Washington University Magazine and Alumni News, Summer 1998

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Engineering a Better Future

This open access book examines how the social sciences can be integrated into the praxis of engineering and science, presenting unique perspectives on the interplay between engineering and social science. Motivated by the report by the Commission on Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Association of Arts and Sciences, which emphasizes the importance of social sciences and Humanities in technical fields, the essays and papers collected in this book were presented at the NSF-funded workshop ‘Engineering a Better Future: Interplay between Engineering, Social Sciences and Innovation’, which brought together a singular collection of people, topics and disciplines. The book is split into three parts: A. Meeting at the Middle: Challenges to educating at the boundaries covers experiments in combining engineering education and the social sciences; B. Engineers Shaping Human Affairs: Investigating the interaction between social sciences and engineering, including the cult of innovation, politics of engineering, engineering design and future of societies; and C. Engineering the Engineers: Investigates thinking about design with papers on the art and science of science and engineering practice

Biohacking and code convergence : a transductive ethnography

Cette thèse se déploie dans un espace de discours et de pratiques revendicatrices, à l’inter- section des cultures amateures informatiques et biotechniques, euro-américaines contempo- raines. La problématique se dessinant dans ce croisement culturel examine des métaphores et analogies au coeur d’un traffic intense, au milieu de voies de commmunications imposantes, reliant les technologies informatiques et biotechniques comme lieux d’expression médiatique. L’examen retrace les lignes de force, les médiations expressives en ces lieux à travers leurs manifestations en tant que codes —à la fois informatiques et génétiques— et reconnaît les caractères analogiques d’expressivité des codes en tant que processus de convergence. Émergeant lentement, à partir des années 40 et 50, les visions convergentes des codes ont facilité l’entrée des ordinateurs personnels dans les marchés, ainsi que dans les garages de hackers, alors que des bricoleurs de l’informatique s’en réclamaient comme espace de liberté d’information —et surtout d’innovation. Plus de cinquante ans plus tard, l’analogie entre codes informatiques et génétiques sert de moteur aux revendications de liberté, informant cette fois les nouvelles applications de la biotechnologie de marché, ainsi que l’activité des biohackers, ces bricoleurs de garage en biologie synthétique. Les pratiques du biohacking sont ainsi comprises comme des individuations : des tentatives continues de résoudre des frictions, des tensions travaillant les revendications des cultures amateures informatiques et biotechniques. Une des manières de moduler ces tensions s’incarne dans un processus connu sous le nom de forking, entrevu ici comme l’expérience d’une bifurcation. Autrement dit, le forking est ici définit comme passage vers un seuil critique, déclinant la technologie et la biologie sur plusieurs modes. Le forking informe —c’est-à-dire permet et contraint— différentes vi- sions collectives de l’ouverture informationnelle. Le forking intervient aussi sur les plans des iii semio-matérialités et pouvoirs d’action investis dans les pratiques biotechniques et informa- tiques. Pris comme processus de co-constitution et de différentiation de l’action collective, les mouvements de bifurcation invitent les trois questions suivantes : 1) Comment le forking catalyse-t-il la solution des tensions participant aux revendications des pratiques du bioha- cking ? 2) Dans ce processus de solution, de quelles manières les revendications changent de phase, bifurquent et se transforment, parfois au point d’altérer radicalement ces pratiques ? 3) Quels nouveaux problèmes émergent de ces solutions ? L’effort de recherche a trouvé ces questions, ainsi que les plans correspondants d’action sémio-matérielle et collective, incarnées dans trois expériences ethnographiques réparties sur trois ans (2012-2015) : la première dans un laboratoire de biotechnologie communautaire new- yorkais, la seconde dans l’émergence d’un groupe de biotechnologie amateure à Montréal, et la troisième à Cork, en Irlande, au sein du premier accélérateur d’entreprises en biologie synthétique au monde. La logique de l’enquête n’est ni strictement inductive ou déductive, mais transductive. Elle emprunte à la philosophie de la communication et de l’information de Gilbert Simondon et découvre l’épistémologie en tant qu’acte de création opérant en milieux relationnels. L’heuristique transductive offre des rencontres inusitées entre les métaphores et les analogies des codes. Ces rencontres étonnantes ont aménagé l’expérience de la conver- gence des codes sous forme de jeux d’écritures. Elles se sont retrouvées dans la recherche ethnographique en tant que processus transductifs.This dissertation examines creative practices and discourses intersecting computer and biotech cultures. It queries influential metaphors and analogies on both sides of the inter- section, and their positioning of biotech and information technologies as expression media. It follows mediations across their incarnations as codes, both computational and biological, and situates their analogical expressivity and programmability as a process of code conver- gence. Converging visions of technological freedom facilitated the entrance of computers in 1960’s Western hobbyist hacker circles, as well as in consumer markets. Almost fifty years later, the analogy drives claims to freedom of information —and freedom of innovation— from biohacker hobbyist groups to new biotech consumer markets. Such biohacking practices are understood as individuations: as ongoing attempts to resolve frictions, tensions working through claims to freedom and openness animating software and biotech cultures. Tensions get modulated in many ways. One of them, otherwise known as “forking,” refers here to a critical bifurcation allowing for differing iterations of biotechnical and computa- tional configurations. Forking informs —that is, simultaneously affords and constrains— differing collective visions of openness. Forking also operates on the materiality and agency invested in biotechnical and computational practices. Taken as a significant process of co- constitution and differentiation in collective action, bifurcation invites the following three questions: 1) How does forking solve tensions working through claims to biotech freedom? 2) In this solving process, how can claims bifurcate and transform to the point of radically altering biotech practices? 3) what new problems do these solutions call into existence? This research found these questions, and both scales of material action and agency, in- carnated in three extensive ethnographical journeys spanning three years (2012-2015): the first in a Brooklyn-based biotech community laboratory, the second in the early days of a biotech community group in Montreal, and the third in the world’s first synthetic biology startup accelerator in Cork, Ireland. The inquiry’s guiding empirical logic is neither solely deductive or inductive, but transductive. It borrows from Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of communication and information to experience epistemology as an act of analogical creation involving the radical, irreversible transformation of knower and known. Transductive heuris- tics offer unconvential encounters with practices, metaphors and analogies of code. In the end, transductive methods acknowledge code convergence as a metastable writing games, and ethnographical research itself as a transductive process

