Managing Failures

2030 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rutger van Santen ◽  
Djan Khoe ◽  
Bram Vermeer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Power Supply ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Payment Systems ◽  
Software Failure ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
High Doses

Computers are the engines that drive our society. We get paid via computer, and we use them to vote in elections; computers decide whether to deploy the airbags in our car; and doctors use them to help identify a patient’s injuries. Computers are embedded in all sorts of processes nowadays, and that can make us vulnerable. Because of a single computer glitch, large payment systems can grind to a halt. When computers malfunction, we risk losing our power supply, our railway links, and our communications. Worst of all, we habitually shift responsibility to computers and blindly follow their advice. This is why patients occasionally receive ridiculously high doses of a powerful drug or a car driver who blindly follows his satnav may end up in a ditch. Ubiquitous computer use can cause otherwise responsible people to leave their common sense at home. We’re all too familiar with poorly designed software, computer errors, or—worse still—programs that flatly refuse to function properly no matter what we do. It is hardly surprising then that computer failures cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars a year. In the United States alone, failed computer projects are believed to waste $55 billion annually. And the media only report the tip of the iceberg— the foul-ups that cost millions or result in fatalities. For instance, in the 1980s, several cancer patients were killed by a programming error that caused the Therac 25 radiotherapy unit to deliver excessive doses of radiation. In 1996, Europe’s first Ariane 5 rocket had to be blown up a mere 37 seconds after launch in what might be the costliest software failure in history. In 2007, six F-22 aircraft experienced multiple computer crashes as they crossed the date line, disabling all navigation and communication systems. The list can be extended endlessly, and there are many more failures that we never hear about. Only about a third of all computer projects can be described as successful, and even these are hardly error-free. Why can’t we prevent programming mistakes? Could we improve computers and their software to protect society from the “moods”’ of its digital machines?

Media as an Educational System: Can the Media Help?

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hamburg ◽  
Beatrix A. Hamburg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
Violent Behaviors ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Events ◽  
The Media

The media, even in democratic societies, have been faulted for glorifying violence, especially in the entertainment industry. And we have seen how the harsh use of hateful propaganda through the media, by nationalist and sectarian leaders, can inflame conflicts in many parts of the world. The international community can support media that portray accurate information on current events, show constructive relations between different groups, and report instances in which violence has been prevented. Foundations, commissions, and universities can work with broadcasters to help provide responsible, insightful coverage of serious conflicts. For example, through constructive interactions with the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, CNN International moved to balance coverage of violence and strategies for peaceful conflict resolution. Social action for prosocial media may become an effective function of nongovernmental organizations, similar to their achievements in human rights. Research findings have established a causal link between children’s television viewing and their subsequent behavior in the United States and a variety of other countries (e.g., Australia, Finland, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland). Both aggressive and prosocial behaviors can be evoked, depending on the content of programs. There is no reason to assume that the impact of movies is substantially different. As early as age 2, children imitate behaviors (including violent behaviors) seen on television, and the effects may last into their teen years. Must violent content predominate forever? How can the media help to prevent deadly conflicts in the future? The proliferation of media in all forms constitutes an important aspect of globalization. Films, television, print, radio, and the Internet have immense power to reach people with powerful messages, for better and worse. At present, the United States is largely responsible for the output of film and television content seen by people worldwide. But advances in technology are making it increasingly feasible for media to be produced in all parts of the world—all too often with messages of hate, and they may become even more dangerous than the excessive violence in U.S. television and movies. Films have great, unused potential for encouraging peace and for nonviolent problem solving. They entertain, educate, and constitute a widely shared experience.

A Time of War, and A Time of Peace

2012 ◽  
pp. 266-283
Author(s):  
Joseph Krauskopf
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Services ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Associations ◽  
The Media

This chapter provides Joseph Krauskopf's discourse regarding war. It was delivered after the United States Congress's formal declaration of war against Spain. The theological underpinning of his sermon is a reassertion of a traditional providential view of God in control of history, patient with Spain despite its many sins (going back at least four centuries), yet certain to punish the unrepentant sinning nation to reassert justice in the world. Two powerful rhetorical passages build to the climax of the sermon. The first is based on a pronounced use of anaphora and parallelism. The second was apparently triggered by the media, as a New York Times article stated that women of the Spanish aristocracy were ‘organizing religious associations, under the auspices of the Bishops, for the purpose of holding, day and night, special services of prayer for the success of the Spanish arms’.

