Towards a Philosophy of the Mobile Information Society

This introductory section of my present paper is a kind of report on the ongoing social science research programme I am directing: the project “Communications in the 21st Century”, launched in January 2001, conducted jointly by T-Mobile Hungary (until 2004 Westel Mobile) and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the framework of the project a number of international conferences were held, on the basis of which altogether eleven volumes—four Hungarian, one German, and six English—have been published. I will first give a very brief summary of these volumes, and then provide a more detailed description of some of the main results we arrived at. The eleven volumes are witness to the history of the mobile phone between 2001 and 2007, no doubt the most dynamic aspect of the recent history of technological and social transformation. But most of all they amount to a first laying of the foundations for, and at the same time the awakening to consciousness and self-reflection of, a young discipline: the social science of mobile communication. Initially, research on problems pertaining to the mobile arose as an interdisciplinary task. From the interdisciplinary research, each of the participating disciplines pro?ted, being forced to take account, on the level of theory, of the new medium which by now has come to constitute their main communicational environment. As a consequence of this taking account of the new realities, by 2005 a transformation was occurring which today has clearly become irreversible: the internal adaptation of the social sciences to the world of mobile communications. At the same time, an autonomous line of research emerged, based on a set of wellestablished paradigms of its own: the social science of mobile communication, Mobile Studies. Both aspects of this juncture in the history of science are represented in Nyíri (2007a, 2007b), which on the one hand takes stock of the paradigmatic results of mobile studies, and on the other hand highlights some new perspectives of the social sciences becoming aware of their mobile environment

Gombrich on image and time

There is a very close, indeed intrinsic, connection between the notions of image and time. Images are incomplete unless they are moving ones – unless, that is, they happen in time. On the other hand, time cannot be conceptualized except by metaphors, and so ultimately by images, of movement in space. That only the moving image is a full-fledged one is a fact that was fully recognized and articulated by Ernst Gombrich. Also, Gombrich entertained, and argued for, a rich and well-balanced view of the relationships between pictorial and verbal representation. An antidote to the unholy influence of Goodman, Gombrich deserves to be rediscovered as the figure whose work is ideally suited to providing a founding paradigm for a truly successful philosophy of images

Konzervatívnak lenni az Internet korában

Ha nem pusztán újításokkal szembeni ösztönös ellenszenvet, vagy elmúlt, személyünkben általában meg sem élt, sőt valójában soha nem is létezett korok iránti nosztalgiát értünk rajta, úgy a konzervativizmusnak a megőrzés funkcionális elméletét kell alkotnia spontán avagy szándékolt társadalmi változások közepette. A tanulmány szerzője mai életvilágunk bizonyos olyan elemeinek szükségessége és ezzel megőrzésre méltó volta mellett érvel, amelyek fenyegetettek a globális számítógépes hálózottság, vagyis egy új kommunikációs technológia uralkodóvá válása által, miközben ezeket az elemeket hosszabb távon voltaképpen az új technológia sem tudja nélkülözni. Azonban a szó szoros értelmében vett hagyományok ma sem nem lehetségesek, sem nem kívánatosak. A szerző alternatív vonatkoztatási keretet javasol: nem hagyományok, hanem olyan specifikus stabilitások keretét, amelyeket a hálózott kommunikáció specifikus illékonyságaival/virtualitásaival szemben artikulál. Ezek a stabilitások: valódi helyek/helységek, változatlan dokumentumok, személyes kapcsolatok

Differential Roles of the Two Raphe Nuclei in Amiable Social Behavior and Aggression - An Optogenetic Study.

Serotonergic mechanisms hosted by raphe nuclei have important roles in affiliative and agonistic behaviors but the separate roles of the two nuclei are poorly understood. Here we studied the roles of the dorsal (DR) and median raphe region (MRR) in aggression by optogenetically stimulating the two nuclei. Mice received three 3 min-long stimulations, which were separated by non-stimulation periods of 3 min. The stimulation of the MRR decreased aggression in a phasic-like manner. Effects were rapidly expressed during stimulations, and vanished similarly fast when stimulations were halted. No carryover effects were observed in the subsequent three trials performed at 2-day intervals. No effects on social behaviors were observed. By contrast, DR stimulation rapidly and tonically promoted social behaviors: effects were present during both the stimulation and non-stimulation periods of intermittent stimulations. Aggressive behaviors were marginally diminished by acute DR stimulations, but repeated stimulations administered over 8 days considerably decreased aggression even in the absence of concurrent stimulations, indicating the emergence of carryover effects. No such effects were observed in the case of social behaviors. We also investigated stimulation-induced neurotransmitter release in the prefrontal cortex, a major site of aggression control. MRR stimulation rapidly but transiently increased serotonin release, and induced a lasting increase in glutamate levels. DR stimulation had no effect on glutamate, but elicited a lasting increase of serotonin release. Prefrontal serotonin levels remained elevated for at least 2 h subsequent to DR stimulations. The stimulation of both nuclei increased GABA release rapidly and transiently. Thus, differential behavioral effects of the two raphe nuclei were associated with differences in their neurotransmission profiles. These findings reveal a surprisingly strong behavioral task division between the two raphe nuclei, which was associated with a nucleus-specific neurotransmitter release in the prefrontal cortex

Enciklopédikus tudás a 21. században | Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the 21st Century

Minden kor emberét jellemzi a vágy, hogy a világot valamiféle teljes és egységes képben lássa. Ám csak a könyvnyomtatás teremtette meg annak elvi lehetőségét, hogy egyáltalán létrejöhessen az ismeretek egységes fogalmi kerete, a tudás összefüggő világa. Ez a világ a 16. és 17. században – egyetlen tovatűnő történelmi pillanatig – valós eszmény volt. A nyomtatott anyagok tömegének roppant növekedésével, a tudás fokozódó komplexitásával azonban az egységes tudomány eszménye egyre csak halványult, s a 19. századra éppenséggel elenyészett. Ehhez képest az internet eleve egy új enciklopédizmus gondolatának jegyében áll. Az előadás, a Mindentudás Egyeteme első három szemeszterére is visszatekintve, feltérképezi az interdiszciplinaritás – a résztudományok közötti átjárhatóság, együttműködés és szintézis – új lehetôségeit a hálózott számítógépek korában. | It was the invention of printing that created the theoretical possibility of amassing the interconnected world of knowledge. In the 16th and 17th centuries possessing all knowledge seemed a real prospect. The increasing complexity of knowledge made this idea disappear by the 19th century. Today, the Internet holds the possibility of new opportunities of interdisciplinarity and a new encyclopaedism. Having offered an overview of the history of the concept of encyclopaedism, the lecture concludes that encyclopaedic theoretical knowledge in one single mind is impossible, but it is perhaps possible outside the mind. According to certain anthropologists the majority of human knowledge is stored not in the mind but in external, physical symbolic systems. At the beginning of the 21st century the role of the external human memory is gradually being taken up by the digital Internet. The World Wide Web is not a world encyclopaedia, although many online lexicons can be found on it. In Hungary there is a new venture to create the Hungarian Virtual Encyclopaedia, which is at the same time a scientific experiment