Territorial Violence and Design, 1950-2010: A Human-Computer Study of Personal Space and Chatbot Interaction

Personal space is a human’s imaginary system of precaution and an important concept for exploring territoriality, but between humans and technology because machinic agencies transfer, relocate, enact and reenact territorially. Literatures of territoriality, violence and affect are uniquely brought together, with chatbots as the research object to argue that their ongoing development as artificial agents, and the ambiguity of violence they can engender, have broader ramifications for a socio-technical research programme. These literatures help to understand the interrelation of virtual and actual spatiality relevant to research involving chatrooms and internet forums, automated systems and processes, as well as human and machine agencies; because all of these spaces, methods and agencies involve the personal sphere. The thesis is an ethical tale of cruel techno-science that is performed through conceptualisations from the creative arts, constituting a PhD by practice. This thesis chronicles four chatbots, taking into account interventions made in fine art, design, fiction and film that are omitted from a history of agent technology. The thesis re-interprets Edward Hall’s work on proxemics, personal space and territoriality, using techniques of the bricoleur and rudiments (an undeveloped and speculative method of practice), to understand chatbot techniques such as the pick-up, their entrapment logics, their repetitions of hateful speech, their nonsense talk (including how they disorientate spatial metaphors), as well as how developers switch on and off their learning functionality. Semi-structured interviews and online forum postings with chatbot developers were used to expand and reflect on the rudimentary method. To urge that this project is timely is itself a statement of anxiety. Chatbots can manipulate, exceed, and exhaust a human understanding of both space and time. Violence between humans and machines in online and offline spaces is explored as an interweaving of agency and spatiality. A series of rudiments were used to probe empirical experiments such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Tucker, 1950). The spatial metaphors of confinement as a parable of entrapment, are revealed within that logic and that of chatbots. The ‘Obedience to Authority’ experiments (Milgram, 1961) were used to reflect on the roles played by machines which are then reflected into a discussion of chatbots and the experiments done in and around them. The agency of the experimenter was revealed in the machine as evidenced with chatbots which has ethical ramifications. The argument of personal space is widened to include the ways machinic territoriality and its violence impacts on our ways of living together both in the private spheres of our computers and homes, as well as in state-regulated conditions (Directive-3, 2003). The misanthropic aspects of chatbot design are reflected through the methodology of designing out of fear. I argue that personal spaces create misanthropic design imperatives, methods and ways of living. Furthermore, the technological agencies of personal spaces have a confining impact on the transient spaces of the non-places in a wider discussion of the lift, chatroom and car. The violent origins of the chatbot are linked to various imaginings of impending disaster through visualisations, supported by case studies in fiction to look at the resonance of how anxiety transformed into terror when considering the affects of violence

A narrative exploration of the lived experience of being born, raised in, and leaving a cultic group: the case of the Exclusive Brethren

There is considerable evidence that experiences in cultic groups can be harmful. Most studies have been on First Generation former members. Second Generation former cultic group members (SGA) are an under-researched population. Multi-Generational former members (MGA), i.e. those born into families whose membership of the cultic group goes back more than two generations appear never to have been researched. This thesis underpinned by social constructionism, explores the experiences of being born and raised in The Exclusive Brethren, an exemplar of a cultic group, and subsequently leaving. As a counselling psychologist and a former member of the Brethren, this thesis is of professional and personal interest. Unstructured interviews were conducted with three male and three female participants in their mid 30s to mid 70s, who left at various times over the last 50 years. Two participants are ‘true SGA’ –their parents were the first generation to join the Brethren. The other four are MGA coming from families with a long generational history in the Brethren. A qualitative narrative inquiry methodology was used, informed by critical and dialogical narrative analysis. Each story’s interview was represented in collaboration with the storytellers using their words as far as possible. At the heart of every story lay their experience in the Brethren; the doctrines and practices forming the bedrock. The stories told how storytellers came to leave and how, in leaving, they renegotiated their identities. A cross-story view led to a continuum model of families’ degree of enmeshment with the Brethren system. The representations were viewed through the lenses of disorganised attachment and identity theory. The implications for therapy were discussed stressing the importance of therapists’ knowledge of cultic groups. Approaches need to facilitate the telling of stories focussing on attachment, identity, trauma, bereavement as well as life and relationships skills

