienna 2015 3-7 June

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In May 2013, we held the Workshop “Open System Thinking: at the crossroad of a complex world”, in Sierra Pambley, León, counting with the participation of veteran colleagues as Wolfgang, Gordana, José María, Paco, and new ones: Julian Marcelo, Francisco Álvarez, Enrique Díez, Mahmoud Rasmi, Marcelo León, Mauricio Ortiz, as well as other frequent collaborators. Linked to this event, we also convened a webinar at the end of the Month. In the portal of the event you can access to the contributions, videos of the lectures, and other materials (access).

In September 2013, we held a second edition of the workshop on social networks, in this occasion under the motto “from communicating to solidary networks (an interdisciplinary approach)” in Sierra Pambley, in which several BITrum colleagues had the occasion to meet: Peter Fleissner, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Julian Marcelo, Paco Alvarez, Mahmoud Rasmi, Enrique Díez, Mauricio Ortiz, Paco Salto, José María Díaz, as well as other frequent collaborators. Linked to this summer event, we organised a Soundpainting Workshop and a couple of Webinars during Fall 2013 gathering further participation. In the portal of the event you can access to the contributions, videos of the lectures, and other materials (access).

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This initiative expands the interdisciplinary conception of BITrum to other knowledge areas, though taking information studies as a paradigmatic case. It was discussed in 2012 and set up at the beginning of 2013 according to a strategic statement aimed to provide support to the most of the activities held past year and to be presented as a candidate to the new Erasmus+ programme of the EC in April 2014. Among other activities we developed a new web linked to BITrum web-system in which the related events has been informationally hosted. The supporting effort of the participating institutions have been decisive for the ongoing success of the initiative which so far has gather some hundreds of participants. More details of the activities, rationale and collaboration network can be found in PRIMER portal. 

Collaborations

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As a result of the deployed activities BITrum has collaborate with a number of institutions and projects beyond the mentioned PRIMER network:

• With the International Society for Information Studies (ISIS) we have keep our collaboration setting up its information system based on domusBITae concept.
• Several events in Spain and Germany have been enriched by our collaboration with the Institut für Design Science (IDS), hub of the project Foundations of philosophy we have also contributed to, and the Observatory of the Cybersociety (OCS).
• Together with the International Center for Information Ethics (ICIE), and the American IEEE, we are co-organising an Information Ethics panel for the 21 Century Norber Wiener IEEE Conference, June 2014, Boston.
• With University of León, and besides the organisation of most remarkable events, we have contributed with the projects: (i) Impact of ICTs in civic attitudes in Education; (ii) Education in values: inquiry into the hidden syllabus; and (iii) MyUniversity, eDemocracy in the European Higher Education System.

New Members

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Nothing is more important to the fulfilment of our objectives than gathering efforts and enthusiasm around them, thus nothing can be more effusively saluted than the willing to participate in the group of new researchers who have indeed amounted new contributions, proposals, ideas…

First we must grateful mention Francisco Álvarez and Julian Marcelo, who were actually part of the group in the past General Assembly but not properly presented to the rest of the group, both have done significant contributions in the past years in the areas of Philosophy of Science and Technology and Information Uncertainty respectively; but we also joyful greet Enrique Díez, who has contributed in the field of ICT and education as well as in organisational matters, Paz Benito, expert in geography and co-organiser of upcoming events; Marcelo León, expert in regional economic development and contributor to some webinars held in May and December, and promotor of the collaboration with Ecuador; Cecile Malaspina, expert in aesthetics and translator of Simondon and Morin, who has contributed to the event recently held;  Mahmoud Rasmi, expert in aesthetics and finances and contributor to several activities since past year; Balu Athreya, interested in clarifying information phenomena in medical concerns and eager to lead an article of glossariumBITri regarding the issue; and Mauricio Ortiz, student of mechanical engineering who has widely contributed to the deployment of the PRIMER initiative. (See members' presentation)

GlossariumBITri

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As we informed past year, the visibility of the glossariumBITri has keep on growing, even without taking care of being indexed or referred in public bibliographic catalogues until recently. The number of visits has grown in the same proportion as past years, and readers come now from all over the globe, concentrating the Latin American countries the higher audience.  The achieved impact can be somehow reflected in the maximum figure of 10.413 pages visited in past October (the figures below show the number of visits between 1/1/2010 and 31/12/2013, excluding visits done to the domain bitrum.unileon.es).

Concerning new content proposals, there is a number of new contributions that have been forwarded by different authors covering new areas. Insofar as one of our objectives was to facilitate the visibility of the contributions through different publishing means, and while TripleC (with whom we had agree the publication of selected articles) has significantly changed its orientation as to cover the areas of the glossary, we have been hesitating about what to do next. We have finally taken the resolution of opening an electronic open journal, hosted in some of our collaborating universities, for the periodical publication of new and reviewed articles. In the next general assembly we would like to discuss some details.

Bibliographic contributions

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Carlos Aguilar accomplished his doctoral thesis, “Information processing of audiovisual contents”, with honours. Wolfgang Hofkirchner's book “Emergent Information” was published by World Scientific Publishing. Therein, our colleague completes previous works in the matter and deepens in the aspect we already discussed in the Colloquium BITae (León, 2009). Rainer Zimmermann's book “Kreativität und Form” (creativity and form) was published by Springer, containing interesting insights for the foundations of informational dynamics, social games and networks and the related problem of emergence and evolution of meaning. Rafael Capurro's co-authored book “Digital Whoness” was published by Ontos. Therein he tackles the problem of identity, privacy and liberty in the information era with renewed breadth and depth.

A number of articles and contributions to collective works, difficult to summarize, have been published by BITrum members concerning the understanding of information we encourage to share and discuss with the rest of the group through the BITrum blog of contributions and the BITrum’s Facebook-page newly open. All of them represent significant contributions we grateful cheer.

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We hope this brief summary provides you a sufficient picture to be aware of BITrum’s activity and endeavour to develop our objectives. We are eager to keep on developing them, and to open more spaces of participation among all members. We would like to discuss with you the future course in the (off- and on-line) general assembly to be held next week coincident with a seminar held by Rainer Zimmermann in León, concerning the Understanding of complexity, with interesting regards to the conceptualization of information in relation to the dynamic of reality...