future research in ubiquitous computing

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Charting past, present, and future research in ubiquitous computing

2000, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

Related Papers

Georgia Tech GVU Technical Report GIT- …

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing

Paul Dourish

Irene Mavrommati

ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review

Andy Crabtree , Peter Tolmie

pankaj gupta

GIRLIAN SANTOS

… of the Association for …

Michel Avital

IBM Systems Journal

Steve Sawyer

RELATED PAPERS

Materials Science Poland

Ranjit Singha

Neandro Lima

Combinatorics, Probability & Computing

Ron Aharoni

加急办理cus毕业证书 美国西雅图城市大学毕业证荣誉学位证书原版一模一样

… et Cosmochimica Acta …

Carolina Reyes

Suzette Mohammed

Boletim de Ciências Geodésicas

Luciana Oliveira Da Silva

Chuansi Gao

Joaquin Arriola

BJU International

Simon Podnar

Brain : a journal of neurology

Suejen Perani

rtytrewer htytrer

Food Science and Biotechnology

Raju Ahmmed

Oussama Khatib

Biodiversity Observations

Les Underhill

Jemma Purdey

Chemical Physics Letters

Amy Stevens

Dusan Gordic

Moritz Knoche

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Ubiquitous computing: Applications and research opportunities

Ieee account.

• Change Username/Password
• Update Address

Purchase Details

• Payment Options
• Order History
• View Purchased Documents

Profile Information

• Communications Preferences
• Profession and Education
• Technical Interests
• US & Canada: +1 800 678 4333
• Worldwide: +1 732 981 0060
• Contact & Support
• About IEEE Xplore
• Accessibility
• Terms of Use
• Nondiscrimination Policy
• Privacy & Opting Out of Cookies

A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. © Copyright 2024 IEEE - All rights reserved. Use of this web site signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions.

• myState on Mississippi State University
• Directory on Mississippi State University
• Calendars on Mississippi State University
• A-Z Index on Mississippi State University
• Maps on Mississippi State University
• News on Mississippi State University
• Contact on Mississippi State University

Landing cutting-edge jobs becomes reality with new MSU computing technology degrees

Contact: Harriet Laird

STARKVILLE, Miss.—The future is bright for those interested in cutting-edge jobs in computing technologies, and Mississippi State is offering three new degree paths this fall to get students on their way to professional success.

MSU’s new Bachelor of Applied Science in Cybersecurity, Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence and Master of Applied Data Science offer students hands-on training in occupations growing much faster for the next 12 years than the average for all jobs.

Currently, the university has existing programs that include a Bachelor of Cybersecurity, Bachelor of Data Science and a Master of Cybersecurity and Operations.

“As a comprehensive public research university, we want to ensure all our programs teach innovative and current best practices and prepare our students to be career ready when they graduate,” said MSU’s David Shaw, provost and executive vice president. “Every day, we’re looking at the whole picture—analyzing employers’ needs and workforce demands to offer top-notch academic programs.”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 377,500 openings through 2032, on average, in computer and information technology occupations. While many openings are due to employment growth, an aging and retiring workforce also is a contributor. The bureau reports the median annual wage at $104,420 as of 2023, significantly higher than the median annual wage of $48,060 for all occupations.

Also this fall, MSU is introducing three additional applied science bachelor’s degrees—business office technology, healthcare administration and public management. Applied science bachelor’s degree programs are ideal for those who have completed or are finishing a two-year college or military Associate of Applied Science degree.

Offering online, in-person and hybrid learning options, these degrees add flexibility for working adults and transfer students who have A.A.S. technical degrees in a variety of fields. Students in most of these programs will have the opportunity to gain credentials of value while earning their degree.

A graduate degree for teachers is a new addition as well. The Master of Arts in Teaching Elementary Level Alternate Route is specifically designed to address the state’s challenge of recruiting and retaining quality teachers. More than 100 public school districts have critical teacher shortages.

New Degree Programs: A Closer Look

—The B.A.S. in Cybersecurity is designed to equip students with the knowledge, skills and expertise to become cybersecurity analysts. This program ensures graduates are well-versed in cybersecurity theoretical aspects and possess hands-on skills required in defending organizations against cyber threats.

—Students pursuing the B.S. in Artificial Intelligence gain core theoretical knowledge and skills training to design and develop artificial intelligence systems. Data analytics, machine learning, robotics and more are the foundation of a degree preparing graduates for careers such as AI researcher and data scientist in technology and healthcare and many other industries.

