scholarly journals Recognition, collaboration and community: science fiction representations of robot carers in Robot & Frank, Big Hero 6 and Humans

2020 ◽  
pp. medhum-2019-011744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yugin Teo
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Social ◽  
Community Science ◽  
Fictional Representations ◽  
Affective Relations

In the 2010s, a small number of science fiction films and television series exploring the theme of the robot carer and how humans respond to them were released. This paper explores three works in this regard: the films Robot & Frank (dir. Jake Schreier, USA 2012), Big Hero 6 (dir. Don Hall/Chris Williams, USA 2014) and the television series Humans (UK/USA, Channel 4/AMC, 2015–2018). Examining these works with some of the ethical issues currently being discussed in the use of robot technology in care work, this paper demonstrates how they align themselves with, but also challenge some of these ideas, and ultimately direct viewers to consider their own expectations of personalised healthcare. The essay begins by examining the fears of the care industry deploying robots to replace the work of human carers, followed by a discussion of the effectiveness of robots as carers as depicted in these fictional representations, and the final section considers the social environment that these robot carers are situated in, and how the robots become a reflection of human lives and a repository of memories of affective relations. These texts suggest alternate ways of thinking about human–robot interactions and care work, advocating for a more mutually dependent and reciprocal working relationship that might lead to a better quality of care.

scholarly journals Ethical issues related to eHealth: An integrative review

2020 ◽  
pp. 096973302094576
Author(s):  
Anu Jokinen ◽  
Minna Stolt ◽  
Riitta Suhonen
Keyword(s):  
Social Care ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Cochrane Library ◽  
Service Users ◽  
The Social ◽  
User Access ◽  
Ehealth Services ◽  
Academic Search

Background: Identifying and safeguarding ethics in eHealth services from the service users’ perspective in social care and healthcare is important. The use of eHealth services should not prejudice the quality of services or the social interaction required in care. There is a lack of studies about the ethics of eHealth services from the service users’ perspective. Aim: The aim of this study is to identify and analyse ethical issues related to eHealth in social care and healthcare from the service users’ perspective. Research design: An integrative literature review. Ethical considerations: The review followed good scientific conduct. Research context and data sources: A systematic literature search was performed using CINAHL, Scopus, PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Academic Search Premier to find relevant empirical studies published in English from their earliest up to 30 November 2018. In addition, reference lists from the identified research papers were searched. A quality appraisal of each paper included in the review was conducted before thematic analysis. Results: In total, 26 studies were included in the review, and from these four ethical themes were identified: (1) privacy in eHealth, (2) beneficence and nonmaleficence in eHealth, (3) justice in eHealth and (4) trust in eHealth. The ethical issues within these themes were related to information sharing; ownership; access to information and data protection; informed consent; defence of rights; and equity, equality and proportionality of response. Conclusion: eHealth inequality occurs in social care and healthcare. eHealth service designers and social care and healthcare professionals need to act to maintain and improve user access and data accuracy and provide different levels of security in eHealth services, relative to the information stored. There is a need for further research about ethical issues of eHealth from the user’s perspective, including the customer-oriented availability and usability of eHealth services which avoid discrimination.

Facial transplantation: historical developments and future directions

2015 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 206-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
G L Garrett ◽  
I Beegun ◽  
A D'souza
Keyword(s):  
Functional Outcomes ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Infectious Complications ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Facial Transplantation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bibliographic Search ◽  
Historical Developments

AbstractObjective:To present the clinical outcomes obtained by the first facial transplant teams worldwide, reviewing current practice and addressing controversies.Methods:A bibliographic search of Medline and Embase databases was performed, and a comparative analysis of all articles published from 1980 to the present was conducted. Two independent investigators screened the manuscripts in accordance with pre-defined criteria.Results:A total of 12 partial and 5 full facial transplants were recorded in the literature. Procedures included partial and near-total facial myocutaneous flaps, and complex osteomyocutaneous grafts. Fifteen patients had fully vascularised grafts, and two patients died of transplant-related and infectious complications.Conclusion:Facial transplantation can restore quality of life and enable the social re-integration of recipients. Results published by the first facial transplant teams are promising. However, long-term reports of aesthetic and functional outcomes are needed to more precisely define outcomes. In addition, significant technical, medical and ethical issues remain to be solved.

