Fabric(ated) Ontologies: the biopolitics of smart design in clothing and jewellery

This paper exploresthe biopotiticsof smaf design as it is realised in contemporary smart clothing and jewellery. The discussion hinges on our understanding of the meanings of technology and of the relationship between technology and human ontology, i.e. human being. \f begins by exploring the assumed relationship between clothing and skin - that clothing is a form of skin, a second skin - which leads us fo explore the ways in which skin operates as a technology. My argument is that skin is not a form of technology, and that making fhis assumption leads to a re-invocation of the mind-body split, which makes human subjects susceptible to ordering by their own technology. lnstead the paper argues for recognition of clothing (and jewellery) as technology, and the examination of wearables as a more technical form of an existing technology. This enables us fo explore the ways in which human being is modified and transformed by this new technology and to choose applications that enhance the potential of individual subjects

ICT to Disempower? A Perspective on ICT as Postmodern Agent

The wholesale implementation of Information Technology (IT) has brought with it a host of unintended and unforeseen consequences. Through a literature review and an examination of both Postmodernism and IT, it is proposed that the influences of IT have acted and continued to act to promote Postmodernism. These influences amongst others include displacement of space and time, its promotion of the Information Society, its ability to create digital hyper-realities, its destructive influence on tradition and culture, and most of all its revolutionary impact on the identity. Through these influences this reflective paper seeks to demonstrate that the agency of IT (unintentionally) supports a Postmodern deconstructed societal structure

Interactions Through the Screen: The International Self as a Theory for Internet-Mediated Communication

This thesis presents an emerging concept called the interactional self to illustrate how, contrary to theories of "cyberspace" and "cyberselves," there tend not to be sharp socio-phenomenological distinctions between "virtual" and offline sociability within one\u27s life-world. As such, using aspects of the philosophies of experience of Heidegger, Mead, Schutz, and Husserl as foundations, this thesis argues that social interactions online, for most, are extensions of and not apart from their everyday, situated life-worlds. After briefly introducing the path towards our contemporary "will-tovirtuality" and various utopian and dystopian visions of "cyberspace," an alternative conceptual picture of the interactional self is gradually revealed using the metaphor of a portrait painted on a "social-world canvas." In this painting, the ontology of Heidegger\u27s Dasein supplies the first brushes for outlining the early sketches of the interactional self, showing that online, as in offline settings, we encounter the world and others from the position of beings deeply engaged in practical daily acts and "interpretative understandings." These brushes are then dipped into Mead\u27s intertactionist colours and Schutz\u27s sociophenomenological textures, eventually filling in the portrait. Illustrated via a case study of blogging practices, Mead\u27s theory of the "generalized other" highlights the notion that the interactional self does not concretely distinguish between offline and online social settings but instead, as in more traditional "off the network" situations, uses Internet-mediated communication for performative practices that afford self-expression and maintain social cohesion. Schutz\u27s phenomenology of the life-world gives further perspective to the interactional self, showing that online sociability should not be viewed as being apart from the "intersubjective" intersection of life-worlds rooted in everyday life. With some help from Husserl\u27s phenomenology, Schutz is subsequently relied on for understanding online textual embodiment, spatial extensions, community, roleplaying, and fantasy, adding yet more socio-historical shadings to interactions online. Ultimately, the picture that emerges is framed within the following four concluding hypotheses: 1) The interactional self encounters social acts, online and off, as part of its greater life-world, practicing performative and groupenforcing self-management through 2) varying and interlinked dimensions of sociability and 3) pragmatic yet meaningful uses of the communicational tools at hand in 4) contextually relevant degrees of self-disclosure

Technology Embodiment: The Contribution of Heidegger\u27s Phenomenology

The rapid evolution, expansion, and integration of technology into our everyday lives changes the way that we understand the relationship between technology and people. A dualistic relationship, with technology at one end and people at the other, no longer serves as a clear approach in understanding why and how we engage technology. As such, we must seek new forms of understanding as technology has become truly part and parcel of who we are, how we connect with our past, and how we shape our future. We use Heidegger\u27s phenomenology for understanding the relationship between technology and people, investigating why and how people engage hedonic systems in the formation of embodied technology relationships. In this qualitative study we contribute to research on both hedonic systems and phenomenology, evidencing characteristics of how people constitute an embodied relationship with the technology that has become so pervasive in their lifeworld

