ASTRAL PROJECTION: THEORIES OF METAPHOR, PHILOSOPHIES OF SCIENCE, AND THE ART O F SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION

This thesis provides an intellectual context for my work in computational scientific visualization for large-scale public outreach in venues such as digitaldome planetarium shows and high-definition public television documentaries. In my associated practicum, a DVD that provides video excerpts, 1 focus especially on work I have created with my Advanced Visualization Laboratory team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Champaign, Illinois) from 2002-2007. 1 make three main contributions to knowledge within the field of computational scientific visualization. Firstly, I share the unique process 1 have pioneered for collaboratively producing and exhibiting this data-driven art when aimed at popular science education. The message of the art complements its means of production: Renaissance Team collaborations enact a cooperative paradigm of evolutionary sympathetic adaptation and co-creation. Secondly, 1 open up a positive, new space within computational scientific visualization's practice for artistic expression—especially in providing a theory of digi-epistemology that accounts for how this is possible given the limitations imposed by the demands of mapping numerical data and the computational models derived from them onto visual forms. I am concerned not only with liberating artists to enrich audience's aesthetic experiences of scientific visualization, to contribute their own vision, but also with conceiving of audiences as co-creators of the aesthetic significance of the work, to re-envision and re-circulate what they encounter there. Even more commonly than in the age of traditional media, on-line social computing and digital tools have empowered the public to capture and repurpose visual metaphors, circulating them within new contexts and telling new stories with them. Thirdly, I demonstrate the creative power of visaphors (see footnote, p. 1) to provide novel embodied experiences through my practicum as well as my thesis discussion. Specifically, I describe how the visaphors my Renaissance Teams and I create enrich the Environmentalist Story of Science, essentially promoting a counter-narrative to the Enlightenment Story of Science through articulating how humanity participates in an evolving universal consciousness through our embodied interaction and cooperative interdependence within nested, self-producing (autopoetic) systems, from the micro- to the macroscopic. This contemporary account of the natural world, its inter-related systems, and their dynamics may be understood as expressing a creative and generative energy—a kind of consciousness-that transcends the human yet also encompasses it

On the Evolution of the Heavenly Spheres: An Enactive Approach to Cosmography

The ability to view the world from multiple perspectives is essential for tackling complex, interconnected challenges. Yet conventional academic structures are designed to produce knowledge through ever-increasing specialization and compartmentalization. This fragmentation is often reinforced by tacit dualistic assumptions that prioritize linear thinking and abstract ways of knowing. Though the need for integrated approaches has been widely acknowledged, effective techniques for transcending disciplinary boundaries remain elusive. This thesis describes a practical strategy that uses immersive visualizations to cultivate transdisciplinary perspectives. It develops an enactive approach to cosmography, contending that processes of visualizing and interpreting the cosmos iteratively shape ‘views’ of the ‘world.’ The archetypal trope of the heavenly sphere is examined to demonstrate the significance of its interpretations in this history of ideas. Action research and mixed methods are employed to elucidate the theoretical considerations, cultural relevance, and practical consequences of this approach. The study begins with an investigation into the recurring appearance of the heavenly sphere across time, in which its embodied origins, metaphorical influence, and material embodiments are considered. Particular attention is given to how cosmographic tools and techniques have facilitated imaginary ‘flights’ through the heavens, from the ecstatic bird’s eye view of the shaman to the ‘Archimedean point’ of modern science. It then examines how these cosmographic practices have shaped cosmological beliefs and paradigmatic assumptions. Next, the practical utility of this approach is demonstrated through the development of cosmographic hermeneutics, a technique using visual heuristics to interpret cosmic models from transdisciplinary world views. Finally, the performative practice of cosmotroping is described, in which cosmographic hermeneutics are applied to re-imagine the ancient dream of the transcendent ‘cosmic journey’ within immersive vision theaters. This study concludes that the re-emergence of the heavenly sphere within the contemporary Digital Universe Atlas provides a leverage point for illuminating the complexity of knowledge production processes. It is claimed that this research has produced a practical strategy for demonstrating that the ultimate Archimedean point is the ability to recognize the limits of our own knowledge, a crucial first step in cultivating much-needed multi-perspectival and paradoxical spherical thinking

Right Research

"Educational institutions play an instrumental role in social and political change, and are responsible for the environmental and social ethics of their institutional practices. The essays in this volume critically examine scholarly research practices in the age of the Anthropocene, and ask what accountability educators and researchers have in ‘righting’ their relationship to the environment. The volume further calls attention to the geographical, financial, legal and political barriers that might limit scholarly dialogue by excluding researchers from participating in traditional modes of scholarly conversation. As such, Right Research is a bold invitation to the academic community to rigorous self-reflection on what their research looks like, how it is conducted, and how it might be developed so as to increase accessibility and sustainability, and decrease carbon footprint. The volume follows a three-part structure that bridges conceptual and practical concerns: the first section challenges our assumptions about how sustainability is defined, measured and practiced; the second section showcases artist-researchers whose work engages with the impact of humans on our environment; while the third section investigates how academic spaces can model eco-conscious behaviour. This timely volume responds to an increased demand for environmentally sustainable research, and is outstanding not only in its interdisciplinarity, but its embrace of non-traditional formats, spanning academic articles, creative acts, personal reflections and dialogues. Right Research will be a valuable resource for educators and researchers interested in developing and hybridizing their scholarly communication formats in the face of the current climate crisis.