—MSU is offering the Master of Applied Data Science focused toward working adults who may have a variety of bachelor’s degrees. While students learn foundational data science concepts, they also gain practical skills using real world datasets in many application domains. Careers for data scientists are innumerable—from agriculture and athletics to finance and healthcare.

—The B.A.S. in Business Office Technology prepares those holding business/technology A.A.S. degrees for work as office managers, administrative supervisors, IT administrators and more. It is delivered in both online and face-to-face formats, accommodating the preferences and schedules of a diverse population interested in pursuing a BOT degree.

—Those with health-related A.A.S. degrees can pursue MSU’s B.A.S. in Healthcare Administration at MSU-Meridian, where students are prepared to become managers in such settings as hospitals, private practices, pharmaceutical agencies, insurance companies and more. The curriculum includes study and skills training in such subjects as healthcare finance, law and management.

—MSU’s new B.A.S. in Public Management is specifically to advance the education and career options of professionals with existing A.A.S. degrees in public safety areas such as fire science, law enforcement or emergency medical/management services. Jobs for graduates include city or emergency manager, criminal justice administrator, fire management officer and others.

—A new graduate-level licensure program, the M.A. in Teaching Elementary Level Alternate Route prepares students for highly competent instruction in kindergarten through sixth grade. The MSU-Meridian coursework includes planning and managing learning, assessment and serving children with special needs. A one-year residency includes diagnosing reading problems and more.

Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters. Learn more at www.msstate.edu .

Tuesday, June 4, 2024 - 1:30 pm

• Science & Technology News
• Students News
• College of Engineering

You may also be interested in…

Cadence bank makes $2,500 donation to bully’s pantry.

May 16, 2024

MSU Horticulture Club grows new Excellence Endowment

June 05, 2024

Conifers in Crisis: MSU scientist seeks solutions to widespread needle blight

May 17, 2024

• Find Mississippi State University on Facebook
• Find Mississippi State University on Instagram
• Find Mississippi State University on LinkedIn
• Find Mississippi State University on Pinterest
• Find Mississippi State University on Twitter
• Find Mississippi State University on YouTube

TechRepublic

Account information.

Share with Your Friends

Gartner’s 7 Predictions for the Future of Australian & Global Cloud Computing

Your email has been sent

Cloud computing will account for 70% of global enterprise workloads by 2028, up from about 25% now, according to Gartner, and issues like sustainability, AI computing and data sovereignty will play greater roles in how Australian enterprises use and procure cloud vendors.

At the Gartner IT infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference in Sydney, Dennis Smith, a leading cloud computing analyst, told Australian cloud computing executives the cloud had moved from being a technology disrupter to a business disrupter and was now becoming a business essential.

“If you don’t have a cloud strategy that’s solid and aren’t executing on it, you’re going to be putting your business at risk in many ways,” he said. “We’ve gone beyond this being a thing you’re kind of dabbling with to really something that needs to be a part of your much larger IT strategy.”

Gartner’s seven cloud computing trend predictions for Australia and globally until 2028 were:

• More than half of current multicloud plans will fail to provide value by 2028.
• Cloud-native platforms will be the de facto way of implementing new applications.
• Cloud modernisation will see 70% of workloads in cloud environments by 2028.
• Industry clouds will be used by more than half of all organisations in the cloud.
• Multinationals will need to have a digital sovereignty strategy by 2028.
• Sustainability will become a top five procurement criterion for cloud vendors.
• AI and machine learning will account for 50% of cloud computing by 2028.

In additional research published to coincide with the Australian cloud conference, Gartner predicted Australian companies would spend AUD $23.3 billion (US $15.4 billion) on public cloud in 2024, up 19.7% from 2023. Spending on software-as-a-service will continue to be the largest category, up 18.3% in 2023 to AUD $11 billion (US $7.2 billion) in spending.

1. More than half of current multicloud plans will fail to provide value by 2028

Multicloud strategies are a top agenda item for clients in 2024, Smith said. However, while saying multicloud was not inherently a bad strategy, 50% or more organisations would not gain the value they were seeking by 2028 , often because “they are not always doing multicloud for the right reasons.”

Smith said multicloud did not always provide portability or resilience if applications themselves are not architected and encoded for those advantages. Multicloud may not be cheaper if customers have less price leverage with a cloud vendor or need to spend on talent and tooling to manage the environments.

2. Cloud-native platforms to become the de facto way of implementing new applications

Gartner believes cloud-native platforms will be the default for building new applications by 2028, whether in the public cloud or in on-prem or hybrid environments. Smith described cloud-native as those platforms “enabling developers to get up to speed and develop code quicker.”

