Reclaiming human machine nature

Extending and modifying his domain of life by artifact production is one of the main characteristics of humankind. From the first hominid, who used a wood stick or a stone for extending his upper limbs and augmenting his gesture strength, to current systems engineers who used technologies for augmenting human cognition, perception and action, extending human body capabilities remains a big issue. From more than fifty years cybernetics, computer and cognitive sciences have imposed only one reductionist model of human machine systems: cognitive systems. Inspired by philosophy, behaviorist psychology and the information treatment metaphor, the cognitive system paradigm requires a function view and a functional analysis in human systems design process. According that design approach, human have been reduced to his metaphysical and functional properties in a new dualism. Human body requirements have been left to physical ergonomics or "physiology". With multidisciplinary convergence, the issues of "human-machine" systems and "human artifacts" evolve. The loss of biological and social boundaries between human organisms and interactive and informational physical artifact questions the current engineering methods and ergonomic design of cognitive systems. New developpment of human machine systems for intensive care, human space activities or bio-engineering sytems requires grounding human systems design on a renewed epistemological framework for future human systems model and evidence based "bio-engineering". In that context, reclaiming human factors, augmented human and human machine nature is a necessityComment: Published in HCI International 2014, Heraklion : Greece (2014

From the invalidity of a General Classification Theory to a new organization of knowledge for the millennium to come

Proceedings der 10. Tagung der Deutschen Sektion der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Wissensorganisation. Wien, 3-5 Juli 2006The idea of organizing knowledge and the determinism in classifícation structures implicitly involve certain limits which are translated into a General Theory on the Classifícation of Knowledge, given that classifícation responds to specific parameters and structures more than to a theoretical concept. The classifícation of things is a refiection of their classifícation by man, and this is what determines classifícation structures. The classifícation and organization of knowledge are presented to us as an artificial construct or as a useful fiction elaborated by man. Positivist knowledge reached its peak in the 20* century when science classifications and implemented classifícation systems based on the latter were to be gestated and Consolidated. Pragmatism was to serve as the epistemological and theoretical basis for science and its classifícation. If the classifícation of the sciences has given rise to clastification systems, the organisation and representation of knowledge has to currendy give rise to the context of the globalisation of electronic information in the hypertextual organisational form of electronic information where, if in information the médium ivas the message, in organisation the médium is the structure. The virtual reality of electronic information delves even deeper into it; the process is completed as the subject attempts to look for information. This information market needs standards of an international nature for documents and data. This body of information organization will be characterized by its dynamic nature. If formal and material structures change our concept of knowledge and the way it is structured, then this organization will undergo dynamic change along with the material and formal structures of the real world. The semantic web is a qualitative leap which can be glimpsed on tiie new knowledge horizon; the latter would be shaped with the full integration of contents and data, the language itself would include data and its rules of reason or representation system. The new organisation of knowledge points to a totally nCw conception; post-modern epistemology has yet to be articulated. In the 21 st century, the organization of electronic information is presenting a novel hypertextual, non-linear architecture that will lead to a new change in the paradigm for organization of knowledge for the mülennium to come.Publicad

Mobile Knowledge, Karma Points, and Digital Peers: The Tacit Epistemology and Linguistic Representation of MOOCs

Media representations of massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as those offered by Coursera, edX and Udacity reflect tension and ambiguity in their bold promise of democratized education and global knowledge sharing. An approach to MOOCs that emphasizes the tacit epistemology of such representations suggests a richer account of the ambiguities of MOOCs, the unsettled linguistic and visual representations that reflect the strange lifeworld of global online courses and the pressing need for promising innovation that seeks to serve the restless global desire for knowledge. This perspective piece critically appraises the linguistic laboratory of thought such representation reveals and its destabilized rhetoric of technology and educational practice. The mobile knowledge of MOOCs, detached from context and educational purpose and indifferent to cultural boundary distortions, contains both the promise of democratized education and the shadow of post-colonial knowledge export

