1,790 research outputs found
EastâWest Perspectives on Privacy, Ethical Pluralism and Global Information Ethics
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are both primary drivers and facilitating technologies of globalizationâand thereby, of exponentially expanding possibilities of cross-cultural encounters. Currently, over one billion persons throughout the planet have access to the Web: of these, Asian users constitute 35.8% of the Web population, while Europeans make up 28.3 % of world usersâand North Americans only 20.9% (Internet World Stats, 2007). Our histories teach us all too well that such encountersâespecially concerning potentially global ethical normsâalways run the risk of devolving into more destructive rather than emancipatory events. Speci?cally, these encounters risk pulling us into one of two contradictory positions. First of all, naĂŻve ethnocentrisms too easily issue in imperialisms that remake âthe Otherâ in oneâs own imageâprecisely by eliminating the irreducible differences in norms and practices that de?ne distinctive cultures. Second, these imperialisms thereby inspire a relativistic turn to the sheerly localâprecisely for the sake of preserving local identities and cultures. Hence the general problem: how we might foster a cross-cultural communication for a global ICE that steers between the two Manichean polarities of ethnocentric imperialism and fragmenting relativism
Psychopower and Ordinary Madness: Reticulated Dividuals in Cognitive Capitalism
Despite the seemingly neutral vantage of using nature for widely-distributed computational purposes, neither post-biological nor post-humanist teleology simply concludes with the real "end of nature" as entailed in the loss of the specific ontological status embedded in the identifier "natural." As evinced by the ecological crises of the Anthropoceneâof which the 2019 Brazil Amazon rainforest fires are only the most recentâour epoch has transfixed the ânatural order" and imposed entropic artificial integration, producing living species that become âanoetic,â made to serve as automated exosomatic residues, or digital flecks. I further develop Gilles Deleuzeâs description of control societies to upturn Foucauldian biopower, replacing its spacio-temporal bounds with the exographic excesses in psycho-power; culling and further detailing Bernard Stieglerâs framework of transindividuation and hyper-control, I examine how becoming-subject is predictively facilitated within cognitive capitalism and what Alexander Galloway terms âdeep digitality.â Despite the loss of material vestiges qua virtualizationâwhich I seek to trace in an historical review of industrialization to postindustrializationâthe drive-based and reticulated "internet of things" facilitates a closed loop from within the brain to the outside environment, such that the aperture of thought is mediated and compressed. The human brain, understood through its material constitution, is susceptible to total dataficationâs laminated process of âbecoming-mnemotechnical,â and, as neuroplasticity is now a valid description for deep-learning and neural nets, we are privy to the rebirth of the once-discounted metaphor of the âcybernetic brain.â Probing algorithmic governmentality while posing noetic dreaming as both technical and pharmacological, I seek to analyze how spirit is blithely confounded with machine-thinkingâs gelatinous cognition, as prosthetic organ-adaptation becomes probabilistically molded, networked, and agentially inflected (rather than simply externalized)
Architecture and the creation of worlds
This thesis is an enquiry by creative practice into the academic and aesthetic
(avant-garde) practice of architecture. It explores the notion of the virtual as
pure potentiality following an event, and defines architecture as the site of such
potentiality. (Alain Badiou names event as the moment /encounter which initiates
a radical break from a given situation /state of affairs. There are four types of
event: artistic, political, scientific and amorous).The thesis follows two parallel strands of enquiry. One, into the material
production of the architectural object and topological space, this is titled the
actual; and the other, an investigation into the philosophical and antagonistic
nature of the virtual, this is titled the virtual. The actual deals with the literature
review, methodology, context of study and proposal for (the site of) actual
engagement with theory, including a design element (House of the Chinese
Mantis); while the virtual explores (through a series of five international and
interdisciplinary conference papers) the philosophical problems of emergence.
The 'context of study' in the actual centres around the move from the fetish of
commodities to seduction and concludes with eroticism, while the body of work
in the virtual concentrates on the notions of sovereignty, becoming, and concrete
subjectivity.Following the technological practices of the avant-garde between hypersurface
theory and catalytic formations in architecture, the thesis rejects the claims of
virtual space as the digital space of computer -based design, and of emergence as
mimetic and /or algorithm based design. It argues that the virtual is the
intangible space of creative unfolding following Bergson and Deleuze, but
resists the claim in Deleuze that event is a chance occurring. Also, it resists the
claim in Baudrillard that seduction and /or enchanted simulation are event and
abandons them to focus on the amorous (one of the four events in Badiou). This
creates an inflection in the enquiry, moving the thesis towards Plato and the
Renaissance, and a contemporary resurrection in architecture, of the tragic, as
concrete manifestation of the amorous encounter.The method of inquiry is structured after the nomadic logic of the War Machine
in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, and of the revolutionary nature of
fidelity to the scientific event in Badiou, which argues that new knowledge is
created by 'revolutions' and from the anomalies and collaborations which arise
as a result of such 'detours'; it is a strategy justified by the science historians
Feyerabend, Kuhn and Lakatos.The thesis takes the form of two books (the actual and the virtual), and concludes
that the avant-garde practice of architecture, with its infinite potentialities is
distinct from the bureaucratic or State apparatus of building, and that the
commonplace appropriation of the avant-garde by the State, as seen in the
institutional recourse to parametrics, appears unproductive and uncreative with
regard to knowledge
The Interface is Obsolete: A Critical Investigation of the Digital interface in Interactive New Media Installations
My thesis proposes a critical framework for understanding the digital interface in interactive
new media installations. I aim at dispelling the instrumental, cybernetic, âaction-reactionâ
myth that surrounds the functions of the interface and that constitutes one of the main
limitations in its conceptualization today. I argue that a rethinking of the digital interface in
terms of its aesthetic and cultural properties is essential if we are to take digital interfaces
seriously as devices that inform or even, to some extent, structure our relationship with
technology.
