41,196 research outputs found
Revisiting digital technologies: envisioning biodigital bodies
In this paper the contemporary practices of human genomics in the 21st century are placed alongside the digital bodies of the 1990s. The primary aim is to provide a trajectory of the biodigital as follows: First, digital bodies and biodigital bodies were both part of the spectacular imaginaries of early cybercultures. Second, these spectacular digital bodies were supplemented in the mid-1990s by digital bodywork practices that have become an important dimension of everyday communication. Third, the spectacle of biodigital bodies is in the process of being supplemented by biodigital bodywork practices, through personal or direct-to-consumer genomics. This shift moves a form of biodigital communication into the everyday. Finally, what can be learned from putting the trajectories of digital and biodigital bodies together is that the degree of this communicative shift may be obscured through the doubled attachment of personal genomics to everyday digital culture and high-tech spectacle.Keywords: genomics, biodigital, bodies, spectacle, everyda
Shifting realities: Tron cyberspace and the “New” consciousness in 21st Century technoscapes
The existing direction of the (mis)use of information technologies founded on the deceptively secular rationalised heritage of scientism, arguably spells the increasing proximity to a dystopian nightmare that is far from mere fiction and imbued with the eternal religious symbolic of the battle between good and evil, as depicted in the 2010 science fiction film Tron: Legacy . The historical contextualisation of events in the film reveals the promise of the unfolding of an advanced sensibility alongside these concerns, in which fantasy and science converge to liberate humanity from an increasingly limiting worldview, and information and images serve as conduits to the sacred. The critical role information stands to play in humanity’s conscious evolution is outlined in the proposed development of a “dream systems theory”, where dreams capes are defined as interconnected systems of imaginal data
Continuous Gravitational Waves from Isolated Galactic Neutron Stars in the Advanced Detector Era
We consider a simulated population of isolated Galactic neutron stars. The
rotational frequency of each neutron star evolves through a combination of
electromagnetic and gravitational wave emission. The magnetic field strength
dictates the dipolar emission, and the ellipticity (a measure of a neutron
star's deformation) dictates the gravitational wave emission. Through both
analytic and numerical means, we assess the detectability of the Galactic
neutron star population and bound the magnetic field strength and ellipticity
parameter space of Galactic neutron stars with or without a direct
gravitational wave detection. While our simulated population is primitive, this
work establishes a framework by which future efforts can be conducted.Comment: Accepted for publication by Physical Review D, 8 pages, 5 figure
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Firm technological responses to regulatory changes: A longitudinal study in the Le Mans Prototype racing
Despite the critical role of regulations on competition and innovation, little is known about firm responses and related effects on performance under regulatory contingencies that are permissive or restrictive. By longitudinally investigating hybrid cars competing in the Le Mans Prototype racing (LMP1), we counter-intuitively suggest that permissive regulations increase technological uncertainty and thus decrease the firms’ likelihood of shifting their technological trajectory, while restrictive regulations lead to the opposite outcome. Further, we suggest that permissive regulations favour firms that innovate their products by sequentially upgrading core and peripheral subsystems, while restrictive regulations—in the long term— favour firms upgrading them simultaneously. Implications for theory and practice are discussed
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