The International Veterinary Academy on Disaster Medicine

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-66
Author(s):  
Robert R. Shomer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Nuclear Energy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Disaster Medicine ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
Physicians For Social Responsibility

The International Veterinary Academy on Disaster Medicine had its genesis in Perth, Australia, when at the World Veterinary Congress in August 1983, Dr. Ole Stalheim extended an invitation to attend a meeting of a group under the label “World Veterinarians Against Nuclear War”. It had an auspicious beginning—we attracted some attention in the media, more indeed, than we had received during our early attempts at formation in the United States. It became apparent, however, that we were in effect replicating activities of other well-established and more financially secure groups—Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Society Against Nuclear Energy (SANE), etc. We needed greater participation to cope with “peace time” problems already confronting us as well, and it was evident that a larger veterinary audience would be reached and our services to the community enhanced if we broadened the commitment.

The old European States-system: Gentz versus Hauterive

1980 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 521-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray Forsyth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Half Century ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Great War

The contemporary international system is at once the continuation and the negation ofthe old European states-system. It is the continuation in the sense that the world is nowpeopled with the same kind of political bodies that were formerly concentrated within thearea of Europe alone, namely sovereign states. The overseas empires of Britain, France, Spain, and others, represented both the subordination of the rest of the world to Europe, and the media through which the state as a political structure was exported from Europe. The dissolution of these empires, foreshadowed by the independence of the United States and the emancipation of Spain's Latin American colonies, and accomplished definitively in the half-century following the Great War, signified the extension of inter-state relationships to the world in general, while it marked the end of the domination of the European states in particular.

scholarly journals Respostas Populistas à Crise do Coronavírus: Análise dos Twitters de Donald Trump e Jair Bolsonaro

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 81-103
Author(s):  
Andressa Costa ◽  
◽  
Ana Bernardi ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
International Media ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Challenges

The coronavirus pandemic has suddenly and fast emerged, bringing new challenges on a global scale. Brazil and the United States have been for months the two countries with most cases and deaths by Covid-19 in the world, until India surpassed Brazil, and only on the number of cases. Therefore, there are similarities in the way their presidents have been dealing with the crisis. Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro have been in standout on international media by their poor leadership in face of the crises created by the pandemic. Both presidents have politicized the crisis, standing against scientific evidence and world recommendations. Contrary to social isolation, they have antagonized governors and mayors, intensifying conflicts despite the lost lives, disqualifying the media as fake news. Given that, this paper aims to analyse how the populist leaders, in Brazil and in the United States, have responded to the coronavirus crisis in terms of actions and discourses. For this purpose, we analyse tweets from both their official Twitter accounts, on the period from the first official recorded case until the milestone of 100 thousand deaths in each country.

Politics of Vision in the Carceral State: Legibility and Looking in Hostile Territory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Hunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The United States ◽  
Carceral State ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control ◽  
Multiple Discourses

As we begin to think about the United States as a carceral state, this means that the scale of incarceration practices have grown so great within it that they have a determining effect on the shape of the the society as a whole. In addition to the budgets, routines, and technologies used is the culture of that carceral state, where relationships form between elements of its culture and its politics. In terms of its visual culture, that relationship forms a visuality, a culture and politics of vision that both reflects the state’s carceral qualities and, in turn, helps to structure and organize the society in a carceral manner. Images, architecture, light, presentation and camouflage, surveillance, and the play of sight between groups of people and the world are all materials through which the ideas of a society are worked out, its politics played out, its technology implemented, its rationality or common sense and identities forming. They also shape the politics of freedom and control, where what might be a free, privileged expression to one person could be a dangerous exposure to another, where invisibility or inscrutability may be a resource. In this article, these questions are asked in relation to the history of prison architecture, from premodern times to the present, while considering the multiple discourses that overlap throughout that history: war, enslavement, civil punishment, and freedom struggle, but also a discourse of agency, where subordinated peoples can or cannot resist, or remain hostile to or in difference from the control placed upon them.

