Real-time internet control of situated human agents

We present an online platform, called BeeMe, designed to test the current boundaries of Internet collective action and problem solving. BeeMe allows a scalable internet crowd of online users to collectively control the actions of a human surrogate acting in physical space. BeeMe demonstrates how intelligent goal-oriented decision-making can emerge from large crowds in quasi real-time. We analyzed data collected from a global BeeMe live performance that involved thousands of individuals, collectively solving a sci-fi Internet mystery. We study simple heuristic algorithms that read in users' chat messages and output human actionable commands representing majority preferences, and compare their performance to the behavior of a human operator solving the same task. Results show that simple heuristics can achieve near-human performance in interpreting the democratic consensus. When human and machine's output differ, the discrepancy is often due to human bias favoring non-representative views. We discuss our results in light of previous work and the contemporary debate on democratic digital systems

La reina de Sabà i el preste Joan en les cartes portolanes medievals

The luxury medieval portolan charts use to take a varied decoration of historical, ethnographic, natural or religious type, apart from the geographical symbols (urban, water, orographical...). Among the historical or legendary prominent figures –who have a political base– we find the queen of Saba and Preste Joan, particularly assiduous to the Majorcan cartography, studied here across a historic and artistic prism.Las cartas portulanas de lujo medievales suelen llevar una decoración variada de tipo histórico, etnográfico, naturalístico o religioso, aparte de la simbología geográfica (urbana, hídrica, orográfica...). Entre los personajes históricos o legendarios –que tienen un transfondo político– encontramos a la reina de Saba y al Preste Joan, particularmente asiduos a la cartografía mallorquina, estudiada aquí a través de un prisma históricoartístic

The small-world network of global protests

Protest diffusion is a cascade process that can spread over different regions of the planet. The way and the extension that this phenomenon can occur is still not properly understood. Here, we empirically investigate this question using protest data from GDELT and ICEWS, two of the most extensive and longest-running data sets freely available. We divide the globe into grid cells and construct a temporal network for each data set where nodes represent cells and links are established between nodes if their protest events co-occur. We show that the temporal networks are small-world, indicating that the cells are directly linked or separated by a few steps on average. Furthermore, the average path lengths are decreasing through the years, which suggests that the world is becoming “smaller”. The persistent temporal hubs present in both data sets indicate that protests can spread faster through the hubs. This topological feature is consistent with the hypothesis that protests can quickly diffuse from one region to any other part of the globe

Sucessos fatales desta ciudad, y Reyno de Valencia o Puntual Diario de lo sucedido en los Años de 1705, 1706 y 1707 [Manuscrito] : Tomo I

En algunas notas del ms. y en lomo se le da el título de "Dietario"En. v. de h. 324 consta lugar, fecha y nombre del copista : "Valencia y Diciembre de 1899, L. Cebrián"Enc. hol

Una lectura de Água Viva de Clarice Lispector a la llum de la crítica literaria feminista de Françoise Collin

Màster d'Estudis de Dones, Gènere i Ciutadania, Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat de Geografia i Història, any: 2015-2016, Tutora: Elena LaurenziEl cor d’aquest treball de final de màster és la lectura de Água Viva de Clarice Lispector (1910-1977) des d’una visió de la crítica literària amb perspectiva feminista que superi tota pretesa d’abraçar les obres escrites per autores com a constitutives i definidores del que és femení. En altres paraules, es pretén evitar caure en la mirada tradicional de certa crítica feminista que acaba reduint tota obra a la expressió de la especificitat femenina lligada a la condició sexual de la seva autora. Es vol fer lectura de Água Viva en clau d’espai de negociació en el qual Lispector inscriu la seva singularitat, la seva paraula i la seva experiència femenina. I per això, per poder assolir tal objectiu, s’ha considerat posar en diàleg a Clarice Lispector i Françoise Collin (1928-2012), la filòsofa belga que, tot buscant el nexe entre política i escriptura, apostà per una crítica literària feminista capaç d’acollir la revelació de tota autora sense renunciar a llegir la seva obra amb la mirada i les qüestions que deriven del feminisme, i qui també proclamà que ser feminista avui en dia “podria ser renunciar a saber què vol dir dona per escoltar què diu una dona” (Collin 2006:184)