Design is a conceptive activity which is usually presented as a sensible, sequential process and action. This book claims that design cannot be reduced to the rational, effective planning and organization that most models (such as design thinking) present. The author suggests another type of rationality which is based on what the humanities call aesthetics, writing, composition, and style: a rationality based in imaginary elaboration and coherence. The chapters, therefore, demonstrate that design practice is about creating not only functional tools, (...) but planes of reflections that challenge norms. To support this claim, this book analyzes research programs, art works, and design projects that produced new information and communication technologies (ICT). This is detailed using examples in each chapter. From these examples, two types of conclusions are derived: a first level considers the lessons that we can draw from these examples in terms of design practice while the second level starts a theoretical discussion based on these analyses of use cases. The goal is to develop an understanding of conception in its different forms. This book brings the use of these neglected methods to the foreground as a way to explicate the design process. Taking into consideration the humanities within design contributes to the discussion on pluridisciplinarity. The book posits that design as a historical and situated activity is a truly multidisciplinary endeavor that bridges the gap between engineering sciences and the humanities. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.4 (2003) 58-64 [Access article in PDF] Media Literacy Education in Art:Motion Expression and the New Vision of Art EducationThe Bauhaus, which established the foundation of modern design, has greatly influenced Japanese design and art education. It is a historical fact that the movement views "synthetic art" as an integration of the various fields and the integration of the art and machine technology experimentally. (...) However, the Bauhaus is not just of historical importance but continues to have an influence even in the integration of the art and electronic technology in today's "multimedia." In addition, it can be said that it is very much alive as "the digital Bauhaus" or "the electronic Bauhaus." 1 As we know, today's multimedia and the Internet give us a new life-environment, and expandthe possibility of expression in art. Therefore, current art education must examine how these new medias will be incorporated into the curriculum.In the cases of the photograph, video, or computer, an expression by the image media is added to the art course for the junior high school course of study. 2 Also in school art classes, image media was introduced, expanding the possibilities of self-expression through art. This result can be matched to the needs of the industrial world in Japan as well. As an educational practice, the content of this course of study is promising, even though someproblems must be solved, acquiring new equipment, re-educating the artteacher, and securing additional art school hours. The new content in art education can be summarized as follows:1. The motion picture (animation) which includes time and movement. Motion picture is asequence of continuous images, obviously different from the still images of painting. There are, of course, artworks that express motion or induce the viewer'seye movement. There are also kinetic artworks that do move, such as mobiles. Works of motion picture have, however, a fixed time shaft, and they are formed by the afterimage phenomenon. Thinking about the progress of time shaft is an indispensable element for the production. [End Page 58]2. The synchronism of image and sound. Because time is a factor in the visual expression, the works are compatible with music — the art of time. There is a synchronized relation between the motion picture and music. Image expression with multimedia became synthetic art, just as the Bauhaus looked for "architecture." Currently, this kind of expression transitions from art to entertainment, and permeates daily life.3. The method with interactive art work. Not only artworks of installation, but also TV games and web design have interactive construction as an indispensable interface. The aesthetic value of these visual works will be appreciated when the user starts the action by hitting a touchpad, pushing buttons, or clicking a mouse. To make this kind of artwork, one needs to consider the latent relationships between humans and work, and establish the input-output order for the method of construction.4. The problem of virtual reality. The term "virtual reality" is used by some art teachers as criticism against digital works such as computer graphics. These teachers insist that there is no reality there. One can, however, get an aesthetic feeling through sensory information, imagination, and sensitivity, even though what one sees is an illusion. The feeling of reality a picture of an apple gives, for example, may be equal to a computer graphic apple.Human imagination also creates "virtual reality" beyond reality in the myth, the novel, and so on. It can be said that this is the basis for human creativity.Furthermore, expression by image media raises the problem of a "reality" in which material experience is important to encounterthe world directly. Such an argument discusses multimedia as a tool of expression and a teaching material while reconsidering human reality.More recently, "media literacy" (ability to read and understand media) became an important point of discussion for Japanese educators. Usually, in this discussion, the critical ability to talk back to the television program is emphasized. However, through art... (shrink)

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies is touted as ushering in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). 4IR, also known as ‘Industry 4.0,’ pertains to the burning internet connectivity, sophisticated analytics and production, and automation’s transformative impacts on the world. The surge of change in the production arena started in the second half of 2010 and has continued to increase astronomically, with a remarkable probability of shaping the future of manufacturing and humanity. The 4IR is thus heralding (...) areas such as digitalisation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics, and 3D technologies amidst many other innovative digital technologies following the first, second and third industrial revolutions. The problem this paper addresses is the role of Arts and humanities (A&H) in the era of AI. Should A&H imbibe the empirical science methodology to stay relevant? How does A&H contribute to 4IR? Leveraging on philosophical tools of arguments and reconstruction of ideas, this paper argues for the significance of Kant’s thoughts in The Contest of the Faculties and that Arts and humanities are instrumental to humanising science and technology, helping to shape interdisciplinary collaboration and fostering understanding of the ethical, social and cultural dimensions of AI. (shrink)

Born out of a major international dialogue held at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, Italy, this collection of essays presents innovative and provocative arguments about the claims of universal knowledge schemes and the different aesthetic and material forms in which such claims have been made and executed. Contributors take a close look at everything from religious pilgrimages, museums, and maps of the world, to search engines and automated GPS. Current obsessions in information technology, communications theory, and digital culture often (...) concern the value and possibility of a grand accumulation of universally accessible forms of knowledge: total libraries, open data bases, ubiquitous computing, and 'smart' technologies. These obsessions have important social and philosophical origins, and they raise profound questions about the very nature of knowledge and its organization. This volume's contributors draw on the histories of maps and of encyclopedias, worldviews and visionary collections, to make sense of the crucial relation between the way the world is known and how it might be displayed and transformed. (shrink)