Postmodernism Creates Innovative English Teaching Learning by Utilizing ICT

Through comprehensive literature review and an examination of both Postmodernism and ICT, it is proposed that the influences of ICT have acted and continued to act to promote Postmodernism. The development of ICT is utilized by education field for teaching learning process. Many teachers and students utilize the existing of ICT as model of teaching and learning especially English. This study discussed about teachers’ belief and students’ belief in using ICT to have innovative English teaching learning. Qualitative descriptive was used in this study. The data was collected by conducting the interview. The participants were five English teachers and five students that chose randomly. The result showed that both teachers’ and students’ belief in using ICT is to make English teaching learning easier, more interesting, and effective.   Keywords:Postmodernism,ICT, teachers’ belief, students’ belie

Philosophy and the Turn to Religion

Originally published in 1999. If religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and, especially, Jacques Derrida. Tracing how Derrida probes the discourse on religion, its metaphysical presuppositions, and its transformations, de Vries shows how this author consistently foregrounds the unexpected alliances between a radical interrogation of the history of Western philosophy and the religious inheritance from which that philosophy has increasingly sought to set itself apart.De Vries goes beyond formal analogies between the textual practices of deconstruction and so-called negative theology to address the necessity for a philosophical thinking that situates itself at once close to and at the farthest remove from traditional manifestations of the religious and the theological. This paradox is captured in the phrase adieu (à dieu), borrowed from Levinas, which signals at once a turn toward and a leave-taking from God—and which also gestures toward and departs from the other of this divine other, the possibility of radical evil. Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day

The Mutualistic Relationship between Information Systems and the Humanities

The paper explores the nature of the relationship between the study fields of Information Systems and the humanities. Although literature on Humanities Computing states in principle that there is a bi-directional, beneficial symbiotic relationship, most studies and reflections investigate only the application of information technology in the humanities. This implies that the relation is commensalistic rather that mutualistic. However, studies do exist that implement theoretical constructs borrowed from the humanities in various aspects of Information Systems. Therefore, the author pleads that more recognition be given to the pre-discipline of Humanities-enriched Information Systems and proposes theoretical and practical ways to make the field more independent. The paper uses an interpretive research approach and explores the issue at hand on a meta-theoretical level. It suggests that, by building on the foundations of existing, pre-disciplinary enrichment endeavors, a new paradigm of Information Systems research may be acknowledged and nursed in order to facilitate further growth of the discipline

Virtual Theory: the virtual (and virtual technics) in Deleuze, Bergson, Massumi, Grosz, Žižek, Lévy, De Landa and others

Exploration, from 20 years ago, of the concept of the virtual in Deleuze, De Landa, Massumi, Grosz, Bergson, Zizek and others. This is the main concern though it is tie into VR and related technologies (as things were around 2004). I wrote this a very long time ago and never quite published it (I don't think I tried). So it's very much a draft. It's what I thought others were saying about the virtual then and how this might change thinking about working with VR technologies. If it's useful I'm glad. It may become a chapter in a book in a while

