Technology and Society

GIS for Marginalization or Empowerment In Environmental Management: a South Indian Example

by Martin Bunch

Bunch, M. J. (2001). "GIS for Marginalization or Empowerment in Environmental Management: A South Indian Example." The Indian Geographical Journal 77(2): 1-17.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) exist to transform data into knowledge and present this knowledge in various... more Geographic Information Systems (GIS) exist to transform data into knowledge and present this knowledge in various formats for the purpose of supporting decisions. In doing so, GIS are portrayed as knowledge-based systems that are free from bias. In fact, GIS is a socially constructed technology. The entire process of GIS production, from software development to data creation, analysis, visualization and interpretation of GIS output, is characterized by political, economic and social motivations. This paper presents a model of communication for GIS that illuminates the potential for GIS to both marginalise and empower vulnerable and excluded groups in environmental management and planning situations at each stage of the GIS production process. Inclusive and empowering uses of GIS in recent research in South India are discussed. In particular, GIS was central to a process of conceptual and environmental modelling intended to support rehabilitation and management of the Cooum River in Chennai. This process incorporated the perspectives of citizens and NGOs into expression of system relationships that were represented in a GIS-based Decision Support System and simulation model. The process led to identification of qualitatively different kinds of system interventions than were tried (and failed) in the past to rehabilitate this extremely stressed system.

Global Citizenship in 2040: Six Scenarios

by Vahid V. Motlagh

1- Placeless Brains Triumph, 2-Planetary Second Life, 3-Multicultural City Islands, 4-Cherished Mental Model, 5-Lagging Global Education, 6-Tribal Towers Tremble

After listening to a presentation that reviewed the scientific discoveries and technological developments,... more After listening to a presentation that reviewed the scientific discoveries and technological developments, participants in the workshop titled Global Placeless Brains at the conference Reconciling Babel – Education for cosmopolitanism were directed in a brief method based scenario planning exercise that was designed and run by the author.They were encouraged to do some “disciplined imagination” about the alternative futures of the global citizenship in 2040. One week after the workshop was concluded their written inputs were analyzed and subsequently six scenarios were developed and named. For more detail about how the tacit knowledge of the participants was tapped and thus documented as explicit knowledge see the Method section below

Deskilling on the Disassembly Line: Technological Change and Its Consequences in Beef-Packing Since the 1960s

by Chris Wright

In this paper I trace the outlines of the history of technological innovation in the U.S.’s beef-packing industry from... more In this paper I trace the outlines of the history of technological innovation in the U.S.’s beef-packing industry from approximately the 1960s to the present, focusing on mechanization and automation in the slaughter process. I consider when and why particular innovations were introduced and what effects they had on work, workers’ satisfaction, and workers’ safety. To what extent have employees and unions mobilized against increased mechanization, and to what extent has technological advance deskilled and degraded -- or, alternatively, improved the conditions of -- work in the “disassembly” line in beef-packing plants? My argument is in broad accord with Harry Braverman’s in his classic study "Labor and Monopoly Capital" (1974), according to which capitalist production relations have driven a process of relentless deskilling and automation. However, I complicate his story a little, arguing that technological advance has not been solely to the detriment of workers.

Techno-human: New Form of Hybrid Human; from Science-fiction Cinema to the Post-modern Society

by Özgür Çalışkan

Presented on the ISEA2011 Istanbul: the 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art.

This paper discusses the process of how human body and identity has become hybrid of human and machine being affected... more This paper discusses the process of how human body and identity has become hybrid of human and machine being affected by technology and how this alteration has been materialized from science-fiction cinema to the post-industrial society. The term “techno-human” is used to define this new hybrid version of the human including implanted bodies, artificial organs, prosthesis, digital identities and avatars.

