Enabling systemic transformations with polyscopy

It is shown how “the power to transcend paradigms” – which has been identified as “the most impactful way to intervene into systems” – can be radically augmented by a different approach to information. Instead of updating a conventional “reality picture”, available insights are combined to compose completely new highlevel views or gestalts, which coexist and coevolve through a dialog with one another and with the more detailed views. Polyscopy is described as a concrete instantiation of this approach. The Holoscope online platform is outlined as an application of polyscopy to enable (by illuminating the way) the global systemic transformation. This article is a strategy proposal and an invitation, extended to the interested members of the systemic design community, to take part in the transdiscipline we are developing around Holoscope, to evolve it continuously

Collaborative Symbolic Structuring in a Polyscopic Environment

The problem of information overload was described by Vannevar Bush as early as 1945 in his article “As We May Think”, and as we continue to make it easier to create information we also increase the probability of getting lost in the maze. We seek to improve the quality of the information we create and the way we access it by combining the associative paths of Vannevar Bush, the symbolic structures of Douglas Engelbart and the principles of Polyscopy by Dino Karabeg, and show how these can all come together to form an untraditional approach to organizing information on the Web

Design of a CMDB with integrated knowledge management based on Topic Maps

Configuration management databases have gained popularity in enterprises due to their role in providing efficient IT Resource and Service Management. Enterprises are becoming more competitive through increasing of resource utilization to support their business services. Existing configuration management database implantations are known to have serious problems, introducing security and maintenance issues. They use a centralized approach implemented via a complex logical database model. This complexity reduces the possibility for enterprises to achieve competitive advantage. Apart from this, implementing such a complex model requires time. There is room for a new logical database model. Cfengine’s approach to logical database is not as a traditional inventory, but rather as a knowledgebase semantic web of information that connects various aspects of configuration management. The thesis considers designing of a logical database model, and its topic map model for Cfengine 3, which is a machine-learning approach. The developed model is characterized of being easily manageable, easy to implement, extensible, and optimized for updating proces

Ankara’daki karşı-mekanlara bir alternatif olarak queer mekan.

This is to develop a critical understanding for ‘counter-formation’ to power through the psychogeographic mapping of “counter-spaces” in Ankara. It is explored that these spaces, as the territories of the other or dissident subjects for resisting, socializing, and organizing, paradoxically create their own otherness and the hegemonic relations in the stable and invariable spatial ambiances, practices, experiences or borders. The main argument of the study, therefore, is based on the subversion overall dialectical reversal of ‘counter’ formation within space production as it is believed that they are forced to be converted into ghettos with these anomalies. In order to disclose such reversal within the morphogenesis process of the counter-spaces, the theoretical framework of this study primarily relies on the contemporary critical theory, Queer Theory. In this respect, the thesis attempts to construct an alternative spatial formation, which is independent from power relations, by re-conceptualizing the notion of Queer Space, against its problematic uses in the literature. This study claims that this renewed spatial approach to power has a potential to undermine solid and fixed epistemo-ontological grounds of the counter-spaces, as the underlying reason of their conversion to ghettos. M.Arch. - Master of Architectur

Concepts and Tools for Web-based Community Building

This research project explores a new approach to online community building and community health promotion. It is based on the concept of salutogenesis. Salutogenesis is a proactive approach to community health promotion which seeks preventative measures based around social, cultural and natural activities. This is in stark contrast with the traditional reactionary corrective and curative culture of public health care. The main aim of this thesis is the identification of the key salutogenic community building processes. The objective is to materialize the design criteria to develop a comprehensive community building tool which may be used for salutogenic community health promotion. The other objective of this research is the synthesis of the salutogenic Sense of Coherence (comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness), together with the criteria for community building (collaboration, planning and defining). An incentive for pursuing a philosophical line of inquiry is the adaptation of process philosophy into a coherent conceptual framework for epistemological objectivity. Process philosophy as an analytico-synthetic tool is a departure from traditional research paradigms because it does not posit a world of objects, like substance ontology. Process ontology offers rich insight into social practices since they are analytical processes. In spite of its clear and commonsensical intelligibility and enormous exegetic capacity, process ontology or action-based world views remain largely unexplored in Information Design (ID). My contribution is two-fold; the identification of generic salutogenic community building processes and the adaptation of process ontology into a conceptual framework for an analytico-synthetic methodology. This thesis is explanatory account of the salutogenic community building processes at a fundamental level and a non-composition, non-substance semantico-ontological framework is put to use. This research is based two qualitative surveys. The first is a preliminary survey about the extant online communities and tools, and the second is based on data collected in a 9 month ethnographic study of the pratices of a Norwegian-based non-government organization involved in community health promotion

Global Digital Cultures: Perspectives from South Asia

Digital media histories are part of a global network, and South Asia is a key nexus in shaping the trajectory of digital media in the twenty-first century. Digital platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and others are deeply embedded in the daily lives of millions of people around the world, shaping how people engage with others as kin, as citizens, and as consumers. Moving away from Anglo-American and strictly national frameworks, the essays in this book explore the intersections of local, national, regional, and global forces that shape contemporary digital culture(s) in regions like South Asia: the rise of digital and mobile media technologies, the ongoing transformation of established media industries, and emergent forms of digital media practice and use that are reconfiguring sociocultural, political, and economic terrains across the Indian subcontinent. From massive state-driven digital identity projects and YouTube censorship to Tinder and dating culture, from Twitter and primetime television to Facebook and political rumors, Global Digital Cultures focuses on enduring concerns of representation, identity, and power while grappling with algorithmic curation and data-driven processes of production, circulation, and consumption

Excavating the 'critique' : an investigation into disjunctions between the espoused and the practiced within a Fine Art studio practice curriculum

This report presents the findings of a case study excavating the event of the ‘Critique’ (crit), the formative assessment method within a Fine Art Studio Practice curriculum. Arguments informed by critical postmodernism, education theories and contemporary art criticism are utilised to construct a dialectic of higher education, contemporary art and fine art studio practice. An emphasis is placed on the importance of agency, expressed through intentionality and critical thinking, with a recognition of the relationship between ‘the self’ and ‘the other’. Using critical discourse analysis, the disjunctions between the espoused and practiced curriculum are explored. The researcher analyses how the assessment practices of the case studied are influenced by unexamined agentic factors, such as inter-departmental relations, lecturers’ assumptions and prior learning, and structural determinants, such as the medium-specific Bachelor of Fine Art degree structure and prevailing artistic traditions. The research findings indicate that these are underpinned by tensions between two orientations, the espoused curriculum’s discourse-interest informed by critical theory, and the theory-in-use. The latter is shown to have unexamined modernist leanings towards formalism and a master-apprentice relationship between lecturer and students, which encourages reproduction rather than critical, creative thinking. The dominant discourses in the case studied construct a negative dialectic of the artist-student that can be seen to deny student agency and authorial responsibility. Findings suggest that students experience this as alienating, to the extent that to preserve their sense of self, they adopted surface and strategic approaches to learning. An argument is made for lecturers’ critically reflexive engagement with their teaching practice, and thereby to model ethical relationships between ‘self’ and ‘other’ during ‘crits’. In addition, emphasis is placed on how assessment practices should be more aligned with the espoused curriculum, so that the importance of a reflexive relationship between form and content, process and product, intentionality and interpretation is acknowledged