The age-old adage "Give a man a fish; he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish he'll eat for the rest of his days", has truly manifested itself in Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop per Child program. His organization seeks "To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning". While it is seemingly a noble humanitarian effort for the (...) enhancement of education, support for the "$100 laptop" has fallen short of its stated goal with only twenty-eight participating countries. The fact that only a limited number of countries are willing to enter the program demonstrates that it does not address the majority of problems faced by developing nations. Inadequate education is one of many pressing social concerns, but its necessity should not be placed above the immediate needs of developing nations. And for an organization devoted to a non-survival-essential cause to pursue such an ambitious objective brings its social significance and ethics under question. (shrink)

One Laptop per Child attempts to bridge the "digital divide" between the rich and the poor, especially in third-world countries. In order to accomplish this, OLPC must introduce twenty-first century technology to the poverty-stricken, which can lead to more efficient means of education. Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC, explains that in his opinion, "whatever big problem you can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to poverty, the solution always includes education". The first step to improving education in (...) poverty-stricken countries, according to OLPC, is providing children with an inexpensive yet functional laptop, informally known as the $100 laptop. (shrink)

Purpose of the article There is relatively a big number of brands in the market of laptops nowadays in Albania. It appears that the number of brands offered in this market could easily be compared to the number of brands in Europe and even broader. The purpose of this study is to help Albanian vendors understand the criteria that consumers take into consideration when they make the decision to purchase a laptop. Methodology/methods The research is based on the collection (...) and the analyses of the primary data collected through interviews to people like managers or employees who work in the sector of trading laptops or in businesses like education where laptops are broadly used recently; then a survey is done through a questionnaire delivered to customers who already own and use a laptop and customers who are potential buyers of laptops. Scientific aim The aim of the research is to identify if there are any relationships between the demographics of the consumers and the criteria of buying a laptop; on the other hand, to find out how is the relationship between the demographics and the features of different brands. Findings The study found out that Albanian consumers have good knowledge of laptops and their brands, and they use different sources of information for making their decisions in buying a laptop; it is found that there are relationships between some demographics like age or gender and the appraisal for some attributes of the laptops like price, design and high graphics card; it is also found that some technical features and other attributes of using laptops are some of the determinants that influence the laptops’ purchases. Conclusions It is realized that one of the most important demographics of the consumers is their age. Some core features like RAM, ROM, battery life, processor quality, light weight or attributes that are connected to the purposes of using the laptop computers like practicality and mobility in using them, work and studying processes, quick access to the internet are determinant factors which influence the decision making process of purchasing a laptop. I would recommend that future researches be focused also on the relationship between the customers’ income and their preferred brand or ranking brands according to the customers’ preferences. Such studies should also extend outside the city of Tirana. (shrink)

In this multiple case study, the authors compare the instruction of two high school civics teachers during the 2012 Presidential Election. Both were highly-qualified practitioners who worked in schools with one-to-one laptop initiatives, creating an environment in which access to digital technology ceased to be an issue. Although both teachers regularly used technology in their classrooms, the authors describe stark differences in the complexity and authenticity of their instruction, which the authors attribute to the teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK). (...) The authors conclude by discussing implications for better understanding TPCK within civics instruction, specifically in classrooms with one-to-one laptop access. (shrink)

Igor Aleksander and Helen B. Morton, Int. J. Mach. Conscious. 06, 67 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400113.

The 2009 competition was the fifth year of the Schubmehl-Prein contest for the Best Essay on Social Impact of Computing. The competition is open to high school juniors each year, with a submission deadline at the end of May. The essay topic varies each year, with the 2009 topic being, "What are the potential social and ethical implications of the $100 laptop?" The 2009 competition attracted a number of essays that strongly engaged with the topic. The 2009 First Place winner (...) is Katherine Heit, the Second Place winner is Danielle Harris, and the Third Place winner is David Purington. In addition, this year, for the first time, two Honorable Mention winners were also selected: Bryan Dongre and Erica Smith. Revised versions of the First, Second and Third Place essays appear in this issue of Computers and Society. Congratulations to all of this year's winners. Thanks to all of the students who prepared and submitted an entry to the competition. And thanks as well to all of the teachers and school counselors who worked with all of the students. (shrink)

Drew McDermott, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 45 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400071.

Alexei V. Samsonovich, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 49 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400083.

Randal A. Koene, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 41 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S179384301440006X.

Seeing one’s laptop to be missing, hearing silence and smelling fresh air; these are all examples of perceptual experiences of absences. In this paper I discuss an example of absence perception in the tactual sense modality, that of tactually perceiving a tooth to be absent in one’s mouth, following its extraction. Various features of the example challenge two recently-developed theories of absence perception: Farennikova’s memory-perception mismatch theory and Martin and Dockic’s meta-cognitive theory. I speculate that the mechanism underlying the experience (...) is a body schema that has failed to update itself. (shrink)

I know that the laptop on which I am writing these words is dusty. How do I know? I can see that it is dusty. Seeing that it is dusty is a way of knowing that it is dusty. How come? According to what I’m going to call the entailment view, ‘S sees that P’ entails ‘S knows that P’ and it is only because this is so that seeing that the laptop is dusty qualifies as a way of knowing (...) that it is dusty. Generalizing from this, the entailment view concludes that Φ-ing that P is a way of knowing that P if and only if ‘S Φs that P’ entails ‘S knows that P’. (shrink)

Information communications technologies like laptops, smartphones and portable storage devices facilitate travel, communication and documentation for researchers who conduct fieldwork. But despite increasing awareness about the ethical complications associated with using ICTs among journalists and humanitarians, there are few reflections on digital security among researchers. This article seeks to raise awareness of this important question by outlining three sets of ethical challenges related to digital security that may arise during the course of field research. These ethical challenges relate to (...) informed consent and confidentiality, collecting, transferring and storing sensitive data, and maintaining the personal security and integrity of the researcher. To help academics reflect on and mitigate these risks, the article underscores the importance of digital risk assessments and develops ten basic guidelines for field research in the digital age. (shrink)

This paper takes laptops as an example to carry out research on quantitative model of brand recognition based on sentiment analysis of big data. The basic idea is to use web crawler technology to obtain the most authentic and direct information of different laptop brands from first-line consumers from public spaces such as buyer reviews of major e-commerce platforms, including review time, text reviews, satisfaction ratings and relevant user information, etc., and then analyzes consumers’ sentimental tendencies and recognition status (...) of the product brands. This study extracted a total of 437,815 user reviews of laptops from e-commerce platforms from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2021, and performed data preprocessing on the obtained review data, followed by sentiment dictionary construction, attribute expansion, text quantification and algorithm evaluation. This paper analyzed the information receiving and processing hierarchy of the quantitative model of brand recognition, discussed the interactive relationship between brand recognition and consumer sentiment, discussed the brand recognition bias, style and demand in the context of big data, and performed the sentiment statistics and dimension analysis in the quantitative model of brand recognition. The study results show that the quantitative model of brand recognition based on sentiment analysis of big data can transform and map the keywords in text to word vectors in the high-dimensional semantic space by performing unsupervised machine learning on the text based on artificial neural network computer bionic metaphors; the model can accumulate each brand-related buyer review in the corresponding brand recognition dimension, so as to obtain the value of each product in each dimension of brand recognition; finally, the model will add the values of each dimension of brand recognition, that is, obtain the relevant value of the sum of each brand recognition. The results of this paper may provide a reference for further research on the quantitative model of brand recognition based on sentiment analysis of big data. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that an object or system computes? What is it about laptops, smartphones, and nervous systems that they are considered to compute, and why does it seldom occur to us to describe stomachs, hurricanes, rocks, or chairs that way? Though computing systems are everywhere today, it is very difficult to answer these questions. The book aims to shed light on the subject by arguing for the semantic view of computation, which states that computingsystems are (...) always accompanied by representations. This view is presented as an alternative to non-semantic views such as the mechanistic account of computation. (shrink)

