New materialism and runaway capitalism: a critical assessment

The “return to materiality” is a burgeoning phenomenon in philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities. New materialists make a case against cultural constructionism and for a nondualist account of the world as comprised of fluid, ever-changing entities. This would allegedly offer grounds for an embodied, post-humanist emancipatory politics. The article problematizes such claim. By relying on techno-scientific accounts of materiality, new materialism embroils with the analytics of truth, neglecting how nondualist ontologies underpin today intensifying forms of domination over humans and nonhumans. A “critical” humanism is needed, which refrains from ambivalent post-humanist narratives without reverting to dualist thinking. To this purpose Heidegger offers valuable insights.El “regreso a la materialidad” es un fenómeno floreciente en la filosofía, las ciencias sociales y las humanidades. Los nuevos materialistas desarrollan argumentos en contra del construccionismo cultural y a favor de un relato no dualista del mundo, compuesto de entidades fluidas y en constante cambio. Esto presuntamente ofrecería fundamentos para una política emancipatoria de carácter post-humanista. El artículo problematiza tal afirmación. Al confiar en los relatos tecnocientíficos de la materialidad, el nuevo materialismo se ha embrollado con la analítica de la verdad, descuidando cómo las ontologías no dualistas sustentan hoy formas intensificadoras de dominación sobre los humanos y los no humanos. Se necesita un humanismo “crítico”, que se abstenga de las narrativas ambivalentes post-humanistas sin volver al pensamiento dualista. Con este propósito, Heidegger ofrece ideas valiosas

Analysis of Dynamic Memory Bandwidth Regulation in Multi-core Real-Time Systems

One of the primary sources of unpredictability in modern multi-core embedded systems is contention over shared memory resources, such as caches, interconnects, and DRAM. Despite significant achievements in the design and analysis of multi-core systems, there is a need for a theoretical framework that can be used to reason on the worst-case behavior of real-time workload when both processors and memory resources are subject to scheduling decisions. In this paper, we focus our attention on dynamic allocation of main memory bandwidth. In particular, we study how to determine the worst-case response time of tasks spanning through a sequence of time intervals, each with a different bandwidth-to-core assignment. We show that the response time computation can be reduced to a maximization problem over assignment of memory requests to different time intervals, and we provide an efficient way to solve such problem. As a case study, we then demonstrate how our proposed analysis can be used to improve the schedulability of Integrated Modular Avionics systems in the presence of memory-intensive workload.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) 2018 conferenc

Responsibility and ultimate ends in the age of the unforeseeable: On the current relevance of Max Weber’s political ethics

Ethic of responsibility and ethic of ultimate ends are most discussed Weberian concepts. The article reflects on their heuristic value in the present. A common interpretation claims that, in a rationalized society, the ethic of responsibility supplants or integrates the ethic of ultimate ends. The two ethics, however, fundamentally differ according to their relationship with the unforeseeable. Moreover, contrary to the idea of a relentless rationalization of society, the unforeseeable is today gaining relevance, even ceasing to be regarded as a problem. As a result, the ethic of ultimate ends expands its scope. The article dwells on major implications of this. The enduring relevance of Weber’s conceptualization, it is concluded, lies in its independence from the historical conditions in which it was formulated

Embroiling nature and history: The philosophy of praxis and the challenges of the present

Building on a book by Andrew Feenberg, the article discusses the salient features of the 'philosophy of praxis' and classic Critical Theory, also with reference to current trends in social theory and technoscience

Reassessing sustainability. An introduction

Debates over sustainable development highlight its inherently contentious character. Not only its three “pillars” (economic, ecologic and social) have enjoyed a varied scientific and policy success, the social dimension of sustainability remaining the weakest and most controversial, but there are different strategies as regards the way to give operational meaning to the concept. Some follow a pragmatic approach, where sustainability plays a boundary role thanks precisely to its ambiguities. Others choose a specific outlook, according to a preference for “stronger” or “weaker” interpretations of the role of technology. Still others elaborate on the political import of the notion, its use for political purposes and within social struggles. Hardly insignificant from this viewpoint is the connection between the emergence and spread of the sustainability discourse and the rise of neoliberalism. A reassessment of the issue in the light of ongoing social and environmental changes is mandatory. The articles included in this issues offer an updated discussion of major theoretical and empirical aspects, from biofuels to green urban management, from sustainable tourism to climate change policies, devoting particular attention to the strengths and weaknesses of current prevailing “reformist” approaches. Sustainability remains a wicked problem, the performative role of which in inducing social transformation calls for a renewed sociological inquiry

Intensifying embroilments: Technosciences, imaginaries and publics

A common thread in the contributions to this special issue can be found in the Foucauldian notion of intensification. Technoscientific imaginaries and publics have long been embroiled; yet, elements of novelty in their relationship can be detected in the ambivalence of the overcoming of traditional purification work; the expanding production of 'prototypical' truths; the uncertain threshold between publics of enquirers, witnesses and lookouts; and the growing indistinction of the everyday and the sublime, of trivial and non-trivial futures. The intensification of old patterns and recent trends determines a critical moment in a literal sense of the word: novel potentialities for a democratic governance of technosciences are opening up, but novel dominative opportunities are disclosing as well

Reflexive modernization and beyond : knowledge and value in the politics of environment and technology

The relationship between knowledge and values, experts and lay people, represents a major issue of the debate involving environment and technology. There is a growing awareness that the connection between value commitments and technical solutions, scientific expertise and lay competence, is much more entangled than once was believed. The article deals with this issue by analysing Robert Dahl's ‘minipopulus’ and Silvio Funtowicz and Jerry Ravetz's ‘extended peer communities’ arguments. They are subsequently inserted into the sociological debate which is, at present, considerably influenced by the reflexive modernization framework. As a result, Ulrich Beck's and Anthony Giddens' theories appear as one of four ideal-typical approaches to the social construction of the issues that can be outlined, according to the priority assigned to knowledge versus power and nature versus society. The idea of an ‘extended peer review’ of problems and solutions is remarkably close to the deliberative democracy concept. However, the high level of uncertainty characterizing major environmental and technological questions suggests that a ‘strong’ version of deliberative democracy, such as the Discourse Ethics proposed by Habermas, is untenable in its search for a universal, rational consensus on the normative grounds of action. Thus it is necessary to develop a ‘weak’ interpretation of the extended peer review, exploring the possibility of fair and stable agreements on bounded, practical solutions to bounded, practical problems