28 research outputs found
Mediating Human-Technology Relationships: Explorations of Hybridity, Humanity and Embodiment in Doctor Who
Get PDFThe relationship between human beings and technology has been a regular concern of the television series, Doctor Who. Though its titular hero moves through space-time by means of advanced technology and he is by his own admission a technological genius and Doctor 'of everything really', the program nevertheless consistently maps the unease that attends the interaction of humans and the technology - whether through the human characters' horror at the abuse of technology and its power or through characters who incorporate this interaction.The trope of the cyborg, the human-machine hybrid that articulates many contemporary fears (and desires) about the intrusion of technology on the 'human' is enacted and embodied in Doctor Who by the Daleks and the Cybermen - long-term enemies of the Doctor. In the recent new series (2005-2009) featuring Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant both Daleks and Cybermen have returned, to enact contemporary concerns about new technologies. This paper explores the recent Dalek double-episode, "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" (2007) for its representation of current human-technology relationships
Introduction, LTC volume 17
Get PDFThis collection of articles was prompted by our concern with the ways in which the treatment of strangers is understood socially, culturally, politically and legally. The actions of successive Australian governments seem deliberately to avoid any engagement with a notion of hospitality as an obligation to assist those in need, to accommodate the visitor or the alien. The arrival of strangers is instead viewed as hostile – an infringement of national sovereignty, rather than an appeal for assistance. The common social response is a kind of panic that is not justified by the number of applicants, which is tiny by comparison with the demands on nation states elsewhere. This seems a deadly irony in a country that was founded as a nation-state by immigrants – and perhaps something of the hysteria aroused by the arrival of supplicants is a displaced recognition among non-Indigenous Australians that they are us; if we admit these strangers, perhaps they will ‘settle’ this country as violently as our forerunners did, but this time we will be the targets. Whether or not that is the case, it seemed that the time is ripe for an examination of the notion of hospitality
THE STRATEGY OF UTOPIA: A STUDY OF IDEOLOGY AND CONFLICT IN WILLIAM MORRIS' NEWS FROM NOWHERE
Get PDFIn 1890 William Morris published his utopian romance, News from Nowhere as a serial in the Socialist League newspaper, Common weal. Recently this text has been the subject of articles by, among others, E.P. Thompson (1977), Perry Anderson (1980), John Goode (1971) and Bernard Sharratt (1980). All have attempted to understand Morris' use of the utopian text as propaganda for the socialist movement, and so to challenge views of utopianism as worthless and regressive. Both Thompson and Sharratt agree that Morris used the utopia innovatively to produce functional socialist propaganda· which Thompson (1977:79) called, after French critic Abensour, the 'education of desire'. Although I do not agree entirely with Thompson's argument, my analysis of News from Nowhere as a utopian text supports the Thompson·Sharratt case · that Morris' text, and other utopian texts, can contribute effectively to the critique of capitalist society and the formation of new, revolutionary, social theory
Contents and contributors, LTC volume 17
Get PDFContents and contributors, Law Text Culture, volume 17
Spinning the web : an analysis of a web site
No full textThis chapter explores the theory and methodology of Web site analysis from the viewpoint of a theorist and occasional consultant. I begin with an overview of my analysis of the Australian government Web site, “Documenting a Democracy”, as it illustrates some of the issues that are raised in the ensuing discussion. The analysis was commissioned by the National Archives of Australia.18 page(s
