The design of surfaces, between empathy and new figuration

Nowadays design languages seem anew defined through images and figures that appear increasingly distant from abstraction. In the time that we live in, where it is prevailing a dominance of individual needs rather common desires, an abandon of abstraction in favour of new figuration, stimulates the opportunity to investigate a new dyad, ‘Project and Empathy’; these terms could summarize well the expanded modality of physical and psychological interaction between people – as individual – and artefacts, through the increasing role of surfaces. The whole world of postmodern image, especially through the digital technologies, tends to offer hyper realistic aesthetic simulacra, altered nature: this is the current world of extension of feelings and sense, in which we are immersed daily. This condition affect the approaches to design, which require a new thinking around technologies, method and tools from training to practice the activity of design: a new attitude for materiality of things, beyond the immateriality of digital reality

Dreams and Desires of Preschoolers

AbstractThe research presented in this article is part of the “Children in a Changing World” project, a cross-sectional study that explores the influence of social changes on the world views of children. The project was launched in 1992, at a time when socioeconomic reforms began to unfold in Russia. Six cross sections have been conducted to date, each including interviews with older preschoolers in the age range of 5.6-7.0 years. The children were asked about their life today and how they imagine it in the future. This article analyzes the way that the dreams and desires of older preschoolers have changed over the past two decades (comparing the dreams and desires children expressed in the 1990s with those voiced by children of the same age in 2015). The main results obtained through qualitative analysis suggest certain changes in the structure of the preschooler's desires (in particular, an increase in “magical,” non-realistic wishes) and a decrease in the negative influence of the distant environment on the children

Being realistic about motivation

T.M. Scanlon’s ‘reasons fundamentalism’ is thought to face difficulties answering the normative question—that is, explaining why it’s irrational to not do what you judge yourself to have most reason to do (e.g., Dreier 2014a). I argue that this difficulty results from Scanlon’s failure to provide a theory of mind that can give substance to his account of normative judgment and its tie to motivation. A central aim of this paper is to address this deficiency. To do this, I draw on broadly cognitivist theories of emotion (e.g., Nussbaum 2001, Roberts 2013). These theories are interesting because they view emotions as cognitive states from which motivation emerges. Thus, they provide a model Scanlon can use to develop a richer account of both the judgment-motivation connection and the irrationality of not doing what you judge yourself to have most reason to do. However, the success is only partial—even this more developed proposal fails to give a satisfactory answer to the normative question

Synthetic vision and emotion calculation in intelligent virtual human modeling

The virtual human technique already can provide vivid and believable human behaviour in more and more scenarios. Virtual humans are expected to replace real humans in hazardous situations to undertake tests and feed back valuable information. This paper will introduce a virtual human with a novel collision-based synthetic vision, short-term memory model and a capability to implement the emotion calculation and decision making. The virtual character based on this model can ‘see’ what is in his field of view (FOV) and remember those objects. After that, a group of affective computing equations have been introduced. These equations have been implemented into a proposed emotion calculation process to enlighten emotion for virtual intelligent huma

What do people want from their lifelogs?

The practice of lifelogging potentially consists of automatically capturing and storing a digital record of every piece of information that a person (lifelogger) encounters in their daily experiences. Lifelogging has become an increasingly popular area of research in recent years. Most current lifeloggiing research focuses on techniques for data capture or processing. Current applications of lifelogging technology are usually driven by new technology inventions, creative ideas of researchers, or the special needs of a particular user group, e.g. individuals with memory impairment. To the best of our knowledge, little work has explored potential lifelogs applications from the perspective of the desires of the general public. One of the difficulties of carrying out such a study is the balancing of the information given to the subject regarding lifelog technology to enable them to generate realistic ideas without limiting or directing their imaginations by providing too much specific information. We report a study in which we take a progressive approach where we introduce lifelogging in three stages, and collect the ideas and opinions of a volunteer group of general public participants on techniques for lifelog capture, and applications and functionality

The Role of the Imagination in Religion and Science

Western culture has seen a separation between two once-connected disciplines: the scientific and the religious. The religious is part of the humanities, thus it utilizes imagination, while the world of the scientific is based in objective facts. However, this description of the separation between these disciplines does not suffice. I posit that both of these realms use an aspect of the imagination, just with different ends in mind and different mindsets. In order to show this, I will be utilizing the psychological framework developed by Jerome Bruner in his book, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, focusing on pragmatic and narrative mindsets. I will also be relying heavily on the work done by Garett Green in his book, Imagining God, who attempts to breach this same divide by looking at it from a purely theological perspective. Crossing the gap can be done by seeing science and religion as both using the world-making tool of imagination. This paper will begin with an examination of Bruner’s framework, followed by an analysis of how each of these mindsets utilize their own form of imagination as a tool in their respective disciplines: the pragmatic in the scientific world, and the narrative in the religious. After this I will examine how one can communicate across this seemingly growing divide between worlds, opening the way for further collaboration between science and religion, as well as assisting in reducing conflict between them

The Pastor as Bearer of Hope

Lutheran Life Lecture, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, November 4 1993

Transition Planning for Secondary LD Students

Despite increasing legal requirements in planning and documentation, transition outcomes for secondary LD students continue to fall short of pre-graduation expectations. As students move from the supportive and controlled environment of public school education systems to the less structured world of work or post-secondary education, a myriad of skills, supports, and coordinated efforts are needed for optimal outcomes. As the number of students qualifying for services continues to rise, analysis of the shortcomings and successes of the current special education transition strategies is becoming increasingly important. This meta-synthesis of the literature on transitioning secondary LD students investigates the realities of secondary transition planning and the difficulties in implementation

The Uncogent Auxiliary Hypotheses of Gordon and Modugno: Reply to a Review

Lester‘s reply to the review by Gordon and Modugno of Escape from Leviathan was due to appear in a later edition of the same periodical, but it was eventually dropped without notice or a reason being given. Subsequently, their review has occasionally been cited in isolation as a refutation of that book‘s theory of liberty, the compatibility of such liberty with welfare maximisation, and the use of "Popperian views" as though a complete reply did not exist and were not freely available and easily found online. To make it harder to avoid the reply, whether by accident or design, it is reproduced here (but with sundry small emendations for greater clarity)