Towards a Critical Realist Comparative Methodology: Context-Sensitive Theoretical Comparison

Towards operational risk-aware information systems: A critical realist perspective

Following calls to enhance risk-sensitivity of second generation Operational Risk-Aware Information Systems (ORISs), this paper aims to address the lack of ontological/epistemological grounding for the concept of Operational Risk (OR). Herein, OR is regarded both as a property of a real system and as a representational phenomenon forming part of the core of ORIS in line with Weber’s (2003) view...

Towards Context-Sensitive Intelligence

Even modern component architectures do not provide for easily manageable context-sensitive adaptability, a key requirement for ambient intelligence. The reason is that components are too large – providing black boxes with adaptation points only at their boundaries – and to small – lacking good means for expressing concerns beyond the scope of single components – at the same time. We present a f...

A Critical Realist Commentary

The case for “analytical dualism” as a means of approaching sociotechnical action is presented as an alternative to accounts which tend to conflate agency, structure, and technology. This is based on the work of Margaret Archer, whose work is in turn located in the traditions of critical realism. Her commitment to analytical dualism, which stresses both the importance of time in analysis and th...

Towards Context-sensitive Modeling Tools

Towards Context-Sensitive Visual Attention

In this paper we present a discussion of information processing context and how we believe a visual attention system should be influenced by contextual information. We support this argument with a proof-of-concept design and implementation of a context-sensitive extension to the Itti & Koch model of visual attention as part of an architecture for a cognitive system. Our model demonstrates impro...