Design Ltd.: Renovated Myths for the Development of Socially Embedded Technologies

This paper argues that traditional and mainstream mythologies, which have been continually told within the Information Technology domain among designers and advocators of conceptual modelling since the 1960s in different fields of computing sciences, could now be renovated or substituted in the mould of more recent discourses about performativity, complexity and end-user creativity that have been constructed across different fields in the meanwhile. In the paper, it is submitted that these discourses could motivate IT professionals in undertaking alternative approaches toward the co-construction of socio-technical systems, i.e., social settings where humans cooperate to reach common goals by means of mediating computational tools. The authors advocate further discussion about and consolidation of some concepts in design research, design practice and more generally Information Technology (IT) development, like those of: task-artifact entanglement, universatility (sic) of End-User Development (EUD) environments, bricolant/bricoleur end-user, logic of bricolage, maieuta-designers (sic), and laissez-faire method to socio-technical construction. Points backing these and similar concepts are made to promote further discussion on the need to rethink the main assumptions underlying IT design and development some fifty years later the coming of age of software and modern IT in the organizational domain.Comment: This is the peer-unreviewed of a manuscript that is to appear in D. Randall, K. Schmidt, & V. Wulf (Eds.), Designing Socially Embedded Technologies: A European Challenge (2013, forthcoming) with the title "Building Socially Embedded Technologies: Implications on Design" within an EUSSET editorial initiative (www.eusset.eu/

Structure Phenomenology

This is the first English translation of Herbert Witzenmann’s seminal work,Strukturphänomenologie, which departs from the traditional phenomenological methods of Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to introduce a fresh approach to the nexus of consciousness and reality. In Structure Phenomenology, published open access, Witzenmann argues for the active mental, yet mostly pre-reflective, participation of humans in the emergence of individual consciousness of all kinds and the basic structure that determines it. While Witzenmann ascribes a derivative or memorative status to habitual states of phenomenal consciousness, even if they seem to refer to present objectivity, he proposes that the underlying formative processes be unveiled and explored through systematic first-person observation. Through his logically grounded and experience-based approach, he contends that it is not neural processes that produce consciousness, but rather one’s own preconscious rootedness in reality which can be made conscious. Influenced by the writings of Rudolf Steiner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Witzenmann’s innovative approach casts new light on a number of philosophical, psychological, and scientific issues: from being and becoming to temporality and presence, and from remembering to mind and body. Even freedom takes on a new meaning when reality is not pre-given to human consciousness, but is rather a result of human participation in the basic process. This annotated translation makes Witzenmann’s text accessible to an English audience for the first time and, with a comprehensive editorial introduction by Johannes Wagemann, situates his ground-breaking insights within the development of phenomenology, as well as in current philosophical and psychological debates. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com

Structure Phenomenology

This is the first English translation of Herbert Witzenmann’s seminal work,Strukturphänomenologie, which departs from the traditional phenomenological methods of Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to introduce a fresh approach to the nexus of consciousness and reality. In Structure Phenomenology, published open access, Witzenmann argues for the active mental, yet mostly pre-reflective, participation of humans in the emergence of individual consciousness of all kinds and the basic structure that determines it. While Witzenmann ascribes a derivative or memorative status to habitual states of phenomenal consciousness, even if they seem to refer to present objectivity, he proposes that the underlying formative processes be unveiled and explored through systematic first-person observation. Through his logically grounded and experience-based approach, he contends that it is not neural processes that produce consciousness, but rather one’s own preconscious rootedness in reality which can be made conscious. Influenced by the writings of Rudolf Steiner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Witzenmann’s innovative approach casts new light on a number of philosophical, psychological, and scientific issues: from being and becoming to temporality and presence, and from remembering to mind and body. Even freedom takes on a new meaning when reality is not pre-given to human consciousness, but is rather a result of human participation in the basic process. This annotated translation makes Witzenmann’s text accessible to an English audience for the first time and, with a comprehensive editorial introduction by Johannes Wagemann, situates his ground-breaking insights within the development of phenomenology, as well as in current philosophical and psychological debates. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com