Tarquimpol, la Gaule et l'agriculture du premier millénaire après J.-C.: Questions d'archéologie, adressée à la paléobotanique, in: J. Wiethold - C. Schaal (ed.) Agriculture et fruticulture de l'époque gallo-romaine jusqu'au début de l'époque moderne (Rencontres d'Archéobotanique; Grand /Vosges/, 23-26 Juin 2011; Pré-actes), (Metz: INRAP 2011), pp. 31-35.

by Joachim Henning

This paper relates recent research results of the excavation project of Frankfurt University with Harvard University,... more This paper relates recent research results of the excavation project of Frankfurt University with Harvard University, Cologne University and French Institutions in Tarquimpol (ancient Decem Pagi, Lorraine, France) to the author's perspectives on rural technological developments in Roman and Post-Roman Gaul. It seems to turn out that innovative technology was predominantly applied by small-scale agricultural units in the margins of the Roman villa economy already in the earlier centuries of Roman domination. Finds of iron equipment and botanical rests from middle and large scale villas on the other hand attest a more simple and modest technological level of these big units, which certainly were predominantly based on forced labor exploitation (commonly known as chattel slavery). The spread of small scale (more family-based) agriculture in Late Antiquity brought about an expansion of advanced rural technologies whose very (but broadly "suppressed") roots were in much earlier times. Thus the Post-Roman agricultural system should not be explained primarily by a survival of elements of the villa economy but by the triumph of (originally ancient) small scale farming.

"Beyond Adbusters: Can Subvertising Break Bricks?" (Souciant)

by Jason Adams

Souciant, December 2011.

***

Excerpt:

"In his essay on Debord’s films, Agamben does not simply oppose them in order to promote his own conceptions. Rather, he thinks with and against his interlocutor. For instance, while Agamben acknowledges that the Situationist critique of mediation is suspect, he still affirms that the aesthetic practice of détournement might suggest a process through which the paradoxes of representation could be radicalized. Since one of Debord’s primary media was cinema, Agamben focuses on this dimension in order to think through the manner in which it mobilizes the relation of reality and possibility, countering the static facticity deployed by “the media”: "Cinema does the opposite of the media. What is always given in the media is the fact, what was, without its possibility, its power: we are given a fact before which we are powerless. The media prefer a citizen who is indignant, but powerless. That’s exactly the goal of the TV news. It’s the bad form of memory, the kind of memory that produces the man of ressentiment. By placing repetition at the center of his compositional technique, Debord makes what he shows us possible again, or rather he opens up a zone of undecidability between the real and the possible. When he shows an excerpt of a TV news broadcast, the force of the repetition is to cease being an accomplished fact and to become possible again, so to speak. You ask, ‘How was that possible?’- first reaction – but at the same time you understand that yes, everything is possible." Agamben’s approach in other words, extracts particular forms of a medium such as cinema and, implicitly, specific examples of it such as Debord’s, from the conventional image of “the media” in order to assert that for all his critique of the spectacle, the most celebrated figure of Situationism used spectacular means to oppose it, and commendably so. Rather than interpreting this practice as a contradiction, he affirms the zone of indistinction between reality and possibility that is détournement, “turning expressions of the capitalist system against itself.” Implicitly then, Agamben suggests that Debord himself understood the plasticity of meaning even in spectacular images, at least when exposed to critical perception, and potentially without the assistance of additional alteration techniques. That is why Agamben follows Benjamin in considering even “un-détourned” advertisements as laden with as-yet unrealized possibility. By loosening the hold of identity, they serve as the “unknowing midwives of the new body of humanity”. What then, can we make of Adbusters and its subvertising culture? Is it cinema or is it “the media”? Lasn may have started as a filmmaker, but film is not necessarily cinema simply due to the medium. Cinema derives from the Greek word kinema, or movement. Thus it could be said that only that which refuses stagnation is cinematic in the deepest sense. Annual events like Buy Nothing Day, promoted as culminations of otherwise continuous efforts, have become increasingly predictable affairs, serving more often than not to chastise low-income and working class people for lack of access to the “choice”- based morality their accusers retain, thereby propping up the Feuerbachian/Platonist hierarchy critiqued by Ranciere. And while the magazine’s subvertising itself certainly did turn expressions of capitalism back against it over the last decades, they also restrained the process within a closed group bound more than anything by their chosen medium. What is different today is that the new meanings produced in subvertisements are nowhere near as easily contained within a single object. They have been plasticized, thereby enabling continuous alteration."

