Mobile Knowledge, Karma Points, and Digital Peers: The Tacit Epistemology and Linguistic Representation of MOOCs

Media representations of massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as those offered by Coursera, edX and Udacity reflect tension and ambiguity in their bold promise of democratized education and global knowledge sharing. An approach to MOOCs that emphasizes the tacit epistemology of such representations suggests a richer account of the ambiguities of MOOCs, the unsettled linguistic and visual representations that reflect the strange lifeworld of global online courses and the pressing need for promising innovation that seeks to serve the restless global desire for knowledge. This perspective piece critically appraises the linguistic laboratory of thought such representation reveals and its destabilized rhetoric of technology and educational practice. The mobile knowledge of MOOCs, detached from context and educational purpose and indifferent to cultural boundary distortions, contains both the promise of democratized education and the shadow of post-colonial knowledge export

Digital Peacekeepers, Drone Surveillance and Information Fusion: A Philosophical Analysis of New Peacekeeping

In June 2014 an Expert Panel on Technology and Innovation in UN Peacekeeping was commissioned to examine how technology and innovation could strengthen peacekeeping missions. The panel\u27s report argues for wider deployment of advanced technologies, including greater use of ground and airborne sensors and other technical sources of data, advanced data analytics and information fusion to assist in data integration. This article explores the emerging intelligence-led, informationist conception of UN peacekeeping against the backdrop of increasingly complex peacekeeping mandates and precarious security conditions. New peacekeeping with its heightened commitment to information as a political resource and the endorsement of offensive military action within robust mandates reflects the multiple and conflicting trajectories generated by asymmetric conflicts, the responsibility to protect and a technology-driven information revolution. We argue that the idea of peacekeeping is being revised (and has been revised) by realities beyond peacekeeping itself that require rethinking the morality of peacekeeping in light of the emergence of \u27digital peacekeeping\u27 and the knowledge revolution engendered by new technologies

Deep Fakes and Computer Vision: The Paradox of New Images

This chapter explores the relationship of artificial intelligence with counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts and examines the philosophical analysis of digital image processing and its relevance to digital maps that annotate objects of military interest and improve recognition and tracking. Paradoxically, such images generated by machine-learning algorithms, which are meant to enhance image understanding and enhance our grasp of reality, share the same uncertain ontology with computer-generated digital impersonation and deep fakes used in malicious hoaxes and fake news. This paper examines this parallel and argues that new images and heir enabling technologies require rethinking the nature of digital images processing in high-stakes war-fighting contexts in which authentication is rarely possible and ethical issues remain inextricable

Post-truth: Marcuse and New Forms of Social Control

Post-truth political speech - the lies, disinformation, alternative facts, and propaganda that undermine rational discourse and political decision-making - operates to influence, obfuscate, and distract, executing messages and image content that allow for deniability, amplification, and distortion. Troll farms, targeted Facebook and Google ads, web brigades, Twitter bots, and other fake news production have proved able to disrupt elections, deliver votes on national referendums, accentuate social divisions, fuel racial animosity, and communicate fake news in coded speech that skillfully communications with targeted groups. As Malware does with its hostile software, fake news has its own executable code in viral contagion, video/audio manipulations, and active content that conceals intentionality and political will. In benign forms, fake news, coded memes, and image manipulation entertain- sharks swimming on flooded highways and Onion-like satire of political events- and blur the boundary of news and non-news

Mobile Knowledge, Karma Points and Digital Peers: The Tacit Epistemology and Linguistic Representation of MOOCs / Savoir mobile, points de karma et pairs numériques : l’épistémologie tacite et la représentation linguistique des MOOC