Tech Imaginations

Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter, Christoph Borbach, Max Kanderske und Prof. Dr. Benjamin Beil sind Herausgeber der Reihe. Die Herausgeber*innen der einzelnen Hefte sind renommierte Wissenschaftler*innen aus dem In- und Ausland.Technologies and especially media technologies are pervasive in modern societies. But even more omnipresent are the imaginaries of modern technologies – what technologies are thought to be capable of or what effects they are supposed to have. These imaginations reveal a lot of the political and ideological self-descriptions of societies, hence the (techno-)imaginary also functions as a kind of epistemic tool. Concepts of the imaginary therefore have experienced an increasing attention in cultural theory and the social sciences in recent years. In particular, work from political philosophy, but also approaches from science and technology studies (STS) or communication and media studies are worth mentioning here. The term "techno-imagination", coined by Vilém Flusser in the early 1990s, refers to the close interconnection of (digital) media and imaginations, whose coupling can not only be understood as a driver of future technology via fictional discourses (e.g. science fiction), but much more fundamentally also as a constitutive element of society and sociality itself, as Castoriadis has argued. In the first part of the issue several theoretical contributions add new aspects to the discussion of socio-technical imaginaries, while in the second part a workshop held in January 2022 at the CAIS in Bochum is documented, in which the case of the imaginaries of “Future Internets” was discussed

Right Research

"Educational institutions play an instrumental role in social and political change, and are responsible for the environmental and social ethics of their institutional practices. The essays in this volume critically examine scholarly research practices in the age of the Anthropocene, and ask what accountability educators and researchers have in ‘righting’ their relationship to the environment. The volume further calls attention to the geographical, financial, legal and political barriers that might limit scholarly dialogue by excluding researchers from participating in traditional modes of scholarly conversation. As such, Right Research is a bold invitation to the academic community to rigorous self-reflection on what their research looks like, how it is conducted, and how it might be developed so as to increase accessibility and sustainability, and decrease carbon footprint. The volume follows a three-part structure that bridges conceptual and practical concerns: the first section challenges our assumptions about how sustainability is defined, measured and practiced; the second section showcases artist-researchers whose work engages with the impact of humans on our environment; while the third section investigates how academic spaces can model eco-conscious behaviour. This timely volume responds to an increased demand for environmentally sustainable research, and is outstanding not only in its interdisciplinarity, but its embrace of non-traditional formats, spanning academic articles, creative acts, personal reflections and dialogues. Right Research will be a valuable resource for educators and researchers interested in developing and hybridizing their scholarly communication formats in the face of the current climate crisis.

Right Research: Modelling Sustainable Research Practices in the Anthropocene

The year 2020 started with a massive bushfire crisis in south eastern Australia, resulting in disruption to many communities, the loss of lives and businesses, an estimated loss of a billion animals and the dirtiest air on the planet in the cities of Sydney, Newcastle and Canberra. With record-high temperatures and a punishing draught lasting several years, the Australian bush was primed to explode into flames. With lightning strikes in national parks, the spontaneous eruptions of bushfire spread from the north coast to the south and inland towards the alpine regions of New South Wales and Victoria. With the very hot year of 2019 affecting other parts of the planet in 2020, the Antarctic Peninsula reached a record 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The chapter that follows reflects the new progressive politics of climate change that emerged in 2019 with large mass demonstrations taking place in Australia and around the world and examines the critical role of universities in the mitigation of climate catastrophe. The following interventions are variably focused on the concept of ‘Living Labs’ where thinking is developed within a problem-solving ethos. The three contributions here offer ways to think about sustainability with specific reference to waste recovery, environmental awareness in urban settings and the contribution that a ‘repair’ mentality can make to a shared and re-cycled economy. With a clear-eyed recommendation that mitigation of climate change starts locally, the premise of the paper is that people can work with what is available as local solutions to specific problems. The impact of this approach can be essential to people who sense the impending catastrophe and who may have experienced the crisis directly through compromises in their health outcomes, the experience of trauma and the loss of property and livelihoods, though through no fault of their own. The links through the Western Sydney University campus, common ground to the authors to both its small bushland outpost and further to the local community it serves, suggest that the boundaries of the campus are permeable – and that Living Labs are both a means and metaphor for thinking about how the campus opens learning and knowledge creation about sustainability for its students, staff and community constituents

