Visual Culture and Teenage Girls: Unraveling “Cultural” Threads Tied to “Self” and “Other”

Visual culture is prevalent in almost every aspect of our lives. We take photos with our cell phones, read magazines brimming with full color images, visit art museums, download streaming video, watch MTV, and scan street signs to find our favorite fast food restaurant. One hundred years ago, except for visiting art museums and reading magazines, these activities were nonexistent. As the twentieth century progressed, visual culture has increasingly been disseminated through new technological developments. In the sixties, Marshall McLuhan forecasted the impact of media upon our changing world. The medium or process, of our time-electronic technology-is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life (1967, p.9). As the transmission of visual culture continues to reshape our personal as well as our communal identities (Freedman & Stuhr, 2004), it is important to acknowledge and understand visual culture\u27s role in our lives. Recognizing the resulting shift and change brought about by the proliferation of imagery in our world, Tavin (2003), described visual culture as a present-day condition where images playa more central role in the construction of consciousness and the creation of knowledge than in the past (p. 204)

The architecture and acuity of critical systems thinking

This thesis looks at two critical urges in Critical Systems Thinking that both complement and critique each other. Firstly, there is an urge to construct in a critical manner. Secondly, there is an urge to be critical about such constructions. They complement and critique each other in the manner in which the second urge requires the first urge in order to understand what it means when one begins to create by construction, and also in which the first urge requires the second in order to understand the privileged position that construction is given in epistemology. These two urges give two stages.Construction relates to four clear conditions that develop from an Architectural study. This study offers two definitions of Architecture : structural longevity and relational modification. Consequently, a Structure and Process are established (first two stages) which together content an Architecture of Critical Systems Thinking (third stage). This Architecture is then applied to Systems Thinking through a study of five Systems Thinkers, this application offers an Architecture as commensurability (fourth stage). The Architecture is thereby offered as author.De-construction relates to four clear conditions that develop from the Architecture of Critical Systems Thinking. Each condition questions the Architectural authority to construct. The Process (reversed to complement and critique) questions the Structural consistency of the Architecture (first). A Structure of Acuity develops that maintains meaning where the Architecture neutralised meaning (second). A Contentless Acuity follows (third), thereby allowing the contentlessness of paradigm (in)commensurability to be discussed as an application of the Acuity of Critical Systems Thinking. The Acuity is thereby offered as reader.To balance these two urges is to read with authority

Transcending Semiotics: Toward Understanding Design for Understanding

In this paper I intend to examine several epistemological difficulties one quite naturally encounters within traditional semiotics, especially when trying to apply it to design (industrial design and product semantics in particular)

An examination of the impact of the Internet on modern Western astrology.

Astrology is a feature of modern culture. While the academic study of the culture of astrology is on the increase, virtually no scholarship exists on astrology and the Internet. However a large body of literature exists on the relationship between the Internet and religion, and this literature is used as a framework for the study of astrology and Internet. This research investigates the use of the Internet by modern Western Astrologers, within the context of theories of cyberspace. It looks at how the Internet is being used by astrologers and what effects they believe it can have on astrology and its practice. The research was both quantitative and qualitative. Questionnaires were issued at astrological conferences in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. In addition sixty-five astrologers were interviewed. In the 1990s a body of literature was produced that associated the physical Internet with the virtual world of cyberspace. From this literature came claims of cyberspace as dualistic or Cartesian. My research was informed by theories of dualism inherited from the classical world, and by previous arguments that astrology is dualistic. The thesis concludes that the majority of astrologers have a dualistic view of the Internet and cyberspace; the online world of cyberspace is viewed as a mental arena in contrast to the offline, physical world. A highly positive use of the Internet is the growth of online astrological communities; connections can be made with astrologers in different parts of the world. The Internet is perceived as a source of vast quantities of astrological information of varying quality. In the views of the astrologers poor quality astrological information can have a detrimental effect on the practice of astrology in the modern Western world

Everyday philosophy

My thesis is a work of creative non-fiction, in the form of an introductory, philosophy workbook. The workbook, tentatively named Everyday Philosophy, is intended to appeal to upper secondary students aged sixteen to seventeen, and contains a broad cross-section of information about the philosophy tradition. The workbook is loosely constructed around the new Western Australian Certificate of Education \u27Philosophy and Ethics\u27 curriculum, due to be launched in 2008. The aim of my thesis is to provide an introduction to Philosophy and Ethics that is thought-provoking yet easy to understand, employing examples, analogies and illustrations that are relevant and current to the intended readership. In order to achieve this I have employed a mixture of non-fiction and fictional scenarios to illustrate philosophical themes. The scenarios range from the commonplace to the ridiculous, in order to effectively promote the curiosity and enthusiasm of a sixteen or seventeen year-old high school student. The language and tone are friendly, grounded, conversational and, at times, amusing. I believe this strategy to be a necessary antidote to the perception that the study of philosophy is academic, lofty and inaccessible to mere mortals. The workbook contains: • topical, essay-style discussions of the main themes of philosophy. • historical information regarding key philosophers and their contributions. • creative and anecdotal scenarios to illustrate fundamental tenets. • in-chapter, journal exercises. • recommendations for supplementary reading and viewing material. • interesting quotes by philosophers. • profiles of famous philosophy students, and their impact on the world today. The rationale behind Everyday Philosophy is to create an innovative and interactive introduction to the sometimes daunting discipline of philosophy, in a style that specifically addresses the needs and interests of upper secondary students

Dead men's eyes: embodied GIS, mixed reality and landscape archaeology

Archaeology has been at the forefront of attempts to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to address the challenges of exploring and recreating perception and social behaviour within a computer environment. However, these approaches have traditionally been based on the visual aspect of perception, and analysis has usually been confined to the computer laboratory. In contrast, phenomenological analyses of archaeological landscapes are normally carried out within the landscape itself, computer analysis away from the landscape in question is often seen as anathema to such approaches. This thesis attempts to bridge this gap by using a Mixed Reality (MR) approach. MR provides an opportunity to merge the real world with virtual elements of relevance to the past, including 3D models, soundscapes and immersive data. In this way, the results of sophisticated desk-based GIS analyses can be experienced directly within the field and combined with phenomenological analysis to create an embodied GIS. The thesis explores the potential of this methodology by applying it in the Bronze Age landscape of Leskernick Hill, Bodmin Moor, UK. Since Leskernick Hill has (famously) already been the subject of intensive phenomenological investigation, it is possible to compare the insights gained from 'traditional' landscape phenomenology with those obtained from the use of Mixed Reality, and effectively combine quantitative GIS analysis and phenomenological fieldwork into one embodied experience. This mixing of approaches leads to the production of a new innovative method which not only provides new interpretations of the settlement on Leskernick Hill but also suggests avenues for the future of archaeological landscape research more generally

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

Conversion converted : a new model of Christian conversion in light of Wesleyan theology and nonreductive physicalism

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Creativity: can artistic perspectives contribute to management?

Today creativity is considered as a necessity in all aspects of management. This working paper mirrors the artistic and managerial conceptions of creativity. Although there are shared points in both applications, however deep-seated and radically opposed traits account for the divergence between the two fields. This exploratory analysis opens up new research questions and insights into practices