Archive for January, 2010

Fair Tracing has second meeting with designer

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

L-R: Nicolas Myers, Dr Dorothea Kleine, Dr Ann Light, Dr Apurba

On Friday, 15 January 2010, Fair Tracing project team members Dr Apurba Kundu, Dr Dorothea Kleine and Dr Ann Light met again with Nicolas Myers, the designer who selected our project as his inspiration for his contribution to the EPSRC Impact! Exhibition.

The grand surroundings of the British Museum’s Great Court lent an inspirational air to our discussions about how Nicolas understood our research project, including its founding ethical concerns, and what particular aspect(s) he might focus on to motivate his own artistic design. Nicolas also described some very interesting ideas as to how his work will be presented at the Impact! Exhibition.

To see the results for yourself, be sure to visit the the Royal College of Art, London, from 16-21 March 2010.

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Fair Tracing in the news (and legal application?)

Monday, January 18th, 2010

The latest news about the Fair Tracing project was reported in a brief “Fair Tracing project chosen for Impact! Exhibition” article by principle investigator Dr Apurba Kundu that appeared in the Anglia Ruskin University Bulletin of January 2010, 7:1, p 9.

The appearance of the article has already led to a colleague in the Anglia Law School contacting Apurba to see if the project’s research outcomes are relevant to the rule of nemo dat quod non habet (i.e., that no one can pass title to goods they do not already have), and its potential solution via unique identification marks on goods, thereby allowing a chain of title to be validated. Watch this space!

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New Fair Tracing article accepted for publication

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Fair Tracing co-investigator Dr Ann Light has just had her paper, ”Barriers to Bridging: Can we cross Global Divides with Trac(k)ing Technology?”, accepted for publication in a special issue on “Labelling the World” of the IEEE journal Pervasive Computing. As she writes:

Product tracking technology is increasingly available to big players in the value chain which connects producers to consumers, giving them new competitive advantages. Such shifts in technology do not benefit small producers, and especially those in developing regions, to the same degree. This paper looks at the practicalities of trying to level the playing field by making a form of tracing technology available for any producer to use. In doing so, it goes beyond considering engineering solutions to examine what happens in the context of use, reporting on work with partners in Chile and India and reflecting on the potential for impact on business and community wellbeing. Reporting on the results of the “Fair Tracing” project, the paper argues that a generic trac(k)ing tool for use with the different commerce systems employed across developing regions is not likely to be useful as such. It concludes with some insights into the tensions that arise in designing a viable socio-technical system around this type of tool and considers what the wider implications may be.

We will keep readers informed as to when the publication appears.

Posted in Chile, Fair Tracing project activities, Fair Tracing publications, India, Tracing & Tracking | Comments Off