Vision 21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace

The symposium Vision-21: Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace was held at the NASA Lewis Research Center on March 30-31, 1993. The purpose of the symposium was to simulate interdisciplinary thinking in the sciences and technologies which will be required for exploration and development of space over the next thousand years. The keynote speakers were Hans Moravec, Vernor Vinge, Carol Stoker, and Myron Krueger. The proceedings consist of transcripts of the invited talks and the panel discussion by the invited speakers, summaries of workshop sessions, and contributed papers by the attendees

Collective intelligence: creating a prosperous world at peace

XXXII, 612 p. ; 24 cmLibro ElectrónicoEn este documento se plantea un tema de interes general mas como lo es especificamente el tema de la evolucion de la sociedad en materia de industria y crecimiento de las actividades humanas en el aspecto de desarrollo de la creatividad enfocada a los mercadosedited by Mark Tovey ; foreword by Yochai Benkler (re-mixed by Hassan Masum) ; prefaces by Thomas Malone, Tom Atlee & Pierre Levy ; afterword by Paul Martin & Thomas Homer-Dixon.The era of collective intelligence has begun in earnest. While others have written about the wisdom of crowds, an army of Davids, and smart mobs, this collection of essays for the first time brings together fifty-five pioneers in the emerging discipline of collective intelligence. They provide a base of tools for connecting people, producing high-functioning teams, collaborating at multiple scales, and encouraging effective peer-production. Emerging models are explored for digital deliberative democracy, self-governance, legislative transparency, true-cost accounting, and the ethical use of open sources and methods. Collective Intelligence is the first of a series of six books, which will also include volumes on Peace Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, and Global Intelligence.Table of Contents Dedication i Publisher’s Preface iii Foreword by Yochai Benkler Remix Hassan Masum xi The Wealth of Networks: Highlights remixed Editor’s Preface xxi Table of Contents xxv A What is collective intelligence and what will we do 1 about it? (Thomas W. Malone, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence) B Co-Intelligence, collective intelligence, and conscious 5 evolution (Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence Institute) C A metalanguage for computer augmented collective 15 intelligence (Prof. Pierre Lévy, Canada Research Chair in Collective Intelligence, FRSC) I INDIVIDUALS & GROUPS I-01 Foresight I-01-01 Safety Glass (Karl Schroeder, science fiction author 23 and foresight consultant) I-01-02 2007 State of the Future (Jerome C. Glenn & 29 Theodore J. Gordon, United Nations Millennium Project) I-02 Dialogue & Deliberation I-02-01 Thinking together without ego: Collective intelligence 39 as an evolutionary catalyst (Craig Hamilton and Claire Zammit, Collective-Intelligence.US) I-02-02 The World Café: Awakening collective intelligence 47 and committed action (Juanita Brown, David Isaacs and the World Café Community) I-02-03 Collective intelligence and the emergence of 55 wholeness (Peggy Holman, Nexus for Change, The Change Handbook) I-02-04 Knowledge creation in collective intelligence (Bruce 65 LaDuke, Fortune 500, HyperAdvance.com) I-02-05 The Circle Organization: Structuring for collective 75 wisdom (Jim Rough, Dynamic Facilitation & The Center for Wise Democracy) I-03 Civic Intelligence I-03-01 Civic intelligence and the public sphere (Douglas 83 Schuler, Evergreen State College, Public Sphere Project) I-03-02 Civic intelligence and the security of the homeland 95 (John Kesler with Carole and David Schwinn, IngeniusOnline) I-03-03 Creating a Smart Nation (Robert Steele, OSS.Net) 107 I-03-04 University 2.0: Informing our collective intelligence 131 (Nancy Glock-Grueneich, HIGHEREdge.org) I-03-05 Producing communities of communications and 145 foreknowledge (Jason “JZ” Liszkiewicz, Reconfigure.org) I-03-06 Global Vitality Report 2025: Learning to transform I-04 Electronic Communities & Distributed Cognition I-04-01 Attentional capital and the ecology of online social 163 conflict and think together effectively (Peter+Trudy networks (Derek Lomas, Social Movement Lab, Johnson-Lenz, Johnson-Lenz.com ) UCSD) I-04-02 A slice of life in my virtual community (Howard 173 Rheingold, Whole Earth Review, Author & Educator) I-04-03 Shared imagination (Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart, 197 Bootstrap) I-05 Privacy & Openness I-05-01 We’re all swimming in media: End-users must be able 201 to keep secrets (Mitch Ratcliffe, BuzzLogic & Tetriad) I-05-02 Working openly (Lion