Just Policing: An Ellulian Critique

by Andy Alexis-Baker

Alexis-Baker, Andy. "Just Policing: An Ellulian Critique." The Ellul Forum 48 (Fall, 2011): 12–18.

In the past decade many pacifist-minded Christians have began to explore differences between policing and warfare with... more In the past decade many pacifist-minded Christians have began to explore differences between policing and warfare with the noble hope of limiting or even abolishing war as we know it. Jim Wallis claims that since 9/11 many Christians have re-read Jacques Ellul, “who explained his decision to support the resistance movement against Nazism by appealing to the ‘necessity of violence’ but wasn’t willing to call such recourse ‘Christian.’” Similarly, Christian pacifists might respond to terrorism, Wallis claimed, by advocating that the international community create a global police force to deal with violations of international law and human rights. Such a force, Wallis wrote, is “much more constrained, controlled, and circumscribed by the rule of law than is the violence of war, which knows few real boundaries.” Wallis’ suggestion that Ellul’s works may help to formulate a response to terrorism, and that such a response ought to be “policing” raises the question of what an Ellulian analysis of policing might look like.

In my paper, I will use Ellul—rather than summarize his views—to critique just policing. Those who advocate for just policing have not adequately tested whether police are less violent because of the rule of law, and they make ahistorical arguments that do not countenance the possibility that policing may in fact sustain or even worsen violence, not lessen it.

Corporate power and the market: Automotive performance and the automobile industry

by Alan Listiak

From death to final disposition: The role of technology in the post-mortem interval

by Wendy Moncur

Accepted for CHI2012.
Austin, Texas, USA.
Co-authored with Jan Bikker, Elaine, Kasket and John Troyer.

In this paper, we describe the collaborative processes and stakeholders involved in the period from when a person dies... more In this paper, we describe the collaborative processes and stakeholders involved in the period from when a person dies until they are laid to rest: the funeral, final disposition of the body, and (in some circumstances) victim identification. The rich mixture of technologies currently deployed during this brief period are categorized and critically analyzed. We then reflect on what our findings mean for the design space related to End of Life, and for the wider HCI community.

Tsoraki, C. 2011a. Disentangling Neolithic Networks: Ground stone technology, material engagements and networks of action. In A. Brysbaert, (ed.) Tracing prehistoric social networks through technology: a diachronic perspective on the Aegean, 12-29. New York and London: Routledge.

by Christina Tsoraki

Technonatures Introduction White Wilbert

by Damian White

An attempt to survey and think through the political implications of hybridity discourses such as Latour and Haraway for environmental politics. This is the introductory chapter from D.White and C.Wilbert (Eds) Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces, and Places in the Twenty-first CenturyISBN13: 978-1-55458-150-4, 2009.

Lots of other really interesting cuts in the book from Erik Swyngedouw, Sarah Whatmore, Mike Michael, Steve Hinchliffe and others ...check it out at Available from http://www.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/white-wilbert.shtml

Memento Mori: Technology Design for the End of Life

by Wendy Moncur

This paper is the basis for the CHI 2012 workshop “Memento Mori: Technology Design for the End of Life.”, scheduled for May 2012 in Austin, Texas, USA.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Interactive technologies increasingly play a role throughout our lives – and the end of life is no exception. Building on a successful workshop at CHI 2010, we invite participation in the CHI 2012 workshop “Memento Mori: Technology Design for the End of Life.” This one-day workshop will address technology use associated with processes of death, dying, bereavement, and the end of the human lifespan. Example topics include (but are not limited to): health systems for the dying, interactive memorials, bereavement support systems, digital inheritance, and death-oriented perspectives on social media.