Bonding with Robotic Pets. Children’s Cognitions, Emotions and Behaviors towards Pet-Robots. Applications in a Robot Assisted Quality of Life Intervention in a Pediatric Hospital

[eng] This dissertation addresses the emergence of emotional involvement in the interaction with social robots. More specifically, we investigate the dynamics of children bonding with robotic pets to design robot based programs to improve patients’ experience in pediatric hospitals. Pet-robots are robots that mimic real pets as dogs or cats, both in appearance and in behavior. We assume that gaining understanding of the emotional dimension of children/pet-robots interaction would contribute to evaluate the impact of pet-robots in children’s lives, and to inform both robots’ design and robot-based applications for health and wellbeing. First, this research presents a novel model of bonding with robotic pets inspired in the human-animal affiliation and particularly in child-dog relatedness, where bonding is envisaged as a process towards companionship that evolves through three stages –first impression, short-term interaction and lasting relationship- characterized by distinguishable patterns of behaviors, cognitions and feelings that can be identified and measured. Secondly, a behavioral analysis of children interacting with the Pleo robot -a robotic pet shaped as a baby dinosaur-, with an emphasis on the interactional surface and particularly on the sequences of dyad’s reciprocal exchange is presented. The outcomes are twofold: the ethograms and coding schemes of Pleo’s and children’s behaviors and a higher level categorization of behaviors involved in bond forming that can be applied to other platforms and users. Thirdly, a naturalistic study carried out in a pediatric hospital to observe the interactive practices with the Pleo robot in the wild and to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of a Pleo-based intervention to accompany children is analyzed and discussed. Inspired on the beneficial effects of real pets’ company, the study consisted in an intensive ethnography, a systematic observation of a group play session and a follow-up case study of an experience of adopting a Pleo. Our results show that the key mechanism driving bond forming is the robot’s capability to deploy credible attachment behaviors –proximity seeking and resource soliciting- that elicit complementary nurturing and play behaviors in children. Beyond the novelty effect, self-reinforcing processes as learning and evolution can keep children engaged in rewarding interaction with the robot over time. Moreover, Pleo’s versatility allows diverse modalities of interaction and individual and group play, satisfying different needs as company, technological curiosity, entertainment and social facilitation both for normatively developed children and for children with special needs and their families. In general, the introduction of robot-based play was regarded by the hospital professionals not only as compatible with their daily day practice but valuable as a regular resource to smooth children’s stay at the hospital.[cat] Aquesta tesi aborda el sorgiment de la implicació emocional en la interacció amb els robots socials. Més específicament, s'investiga la dinàmica de la afiliació dels nens amb les mascotes robòtiques – robots que evoquen els animals de companyia- per tal de dissenyar programes basats en robots per millorar l'experiència dels pacients en els hospitals pediàtrics. Considerem que investigar la dimensió emocional de la interacció nen/robots-mascota contribuirà a avaluar-ne el seu impacte en la vida del nens i nenes, i a informar el disseny d’aquests robots i de les aplicacions que se’n deriven per a la seva salut i benestar. A partir d’un model evolutiu original de vinculació nen-robot inspirat en la afiliació d'humans i animals - i més concretament, en la relació nen-gos- s’analitza el comportament de nens interactuant amb el robot Pleo –robot mascota en forma de nadó dinosaure-, amb un èmfasi en les seqüències d'intercanvi recíproc de la diada. Els resultats són de dos tipus: els etogrames del Pleo i dels nens, i una categorització conductual a més alt nivell, aplicables a altres plataformes i usuaris. A partir d’aquest estudi, s’analitza una experiència d’intervenció en un hospital pediàtric per observar les pràctiques interactives amb el robot Pleo, i per avaluar la viabilitat i l'eficàcia d'una intervenció basada en el Pleo per acompanyar els nens. Inspirat en els efectes beneficiosos de la companyia de mascotes reals, l'estudi va consistir en una etnografia, una anàlisi observacional d'una sessió de joc en grup amb el robot, i un estudi de cas longitudinal d'una experiència d’adopció d’un Pleo. Els resultats mostren que l’aspecte clau que impulsa la formació del vincle és la capacitat del robot per desplegar conductes d’aferrament creïbles –cerca de proximitat i sol·licitud de recursos- que provoquen comportaments complementaris de criança i joc en els nens, més enllà de l'efecte novetat. D'altra banda, la versatilitat de Pleo permet diverses modalitats d'interacció i joc, i satisfer diferents necessitats dels usuaris, com ara companyia, curiositat, entreteniment i facilitació social, també per nens i nenes amb necessitats especials i les seves famílies. En general, la introducció del joc basat en el robot va ser considerada pels professionals de l'hospital no només compatible amb la seva pràctica professional, sinó també com un recurs valuós per alleugerir l'estada dels nens a l'hospital

