9,719 research outputs found
A Sociosemiotic Analysis of Fugard’s My Children! My Africa!
This essay presents a sociosemiotic analysis of My Children! My Africa! (1989) by Athol
Fugard. By considering the characters’ views about self, community, education, and time, it
points to the Fugard’s anxious attempt to offer liberalism as the solution to apartheid in South
Africa instead of oppositional politics, especially blacks’ calls for activism and communalism.
Sociosemiotics is suitable to plays overtly political; it holds that political writers are troubled
by political changes that do not correspond to a firmly held ideology—a tension between what
a playwright believes is absolute and what s/he senses and perhaps fears is happening. Keys
to the analysis are contemporary texts, including essays from leading Black writers and
journalists and from studies and essays from attendees of a 1986 conference on liberal
solutions to the unrest in South Africa
Quantum Theory and Human Perception of the Macro-World
We investigate the question of 'why customary macroscopic entities appear to
us humans as they do, i.e. as bounded entities occupying space and persisting
through time', starting from our knowledge of quantum theory, how it affects
the behavior of such customary macroscopic entities, and how it influences our
perception of them. For this purpose, we approach the question from three
perspectives. Firstly, we look at the situation from the standard quantum
angle, more specifically the de Broglie wavelength analysis of the behavior of
macroscopic entities, indicate how a problem with spin and identity arises, and
illustrate how both play a fundamental role in well-established experimental
quantum-macroscopical phenomena, such as Bose-Einstein condensates. Secondly,
we analyze how the question is influenced by our result in axiomatic quantum
theory, which proves that standard quantum theory is structurally incapable of
describing separated entities. Thirdly, we put forward our new 'conceptual
quantum interpretation', including a highly detailed reformulation of the
question to confront the new insights and views that arise with the foregoing
analysis. At the end of the final section, a nuanced answer is given that can
be summarized as follows. The specific and very classical perception of human
seeing -- light as a geometric theory -- and human touching -- only ruled by
Pauli's exclusion principle -- plays a role in our perception of macroscopic
entities as ontologically stable entities in space. To ascertain quantum
behavior in such macroscopic entities, we will need measuring apparatuses
capable of its detection. Future experimental research will have to show if
sharp quantum effects -- as they occur in smaller entities -- appear to be
ontological aspects of customary macroscopic entities.Comment: 28 page
Focal Spot, Summer/Fall 2008
https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/focal_spot_archives/1109/thumbnail.jp
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Information Overload: An Overview
For almost as long as there has been recorded information, there has been a perception that humanity has been overloaded by it. Concerns about 'too much to read' have been expressed for many centuries, and made more urgent since the arrival of ubiquitous digital information in the late twentieth century. The historical perspective is a necessary corrective to the often, and wrongly, held view that it is associated solely with the modern digital information environment, and with social media in particular. However, as society fully experiences Floridi's Fourth Revolution, and moves into hyper-history (with society dependent on, and defined by, information and communication technologies) and the infosphere (a information environment distinguished by a seamless blend of online and offline information actvity), individuals and societies are dependent on, and formed by, information in an unprecedented way, information overload needs to be taken more seriously than ever. Overload has been claimed to be both the major issue of our time, and a complete non-issue. It has been cited as an important factor in, inter alia, science, medicine, education, politics, governance, business and marketing, planning for smart cities, access to news, personal data tracking, home life, use of social media, and online shopping, and has even influenced literature The information overload phenomenon has been known by many different names, including: information overabundance, infobesity, infoglut, data smog, information pollution, information fatigue, social media fatigue, social media overload, information anxiety, library anxiety, infostress, infoxication, reading overload, communication overload, cognitive overload, information violence, and information assault. There is no single generally accepted definition, but it can best be understood as that situation which arises when there is so much relevant and potentially useful information available that it becomes a hindrance rather than a help. Its essential nature has not changed with changing technology, though its causes and proposed solutions have changed much. The best ways of avoiding overload, individually and socially, appear to lie in a variety of coping strategies, such as filtering, withdrawing, queuing, and 'satisficing'. Better design of information systems, effective personal information management, and the promotion of digital and media literacies, also have a part to play. Overload may perhaps best be overcome by seeking a mindful balance in consuming information, and in finding understanding
The Greening of Faith: God, the Environment, and the Good Life (20th Anniversary Edition)
The recent release of Pope Francis’s much-discussed encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, has reinforced environmental issues as also moral and spiritual issues. This anthology, twenty years ahead of the encyclical but very much in line with its agenda, offers essays by fifteen philosophers, theologians, and environmentalists who argue for a response to ecology that recognizes the tools of science but includes a more spiritual approach—one with a more humanistic, holistic view based on inherent reverence toward the natural world. Writers whose orientations range from Buddhism to evangelical Christianity to Catholicism to Native American beliefs explore ways to achieve this paradigm shift and suggest that “the environment is not only a spiritual issue, but the spiritual issue of our time.”https://scholars.unh.edu/unh_press/1003/thumbnail.jp
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