George Kennan and the Russian Soul: Issues from the Authorized Kennan Biography by John Lewis Gaddis

George Frost Kennan is probably best known as the author of the “containment policy” which served as the overarching principle informing U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. With the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the demise of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, very much along the lines that Kennan had foreseen when launching his policy recommendations in 1946, one might assume that the master's life and thoughts would be of consequence today only to historians of the Cold War, like his authorized biographer John Gaddis. However, a second abiding concern of Kennan throughout his career was to defend the principle of interest-based foreign policy, or Realpolitik, as opposed to the moralistic-legalistic approach to policy formulation which prevailed in the American foreign policy community of his day. Since that very same object of Kennan's scorn, Wilsonian idealism, has become even further entrenched in the Washington of our day, Kennan's life and thoughts are also directly relevant to current politics in America. Moreover, as I will set out in this essay, there are issues surrounding Kennan's career in government service that are instructive as regards today's practices of recruiting and promoting top level planners and implementers of foreign policy. For these reasons, it is very good that in his biography of Kennan which came out last year Gaddis does not let his own persona intrude —put simply, he does not get in the way. He has thereby facilitated a growing discussion about Kennan in the professional community

From Social Data Mining to Forecasting Socio-Economic Crisis

Socio-economic data mining has a great potential in terms of gaining a better understanding of problems that our economy and society are facing, such as financial instability, shortages of resources, or conflicts. Without large-scale data mining, progress in these areas seems hard or impossible. Therefore, a suitable, distributed data mining infrastructure and research centers should be built in Europe. It also appears appropriate to build a network of Crisis Observatories. They can be imagined as laboratories devoted to the gathering and processing of enormous volumes of data on both natural systems such as the Earth and its ecosystem, as well as on human techno-socio-economic systems, so as to gain early warnings of impending events. Reality mining provides the chance to adapt more quickly and more accurately to changing situations. Further opportunities arise by individually customized services, which however should be provided in a privacy-respecting way. This requires the development of novel ICT (such as a self- organizing Web), but most likely new legal regulations and suitable institutions as well. As long as such regulations are lacking on a world-wide scale, it is in the public interest that scientists explore what can be done with the huge data available. Big data do have the potential to change or even threaten democratic societies. The same applies to sudden and large-scale failures of ICT systems. Therefore, dealing with data must be done with a large degree of responsibility and care. Self-interests of individuals, companies or institutions have limits, where the public interest is affected, and public interest is not a sufficient justification to violate human rights of individuals. Privacy is a high good, as confidentiality is, and damaging it would have serious side effects for society.Comment: 65 pages, 1 figure, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

POSIWID and determinism in design for behaviour change

Copyright @ 2012 Social Services Research GroupWhen designing to influence behaviour for social or environmental benefit, does designers' intent matter? Or are the effects on behaviour more important, regardless of the intent involved? This brief paper explores -- in the context of design for behaviour change -- some treatments of design, intentionality, purpose and responsibility from a variety of fields, including Stafford Beer's "The purpose of a system is what it does" and Maurice Broady's perspective on determinism. The paper attempts to extract useful implications for designers working on behaviour-related problems, in terms of analytical or reflective questions to ask during the design process

New York: the animated city

The urban landscape of New York City is one that is familiar to many, but, through the medium of animation, this familiarity has been consistently challenged. Often metamorphic, and always meticulously constructed, animated imagery encourages reflective thinking. Focusing on the themes of construction, destruction, and interactivity, this article seeks to cast critical light upon the animated double life that New York City has lived through the following moving image texts: Disney’s Fantasia 2000 (1999), Patrick Jean’s computer-generated short Pixels (2009), and Rockstar Games’ open-world blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV (2008)

American-Irish Literary Relations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record.This chapter examines some key developments in Irish-American literary relations from the middle of the century to the 1980s. It begins by arguing that this was a period when Irish-American literary relations acquired a new complexity – in both the reception of the work of Irish writers in the United States and the emergence of a distinctive and authoritative Irish-American voice. It then goes on to examine the distinctive contribution of Irish and Irish-American writers to the development of the short story as a form in the United States, which was a process mediated and galvanised by the literary magazine The New Yorker, the natural habitat of writers such as John O’Hara and Maeve Brennan and, later, Elizabeth Cullinan. The chapter then discusses the expansion of the Irish-American literary canon from mid-century onwards and explores how key figures such as Edward McSorley, James T. Farrell, Mary McCarthy and Mary Gordon sought to engage with or contest influential Irish and Irish-American literary inheritances. These writers’ commitment to social realism invented a new version of Irish-America during these decades of cultural transition, one that often deliberately set itself apart from previous received scripts and mythmaking

Architectures of control in consumer product design

Copyright @ 2005 Social Services Research GroupThe idea of architectures of control is introduced through examples ranging from urban planning to digital rights management, and the intentions behind their use in consumer products are examined, with reference to case studies of printer cartridges and proposed 'optimum lifetime products.' The reactions of the technical community and consumers themselves are also explored, along with some wider implications for society