Introduction to the Special Issue on “The Legacy of Rob Kling: Social Informatics as a Research Discipline”

Drawing on Jones's ethical model and Ajzen's theory of planned behavior, this study proposes and tests an integrative model for the decision-making process underlying software piracy. Survey data collected from computer users in Guangzhou, China, in accordance with two software piracy scenarios under study—end user piracy and software counterfeiting—provide general support for the model. Consistent with major propositions of the theory of planned behavior, the findings show that Chinese computer users’ perceived moral intensity of software piracy significantly affects their corresponding moral recognition, judgment, and intention in both scenarios. Moreover, a direct influence of moral judgment on attitude toward software piracy is found in both scenarios. With regard to end-user piracy specifically, the findings further echo the theory of planned behavior by demonstrating a direct influence of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on intention to pirate. As in the case of software counterfeiting, the findings, however, show that only attitude and subjective norm but not perceived behavioral control significantly influence this intention. Implications derived from this study suggest the potential to synthesize ethical and general social psychological concepts to explain software piracy behavior, and also furnish insights on how to deter software piracy in China.     

The Lost Generation and its significance to American Culture

The Lost Generation is actually a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900s.The Lost generation tendency and Lost generation writers are of great importance to the American and world literature.This article serves as a brief introduction to the Lost generation and its significant writers.     

Objections to Ostritsch’s argument in “The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation”

This paper raises three objections to the argument presented by Ostritsch in The amoralist challenge to gaming and the gamer’s moral obligation, in which the amoralist’s mantra “it’s just a game” is viewed as an illegitimate rebuttal of all moral objections to (typically violent) video games. The first objection focuses on Ostritsch’s ‘strong sense’ of player enjoyment, which I argue is too crude, given the moral work it is meant to be doing. Next, I question the legitimacy of Ostritsch’s claim that certain video games are immoral. I examine what is involved in making this claim and what would be required for a normative position to be established: none of which is addressed by Ostritsch. Finally, I challenge the legitimacy of his claim that players are obliged not to play certain video games in certain ways (i.e., games endorsing immorality as ‘fun games’). I distinguish between immoral and suberogatory actions, arguing that the latter is in fact more applicable to cases Ostritsch has in mind, and that one is not obliged not to engage in these actions.     

The Lost Generation and its significance to American Culture

The Lost Generation is actually a group of American writers who were rebelling against what America had become by the 1900s. The Lost generation tendency and Lost generation writers are of great importance to the American and world literature. This article serves as a brief introduction to the Lost generation and its significant writers.     

CEPC: The “Right Ambition” to Have for China

正The Circular Electron-Positron Colloder(CEPC)is a very exciting project,and I’ve been particularly struck by the progress over the past year.Last November at the international advisory committee meeting of CEPC,we advised Yifang to increase the radius of the machine to a hundred kilometers.It’s about twice the size they were originally thinking,but it seemed to us that a     

The Acculturation,Conflict and Integration of Christianity′s Spreading to Shaanxi in Modern Times

Christianity spread to Shaanxi widely and deeply fourth time after the first Opium War,the western missionaries took the preaching tactics to adapting the Chinese culture and custom.As a foreign heterogeneous culture,it showed the conflict and integration for the Christianity with the Chinese traditional culture and ideas in Shaanxi province during all the modern times.This study will provide the beneficial enlightment in the case of Sino-Western culture also showing the tendency of the global communication in nowadays.