In previous work, I have looked in detail at the capacity and the limits of the linguistics model as applied to gene expression. The recent use of a primitive applied linguistic model in Apple's SIRI system allows further analysis. In particular, the failings of this system resemble those of the HGP; the model used also helps point out the shortcomings of the concept of the "gene". This is particularly urgent as we are entering an era of applied biology in the (...) absence of theory, and indeed an era with a near-epidemic of retracted papers. There are a few workarounds proposed. One is to add to the nascent field of biosemiotics a more explicit concern with syntax. At the time of writing, Apple is being sued for false advertising of its iphone 4s, with the associated claim that apple had solved many of the problems of natural language processing by computer . The system was bought by Apple from a company called SIRI, and in turn was based on the notion, trumpeted by the prior art in a company called Dejima, that nlpbc could be done by keywords alone. Yet the hype resembles nothing so much as the misrepresentation of the Human Genome Project fed to the media in the glory days at the beginning of this millennium, and it says a lot for the status of scientists in society that they have avoided Apple's fate. In this paper, a short review of several current themes in theoretical and applied biology is first proposed. Then the tensions implicit in the notion that the "gene" is simultaneously to be identified as a unit of inheritance and spatially located over spatially well-defined nucleotides is explored and the notion is found to be incoherent. An expanded notion of inheritance is proposed in the context of a focus on inheritance as necessarily involving species, population and organism over time. While it is premature to talk about a paradigm shift, it is certainly arguable that biology urgently needs a sophisticated theory of how symbols work substantially more sophisticated than that implicit in the HGP; Biosemiotics affords a framework in which this might be tried. Indeed, as this paper concludes, there may yet be room for a "Bionoetics", a perspective in which biological explanation can be extended to include cognition in all its forms. Finally, a working sketch of a modeling environment written in LISP, one that shows promise in reflecting the complexities discussed in the paper, is included. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

For a long time, researchers in the fields of psychology and neuroscience have been interested in discovering ways to boost productivity in traditionally "healthy," "clinical," and "military" populations. However, one of the biggest challenges in reaching this objective is developing personalised performance phenotypes that can be used to build interventions that are specifically catered to each individual's needs. Impact: Thanks to AI's recent advancements, we can now create individualised training, preparation, and recovery plans that are tailored to each person's unique (...) cognitive and biological profile. Concurrent AI advancements, especially in the psychological and neurological sciences, have demonstrated the importance of incorporating domain expertise and stakeholder inputs into the development of trustworthy AI. Value: This Patterns themed issue seeks original empirical work, literature reviews, and methodological papers that establish and validate precision artificial intelligence methods for human performance optimization, with a focus on modelling individual differences via state-of-the-art computational methods. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the way that art is created and consumed, allowing artists to create unique, engaging works with high computing power that can supplement their creative process. This manuscript explores the creative process of using AI technology in digital art to create paintings and evaluates creativity based on the aesthetic value and components of works created by AI. This research seeks to understand how AI technology influences the art world through a practice-led methodology with a descriptive (...) qualitative approach and observational methodology. Pioneering artwork such as Edmond de Belamy, created by French collective obvious using generative adversarial networks (GANs), has raised questions among the creative fields concerning originality, creativity, and authorship. Through analyses of AI-generated artwork and comparison with traditional artwork, the research investigates potential opportunities and challenges that AI presents to the art world. Ultimately, AI technology can provide a creative spark for human artists who, with an appropriate understanding of the limitations of AI algorithms, can create incredible pieces of art that embrace the contributions of both humans and machines. This research seeks to fill in the gaps left by earlier works and provide a more multi-faceted look at the changing landscape of AI in art, gaining a better understanding of the ways AI is impacting the art world and what the future may look like in the coming years. (shrink)

This paper presents an emerging aspect of intentionality through recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) developments in art and design. Our main thesis is that, if we focus just on the outcome of the artistic process, the intentionality of the artist does not have any relevance. Intention is measured as a result of actions regardless of whether they are human-based or not as long as there is an esthetical value intersubjectively acknowledged. In other words, what matters is the ‘intentio’ embedded in the (...) work of art (the output) rather than the ‘intendere’ (the process). By considering the former aspect, intentionality becomes free of human intervention, therefore 'unintentional'. This thesis is supported through a range of examples related to AI in general and AI art in particular. However, in the case of a self-driving vehicle, the macro-goal of the system is fixed by humans, even though the AI system itself will take care of decomposing the macro-goal into a set of micro-goals and take the corresponding decisions. In the case of art, the system does not need to have any exterior goal to the extent that art is pure freedom of expression, as many philosophers have acknowledged. In this sense, the decisions of any AI system generating art or design are independent of humans and must be judged only on the ground of the final outcome. A work of art will be judged ‘artistic’ to the extent that humans will recognize an artistic intent in the work itself. In particular, the introduction of random processes makes an AI-generated artwork fully independent of human creativity. (shrink)

What is the most important reason for using Computer Vision methods in humanities research? In this article, I argue that the use of numerical representation and data analysis methods offers a new language for describing cultural artifacts, experiences and dynamics. The human languages such as English or Russian that developed rather recently in human evolution are not good at capturing analog properties of human sensorial and cultural experiences. These limitations become particularly worrying if we want to compare thousands, millions (...) or billions of artifacts—i.e. to study contemporary media and cultures at their new twenty-first century scale. When we instead use numerical measurements of image properties standard in Computer Vision, we can better capture details of a single artifact as well as visual differences between a number of artifacts–even if they are very small. The examples of visual dimensions that numbers can capture better then languages include color, shape, texture, contours, composition, and visual characteristics of represented faces, bodies and objects. The methods of finding structures and relationships in large numerical datasets developed in statistics and machine learning allow us to extend this analysis to very big datasets of cultural objects. Equally importantly, numerical image features used in Computer Vision also give us a new language to represent gradual and continuous temporal changes—something which natural languages are also bad at. This applies to both single artworks such as a film or a dance piece and also to changes in visual characteristics in millions of artifacts over decades or centuries. (shrink)