This paper develops and benchmarks the Relational Zero State (RZS) framework as an action-free, graph-dynamical model for pre-geometric cosmology. The starting point is not a spacetime Lagrangian, but a weighted relational network (graph) and node fields updated by explicit rules constrained by a stability principle (“Romero Law”). A reproducible workflow (“Universe Factory”) is provided to generate synthetic universes on a laptop and to track phase-transition diagnostics such as component unification (percolation), global communication onset (spectral connectivity growth), and saturation (stability plateaus). (...) -/- A core requirement is low-redshift validation. Mechanisms intended to amplify early rare events must remain compatible with the established low- and intermediate-redshift large-scale-structure (LSS) phenomenology. To isolate the specific RZS statistical effect—symmetric heavy-tail amplification of rare peaks with minimal impact on the two-point sector—controlled surrogate tests are performed using BOSS DR12 LOWZ and CMASS power-spectrum targets (NGC/SGC) and multiple k-windows. Iterative amplitude-adjusted Fourier transform (IAAFT) surrogates hold the target two-point spectrum fixed by construction while varying only the one-point distribution. Across catalogs and parameter sweeps, the heavy-tail prescription keeps skewness consistent with zero, increases excess kurtosis, and boosts tail exceedance in the high-sigma regime, consistent with an even-order (trispectrum-like) signature rather than a two-point modification. -/- All scripts, figures, and summary tables are included for reproducibility and direct scrutiny. -/- . (shrink)

The past several decades have seen a frenzy of philosophical focus on artifacts, spawning numerous theories of artifacts. Most proposals understand being an artefact as being a member of a particular artifact kind; to be an artifact is to be a chair or a pencil or a crank shaft or flatbed truck or whatever. Despite the many theories of artifacts, no one has asked what makes a kind an artifact kind, specifically. While the artifact literature has yet to address this (...) issue, the philosophy of art has already been addressing a parallel question about art by asking what kinds are the art kinds, if being an artwork requires belonging to an artkind. Michel Xhignesse has proposed that the artkinds are those kinds governed by the social norms of the art world which constitute an artistic practice. In this paper, I argue that Xhignesse’s answer can be extended to artifacts generally. I argue that artifact kinds like cabinet, cellphone or sedan chair are constituted by the social norms which govern the associated artifact practice. These social norms determine what features are constitutive of the kind, how the kind should be used, treated, and regarded and by whom and in what context. Crucially, these social norms are often arbitrary and always contingent—there’s nothing necessary about the artifact kinds that happen to be at the center of our current artifact practices. I call this the social practice view of artifact kinds. To illustrate the social practice view, I consider two cases. First, the historical case of chopines—elevated shoes associated with Venetian prostitutes during the Renaissance—illustrates how a distinct social practice arose in a particular historical context, simultaneously giving rise to a new kind of shoe constituted by its attendant norms which differentiated the chopine from the similar clog and high heel, and which eventually fell out of fashion. There was nothing necessary about the chopine being a distinct kind of footwear from clogs or high heels. Rather, the kind arose and developed as a result of distinct social practices and in response to various competing social values. Similar considerations hold for all other artifact kinds—e.g. chairs and stools, pens and pencils, laptops and tablets. Second, is the case of Jaffa cakes, a British confection where there’s debate about whether they’re cakes or biscuits because if they’re the latter they will be subject to an additional tax. Here there’s disagreement about the artifact kind a given artifact belongs to because there is heavy overlap between the social norms and concomitant social practices. Where our practices are indeterminate, we are deciding that Jaffa cakes are or are not biscuits, that is, we are stipulating what social practice Jaffa cakes should be subject to. In many cases, an informal answer is sufficient since people will treat them however they want, but sometimes what kind an artifact belongs to requires more formal. (shrink)

We naturally think of the material world as being populated by a large number of individuals. These are things, such as my laptop and the particles that compose it, that we describe as being propertied and related in various ways when we describe the material world around us. In this paper I argue that, fundamentally speaking at least, there are no such things as material individuals. I then propose and defend an individual-less view of the material world I call “generalism”.

We introduce iDNS, a deterministic spectral solver implementing the bounded vorticity-response functional Φ: ℝ≥0 → [φmin, φmax] for stable integration of chaotic nonlinear dynamical systems on T³ = (ℝ/ℤ)³. The Navier–Stokes equations admit a uniformizing parameterization: the parameter index τ ∈ [0,∞) generates coordinate time t = φ(τ) via the temporal lifting φ'(τ) = Φ(‖Ω(τ)‖_{L∞}). The lifted expression φ'(τ)∂τU + (U · ∇)U + ∇P − νΔU = 0 is not a modification—it is the same equation read in the uniformizing (...) parameter. Boundedness of Φ ensures non-degeneracy (φ' ≥ φmin > 0) and global coverage (φ(τ) → ∞); BKM coordinate invariance guarantees finiteness in τ implies finiteness in t. Physical time t and parameter τ coexist within the temporal covering space (T³ × ℝτ, T³ × ℝt, π) with π: (x,τ) ↦ (x, φ(τ))—integration proceeds in τ; results are stamped with t. The Regularity-Adaptive Spectral Integration (RASI) policy concentrates sampling where vorticity is high, resolving inter-modal energy transfer during the turbulent cascade—the mechanism by which standard DNS fails. Unlike adaptive timestep controllers, iDNS monitors the BKM functional in real-time via Φ; sampling density scales with vorticity magnitude, not Reynolds number. Kolmogorov flow computed stably from Re = 2 × 10⁴ to 10⁸ (0.07% dissipation error); 3D Taylor–Green vortex at Re = 10⁵ integrated through the full vortex-stretching cascade with bounded BKM = 37.1, Kolmogorov k⁻⁵ᐟ³ statistics, and 33.7× speedup—traversing the t ≈ 4.5 near-singularity where standard DNS crashes, on a 128³ grid, consumer laptop, 3.4 days. Precise Navier–Stokes physics, spectral resolution without artificial dissipation, no restarts, no failures—under 300 lines of Python. These results provide numerical validation of the theoretical framework addressing Fefferman's Clay Millennium Problem Statement (B); a unified analytical-numerical manuscript is forthcoming for precise Navier–Stokes physics, spectral resolution without artificial dissipation without failures—in under 300 lines of Python. -/- Data and code: 10.5281/zenodo.17730873. Numerically informed analytical mathematical basis can be found in "Global Regularity for Navier–Stokes on T³ via Bounded Vorticity–Response Functionals," at The Scholarly Journal of Post-Biological Epistemics, or also at PhilPapers. (shrink)

The semantic view of computation is the claim that semantic properties play an essential role in the individuation of physical computing systems such as laptops and brains. The main argument for the semantic view rests on the fact that some physical systems simultaneously implement different automata at the same time, in the same space, and even in the very same physical properties. Recently, several authors have challenged this argument. They accept the premise of simultaneous implementation but reject the semantic (...) conclusion. In this paper, I aim to explicate the semantic view and to address these objections. I first characterize the semantic view and distinguish it from other, closely related views. Then, I contend that the master argument for the semantic view survives the counter-arguments against it. One counter-argument is that computational individuation is not forced to choose between the implemented automata but rather always picks out a more basic computational structure. My response is that this move might undermine the notion of computational equivalence. Another counter-argument is that while computational individuation is forced to rely on extrinsic features, these features need not be semantic. My reply is that the semantic view better accounts for these extrinsic features than the proposed non-semantic alternatives. (shrink)