The Relational Materiality of Groundwater

This paper is part of a larger research project which draws out ways of knowing and thinking with groundwater from Chennai, south India. The (under)ground or (sub)terranean environment is a thick and complex, three-dimensional space of “nothing but change,” but whose utility is essential to sustaining urban life above it. This paper looks at multiple, specific, and contradictory ways in which the materiality of groundwater is understood and intervened in. Using the case of the ongoing Chennai Metro Rail construction project, and its disciplinary cultures of representation, I bring attention to the ground and its waters as a composite system in both balance and unrest, and an active, vital component of the city. Through unpacking established concepts of strata, porosity, and pressure, I will cast groundwater not as an objective fact, always pictured by, and relative to, a human subject, but as an actual being which humans (and others beyond) perceive, relate to, and come into contact with. I close by drawing from this account a possible further set of concepts which groundwater generates—dynamic states which are common to human and material life—suggesting that a relational theory of groundwater materiality, based on leaking as opposed to bordering, might better respond to the ways in which groundwater troubles knowledge

A Geology of the General Intellect

We can no longer be certain whether the central terms and conceptual matrix that the Italian Autonomist Marxist tradition richly develops and draws on--the common, the general intellect, immaterial labour, psychopolitics, cognitariat--are able to survive unscathed the theoretical problems that the epoch of the Anthropocene poses. In an attempt to push this conceptual matrix to its political and ontological limits, I expose a series of “ecological deficits” at the core of Autonomist thought and make the argument that semiocapitalism is a geological operator just as much it is a cognitive, financial or linguistic one. This has a plethora of paradoxical implications that are constellated throughout the three chapters. The first chapter explores the non-mediatic conditions of possibility behind “mediation”: following Jussi Parikka and Matteo Pasquinelli, the first “ecological deficit” emerges due to conflating the mediasphere with the subjective operations of the “sign” (semiotic flows of labour, knowledge, information) and “desire” (creative flows, libidinal energy, affects) as well as over-valuing the “general intellect” (the productive powers of the social brain) and its exclusive relation to the infosphere (knowledge transmission, big data, linguistic networks of communication), the cognitariat (social subjectivity, value-producing labour) and the technosphere (machines, fixed capital). The second chapter critiques Antonio Negri’s ontological theory of value: following Silvia Federici and Jason W. Moore, the second “ecological deficit” emerges due to Autonomism’s negligence of socially necessary unpaid work, non-human relations of reproduction and cheap nature that make possible value-producing labour; this chapter also, following Bernard Stiegler, critiques an ontology of the sign that privileges expressionism (immaterial semiotic productivity, meaning and epistemics) over impressionism (retentional systems of incarnation, reproduction and energetics). The third chapter develops a critique of representational eco-politics or the spectacular Anthropocene: following Jean Baudrillard and Yves Citton, the final “ecological deficit” emerges due to the hyperplasia of images, data and simulacra of the Anthropocene itself, whereby the referent is spectralized by the luminescent aura of the sign, resulting in complicated forms of irrelevance, boredom and attentional scarcities. Each chapter in its own way develops the speculative leitmotif of a “transcendental geology --i.e. the claim that the earth is a condition of possibility for thought

Socio-territorial conflicts over the Gulf of Tribugá. Black collectivities and the socio ontological dispute over their territory

