scholarly journals Exploring the Facts and Fantasies in Neal Town Stephenson’s ‘The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer’

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Jushaini. P

Literature enables people to think out of the box and connect with new ideas. At the same time, it takes us back and helps us know more about the life led by our ancestors. As a great foundation of life, literature fosters the overall development of the people and the society through inspiring stories, motivating tales and futuristic writings. We live in a world of technological advancements and Science Fiction stories are the profound ways to introduce extrapolation and speculation in literature. Built on a strong foundation of realistic concepts, sci-fi stories develop a futuristic world of limitless possibilities. Sci-fi stories take us to an exciting world where one witness unimaginable applications of science and technologies. Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer well-known for writing science fiction, cyberpunk and postcyberpunk stories. He belongs to a prestigious family of scientists and engineers. His father was a biochemistry professor and his paternal grandfather, a physics professor. After completing his studies from Boston University, he started working as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company specialized in developing spacecraft and space launch systems. Currently, he is serving as the chief futurist for Magic Leap. He also cofounded Subutai Corporation, a company dedicated to developing interactive fiction projects. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Town Stephenson. The novel’s protagonist is named Nell, who is a thete, meaning a person who is not a member of any of the phyles. The entire plot is set in a future nanotech world where three forms of tribes or phyles exist, known as the Han, the Neo-Victorian New Atlantis, and the Nippon. The Diamond Age details some of the applications of nanotechnology such as chevaline, smart paper, etc. This journal is an analysis of extrapolation and speculation used in the sci-fi novel, The Diamond Age, written with an aim to explore different facts and fantasies created by the author.

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 266-273
Author(s):  
Ivan S. Palitai

The article is devoted to the modern Russian party system. In the first part of the article, the author shows the historical features of the parties formation in Russia and analyzes the reasons for the low turnout in the elections to the State Duma in 2016. According to the author the institutional reasons consist in the fact that the majority of modern political parties show less and less ability to produce new ideas, and the search for meanings is conducted on the basis of the existing, previously proposed sets of options. Parties reduce the topic of self-identification in party rhetoric, narrowing it down to “branded” ideas or focusing on the image of the leader. In addition, the author shows the decrease in the overall political activity of citizens after the 2011 elections, and points out that the legislation amendments led to the reduction of the election campaigns duration and changes in the voting system itself. The second part of the article is devoted to the study of the psychological aspects of the party system. The author presents the results of the investigation of images of the parties as well as the results of the population opinion polls, held by the centers of public opinion study. On the basis of this data, the author concludes that according to the public opinion the modern party system is ineffective, and the parties don’t have real political weight, which leads to the decrease of the interest in their activities and confidence in them. The author supposes that all this may be the consequence of the people’s fatigue from the same persons in politics, but at the same time the electorate’s desire to see new participants in political processes is formulated rather vaguely, since, according to the people, this might not bring any positive changes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6538
Author(s):  
Fco. Javier García-Gómez ◽  
Víctor Fco. Rosales-Prieto ◽  
Alberto Sánchez-Lite ◽  
José Luis Fuentes-Bargues ◽  
Cristina González-Gaya

Asset management, as a global process through which value is added to a company, is a managerial model that involves major changes in strategies, technologies, and resources; risk management; and a change in the attitude of the people involved. The growing commitment of companies to sustainability results in them applying this approach to all their activities. For this reason, it is relevant to develop sustainability risk assessment procedures in industrial assets. This paper presents a methodological framework for the inclusion of sustainability aspects in the risk management of industrial assets. This approach presents a procedure to provide general criteria, methodology, and essential mandatory requirements to be adopted for the identification, analysis, and evaluation of sustainability aspects, impacts, and risks related to assets owned and managed by an industrial company. The proposed procedure is based on ISO 55,000 and ISO 31,000 standards and was developed following three steps: a preliminary study, identification of sustainability aspects and sustainability risks/opportunities, and impact assessment and residual risks management. Our results could serve as a model that facilitates the improvement of sustainability analysis risks in industrial assets and could be used as a basis for future developments in the application of the standards to optimize management of these assets.


1973 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
J. McMaster

Let me first explain my situation. All the people in Duchess are involved in some way or another with the Queensland Railways. Duchess is a railway town, supported by the Queensland Railways and existing only because of them. The majority of settlers are Islanders, with a few Aboriginals. These people live harmoniously side by side. All the fathers have jobs. The children thus have the necessary monetary backing to encourage development. These people are not poor, though their conditions may indicate otherwise. All the children are clothed reasonably well, and fed reasonably well. Most of the children are scrupulously clean.It is wise to keep in mind the fact that regardless of what my successes and failures are, each one of us has a special situation, which differs vastly from everyone else’s. It is therefore necessary for us to be continually trying, adapting, and changing, in order to achieve any measure of success.In the small school, the teacher is faced with a number of problems which perhaps appear unique or magnified by virtue of the fact that he is on his own. Multiple grades, voluminous workloads multiple cultures, remoteness and lack of finance are amongst the greatest problems facing me personally, and no doubt many of you at present. But the small school also offers unique opportunities to teachers to experiment and implement new ideas and methods. The relative freedom of working alone offers unlimited scope for development in every field. Numbers are fewer, and parental contact is more practical and rewarding. In every field our freedom to work is limited only by our capacity. I believe that the small schools are more effective amongst these people, simply by virtue of the fact that contact and discussions with both parents and children are more intimate, and therefore more successful. Of course, initially they are shy, but eventually we can reach them, and once their confidence is gained, they will make every attempt to help us. This is a big advantage to have, and very necessary if any program is to achieve success.