Media representations of massive open online courses (MOOCs) such as those offered by Coursera, edX and Udacity reflect tension and ambiguity in their bold promise of democratized education and global knowledge sharing. An approach to MOOCs that emphasizes the tacit epistemology of such representations suggests a richer account of the ambiguities of MOOCs, the unsettled linguistic and visual representations that reflect the strange lifeworld of global online courses and the pressing need for promising innovation that seeks to serve the restless global desire for knowledge. This perspective piece critically appraises the linguistic laboratory of thought such representation reveals and its destabilized rhetoric of technology and educational practice. The mobile knowledge of MOOCs, detached from context and educational purpose and indifferent to cultural boundary distortions, contains both the promise of democratized education and the shadow of post-colonial knowledge export. Les représentations médiatiques des cours en ligne ouverts et massifs (MOOC en anglais) comme ceux offerts par Coursera, edX et Udacity reflètent une tension et une ambiguïté occasionnées par leur audacieuse promesse de démocratisation de l’éducation et de partage global du savoir. Étudier les MOOC en accentuant l'épistémologie tacite de ces représentations mène à une explication plus riche des ambiguïtés inhérentes aux MOOC, de l’incertitude des représentations linguistiques et visuelles reflétant l’étrange monde vécu des cours en ligne à l’échelle globale et le besoin pressant d'innovation prometteuse visant à répondre au désir insatiable de connaissance à travers le monde. Le présent essai évalue de manière critique le laboratoire linguistique d’idées révélées par une telle représentation ainsi que son discours instable sur la technologie et sur les pratiques pédagogiques. Libéré de tout contexte et d’objectif pédagogique et indifférent aux distorsions des barrières culturelles, le savoir mobile des MOOC contient à la fois la promesse d'une éducation démocratisée et le spectre d’un savoir postcolonial

Confronting Cyber Warfare: Rethinking the Ethics of Cyber War

The emergence of sophisticated cyber weapons such as Stuxnet and Flame, and widespread offensive cyber-operations revealed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, pose challenges not only to international security and civilian infrastructure, but blur the distinction between violence and nonviolence, confusing the ethical discourse of cyber war and muting public discourse and resistance. Rethinking cyber war as destabilizing nonviolence reveals the moral ambiguities and contested ontology of cyber weapons, heightens awareness of their conflicted linguistic representation and challenges the vantage point of “the responsible actor” in justifying cyber war attacks. Such heightened awareness of the ontological and ethical complexity of cyber weapons makes room for reasoned public discourse and strategies of resistance to clandestine cyber war and to justified use arguments that defend cyber weapons as nonviolent

Data Barns, Ambient Intelligence and Cloud Computing: The Tacit Epistemology and Linguistic Representation of Big Data

The explosion of data grows at a rate of roughly five trillion bits a second, giving rise to greater urgency in conceptualizing the infosphere (Floridi 2011) and understanding its implications for knowledge and public policy. Philosophers of technology and information technologists alike who wrestle with ontological and epistemological questions of digital information tend to emphasize, as Floridi does, information as our new ecosystem and human beings as interconnected informational organisms, inforgs at home in ambient intelligence. But the linguistic and conceptual representations of Big Data—the massive volume of both structured and unstructured data—and the real world practice of data-mining for patterns and meaningful interpretation of evidence reveal tension and ambiguity in the bold promise of data analytics. This paper explores the tacit epistemology of the rhetoric and representation of Big Data and suggests a richer account of its ambiguities and the paradox of its real world materiality. We argue that Big Data should be recognized as manifesting multiple and conflicting trajectories that reflect human intentionality and particular patterns of power and authority. Such patterns require attentive exploration and moral appraisal if we are to resist simplistic informationist ontologies of Big Data, and the subtle forms of control in the political ecology of Big Data that undermine its promise as transformational knowledge

Digital neocolonialism and massive open online courses (MOOCs): colonial pasts and neoliberal futures

Through evaluating dominant MOOC platforms created by Western universities, I argue that MOOCs on such platforms tend to embed Western-centric epistemologies and propagate this without questioning their global relevance. Consequently, such MOOCs can be detrimental when educating diverse and complex participants as they erode local and indigenous knowledge systems. Arguing that the digital divide is an exacerbation of historical inequalities, I draw parallels between colonial education, specifically across Sub-Saharan Africa, and ‘digital neocolonialism’ through Western MOOC platforms. I analyse similarities in ideology, assumptions, and methods of control. Highlighting evolving forms of coloniality, I include contemporary problems created by neoliberal techno-capitalist agendas, such as the commodification of education. Balance is needed between the opportunities offered through MOOCs and the harms they cause through overshadowing marginalised knowledges and framing disruptive technologies as the saviour. While recommending solutions for inclusion of marginalised voices, further problems such as adverse incorporation are raised.Cambridge Trust is my sponsor for my Ph