Science Fiction or Reality

2011 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dragan Petrovec ◽  
Mitja Muršič
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Climate ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Specific Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Almost All ◽  
And Control

The article presents probably the most relevant research to date on the Slovene prison system. The study was conducted through a 2-year research project sponsored by Ministry of Justice and carried out by the Institute of Criminology in Ljubljana. Along with a “longitudinal” study of the social climate in Slovene prison institutions, it evaluates the concepts, practices, and results of so-called sociotherapy as a specific approach to treatment of offenders. “Specific” in this case means that treatment simultaneously encompasses life in prison, the offenders’ social environment, and the inclusion of prison staff. Sociotherapy began as an experiment during the mid-70s and led to astonishing results, namely, the “opening” of prison institutions for almost all inmates, regardless of the length of sentence or the crime committed. Applying the findings of sociotherapy every 5 years since 1980, the social climate in every Slovene prison institution has been measured to assess the quality of support and control prisoners receive and the discipline and treatment philosophies at work in the system. Finally, the article deals with the situation after Slovene independence in 1991 and the passage of new legislation. Against expectations, we find that with the advent of democracy, standards of prisoner treatment have dropped. However, the success of the experiment should encourage all countries seeking to reduce the significant costs of incarceration and attempting to make prison institutions more humane.

The Dialogic Expansion of Garcia’s We: Chronotopes, Ethics, and Politics in The Expanse Series

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-191
Author(s):  
Eamon Reid
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Milky Way ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Discrete Events ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Fictional Representations ◽  
Generic System

Abstract Popular culture could be understood as a political battleground where conflicting meanings are inscribed into the “ordinary objects” that constitute that public sphere. This is also true for science fiction television series. This article critically examines how political matters and ethical agencies are represented within The Expanse, a series that takes place within a speculative twenty-fourth century milky way. Firstly, I will situate The Expanse within its generic “system of reference.” Then, I will illustrate how political matters are represented as conjoined with the ethical. While the ethical refers to actions of persons, politics refers to fictional conceptions of what Tristan Garcia’s terms we-ourselves, understood as conflicting and overlapping conceptions of “we.” The conjunction between the political and the ethical in The Expanse is spatiotemporal: the characters, the events they are entangled in, and the spaces that connect discrete events develop through fictional and literal time. I argue that the science fictional representations of “we-ourselves,” and the specific spatiotemporal representational capacities of the television series format, can be understood through the application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of the chronotope and the dialogic. That is, The Expanse’s we-representations are chronotopic and the refractive rhetoric of television is dialogic.

scholarly journals Beyond Human to Humane: A Multispecies Analysis of Care Work, Its Repression, and Its Potential

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Coulter
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Ethical Considerations ◽  
The Social ◽  
In The Wild

This paper approaches care work through a multispecies and interspecies lens, and challenges readers to expand both their analysis and their ethical considerations in order to include animals. First I present a conceptual framework to help illuminate and unpack the care work animals do in the wild, in homes, and in formal workplaces. I then highlight the complex ways animals’ bodies, minds, and families are involved in the production of commodities for human consumption, and the implications of such practices for animals’ own forms of caregiving. Unfortunately, the fact is that for many animals, their primary experiences of care work are its repression. As a result, in the final section, I offer food for thought about the potential for care work to not only involve more empathetic embodied interactions and labour processes, but to be a springboard for expanded visions and projects of social justice which include humane jobs and recognize that “the social” is multispecies.

scholarly journals WESTWORLD: FROM EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION OF THE WESTERN

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-85
Author(s):  
ARTEM N. ZORIN ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
World Order ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Important Link ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Content

Westworld television series was created in the second half of the 2010s by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. It has become an important link in the chain of actualizing the western as a genre in its variations against the background of the current social and cultural content. Initially a remake of the 1973 film of the same name directed by Michael Crichton, the series soon evolved: its second season has become a form of comprehension for both the basis of the western poetics in its relation to science fiction and the burning issues of the 21st century. “The rise of the machines” is interpreted here as a revolt against God, as overcoming the total scenarios of normative poetics and also as a visualization of Donna Haraway’s cyberfeminism ideas. The meta-western part of the Westworld plot unfolds from the 1970s and 1980s to the “revolutionary” aesthetics of the 60s and reveals its ambition to play around with the revisionist scripts of the spaghetti western, especially its most radical part — the zapata western. Trying on their revolutionary logic, the characters and creators of the series try to find their way out of the maze of unsolvable questions about the oncoming future and formulate new ethical dominants for a contemporary viewer. Such a logic supposes existence not in the world of a classical western — with the final triumph of justice, but in the world of a total revisionism of the late 1960s western. It is manifested in the integral poetics of the second season. Androids are creatures with a new worldview and perception of a different world order. They travel through different areas and levels of the historical park, collect key moments of history and stylistic features of a western as the central epic genre of cinema aesthetics. The first two seasons of the Westworld are as much an anthem to the cinema, the main art of the 20th century, as Quentin Tarantino’s westerns created at the same time. They demonstrate that in the world of contemporary values the cinema epic is the starting point of history, the beginning and the source of a person’s epic worldview. As a result, the western appears in the series as a key epic form underlying the mythological mind of a contemporary viewer. The meta-western nature also reflects the direction towards the total westernization of cinema aesthetics and, at the same time, an attempt to understand the reasons which led this approach to the crisis, projected onto the social contradictions of our time. The ironic laws of the spaghetti western, using the elements of Christianization and surrealism in the interpretation of the genre’s canonical schemes, make it possible to expand the range of the tasks set by the authors far beyond the borders of one-nation specifics.