Scholars refute the dichotomy of subject and object in the study of technology. Basing on relational ontology and revised empirical study, namely the social historical phenomenology of technology, inspired by post-phenomenology and actor-network theory, this study adopts an approach informed by the genetic phenomenological sociology (Zhang 2017; 2020) of technology, and examines the formation of Apple’s technology in the process of its emergence and diffusion. Unlike post-phenomenology and actor-network theory, which mainly examine the role of technology in the relation of (...) human-technology-world after technology was formed, this study examines technology in the process of its formation. The relationship between the intentionality of humanity and the potentiality of technology is explored empirically and ontologically, thus transcending the dichotomy of subject and object in the examination of technology through the relational ontology indicated in potentiality, intentionality, embodiment, and genealogy, and simultaneously building a foundation for the critique, ethics, and normative theory of media and technology. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience have paved the way to innovative applications that cognitively augment and enhance humans in a variety of contexts. This paper aims at providing a snapshot of the current state of the art and a motivated forecast of the most likely developments in the next two decades. Firstly, we survey the main neuroscience technologies for both observing and influencing brain activity, which are necessary ingredients for human cognitive augmentation. We also compare and contrast such technologies, as their (...) individual characteristics (e.g., spatio-temporal resolution, invasiveness, portability, energy requirements and cost) influence their current and future role in human cognitive augmentation. Secondly, we chart the state of the art on neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation, keeping an eye both on the applications that already exist and those that are emerging or are likely to emerge in the next two decades. Particularly, we consider applications in the areas of communication, cognitive enhancement, memory, attention monitoring/enhancement, situation awareness and complex problem solving, and we look at what fraction of the population might benefit from such technologies and at the demands they impose in terms of user training. Thirdly, we briefly review the ethical issues associated with current neuroscience technologies. These are important because they may differentially influence both present and future research on (and adoption of) neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation: an inferior technology with no significant ethical issues may thrive while a superior technology causing widespread ethical concerns may end up being outlawed. Finally, based on the lessons learned in our analysis, using past trends and considering other related forecasts, we attempt to forecast the most likely future developments of neuroscience technology for human cognitive augmentation and provide informed recommendations for promising future research and exploitation avenues. (shrink)

Biases in cognition are ubiquitous. Social psychologists suggested biases and stereotypes serve a multifarious set of cognitive goals, while at the same time stressing their potential harmfulness. Recently, biases and stereotypes became the purview of heated debates in the machine learning community too. Researchers and developers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that some biases, like gender and race biases, are entrenched in the algorithms some AI applications rely upon. Here, taking into account several existing approaches that address the (...) problem of implicit biases and stereotypes, we propose that a strategy to cope with this phenomenon is to unmask those found in AI systems by understanding their cognitive dimension, rather than simply trying to correct algorithms. To this extent, we present a discussion bridging together findings from cognitive science and insights from machine learning that can be integrated in a state-of-the-art semantic network. Remarkably, this resource can be of assistance to scholars (e.g., cognitive and computer scientists) while at the same time contributing to refine AI regulations affecting social life. We show how only through a thorough understanding of the cognitive processes leading to biases, and through an interdisciplinary effort, we can make the best of AI technology. (shrink)

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, governments have turned their attention to digital contact tracing. In many countries, public debate has focused on the risks this technology poses to privacy, with advocates and experts sounding alarm bells about surveillance and mission creep reminiscent of the post 9/11 era. Yet, when Apple and Google launched their contact tracing API in April 2020, some of the world’s leading privacy experts applauded this initiative for its privacy-preserving technical specifications. In an interesting twist, the tech (...) giants came to be portrayed as greater champions of privacy than some democratic governments. This article proposes to view the Apple/Google API in terms of a broader phenomenon whereby tech corporations are encroaching into ever new spheres of social life. From this perspective, the advantage these actors have accrued in the sphere of the production of digital goods provides them with access to the spheres of health and medicine, and more worrisome, to the sphere of politics. These sphere transgressions raise numerous risks that are not captured by the focus on privacy harms. Namely, a crowding out of essential spherical expertise, new dependencies on corporate actors for the delivery of essential, public goods, the shaping of public policy by non-representative, private actors and ultimately, the accumulation of decision-making power across multiple spheres. While privacy is certainly an important value, its centrality in the debate on digital contact tracing may blind us to these broader societal harms and unwittingly pave the way for ever more sphere transgressions. (shrink)