“Think of the ability to build applications that are scalable, that are instrumented already, that have a nice tight CI/CD (continuous integration and deployment) pipeline, that give the ability to implement some serverless functions. Maybe a managed Kubernetes offering or other activity that makes it easier for me as a developer to code that application,” he said.

3. Cloud modernisation will see 70% of Australian and global workloads in cloud environments by 2028

Gartner said the focus on modernisation from enterprises and cloud providers, as well as new emerging AI tools for modernisation such as tools discovering legacy systems or refactoring notes, will see a dramatic shift in the proportion of workloads in the cloud, from 25% to 70%.

SEE: The top five advantages of cloud computing .

Australian research firm ADAPT has found highly modernised organisations in Australia already have 67% of their workloads in public clouds and predicted that 55% of workloads overall will be in public clouds by 2025 , with larger organisations in particular more committed to cloud strategies. Hyperscalers like Microsoft have been investing in new cloud capacity .

“The remaining will be within your existing data centers and such. A key takeaway is that the future for most of you will be hybrid, so do end up planning for that.” Smith added the blanket concept of organisations just moving everything to the cloud without vetting applications is not the right path to take.

4. More than half of all organisations will accelerate with industry cloud platforms

There is a 50% chance or more, according to Gartner, that organisations will utilise an industry cloud platform by 2028. Smith described industry clouds as a combination of an infrastructure platform and SaaS offering, enabling a company to jump-start initiatives in an industry, like manufacturing or retail.

“There are numerous vendors in this space, including the hyperscalers. So do end up anticipating this, particularly if you’re looking at gaining a competitive advantage within your respective industries,” he told delegates at Gartner’s conference.

5. Digital sovereignty issues will require multinationals to develop strategies by 2028

The multinationals Australian cloud professionals work within will need strategies around digital sovereignty by 2028, Gartner argued. Strategies will aim at having more control over technology, data or operations in national locations, or even having the technology disconnected in some manner.

“This is a very hot area among many of my clients in certain parts of the world, where they may be in countries and a bit hesitant, frankly, to use a cloud provider across the ocean, or may have a fear that there may be some national issues that may cause that to be disconnected,” Smith elaborated.

Australia’s own dependence on tech from the U.S. and China has been noted . The Australian government has admitted dependence on the three U.S. hyperscale clouds and was left stranded when Microsoft pulled out of a project that would have provided a sovereign Australian “top secret” cloud.

6. Sustainability will become one of the top five procurement criteria for cloud vendors

Gartner estimated a quarter of organisations are already asking for sustainability information as part of the procurement process for cloud vendors, with particular interest over the last three years. Smith said that would at least double over the next four years to become a top five criteria.

In 2024, Australia released draft legislation that would introduce mandatory climate-related reporting . These requirements would require reporting from larger companies with more than 500 employees, revenues higher than AUD $500 million (US $331 million) or AUD $5 billion (US $3.3 billion) in assets from the 2024/25 financial year, with medium-size and smaller companies to follow in the next two financial years.

Smith noted some cloud vendors are already having to build data centres in adjacent countries if there are energy consumption restrictions in jurisdictions. He said enterprises in the near future would be asking vendors for more transparency and would need to look at the energy consumption of their own data centres.

7. AI and machine learning will account for 50% of cloud computing resource usage

The amount of cloud computing resources directed to AI and machine learning is about 10% today, but this will increase fivefold, though other activity will not decrease. Smith said the industry would move from a “medium sized pizza to a large pizza,” with 50% dedicated to AI and machine learning.

Gartner VP Analyst Michael Warrilow said generative AI is becoming a key driver and differentiator of future cloud demands. “Australian CIOs must determine the best adoption model for their needs, whether to build a model from scratch, or focus on AI capabilities being integrated into the applications they buy.”

Editor’s note: TechRepublic covered Gartner IT infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference remotely.

Subscribe to the Daily Tech Insider AU Newsletter

Stay up to date on the latest in technology with Daily Tech Insider Australian Edition. We bring you news on industry-leading companies, products, and people, as well as highlighted articles, downloads, and top resources. You’ll receive primers on hot tech topics that are most relevant to AU markets that will help you stay ahead of the game. Delivered Thursdays

• Cyber Security ‘Tax’ and Cloud ‘Love Affair’ Driving New IT Spending Despite Flat Budgets in 2024
• Is Edge Computing Living Up to Its Promise in the Australian Market?
• Top IT Trends in Australia for IT Pros to Prepare For in 2024
• Top 5 Cloud Computing Use Cases and Examples
• Disadvantages of Cloud Computing

Create a TechRepublic Account

Get the web's best business technology news, tutorials, reviews, trends, and analysis—in your inbox. Let's start with the basics.