Socialising Epistemic Cognition

We draw on recent accounts of social epistemology to present a novel account of epistemic cognition that is ‘socialised’. In developing this account we foreground the: normative and pragmatic nature of knowledge claims; functional role that ‘to know’ plays when agents say they ‘know x’; the social context in which such claims occur at a macro level, including disciplinary and cultural context; and the communicative context in which such claims occur, the ways in which individuals and small groups express and construct (or co-construct) their knowledge claims. We frame prior research in terms of this new approach to provide an exemplification of its application. Practical implications for research and learning contexts are highlighted, suggesting a re-focussing of analysis on the collective level, and the ways knowledge-standards emerge from group-activity, as a communicative property of that activity

Co-creating an educational space

In this paper I generate my living educational theory as an explanation of my educational influences in learning as I research my tutoring with practitioner researchers from a variety of workplace backgrounds. I will show how I have closely inter-related the teaching learning and research processes by providing opportunities for participants to accept responsibility for their own learning and to develop their capacity as learners and researchers. My PhD enquiry ‘How am I creating a pedagogy of the unique through a web of betweenness?’ (Farren, 2006) was integral to the development of my own practice as higher education educator. I clarified the meaning of my embodied values in the course of their emergence in practice. I try to provide an educational space where individuals can create knowledge in collaboration with others. I believe dialogue is fundamental to the learning process. It is a way of opening up to questions and assumptions rather than accepting ready-made solutions. The originality of the contribution is in the constellation of values and understandings I use as explanatory principles in my explanations of educational influence. This constellation includes the unusual combination of an educational response to the flow of energy and meaning in Celtic spirituality and the educational opportunities for learning opened up by digital technology

Fruits of Gregory Bateson’s epistemological crisis: embodied mind-making and interactive experience in research and professional praxis

Background: The espoused rationale for this special issue, situated “at the margins of cybernetics,” was to revisit and extend the common genealogy of cybernetics and communication studies. Two possible topics garnered our attention: 1) the history of intellectual adventurers whose work has appropriated cybernetic concepts; and 2) the remediation of cybernetic metaphors. Analysis: A heuristic for engaging in first- and second-order R&D praxis, the design of which was informed by co-research with pastoralists (1989–1993) and the authors’ engagements with the scholarship of Bateson and Maturana, was employed and adapted as a reflexive in-quiry framework.Conclusion and implications: This inquiry challenges the mainstream desire for change and the belief in getting the communication right in order to achieve change. The authors argue this view is based on an epistemological error that continues to produce the very problems it intends to diminish, and thus we live a fundamental error in epistemology, false ontology, and misplaced practice. The authors offer instead conceptual and praxis possibilities for triggering new co-evolutionary trajectories

Agent-Based Models and Simulations in Economics and Social Sciences: from conceptual exploration to distinct ways of experimenting

Now that complex Agent-Based Models and computer simulations spread over economics and social sciences - as in most sciences of complex systems -, epistemological puzzles (re)emerge. We introduce new epistemological tools so as to show to what precise extent each author is right when he focuses on some empirical, instrumental or conceptual significance of his model or simulation. By distinguishing between models and simulations, between types of models, between types of computer simulations and between types of empiricity, section 2 gives conceptual tools to explain the rationale of the diverse epistemological positions presented in section 1. Finally, we claim that a careful attention to the real multiplicity of denotational powers of symbols at stake and then to the implicit routes of references operated by models and computer simulations is necessary to determine, in each case, the proper epistemic status and credibility of a given model and/or simulation

Investigating facial animation production through artistic inquiry

Studies into dynamic facial expressions tend to make use of experimental methods based on objectively manipulated stimuli. New techniques for displaying increasingly realistic facial movement and methods of measuring observer responses are typical of computer animation and psychology facial expression research. However, few projects focus on the artistic nature of performance production. Instead, most concentrate on the naturalistic appearance of posed or acted expressions. In this paper, the authors discuss a method for exploring the creative process of emotional facial expression animation, and ask whether anything can be learned about authentic dynamic expressions through artistic inquiry