Mind-Body-Technology: ‘Nosce te Ipsum’ and a theory of prosthetic ‘trialism’

This chapter will discuss a profound and fundamental interrelationship between mind, body and technology in terms of what it means to be ‘human’, or, what ‘being’ human might mean. One historical, yet enduring, theory of the human subject is René Descartes’s philosophy of the mind distinct from the body – this is termed ‘Cartesian dualism’. Whilst this is a classical, if outmoded, model of conceiving of a philosophy of the subject, it also provides a useful conceptual framework through which to critique, and arrive at, a different concept of how the terms ‘mind’ and ‘body’ might operate. For example, the mind/body binary distinction can be interrogated and deconstructed to accommodate the role of technology as having an ontologically embedded position within the very definition of ‘humanity’. Indeed, ‘anthropogenesis’ – the very becoming of humanity – might instead incorporate the role of technological prosthesis to any mind/body dualism in defining the ‘human subject’. We will propose that this ‘dualism’ should be reconsidered for a fundamentally entangled mind-body-technology ‘trialism’ in the emergence of a distinct human being. However, at the same time, this interconnected relationship is also the object of power and control

Is There a "New Economy" in Ireland?

This paper reviews the sources of economic growth in Ireland between 1962 and 2000. The purpose of this analysis is to assess if there is a “new economy” in Ireland. The “new economy” phenomenon is reflected in higher productivity growth as a result of technical progress in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. The consequences of a “new economy” include, among other things, a higher potential output growth rate, higher productivity growth, lower unemployment and improved living standards. At the aggregate level, productivity growth increased from 2.5 per cent per annum between 1990 and 1995 to approximately 4.0 per cent per annum between 1996 and 2000. This step-up in productivity growth would suggest a new era in the Irish economy. A sub-sectoral analysis was undertaken to assess which sectors were significant in accounting for this increase in productivity growth. Productivity growth in the industrial sector averaged 2.7 per cent per annum between 1996 and 2000. Within the industrial sector, the manufacturing sector was a significant contributor to productivity growth. Productivity growth in the manufacturing sector averaged 6.3 per cent per annum between 1995 and 1999. The performance of this sector was primarily driven by the high-tech sector, where productivity growth averaged 5.7 per cent per annum between 1995 and 1999. The results suggest that although there has been a significant step-up in the overall productivity growth rate of the economy, this was primarily related to the high-tech sector, particularly the chemicals sector. The large values of net output per worker in this sector may be the result of transfer pricing and/or high returns to research and development. Thus while there has been a structural change of the economy in recent years, this may represent a sectoral shift of resources from more traditional sectors to high-tech sectors rather than a “new economy” effect.

Numerical verification of universality for the Anderson transition

We analyze the scaling behavior of the higher Lyapunov exponents at the Anderson transition. We estimate the critical exponent and verify its universality and that of the critical conductance distribution for box, Gaussian and Lorentzian distributions of the random potential

Critical exponent for the quantum spin Hall transition in Z_2 network model

We have estimated the critical exponent describing the divergence of the localization length at the metal-quantum spin Hall insulator transition. The critical exponent for the metal-ordinary insulator transition in quantum spin Hall systems is known to be consistent with that of topologically trivial symplectic systems. However, the precise estimation of the critical exponent for the metal-quantum spin Hall insulator transition proved to be problematic because of the existence, in this case, of edge states in the localized phase. We have overcome this difficulty by analyzing the second smallest positive Lyapunov exponent instead of the smallest positive Lyapunov exponent. We find a value for the critical exponent $\nu=2.73 \pm 0.02$ that is consistent with that for topologically trivial symplectic systems.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the proceedings of Localisation 201

The United States as a growth leader for the Euro Area - A multi-sectoral approach

In this paper we examine the role played by technology spillovers between the United States and the Euro area. We explicitly assume that the United States acts as a growth leader for Europe and that the Euro area is constantly converging to US total factor productivity (TFP) levels. As a result, a growing divergence in the level of US TFP vis-`a-vis that of Europe results in an increase in the growth rate of Euro area TFP. The model is applied to TFP data from 26 subsectors of both economies. The role of greater ICT adoption in increasing Euro area TFP is also explored.