* - indicates required fields

Sign in to TechRepublic

Lost your password? Request a new password

Reset Password

Please enter your email adress. You will receive an email message with instructions on how to reset your password.

Check your email for a password reset link. If you didn't receive an email don't forgot to check your spam folder, otherwise contact support .

Welcome. Tell us a little bit about you.

This will help us provide you with customized content.

Want to receive more TechRepublic news?

You're all set.

Thanks for signing up! Keep an eye out for a confirmation email from our team. To ensure any newsletters you subscribed to hit your inbox, make sure to add [email protected] to your contacts list.

Theme issue on emerging advances in ubiquitous artificial intelligence: trends, challenges, and future research directions

• Guest Editorial
• Published: 08 February 2023
• Volume 27 , pages 1453–1454, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

• Sang-Bing Tsai 1 ,
• Chia-Huei Wu 2 &
• Jian Mou 3  

1862 Accesses

1 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Ubiquitous digital developments such as the Internet of Things (IoTs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are increasingly changing the strategies of organisations and the way they operate. In the information economy era, the lack of the necessary digital applications will only make it difficult for firms to survive. Examples include Airbnb, which has hit the hotel industry hard; Uber, which has used big data technology to change the way people travel; Groupon, which has created a new digital platform; and Facebook and Twitter, which have defined new ways of communication and social interaction. These firms have used digital technology to bring about changes in products, services, and information that have allowed them to grow rapidly. We have to acknowledge that the emergence of artificial intelligence has greatly facilitated the life of society. However, while providing convenience, AI also faces the problem of lack of accuracy. Not only that, but there are certain obstacles to the development of AI. For example, unclear self-configuration and self-optimisation mechanisms of AI, the development of machine learning and federated learning, security and privacy concerns of blockchain, and compatibility and efficiency issues. The above research gaps are examined in some depth in the five articles in this special issue.

The first article, named “An Optimal Deep Feature-Based AI Chat Conversation System for Smart Medical Application”, developed a novel lion-based deep Belief chatbot (LbDBC) model in the medical sector. The authors optimise a previously developed chatbot model that had low accuracy issues, taking into account quality of care assessment data, incorporating word roots and tokenization methods to help provide the best answer retrieval rate for the users.

In the second article, named “Exploring Information Dissemination Effect on Social Media: An Empirical Investigation”, the authors used real and valid data from firms that specialise in running official WeChat accounts, which greatly enhances its practical implications. Through analysing the characteristics of information dissemination using the “Feedback-Sympathize-Identify Participant-Share” (FSIPS) two-stage model, the authors took into account the roles of users, message content, the interaction between the content and individual, and the context of social media in information dissemination behaviours. In addition, the authors included environment-related variables to ensure the accuracy of the results. The results show that “favorite rate” has the greatest impact on reading rate, while “like rate” has the greatest impact on sharing rate.

In the third article, named “A Design Concept of Big Data Analytics Model for Managers in Hospitality Industries”, the authors developed a new data analytics model to help managers in the hospitality and tourism industry transform their decision-making. After COVID-19, the industry struggled to provide a better programme due to the massive lack of data trends. Therefore, the authors proposed a model for using user-generated content (UGC), starting with everyday data from online and video recordings.

The forth article, named “Adoption of AI in Response to Covid—A Configurational Perspective”, focuses on whether artificial intelligence helps firms strengthen their competitiveness. We know that AI excels in corporate strategy, but how AI will help firms strengthen their competitiveness is yet to be seen. Therefore, the authors analysed the data from 514 Chinese exporting firms using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The strategic response of the organisation is integrated into the Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) framework based on the COVID-19 perspective. The results shows that AI is not sufficient to improve the competitiveness of firms and that other organizational capabilities such as organizational resource capacity and digital business model innovation influence the use of AI. These findings have good practical implications for firms in dealing with future crisis.

The last article, named “Emerging Advances of Block Chain Technology in Finance: a Content Analysis”, focuses on the development of blockchain in the financial sector. As a widely used information system technology, blockchain can help firms to develop “distributed databases”. The authors systematically summarized several possible features of financial blockchain research by analysing 50 relevant articles and industry reports between 2008 and 2022. This study identifies three main areas that will help blockchain technology become the “next generation networks” that will transform the financial industry.

