Science Fiction, Philosophy, and Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 227-240
Author(s):  
Noël Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Racial Relations

This chapter examines the 1968 film as an intuition pump designed to potentially move audiences toward a positive attitude toward civil rights by allegorically projecting racial relations in terms of the unjust ape-to-human relations portrayed in the movie.

scholarly journals Entrepreneurs' learning preferences: A guide for entrepreneurship education

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Nieuwenhuizen ◽  
D. Groenewald
Keyword(s):  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Entrepreneurship Education ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Learning Preferences ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Measurement Instruments ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Entrepreneurial Skills ◽  
Entrepreneurial Training ◽  
Creativity And Innovation

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to determine guidelines for effective entrepreneurship education and training, focusing on the development of entrepreneurial skills, based on what successful, established entrepreneurs look like, how they operate and their learning and thinking preferences. Problem investigated: Entrepreneurial skills training is the difficult part of teaching entrepreneurship and is different from teaching functional and managerial skills related to entrepreneurship. The problem is that training and education focuses primarily on the management and functional business training of entrepreneurs and very seldom on the entrepreneurial skills. This study focuses on the much neglected second leg of entrepreneurship training, as most entrepreneurship programmes focus on the first leg, namely business planning and functions and management skills. Design/methodology/approach: This is a formal and exploratory study. Two measurement instruments (Schein Career Orientations Inventory and the Neethling Brain Instrument) were used and completed by a sample of 50 entrepreneurs of the identified population. The paper address the entrepreneurship education needs as determined by the learning preferences of entrepreneurs. Findings: The research indicated that all the essential entrepreneurial skills are seldom addressed in entrepreneurial training. The entrepreneurial skills that need to be incorporated in these programmes are self-concept, creativity and innovation, risk orientation, good human relations; perseverance and a positive attitude. The research also revealed that entrepreneurs have different learning preferences from other students / learners and this should be taken into consideration in the design of entrepreneurial curricula. Value of research: The paper assist curriculum developers of entrepreneurship education programmes to better align their content to the entrepreneurial skills identified by successful entrepreneurs that need to be developed, and to conduct entrepreneurship education according to the learning preferences of entrepreneurs. Conclusion: The application of the Garavan and O'Cinneide model regarding the methodology in the education of entrepreneurs can therefore be confirmed and recommended. The results of the career anchor and brain instruments indicate the importance of entrepreneurial skills-training and include training in the following areas : self concept; creativity and innovation; risk orientation; good human relations, perseverance and positive attitude.

scholarly journals (Un)Human Relations: Transhumanism in Francesco Verso’s Nexhuman

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-226
Author(s):  
Jana Vizmuller-Zocco
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Human Organ ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Italian Science ◽  
Limb Prosthesis ◽  
Number Of Authors

Transhumanism is an international movement which es­pouses the idea that any human organ, function, sense, ability, can be augmented and ameliorated with the judicious use of technology. The ethical, cultural, social, biological, economic implications for this view are far-reaching and point to a number of complex ques­tions whose solution eludes researchers so far. One of the possible sources for answers to these is found in science fiction. While trans­humanism is a relatively recent phenomenon (last 25 years or so), science fiction published in English that mirrors some of its issues and ideas has been flourishing for at least as long. In Italy, science fiction is starting to enjoy popularity and critical depth in no small measure due to the untiring abilities of a number of authors. This article analyzes the intersections between human and machine as they are portrayed in Francesco Verso’s Nexhuman. Francesco Verso has published 4 award-winning science fiction novels and a number of short stories. Nexhuman offers a considerable narrative construct which paints a dystopian future where trash is formed and re-formed, sold and reworked; however, strong emotions are not absent, since love may flourish in this “kipple”-laden setting, as well as violence and obsession. Transhumanist ideas explicitly dealt with in the novel include the end of death, the question of the soul, mind uploading, limb prosthesis, the co-existence of humans with mind-uploaded be­ings. The amalgam between human and machine does away with the Self and the Other(s) as separate entities and constructs a completely different Weltanschauung. Nexhuman is not only a transhumanist trailblazer within the flourishing arena of Italian science fiction, but also a springboard for deeper understanding of what makes us human and the extent to which binary categories need to be overcome in order to create a more accommodating world.