2016, UMaine News Press Releases

This is a catalog of press releases put out by the University of Maine Division of Marketing and Communications between January 4, 2016 and December 30, 2016

Reports to the President

A compilation of annual reports for the 1988-1989 academic year, including a report from the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as reports from the academic and administrative units of the Institute. The reports outline the year's goals, accomplishments, honors and awards, and future plans

Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 1: Change, Voices, Open

In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 1 includes papers from Change, Voices and Open tracks of the conference

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Understanding Designer Mental Models to Support Computer Directed Analogical Design

Analysis of alternative concepts has a significant impact on design project outcomes, and yet many design teams fail to consider a significantly broad range of conceptual solutions. Within the realm of conceptual design exists a technique called design by analogy (DBA) -- the practice of reapplying old solutions to new problems. DBA mitigates the effort required to generate a large field of candidate concepts by leveraging existing knowledge from a wide variety of domains, making it an attractive approach toward improving design outcomes. Unfortunately, DBA is challenging in the absence of expert knowledge. Designers need computational support in order to effectively identify a large number of high-quality analogical connections across a wide variety of domains. With this challenge in mind, the goal of this dissertation is to improve the body of knowledge regarding computational support for design by analogy. More specifically, this body of work includes five manuscripts. Manuscript 0 presents a review of several function-related design abstractions, including their impacts on education and industry. Manuscript 1 studies analogy retrieval in a novel design context and catalogs the types of abstract similarity (including function) commonly used to form analogies. Manuscript 2 examines a scalable approach to capturing analogy-relevant design knowledge to support large-scale analogy searching. Manuscripts 3 and 4 examine and modify a technique from de novo drug design for quickly indexing and retrieving design analogies. Manuscript 3 examines the domain independence of the technique, and manuscript 4 develops it as a large-scale design analogy search method. The body of work contributes to a greater understanding of (1) the abstractions used by designers during conceptual design, (2) the use of human computation to support conceptual design activities, and (3) large scale solution screening using a variety of mixed design abstractions. This understanding advances the creation of tools that enable designers to consider a wide range of conceptual solutions in spite of lacking domain expertise