The emergence of artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword, offering convenience for social development while also posing considerable challenges. When faced with issues such as security and accuracy, more accurate models will be needed to improve in the future.

Data availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are included within the article.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

WUYI University, Fujian, China

Sang-Bing Tsai

Minghsin University of Science and Technology, Xinfeng, Taiwan

Chia-Huei Wu

Pusan National University, Busan, South Korea

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sang-Bing Tsai or Chia-Huei Wu .

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Tsai, SB., Wu, CH. & Mou, J. Theme issue on emerging advances in ubiquitous artificial intelligence: trends, challenges, and future research directions. Pers Ubiquit Comput 27 , 1453–1454 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-023-01715-2

Download citation

Published : 08 February 2023

Issue Date : August 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-023-01715-2

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Suggestions or feedback?

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Machine learning
• Social justice
• Black holes
• Classes and programs

Departments

• Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Architecture
• Political Science
• Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
• Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
• Lincoln Laboratory
• School of Architecture + Planning
• School of Engineering
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• Sloan School of Management
• School of Science
• MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

The unexpected origins of a modern finance tool

Press contact :, media download.

*Terms of Use:

Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license . You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT."

Previous image Next image

In the early 1600s, the officials running Durham Cathedral, in England, had serious financial problems. Soaring prices had raised expenses. Most cathedral income came from renting land to tenant farmers, who had long leases so officials could not easily raise the rent. Instead, church leaders started charging periodic fees, but these often made tenants furious. And the 1600s, a time of religious schism, was not the moment to alienate church members.

But in 1626, Durham officials found a formula for fees that tenants would accept. If tenant farmers paid a fee equal to one year’s net value of the land, it earned them a seven-year lease. A fee equal to 7.75 years of net value earned a 21-year lease.

This was a form of discounting, the now-common technique for evaluating the present and future value of money by assuming a certain rate of return on that money. The Durham officials likely got their numbers from new books of discounting tables. Volumes like this had never existed before, but suddenly local church officials were applying the technique up and down England.

As financial innovation stories go, this one is unusual. Normally, avant-garde financial tools might come from, well, the financial avant-garde — bankers, merchants, and investors hunting for short-term profits, not clergymen.

“Most people have assumed these very sophisticated calculations would have been implemented by hard-nosed capitalists, because really powerful calculations would allow you to get an economic edge and increase profits,” says MIT historian William Deringer, an expert in the deployment of quantitative reasoning in public life. “But that was not the primary or only driver in this situation.”

Deringer has published a new research article about this episode, “ Mr. Aecroid’s Tables: Economic Calculations and Social Customs in the Early Modern Countryside ,” appearing in the current issue of the Journal of Modern History . In it, he uses archival research to explore how the English clergy started using discounting, and where. And one other question: Why?

Enter inflation

Today, discounting is a pervasive tool. A dollar in the present is worth more than a dollar a decade from now, since one can earn money investing it in the meantime. This concept heavily informs investment markets, corporate finance, and even the NFL draft (where trading this year’s picks yields a greater haul of future picks). As the historian William N. Goetzmann has written, the related idea of net present value “is the most important tool in modern finance.” But while discounting was known as far back as the mathematician Leonardo of Pisa (often called Fibonacci) in the 1200s, why were English clergy some of its most enthusiastic early adopters?

The answer involves a global change in the 1500s: the “price revolution,” in which things began costing more, after a long period when prices had been constant. That is, inflation hit the world.

“People up to that point lived with the expectation that prices would stay the same,” Deringer says. “The idea that prices changed in a systematic way was shocking.”

For Durham Cathedral, inflation meant the organization had to pay more for goods while three-quarters of its revenues came from tenant rents, which were hard to alter. Many leases were complex, and some were locked in for a tenant’s lifetime. The Durham leaders did levy intermittent fees on tenants, but that led to angry responses and court cases.

Meanwhile, tenants had additional leverage against the Church of England: religious competition following the Reformation. England’s political and religious schisms would lead it to a midcentury civil war. Maybe some private landholders could drastically increase fees, but the church did not want to lose followers that way.

“Some individual landowners could be ruthlessly economic, but the church couldn’t, because it’s in the midst of incredible political and religious turmoil after the Reformation,” Deringer says. “The Church of England is in this precarious position. They’re walking a line between Catholics who don’t think there should have been a Reformation, and Puritans who don’t think there should be bishops. If they’re perceived to be hurting their flock, it would have real consequences. The church is trying to make the finances work but in a way that’s just barely tolerable to the tenants.”

Enter the books of discounting tables, which allowed local church leaders to finesse the finances. Essentially, discounting more carefully calibrated the upfront fees tenants would periodically pay. Church leaders could simply plug in the numbers as compromise solutions.

In this period, England’s first prominent discounting book with tables was published in 1613; its most enduring, Ambrose Acroyd’s “Table of Leasses and Interest,” dated to 1628-29. Acroyd was the bursar at Trinity College at Cambridge University, which as a landholder (and church-affiliated institution) faced the same issues concerning inflation and rent. Durham Cathedral began using off-the-shelf discounting formulas in 1626, resolving decades of localized disagreement as well.

Performing fairness

The discounting tables from books did not only work because the price was right. Once circulating clergy had popularized the notion throughout England, local leaders could justify using the books because others were doing it. The clergy were “performing fairness,” as Deringer puts it.

“Strict calculative rules assured tenants and courts that fines were reasonable, limiting landlords’ ability to maximize revenues,” Deringer writes in the new article.

To be sure, local church leaders in England were using discounting for their own economic self-interest. It just wasn’t the largest short-term economic self-interest possible. And it was a sound strategy.

“In Durham they would fight with tenants every 20 years [in the 1500s] and come to a new deal, but eventually that evolves into these sophisticated mechanisms, the discounting tables,” Deringer adds. “And you get standardization. By about 1700, it seems like these procedures are used everywhere.”

Thus, as Deringer writes, “mathematical tables for setting fines were not so much instruments of a capitalist transformation as the linchpin holding together what remained of an older system of customary obligations stretched nearly to breaking by macroeconomic forces.”

Once discounting was widely introduced, it never went away. Deringer’s Journal of Modern History article is part of a larger book project he is currently pursuing, about discounting in many facets of modern life.

Deringer was able to piece together the history of discounting in 17th-century England thanks in part to archival clues. For instance, Durham University owns a 1686 discounting book self-described as an update to Acroyd’s work; that copy was owned by a Durham Cathedral administrator in the 1700s. Of the 11 existing copies of Acroyd’s work, two are at Canterbury Cathedral and Lincoln Cathedral.

Hints like that helped Deringer recognize that church leaders were very interested in discounting; his further research helped him see that this chapter in the history of discounting is not merely about finance; it also opens a new window into the turbulent 1600s.

“I never expected to be researching church finances, I didn’t expect it to have anything to do with the countryside, landlord-tenant relationships, and tenant law,” Deringer says. “I was seeing this as an interesting example of a story about bottom-line economic calculation, and it wound up being more about this effort to use calculation to resolve social tensions.” 

Share this news article on:

Related links.

• William Deringer
• Program in Science, Technology, and Society

Related Topics

• Program in STS
• School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences

Related Articles

Exploring the history of data-driven arguments in public life

When numbers started counting

Previous item Next item

More MIT News

Exotic black holes could be a byproduct of dark matter

Read full story →

Nuh Gedik receives 2024 National Brown Investigator Award

Reducing carbon emissions from long-haul trucks

Mouth-based touchpad enables people living with paralysis to interact with computers

Advocating for science funding on Capitol Hill

Unique professional development course prepares students for future careers

• More news on MIT News homepage →

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Map (opens in new window)
• Events (opens in new window)
• People (opens in new window)
• Careers (opens in new window)
• Accessibility
• Social Media Hub
• MIT on Facebook
• MIT on YouTube
• MIT on Instagram

• Asia/Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East, Africa & Türkiye
• Shopping Cart
• IDC Media Center
• Current: Device Refresh Cycles and the Emergence of AI PCs are Forecast to Drive Modest PC Growth in 2024, According to IDC

Publication date: 03 Jun 2024

Device Refresh Cycles and the Emergence of AI PCs are Forecast to Drive Modest PC Growth in 2024, According to IDC

• Jay Chou  Email:  [email protected]  Phone number:  +1 650-350-6464
• Bryan Ma  Email:  [email protected]  Phone number:  +65 6829-7733
• Ryan Reith  Email:  [email protected]  Phone number:  +1 508-935-4301
• Michael Shirer  Email:  [email protected]  Phone number:  +1 508-935-4200

Copy the following code into your site

Companies Covered

• Intel Corporation
• Qualcomm Inc.
• LinkedIn Corporation
• Microsoft Corporation

Regions Covered

• United States

Topics Covered

• Generative artificial intelligence
• Traditional notebook