Epistemic and relational conflicts in sharing identical vs. complementary information during cooperative learning

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 139-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Céline Darnon ◽  
Céline Buchs ◽  
Fabrizio Butera
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Learning ◽  
Social Comparison ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Complementary Information ◽  
Relational Conflict ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University

When interacting on a learning task, which is typical of several academic situations, individuals may experience two different motives: Understanding the problem, or showing their competences. When a conflict (confrontation of divergent propositions) emerges from this interaction, it can be solved either in an epistemic way (focused on the task) or in a relational way (focused on the social comparison of competences). The latter is believed to be detrimental for learning. Moreover, research on cooperative learning shows that when they share identical information, partners are led to compare to each other, and are less encouraged to cooperate than when they share complementary information. An epistemic vs. relational conflict vs. no conflict was provoked in dyads composed by a participant and a confederate, working either on identical or on complementary information (N = 122). Results showed that, if relational and epistemic conflicts both entailed more perceived interactions and divergence than the control group, only relational conflict entailed more perceived comparison activities and a less positive relationship than the control group. Epistemic conflict resulted in a more positive perceived relationship than the control group. As far as performance is concerned, relational conflict led to a worse learning than epistemic conflict, and - after a delay - than the control group. An interaction between the two variables on delayed performance showed that epistemic and relational conflicts were different only when working with complementary information. This study shows the importance of the quality of relationship when sharing information during cooperative learning, a crucial factor to be taken into account when planning educational settings at the university.

A Futures Study on the Quality Of Life from the Point Of View of Iranian Youth

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Sina Saeedy ◽  
Mojtaba Amiri ◽  
Mohammad Mahdi Zolfagharzadeh ◽  
Mohammad Rahim Eyvazi
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Mixed Model ◽  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Futures Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University

Quality of life and satisfaction with life as tightly interconnected concepts have become of much importance in the urbanism era. No doubt, it is one of the most important goals of every human society to enhance a citizen’s quality of life and to increase their satisfaction with life. However, there are many signs which demonstrate the low level of life satisfaction of Iranian citizens especially among the youth. Thus, considering the temporal concept of life satisfaction, this research aims to make a futures study in this field. Therefore, using a mixed model and employing research methods from futures studies, life satisfaction among the students of the University of Tehran were measured and their views on this subject investigated. Both quantitative and qualitative data were analysed together in order to test the hypotheses and to address the research questions on the youth discontentment with quality of life. Findings showed that the level of life satisfaction among students is relatively low and their image of the future is not positive and not optimistic. These views were elicited and discussed in the social, economic, political, environmental and technological perspectives. Keywords:  futures studies, quality of life, satisfaction with life, youth

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

Same Address, Different Doors: Post-Heritage Deconstruction of the Heritage Household in Upstairs Downstairs in the 1970s and 2010s

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Abbiss
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Critical History ◽  
The Social ◽  
Fourth Series ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multiple Episodes

This article offers a ‘post-heritage’ reading of both iterations of Upstairs Downstairs: the LondonWeekend Television (LWT) series (1971–5) and its shortlived BBC revival (2010–12). Identifying elements of subversion and subjectivity allows scholarship on the LWT series to be reassessed, recognising occasions where it challenges rather than supports the social structures of the depicted Edwardian past. The BBC series also incorporates the post-heritage element of self-consciousness, acknowledging the parallel between its narrative and the production’s attempts to recreate the success of its 1970s predecessor. The article’s first section assesses the critical history of the LWT series, identifying areas that are open to further study or revised readings. The second section analyses the serialised war narrative of the fourth series of LWT’s Upstairs, Downstairs (1974), revealing its exploration of female identity across multiple episodes and challenging the notion that the series became more male and upstairs dominated as it progressed. The third section considers the BBC series’ revised concept, identifying the shifts in its main characters’ positions in society that allow the series’ narrative to question the past it evokes. This will be briefly contrasted with the heritage stability of Downton Abbey (ITV, 2010–15). The final section considers the household of 165 Eaton Place’s function as a studio space, which the BBC series self-consciously adopts in order to evoke the aesthetics of prior period dramas. The article concludes by suggesting that the barriers to recreating the past established in the BBC series’ narrative also contributed to its failure to match the success of its earlier iteration.

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