Critical Programming: Toward a Philosophy of Computing

Beliefs about the relationship between human beings and computing machines and their destinies have alternated from heroic counterparts to conspirators of automated genocide, from apocalyptic extinction events to evolutionary cyborg convergences. Many fear that people are losing key intellectual and social abilities as tasks are offloaded to the everywhere of the built environment, which is developing a mind of its own. If digital technologies have contributed to forming a dumbest generation and ushering in a robotic moment, we all have a stake in addressing this collective intelligence problem. While digital humanities continue to flourish and introduce new uses for computer technologies, the basic modes of philosophical inquiry remain in the grip of print media, and default philosophies of computing prevail, or experimental ones propagate false hopes. I cast this as-is situation as the post-postmodern network dividual cyborg, recognizing that the rational enlightenment of modernism and regressive subjectivity of postmodernism now operate in an empire of extended mind cybernetics combined with techno-capitalist networks forming societies of control. Recent critical theorists identify a justificatory scheme foregrounding participation in projects, valorizing social network linkages over heroic individualism, and commending flexibility and adaptability through life long learning over stable career paths. It seems to reify one possible, contingent configuration of global capitalism as if it was the reflection of a deterministic evolution of commingled technogenesis and synaptogenesis. To counter this trend I offer a theoretical framework to focus on the phenomenology of software and code, joining social critiques with textuality and media studies, the former proposing that theory be done through practice, and the latter seeking to understand their schematism of perceptibility by taking into account engineering techniques like time axis manipulation. The social construction of technology makes additional theoretical contributions dispelling closed world, deterministic historical narratives and requiring voices be given to the engineers and technologists that best know their subject area. This theoretical slate has been recently deployed to produce rich histories of computing, networking, and software, inform the nascent disciplines of software studies and code studies, as well as guide ethnographers of software development communities. I call my syncretism of these approaches the procedural rhetoric of diachrony in synchrony, recognizing that multiple explanatory layers operating in their individual temporal and physical orders of magnitude simultaneously undergird post-postmodern network phenomena. Its touchstone is that the human-machine situation is best contemplated by doing, which as a methodology for digital humanities research I call critical programming. Philosophers of computing explore working code places by designing, coding, and executing complex software projects as an integral part of their intellectual activity, reflecting on how developing theoretical understanding necessitates iterative development of code as it does other texts, and how resolving coding dilemmas may clarify or modify provisional theories as our minds struggle to intuit the alien temporalities of machine processes

Analytical and interpretive practices in design and new product development : evidence from the automobile industry

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-271).Product design and development have been studied from both positivist and interpretivist paradigms. From the positivist perspective, design and product development are seen as technical transformation or production processes, which take customer requirements and existing technological possibilities as inputs and produce an objectively optimal product, one that is not influenced by the designer's preferences or biases. The result of this research is a focus on measuring the voice of the customer with "high fidelity", and on streamlining and optimizing this production process. From the intrepretivist perspective, product design and development are seen as relatively open-ended discursive processes, to which human participants from different backgrounds bring their unique worldviews and prejudices. Models of these processes are seen as metaphors intended to help people come to understanding by shedding light on and thus bridging the different worldviews, not as mathematical constructs to be optimized. In real life, empirical evidence shows that practitioners rely on a number of approaches that do not fit easily into one or the other of these paradigms. As a result, many analytical models and methodologies need to be modified to make them useful in real-world applications and, coniverscly, empirical research that accurately captures the richness and complexity of the design and development process fits uneasily in these traditional paradigms which researchers feel compelled to use. This dissertation addresses this shortcoming by developing a vocabulary for describing product design and development practices, which bridges the divide between the strictly positivist and strictly interpretivist views. The research approach used is one of theory building from case studies. The industry chosen for the case studies is the automobile industry. The thesis reports on three study sites. The first is an American manufacturer based in Detroit, known for its innovative product designs and its pioneering reliance on dedicated platform development teams. The second is the American design subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturer, one of the first to set up such a design operation in US. The third site is the Japanese design and development organization of the same manufacturer, based in a technical center outside of Tokyo. The theoretical framework presented in this dissertation, which co-evolved with the above case studies, takes the form of a taxonomy of product development practices. This taxonomy draws upon concepts from linguistics and the philosophy of language. In a first step, the distinction within linguistics between the structural sub fields (e.g., syntax and semantics) and the functional sub field of Pragmatics is used to sharpen the difference between analytical/structural practices on the one hand, and interpretive practices on the other. In a second step. two views of interpretation, one grounded in linguistics (Pragmatics. specifically). the other in the philosophical hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer are used to expand the interpretive category into two, referred to as pragmatic interpretation and hermeneutic interpretation, respectively. Each of the three case studies provides a good illustration of a product development organization that relies predominantly on one of the types of practices and approaches captured by the taxonomy. The findings suggest a number of recommendations for design and product development managers and practitioners, as well as several directions for future research.by Kamal M. Malek.Ph.D