(Un)filial daughters and digital feminisms in China: The stories of awakening, resisting, and finding comrades

This thesis sets out to understand Chinese feminist struggles in a so-called digital era by looking at the experiences and practices of an emerging generation of digital feminists that came into light in Chinese feminist movements. Conceptually and methodologically, this research took inspirations from an interdisciplinary body of literature including feminist theory, sociology, media and cultural studies, girlhood studies and gender studies. Inspired by online ethnography and feminist participatory methodologies, it combined an online tracking of feminist events on Weibo with semi-structured interviews and social media diary study with 21 Chinese girls and young women. This thesis explores the embedded and embodied experiences of these participants as they discover and learn about feminism, resist and challenge gender and sexual inequalities, and try to build connections with like-minded people within and beyond the digital sphere. By charting feminist responses and resistance to familial discourses and norms around girlhood and young femininity, I show the emergence of feminist subjectivities of (un)filial daughters that arises from but also comes to reconfigure gender and sexuality within a neoliberal and postsocialist context of patriarchal familism in China. I build upon the concepts of networked counterpublics and networked affects to explore how these (un)filial daughters are networked to carve out spaces for feminist discussion in social media. Employing an affective-discursive analysis, I also tune into how networked feminist resistance and alliances are formed not merely on the basis of how women and feminists talk about these issues but also how they feel

Actor & Avatar: A Scientific and Artistic Catalog

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of "technical others" and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material

Divergent femininities in British film, 1945-59

British cinema of the post-war period has often been characterised as anodyne in terms of gender relations, with the exciting 'wicked ladies' of the war years erased in favour of more conservative versions of femininity. Recent writing (Geraghty, 2000, Harper and Porter, 2003) has brought challenges to bear on this paradigm and opened up a critical space for a more nuanced analysis of gender. This thesis considers representations of divergent femininities in post-WWII British films, that is, female characters who function as liminal figures and who queer boundaries between normative and divergent femininity. I explore how divergent femininities are constructed and the extent to which gender conservatism can be challenged in films from the period. A number of well-known (cross-genre) films, such as Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) and Mandy (1952), are analysed, augmented by other films that have received little critical attention, for example, The Perfect Woman (1949), Dear Murderer (1947) and Young Wives' Tale (1951). This study employs detailed textual and semiotic analyses (film, reviews, publicity material, critical writings) to produce a historicised feminist reading of 1950s films and femininity and, by combining attention to visual style with an analysis of contextual material, complements existing scholarship which emphasises film production and reception.This thesis explores the extent to which female desire for autonomy, excitement and social mobility could be expressed in 1950s films, and how women questioned their 'proper place' in the gendered social economy. Women's function as housewives is problematised in ways that enter into contemporaneous debates about modernity and consumerism. The heterosexual nuclear family survives as the preferred familial model but the difficulty of mothering is dramatised in ways that challenge hegemonic maternity. Heteroromance and marriage remain the central goal for all women and censorship largely curtails the depiction of female sexuality outside this paradigm. A space however is opened up for women to voice desire for something in addition to the role of wife and mother and in this respect these liminal figures represent a cultural contestation of normative femininity. They shore up - whilst simultaneously challenging - certain ideals of femininity and in doing so speak of the consolidation and transformation of gender relations in post-war British society, suggesting a more dynamic model than has been acknowledged

Aviation maintenance in multicultural settings : the challenges of cultural tolerance and of employees' maintenance resource management/human factors (MRM/HF) awareness

