Toward mutual dependency between empathy and technology

Technology explosion induced by information explosion will eventually change artifacts into intelligent autonomous agents consisting of surrogates and mediators from which humans can receive services without special training. Four potential problems might arise as a result of the paradigm shift: technology abuse, responsibility flaw, moral in crisis, and overdependence on artifacts. Although the first and second might be resolved in principle by introduction of public mediators, the rest seems beyond technical solution. Under the circumstances, a reasonable goal might be to create a mutual dependency between empathy and technology: Using technology to help people cultivate empathy among people, so empathy in the society may allow people to help each other to recover from disasters beyond the scope of the assumption underlying the society of mediators. I highlight an immersive collaborative interaction environment for helping people share first-person view and its application to building empathic agents

Quaint knowledge: a 'body-mind' pattern across Shakespeare's career

A pattern surrounds the use of the verb form 'acquaint' in the first half of Shakespeare's career which also reveals a gender bias: if the acquaintance is being made with a male or any neutral object, the surrounding language will give the audience or reader no grounds to presume that a sexual pun is in play (the word 'quaint' being a commonly used term in the early modern period for female genitals); if, on the other hand, the acquaintance is male to female or male to a gendered object, the surrounding language is routinely sexualised, suggesting that a double entendre is being activated in the verb. I focus as much on the surrounding language in these calculations as on the 'quaint' words because I contend that this is a viable method by which to determine potential nuances in the use of any word. Unlike Pauline Kiernan, whose work involves hunting down filthy puns in every use of dozens of words with potentially bawdy meanings, I acknowledge that Shakespeare's use of language was not routinely bawdy throughout, but the plays do give their audiences cues with which to listen for multiple meanings. In the second half of Shakespeare's career, the sexualised pun disappears altogether, suggesting that he was gravitating toward a use of the verb 'to acquaint' that was disconnected from any bodily connotation

Is design education preparing product for the real world? A study of product design graduates in Ireland

peer-reviewedThis study aims to identify professional product design roles. It presents the results of a survey of 251 graduates from undergraduate product design courses. Data was gathered about graduate s job descriptions; the companies that employ product designers and the postgraduate education taken. The objective was to show how design practice has evolved and the effect that this has had on product design as a discipline. The results highlight the cross over between design disciplines, the integration of product designers across different industries and the variety of roles that product designers undertake. Implications for product design education are discussed and recommendations are presented.  ACCEPTEDpeer-reviewe