Better Integrating Travel Choices into Future Urban Mobility Systems: The Day the Highways Stood Still
This exchange between a scientist and an alien in the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still summarizes the dilemma that is facing urban transportation today and that will continue to be a major issue in determining our ability to create a sustainable future. Many engineers and technologists think that they have the answers, while the crux of the matter lies in another popular quote provided by Walt Kelly in his April 1970 Earth Day comic strip Pogo: “We have met the enemy and they is us.”
Digital Innovation and Taxi Services: The Case of Uru in Ghana
The purpose of this study is to understand how ridesharing as a form of digital innovation in taxi services creates affordances and constraints for riders and drivers in a developing country. Extant studies on digital innovation and taxi services primarily have focused on digital innovation for ridesharing in the taxi industry. However, less is known about how digital innovation for ridesharing in taxi services creates affordances and constraints for drivers and riders. This study, therefore, follows an interpretive case study as a methodology and affordance theory as a lens to understand ridesharing in Ghana. The findings show three digital technology affordances that cause riders and drivers to use digital innovation in taxi services for ridesharing. These are security affordance with riders and drivers background information, automatic billing affordance for affordable transportation, and ubiquitous service affordance with anywhere and anytime service in the cities. The study finally provides concluding thoughts.
The Tsadik and His Soul’s Sparks: From Kabbalah to Hasidism
The present study shows the continuity between the Safedian Kabbalistic view of the relations between the sparks of a certain soul, and the Hasidic theory, that was conceived of as innovated by and characteristic of 18th century Hasidism, as to the responsibility of the Tsadik for the sparks that belongs to his soul. In the two literatures, the rescue of a spark of one's soul is related to the beautiful captive woman that is conceived of as an externalization of an inner dimension of the righteous person, immersed in a shell.