scholarly journals INNOCENT UNTIL PRESENTED

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 344
Author(s):  
Aristo Pangaribuan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
The World ◽  
Standard Term ◽  
The Media ◽  
Higher Purpose

This paper analyzes a practice of presenting suspects, which is a ritual that displays a suspect before the media. Until now, although it is frequently used by the police, there has been no attempt to examine such practices in Indonesia. In the criminal procedure scholarship, there is no standard term to describe it. This article will refer to such ritual as a presentation of suspects. This ritual has also been practiced around the world with different methods and has a long history, especially in the United States. This article discusses the presentation of suspects and question whether such a ritual is a violation of the fundamental rights of being presumed innocent until found guilty. Two issues will be examined to answer this question: The purported objectives for the practice and the accused’s right to be presumed innocent. The term innocence here is a presumptively innocent and not factually innocent. With that in mind, to some degree, this article realizes it would be permissible to deprive their liberty if it has a higher purpose.

scholarly journals a Literary History of Mental Captivity in the United States. Blood Meridian, Wise Blood, and Contemporary Political Discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-97
Author(s):  
Manuel Broncano Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Literary History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Blood Meridian ◽  
The World ◽  
Wise Blood ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
A Chain

On July 15, 2018, US President Donald Trump and Russia President Vladimir Putin held a summit in Helsinki that immediately set off a chain reaction throughout the world. By now, barely two months later, that summit is all but forgotten for the most part, superseded by the frantic train of events and the subsequent bombardment from the media that have become the “new normal.” While the iron secrecy surrounding the conversation between the two dignitaries allowed for all kinds of speculation, the image of president Trump bowing to his Russian counterpart (indeed a treasure trove for semioticians) became for many observers in the US and across the world the living proof of Mr. Trump´s subservient allegiance to Mr. Putin and his obscure designs. Even some of the most recalcitrant GOPs vented quite publicly their disgust at the sight of a president paying evident homage to the archenemy of the United States, as Vercingetorix kneeled down before Julius Cesar in recognition of the Gaul´s surrender to the might of the Roman Empire. For some arcanereason, the whole episode of the Helsinki summit brought to my mind, as in a vivid déjà vu, Cormac McCarthy´s novel Blood Meridian and more specifically, the characters of Judge Holden and the idiotic freak who becomes Holden´s ludicrous disciple in the wastelands of Arizona. In my presentation, I will provide some possible explanations as to why I came to blend these two unrelated episodes into a single continuum. In the process, I will briefly revisit some key texts in the American canon that fully belong in the history of “mental captivity” in the United States, yet to be written. Obviously, I am not in hopes of deciphering the ultimate reasons for current US foreign policy, and the more modest aim of my presentation today is to offer some insights into the general theme of our conference through a novel and a textual tradition overpopulated with “captive minds.”

Sex Differences in Mass Media Preferences Across Four Asian Countries

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malini Ratnasingam ◽  
Lee Ellis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sex Differences ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Female Students ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Evolutionary Explanation ◽  
Asian Countries ◽  
The World ◽  
Media Preferences

Background. Nearly all of the research on sex differences in mass media utilization has been based on samples from the United States and a few other Western countries. Aim. The present study examines sex differences in mass media utilization in four Asian countries (Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, and Singapore). Methods. College students self-reported the frequency with which they accessed the following five mass media outlets: television dramas, televised news and documentaries, music, newspapers and magazines, and the Internet. Results. Two significant sex differences were found when participants from the four countries were considered as a whole: Women watched television dramas more than did men; and in Japan, female students listened to music more than did their male counterparts. Limitations. A wider array of mass media outlets could have been explored. Conclusions. Findings were largely consistent with results from studies conducted elsewhere in the world, particularly regarding sex differences in television drama viewing. A neurohormonal evolutionary explanation is offered for the basic findings.

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