2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 722-756
Author(s):  
Jon Adams ◽  
Edmund Ramsden

Nestled among E. M. Forster's careful studies of Edwardian social mores is a short story called “The Machine Stops.” Set many years in the future, it is a work of science fiction that imagines all humanity housed in giant high-density cities buried deep below a lifeless surface. With each citizen cocooned in an identical private chamber, all interaction is mediated through the workings of “the Machine,” a totalizing social system that controls every aspect of human life. Cultural variety has ceded to rigorous organization: everywhere is the same, everyone lives the same life. So hopelessly reliant is humanity upon the efficient operation of the Machine, that when the system begins to fail there is little the people can do, and so tightly ordered is the system that the failure spreads. At the story's conclusion, the collapse is total, and Forster's closing image offers a condemnation of the world they had built, and a hopeful glimpse of the world that might, in their absence, return: “The whole city was broken like a honeycomb. […] For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky” (2001: 123). In physically breaking apart the city, there is an extent to which Forster is literalizing the device of the broken society, but it is also the case that the infrastructure of the Machine is so inseparable from its social structure that the failure of one causes the failure of the other. The city has—in the vocabulary of present-day engineers—“failed badly.”


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Merfin Merfin ◽  
Raymond Sunardi Oetama

Stock investment is important for financial development in a company. Moreover, the stock price displayed by the company can be known by the people and the local economy because the company has gone public on the Indonesia Economic Exchange (IDX) at www.idx.co.id. There are several fundamental factors that influence the stock market price in a listed company and as a result the number of stock investors in Indonesia is very small. This cause made it difficult for the community to predict the stock price of banking companies at inconsistent prices. The method to be used in this paper is Linear Regression using Excel tools to perform calculations and SPSS 16.0 as a data mining tool. The research data taken is historical data of banking companies for 3 periods as a whole in the form of excel that has been downloaded from the Yahoo Finance website. The final results are in the form of MAPE charts in 3 years period, and Average error chart in 3 years period.


2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 618-624
Author(s):  
Kanika Sofat ◽  
Dr.Ravi Kiran

The organization change is defined as the adoption of new ideas or behavior by an organization. The mainobjective of organizational change is to maximize the benefits of the people involved in the process and to minimize the risk involved in the failure of implementing and managing change. Organization commitment of the employees is an intangible asset for an organization so as to derive strategic advantage over competitors. It is a psychological link between the employee and his organization. If the employees lack commitment it willlead to increase in absenteeism and affecting labor turnover. The commitment employees will hence ease stressduring organizational change process and will understand and cope with change so as to make it successful. The paper helps to understand the organizational change initiatives undertaken in the organizations. It further helpsto examine the relationship between change management and organization commitment in organizations.Keywords: Organizational change, Change levers, Organizational change initiatives, organization commitment


2014 ◽  
Vol 629 ◽  
pp. 382-387
Author(s):  
Alexander Nebylov

Integrated launch systems that include aerospace plane (ASP) and another heavy winged vehicle (plane or better Wing-in-Ground effect vehicle) as a booster are reviewed. It is shown that WIG-vehicle with a mass of 1500 ton or more is capable to carry ASP with initial mass of 500 ton and landing mass of 60-70 ton. Ekranoplane can provide ASP with the primary speed of Mach 0.5-0.65 in the required direction that allows lowering the design requirements to ASP's wing area and engines. A number of other advantages from the offered transport system are linked to possible use of WIG-vehicle at ASP landing. Heavy WIG-vehicle is unique vehicle for realizing the progressive idea of docking to descending ASP, allowing expanding opportunities of its landing. The problem of ASP horizontal landing without undercarriage by docking with other flying vehicle at the last stage of decent and the requirements to control systems for relative motion control of both vehicles are discussed. The progressive idea of joining space launch technologies with marine technologies is developed. It is especially important for countries with strongly limited areas of land territory but with easy access to the ocean.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Fuller

Intrigued by the descriptions of hitherto unknown species, Victorian naturalists embarked on Pacific journeys to study new flora and fauna. The third chapter follows a young Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley as they develop theories that would challenge the assumed boundaries between “civilized” and “savage” man. Their often overlooked travel narratives, The Voyage of the Beagleand The Voyage of the Rattlesnake respectively, displayed not only emerging theories of evolution and natural selection, but also early biological and anthropological observations that questioned whether Pacific islanders were truly so different from British ones. These radical new ideas, spurred on by later works such as Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man, influenced novelists to use the Pacific islands as a testing ground for new theories of regressive evolution. Capitalizing on the emerging genre of “science fiction,” H.G. Wells imagined the Pacific in The Island of Doctor Moreau not as an idyllic paradise but as a horrific nightmare that reduced all islanders, British and native, to their most bestial forms displaying distinctly Pacific resonances and the changing British perspectives on the islands.


2020 ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Theodore M. Porter

This chapter explains that, as with the methods of natural science, the quantitative technologies used to investigate social and economic life work best if the world they aim to describe can be remade in their image. Numbers alone never provide enough information to make detailed decisions about the operation of a company. Their highest purpose is to instill an ethic. Measures of profitability — measures of achievement in general — succeed to the degree they become “technologies of the soul.” They provide legitimacy for administrative actions, in large part because they provide standards against which people judge themselves. Grades in school, scores on standardized examinations, and the bottom line on an accounting sheet cannot work effectively unless their validity, or at least reasonableness, is accepted by the people whose accomplishments or worth they purport to measure. When it is, the measures succeed by giving direction to the very activities that are being measured. In this way, individuals are made governable; they display what Foucault called governmentality. Numbers create and can be compared with norms, which are among the gentlest and yet most pervasive forms of power in modern democracies.


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