We invite 2-4 page submissions in ACM Extended Abstracts format that describe the author’s experience engaging with a specific theme or challenge involved with designing, using, or evaluating technologies that engage with the end of life. We encourage submissions from diverse backgrounds, including (but not limited to): medicine, sociology, law, social work, the arts, humanities, death studies, and thanatology. Industrial and community organizations are similarly encouraged, and will be joined by founders of prominent organizations including The Digital Beyond, Entrustet, and Legacy Locker. Submissions will be selected based on originality, quality, and ability to promote discussion. Both completed and in-progress work is welcome.
Submissions and questions should be directed to Michael Massimi (mikem@dgp.toronto.edu). More information can be found at http://sites.google.com/site/chi2012eol/. At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the workshop and at least one day of the ACM CHI 2012 conference.

More information to follow.

ABSTRACT:
The role of interactive technologies at End of Life (EoL) is a recently established and quickly... more ABSTRACT:
The role of interactive technologies at End of Life (EoL) is a recently established and quickly growing topic in the CHI community. In this workshop, we focus on the design space, methodologies and processes associated with EoL, moving forward the research agenda initiated in the successful CHI 2010 workshop “HCI at the End of Life”. In particular, we focus on moving from fieldwork to thanatosensitive design – a process which engages with EoL issues as part of the design concept. We invite participation from a wide range of people interested in technology and EoL, from the HCI community, academic and professional communities with a variety of perspectives/disciplines, and entrepreneurs developing applications in this space.

Student Occupational Expectations: A Geolocative Study

by Jamie Smith

Smith, J., Straight, R., & Franklin, T. (2011). Student Occupational Expectations: A Geolocative Study. In Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2011.

Expectation of future occupational achievement is a powerful determining factor of student self-perception. Likewise,... more Expectation of future occupational achievement is a powerful determining factor of student self-perception. Likewise, location and socio-economic status influence both expectations and self-perception. The current study seeks to use an innovative web technology as a means of exploring these concepts using geolocated, self-reported and recorded narratives from students in grades 6-8. This is compared to academic performance and socio-economical demographics by school under the theoretical grounding of social cognitive career theory. Future implications for study, the use of web technologies and crowdsourcing for this area of research are included.

Body and Technology: Reframing the Humanistic Critique

by Amy Taylor

Metal music as critical dystopia: humans, technology and the future in 1990s science fiction metal

by Laura Wiebe

MA thesis (as Laura Taylor) for Brock University (St. Catharines, ON), Dept. of Communications, Popular Culture and Film, 2007.

Book Review Essay: Not Understanding the Network? A Review of Four Contemporary Works

by Grant Bollmer

This is a book review essay published in "The Communication Review." In it, I discuss Philip Armstrong's "Reticulations," Yochai Benkler's "Wealth of Networks," Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker's "Exploit," and Brian Rotman's "Becoming Beside Ourselves."

EI impacto de las TIC sobre la juventud: metáfora y representación en ciencias sociales

by Joel Feliu

Co-authored with Adriana Gil-Juárez and Anna Vitores

En primer lugar, en este artículo describimos con cierto detalle una metáfora usada de forma común tanto en medios... more En primer lugar, en este artículo describimos con cierto detalle una metáfora usada de forma común tanto en medios académicos como en medios de difusión masiva: la del
impacto de las nuevas tecnologías sobre la sociedad y, específicamente, sobre la juventud. A continuación, discutimos la pertinencia de esta metáfora del impacto a la luz de otra metáfora posible: la de la lectura de las TIC por parte de las personas jóvenes. Finalizamos comentando el papel que tienen las metáforas en las explicaciones que se realizan en ciencias sociales, mostrando cómo se usan de dos formas diferentes: como dispositivo de representación y como dispositivo de comprensión. En el primer caso, la investigadora encuentra y describe las metáforas, ofreciéndonos una interpretación, necesariamente parcial y situada, de los mundos que construye el sujeto investigado. En el segundo caso, la investigadora propone las metáforas, ofreciéndonos su visión del mundo de los sujetos y obligándose con ello a reconocer las limitaciones y
posibles efectos de su propuesta.

