Digital culture, materiality and Nineteenth-Century studies

The rhetoric of the virtual stubbornly clings to digital culture, even though our experience of working within it is of a resisting medium that only behaves in certain ways. The persistence of the virtual demands attention: why do we cling to such a description even while we quite willingly recognise the interpenetration of the world beyond the monitor and that represented on it? In education we’re encouraged to use Virtual Learning Environments, as if somehow these spaces are not as real as classrooms; we participate (or read about others participating) in virtual worlds such as Second Life or World of Warcraft, places that imitate the real world, providing access to fantasies that are underpinned by very real economics; and we exploit the World Wide Web, believing in its textual metaphors (pages, hypertext) while ignoring its presence as a medium. In my contribution to this forum I want to suggest that our insistence on the immateriality of digital culture enforces an ontological distinction that overdetermines the materiality of the world beyond the monitor while misrecognizing the new things that are displayed upon it. Rather than continue to use the virtual as a category, I would like to argue using an alternative term, the apparition.1 Unlike the virtual, which foregrounds its effect of the real with reality itself present only as absence, apparition has two meanings: the first is an immaterial appearance, a ghostly presence that, like the virtual, can signal an absent materiality; the second is simply the appearance of something, specifically the emergence of something into history. It is this latter meaning, I suggest, that permits materiality to re-enter digital discourse

Overview of FAA's aircraft icing program

An overview of the FAA's icing program is presented. The program involves certification of various types of aircraft for flight in known icing conditions, the study of icing conditions, and the preparation of certification standards. Test and technology transfer programs are also included

Overview of NASA's programs

An overview of some of NASA's aviation related programs is presented. The areas discussed include: (1) severe storms; (2) clear air turbulence; (3) icing; (4) fog; and (5) landing systems

The Burden of Choice, the Complexity of the World and Its Reduction: The Game of Go/Weiqi as a Practice of "Empirical Metaphysics

The main aim of the text is to show how a game of Go (Weiqi, baduk, Igo) can serve as a model representation of the ontological-metaphysical aspect of the actor–network theory (ANT). An additional objective is to demonstrate in return that this ontological-metaphys⁠ical aspect of ANT represented on Go/Weiqi game model is able to highlight the key aspect of this theory—onto-methodological praxis

Local entanglements and utopian moves : an inquiry into train accidents

In 1996 after nearly fifty years in public ownership the British rail network was privatised. As a part of this what had been single organisation, British Rail, was broken into a set of different units which were individually sold off. Prominent among these were Railtrack plc (owner of the track, stations, signalling and other infrastructure), more than twenty train operating companies (TOCs) which received franchises to run trains (usually with government subsidies), and three companies which owned and leased rolling stock

A different kind of urban

Like many, I had certain pre-conceptions about Milton Keynes when I first approached writing A different kind of urban; however, I have since had the good fortune to be guided into a deeper understanding of the many strands that make up this remarkable town. A recce visit with The Open University Choir conductor Bill Strang and lyricist Judi Moore in February 2017, both long-time residents, opened my eyes to a rich wealth of history when we visited key artefacts of the town (none of which I will divulge here, as it would take away from the excellent narrative of Judi’s lyrics!).A different kind of urban is in five movements. The first, ‘1: what do we celebrate?’, outlines an introductory scene, whilst ‘2: Up in the air’ and ‘3: Down on the ground’ respectively showcase the work's main themes, inspired by the town's juxtaposition of old and new. The material within these two movements sets the tone for ‘4: In the heart’ and ‘5: An ending, but not the end’, where the themes are revisited, becoming more interlinked until they are at least in part merged at the music’s culmination. The lyrics of ‘4: In the heart’ are interpreted to give a sense of drawing things together, representing a more intimate and proud knowledge of the town.The use of brass, too, plays a part in a representation of the complex and underlying layers of the town; becoming more substantial as the music progresses, evolving a relationship between choir and brass which in itself changes, just as the town has these past 50 years

Witnessing the Future

The paper explores the phenomenon of witnessing the future through a case study of how a Scandinavian new economy firm managed to persuade a number of business journalists that it was "the future". It describes the procedures and rhetorical strategies that the manager deployed to turn the journalists into witnesses. It compares the manager's strategy to other cases of effective witnessing in courtrooms and in science. It concludes that the manager's persuasiveness is derived from his ability to articulate a series of pointed contrasts between the attractive working life within the firm and the problematic work life elsewhere. Finally, it notes that the manager's strategy enacts a time-world characterised by dramatic epochal changes, which is radically different from the more stable and knowable time-world that is enacted in ordinary scientific discourses. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs07011

Rendering an Account: An Open-State Archive in Postgraduate Supervision

The paper begins with a brief account of the transformation of research degree studies under the pressures of global capitalism and neo-liberal governmentality. A parallel transformation is occurring in the conduct of research through the use of information and communication technologies. Yet the potential of ICTs to shape practices of surveillance or to produce new student-supervisor relations and enhance the processes of developing the dissertation has received almost no critical attention. As doctoral supervisor and student, we then describe the features and uses of a web-based open state archive of the student's work-in-progress, developed by the student and accessible to his supervisor. Our intention was to encourage more open conversations between data and theorising, student and supervisor, and ultimately between the student and professional community. However, we recognise that relations of accountability, as these have developed within a contemporary "audit revolution" (Power, 1994, 1997) in universities, create particular "lines of visibility" (Munro, 1996). Thus while the open-state archive may help to redefine in less managerial terms notions of quality, transparency, flexibility and accountability, it might also make possible greater supervisory surveillance. How should we think about the panoptical potential of this archive? We argue that the diverse kinds of interactional patterns and pedagogical intervention it encourages help to create shifting subjectivities. Moreover, the archive itself is multiple, in bringing together an array of diverse materials that can be read in various ways, by following multiple paths. It therefore constitutes a collage, which we identify as a mode of cognition and of accounting distinct from but related to argument and narrative. As a more "open" text (Iser, 1978) it has an indeterminacy which may render it less open to abuse for the technologies of managerial accountability