scholarly journals Posthumanist Solidarity: The Political and Ethical Imaginations of Artificial Intelligence from Battlestar Galactica to Raised by Wolves

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-142
Author(s):  
Alexandre Gefen
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Battlestar Galactica ◽  
Metaphysical Question ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract A number of twenty-first century television series explore the irruption of AI devices into our daily lives, highlighting not only human interaction with AI, but posing disturbing and new ontological considerations: humans wondering how they are different from machines, or those of machines being unaware that they are machines and only discovering so belatedly. Within these series, the emergence of these thoughts is accompanied by the staging of interspecies friendship and romance: the metaphysical question of freedom gives way to the question of attachment, and then the problem of autonomy gives way to that of interdependence. It is this passage from metaphysical speculation to political reflection that I would like to demonstrate.

American Custom, Ritual, and Holidays

2018 ◽  
pp. 255-276
Author(s):  
Jack Santino
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life Course ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Events ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Since the nineteenth century, attention in folklore and folklife studies has shifted from viewing certain customary symbolic actions such as “calendar customs” and rituals of the life course to a more inclusive performance-oriented perspective on holidays and customs. Folklorists recognize the multiplicity of events that people may consider ritual and festival, and the porous nature of these categories. The concept of the “sacred” has expanded to include realms other than the strictly religious, so as to include the political and other domains, both official and unofficial. A comprehensive study of ritual and festival incorporates a close study of folk and popular actions as well as institutional ceremony. In the twenty-first century, approaching events as both carnivalesque and ritualesque allows folklorists to describe purpose and intention in public events, and to account for political, commemorative, celebratory, and festive elements in any particular event.

The Younghusband-Waddell Collection and Its People: the Social Life of Tibetan Books Gathered in a Late-colonial Enterprise

Inner Asia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-171
Author(s):  
Hildegard Diemberger
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Social Life ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
Cultural Biography ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractIn this paper I follow the social life of the Tibetan books belonging to the Younghusband-Waddell collection. I show how books as literary artefacts can transform from ritual objects into loot, into commodities and into academic treasures and how books can have agency over people, creating networks and shaping identities. Exploring connections between books and people, I look at colonial collecting, Orientalist scholarship and imperial visions from an unusual perspective in which the social life and cultural biography of people and things intertwine and mutually define each other. By following the trajectory of these literary artefacts, I show how their traces left in letters, minutes and acquisition documents give insight into the functioning of academic institutions and their relationship to imperial governing structures and individual aspirations. In particular, I outline the lives of a group of scholars who were involved with this collection in different capacities and whose deeds are unevenly known. This adds a new perspective to the study of this period, which has so far been largely focused on the deeds of key individuals and the political and military setting in which they operated. Finally, I show how the books of this collection have continued to exercise their attraction and moral pressure on twenty-first-century scholars, both Tibetan and international, linking them through digital technology and cyberspace.

Prophetic Imagination and Empire in Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-116
Author(s):  
Jude Lal Fernando
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Prophetic Imagination ◽  
Twenty First Century

The aim of this article is to identify the glimpses of prophetic imagination amongst the Christian communities in Asia, particularly in Korea and Japan, who are engaged in resisting the new round of militarization in the twenty-first century. This resistance denounces the globalist security complex in the region and announces a nonmilitaristic alternative forming a praxis that is necessary for a new theology of peace in East Asia and in Asia broadly. The political reality of the new round of military empire-building will be discussed with a personal narrative and a political analysis after which the theological meaning of prophetic imagination as opposed to imperial consciousness will be analyzed, correlating the personal and political with the theological. The ways in which the resistance to militarization resonates with the prophetic imagination of an alternative consciousness and community will be examined through an analysis of memories and renunciation of war by the churches. Broad implications of these resonances for a peace theology in Asia will be identified.

Coda

2018 ◽  
pp. 182-194
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Insko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Monuments ◽  
Twenty First Century

The book’s final chapter turns to the twenty-first-century historical present to examine the resurgence of pious warnings about the dangers of presentism in current debates over historical monuments and other forms of historical commemoration. After linking, by way of Afrofuturism, the recent political slogan #StayWoke to the political disposition identified in the book’s previous chapters, I turn to debates about the renaming of college buildings in order to challenge the ideas about history promoted by antipresentists, whose claims are themselves often ahistorical. The historiographical injunction against presentism, I claim, has unwittingly sustained white supremacy in the United States. I feel strongly that we’re not yet done with history—but not done precisely because of, not despite, the history that we inhabit.

Francis Bacon on the Political Dangers of Scientific Progress

1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi D. Studer
Keyword(s):  
Technological Progress ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
First Century ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
The Political ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Political Works

AbstractTechnological progress has brought some political difficulties: we have both too much power and too little control. Francis Bacon, a principal promoter of science and technology, was not naive about the uses to which the conquest of nature would be put; they may not all be good, humane and charitable. He was not uniformly optimistic about the result being “the relief of man's estate,” even though that is the overwhelming rhetorical thrust of his major writings. Bacon actually rejected many of our currently offered “solutions” for controlling science as being hopelessly impolitic and improvident. This is revealed in a little-known chapter, entitled “Daedalus,” in one of his most comprehensive political works, Of the Wisdom of the Ancients. He provides timely lessons for us to consider now, entering the twenty-first century.

A General Theory for Our Times: On Piketty

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Mann
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Stance ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty has offered, and many have desperately snatched at, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money of our epoch. Piketty’s affinity with John Maynard Keynes and his groundbreaking 1936 landmark is largely unreflexive. But the ties that bind him to Keynes are powerful, and manifest themselves at many levels in Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The epistemology, the political stance, the methodological commitments, and the politics resonate in imperfect but remarkable harmony. This is no accident, because the world in which Piketty’s book appeared is saturated with the specifically capitalist form of anxiety that Keynes sought to diagnose, and fix, the last time it made the richest economies in the world tremble.

scholarly journals Exploring Peoples' Perception of Autonomy and Reactance in Everyday AI Interactions

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Supraja Sankaran ◽  
Chao Zhang ◽  
Henk Aarts ◽  
Panos Markopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
Design Fiction

Applications using Artificial Intelligence (AI) have become commonplace and embedded in our daily lives. Much of our communication has transitioned from human–human interaction to human–technology or technology-mediated interaction. As technology is handed over control and streamlines choices and decision-making in different contexts, people are increasingly concerned about a potential threat to their autonomy. In this paper, we explore autonomy perception when interacting with AI-based applications in everyday contexts using a design fiction-based survey with 328 participants. We probed if providing users with explanations on “why” an application made certain choices or decisions influenced their perception of autonomy or reactance regarding the interaction with the applications. We also looked at changes in perception when users are aware of AI's presence in an application. In the social media context, we found that people perceived a greater reactance and lower sense of autonomy perhaps owing to the personal and identity-sensitive nature of the application context. Providing explanations on “why” in the navigation context, contributed to enhancing their autonomy perception, and reducing reactance since it influenced the users' subsequent actions based on the recommendation. We discuss our findings and the implications it has for the future development of everyday AI applications that respect human autonomy.

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