Key factors in the invention of marine conservation technology: A case study of TEDs.

by Lekelia "Kiki" Jenkins

see page 105 of Proceedings

To solve problems such as bycatch, policy-makers resort to conservation technologies, such as turtle excluder devices... more To solve problems such as bycatch, policy-makers resort to conservation technologies, such as turtle excluder devices (TEDs). Although substantial funding has been directed toward the invention and diffusion—the spread and adoption of an item by people—(I&D) of conservation technologies, little research has investigated the I&I process itself.  As a case study, I examined the use of TEDs for the U.S. shrimp trawl fisheries.  I identified key features for successful I&D by conducting on-site interviews with people involved in the process including National Marine Fisheries Service gear specialists, Sea Grant agents, and industry representatives. In addition, I analyzed records from management agencies using the grounded-theory approach, a method that allowed me to identify concepts that emerge from the text and to link these concepts to existing theories of invention and diffusion of innovations. The resulting data were used to (1) diagram the relationships among participants in the network and (2) construct a graphical depiction of how technology evolved, including encoded information about the I&D process.  I conclude that: (1) social and political pressures compel speedy action at the determent of adequate goal setting and research planning, (2) people with both mechanical and shrimping expertise have invented the most widely adopted TEDs but directed-recruitment and integration of these individuals into the invention network is poor, and (3) industry-sensitive adoption efforts are the most successful and include the use of videos, translation for non-English speakers, and community-based Sea Grant agents but translation is inadequate and community-based agents are too few.

The end game is diffusion: adoption of turtle excluder devices and the diffusion process

by Lekelia "Kiki" Jenkins

see page 45 of Proceedings

To solve problems such as bycatch, policy-makers resort to conservation technologies, such as turtle excluder devices... more To solve problems such as bycatch, policy-makers resort to conservation technologies, such as turtle excluder devices (TEDs). For conservation technologies to be useful management tools, they must be widely adopted by the intended users. In order to better understand the adoption process for conservation technologies and what influences the success of the process, I studied the adoption of TEDs by the U.S. shrimp fishery. I conducted on-site interviews with key informants including NMFS personnel, Sea Grant agents, state managers and fishers. In addition, I analyzed records from NMFS, Sea Grant, NGOs, and state governments using grounded theory.  This technique allowed me to identify categories and concepts that emerge from the text and to link these concepts to existing theories and models, specifically diffusion theory and technology transfer. Diffusion is the process by which an innovation is transmitted among members of a social system. Technology transfer is the movement of information or technology from one organizational setting to another. An important difference between these two models of adoption is that diffusion theory focuses on individual adoption decisions. By linking my data to these two theories I concluded that (1) some policy-makers and managers erroneously believed that a mandate negates the need for individual adoption decisions (2) both Sea Grant and NMFS used technology transfer methods that promoted TED awareness but not wide-spread adoption (3) diffusion theory would be a more appropriate model to encourage wide-spread adoption (4) enforcement is not a substitute for nor can it assure true adoption.

Bycatch: Interactional expertise, dolphins and the U.S. tuna fishery

by Lekelia "Kiki" Jenkins

published in 'Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science', 2007

The burgeoning field of studies in expertise and experience (SEE) is a useful theoretical approach to complex... more The burgeoning field of studies in expertise and experience (SEE) is a useful theoretical approach to complex problems. In light of SEE, examination of the controversial and well known case study of dolphin bycatch in the US tuna fishery, reveals that effective problem-solving was hindered by institutional tensions in respect of decision-making authority and difficulties with the integration of different expertises. Comparing the profiles of four individuals, who played distinct roles in the problem-solving process, I show that (1) to address a complex problem, a suite of contributory expertises—rarely found in one individual—may be required; (2) formal credentials are not a reliable indicator of who possesses these necessary expertises; (3) interactional expertise and interactive ability are useful tools in combining the contributory expertises of others to yield a desirable collective outcome; and (4) the concepts of contributory expertise and no expertise are useful tools for understanding the actual contribution of various parties to the problem-solving process.