Intuitively, we often see absences. For example, if someone steals your laptop at a café, you may see its absence from your table. However, absence perception presents a paradox. On prevailing models of perception, we see only present objects and scenes (Marr, Gibson, Dretske). So, we cannot literally see something that is not present. This suggests that we never literally perceive absences; instead, we come to believe that something is absent cognitively on the basis of what we perceive. But this (...) cognitive explanation does not do justice to the phenomenology. Many experiences of absence possess immediate, perceptual qualities. One may further argue that the ability to detect certain absences confers strong adaptive advantage and therefore must be as primitive and fundamental to humans as seeing positive things. I argue that we can literally see absences; in addition to representing objects, perception represents absences of objects. I present a model of seeing absence based on visual expectations and a visual matching process. The phenomenon of seeing absence can thus serve as an adequacy-test for a theory of perceptual content. If experiences of absence are possible, then we have another reason (following Siegel) to reject the view that perceptual content is restricted to colors and shapes. Furthermore, if the proposed account is correct, then we have grounds for dissociating seeing absence from other imagery-based phenomena termed “perceptual presence-in-absence” (Noë, Macpherson). (shrink)

Philosophy of mind and cognitive science (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2010; Palermos 2014) have recently become increasingly receptive to the hypothesis of extended cognition, according to which external artifacts such as our laptops and smartphones can—under appropriate circumstances—feature as material realizers of a person's cognitive processes. We argue that, to the extent that the hypothesis of extended cognition is correct, our legal and ethical theorizing and practice must be updated by broadening our conception of personal assault so (...) as to include intentional harm toward gadgets that have been appropriately integrated. We next situate the theoretical case for extended personal assault within the context of some recent ethical and legal cases and close with critical discussion. (shrink)

Philosophy of mind and cognitive science (e.g., Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 2010; Palermos 2014) have recently become increasingly receptive tothe hypothesis of extended cognition, according to which external artifacts such as our laptops and smartphones can—under appropriate circumstances—feature as material realisers of a person’s cognitive processes. We argue that, to the extent that the hypothesis of extended cognition is correct, our legal and ethical theorising and practice must be updated, by broadening our conception of personal assault so as (...) to include intentional harm towards gadgets that have been appropriately integrated. We next situate the theoretical case for extended personal assault within the context of some recent ethical and legal cases and close with some critical discussion. (shrink)

Megan1 is a young teenage patient who suffered a stillbirth at 28 weeks, leading to a year long police investigation dropped only after postmortem tests found that her pregnancy was lost due to natural causes. The stress of the investigation and her isolation from friends and support network following the seizure of her mobile and laptop compounded the trauma of the stillbirth, leaving her requiring emergency psychiatric care. Aisha1 is a vulnerable patient who suffered a premature delivery, having experienced similar (...) problems in earlier pregnancies. Things happened so quickly that Aisha delivered on her own at home, only then seeking medical care. She told hospital staff that earlier in her pregnancy she had considered an abortion. As a result, she found herself interviewed under police caution and was required to surrender her phone and tablet, limiting access to friend and family support just when most needed. Aisha was denied unsupervised access to her baby in the intensive care unit, needing to hand over expressed breast milk to a receptionist. These stories, which were reported in a recent meeting in Parliament,1 are sadly far from unusual. They reflect the collateral damage of a growing trend towards more enthusiastic enforcement of the archaic abortion laws of England and Wales.2–5 In such cases, women who present with miscarriage, stillbirth or a premature delivery have aroused the suspicion of health professionals, sometimes because—like Aisha—they speak honestly about having considered abortion earlier in their pregnancies. They then find themselves reported to the police, required to surrender electronic devices and sometimes advised by duty solicitors to speak to no one about events leading to their investigation, thus being denied emotional and full clinical support at a time of significant trauma. These women are not the only victims of British abortion laws: so …. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences justify. When I look at the black laptop in front of me and my perceptual experience presents me with a black laptop placed on my desk, my perceptual experience has justificatory force with respect to the proposition that there is black laptop on the desk. The present paper addresses the question of why perceptual experiences are a source of immediate justification: What gives them their justificatory force? I shall argue that the most plausible and the most straightforward answer (...) to this question consists in what I call the phenomenological conception of perceptual justification. Perceptual experiences justify by virtue of their distinctive presentive phenomenology. This is a truly internalist conception that enjoys significant advantages over rival conceptions. In the course of his paper, I demonstrate the advantages of the phenomenological conception and defend it against a recent objection. (shrink)

Word co‐occurrence patterns in language corpora contain a surprising amount of conceptual knowledge. Large language models (LLMs), trained to predict words in context, leverage these patterns to achieve impressive performance on diverse semantic tasks requiring world knowledge. An important but understudied question about LLMs’ semantic abilities is whether they acquire generalized knowledge of common events. Here, we test whether five pretrained LLMs (from 2018's BERT to 2023's MPT) assign a higher likelihood to plausible descriptions of agent−patient interactions than to minimally (...) different implausible versions of the same event. Using three curated sets of minimal sentence pairs (total n = 1215), we found that pretrained LLMs possess substantial event knowledge, outperforming other distributional language models. In particular, they almost always assign a higher likelihood to possible versus impossible events (The teacher bought the laptop vs. The laptop bought the teacher). However, LLMs show less consistent preferences for likely versus unlikely events (The nanny tutored the boy vs. The boy tutored the nanny). In follow‐up analyses, we show that (i) LLM scores are driven by both plausibility and surface‐level sentence features, (ii) LLM scores generalize well across syntactic variants (active vs. passive constructions) but less well across semantic variants (synonymous sentences), (iii) some LLM errors mirror human judgment ambiguity, and (iv) sentence plausibility serves as an organizing dimension in internal LLM representations. Overall, our results show that important aspects of event knowledge naturally emerge from distributional linguistic patterns, but also highlight a gap between representations of possible/impossible and likely/unlikely events. (shrink)

In this essay, I first analyze the extension of hermeneutical interpretation in the Heideggerian sense to products of contemporary technology which are components of our “lifeworld”. Products of technology, such as airplanes, laptops, cellular phones, washing machines, or vacuum cleaners might be compared with what Heidegger calls the “Ready-to-hand” (das Zuhandene) with regard to utilitarian objects such as a hammer, planer, needle and door handle in Being and Time. Our life with our equipment, which represents the “Ready-to-hand” in Heidegger's (...) sense of the word, is determined by temporalization (Zeitigung) which cannot be separated and isolated from the wholeness of things in the world. In the second part of my paper, I explore the positive achievement of material hermeneutics (Don Ihde) with regard to its extension to technoscience and the discussion of how such hermeneutics can contribute to the preservation of our threatened lifeworld, but also to explore the possibilities of how technical inventions, medical innovations could improve our way of life. (shrink)

