Experiencing Multiple Realities: Alfred Schutz’s Sociology of the Finite Provinces of Meaning

This book offers a theoretical investigation into the general problem of reality as a multiplicity of ‘finite provinces of meaning’, as developed in the work of Alfred Schutz. A critical introduction to Schutz’s sociology of multiple realities as well as a sympathetic re-reading and reconstruction of his project, Experiencing Multiple Realities traces the genesis and implications of this concept in Schutz’s writings before presenting an analysis of various ways in which it can shed light on major sociological problems, such as social action, social time, social space, identity, or narrativity

Shifting realities: Tron cyberspace and the “New” consciousness in 21st Century technoscapes

The existing direction of the (mis)use of information technologies founded on the deceptively secular rationalised heritage of scientism, arguably spells the increasing proximity to a dystopian nightmare that is far from mere fiction and imbued with the eternal religious symbolic of the battle between good and evil, as depicted in the 2010 science fiction film Tron: Legacy . The historical contextualisation of events in the film reveals the promise of the unfolding of an advanced sensibility alongside these concerns, in which fantasy and science converge to liberate humanity from an increasingly limiting worldview, and information and images serve as conduits to the sacred. The critical role information stands to play in humanity’s conscious evolution is outlined in the proposed development of a “dream systems theory”, where dreams capes are defined as interconnected systems of imaginal data

Sinophone, Chinese and, PRC Internet: Chinese Overseas in Australia and the PRC Internet

Recently, while there have been some who advocate the notion of a Sinophone internet, approximately coterminous with a Chinese-literate user base (Sullivan & Chen 2015), others have argued the internet in China should be known as the Chinese internet (Yang 2015: 1). This paper extends from the call to specificity to ask how the suggestion of the Chinese internet might manifest itself and what it might mean for the Chinese overseas. This is specifically in light of the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the Chinese diaspora in Australia, where many individuals of Chinese ancestry may or may not speak, read, or understand Putonghua (i.e. Mandarin). Rather than the Chinese internet, this paper proposes that we think of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) internet as one component of the multiple internets. Recently, while there have been some who advocate the notion of a Sinophone internet, approximately coterminous with a Chinese-literate user base (Sullivan & Chen 2015), others have argued the internet in China should be known as the Chinese internet (Yang 2015: 1). This paper extends from the call to specificity to ask how the suggestion of the Chinese internet might manifest itself and what it might mean for the Chinese overseas. This is specifically in light of the multiplicity and heterogeneity of the Chinese diaspora in Australia, where many individuals of Chinese ancestry may or may not speak, read, or understand Putonghua (i.e. Mandarin). Rather than the Chinese internet, this paper proposes that we think of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) internet as one component of the multiple internets

Systems, Resilience, and Organization: Analogies and Points of Contact with Hierarchy Theory

Aim of this paper is to provide preliminary elements for discussion about the implications of the Hierarchy Theory of Evolution on the design and evolution of artificial systems and socio-technical organizations. In order to achieve this goal, a number of analogies are drawn between the System of Leibniz; the socio-technical architecture known as Fractal Social Organization; resilience and related disciplines; and Hierarchy Theory. In so doing we hope to provide elements for reflection and, hopefully, enrich the discussion on the above topics with considerations pertaining to related fields and disciplines, including computer science, management science, cybernetics, social systems, and general systems theory.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of ANTIFRAGILE'17, 4th International Workshop on Computational Antifragility and Antifragile Engineerin

Pathways to identity: using visualization to aid law enforcement in identification tasks

The nature of identity has changed dramatically in recent years and has grown in complexity. Identities are defined in multiple domains: biological and psychological elements strongly contribute, but biographical and cyber elements also are necessary to complete the picture. Law enforcement is beginning to adjust to these changes, recognizing identity’s importance in criminal justice. The SuperIdentity project seeks to aid law enforcement officials in their identification tasks through research of techniques for discovering identity traits, generation of statistical models of identity and analysis of identity traits through visualization. We present use cases compiled through user interviews in multiple fields, including law enforcement, and describe the modeling and visualization tools design to aid in those use cases

Shifting Realities: Tron Cyberspace and the “New” Consciousness in 21st Century Technoscapes

The existing direction of the (mis)use of information technologies founded on the deceptively secular rationalised heritage of scientism, arguably spells the increasing proximity to a dystopian nightmare that is far from mere fiction and imbued with the eternal religious symbolic of the battle between good and evil, as depicted in the 2010 science fiction film Tron: Legacy. The historical contextualisation of events in the film reveals the promise of the unfolding of an advanced sensibility alongside these concerns, in which fantasy and science converge to liberate humanity from an increasingly limiting worldview, and information and images serve as conduits to the sacred. The critical role information stands to play in humanity’s conscious evolution is outlined in the proposed development of a “dream systems theory”, where dreamscapes are defined as interconnected systems of imaginal data

Situations and Evidence for Identity Using Dempster-Shafer Theory

We present a computational framework for identity based on Barwise and Devlin’s situation theory. We present an example with constellations of situations identifying an individual to create what we call id-situations, where id-actions are performed, along with supporting situations. We use Semantic Web standards to represent and reason about the situations in our example. We show how to represent the strength of the evidence, within the situations, as a measure of the support for judgments reached in the id-situation. To measure evidence of an identity from the supporting situations, we use the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence. We enhance Dempster- Shafer theory in two ways to leverage the information available in a constellation of situations. One way exploits the structure within the situations, and the other way interprets the information-relationships in terms of argument schemes