Obwohl sozio-territoriale Konflikte sich in vielfältigen Kämpfen um Ressourcen, Raum und Umweltbedingungen manifestieren können, vertritt diese Forschung die These, dass sozio-territoriale Konflikte nicht auf diese Aspekte beschränkt sind, sondern eine ontologische Dimension beinhalten. In diesem Sinne geht es im Golf von Tribugá um die Existenzbedingungen und die Interaktionen zwischen den bestehenden Entitäten entsprechend ihrer Ontologie sowie um die Rolle, die jede Entität bei der Konstituierung des Territoriums als eine entstehende und sich ständig verändernde Kategorie spielt. Um diesen ontologischen Disput zu verstehen, kontrastiert diese Arbeit die Unterschiede und Überschneidungen zwischen Developmentalismus - der jüngsten Manifestation des Projekts der westlichen Moderne -, nachhaltigem Developmentalismus und lokalen Lebensweisen, Interaktionen und Praktiken am Golf von Tribugá. Darüber hinaus zeigt die Untersuchung einige Strategien auf, mit denen lokale Kollektive sich bestimmte abstrakte Universalismen der Moderne aneignen, sie durch die Brille ihrer eigenen Erfahrungen transformieren und so ein transmodernes und interkulturelles Territorium gestalten und verwirklichen. Transmodernität und Interkulturalität als wirtschaftlicher, sozialer und politischer Horizont impliziert die Überwindung einer Vielzahl von Konzepten, die mit der europäischen Erkenntnistheorie in Verbindung gebracht werden und die derzeit weltweit eine hegemoniale Position einnehmen. Somit beinhaltet der Kampf für einen transmodernen und interkulturellen Horizont die Infragestellung einiger der erkenntnistheoretischen und ontologischen Grundlagen dessen, was gemeinhin als "Modernität" definiert wird.Although socio-territorial conflicts might materialise through multiple struggles over resources, space and environmental conditions, the main argument of this research is that, rather than being limited to such resources or environmental conditions, socio-territorial disputes have an ontological dimension. With this in mind, what is at stake in the Gulf of Tribugá are the conditions of existence and the interactions between existing entities according to their ontology, as well as the role each entity plays in the constitution of the territory as an emerging and constantly changing category. To understand this ontological dispute, this research contrasts the differences and partial connections between developmentalism – the most recent manifestation of the project of western modernity – and local forms of inhabiting, interacting with and enacting the Gulf of Tribugá. On top of that, the research highlights some strategies through which local collectivities, by appropriating specific abstract universalisms of modernity and concretising them through the lenses of their own experiences, propose and enact a transmodern and intercultural territory. Transmodernity and interculturality as an economic, social and political horizon implies breaking up with most of the notions mainly associated with European epistemology, which are currently hegemonic all over the globe. Struggling towards a transmodern and intercultural horizon entails questioning some of the epistemological and ontological fundaments of what is commonly defined as “modernity”

Towards high throughput and spatiotemporal proteomics : analytical workflows and quantitative label-free mass spectrometry

A large part of modern biology is dedicated to the functional annotation and interpretation of genetic information and its influence on the subject__s phenotype. Proteomics describes the state of the system from the perspective of expression, structure, localization, interaction and function of the proteins. It is a complex field which requires a combination of various disciplines such as cellular biology and biochemistry for sample preparation, analytical chemistry for sample measurement and bioinformatics for the processing of data. Different chapters of this thesis illustrate various aspects of the proteomics pipeline and emphasize the importance and connection between them. Therefore the information in this dissertation can be divided into three major parts depicting these aspects of a proteomics experiment. First, sample preparation for proteomics has been addressed through two studies aimed at decreasing sample complexity and increasing proteome coverage. The second part is dedicated mostly to the technical step of the mass spectrometry measurement and the analysis of obtained spectra. The final part describes example- and proof-of-principle applications.UBL - phd migration 201

The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory

This companion explores ANT as an intellectual practice, tracking its movements and engagements with a wide range of other academic and activist projects. Showcasing the work of a diverse set of ‘second generation’ ANT scholars from around the world, it highlights the exciting depth and breadth of contemporary ANT and its future possibilities. The companion has 38 chapters, each answering a key question about ANT and its capacities. Early chapters explore ANT as an intellectual practice and highlight ANT’s dialogues with other fields and key theorists. Others open critical, provocative discussions of its limitations. Later sections explore how ANT has been developed in a range of social scientific fields and how it has been used to explore a wide range of scales and sites. Chapters in the final section discuss ANT’s involvement in ‘real world’ endeavours such as disability and environmental activism, and even running a Chilean hospital. Each chapter contains an overview of relevant work and introduces original examples and ideas from the authors’ recent research. The chapters orient readers in rich, complex fields and can be read in any order or combination. Throughout the volume, authors mobilise ANT to explore and account for a range of exciting case studies: from wheelchair activism to parliamentary decision-making; from racial profiling to energy consumption monitoring; from queer sex to Korean cities. A comprehensive introduction by the editors explores the significance of ANT more broadly and provides an overview of the volume. The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory will be an inspiring and lively companion to academics and advanced undergraduates and postgraduates from across many disciplines across the social sciences, including Sociology, Geography, Politics and Urban Studies, Environmental Studies and STS, and anyone wishing to engage with ANT, to understand what it has already been used to do and to imagine what it might do in the future