Theorists who work in the interdisciplinary field of interface studies have historically been
preoccupied with the technical and instrumental functions the interface performs â
specifically with how it acts and reacts to pre-programmed information. To do this, they have
predominantly drawn on computer science and engineering perspectives. Thus digital
interfaces have commonly been understood as the symbolic software that enables humans to
use computers. My thesis approaches the digital interface from a different direction,
concentrating on the aesthetic and cultural aspects of the digital interface, and drawing on
scholarship from the fields of art history and media studies. In particular, I focus on critically
examining how various interfaces are defined within art environments and how they
influence the way subjects, objects, and the relationships and processes that exist between
them are understood in these disciplinary fields and practices. Throughout, I propose a more
expansive definition of the digital interface in interactive new media installations, positioning
it as a dynamic, hybrid, aesthetic and cultural process. I thus reformulate the problem of the
digital interface as a problem of making the often invisible aspects of the device legible.
Ultimately, I argue that the interface mediates, thus creates, to an extent, relationships
between viewer/participants, artists and artworks as well as influences the movements and
perceptions of those interacting with it. This reading enables me to conclude that the digital
interface can be seen as an important actor in positioning and (re)shaping specific ways in
which the self relates to technology, to artistic practice and to other human and nonhuman
beings in the current media culture. At the heart of this thesis is the notion that the digital
interface matters and that a critical exploration of it in aesthetic contexts can help us
understand and possibly reconfigure our human relationship with technology
Jens Glad Balchen: A Norwegian Pioneer in Engineering Cybernetics
This paper tells the story of Jens Glad Balchen (1926-2009), a Norwegian research scientist and engineer who is widely regarded as the father of Engineering Cybernetics in Norway. In 1954, he founded what would later become the Department of Automatic Control at the Norwegian Institute of Technology in Trondheim. This name was changed to the Department of Engineering Cybernetics in 1972 to reflect the broader efforts being made, not only within the purely technical disciplines, but also within biology, oceanography and medicine. Balchen established an advanced research community in cybernetics in postwar Norway, whose applications span everything from the process industry and positioning of ships to control of fish and lobster farming. He was a chief among the tribe of Norwegian cybernetics engineers and made a strong impact on his colleagues worldwide. He planted the seeds of a whole generation of Norwegian industrial companies through his efforts of seeking applications for every scientific breakthrough. His strength and his wisdom in combination with his remarkable stubbornness gave extraordinary results
Recommended from our members
Inventing Intelligence: On the History of Complex Information Processing and Artificial Intelligence in the United States in the Mid-Twentieth Century
In the mid-1950s, researchers in the United States melded formal theories of problem solving and intelligence with another powerful new tool for control: the electronic digital computer. Several branches of western mathematical science emerged from this nexus, including computer science (1960sâ), data science (1990sâ) and artificial intelligence (AI). This thesis offers an account of the origins and politics of AI in the mid-twentieth century United States, which focuses on its imbrications in systems of societal control. In an effort to denaturalize the power relations upon which the field came into being, I situate AIâs canonical origin story in relation to the structural and intellectual priorities of the U.S. military and American industry during the Cold War, circa 1952 to 1961.
This thesis offers a detailed and comparative account of the early careers, research interests, and key outputs of four researchers often credited with laying the foundations for AI and machine learningâHerbert A. Simon, Frank Rosenblatt, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky. It chronicles the distinct ways in which each sought to formalise and simulate human mental behaviour using digital electronic computers. Rather than assess their contributions as discontinuous with what came before, as in mythologies of AI's genesis, I establish continuities with, and borrowings from, management science and operations research (Simon), Hayekian economics and instrumentalist statistics (Rosenblatt), automatic coding techniques and pedagogy (McCarthy), and cybernetics (Minsky), along with the broadscale mobilization of Cold War-era civilian-led military science generally.