It is undeniable that computer technology has had a major impact on how we engage enquiry. We use computer devices to store information that helps us in our daily lives—just think of the contacts on your phone and whatever calendar app you might use to keep track of your schedule. Furthermore, people enjoy easy and quick access to a wide range of reliable online resources such as Nature, Reuters, and Encyclopedia Britannica through their laptops or smartphones. Powerful search engines (...) such as Google open up the door to swaths of information, enabling people easily to acquire a wide range of true beliefs through reliable means about all kinds of subject matters. However, what is the status of such true beliefs? In particular, once beliefs cease to be occurrent, do we still have non-occurrent beliefs, and, if true and reliably sustained, do they still qualify as knowledge? If they do, we would have cases of extended belief and knowledge, as these computer devices go beyond onboard capacities such as perception and memory. However, unlike our beliefs and desires, many information-storing apps and resources do not have the capacity automatically to “update” their information in light of new information. Moreover, wouldn’t extended belief and knowledge lead to massive cognitive bloat—an unpalatable explosion of belief and knowledge completely detached from an ability naturally to recall the relevant information? It would seem so given the wide variety of storage repositories and devices at one’s fingertips. Doesn’t cognitive bloat threaten to undermine the notion of expertise? Is it really possible to become an expert on a given topic by simply and easily looking up information via one’s smartphone and saving it? And where, now, would we place cognitive effort—steps taken by individuals to commit details to memory, to apply knowledge, to deliberate, and to assess and reflect? In “Extended Knowledge Overextended?”, Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen and Jens Christian Bjerring offer a comprehensive discussion of extended belief and knowledge. They criticize two recent attempts to mitigate concerns about cognitive bloat by arguing that their effectiveness is contingent on the current state of technology—in particular, the fact that computer devices are currently external to us. However, if computer devices seamlessly integrated with our own onboard capacities—the so-called neuromedia—become reality, it may be much more difficult to resist extended belief and knowledge and, with them, massive cognitive bloat. (shrink)

Phenomenologically, perception distinguishes itself from other modes of consciousness by presenting its objects and contents “in the flesh;” it has a presentive character. From the first person perspective, there is a clear difference between thinking about a laptop on the desk, imagining a laptop on the desk, believing or hoping that there is a laptop on the desk, and actually visually perceiving a laptop on the desk. Only perception has a presentive character with respect to physical objects. Epistemologically, perception distinguishes (...) itself by being a source of immediate justification for beliefs about physical states of affairs. Believing, imagining, or hoping that there is a laptop on the desk does not justify a person in believing so. However, if the person sees that there is a laptop on the desk, it is plausible to assume that she is thereby justified in believing that there is a laptop on the desk. Only perception is a source of immediate justification with respect to such states of affairs. In the phenomenological as well as in the recent analytic tradition, there have been attempts to connect the phenomenological and the epistemological distinctiveness of perception: It has been argued that perception is a source of immediate justification precisely by virtue of its presentive phenomenal character. In the analytic tradition, however, it has been often overlooked that the phenomenal character of perception is not exhausted by its presentive character. Perception, essentially, also has a co-presenting character; it has a horizontal structure. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the epistemological significance of the horizontal structure of perception. (shrink)

This article documents experiences of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s virtual, synchronous improvisation sessions during COVID-19 pandemic via interviews with 29 participants. Sessions included an international, gender balanced, and cross generational group of over 70 musicians all of whom were living under conditions of social distancing. All sessions were recorded using Zoom software. After 3 months of twice weekly improvisation sessions, 29 interviews with participants were undertaken, recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Key themes include how the sessions provided opportunities for artistic development, enhanced (...) mood, reduced feelings of isolation, and sustained and developed community. Particular attention is placed upon how improvisation as a universal, real time, social, and collaborative process facilitates interaction, allowing the technological affordances of software (latencies, sound quality, and gallery/speaker view) and hardware (laptop, tablet, instruments, microphones, headphones, and objects in room) to become emergent properties of artistic collaborations. The extent to which this process affects new perceptual and conceptual breakthroughs for practitioners is discussed as is the crucial and innovative relationship between audio and visual elements. Analysis of edited films of the sessions highlight artistic and theoretical and conceptual issues discussed. Emphasis is given to how the domestic environment merges with technologies to createThe Theatre of Home. (shrink)

Are there universal properties grounding our sense of resemblance or qualitative identity among a number of distinct things or events which appear to form a class, a type or a kind of some other sort? Do universals such as humanness, triangularity, or being an Oak exist? Is being a laptop computer a universal, which has only recently come into existence? Do predicate expressions, adjectives or abstract nouns refer to objective properties or cognitive contents called concepts? The problem of universals has (...) been at the centre of ancient, medieval, Western, and Indian metaphysics. After the logico-linguistic turn in philosophy, this problem re-surfaced in the discourse on the meaning of predicate expressions on the one hand and in the theories of concepts on the other. (shrink)

Dasgupta :35–67, 2009) has argued that material individuals, such as particles and laptops, are metaphysically objectionable and must be eliminated from our fundamental theories of the world. He proposes to eliminate them by redescribing all the fundamental facts of the world in a variant of predicate functor logic. We study the status, on this theory, of a putative fact particularly recalcitrant to a formulation within predicate functor logic: his own claim that there are no fundamental or primitive material individuals. (...) We consider three regimentations of the denial of primitive individuals and show that—under some plausible hypotheses about fundamental truths and the fundamentality operator—they cannot be consistently translated in predicate functor logic by Dasgupta’s usual strategy. We conclude by discussing two approaches to salvage Generalism, in the absence of such a translation. (shrink)

The most common form of endurantism takes enduring objects to be wholly located at every time they occupy. Such a view is believed to give rise to a problem concerning intrinsic change. My laptop may have been shut before, but it is currently open. Yet, if we understand endurantism as above, then my laptop is in possession of two contradictory properties: the shapes of being open and shut. This problem is known as the “problem of temporary intrinsics,” and, to avoid (...) it, two major kinds of moves have been made. The first is to meddle with the relationship between an enduring object and its properties by, for instance, claiming enduring objects bear their properties relationally to times rather than intrinsically. Many who have found this move unappealing have instead turned to presentism, claiming that endurantists should be presentists to avoid the problem. I take it that while both options can work, neither is optimal. Instead, I argue in favor of an alternative understanding of endurantism that allows endurantists to have it all: there is a version of endurantism that leaves the intrinsic properties of objects untouched, avoids the problem of temporary intrinsics, and does not require adopting presentism. (shrink)