Bringing human–robot interaction (HRI) into conversation with scholarship from human geography, this paper considers how socially interactive robots become important agents in the production of social space and explores the utility of core geographic concepts of _scale_ and _place_ to critically examine evolving robotic spatialities. The paper grounds this discussion through reflections on a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project studying the development and deployment of interactive museum tour-guiding robots on a North American university campus. The project is a collaboration among geographers, (...) roboticists, a digital artist, and the directors/curators of two museums, and involves experimentation in the development of a tour-guiding robot with a “socially aware navigation system” alongside ongoing critical reflection into the socio-spatial context of human–robot interactions and their future possibilities. The paper reflects on the tensions between logics of control and contingency in robotic spatiality and argues that concepts of scale and place can help reflect on this tension in a productive way while calling attention to a broader range of stakeholders who should be included in robotic design and deployment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HIV, Art, and a Journey toward Healing:One Man's StoryJulia Kellman (bio)Some of the territory is wilder and reports do not tally. The guides are good for only so much. In these wild places I become part of the map, part of the story, adding my versions there. This Talmudic layering of story on story, map on map, multiplies possibilities, but also warns me of the weight of accumulation. I (...) live in one world—material, seemingly solid—and the weight of that is quite enough.1I have just reread anthropologist Ruth Behar's2 essay, "Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart." It started me thinking about several things—the outer limits of psychic pain, for example, or the relationship of the researcher and the researched, of bearing witness and giving testimony, and of the "ethnographic experience of talking, listening, transcribing, translating, and interpreting" that forms the core of enquiry about people and their lives.3 What can I say, I wonder, to touch readers in such a way that they see the indispensable truth in the individual stories that develop from such enquiries? How can my role as interpreter and witness lead to the understanding that the buffeting winds of lived experience (those of the researcher and of those who are researched) are not inconveniences but an essential quality of humanistic research? How can I use the accretion of stories that make up my research and my life (as if there were a difference), I muse, as I sit at my computer screen reading a text as "it in its turn reads me," as the writer Jeanette Winterson4 describes this experience. For over the years, I, too, not only have come to feel this pulse of the systole and diastole of telling and being told, but I have also used this alternating relationship to develop insight into the nature of the connection of researcher and researched, teacher and taught.There are two main narratives that form the core of this particular undertaking—one personal and the other the result of informal conversations, [End Page 33] formal interviews, casual interactions, social events, and interchanges during the art class for people with HIV/AIDS that I teach weekly at a local hospital. The stories both probe the mystery of disease, expression, and the search for coherence, and, in my case, the role of "the wild places on the map"5 where the researcher/writer adds her witness and testimony to the narrative to become part of the story.Individual ExperienceBefore we begin this discussion of individual experience, art, and illness, it is important to point out that there are only two general types of humanities enquiry: One enumerates, compares and contrasts, creates and tests hypotheses, reads literature, and/or examines the minutiae of materials or systems of one sort or another. The other is engaged in exploring the individual, the idiosyncratic, and the unique. Its subject is that which is particular. My research consists of the second type, qualitative to its core, and deeply sunk in the narrative, personal world of lived experience.The privacy of individual situations, our utter singularity, is one of the factors that most marks our lives as creatures. We can share our stories, describe our impressions, explain our sensations, but unless we participate in an actual experience in which our boundaries momentarily disappear, the most we can hope for is the simultaneous partaking of similar feelings with a sensitive, empathetic companion in what philosopher-sociologist Alfred Schutz6 describes as a We-relationship, an intersubjective experience that leads to sharing time, mutuality, and growing old together. Thus the ticklish nature of achieving actual interpersonal congruence makes enquiries into the specifics of actual lived experience difficult. If one is to learn anything useful from such considerations, one must focus on the individual and the story of his/her particular life journey in an intimate, extended, multifaceted manner and content one's self with the fact that all one will ever be able to report about in such an undertaking are discrete events and single people, never grand numerical accumulations or demographically significant quantities.Researcher's DisclaimerFor a reader to orient herself in... (shrink)

This paper offers an approach to support the development of reflective teaching practice among university academics that can be used to promote dialogue about quality enhancement and the student experience. Pedagogic frailty has been proposed as a unifying concept that may help to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching within universities by helping to maintain a simultaneous focus on key areas that are thought to impede development of pedagogy. These areas and the links that have been proposed to connect them (...) are interrogated here through the dialogic analysis of a framed autoethnographic narrative produced by a community ‘insider’ who has considerable experience of teaching within the arts and humanities. This person-centred methodology acknowledges the subjective nature of teaching and gives voice to important stories that otherwise might not be heard formally, and allows an academic to rehearse this voice individually before comparing it with others in the institution. (shrink)

This article critically examines the emergent phenomena of AI-generated and NFT art through the lens of Georg Lukács’ theory of reification and its existential implications. Lukács argued that under capitalism, social relations and human experiences are transformed into objective, quantifiable commodities, leading to a fragmented and alienated consciousness. Applying this framework to AI and NFT art, these technologies can be said to represent extreme examples of the reification of art and creativity in the digital age. AI art generators reduce artistic (...) production to abstract, computable properties divorced from lived experience, while NFTs transform digital art into speculative commodities, imposing the logic of private property and exchange value onto the previously open domain of online culture. The existential dimension of this reification is explored, raising questions about the nature of creativity, originality, and the value of art in an increasingly financialized and automated world. The article suggests that a Lukácsian critique must not only diagnose the reified character of these cultural forms but also identify their potential for resistance and transformation, pointing toward a re-humanized and emancipatory vision of art in the digital age. Contemporary theorists such as Tiziana Terranova, Nick Dyer-Witheford, and Benjamin Noys are invoked to further elucidate these issues. (shrink)

Automation is inherently tied to ethical challenges because of its potential involvement in morally loaded decisions. In the present research, participants (n = 34) took part in a moral multi-trial dilemma-based task where the agent (human vs. machine) and the behavior (action vs. inaction) factors were randomized. Self-report measures, in terms of morality, consciousness, responsibility, intentionality, and emotional impact evaluation were gathered, together with electroencephalography (delta, theta, beta, upper and lower alpha, and gamma powers) and peripheral autonomic (electrodermal activity, heart (...) rate variability) data. Data showed that moral schemata vary as a function of the involved decider, and when the agent and behavior factors are crossed. Subjects did not consider machines full moral deciders to the same degree as humans and tend to morally better accept human active behavior and machine inaction. Moreover, the autonomic physiological activity might support the a-posteriori moral evaluation. In the evaluation of the agent’s consciousness, a beta ventrolateral prefrontal synchronization was detected for human action and machine inaction, while a generalized gamma synchronization occurred in artificial agent trials while rating the emotional impact of the decider’s behavior. The detected differences might point to a potential explicit and implicit asymmetry in moral reasoning toward artificial and human agents. (shrink)