An American Story

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danilo Kiš
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Danilo Kis ◽  
The U.S

The twelve stories in this collection, published in various journals and newspapers in Yugoslavia between 1953 and 1967, provide fascinating insights into the development of Danilo Kiš as a writer. From lapidary childhood idylls to harrowing foreshadowings of the Holocaust, from a satirical treatment of totalitarianism to a philosophical reflection on perception and form, the subject matter is remarkably varied. The highly unusual title story is even set amidst the U.S. civil rights struggles of the 20th century, and several of the tales are redolent of science fiction.

Robo sapiens japanicus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Humanoid Robots ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Gender System

Japan is arguably the first postindustrial society to embrace the prospect of human-robot coexistence. Over the past decade, Japanese humanoid robots designed for use in homes, hospitals, offices, and schools have become celebrated in the global mass media and on social media. Robo sapiens japanicus casts a critical eye on press releases and PR videos that (mis)represent actual robots as being as versatile and agile as their science fiction counterparts. An ethnography and sociocultural history of governmental, academic, and popular discourses of human-robot relations in Japan, this book explores how actual robots—humanoids, androids, animaloids—are “imagineered” in ways that reinforce the conventional sex/gender system and political-economic status quo. The granting of “civil rights” to robots is interrogated in tandem with the notion of human exceptionalism. Similarly, how robots and robotic exoskeletons reinforce a conception of the “normal” body is juxtaposed with a deconstruction of the much-invoked theory of the uncanny valley.

Attitude Change Through Training in Industry

1958 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-30
Author(s):  
Harry Triandis
Keyword(s):  
Attitude Change ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Considerable Increase ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Top Management ◽  
Enterprise System ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Supervisory Training

In the last fifteen or twenty years there has been a considerable increase in supervisory training in industry. A large variety of courses ranging in content from Human Relations to Mathematics are given. Many of these courses do not aim to impart specific facts, figures, or formulae. Instead, the aim is to change the attitudes of the supervisor in relation to some aspect of the industry's operations. They aim, for example, at having him acquire a person-centered rather than a production-centered attitude in his dealings with his subordinates, or a positive attitude towards the free enterprise system, or toward certain aspects of top management policy.

scholarly journals Acts of Becoming

Loading ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (24) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Adam Tompkins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
The Past ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
The Future

This article examines the rich historical subtext in the future-focused storylines of Quantic Dream’s 2018 release Detroit: Become Human (PS4) and illuminates many of the thematic continuities in racial issues between the past and the future. Much of the subtle historical symbolism appears to have went unnoticed by many reviewers who maligned the videogame and its creator David Cage for relying on lazy tropes that clunkily connect the African American civil rights movement to the narrative of woke androids engaging in a struggle for greater equality in society. Following scholarship that has examined the development of racialized thought in the past, this essay recognizes “race” as a powerful, yet malleable social construct, that sometimes changes over time. Racial concepts in the game do not perfectly align with historical or contemporary understandings of “race” in the United States. Androids, in short, all belong to the same “race.” This article then contends that the storylines of all three playable characters in the game resonate with well-crafted historical parallels and that the narrative geography in the gameworld often closely tethers to the historical geography of Detroit. The characters Markus, Connor, and Kara have intertwining stories that represent different elements of minority life in the United States with the clearest parallels to the historical experience of African Americans. Detroit: Become Human, nonetheless, is a science fiction game about androids. Framing the struggle for equal rights in the future with a group of beings that do not yet exist has the potential to disarm gameplayers of latent biases that may otherwise color their view of contemporary racial issues. The article asserts that the wedding together of past and future through experiential gameplay nurtures an empathic understanding of minority concerns that may carry over to the present to impact understandings of contemporary racial issues.

Western Literature at Century's End: Sketches in Generation X, Los Angeles, and the Post-Civil Rights Novel

2003 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista Comer
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Generation X ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Racial Formations ◽  
The Status ◽  
Detective Stories ◽  
Under Construction ◽  
Post Civil Rights

Since the early 1990s several "serious" southern California writers have begun writing science fiction, detective stories, mysteries, comic satires, even magical realism, finding freshly relevant ways to represent western life at century's end. Through novels by Sandra Tsing Loh and Cynthia Kadohata, I locate this turn to the popular within a larger political and cultural context we might call "post-Civil Rights." In such novels, texts do not take racial alterity as a starting, radically disruptive fact, although they do not claim that America has outgrown racism. Rather, a new racial subject and/or series of racial formations is under construction, invested in updating and reformulating the status of the nonwhite racial other, to account for the enormity of change in recent years, especially the place of youth within globalization discourse.

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