Human-dimension systems of information society and risks of social relations regress

The development of human-dimension systems (e.g. «human–technique»systems) is supposed to play the most important role in the further evolution of society in the context of informatization. However, the risk-generating potential of these systems significantly exceeds the risks of socio-technical systems characteristic of industrial society due to the exponentially rapid development of so-called «dangerous knowledge». On the one hand, information technologies offer unprecedented opportunities for human creativity. On the other hand, a significant majority of people still use them as passive consumers. They are ready to automate not only some aspects of professional activity but also interpersonal interactions, i.e. a conscious component of social relations. This means that we are losing consciousness of individual life and social processes. We are less and less willing to make reflexive efforts. This leads to a «virtual objectification» of person, a loss of identity, reduces person to the state of an element of the network mechanism, unwilling and unable to deeply understand and comprehend social relations. «Artificial virtuality» displaces the «natural virtuality» of individual and social consciousness. Since in the current sociocultural context, information technology can destroy a person’s capacity for such understanding and comprehension, we consider knowledge associated with information technology to be potentially «dangerous». We see a response to this challenge in the following. Firstly, it is necessary to develop a scientific concept of consciousness as essentially autonomous and not reducible to its material foundations. Secondly, education should be developed in the direction of «Writing and Thinking» technology, which forms the competence of reflective, critical and systematic thinking.

Late-Presenting Swimming-Induced Pulmonary Edema: A Case Report Series from the Norseman Xtreme Triathlon

Swimming-induced pulmonary edema (SIPE) may develop during strenuous physical exertion in water. This case series reports on three cases of suspected late-presenting SIPE during the Norseman Xtreme Triathlon. A 30-year-old male professional (PRO) triathlete, a 40-year-old female AGE GROUP triathlete and a 34-year-old male AGE GROUP triathlete presented with shortness of breath, chest tightness and coughing up pink sputum during the last part of the bike phase. All three athletes reported an improvement in breathing during the first major uphill of the bike phase and increasing symptoms during the downhill. The PRO athlete had a thoracic computed tomography, and the scan showed bilateral ground glass opacity in the peripheral lungs. The male AGE GROUP athlete had a normal chest x-ray. Both athletes were admitted for further observation and discharged from hospital the following day, with complete regression of symptoms. The female athlete recovered quickly following pre-hospital oxygen treatment. Non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema associated with endurance sports is rare but potentially very dangerous. Knowledge and awareness of possible risk factors and symptoms are essential, and the results presented in this report emphasize the importance of being aware of the possible delayed development of symptoms. To determine the presence of pulmonary edema elicited by strenuous exercise, equipment for measuring oxygen saturation should be available for the medical staff on site.

Miserrimus Dexter

This essay focuses on the ‘monstrous’ deformities of Miserrimus Dexter in Wilkie Collins’s The Law and the Lady (1875) and their framing within the Victorian interest in teratology – the study of genital birth defects. Born without legs, Dexter is a taxonomical conundrum, positioned somewhere between subject and object and between madness and knowledge. His deformity is, as Katherine Angell makes clear, the object of scientific investigation, but it must also be interpreted in order to resolve the mystery at the heart of the novel’s plot. The dangerous knowledge that he possesses, which as much concerns his deformed body as the key to the novel’s mystery, threatens to exceed the symbolic order and thereby render questionable the ordering principles of science and medicine.

The Promotion of Avoidable Ignorance in the British Journal of Social Work

The manifest purpose of professional journals is to share important knowledge. Increasing revelations of flaws in the peer-reviewed literature shows that this purpose is often not honored and that inflated claims of knowledge as well as other concerns such as misrepresentations of disliked or misunderstood views are rife. In this article, avoidable misunderstandings of science and evidence-based practice (EBP) in publications in the British Journal of Social Work 2005–2016 are described as well as strategies used to forward misinformation. Such discourse misinforms rather than informs readers and decreases opportunities to accurately inform social workers about possibilities to help clients and to avoid harming them and to involve clients as informed participants. Those writing about avoidable ignorance highlight how it is used strategically, perhaps to neutralize what is viewed as dangerous knowledge—the process of EBP and science generally, which may threaten the status quo.

Wisdom, Mystery, and Dangerous Knowledge: Exploring Depictions of the Archetypal Sage in Young Adult Literature

The archetypal sage character is a common, though relatively unexplored character, in young adult literature (YAL). Employing a sociocultural, constructivist understanding of archetypes, we unpack features of the sage through an examination of three sagacious characters: the Receiver of Memory in The Giver, Haymitch Abernathy in The Hunger Games, and Anatov in Akata Witch. Our analysis reveals how these characters are each marked with physical or behavioral abnormalities, are isolated from society and its institutions, and possess dangerous knowledge of eros (The Giver), power (The Hunger Games), and identity (Akata Witch). They are also depicted as standing in sharp contrast to other, more typical teachers in the intimate relationships they form with students and degree of vulnerability they display. All of these characteristics, we argue, might explain the appeal of the sagecharacter in YAL, as well as its curious absence from our common understanding of K-12 teachers and curriculum. Indeed, we see these characterizations of fictional teachers as raising interesting questions about sagacious mentorship and wisdom in schools.

Is a Bourdieusian Ethnography Possible?

Chapter abstract This chapter argues that Pierre Bourdieu’s research program is less compatible with ethnography than it first appears. Bourdieu was critical of structuralism, that perspective on the social world that prioritizes general patterns over lived experience, whereas ethnography claims as its raison d’être the elucidation of lived experience. A close reading of Bourdieu’s entire body of writings, however, reveals multiple reservations about the ethnographic method. At various points Bourdieu argues that ethnography is partial knowledge, impotent knowledge, and dangerous knowledge. This chapter elaborates each of these critiques, and gives ethnography a chance to respond. Ultimately, it concludes that it is possible to do ethnography from within the Bourdieusian research program. But ethnographers must take care to contextualize their field data in its extra-local context; they should deploy systematic research designs; and they must exercise reflexivity as to how one’s position as a scholar shapes one’s experience of others’ social worlds.