This article provides a comprehensive overview of John Dewey's impact on education and aesthetics in Korea and Japan. While initially focused on education, the 1990s saw a growing interest in Dewey's aesthetics, with _Art as Experience_ partially translated in 1999. The Korean perspective on Dewey's aesthetics extends mostly to philosophy of education and art education, but there are also efforts to deepen the understanding of Dewey's aesthetics itself. Also, the interdisciplinary impact of Dewey's aesthetics can be found in fields such (...) as design and human-computer interaction. In Japan, Dewey's aesthetics received limited focus in spite of the "Dewey boom" from 1945 to 1970. Studies since the 2010s reconnect Dewey's aesthetics to his social and cultural context, highlighting its relevance to contemporary issues and emphasizing the public nature of Dewey's concept of democracy. The article also traces the historical development of Dewey studies in Japan, acknowledging the pioneering work of Tsurumi Shunsuke, who integrated Dewey's aesthetics into Japan's social fabric. While recognizing the biases and division of understanding in Dewey studies, the article concludes with a description of the renewed interest in _Art as Experience_ in both countries since the 2010s. (shrink)

The ability to create and perceive art has long been understood as an exceptional human trait, which should differentiate us from the rest of the organisms or robots. However, with the uprising of cognitive sciences and information stemming from them, as well as the evolutionary biology, even the human being began to be understood as an organism following the evolutionarily and culturally obtained algorithms and evaluation processes. Even fragile and multidimensional phenomena like beauty, aesthetic experience or the good have lately (...) been analyzed using computational aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, and neuroethics, suggesting that the entire aesthetics, art or ethics can be understood as a result of a certain algorithmic data analysis. In the following article, I will attempt to think about the concept of computational aesthetics and the possibilities, benefits and shortcomings of artificial intelligence in the creation, as well as in perception and evaluation of artworks. I will introduce multiple models of artistic work based on AI, quality/originality evaluating computer programs, as well as mechanisms of its perception. In the end, I will attempt to present the basic aesthetic problems stemming from the development of AI and its usage in the field of art. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the analysis of the characteristic features of the process of displaying virtual network platforms and cybernetic technologies in the early 1970s — early 2020s in the fantastic universe (literary and cinematic) created by S. King, one of the leading American science fiction writers of our time. In this study, the authors provide a justification for the relevance and scientific novelty of the problem under study. This paper analyzes the specific features of the impact of electronic (...) communication communities and computer technologies on modern society. This article provides an argument for the need to comprehend the coverage of this social problem in fantastic art — specifically in literature and cinematography — as one of the additional aspects of the progress of the predictive function of science. This study provides a reasoned explanation of the definition of the fantastic literary and cinematic universe of S. King as an object of research, taking into account its priority position in the fantasy genre as a whole. This problem was chosen by the authors for analysis in order to reasonably refute stereotypes, according to which the works of S. King and the film adaptations created on their basis are a complex of mass culture materials of an entertainment nature that do not have any semantic significance. At the same time, the authors explore the cardinal differences in the coverage of the studied problem in the original literary works of S. King and their film adaptations. This approach, among other things, allowed the authors to identify the reasons for the negative attitude of the writer to the embodiment of his books on the cinema screen. In this work, the specifics of the process of transformation of the display of social networks and high technologies in the fantastic universe of S. King during the 1970s and early 2020s are comprehended in the context of the author’s reaction to objective changes in scientific and technological progress and ideas about it in public opinion, as well as the growth of their importance in socio-economic, spiritual and the political spheres of life of the human community. In this study, using the example of the fantastic universe of S. King, the characteristic features of the evolution of the position of experts in the field of computer technology over the past five decades in the context of their perception in literature and cinema are also analyzed. The work also examines the moral criteria for the use of social networks and cybernetic technologies in public life and their impact on the development of modern family relations in the perception of S. King, one of the subjects of the formation of public relations in Western society. (shrink)

AbstractThe world we live in is shaped by technology and its development. This process is observed and debated in the humanities as well as in computer science and cognitive sciences. Narratives of human life being merged with and transcended by technology not only belong to science fiction but also to science: Theorists like Katherine Hayles or Mark B. N. Hansen speak of a technogenesis of consciousness. These accounts hold that our cognitive abilities are deeply influenced by technology and digital (...) media. The digitalization of the lifeworld is a global phenomenon, which unfolds regardless of local cultures. It is art which seeks to explore the experiential aspects of technologically shaped life-worlds. In my contribution I will present examples of artworks which focus on the possibility of aesthetic experiences with new technologies and getting in touch with the so-called technological unconscious. I attempt to investigate the potential of art to unfold experiential aspects of human rapport with technology and thereby develop aisthetic practices for understanding the cultural and political dimensions of digitalized life-worlds. (shrink)

The goals of a global liberal arts education, as conjoining both western and eastern sources, focus on ‘virtue first’, i.e. on pursuing human excellence . To determine whether such excellence can be taught online, I turn to contemporary research on Computer-Mediated Communication and online education. Among other factors, important cultural issues as well as the real costs of online education have moderated 1990s enthusiasm for online learning as ‘revolutionary’. I then take up Hubert Dreyfus’ pedagogical taxonomy as it (...) emphasizes the role of embodiment in learning. Expanding on his analysis, I argue that the most important goals of a global liberal arts education–precisely the goals of becoming excellent human beings capable of Aristotelian phroneØsis, a key form of judgment crucial to not only professional success but also ethical and political life–require human teachers who incarnate the skills and judgment students need to acquire. These analyses, finally, support what is in fact a recent turn in online education towards blended classrooms that seek to exploit the distinctive advantages of both embodied and disembodied teaching. (shrink)

The invention of computers, and especially their communication capabilities is revolutionary in several ways. They show the paramount importance of communication in human life, as well as facilitating revolutionary improvements in virtually all areas of social life: business, the arts, agriculture, and others. They put in perspective the erroneous outlook of "materialism" -the idea that human well-being is a matter of accumulating material objects, with a corollary that we must be using up the material resources that make such life (...) possible. In fact, we use fewer and fewer material resources to make life better. Given human ingenuity, natural resources simply do not pose any basic restriction on human potential. Humanity can be in for a great future, provided our politics can be kept from wrecking it all. Will we have the wisdom to leave people to their devices and continue to forward all this progress? (shrink)

