Visualization in cyber-geography: reconsidering cartography's concept of visualization in current usercentric cybergeographic cosmologies

This article discusses some epistemological problems of a semiotic and cybernetic character in two current scientific cosmologies in the study of geographic information systems (GIS) with special reference to the concept of visualization in modern cartography. Setting off from Michael Batty’s prolegomena for a virtual geography and Michael Goodchild’s “Human-Computer-Reality-Interaction” as the field of a new media convergence and networking of GIS-computation of geo-data, the paper outlines preliminarily a common field of study, namely that of cybernetic geography, or just “cyber-geography) owing to the principal similarities with second order cybernetics. Relating these geographical cosmologies to some of Science’s dominant, historical perceptions of the exploring and appropriating of Nature as an “inventory of knowledge”, the article seeks to identify some basic ontological and epistemological dimensions of cybernetic geography and visualization in modern cartography. The points made is that a generalized notion of visualization understood as the use of maps, or more precisely as cybergeographic GIS-thinking seems necessary as an epistemological as well as a methodological prerequisite to scientific knowledge in cybergeography. Moreover do these generalized concept seem to lead to a displacement of the positions traditionally held by the scientist and lay-man citizen, that is not only in respect of the perception of the matter studied, i.e. the field of geography, but also of the manner in which the scientist informs the lay-man citizen in the course of action in the public participation in decision making; a displacement that seems to lead to a more critical, or perhaps even quasi-scientific approach as concerns the lay-man user

Ein methodisches Rahmenwerk zur Gestaltung der Produktarchitektur bei der Konzeption

Product architecture represents the structure of products or product families from different perspectives. By an explicit consideration of product architecture during the design process, the achievement of various design goals can be supported. For this, methodical approaches for product architecture design exist that focus, for instance, on modularization, platform development, or function integration. However, for designers and researchers, the variety of existing approaches causes the challenge to select and apply those approaches most suitable for specific situations in design. The aim of this thesis is to gain an overarching understanding of approaches for product architecture design. Therefore, existing approaches are analyzed regarding their contributions to different fields of design research, for instance, their proposed product models to represent product architecture and their design principles to improve the product architecture. In this way, the basis for a framework is elaborated that includes and expediently classifies the relevant knowledge from a variety of established approaches. To allow designers to access this knowledge, supports are developed that guide designers through the main activities regarding the consideration of product architecture. The application of the framework is demonstrated by case studies aiming at the conceptualization of product families and improving existing products by considering alternative product architectures. The results contribute towards both design practice and design research. On the one hand, the framework allows designers to gain a comprehensive understanding of product architecture design and enables them to select and apply approaches most appropriate for their individual design tasks. On the other hand, design research is enriched by an overarching concept of product architecture design allowing researchers to allocate own work in the context of others and elaborate new knowledge on the basis of already existing knowledge.Die Produktarchitektur bildet die Struktur von Produkten und Produktfamilien ab. Durch eine explizite Berücksichtigung der Produktarchitektur während der Produktentwicklung kann die Erreichung von einer Vielzahl von Entwicklungszielen unterstützt werden. Aus diesem Grund existieren methodische Ansätze für die Gestaltung der Produktarchitektur, die beispielsweise auf Modularisierung, Baukastenentwicklung oder Funktionsintegration abzielen. Für Produktentwickler/innen und Forscher/innen ist es allerdings eine Herausforderung, in der Vielzahl bestehender Ansätze die am besten geeigneten für spezifische Entwicklungssituationen auszuwählen und anzuwenden. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, ein übergeordnetes Verständnis von Ansätzen zur Gestaltung der Produktarchitektur zu erlangen. Dafür werden existierende Ansätze hinsichtlich ihrer Beiträge zu unterschiedlichen Forschungsfeldern analysiert, zum Beispiel, den vorgeschlagenen Produktmodellen zur Abbildung der Produktarchitektur und den Prinzipien zur Gestaltung der Produktarchitektur. Somit wird die Basis für ein Rahmenwerk geschaffen, welches das relevante Wissen einer Vielzahl etablierter Ansätze umfasst und zweckmäßig klassifiziert. Um Entwickler/innen einen Zugriff auf das Wissen zur ermöglichen, werden Hilfsmittel entwickelt, die sie durch zentrale Aktivitäten der Gestaltung der Produktarchitektur führen. Die Anwendung des Rahmenwerks wird in Fallstudien demonstriert, die auf die Konzeption von Produktfamilien und die Verbesserung bestehender Produkte durch alternative Produktarchitekturen abzielen. Die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit leisten sowohl einen Beitrag zur praktischen Produktentwicklung als auch zur Forschung. Einerseits ermöglicht das Rahmenwerk Entwickler/innen ein umfassendes Verständnis von der Gestaltung der Produktarchitektur zu erlangen und ertüchtigt sie, geeignete Ansätze für spezifische Entwicklungssituationen auszuwählen und anzuwenden. Anderseits wird der Stand der Forschung um ein übergeordnetes Konzept für die Gestaltung der Produktarchitektur erweitert, das es Forscher/innen erlaubt, eigene Arbeiten in den Kontext anderer zu setzen und neue Ansätze unter Berücksichtigung von bestehendem Wissen zu erarbeiten