PurposePossession and usage of data-enabled smartphones have added further complexity to the issue of cyberloafing behavior and it certainly evokes newer ethical concerns. This study aims to explore how working individuals perceive the ethicality of their cyberloafing behaviors at the workplace and the cognitive logics they apply to justify their cyberloafing behavior.Design/methodology/approachIncorporating constructivist grounded theory methodology, 19 working managers from various organizations were interviewed face-to-face and responses were audio-recorded with prior consent. The recordings were transcribed verbatim, simultaneously analyzed and coded (...) to let the themes emerge out of the data.FindingsThe research showed that working managers use varied combinations of office computers, personal laptops, smartphones, wireless internet provided at the office and personal mobile-internet to loaf around at workplaces. Moreover, it unearthed that employees use nine different neutralization techniques and six different ethical logics (with normative undertones) in a network fashion while considering the ethicality of cyberloafing behavior.Practical implicationsRecognizing the complexities is imperative to moderate any deviant behavior in an organization. The layers of ethicality and neutralization tactics will equip the working managers and companies to place the required internet and smartphone usage policies in the future.Originality/valueThis research has taken into account all forms of cyberloafing behaviors. The perceived ethicality of cyberloafing behavior at the workplace was not fully explored in a holistic manner before, specifically in the Indian context. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 29–35. Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "Politieke Poëzie: Enige aantekeningen, Poëtica bij N30 (versie 2006)." In Weerstandbeleid: Nieuwe kritiek . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. L’égalité veut d’autres lois . —Eugène Pottier The modern poem does not have form but consistency (that is sensed), no content but a problem (that is developed). Consistency + problem = composition. The problem of modern poetry is capitalism. Capitalism—which has no (...) image: the unrepresentable Idea of “everything.” The problem is that a poem cannot be justified. There is no excuse for it. Political poetry— pure poetry—has to be problematic, though not in a mannerist way. Yes, its problem is first its own problem—poetry’s existence in the same world as the newspaper—but therefore also always everybody’s problem (the problem of any world at all). The cult of the sublime points at a suspect desire for transcendence, nostalgia for paradise lost (the womb?). Melancholia of the post-. But a problem neither sorrows nor mourns, it is alive, and the fact that it is alive is the problem—the problem for death (rigidity, the status quo). Our symbols and ideologies do not hide any god: symbolic = state; imaginary = human; real = money. Problem: the possibility of communal speech (poetry) in the absence of a “we.” Or: what is a “we” that is not a collective subject (or in any case is not a volonté générale )? What is a universal history that is not a History? This work was started in the shade of the anti-globalization protests at the end of November 1999. I considered N30 to be the closure of the nineties, of my adolescence, and of the a seemingly total extinction of social desire. From the beginning I was skeptical about the alterglobalization movement as the avant-garde of a new politics, but something was happening . Maybe this event did not show that, as the slogan would have it, “another world” is possible, but for me it indicated that such possibility was at least still possible. That naked possibility is carrying forward. And if the fundamental tone of this work sounds more desperate than utopian, this is not caused by the catastrophic sequence that since 1999 has plunged us ever deeper into the right-wing nightmare—a nightmare that this work also gives an account for—but because my hope as yet remains empty. Composition . Composition is no design, but the production of an autonomous block of affects (i.e. a POEM), rhythmically subtracted from the language of a community. A poem does something. Is something. New Sentence . Choosing the non sequitur as compositional unit has the advantage that an abstract composition is subjected to the stress of concrete, social references. Where there is a sentence, there is always a world. (This does not hold necessarily for words on their own.) And where sentences collide, something akin to a textual civil war takes place. It is not about “undermining” whatever, or de-scribing the raging global civil war, but about writing social (or even: ontological) antagonism -- including all its catastrophic and utopian possibilities. Minor resistance. Why would poetry be the no protest zone par excellence? It is nothing but protest, not simply qua “content,” but in its most fundamental essence: rhythm. Rhythm is resistance against language, time, and space, and the basis of (what we will continue to call) autonomy. Rhythm starts with the anti-rhythmic caesura as Hölderlin remarked about Sophocles, a disruption of the quotidian drone. The destruction of everything that is dead inside of us. The noise of the avant-garde has never been the representation of the noise of (post)modernity (from the television or shopping mall), but the sober noise of the systematic exchange of an unbearable worldview. The poet does not describe, but looks for a way out: There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, tis translucent & has many Angles But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven William Blake was not mad. And there has always been only one poetry: the poetry of paradise. The principle is that there is something in art (the essentially creative element) that is disgusted by that which, unlike art, does not aim for the supreme. Wonder is not supreme, tranquility is not supreme, beauty is not supreme. Even amusement is not supreme! The supreme is supremely open, “das Einfache,/ Das Schwer zu machen ist” 1 : paradise. That is abstract. Literally. For me it is not about a concrete imagination, an idyll or utopia. There is no doubt a need for that, but it is not so much the supposed lack of imagination or ideals (human rights are ideals), but a fundamental lack of desire (human rights are no desires) that we suffer from, and from which we do not need to remove Nietzsche’s label of “nihilism.” “We.” George Oppen: “ Of Being Numerous asks the question whether or not we can deal with humanity as something which actually exists.” What is less actual than humanity? Nowadays it appears as a lifeless ideology of cynical power politics. Or as what makes one think. It is a shame to be human. The event is the caesura that defines rhythm. Writing toward the event is not the description of the event, but marking an abstract and intense space in which the event may unfold and keep itself. It is a task. “Remember that thou blesseth the day on which I seized thee, because such is thy obligation.” The event is a contraction (or a series of contractions) with its own rhythm and unique qualities. It is more than an explosion or demonstration. But at the same time less. The endless repetition of images and stories in the media points to a fear for the indeterminate and indeterminable void of the event. In the end there is nothing to see. We do not live in disaster’s shade or miracle’s light, but rather in the rhythm, which is contracted time, having little to do with omnipresent representations. For this book I did not intend a rhythm of evental representations (a narrative rhythm), but a rhythm which would be an event itself , because it draws the border between artwork and history. My desire for a direct engagement with the “extra-textual reality” has nothing to do with the representation of “rumor in the streets.” (What has less street cred than representation?) Naturally, a poem is no historical event and does not change anything. But a poem is a part of history that wants to be repeated forever, constructed in such a way that it is worthy of repetition. It is a part of desire (composition) made consistent (durable). The “historical event” flares up and burns down, and has to burn down to be effective. The leftovers are images and stories (representations), History—no event. The artwork—that is the ambition— remains event (though monumental and inefficient/inoperable). (No wonder that a historical singularity, a revolution, reminds us of a work of art; the resurrection yearns for a judgment, an affirmation; everything depends on it.) Hence the title does not summarize the book, let alone contract its “content” into a quasi-transcendental signifier. The title is juxtaposed to the book, like everything else inside the book, and in that relation it precisely forms a part of it. The ideal work is an open whole, lacking nothing but to which everything may be added. I have been interested in this “everything,” the world, or as I said above: capitalism. “Everything” is not the space for “wonder”—a code word, a shibboleth for petty bourgeois imagination (I recognize myself in the strangest things, a speaking dog, a canal, a pond standing straight—oh my god). No. The world is a social world, not YOUR world, poet. Power is number one. I will call “Dutch,” or “shitty,” whatever denies this power. That hurts, but this pain is an expression of the desire in the world to write another world, or as Blanchot