Body Language Without a Body: Nonverbal Communication in Technology Mediated Settings

Humans are wired for face-to-face interaction because this was the only possible and available setting during the long evolutionary process that has led to Homo Sapiens. At the moment an increasingly significant fraction of our interactions take place in technology mediated settings, it is important to investigate how such a wiring - mainly corresponding to neural processes - reacts and adapts to them. This talk focuses in particular on how nonverbal communication - one of the main channels through which people convey socially and psychologically relevant information - plays a role in settings where natural nonverbal cues (facial expressions, vocalizations, gestures, etc.) are no longer available. Such an issue is important not only from a technological point of view (it can help to design interaction and communication technologies that better address human needs), but also from a societal one (it can help to understand major phenomena such as cyberbullyism and virality)

Social networking sites and addiction: ten lessons learned

Online social networking sites (SNSs) have gained increasing popularity in the last decade, with individuals engaging in SNSs to connect with others who share similar interests. The perceived need to be online may result in compulsive use of SNSs, which in extreme cases may result in symptoms and consequences traditionally associated with substance-related addictions. In order to present new insights into online social networking and addiction, in this paper, 10 lessons learned concerning online social networking sites and addiction based on the insights derived from recent empirical research will be presented. These are: (i) social networking and social media use are not the same; (ii) social networking is eclectic; (iii) social networking is a way of being; (iv) individuals can become addicted to using social networking sites; (v) Facebook addiction is only one example of SNS addiction; (vi) fear of missing out (FOMO) may be part of SNS addiction; (vii) smartphone addiction may be part of SNS addiction; (viii) nomophobia may be part of SNS addiction; (ix) there are sociodemographic differences in SNS addiction; and (x) there are methodological problems with research to date. These are discussed in turn. Recommendations for research and clinical applications are provided

Making grooves with needles: Using e-textiles to encourage gender diversity in embedded audio systems design

Historically, women have been excluded from engineering and computer science disciplines, and interactive audio is no exception. Relatively few women are involved with the designing and building of embedded audio systems with traditional tools such as microprocessors, but when embedded audio systems are built using e-textiles, much larger proportions of women become engaged with technology. In this paper we review theories for this gender disparity and the barriers women face in working with audio technology, and then present a comparison of survey data between an e-textile audio workshop and an audio platform user group. Extrapolating from the case study and the surveyed literature, we propose that flexibility in learning, communal dissemination of knowledge, and gendering of tools are prominent reasons why women engage with technology via e-textiles

Origin Gaps and the Eternal Sunshine of the Second-Order Pendulum

The rich experiences of an intentional, goal-oriented life emerge, in an unpredictable fashion, from the basic laws of physics. Here I argue that this unpredictability is no mirage: there are true gaps between life and non-life, mind and mindlessness, and even between functional societies and groups of Hobbesian individuals. These gaps, I suggest, emerge from the mathematics of self-reference, and the logical barriers to prediction that self-referring systems present. Still, a mathematical truth does not imply a physical one: the universe need not have made self-reference possible. It did, and the question then is how. In the second half of this essay, I show how a basic move in physics, known as renormalization, transforms the "forgetful" second-order equations of fundamental physics into a rich, self-referential world that makes possible the major transitions we care so much about. While the universe runs in assembly code, the coarse-grained version runs in LISP, and it is from that the world of aim and intention grows.Comment: FQXI Prize Essay 2017. 18 pages, including afterword on Ostrogradsky's Theorem and an exchange with John Bova, Dresden Craig, and Paul Livingsto

Mothers of invention: an afterword

This paper offers a personal perspective on exchanges at the 2014 NIME panel entitled Gender, Education, Creativity in Digital Music and Sound Art, and also draws on discussion at the 2013 Oxford MusDig Gender Roundtable. Neither anachronistic institutional positions in a fast evolving cultural environment, nor opportunistic promotion of market-driven education programmes doomed to swift obsolescence, is likely to foster the diversity needed to sustain new creative energies in digital music and sound art. Class and race barriers are often indissociable from those that characterise gender discrimination, but this is not just a question of intersectionality. It also concerns thinking specifically about the gendered constructions of the objects and concepts we employ, and about the objectification of gender itself. This overview of a decidedly heterogeneous array of projects and initiatives endeavours to reflect our panel's emphasis on the imperative to uphold diversity and otherness

Days of our lives: Family experiences of digital technology use

© 2018 Association for Computing Machinery. This paper describes findings from a workshop, with 11 parents of children under 12 years of age, that explored family experiences of digital technology use. We found that technology experiences within everyday family life are complicated and interlinked. We highlight four experiences that featured most prominently with our participants: apprehension, ambivalence, compromise and conflict. In addition, we discuss how family values govern these experiences and how families use digital technology. This work contributes to current understandings of how family values guide technology practices. These early findings suggest that deeper understandings of family values; how they are shared, negotiated and put into action, will help inform the design of future technologies that not only support families' practices and activities, but also their experiences and aspirations

Inclusive Masculinity and Facebook Photographs Among Early Emerging Adults at a British University

Central to debates about the construction of masculinity in sociology is the influence of culture and what constitutes acceptable displays of masculinity. This article adopts a novel approach in examining this question. It adopts a summative content analysis, combined with a semiotic analysis, of 1,100 Facebook photographs, in order to explore the underlying meanings within the photos and the performances of masculinity. Facebook photographs from 44, straight, White, male, early emerging adults attending the same university are used as a representation of an individual’s ideal self. These are then analyzed in order to determine the behaviors endorsed by peer culture. It was found that the sample overwhelmingly adopted inclusive behaviors (including homosocial tactility, dancing, and kissing each other), and inclusive masculinity theory was utilized to contextualize participants’ constructions of masculinity. Thus, this research shows that emerging adult males at this university construct their masculine identities away from previous orthodox archetypes. It is argued that the reducing importance of gendered behavior patterns may represent an adoption of what are perceived as wider cultural norms and act as a symbol of adulthood to these early emerging adults

Gender and Videogames: The political valency of Lara Croft

The Face: Is Lara a feminist icon or a sexist fantasy? Toby Gard: Neither and a bit of both. Lara was designed to be a tough, self-reliant, intelligent woman. She confounds all the sexist cliches apart from the fact that she’s got an unbelievable figure. Strong, independent women are the perfect fantasy girls—the untouchable is always the most desirable (Interview with Lara’s creator Toby Gard in The Face magazine, June 1997)