Art and Technology: coherence, connectedness, and the integrative field

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/690 on 03.04.2017 by CS (TIS)This thesis is a theoretical and practical intervention in the field of art and technology. It proceeds from the re-examination of four specific domains that in the past 40 years have considerably informed the invention of new aesthetic forms. They are: art, science, nature and technology. We have identified that each one of these domains and the way they inform one another reflects the influence of a Western analytical tradition based on fragmentation, dichotomies and dualities. In consequence of this, art of the last decades has suffered from a sort of mechanistic thought which results from a predominantly weary aesthetic model, founded in dualities such as: object/process, form/behaviour, meaning/information. The main question that the present study addresses is how to overcome this predominantly reductionist inheritance and to develop an aesthetic model able to interconnect in an integrative fashion those disparate domains, respective discourses and practices? The answer to this question, developed throughout this thesis, is an aesthetic principle built upon the notions of resonance, coherence and field models, rooted in an integrative view of living organisms based on the theory of biophotons. This constitutes the main contribution of the thesis to new knowledge. The theoretical approach of this thesis is developed upon the revision of the concept of form, supported by a Gestalt analysis as provided by Rudolf Arnheim, and has involved the consideration of the ideas of Gilbert Simondon (the concept of "concretisation") and Vilem Flusser (the concept of "apparatus"), in order to gain a deeper insight into the nature of technology. In conclusion, the practice-based methodology of this thesis has been to develop artworks based on the confluence of living organisms (plants) and artificial systems in order to permit empirical observation and reflection on the proposed theory. The major outcome of the practice is the artwork "Breathing", a hybrid creature made of a living organism (a plant) and an artificial system. The creature responds to its environment through movement, light and the noise of its mechanical parts and interacts with the observer through his/her act of breathing. This work is the result of an investigation into plants as sensitive agents for the creation of art. The intention was to explore new forms of artistic experience through the dialogue of natural and artificial processes

Structural and functional model of the successful person training in USA colleges and universities

The purpose of the article is to study the training of a successful person in the colleges and universities of the USA as a holistic process and to create a structural and functional model. The methods of retrospective analysis, systematization and generalization, abstraction and specification, modeling and graphic visualization are applied. A structural and functional model of successful person training in colleges and universities of the USA has been created. The focus groups of this process have been defined, in which the work is aimed at applicants, first-year students, second-fourth years students and a special category - students of the last year and graduates, as a significant part of students do not complete their studies on time. Examples of effective use of models and strategies of student training by American institutions of higher education are given. Five stages of successful person training in American institutions of higher education are proposed. It is summarized that the created structural and functional model is the basis for creating a strategy for the development of an educational institution and will contribute to the high-quality organization of the training of specialists in colleges and universities

Information actors beyond modernity and coloniality in times of climate change:A comparative design ethnography on the making of monitors for sustainable futures in Curaçao and Amsterdam, between 2019-2022

In his dissertation, Mr. Goilo developed a cutting-edge theoretical framework for an Anthropology of Information. This study compares information in the context of modernity in Amsterdam and coloniality in Curaçao through the making process of monitors and develops five ways to understand how information can act towards sustainable futures. The research also discusses how the two contexts, that is modernity and coloniality, have been in informational symbiosis for centuries which is producing negative informational side effects within the age of the Anthropocene. By exploring the modernity-coloniality symbiosis of information, the author explains how scholars, policymakers, and data-analysts can act through historical and structural roots of contemporary global inequities related to the production and distribution of information. Ultimately, the five theses propose conditions towards the collective production of knowledge towards a more sustainable planet

Engines of Order

Over the last decades, and in particular since the widespread adoption of the Internet, encounters with algorithmic procedures for ‘information retrieval’ – the activity of getting some piece of information out of a col-lection or repository of some kind – have become everyday experiences for most people in large parts of the world

Development of a Framework for Ontology Population Using Web Scraping in Mechatronics

One of the major challenges in engineering contexts is the efficient collection, management, and sharing of data. To address this problem, semantic technologies and ontologies are potent assets, although some tasks, such as ontology population, usually demand high maintenance effort. This thesis proposes a framework to automate data collection from sparse web resources and insert it into an ontology. In the first place, a product ontology is created based on the combination of several reference vocabularies, namely GoodRelations, the Basic Formal Ontology, ECLASS stan- dard, and an information model. Then, this study introduces a general procedure for developing a web scraping agent to collect data from the web. Subsequently, an algorithm based on lexical similarity measures is presented to map the collected data to the concepts of the ontology. Lastly, the collected data is inserted into the ontology. To validate the proposed solution, this thesis implements the previous steps to collect information about microcontrollers from three differ- ent websites. Finally, the thesis evaluates the use case results, draws conclusions, and suggests promising directions for future research