arXiv subjects

William Wagner

Publications and source records attributed to William Wagner.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Private Power and Public Interests: An Ethnographic Examination of the Power Outages in Texas in February 2021

In 21st century America, to many observers, the idea that 10's of millions of Americans could lose power and heat for multiple days in the middle of a record cold snap, was unthinkable. It came as an even greater surprise that it would be Texas - arguably one of the world's energy capitals - that failed to provide sufficient power to its residents. This paper explores the events that led to the outage, the experiences of those who lived through it, and the situation in Texas one to two months after the event. We have taken an ethnographic approach to capture both the empirical aspects of the situation, and the more interpretive descriptions of the accounts and thoughts of the participants. We believe this ethnography of events in Texas can serve as foundational evidence and therefore can be generalized to a wide variety of situations and methodologies.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

A Technological Perspective on Net Neutrality

This paper serves as a brief technical examination of Net Neutrality and the Internet fundamentals relevant to the discussion. This document seeks to provide sufficient technical perspective that it may inform the political and economic debate surrounding the issue in the United States. Further, this research demonstrates that existing Internet economics are based strictly on usage, and that this model can account for all uses. Finally, I will argue that there should be some legislation and regulation of ISPs with regard to Net Neutrality in the U.S.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2021

Pilot Investigation for a Comprehensive Taxonomy of Autonomous Entities

This paper documents an exploratory pilot study to define the term Autonomous Entity, and any characteristics that are required to identify or classify an Autonomous Entity. Our solution builds on previous work with regard to philosophical and scientific classification methods but focuses on a novel Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) and model to help identify those characteristics which make any autonomous entity similar or different from others. We have solved the problem of not having an existing term to define our lens by creating a new combinatorial term: "Riskyishness". We present a DSRM and instrument for initial investigation, as well as observational and statistical descriptions of their use in the real world to solicit domain expertise and statistical evidence. Further, we demonstrate a specific application of the methodology by creating a second artifact - a tool to score existing and future technologies based on Riskyishness. The first artifact also provides a technique to disentangle miscellaneous existing technologies or add dimensions to the tools to capture future additions and paradigm shifts.

cs.AI↗