This paper investigates the application of artificial intelligence (AI) language models in writing policy briefing notes within the context of public administration by juxtaposing the technologies’ performance against the traditional reliance on human expertise. Briefing notes are pivotal in informing decision-making processes in government contexts, which generally require high accuracy, clarity, and issue-relevance. Given the increasing integration of AI across various sectors, this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and acceptability of AI-generated policy briefing notes. Using a structured evaluation-by-experts methodology, (...) the research scrutinizes and compares the output of three leading AI language models—OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Mistral’s Le Chat—across ten critical dimensions reflective of policy briefing notes quality. These dimensions encompass both structural and content-related aspects, ranging from linguistic precision to the depth and applicability of the generated information. The discussion is anchored in the technology acceptance model (TAM) theory and its extensions, which offer a theoretical framework for understanding the factors influencing the adoption and usefulness of technology in public administration. Our comparative analysis reveals that while AI models exhibit notable competencies in meeting some structural and linguistic benchmarks, they fail to address the nuances and depth required by policy experts for undertaking informed decision-making adequately. This discrepancy underscores the enduring value of human expertise in synthesizing complex information and navigating ethical considerations, even as AI enhances efficiency in certain aspects of the policy briefing note crafting process. (shrink)

It is often taken for granted that personal computers today are designed to hide technical information in order to make software seem easier. While “transparency of interaction” has influenced popular understandings of computer systems, it also shapes our engagement with software as critics. This essay examines the origins of transparent design in different models of usability proposed by IBM and Apple in response to popular concerns over the inaccessibility of personal computers in the early 1980s. By tracing how and (...) why transparency emerged from this period of crisis, we can better interrogate its justifications and imagine alternative relationships to computing. (shrink)

Doctoral learning entails transition from experienced student to stance-defending researcher, exposed to international critique: a disorientation and reorientation into a new identity. Arts and Hum...

Time and technology permeate the fabric of teamwork across a variety of settings to affect outcomes which have a wide range of consequences. However, there is a limited understanding about the interplay between these factors for teams, especially as applied to artificial intelligence (AI) technology. With the increasing integration of AI into human teams, we need to understand how environmental factors such as time scarcity interact with AI technology to affect team behaviors. To address this gap in the literature, we (...) investigated the interaction between the availability of intelligent technology and time scarcity in teams. Drawing from the theoretical perspective of computers are social actors and extant research on the use of heuristics and human–AI interaction, this study uses behavioral data from 56 teams who participated in a between-subjects 2 (intelligent assistant available × control/no intelligent assistant) × 2 (time scarcity × control/no time scarcity) lab experiment. Results show that teams working under time scarcity used the intelligent assistant more often and underperformed on a creative task compared to teams without the temporal constraints. Further, teams who had an intelligent assistant available to them had fewer interactions between members compared to teams who did not have the technology. Implications for research and applications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper aims to position the birth of the Medical Humanities movement in a greater historical context of twentieth century American medical education and to paint a picture of the current landscape of the Medical Humanities in medical training. It first sheds light on the model of medical education put forth by Abraham Flexner through the publishing of the 1910 Flexner Report, which set the stage for defining physicians as experimentalists and rooting the profession in research institutions. While this paved (...) the way for medical advancements, it came at the cost of producing a patriarchal approach to medical practice. By the late 1960s, the public persona of the profession was thus devoid of humanism. This catalyzed the birth of the Medical Humanities movement that helped lay the framework for what has perpetuated as the ongoing incorporation of humanistic subjects into medical training. As we enter a time in medicine in which rates of burnout are ever-increasing and there are growing concerns about a concomitant reduction in empathy among trainees, the need for instilling humanism remains important. We must consequently continue to consider how to ensure the place of the Medical Humanities in medical education moving forward. (shrink)

The revolution of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, and its implications for human–robot interaction (HRI) opened up the debate on crucial regulatory, business, societal, and ethical considerations. This paper explores essential issues from the anthropomorphic perspective, examining the complex interplay between humans and AI models in societal and corporate contexts. We provided a comprehensive review of existing literature on HRI, with a special emphasis on the impact of generative models such as ChatGPT. The scientometric study posits that due to (...) their advanced linguistic capabilities and ability to mimic human-like behavior, generative AIs like ChatGPT will continue to grow in popularity in pair with human rational empathy, tendency for personification and their advanced linguistic capabilities and ability to mimic human-like behavior. As they blur the boundaries between humans and robots, these models introduce fresh moral and philosophical dilemmas. Our research aims to extrapolate key trends and unique factors in HRI and to elucidate the technical aspects of generative AI that enhance its effectiveness in this field compared to traditional rule-based AI systems. We further discuss the challenges and limitations of applying generative AI in HRI, providing a future research agenda for AI optimization in diverse applications, including education, entertainment, and healthcare. (shrink)

Human oversight has become a key mechanism for the governance of artificial intelligence (“AI”). Human overseers are supposed to increase the accuracy and safety of AI systems, uphold human values, and build trust in the technology. Empirical research suggests, however, that humans are not reliable in fulfilling their oversight tasks. They may be lacking in competence or be harmfully incentivised. This creates a challenge for human oversight to be effective. In addressing this challenge, this article aims to make three contributions. (...) First, it surveys the emerging laws of oversight, most importantly the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (“AIA”). It will be shown that while the AIA is concerned with the competence of human overseers, it does not provide much guidance on how to achieve effective oversight and leaves oversight obligations for AI developers underdefined. Second, this article presents a novel taxonomy of human oversight roles, differentiated along whether human intervention is constitutive to, or corrective of a decision made or supported by an AI. The taxonomy allows to propose suggestions for improving effectiveness tailored to the type of oversight in question. Third, drawing on scholarship within democratic theory, this article formulates six normative principles which institutionalise distrust in human oversight of AI. The institutionalisation of distrust has historically been practised in democratic governance. Applied for the first time to AI governance, the principles anticipate the fallibility of human overseers and seek to mitigate them at the level of institutional design. They aim to directly increase the trustworthiness of human oversight and to indirectly inspire well-placed trust in AI governance. (shrink)