says, “the other of all worlds” 2 : the world. Not as what “is there,” but rather as that which urges for an escape from what “is.” This is a testament of how radical reality has become, for me—or rather, a writing body—in a having-been-written. I am not interested in the problem of “meaning” as misunderstood by literary scholarsi: “order” in “chaos,” “symbolization.” Bullshit. What is there, hop, hope, now: the meaning of the taste in my mouth. Bullshit. I am not interested in the frustration of interpretation; I am writing for readers who do not want to interpret. I do not know how many “professional readers” will hear the music of a paragraph like: Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I hope more than I would think. There is a suggestion (or rather, an actual production) of speed and infinitive owing to the absence of plosives, i.e. articulations such as /k/, /t/, or /p/. Can you hear the slick suaveness? Driving car dark, vocal chiaroscuro of the word “sushi.” The unstressed /i/ stands in the middle of dark vowels and thus acquires its own special out of focus , like a momentary flash or brilliance—an obscure light. It is not about recognizing a story, but about avoiding any story whatsoever: the car disappears in the glow, cars and raw fish have nothing in common except their articulation in a language that brings them together, blurring them. A world appears in its disappearance. For a moment, light is a metaphor for language, though it cannot be reduced to tenor. It is not necessary to be a linguist or philosopher to hear this—a “difficult” poem all too often becomes an allegory of its own impenetrable being-language. The only demand: leave your hermeneutical fetish at home. This was no interpretation. Most shit has been stolen etcetera. That is no longer interesting. You cannot shoot the body with information and let your lawyers reclaim the bullets. So every sentence has been stolen. Also the ones “out” “of” “my” “head.” Why would I be allowed to steal from myself and not from others? Man takes what he needs to move forward. Whatever he encounters, finds in front of him, “occurs” to him. The writer as text editor, or singing pirate. Nothing new here. Important difference with for example Sybren Polet’s 4 montage technique: anti-thematicism. Most of the time ferocious citation from whatever I was reading, listening to, ended up in, and so on. I wrote chapter 12 on my laptop while watching CNN. On the air instead of en plein air . I often employed search engines to generate material. Chapter 20 offers the purest example of this. Often I stop recognizing a particular citation after some time. It is not uncommon for a stolen sentence to conform itself to the paragraph in which it finds itself. Sometimes I nearly arbitrarily replace words. Arbitrariness as a guarantee for absolute democracy. It is a poetics of the non sequitur : a conclusion that does not follow from the premises, the strange element in the discourse. A discourse of strangers. No logical, narrative, thematic unity. There is unity in speed/flight. It has to be read linearly, but not necessarily (not preferably) from beginning to end. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but this line precedes every point. The middle, the acceleration, comes first. A point occurs where two lines cross. It has been written from up close, at the level of the tension between sentences. Nothing to be seen from a distance: no form except the exchange of form, no geometrical or mythical meaning. You have to get in, “groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again” (Stein). 5 In Dutch, experimental poetry has been mainly dense: a small rectangular form filled with a maximum amount of poetic possibility. But at the moment the poem starts to relax, the anecdotical content seems to increase. This is what is called “epic”: long, narrative. I believe that an epic is more than that, in fact something completely different. An epic is “a poem including history,” 6 a long poem tied up with the life of community, that as a whole does not need to be narrative. The American poets of the twentieth century (Pound, Williams, Zukofsky, Oppen, Olson, Silliman) have put the epic back on the map by interpreting the poem itself as a map, and writing it as navigation. They have invented the experimental epic, a genre that has generated little original following in “our” poetry. N30 is the middle part—“always start in the middle”—of a trilogy, the contours of which remain as of yet unclear, although each episode investigates one of the three “ecstasies of time”—past, present, future—concerning society X. N30 concerns itself with the PRESENT: not with the description of actual facts but of the rhythm and the intense depth in which facts appear to us. Where are we? We are camping in the desert. Sometimes we are looking at the stars. As opposed to maximum density and minimal tension (a characteristic of most (post-)experimental lyricism), I have sought a minimal density and maximum tension in this book, considered as a long non-narrative prose poem. On the one hand, the minimal density is obtained by the inherent formlessness of prose, on the other hand by the conscious refusal of any active (formal, non-rhythmic) synthesis: the poem tells nothing, shows nothing, has no theme. I did not seek maximum tension either by loading the quotidian with epiphanic radioactivity (“wonder,” confirmation from above), or by means of the intensity of the linguistic structure. I want an abstract tension, but social in its abstraction, in other words, not neutralized by and subjected to Form. Instead of form (transcendent): composition (immanent). The concept is series. Ideal: every unit is necessary for the efficacy of the others and the whole, their relation is purely linear, i.e. non-hierarchic, non-syllogistic, non-discursive, non-narrative. Sentence related to sentence like paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter; the whole means nothing and represents nothing. Inside the sentence: syntax (Chomsky’s tree, a type of parallel circuit), outside: parataxis (coordination, an asyntactic line through language and world). I consider duration—the energy of duration (rhythm)—to be the fundament of a poem, the temporal inclination to delimit a “space.” Being as consistency, its consistency. A spatial part of time is not merely a metaphor for an inevitable trajectory, an inescapable time, something like “our time.” Not merely—because rhythm comes from language and is not projected onto it; the poem derives from the world like a scent and a color and a life from a flower. A series, a sequence: nothing potential, but truly infinite—the movement of an infinitude. The infinite series = everything minus totality. That means that there is no container—no Form, no Self, no Image, no Structure, not even a Fragment—just “the prose of the world.” No representation, but also no staging of the impossibility of representation (the postmodern sublime). These are no fragments, no image of a fragmented world or personality, no cautious incantations around the Void. It does not exist. It is a movement. Buying bread, a flock of birds, a bomb falling—they do not depict or represent anything, not literally, not metaphorically. There is an Idea, which is however nothing more than a rhythm, in the same way that capitalism is nothing more than a pure function. Parataxis: the white space between two sentences stresses, which is nevertheless always there, also between words, even between letters: the out of focus of idle talk, the gutter, the irreducible Mallarméan mist which renders even the seemingly most transparent text legible. The white space suggests a neutral medium for free signification, a substance of language. A non sequitur is an element from a foreign discourse, which stresses the white space as space, and problematizes freedom for supra-sentential signification. I start by withdrawing material, leaving the initiative to the sentences. In general a word presupposes less often a discourse than a sentence. What discourse is presupposed by “dog”? We could think of several, but why would we? It is more probable that, when faced with the naked word, we think of its naked (dictionary) meaning, of its denotative signified. By means of two simple interventions we may also write the word as sentence: Dog. In no way this suggests the discourse from which this sentence originates, but in any case we’re presupposing one. This is shown by questions like: “Whose dog? Who’s a dog? What kind of dog?” Etc. (Sentences are question marks.) A sentence implies/is a microcosm—a subject, a verb, an object, and so on. Even an incomplete or ungrammatical sentence does so. My main fascination while writing this book is the worldly and social aspect of language, an aspect that often becomes invisible, or rather, transparent in narrativity—the stretching of sentences into stories. Narrativity organizes a new discourse and a new world, and places a sometimes all too dispersing relation of transparence in between. The conventional novel is the brothel of being. I do not intend to prohibit brothels, and I have certainly not intended to write an anti-novel (THIS IS A POEM), but I do consider narrativity (in general, in poetry, in the news, in daily life) to be ontologically secondary with regard to an immediate being in the world through sentences, also if the latter have been withdrawn from a narrative or otherwise externally structured discourse (which in that case would therefore be chronologically primary ). Naturally, two or