A history of inanimate minds

A response to Jonathan Lamb’s thought-provoking discussion of material culture and It-narratives offered in ‘The Things Things Say’

Les jardins zoologiques ou l'exotique à portée de main

International audienceThis paper shows how the exotic is a key concept to analyse zoos. Wherever their location in the world, zoos always show the same core collection. Looking at what continents and animals zoos present, we can analyse them as a form of microcosm of the world, mainly constructed through the lenses of colonisation. Zoos try to build a place that is away in space and time, at a supposed golden age when few technology was between Nature and Mankind.Cet article montre comment l'exotique est au fondement de ce qui est présenté dans les zoos. Quelle que soit leur localisation dans le monde, le cœur de leurs collections est d'une remarquable stabilité. A travers le choix des continents représentés et le type de mise en scène des animaux, ils peuvent s'analyser comme des miniatures du monde reflétant largement le legs de la colonisation. L'exotique du zoo renvoie à un ailleurs spatial mais aussi temporel, dans un age d'or supposé, où la technologie ne s'intercalait pas entre l'homme et la nature

Mobility and Anxious Cosmopolitanism: Jamaica Kincaid's Among Flowers

This essay focuses on a particular site of the transnational: mobility. Reading a contemporary travel narrative, Jamaica Kincaid's Among Flowers, it maps the articulation of a certain 'anxious cosmopolitanism'. Two intertwined discourses produce this anxious cosmopolitanism. Kincaid, I propose, presents a discourse of the uncertain traveller, nervous and hesitant in the Himalaya, even as she is alert to her privileged First World role. A second discourse, that of the cultural insider, with her expertise in plants and gardening situates her within a larger and longer tradition, which also includes, problematically, colonial plant collection. Finally, Kincaid, through acts of memory citizenship, refuses to be identified exclusively within the colonial tradition, foregrounds her horticultural insiderness and multiple allegiances that are local and global

Contract Law and Decisions on Costs

The national statutes on international commercial arbitration, the leges arbitri, do, as a rule, not contain provisions on costs. In the final award, an arbitrator has to determine the costs of the arbitration (the fees of the arbitral tribunals, of expert witnesses mandated by the arbitral tribunal etc.), which cost incurred by the parties during the arbitration are recoverable and which party has to bear what share of the costs. A decision on these issues forms part of the ordinary course of an arbitration. Further cost-related issues may arise due to the peculiarities of the case, such as a refusal of one of the parties to contribute to the financing of the arbitration. Resorting to agreements may provide a satisfactory means for certain decisions on costs in arbitration proceedings; this is by making use of the contractual nature of these agreements; by asking whether these agreements can be interpreted in a way that gives an answer to the issue at stake or - as in the case of security for costs - whether the contract may be amended to grant a motion for security for costs. It is submitted that the reasoning so achieved is at least as convincing and consistent as other approaches solicited by doctrine. Therefore, it is further submitted that this approach should be considered when an issue arises that is not addressed in the lex arbitri or the institutional arbitration rules

Stream ciphers: A Practical Solution for Efficient Homomorphic-Ciphertext Compression

International audienceIn typical applications of homomorphic encryption, the first step consists for Alice to encrypt some plaintext m under Bob’s public key pk and to send the ciphertext c = HEpk(m) to some third-party evaluator Charlie. This paper specifically considers that first step, i.e. the problem of transmitting c as efficiently as possible from Alice to Charlie. As previously noted, a form of compression is achieved using hybrid encryption. Given a symmetric encryption scheme E, Alice picks a random key k and sends a much smaller ciphertext c′ = (HEpk(k), Ek(m)) that Charlie decompresses homomorphically into the original c using a decryption circuit CE−1 .In this paper, we revisit that paradigm in light of its concrete implemen- tation constraints; in particular E is chosen to be an additive IV-based stream cipher. We investigate the performances offered in this context by Trivium, which belongs to the eSTREAM portfolio, and we also pro- pose a variant with 128-bit security: Kreyvium. We show that Trivium, whose security has been firmly established for over a decade, and the new variant Kreyvium have an excellent performance

A Woman’s Optics: Margaret Cavendish, Sensory Mimesis, and Early Modern Rhetorics of Science

Accounts of the rhetorical tradition in early modern England often focus on the Royal Society of London and the scientific epistemologies and visual pedagogies surrounding technologies like the microscope. One critic of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish, theorized her own optics to counter the increasing exclusivity of the scientific community. An analysis of this woman’s optics reveals how the rhetorical concept of mimesis brought a theory of embodied, material sight to a historical moment in which objectivity was emerging. This critically imaginative analysis thus brings forth an early rhetorics of science in which alternative epistemologies may critique mechanical, experimental processes and argue for more inclusive scientific methods

Two machines similarly constructed : humanity between apes and clones.

“Two Machines Similarly Constructed”: Humanity Between Apes and Clones explores the development of scientific taxonomies of difference and the proliferation and evolution of the definition of the “human.” A focus on Enlightenment naturalists’ texts and images of apes reveals how these scientists defined the human “difference” and lends to Michel Foucault’s archaeology of the invention of “man.” This establishes the concept of a classifying discourse and argues that a narrative of human exceptionalism pervaded subsequent ideas of progress and civilization. Analyses of two texts, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, develop a discussion of how the authors present non-humans and clones that complicate the definition of the “human” and incorporate resistance to the classifying discourse’s singular way of understanding the natural order. An investigation of the development of Homo sapiens’s “difference” locates examples of classifying humans and non-humans; this project examines how authors and scientists resist strict exclusions and classifications in a larger, more all-encompassing consideration of the “human condition.

Tropicalizing Frankenstein in Latin America : a tale about promising technologies and apocalyptic robots

Frankenstein is not an exclusive character belonging to the realm of the Gothic narrative, but a vivid element that has evolved and adapted to diverse social contexts and geographies. Mary Shelley's work has endured the passing of time and now is a symbol of the popular culture. It has appeared in numerous movies, TV series, comics and it has inspired many other shows and literary works. In our Internet era, it is present across "memes" and other multimedia staff shared on social media. In this paper, I look to understand Mary Shelley's Frankenstein influence on people's attitudes regarding technology and science, particularly artificial intelligence and robots. How the negative visions and fears about the misuse of science to break traditional moral and religion boundaries are still present in popular culture, including in developing regions like Latin America. Fieldwork will be focused on reviewing several Latin American newspapers and magazine articles in Spanish and Portuguese published on the Internet. As final outcomes will show, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein still continues influencing people's imagination about science and technology, even in technically less developed regions.Frankenstein no es un personaje exclusivo del ámbito de la narrativa gótica, sinoun elemento vivo que ha evolucionado y se ha adaptado a diversas geografías ycontextos sociales. El trabajo de Mary Shelley ha perdurado el paso del tiempo, consolidándose como un símbolo preponderante de la cultura popular. En este artículo, busco entender la influencia del Frankenstein en las actitudes de las perso-nas con respecto a la tecnología y la ciencia, en particular la inteligencia artificialy los robots; así como los temores sobre el uso indebido de la ciencia y el rompimiento de los límites morales y religiosos tradicionales. El trabajo de campo secentrará en la revisión de diversos artículos de periódicos y revistas publicados enmedios latinoamericanos y difundidos en Internet. Los resultados mostrarán comola obra de Mary Shelley continúa influyendo en la imaginación de la gente sobreciencia y tecnología en América Latina