Theology and Virtuality: The Community of God in the Digital Age

This paper suggests the self-conception of people set within a western society pervaded by digital apparatus must be conditioned by a certain ‘background’ understanding of the philosophical idea of ‘virtuality’. To practice Theology in this context means engaging with this background understanding to examine the way that it orders and values the ideas and material practices of such a society. This project attempts just such an examination by first exploring the history of virtuality so to better understand what is meant by the suggestion that we are living in Digital Age ordered by virtuality, and how we become situated in this way by a discursive cultural ‘rupture’. It will connect virtuality into several recent critiques of postmodern and ‘post-human’ thought, and in conclusion offer some constructive theological reflections in an attempt to both reconceive of virtuality and imagine the Church in relation to it

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

A Dose of Reality: Overcoming Usability Challenges in VR Head-Mounted Displays

We identify usability challenges facing consumers adopting Virtual Reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) in a survey of 108 VR HMD users. Users reported significant issues in interacting with, and being aware of their real-world context when using a HMD. Building upon existing work on blending real and virtual environments, we performed three design studies to address these usability concerns. In a typing study, we show that augmenting VR with a view of reality significantly corrected the performance impairment of typing in VR. We then investigated how much reality should be incorporated and when, so as to preserve users’ sense of presence in VR. For interaction with objects and peripherals, we found that selectively presenting reality as users engaged with it was optimal in terms of performance and users’ sense of presence. Finally, we investigated how this selective, engagement-dependent approach could be applied in social environments, to support the user’s awareness of the proximity and presence of others

Parton Energy Loss in Strongly Coupled AdS/CFT

This is a brief review of the theory and phenomenology of parton energy loss in strongly coupled field theories with a gravity dual and its comparison with parton energy loss in QCD at weak coupling.Comment: Invited lecture at Hard Probes 2010, Eilat, Israel. Error in Table 1 and Fig. 7 corrected (thanks to E. Iancu

Exemplary Design Research

In this paper, we will look at what role a research program and an interventionist research strategy based on design experiments may play for the advancement of knowledge relevant to design and designers. We suggest the notion of exemplary design research driven by programs and experiments and by this we refer to research based on the explicit formulation of design programs that act as a frame and foundation for carrying out series of design experiments. It is 'exemplary' in the sense that it enables critical dissemination primarily by creating examples of what could be done and how, i.e. examples that both express the possibilities and characteristics of the design program as well as more general suggestions about a certain (change to) design practice

Virtual public administration: improving public administration procedures through project management

The best way to contribute electronic and mobile Government is by creating a public administration network in virtual communities. This is essentially the definition of Virtual Public Administration (VPA). A virtual community (a good example of which would be the well acclaimed virtual reality world Second Life), could potentially provide the platform to offer improved public administration services. Arguably, the quality of these services to citizens and businesses in virtual communities are more competitive than in reality. Therefore, the social, economic and technological impact is more inquiring because we could potentially offer to the end users more motivation to join these communities. Furthermore the success of the VPA is based on the virtual project management application. Our paper examines, theoretically and empirically, how VPA could potentially contribute to better public administration services and how effective project management application could facilitate the proposed transition. The research strategy is based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches. In that respect pertinent data is been collected through both semi structured interviews and questionnaires, with executives and others, in the Greek and UK public administration sector. Preliminary theoretical results demonstrate the improvement achieved by integrating time in virtual and real worlds and by testing impact to the quality of service provided by public sector to citizens/businesses. To that end, our study provides both qualitative (statements of directors, observations) and quantitative (metrics) examples related to these improvements. Three UK based councils have agreed in principle to participate to the study. Furthermore, in Greece the General Inspector of Public Administration, the National University of Athens and others has also agreed to participate. Our paper concludes with the contribution of our work along with some interesting avenues for further research

Jet Production by Real and Virtual Photons

The production of jets is studied in collisions of virtual photons, specifically for applications at HERA. Photon flux factors are convoluted with matrix elements involving either direct or resolved photons and, for the latter, with parton distributions of the photon. Special emphasis is put on the range of uncertainty in the modeling of the resolved component. The resulting model is compared with existing data and further tests are proposed.Comment: 1+13 pages, LaTeX2e, 16 eps figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the DESY Workshop on "Monte Carlo Generators for HERA Physics

Jet Production by Virtual Photons

The production of jets is studied in collisions of virtual photons, gamma*-p and gamma*-gamma*, specifically for applications at HERA and LEP2. Photon flux factors are convoluted with matrix elements involving either direct or resolved photons and, for the latter, with parton distributions of the photon. Special emphasis is put on the range of uncertainty in the modeling of the resolved component. The resulting model is compared with existing data.Comment: 1+10 pages, LaTeX2e, 4 eps figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the International Conference on the Structure and Interactions of the Photon; PHOTON99, 23-27 May 1999, Freiburg im Breisgau, German