This thesis deals with two major issues, the first is the multicultural nature of many Aircraft Maintenance Technicians (AMTs) teams and the way in which cross-cultural communication and/or barriers to communication might affect teams' performance; and the second is the practice of Maintenance Resource Management/Human Factors (MRM/HF) in developing countries. Using the questionnaire method, this research examines the opinions of AMTs and maintenance supervisors from eight maintenance organisations regarding their attitudes to colleagues from other nations and cultures, and how this might affect their performance in the workplace. It also seeks to probe the respondents' attitudes to, for example, stress, responsibility, attitude to authority and handling conflict, considering these opinions alongside the national and cultural backgrounds of the participants. In order to do this, the respondents themselves were organised into different "culture groups" with the national characteristics of the groups being defined according to Hofstede's ideas of individualistic and collectivistic societies. The thesis begins from the premise that most AMTs demonstrate greater individualistic tendencies than airline pilots, and while their individualism may be partly traceable to the signatory authority of A&P, other factors, such as education, training and working/ socialising with Westerners, are also important influences. This study aims to show that a large contingent of AMTs and maintenance supervisors from collectivistic cultures share many of the attitudes and work goals of individualists. For example, this study will show that AMTs and maintenance supervisors from most collectivistic cultures lean towards a preference for a command style that is closer to the egalitarian pole than to the hierarchical one; tend to reject the idea of blind obedience to supervisors; tend to believe that technical merit, not social status or good connections, makes for successful managers; lean towards the acceptance of only a modicum of rules to deal with the issue of uncertainty in the workplace; tend to favour work goals that pertain to their personal needs and career aspirations, etc. The study also sheds light on AMTs and maintenance supervisors' belief systems, inter-ethnic stereotypes and feuds in the workplace, and on that basis, constructs profiles of the eight aviation maintenance organisations previously mentioned. This also addresses the question of whether these companies have met the cultural diversity and MRMawareness challenges. The analysis specifically provides answers to the fundamental questions of this study, such as whether AMTs and maintenance supervisors from some collectivistic cultural groups do, in fact, have attitudes and work goals that are similar to those of AMTs and maintenance supervisors from individualistic cultural groups; whether ANITs, as a professional group, are actually more individualistic than are airline pilots from the same countries in attitudes and work goals; to what extent ANITs' work-related attitudes and values are universal, or are influenced by their national cultures; whether placing AMTs from different national cultures in the same work teams has deleterious effects on the functioning of an aviation organisation; whether multicultural teams face insurmountable problems as functioning units because of stereotypes, discrimination, and other ills; whether the management of aviation maintenance organisations has been meeting the challenges of cultural diversity effectively, i. e. whether management has minimised cultural diversity as a potential performance barrier, and has, instead, begun to mine value-added potential of cultural diversity; and whether aviation maintenance organisations have met the NIRM-awareness challenge

Phenomenological Study of Engaging Mindset Development in Authentic, Applied Learning Environments in a Secondary School

This qualitative, phenomenological study investigated the perceptions of 16 adults regarding their learning experiences while enrolled as high school students in journalism or engineering classes. The study focused on students\u27 participation in these applied learning experiences, and the effects on the initial and subsequent development of engaging mindsets , also known as noncognitive mindsets (self-efficacy, belief in effort-based achievement, sense of belonging, and appreciating the value and meaning of work), in their post-secondary educational and career experiences. Participants described seven factors of the learning environment positively affecting their learning and future growth: complex, open-ended problem solving; choice and creativity; student independence; real world relevance; products or performances for authentic audiences; relationship and collaboration skill development; and the shifted role of the teacher. Participants conveyed four key enduring effects of applied learning experiences carrying forward into their adulthood: increased autonomy, cognitive freedom, and willingness to take risks; appreciation for collaborative, empowering relationships; meaningful self-discovery; and a greater sense of purpose. I analyzed the participants\u27 reflections through the lens of three theoretical frameworks: educational theories related to applied learning environment design, self-determination theory regarding universal psychological needs, and theories looking at the importance of authentic, real world experiences. I discovered applied learning might hold promise for developing engaging mindsets. Applied learning creates an educational structure teachers can follow, contains elements that fulfill universal psychological needs, and includes important, authentic, real world connections for students