more sentences are always in danger of telling stories or arguing, just like the world is always in danger of becoming an objective representation, facing us, strangers. That is why need to wage war—against representation and against the interface, against interaction. AGAINST THE “READER.” To the extent that a sentence is worldly, writing is a condensed global war, and in so far as there is ultimately only one world and one open continuum of languages, it is a global civil war. Nice subject for an epic. The elaboration of a singular problem—prose as the outside of poetry, the form of the novel as purely prosodic composition scheme—“expresses” the universal problem: capitalism as Idea of the world vs. poetry as language of an (im)possible community. The paragraphs are blocks of rhythmically contracted social material. By choosing the sentence as the basic compositional component, an abstract whole may contain social sounds, without telling a story or showing an image. Composition is subrepresentative —a rhythmic, passive synthesis, or rather: a synthesis of syntheses. I never write large blocks of prose in one sitting, because there is no obvious organizational vector —plot, theme, conscience—outside the inherent qualities of the material itself. Usually I write down one sentence, sometimes two, but rarely more than three. Those sentences are usually placed in the text which I am editing at the time. In fact, there is no original composition, new chapters split off from chapters which became too long during the editing process. (Revision mainly consists of adding and inserting, displacing and dividing; only during the last phase, when the text has gained enough consistency, there may be subtraction to tighten the composition; each chapter requires a season of daily revision). This constant revision, accompanied by a continuous influx of collective background noise (to speak with Van Bastelaere), 7 makes every chapter a block condensed (“historical” and “personal”) time. The block itself is a-personal and a-historic; it is ontologically autonomous. If there is such a thing as a spirit of the times, I do not try to offer an image of it, but rather to cancel something of it by erecting a monument of its own excrement within its own boundaries. Tuning and dis-tuning , “in de taal der neerslachtigen een eigen geluid doen klinken,” 8 in other words, desiring in an Elysian way. In this sense I have intended to be able to write a political poetry. The ultimate political poem is the epic, “the tale of the tribe.” I consider N30 to be a prolegomenon to a future epic (of which it in the end will form a part a structural moment, as introduction-in-the-middle), an extended pile on top of an epic as narrative, a question of the tribe and question of its history. I was burdened by too much satire, too much bullshit. But: satire willy-nilly = the only justifiable satire. Against the abstract universalism of the market (“globalism”): concrete disgust, a positive way of saying “No.” Moreover, disgust is a specifically total attitude, which ultimately concerns the world as a whole. I hate this or that, but I am disgusted by EVERYTHING (when I am disgusted), and so it appears that satire is in fact related to the epic, in so far as it concerns society, the cosmos, history. Maybe it is no coincidence that the Dutch literary canon knows no great poet of disgust; what could be more fearful to us than society, the cosmos, and history? The T-tendency (T from Tollens 9 ) clearly points into the direction of the small, friendly, ironic, melancholic, acquiescent, wondrous, and so on. The anti-political, anti-cosmic, anti-historical. (Why am I so philosophical? To scare away the Dutchies.) And most of all: the “poetical” (the pseudo-mysticism from the backyard). Yes, the N in N30 also stands for the Netherlands (just like 30 indicates the number of chapters). I was not in Seattle, I do not live in Iraq. But is not the whole world bleeding to death on Dutch paving stones? Let’s hope that we mowed away something with this total satire, also “in myself.” The arrogant stupidity that definitely thinks to know the essence of freedom (the free development of esthetic needs inside the void), that cannot take anything serious, only believes in the disciplined bestiality of the individual (“norms and values”) and the mere functioning of a social factory which finds no justification whatsoever outside its functioning (“get to work”)… Who knows. A certain aimed destruction leaves grooves and craters, mapping out a next adventure. Pound’s periplum : sailing while mapping the coasts. Immanent orientation. The terrain changes with the map, history changes with the poem. Maps never merely organize the chaos, transcendent schemes imposed on a formless Ding-an-sich . They organize from within, surfing. But they are most of all routes back into the chaos or forward to paradise (final identity of chaos and paradise; Schlegel: “ Nur diejenige Verworrenheit ist ein Chaos aus der eine Welt entspringen kann ”10). A poem is not only a piece of history, it is also a flight from history. Maps give chaos to the form of reality , open escape routes, break through representations, make us shivery and dazed. Paradise is immanent to a fleeting desire. History is the history of labor—this is Adam’s curse—and the poet works too: For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, school masters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world 11 But: the poet works in paradise. The paradox of the artwork, the work that is no work, the piece of history that cannot be reduced to History—this is explained by The Space of Literature , a virtual space, an autonomous rhythm, not outside, but in the midst of the noise, a piece of paradise in hell, a postcard from the vale of tears addressed to paradise, to X. Political poetry means: a poetry that dares to think about itself, about its language and about its world and about the problematic relation between both, which is this relation as problem. A poetry that thinks at all, articulates its problem. It has nothing to do with journalism or morality or debate, let alone the law or the state. It has nothing to do with “criticism” if this means the replacement of incorrect representations by other, more correct representations. It has something to do with ethics in the sense of learning to live. It has something to do with the community and the language of the community (whichever that may be) and the role of the poet regarding the community. It concerns justice without judgement or measure. In the end the just word is just a word , to paraphrase Godard: it is from a future that is unimaginable. It Is no rational engagement, but an aversion against everything that obstructs life, and love for everything what is worthy of having been loved. The world is engaged with me, not the other way round. First Exodus, then Sinai. A desire does not start with an agenda. To answer the question whether I am really so naive as to want to change the world: “We only want the world.” Justice is the world appealing to us to liberate it from all possible chains, from each organization and inequality, to be it, smooth, equal, under a clear sky—a desert and a people in a desert. That moment between Egypt and the Law. It is not a revolution, but the sky above the revolution. Poetry = the science of escape. There is no art that we already know. The weakness of modernistic epic poetry seems to me to be the unwillingness to completely abandon narrative as a structural principle, in favor of a composition “around” or from an event. The China Cantos and Adams Cantos are the low point, and the Pisan Cantos the high point of Pound’s poetry. Two types of research: archival representation of the past vs. ontology of the present (which virtually presupposes the entire history). Presupposing an event means that it is impossible for the poet to stage his own absence, but in no way makes the work personal. An event is the unknown, the new invading into the business as usual, so also the personal. The question heading this research is not: “Who am I?” but “What is happening?” The book is as little illegible as Mondrian’s work is invisible. Form is of interest only to the extent that it empowers liberation. Ron Silliman So no formalism, but what it means to live in this world and to have a future in it. I want something that holds together that’s not smooth. Bruce Andrews The past above, the future below and the present pouring down: the roar, the roar of the present, a speech— William Carlos Williams If my confreres wanted to write a work with all history in its maw, I wished, from the beginning to start all over again, attempting to know nothing but a will to create, and matter at hand. Ronald Johnson NOTES 1) “The easy thing/ that is difficult to make.” Bertold Brecht, Lob des Kommunismus . (All footnotes are the translator’s) 2) Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature , trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press (1989), 75. 3) Mettes uses the word “Neerlandicus,” which refers to scholars of Dutch language and literature. 4) Dutch poet. 5) Gertrude Stein. “Composition as Explanation.” A Stein Reader . Ed. Ulla E. Dydo. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press (1993), 495-503. 6) Ezra Pound. 7) Flemish poet. 8) “Resounding an original sound in the language of the despondent.” A. Roland Holst, De afspraak . 9) Dutch poet. 10) “Only such a confusion is a chaos which can give rise to a world.” 11) W.B. Yeats, “Adam’s Curse.&rdquo. (shrink)