We discuss robotic art, emotion in robotic art, and compassion in the philosophy of art. We discuss a particular animated artwork, survivor, the walking chair, symbolising survivors of landmine blasts, learning to use crutches, and maimed emotionally as well as physically. Its control incorporates mutual relations between very rudimentary representations of distinct emotions. This artwork is intended for sensitising viewers to the horror experienced by those who survive, and those who don’t. We can only give a small sample, here, of (...) the reactions of viewers on various occasions when survivor was exhibited. Regardless of how much which pertains to human mental functions the tool embodies or doesn’t, it is the effect on the human perceivers which matters most to us, and enables us to understand something more about human cognition. Arguably this project is instructive in respect of the ethical-social implications of the synthetic method, i.e. the construction of inorganic systems in order to understand autonomous intentional action; in this project, the latter pertains to the humans involved. (shrink)

This study investigates the intersection of existing computational frameworks for zoonotic disease control within the emerging societal paradigm, Society 5.0. Technologies in human-centric computing can facilitate real-time data collection and analysis, enabling early detection and rapid response to zoonotic disease outbreaks, thereby enhancing surveillance and containment efforts for public health protection. It aims to explore challenges and opportunities within these frameworks and delineate future research directions to serve as a benchmark. Conducting a three-layered analysis, the study identifies high-level technologies, second-layer (...) technologies within those brackets, and minutely analyzes each technology in the second layer. The focus includes a comprehensive examination of the evolving landscape of zoonotic disease control and the influence of computational tools in public health. The findings highlight the potential of leveraging computational frameworks to predict, monitor, and control zoonotic diseases more effectively within Society 5.0. The major identified thrust areas include One Health and governmental integration, digital and data-driven solutions, healthcare and medical technologies, technologies for communication and information dissemination, and socio-cultural and ethical considerations. The integration of large-scale healthcare services offer a robust data source for AI-driven models, enabling early detection and dynamic response to zoonotic threats using data acquired from IoT surveillance and data acquisition infrastructures. However, challenges such as data privacy and equitable healthcare access need addressing. The study emphasizes the opportunities arising from the integration of computational frameworks with Society 5.0 for zoonotic disease control, proposing potential benefits in terms of improved disease surveillance and response. To fully realize this potential, the study suggests exploring specific technological landscapes for further investigation in the context of zoonotic disease control. (shrink)

This paper argues that research in the arts and humanities should not be marginalized in the academe, as has generally been the situation, but should equally be given emphasis together with those researches in the social sciences. All the more they should be equally funded because they generally require a smaller outlay compared to those in the natural and social sciences. Moreover, outputs in AH qualitative researches can also be comparatively significant epistemologically, culturally, and historically.

We live in an age where there is increasing interplay between scientific and artistic disciplines. By the end of the decade I believe that almost all advances in science and art will rely partly on the computer and advanced technology. Moreover, humans will not be able to rely on any one single field of knowledge to make significant advances.

Traditional human–computer interaction (HCI) allowed researchers and practitioners to share and rely on the ‘five E’s’ of usability, the principle that interactive systems should be designed to be effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, and easy to learn. A recent trend in HCI, however, is that academic researchers as well as practitioners are becoming increasingly interested in user experiences, i.e., understanding and designing for relationships between users and artifacts that are for instance affective, engaging, fun, playable, sociable, creative, involving, meaningful, (...) exciting, ambiguous, and curious. In this paper, it is argued that built into this shift in perspective there is a concurrent shift in accountability that is drawing attention to a number of ethical, moral, social, cultural, and political issues that have been traditionally de-emphasized in a field of research guided by usability concerns. Not surprisingly, this shift in accountability has also received scarce attention in HCI. To be able to find any answers to the question of what makes a good user experience, the field of HCI needs to develop a philosophy of technology. One building block for such a philosophy of technology in HCI is presented. Albert Borgmann argues that we need to be cautious and rethink the relationship as well as the often-assumed correspondence between what we consider useful and what we think of as good in technology. This junction—that some technologies may be both useful and good, while some technologies that are useful for some purposes might also be harmful, less good, in a broader context—is at the heart of Borgmann’s understanding of technology. Borgmann’s notion of the device paradigm is a valuable contribution to HCI as it points out that we are increasingly experiencing the world with, through, and by information technologies and that most of these technologies tend to be designed to provide commodities that effortlessly grant our wishes without demanding anything in return, such as patience, skills, or effort. This paper argues that Borgmann’s work is relevant and makes a valuable contribution to HCI in at least two ways: first, as a different way of seeing that raises important social, cultural, ethical, and moral issues from which contemporary HCI cannot escape; and second, as providing guidance as to how specific values might be incorporated into the design of interactive systems that foster engagement with reality. (shrink)