Kimbro, Programmer and 205 Activist) I-06 Integral Approaches & Global Contexts I-06-01 Meta-intelligence for analyses, decisions, policy, and 213 action: The Integral Process for working on complex issues (Sara Nora Ross, Ph.D. ARINA & Integral Review) I-06-02 Collective intelligence: From pyramidal to global 225 (Jean-Francois Noubel, The Transitioner) I-06-03 Cultivating collective intelligence: A core leadership 235 competence in a complex world (George Pór, Fellow at Universiteit van Amsterdam) II LARGE-SCALE COLLABORATION II-01 Altruism, Group IQ, and Adaptation II-01-01 Empowering individuals towards collective online 245 production (Keith Hopper, KeithHopper.com) II-01-02 Who’s smarter: chimps, baboons or bacteria? The 251 power of Group IQ (Howard Bloom, author) II-01-03 A collectively generated model of the world (Marko 261 A. Rodriguez, Los Alamos National Laboratory) II-02 Crowd Wisdom and Cognitive Bias II-02-01 Science of CI: Resources for change (Norman L 265 Johnson, Chief Scientist at Referentia Systems, former LANL) II-02-02 Collectively intelligent systems (Jennifer H. Watkins, 275 Los Alamos National Laboratory) II-02-03 A contrarian view (Jaron Lanier, scholar-in-residence, 279 CET, UC Berkeley & Discover Magazine) II-03 Semantic Structures & The Semantic Web II-03-01 Information Economy Meta Language (Interview with 283 Professor Pierre Lévy, by George Pór) II-03-02 Harnessing the collective intelligence of the World- 293 Wide Web (Nova Spivack, RadarNetworks, Web 3.0) II-03-03 The emergence of a global brain (Francis Heylighen, 305 Free University of Brussels) II-04 Information Networks II-04-01 Networking and mobilizing collective intelligence (G. Parker Rossman, Future of Learning Pioneer) II-04-02 Toward high-performance organizations: A strategic 333 role for Groupware (Douglas C. Engelbart, Bootstrap) II-04-03 Search panacea or ploy: Can collective intelligence 375 improve findability? (Stephen E. Arnold, Arnold IT, Inc.) II-05 Global Games, Local Economies, & WISER II-05-01 World Brain as EarthGame (Robert Steele and many 389 others, Earth Intelligence Network) II-05-02 The Interra Project (Jon Ramer and many others) 399 II-05-03 From corporate responsibility to Backstory 409 Management (Alex Steffen, Executive Editor, Worldchanging.com) II-05-04 World Index of Environmental & Social 413 Responsibility (WISER) By the Natural Capital Institute II-06 Peer-Production & Open Source Hardware II-06-01 The Makers’ Bill of Rights (Jalopy, Torrone, and Hill) 421 II-06-02 3D Printing and open source design (James Duncan, 423 VP of Technology at Marketingisland) II-06-03 REBEARTHTM: 425 II-07 Free Wireless, Open Spectrum, and Peer-to-Peer II-07-01 Montréal Community Wi-Fi (Île Sans Fil) (Interview 433 with Michael Lenczner by Mark Tovey) II-07-02 The power of the peer-to-peer future (Jock Gill, 441 Founder, Penfield Gill Inc.) Growing a world 6.6 billion people would want to live in (Marc Stamos, B-Comm, LL.B) II-07-03 Open spectrum (David Weinberger) II-08 Mass Collaboration & Large-Scale Argumentation II-08-01 Mass collaboration, open source, and social 455 entrepreneurship (Mark Tovey, Advanced Cognitive Engineering Lab, Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton University) II-08-02 Interview with Thomas Homer-Dixon (Hassan 467 Masum, McLaughlin-Rotman Center for Global Health) II-08-03 Achieving collective intelligence via large-scale argumentation (Mark Klein, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence) II-08-04 Scaling up open problem solving (Hassan Masum & 485 Mark Tovey) D Afterword: The Internet and the revitalization of 495 democracy (The Rt. Honourable Paul Martin & Thomas Homer-Dixon) E Epilogue by Tom Atlee 513 F Three Lists 515 1. Strategic Reading Categories 2. Synopsis of the New Progressives 3. Fifty-Two Questions that Matter G Glossary 519 H Index 52

Technocrats of the Imagination

Technocrats of the Imagination traces the rise of collaborative art and technology labs in the U.S. from WWII to the present. Ryan Bishop and John Beck reveal the intertwined histories of the avant-garde art movement and the military-industrial complex, showing how radical pedagogical practices traveled from Germany’s Bauhaus movement to the U.S. art world and interacted with government-funded military research and development in university laboratories. During the 1960s both media labs and studio labs leaned heavily on methods of interdisciplinary collaboration and the power of American modernity to model new modes of social organization. In light of revived interest in Black Mountain College and other 1960s art and technology labs, this book draws important connections between the contemporary art world and the militarized lab model of research that has dominated the sciences since the 1950s