This special issue aims to explore what is educational in the seemingly humble gesture of making notes: not only how and why the practice of note-taking is educative in and of itself, but also what it says about education as such. The contributions to the issue each highlight different aspects of note-making and approach it differently, but all assume that note-making is an educational practice that merits philosophical study. Interestingly, they mostly focus on note-making as a non-digital practice (putting aside (...) the use of laptops for note-making in class), perhaps because most were written prior to the great digitisation ushered in by educational institutions’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Let us first address how we see the different aspects of note-making highlighted by the contributions to the issue. (shrink)

This essay discusses engineering ethics in Puerto Rico by examining the impact of the Colegio de Ingenieros y Agrimensores de Puerto Rico (CIAPR) and by outlining the constellation of problems and issues identified in workshops and retreats held with Puerto Rican engineers. Three cases developed and discussed in these workshops will help outline movements in engineering ethics beyond the compliance perspective of the CIAPR. These include the Town Z case, Copper Mining in Puerto Rico, and a hypothetical case researched by (...) UPRM students on laptop disposal. The last section outlines four future challenges in engineering ethics pertinent to the Puerto Rican situation. (shrink)

The practice of taking hand-written notes in lectures has been rediscovered recently because of several studies on its learning efficacy in the mainstream media. Students are enjoined to ditch their laptops and return to pen and paper. Such arguments presuppose that notes are taken in order to be revisited after the lecture. Learning is seen to happen only after the event. We argue instead that student’s note-taking is an educational practice worthy in itself as a way to relate to (...) the live event of the lecture. We adopt a phenomenological approach inspired by Vilém Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures, which assumes that a gesture like note-taking is always an event of thinking with media in which a certain freedom is expressed. But Flusser’s description of note-taking focusses on the individual note-taker. What about students’ note-taking in a lecture hall as a collective gesture? Nietzsche considered note-taking ‘mechanical,’ as if students were automatons who mindlessly transcribed a verbal flow, while Benjamin considered it an inaesthetic gesture: at best, boring; at worst, ‘painful to watch.’ In contrast, we argue that the educational potentiality of note-taking—or better, note-making—can be grasped only if we account for its mediaticity (as writing that displaces the voice), together with but distinct from its political potentiality as a collective mediality (as a ‘means without end’). Note-taking enables us to see how collective thinking emerges in the lecture, a kind of thinking that belongs neither to the lecturer nor the student, but emerges in the relation of attention established between the lecturer, students and their object of thought. (shrink)

This study aimed to evaluate if eye blinks can be used to discriminate players with different performance in a session of Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris. To that end, we developed a state-of-the-art method for blink extraction from EAR measures, which is robust enough to be used with data collected by a low-grade webcam such as the ones widely available on laptop computers. Our results show a significant decrease in blink rate per minute (blinks/m) during the first minute of playing (...) Tetris. After having defined 3 groups of proficiency based on in-game performance (Novices, Intermediates, and Experts) we found out that expert players display a significantly lower decrease in blinks/m compared to novices during the first minute of gameplay, which shows that Tetris players' proficiency can be detected by looking at eye blinks/m variations during the early phase of a game session. This difference in blinks/m is observed throughout the entire game session, which supports the general conclusion that proficient Tetris players have a lower decrease in blinks/m, even when playing more difficult levels. Finally, we offer some interpretations of this effect and the relationship that our results may have with the visual cognitive workload experienced during the gameplay. (shrink)

Relatively new and now ubiquitous, smartphones and tablet computers are changing our lives by asking us to rethink the ways that we conduct business, form and maintain relationships, and read books and magazines. In the same capacity, mobile devices are redefining how health care is administered, monitored, and delivered through specialized technologies called medical apps (applications). In general, apps are pieces of software that can be installed and run on a variety of hardware platforms, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and (...) desktop computers. Medical apps, in particular, refer to a wide variety of software that focuses on health care (loosely defined). Whether these apps target the health-care .. (shrink)

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash INTRODUCTION The coronavirus pandemic is a challenge to educators, policy makers, and ordinary people. In facing the threat from COVID-19, school systems and global institutions need “to address the essential matter of each human being and how they are interacting with, and affected by, a much wider set of biological and technical conditions.”[1] Educators must grapple with the societal issues that come with the intent of ensuring the safety of the public. To some, “these (...) are actually as important as the biological concerns of people.”[2] The current global crisis shows that “scientifically, socially, and politically the economy and technosphere are not just related, they are integral to a comprehensive response to major challenges.”[3] In developing these responses, scientists, government leaders, and policy makers need to consider the vulnerabilities of people, especially those in “thrown away” groups.[4] Jerome Ravetz explains that “microscopic viral predators cull our populations, as ever, but with a selection that is not natural but social and political.”[5] Educators must address the underlying vulnerabilities and evaluate the virus as a threat to academic experiences and access to a fair education. ANALYSIS • Critical Pedagogy By definition, the critical approach to teaching is about the problem-posing method of education developed by Paolo Freire. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, he proposed a paradigm shift away from the banking method of learning wherein teachers deposit knowledge into the minds of students. Critical pedagogy is an educational approach that challenges students to develop the ability to recognize and criticize dominating theories and evaluate them in their social context. Teachers press students to recognize oppression and try to remedy oppression in their culture.[6] Despite the lack of in-person interaction between the teacher and the students, the effort to use innovative teaching techniques like critical pedagogy should continue. Online learning is not just about the use of technology, although the internet is crucial in the delivery of content. Since human beings are creators of value, they determine the meaning and purpose of technology. In this way, the set of values people have will influence online learning. Teachers cannot be more concerned about outcomes than about the process itself. The process is crucial since the ability of the student to think critically is developed in the exchange between the student and the teacher. The teacher cannot simply dump loads of information (deposit knowledge) but must pose problems to test the analytical and critical skills of students.[7] Education is about how people humanize the world. Policy makers miss the point when they focus on the delivery but do not pay attention to the substantive aspect of learning, which is human empowerment. Education is meant to expand the freedom of people. Education should be seen as an integrative activity. Learning is a formative process that aims to develop the human person. Without the face-to-face encounter between teacher and students, the challenge is finding ways to make learning an effective means to mold the values of young people. • Online Critical Pedagogy & the Role of Technology Physical distance appears to be an impediment in realizing the ideals of learning. The lack of contact between the teacher and the students may prevent a more meaningful interaction since online instruction is impersonal. It can be argued that there is no alternative to some classroom activities, especially laboratory experiments in science courses. The total classroom environment naturally influences the behavior of students when it comes to academic work: the look in the eyes of the professor, the caring ways of a teacher, or the pressure while taking exams contribute to an experience that only a classroom setting can provide. If implemented properly, technology can facilitate the personal relationships between teachers and students while providing meaningful experiences. With the current need for online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, gadgets are indispensable. Some would even consider gadgets an extension of the human body. A mobile phone is not just any instrument; it has evolved into a novel way of being in the world. Our gadgets are a means of seeing how the outside world unfolds. Modern technological tools allow the interface of people in many fields of experience in a globalized environment. Computers and other digital devices extend the meaning and value of human freedom. For example, a laptop provided to a poor child can redefine the meaning of and what the future might hold for that child. The device is crucial to the whole learning process. Modern tools are critical to self-discovery and greater freedom. The values that people embrace will matter in the new normal. The internet has provided a new democratic space that empowers groups and individuals to express themselves and to understand the world.[8] In an online class, students and teachers alike need to analyze big picture questions and layers of information. For example, the student in an ethics or philosophy class can reflect on the realities of life. With the proper guidance, online education should help define the meaning of moral commitment and human responsibility. CONCLUSION Before the pandemic, policy makers had been pursuing the goals of a globalized economy. They had been fashioning and promoting programs that cater to the interests of a consumer-driven world that has deprived the poor of opportunity. When the pandemic struck, globalization suddenly came to a halt and people realized the things that truly matter in life – family, love, and life itself. The new normal must now emphasize the role of education as a source of inner strength that can empower the person to live well reinforcing values based on a social consciousness. Critical pedagogy is possible under the new normal. The distance between the teacher and student does not make the educational process less real and in the absence of a vaccine, online learning is the safest strategy. Governments cannot freeze an entire school year since education is the only way out from poverty for millions. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a reason to re-imagine teaching using technology to encourage all students to question systems of oppression or greed, as the persistent pursuit of the truth is what education is all about. [1] Hartsell, Layne, Krabbe, Alexander, & Pastreich, Emmanuel. “Covid-19, Global Justice, and a New Biopolitics of the Anthropocene.” Social Ethics Society Journal of Applied Philosophy 6, no. 2 (2020), 3. [2] Ravetz, Jerome. “Science for a Proper Recovery: Post-Normal, not New Normal.” Issues in Science and Technology [Internet] July 15, 2020. https://issues.org/post-normal-science-for-pandemic-recovery/ [3] Hartsell, et al. “Covid-19, Global Justice, and a New Biopolitics of the Anthropocene,” 6. [4] Ravetz, “Science for a Proper Recovery: Post-Normal, not New Normal.” [5] Ibid. [6] Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (New York: Continuum Books, 1993). [7] Freire writes that in such a situation “instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.” See his Pedagogy of the Oppressed. [8] Bakardjieva, Maria. Internet Society. (London: Sage Publications, 2005). (shrink)