Economic freedomEconomic freedom, or economic liberty, is the ability of people of a society to take economic actions. This is a term used in economic and policy debates as well as in the philosophy of economics. One approach to economic freedom comes from the liberal tradition emphasizing free markets, free trade, and private property under free enterprise. Another approach to economic freedom extends the welfare economics study of individual choice, with greater economic freedom coming from a larger set of possible choices.
Freedom of the pressFreedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exercised freely. Such freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state; its preservation may be sought through the constitution or other legal protection and security. It is in opposition to paid press, where communities, police organizations, and governments are paid for their copyrights.
Online deliberationOnline deliberation is a broad term used to describe many forms of non-institutional, institutional and experimental online discussions. The term also describes the emerging field of practice and research related to the design, implementation and study of deliberative processes that rely on the use of electronic information and communications technologies (ICT). Although the Internet and social media have fostered discursive participation and deliberation online through computer-mediated communication, the academic study of online deliberation started in the early 2000s.
Social normSocial norms are shared standards of acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into rules and laws. Social normative influences or social norms, are deemed to be powerful drivers of human behavioural changes and well organized and incorporated by major theories which explain human behaviour. Institutions are composed of multiple norms.
Approval votingApproval voting is an electoral system in which voters can select many candidates instead of selecting only one candidate. Approval voting ballots show a list of all the candidates running and each voter indicates support for as many candidates as they see fit. Final tallies show how many votes each candidate received, and the winner is the candidate with the most support. Approval voting advocates Steven Brams and Dudley R. Herschbach predict that Approval should increase voter participation, prevent minor-party candidates from being spoilers, and reduce negative campaigning.
Freedom of assemblyFreedom of peaceful assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right or ability of people to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue, and defend their collective or shared ideas. The right to freedom of association is recognized as a human right, a political right and a civil liberty. The terms freedom of assembly and freedom of association may be used to distinguish between the freedom to assemble in public places and the freedom to join an association.
Freedom of speechFreedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law by the United Nations. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like free speech, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression are used interchangeably in political discourse.
Approval ballotAn approval ballot, also called an unordered ballot, is a ballot in which a voter may vote for any number of candidates simultaneously, rather than for just one candidate. Candidates that are selected in a voter's ballot are said to be approved by the voter; the other candidates are said to be disapproved or rejected. Approval ballots do not let the voters specify a preference-order among the candidates they approve; hence the name unordered. This is in contrast to ranked ballots, which are ordered.
Knowledge economyThe knowledge economy, or knowledge-based economy, is an economic system in which the production of goods and services is based principally on knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to advancement in technical and scientific innovation. The key element of value is the greater dependence on human capital and intellectual property as the source of innovative ideas, information and practices. Organisations are required to capitalise on this "knowledge" in their production to stimulate and deepen the business development process.
Social norms approachThe social norms approach, or social norms marketing, is an environmental strategy gaining ground in health campaigns. While conducting research in the mid-1980s, two researchers, H.W. Perkins and A.D. Berkowitz, reported that students at a small U.S. college held exaggerated beliefs about the normal frequency and consumption habits of other students with regard to alcohol. These inflated perceptions have been found in many educational institutions, with varying populations and locations.
Knowledge marketA knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, so the traditional commodity market mechanism can be applied directly to distribute it. An alternative model is based on treating knowledge as a public good and hence encouraging free sharing of knowledge. This is often referred to as attention economy.
AC powerIn an electric circuit, instantaneous power is the time rate of flow of energy past a given point of the circuit. In alternating current circuits, energy storage elements such as inductors and capacitors may result in periodic reversals of the direction of energy flow. Its SI unit is the watt. The portion of instantaneous power that, averaged over a complete cycle of the AC waveform, results in net transfer of energy in one direction is known as instantaneous active power, and its time average is known as active power or real power.
Tor (network)Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. It directs Internet traffic via a free, worldwide, volunteer overlay network that consists of more than seven thousand relays. Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace a user's Internet activity. Tor protects personal privacy by concealing a user's location and usage from anyone performing network surveillance or traffic analysis. It protects the user's freedom and ability to communicate confidentially through IP address anonymity using Tor exit nodes.
Social orderThe term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order is contrasted to social chaos or disorder and refers to a stable state of society in which the existing social structure is accepted and maintained by its members. The problem of order or Hobbesian problem, which is central to much of sociology, political science and political philosophy, is the question of how and why it is that social orders exist at all.
Freedom of movementFreedom of movement, mobility rights, or the right to travel is a human rights concept encompassing the right of individuals to travel from place to place within the territory of a country, and to leave the country and return to it. The right includes not only visiting places, but changing the place where the individual resides or works. Such a right is provided in the constitutions of numerous states, and in documents reflecting norms of international law.
Sequential proportional approval votingSequential proportional approval voting (SPAV) or reweighted approval voting (RAV) is an electoral system that extends the concept of approval voting to a multiple winner election. It is a simplified version of proportional approval voting. Proposed by Danish statistician Thorvald N. Thiele in the early 1900s, it was used (with adaptations for party lists) in Sweden for a short period from 1909-1921, and was replaced by a cruder "party-list" style system as it was easier to calculate.
Power outageA power outage (also called a powercut, a power out, a power failure, a power blackout, a power loss, or a blackout) is the loss of the electrical power network supply to an end user. There are many causes of power failures in an electricity network. Examples of these causes include faults at power stations, damage to electric transmission lines, substations or other parts of the distribution system, a short circuit, cascading failure, fuse or circuit breaker operation.
Anonymous P2PAn anonymous P2P communication system is a peer-to-peer distributed application in which the nodes, which are used to share resources, or participants are anonymous or pseudonymous. Anonymity of participants is usually achieved by special routing overlay networks that hide the physical location of each node from other participants. Interest in anonymous P2P systems has increased in recent years for many reasons, ranging from the desire to share files without revealing one's network identity and risking litigation to distrust in governments, concerns over mass surveillance and data retention, and lawsuits against bloggers.
Handwriting recognitionHandwriting recognition (HWR), also known as handwritten text recognition (HTR), is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning (optical character recognition) or intelligent word recognition. Alternatively, the movements of the pen tip may be sensed "on line", for example by a pen-based computer screen surface, a generally easier task as there are more clues available.
Deliberative opinion pollA deliberative opinion poll, sometimes called a deliberative poll, is a form of opinion poll taken before and after significant deliberation. Professor James S. Fishkin of Stanford University first described the concept in 1988. The typical deliberative opinion poll takes a random, representative sample of citizens and engages them in deliberation on current issues or proposed policy changes through small-group discussions and conversations with competing experts to create more informed and reflective public opinion.