Beyond cold monsters : a cognitive-affective theory of international leadership

Le leadership est un processus d’influence sociale à travers lequel un acteur qui préconise une position sur un enjeu international entraîne d’autres acteurs à converger vers cette même position. Cette conception du leadership comme un processus de coopération a été négligée dans l’étude de la politique internationale. De plus en plus de faits empiriques révèlent que les États-Unis ne sont pas le seul État qui puisse produire des leaders internationaux, et que les décideurs d’autres États peuvent aussi s’ériger en meneurs. Pourquoi est-ce qu’une personne est motivée à devenir leader? Pourquoi est-ce que les autres acceptent de suivre ce leader, et non quelqu’un d’autre, ou encore choisissent de refuser la position du meneur? Pour expliquer comment le processus de leadership fonctionne, je développe une théorie cognitive-affective du leadership international. Mon argument est que les meneurs ont la volonté de prendre les devants à cause de leurs fortes convictions, et cherchent à persuader les autres acteurs que leur position est représentative de la communauté dont ils font partie. Ceux et celles qui suivent le meneur se rallient à sa position lorsque leurs croyances émotionnelles sont alignées avec celles du leader, lorsque la position et le comportement du leader sont représentatifs de la communauté, et lorsque des mécanismes de persuasion et de résonance émotionnelle les amènent plus près de la position du meneur. Pour vérifier cette théorie, je me concentre sur le processus de leadership entre les puissances transatlantiques : les États-Unis, l’Allemagne, la France, et le Royaume-Uni. J’étudie la coopération entre les décideurs transatlantiques sur des enjeux cruciaux lors de quatre cas de conflits intraétatiques internationalisés: la reconnaissance de la Slovénie, la Croatie et la Bosnie comme États souverains, la médiation pour la paix lors de la guerre entre la Russie et la Géorgie, les sanctions économiques contre la Russie pendant le conflit en Ukraine, et la construction d’une coalition pour réaliser des frappes aériennes contre l’État islamique en Irak et en Syrie.Leadership is a process of social inflence through which an actor advocating for a position on an international issue induces followers to converge on the same position. Leadership in this sense, as a process of cooperation, has been neglected in the study of international politics. An accumulating body of evidence reveals that the United States is not the only state that can produce international leaders, and that policymakers from other states can also take the lead. Why is someone willing to take the lead? Why are other actors willing to follow this leader and not someone else, or just refuse to agree with the leader’s stance? To explain how the leadership process works, I develop a Cognitive-Affective Theory of international leadership. My argument is that leaders are willing to take the lead because of their strong convictions, and seek to persuade their followers that their position is representative of the wider community of which they are part. Followers rally behind the leader when their emotional beliefs align with the leader, when the leader’s position and behavior are representative of the community, and when mechanisms of persuasion and emotional resonance bring them closer to the leader’s position. In order to test this theory, I concentrate on the leadership process among transatlantic powers: the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. I study the cooperation between transatlantic policymakers on crucial issues that emerged during four cases of internationalized intrastate conflicts: recognition of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia as new sovereign states, peace mediation in the war between Russia and Georgia, economic sanctions against Russia during the Ukraine conflict, and construction of a broader coalition conducting air strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria