Shadows of Universalism: The Untold Story of Human Rights around 1948

How did the idea of self-determination get written into human rights after World War II? And by whom? In this article, Lydia H. Liu reopens the history of how the postwar norms of human rights were radically transformed by an unexpected clash with the classical standard of civilization in international law. She analyzes the drafting of the document of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the UN debates surrounding it to explore the translingual forging of universalism in the multiple temporalities of global history

Enformasyonun metalaşması üzerine

Enformasyonun düzenli olarak saklanması ve işlenmesi faaliyetinin artan önemi ile artık ekonominin motor gü- cünün ve sermayenin kaynağının enformasyon olduğu belirtilerek, günü- müz toplumunun bilişim toplumu olduğu iddia edilmektedir. İletişim ve elektronik teknolojilerindeki gelişmelere bağlı olarak enformasyonun üretim ve dağıtımındaki hızın artması ve daha önemlisi enformasyonun bir meta niteliğine bürünmesi “bilişim toplumu” kavramını yaratan temel gelişmelerdir. Bu çalışmada, bilişim toplumu kavramsallaştırılmasında enformasyona atfedilen önemin, onun bir metaya dönüş- müş olduğu görüşünden yola çıkarak meta ve enformasyonun tanımı yapı- lacak; enformasyonun günümüz ekonomisindeki rolü açıklanacak; sonrasında ise enformasyonu neden ve nasıl metalaştığı konusu tartışılacak, meta olarak enformasyonun Türkiye ekonomisindeki yeri hakkında yapılan araştırmanın sonuçları ortaya konacaktı

A di alogue logic

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-66).The history of computation owes a major debt to the traditional crafts, and the worlds of design and computation have been interlinked since the development of mechanical computing systems during the 19 th century. As computing systems became digital, the connections between craft and computation have become more abstract, though they are still there. The regime between the analogue world of craft, and more generally design practice, and the digital world of computation, here referred to as the "di-alogue" world has barely been explored. By challenging our notions of both craft and computation, how can excursions into the di alogue world help us to re-define or re-conceive of our traditional understanding of craft and of computation? In this thesis, I examine the shared history of traditional craft and computation as well as cover several examples of how these worlds have been combined. Additionally, I argue that by capitalizing on the procedural backbone of a particular craft, one can create unique "logics" that blur the perceived line between craft and computation.by Henry George Skupniewicz.S.B

Information before information theory: The politics of data beyond the perspective of communication

Scholarship on the politics of new media widely assumes that communication functions as a sufficient conceptual paradigm for critically assessing new media politics. This article argues that communication-centric analyses fail to engage the politics of information itself, limiting information only to its consequences for communication, and neglecting information as it reaches into our selves, lives, and actions beyond the confines of communication. Furthering recent new media historiography on the “information theory” of Shannon and Wiener, the article reveals both the primacy of communication in midcentury information theory, and also a striking resonance between these postwar communication theories and Habermas’s more recent communicative theory of democracy. To achieve a critical perspective beyond communication, the article proposes a media genealogy of the politics of subjects as a methodology for developing an analysis of how information formats us as subjects of data

Information in formation: Power and agency in contemporary informatic assemblages

This dissertation critically examines the concept of "information" in an effort to understand the ways it participates in contemporary relations of power. Chapter 1 surveys the contemporary social, political, and economic conditions under which information operates today, and elaborates four "grammars" of information prominent in popular discourse. It also unpacks various assumptions implicit in these discourses, and explains the limitations of such popular accounts for theorizing information's role in various social formations. Chapter 2 performs an historical genealogy of information, tracing the concept's articulation in the American context, especially during the postwar period. This chapter discusses the work of Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, who formalized and mathematized the notion of information during this time, their reasons for and aims in doing so, and these theories' implications for conceptualizing information today. Chapter 3 builds on this analysis in order to pinpoint the particular problematic an historical account of information discloses: namely, that of "agency." This chapter traces this problematic's motivating influence through writing in first- and second-wave cybernetics. It demonstrates that critical social theory's current preoccupation with nonhumanistic theories of agency has conceptual roots in this writing, and offers a schematic for assessing accounts of agency that problematize accounts of the phenomenon inherited from the Enlightenment. Chapter 4 offers a "cartography" of contemporary theories of nonhumanistic agency in order to concretely connect these accounts with their forebearers in cybernetics and information theory; it then re-situates Shannonian and Wienerian theories of information in relation to this cartography. Chapter 5 concludes the dissertation by returning to information's popular articulations. It explains how a "mixed semiotic" approach to information and information technologies might enhance critical discussions of information politics, and attends specifically to the ways in which various figures of agency shape accounts of these politics.Doctor of Philosoph

O desenho da comunicação como conhecimento

Doutoramento em DesignAs últimas décadas do séc. XX assistiram a um crescente protagonismo do Design de Informação que, desde então, tem sofrido inúmeras formas e designações, num processo de afirmação e auto descoberta. A proliferação de dados disponíveis deu ao design e em particular a este ramo do desenho para a compreensão, uma visibilidade crescente e a responsabilidade de encontrar, a partir da informação, novos meios para a construção de sentido. Do design à engenharia informática, são várias as disciplinas que convergem hoje nesse desígnio ainda que sob diferentes modelos e ferramentas. Esta convergência promove uma comparação entre modelos, que tendem a ser tanto mais valorizados quanto mais objectivas as representações. De Playfair a Bertin, as representações gráficas dos últimos duzentos anos têm-se situado no âmbito de disciplinas como a Economia, Sociologia ou a Gestão, explorando metáforas funcionais com vista à evidência da tradução numérica. O Design, enquanto mediador cultural e através do Desenho, tende a acrescentar ao mesmo exercício uma dimensão narrativa ou ilustrativa, convocando a própria existência do autor na interpretação dos mesmos dados numéricos. Com esta investigação, novos processos de semiose se oferecem, associando à objectividade dos dados quantitativos, a subjectividade da cultura formulada a partir do indivíduo enquanto intérprete. Na procura do conhecimento, reconhece-se assim que o desenho da informação ganha competências pela mediação da experiência, religando ética, técnica e estética.The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed the growing importance of information design, which since then has been characterised and named in many ways, through processes of affirmation and self- discovery. The flood of available data gave design – and namely this field of design for understanding – an increased visibility and a responsibility to find new ways of making sense through information. From design to computer sciences, there are several disciplines that converge in this endeavour, although different tools and models are employed. This convergence enables a comparison between models of representation, which tend to be more respected when neutral and rational. From Playfair to Bertin, graphical representations of the past two hundred years have been produced mainly within disciplines such as Economy, Sociology or Management, exploring functional metaphors in pursuit of evidence through numerical translation. Design, as cultural mediator and through Drawing, tends to add to the same exercise a narrative or illustrative dimension, summoning the author’s own existence in the interpretation of the same numerical data. With this research, new processes of semiosis are offered, by adding to the objectivity of quantitative data the subjectivity of culture, conveyed through the individual as interpreter. In the search for knowledge, information design gains skills through the mediation of experience, reconnecting ethics, technics and aesthetics