When Technology Becomes Popular

2017 ◽  
pp. 23-44
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Production ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Common People ◽  
Cultural Communities ◽  
Young Students

The story of mass technology begins in the Seventies of last century, when computers and video devices became “personal” and began to spread in homes. It is not only a matter of industrial production and market, as many “inventions” came from the base, common people, young students, cultural communities, sometimes driving the innovation beyond and even against the plans of the big companies. To know the story is also a way to become aware that anyone of us, possibly together, can do much more than what we generally expect, and also that “technology” is not an endless list of possibilities at our disposal more and more but, if we do not take part actively with our suggestion and choices, there is the tangible risk to waste in the swirl of market a great part of it.

scholarly journals Religion-Based Cultural Communities in the Pre-Modern Balkans

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Detrez
Keyword(s):  
Religious Communities ◽  
Common People ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Code Language ◽  
Cultural Communities ◽  
High Literature ◽  
Intellectual Elites

Religion-Based Cultural Communities in the Pre-Modern BalkansIntellectual life in the pre-modern Balkans was fragmented along religious lines. In the multi-ethnic religious communities (the Orthodox Christian, the Muslim and the Catholic), one particular “high code” language was used by the intellectual elites of the various ethnic groups as a shared means of communication in the field of worship, scholarship and literature. In addition, on behalf of the unschooled, who were ignorant of the high code, there existed within each community vernacular literature that was intended to instruct common people about the doctrine of their faith and keep them on the straight path. The use of a shared literary language strengthened the solidarity with each community but also increased the cultural divisiveness of the Balkans as a whole. The lack or scarcity of a high literature in a particular language is no indication of the “culturelessness” of its speakers. In fact, with their coreligionists they shared a rich high culture in one of the literary languages. Wspólnoty kulturowe oparte na religii na Bałkanach w czasach przednowoczesnychŻycie intelektualne na Bałkanach w czasach przednowoczesnych uległo rozdrobnieniu ze względu na podziały religijne. W wieloetnicznych wspólnotach wyznaniowych – prawosławnej, muzułmańskiej i katolickiej – jeden szczególny „wysoki” język był używany przez elity intelektualne różnych grup etnicznych jako wspólny środek komunikacji w dziedzinie kultu, edukacji i literatury. Obok niego, dla warstw niewykształconych, nieświadomych takiego kodu, w każdej społeczności istniała literatura w językach narodowych, mająca na celu pouczyć zwykłych ludzi o doktrynie ich wiary i właściwej drodze postępowania. Posługiwanie się wspólnym językiem literackim nie tylko wzmocniło solidarność międzywspólnotową, ale także zwiększyło kulturową różnorodność Bałkanów jako całości. Brak lub niedobór wysokiej literatury w danym języku nie świadczy o „braku kultury” u jej użytkowników. W rzeczywistości dzielili oni bowiem bogatą kulturę wysoką ze swoimi współwyznawcami za pośrednictwem innego języka literackiego.

Industrial Output in the USSR and Russia, 1861—2012. Part II. Crises and Cycles

2013 ◽  
pp. 138-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Smirnov
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Production ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Industrial Output ◽  
Production Index ◽  
Russian Industry ◽  
Industrial Production Index ◽  
Cyclical Volatility

Calculation of the aggregated "consensus" industrial production index has made it possible to date cyclical turning points and to measure the depth and length of the main industrial recessions in Russian Empire/USSR/Russia for the last century and a half. The most important causes of all these recessions are described. The cyclical volatility of Soviet/Russian industry is compared to that of American one.

1968: On Social, Epistemic, and Historiographic(?) Revolutions

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto D. Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Young Students ◽  
Historic Significance ◽  
Agent Of Change

This article addresses the meaning and significance of the “world revolution of 1968,” as well as the historiography of 1968. I critically interrogate how the production of a narrative about 1968 and the creation of ethnic studies, despite its world-historic significance, has tended to perpetuate a limiting, essentialized and static notion of “the student” as the primary actor and an inherent agent of change. Although students did play an enormous role in the events leading up to, through, and after 1968 in various parts of the world—and I in no way wish to diminish this fact—this article nonetheless argues that the now hegemonic narrative of a student-led revolt has also had a number of negative consequences, two of which will be the focus here. One problem is that the generation-driven models that situate 1968 as a revolt of the young students versus a presumably older generation, embodied by both their parents and the dominant institutions of the time, are in effect a sociosymbolic reproduction of modernity/coloniality’s logic or driving impulse and obsession with newness. Hence an a priori valuation is assigned to the new, embodied in this case by the student, at the expense of the presumably outmoded old. Secondly, this apparent essentializing of “the student” has entrapped ethnic studies scholars, and many of the period’s activists (some of whom had been students themselves), into said logic, thereby risking the foreclosure of a politics beyond (re)enchantment or even obsession with newness yet again.

Automated Border Control: Criminalizing the “Hidden Intent” of Migrant Embodiment

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicity Amaya Schaeffer
Keyword(s):  
Homeland Security ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Great Part ◽  
The Body ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Border Control ◽  
Computer Engineering ◽  
Novel Technologies ◽  
Surveillance Technology ◽  
Border Zones

I argue that we are entering an automated era of border control that I label a border-biosecurity industrial complex. Funded in great part by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), scientific research and automated surveillance technologies promise the state innovative and supposedly unbiased solutions to the challenge of border control and security. This article spotlights a border surveillance technology called AVATAR (Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessment in Real-Time). Analyzing this technology, which was funded by the DHS and developed by faculty at the University of Arizona’s National Center for Border Security and Immigration (BORDERS), allows me to assess how the emphasis on novel technologies to detect terrorists unleashes the search for ubiquitous surveillance devices programmed to detect deviant behavioral and physiological movements. I offer a wider view of this technology-in-the-making by analyzing how university research in aerial defense, the psychology of deception, the life sciences, and computer engineering influences the development of surveillance devices and techniques. I explore how, during a posthuman era, automated technologies detect and racialize “suspect life” under the guise of scientific neutrality and supposedly free from human interference. Suspect life refers to the racial bias preprogrammed into algorithms that compute danger or risk into certain human movements and regions such as border zones. As these technologies turn the body into matter, they present biological life as a more scientifically verifiable truth than human verbal testimony, moving border control from the adjudication of law through the subjective interview to the automated body that speaks a truth more powerful than a complex story can tell.

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