I assess how Minskyâs 1961 paper 'Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence' simultaneously consolidated and obscured these entanglements as it set in motion an initial research agenda for AI in the following two decades. I argue that mind-computer metaphors, and research in complex information processing generally, played an important role in normalizing the small- and large-scale structuring of social behaviour using mathematics in the United States from the second half of the twentieth century onward
Ambivalent animal
The Ambivalent Animal project explores the interactions of animals, culture and technology. The project employs both artistic practice and critical theory, each in ways that inspire the other. My creative practice centers around two projects that focus on domestic pets. These projects highlight the animal's uncertain status as they explore the overlapping ontologies of animal, human and machine. They provide concrete artifacts that engage with theoretical issues of anthropocentrism, animality and alterity. My theoretical work navigates between the fields of animal studies, art and design, media and culture studies, and philosophy. My dissertation explores animality through four real and imagined animal roles: cyborg, clone, chimera and shapeshifter. Each animal role is considered in relation to three dialectics: irreducibility and procedurality, autonomy and integration, aura and abjection. These dialectics do not seek full synthesis but instead embrace the oscillations of irresolvable debates and desires. The dialectics bring into focus issues of epistemology, ontology, corporeality and subjectivity. When the four animal roles engage the three dialectics, connected yet varied themes emerge. The cyborgian animal is simultaneously liberated and regulated, assisted and restricted, integrated and isolated. The cloned animal is an emblem of renewal and loss; she is both idealized code and material flesh and finds herself caught in the battles of nature and nurture. The chimera is both rebel and conformist; his unusual juxtapositions pioneer radical corporeal transgressions but also conform to the mechanisms of global capital. And the shapeshifter explores the thrill and anxiety of an altered phenomenology; she gains new perceptions though unstable subjectivity. These roles reveal corporeal adjustments and unfamiliar subjectivities that inspire the creative practice.
Both my writing and making employ an ambivalent aesthetic--an aesthetic approach that evokes two or more incompatible sensibilities.
The animal's uncertain status contributes to this aesthetic: some animals enjoy remarkable care and attention, while others are routinely exploited, abused and discarded. Ambivalence acknowledges the complexity of lived experience, philosophical and political debate, and academic inquiry. My approach recognizes the light and dark of these complex ambivalences--it privileges paradox and embraces the confusion and wonder of creative research. Rather than erase, conceal or resolve ambiguity, an ambivalent aesthetic foregrounds the limits of language and representation and highlights contradiction and irresolution.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Bolter, Jay; Committee Member: DiSalvo, Carl; Committee Member: Do, Ellen; Committee Member: Prophet, Jane; Committee Member: Thacker, Eugen
Life Expansion: Toward an Artistic, Design-Based Theory of the Transhuman / Posthuman
The thesisâ study of life expansion proposes a framework for artistic, design-based
approaches concerned with prolonging human life and sustaining personal identity. To
delineate the topic: life expansion means increasing the length of time a person is alive and
diversifying the matter in which a person exists. For human life, the length of time is
bounded by a single century and its matter is tied to biology. Life expansion is located in
the domain of human enhancement, distinctly linked to technological interfaces with
biology.
The thesis identifies human-computer interaction and the potential of emerging and
speculative technologies as seeding the promulgation of human enhancement that approach
life expansion. In doing so, the thesis constructs an inquiry into historical and current
attempts to append human physiology and intervene with its mortality. By encountering
emerging and speculative technologies for prolonging life and sustaining personal identity
as possible media for artistic, design-based approaches to human enhancement, a new axis
is sought that identifies the transhuman and posthuman as conceptual paradigms for life
expansion.
The thesis asks: What are the required conditions that enable artistic, design-based
approaches to human enhancement that explicitly pursue extending human life? This
question centers on the potential of the studyâs proposed enhancement technologies in their
relationship to life, death, and the human condition. Notably, the thesis investigates artistic
approaches, as distinct from those of the natural sciences, and the borders that need to be
mediated between them.
The study navigates between the domains of life extension, art and design,
technology, and philosophy in forming the framework for a theory of life expansion. The
critical approach seeks to uncover invisible borders between these interconnecting forces
by bringing to light issues of sustaining life and personal identity, ethical concerns,
including morphological freedom and extinction risk. Such issues relate to the thesisâ
interest in life expansion and the use emerging and speculative technologies.
4
The study takes on a triad approach in its investigation: qualitative interviews with
experts of the emerging and speculative technologies; field studies encountering research
centers of such technologies; and an artistic, autopoietic process that explores the heuristics
of life expansion. This investigation forms an integrative view of the human use of
technology and its melioristic aim. The outcome of the research is a theoretical framework
for further research in artistic approaches to life expansion
Faculty Publications and Creative Works 2004
Faculty Publications & Creative Works is an annual compendium of scholarly and creative activities of University of New Mexico faculty during the noted calendar year. Published by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, it serves to illustrate the robust and active intellectual pursuits conducted by the faculty in support of teaching and research at UNM
- âŠ