This paper proposes that existing computational modeling research programs may be combined into platforms for the information of public policy. The main idea is that computational models at select levels of organization may be integrated in natural terms describing biological cognition, thereby normalizing a platform for predictive simulations able to account for both human and environmental costs associated with different action plans and institutional arrangements over short and long time spans while minimizing computational requirements. Building from established research programs, the (...) proposal aims to take advantage of current momentum in the direction of the integration of the cognitive with social and natural sciences, reduce start-up costs and increase speed of development. These are all important upshots given rising unease over the potential for AI and related technologies to shape the world going forward. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially in its current incarnation of Machine Learning (ML), is an endeavor that is characterized by contingencies of two kinds. Intrinsic contingencies stem from the use of specific computational techniques that seem to decrease the control that human users exert on this technology. Relational contingencies emerge from the interaction of AI with other disciplines and contexts. I conduct an analysis of these contingencies on the backdrop of the visual arts with the aim to shed light on (...) the complex relations between technology and creativity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.3 (2006) 92-114 [Access article in PDF] A Global Art System: An Exploration of Current Literature on Visual Culture, and a Glimpse at the Universal Promethean Principle—with Unintended Oedipal Consequences Art Education 11-18: Meaning, Purpose And Direction, edited by Richard Hickman; New York, Continuum; 2nd edition, 2004; 176 pp. Global Visual Culture within a Global Art System I have harbored misgivings about the term (...) "visual culture" for several years. Having read Hickman's book with its collection of notable scholars in art and design education, those misgivings turned into qualified acceptance of "visual culture"—so long as it is understood as a global visual culture within a global art system. The ten chapters presented in Hickman's book clearly explore the notion of visual culture in the context of generating an expansive and appropriate canon of art distinctly relevant to our postmodern, multicultural, multidimensional classroom of multiple intelligences.1 And so, art and design education for the twenty-first century must perform three essential functions: one, it must color the classroom with signs of global human pictorial and textual expressions; two, it must attempt to comprehend an immeasurable universe through creative, scaled-down explorations of the phenomenal world all of humanity is subject to; and three, it must open up the Blakeian doors of perception,2 while remaining free of emotional, educational, social, political, or religious ideological bonds. In this light, Hickman's Art Education 11-18 (2004), is a must read for art and design educators currently bogged down in old curriculum, and a must read for educators who incorporate new pedagogical literature easily into their new curriculum. And I say must read because we are on the verge of a revolution in visual art history and education—immersed in it, struggling to make sense of our beloved classical canon of art, and struggling to come to grips with a strangely foreign, beautifully alien, semeiotic reality we call (vaguely) "visual culture." It is a visual culture and history from the north, east, and south. Not just from the west.Key innovative educational issues addressed in these chapters are (respectively) using the dynamic nature of art to expand the curricula (Richard Hickman); the collapse of cultural borders (Lesley Burgess and Nicholas [End Page 92] Addison); a balanced cultural history of the world (Colin Grigg); recognizing art and recognizing visual culture (Howard Hollands); a range of visual cultures and literacy (Darren Newbury); using computer technology as a pathway to a new art and visual culture (Andy Ash); critical study and analysis (Michele Tallack); hand-making as a universal link to nature and art (Rachel Mason); spirituality in the process of art creation (James Hall); and cross-cultural heritage toward a new canon of art (Hickman).I will review each chapter as it pertains to current literature exploring popular pedagogical terms like "visual culture," "postmodernism," "pluralism," and "radicalism" and (more importantly) as it fits into a global system of art and culture. In addition, I suggest another term ("cosmopolitanism"—to identify the viable gay and lesbian aesthetic and culture) not that they are necessarily different, but they are indeed relevant and operate from a fresh literary and historical perspective. Then, I will illustrate how a new, postmodern canon of art must be linked to global visual culture and art in order to expand the concept of visual culture. Thus, I see two tasks before me: the first task is to inventory the philosophy, pedagogy, and meanings within each of the ten chapters in Hickman's Art Education 11-18; and the second task is to integrate key pedagogical ideas highlighted in each chapter as a method of generating a meaningful, holistic, integrated direction for art and design education in the twenty-first century. Integrating Art and Design Education Art is a design process. All subject regimes, D. N. Perkins suggests, are a design process.3 This may seem too obvious now after all these years since the publication of Knowledge... (shrink)

The proliferation of AI systems across all domains of life as well as the complexification and opacity of algorithmic techniques, epitomised by the bourgeoning field of Deep Learning (DL), call for new methods in the Humanities for reflecting on the techno-human relation in a way that places the technical operation at its core. Grounded on the work of the philosopher of technology Gilbert Simondon, this paper puts forward individuation theory as a valuable approach to reflect on contemporary information technologies, offering (...) an analysis of the functioning of deep neural networks (DNNs), a type of data-driven computational models at the core of major breakthroughs in AI. The purpose of this article is threefold: (1) to demonstrate how a joint reading of Simondon’s mechanology and individuation theory, foregrounded in the Simondonian concept of information, can cast new light on contemporary algorithmic techniques by considering their situated emergence as opposed to technical lineage; (2) to suspend a predictive framing of AI systems, particularly DL techniques, so as to probe into their technical operation, accounting for the data-driven individuation of these models and the integration of potentials as functionality; and finally, (3) to argue that individuation theory might in fact de-individuate AI, in the sense of disassembling the already-there, the constituted, paving the way for questioning the potentialities for data and their algorithmic relationality to articulate the unfolding of everyday life. (shrink)

Arthur Bispo do Rosário created separate realities inspired by the objects of his surroundings. He intended to summon up everything and report to God. The objects he found or got from other inmates were waste of the Juliano Moreira Colony where he lived in seclusion because the lords of order categorised him as mentally ill. Bispo began by unravelling the uniforms of his seafaring days and Colony clothing and with the threads he wove maps and banners. He collected old shoes, (...) empty milk bags, gears, tools, toys, cutlery, bottles, mugs to shape into powerful amalgams of odd aesthetic narrative. As pieces of the Colony waste were given to Bispo by other inmates and as he turned the scraps into art, his creative strength was offered to the hospital’s population and now to museums and art galleries. The observation of this cycle of stunning wonder between Bispo and his fellow inmates suggests the view of unravelling second-order cybernetic processes. Simple things of the world turned into art got new significance in the eyes of the observers. Their poor world became thrilled in delight. As an inmate of a psychiatric ward in Rio de Janeiro, he never stopped his intense and endless work building an inventory of embroidery, assemblages and objects deemed to present the Lord. His work captured the aesthetic sensibility of the Colony population who started viewing the common things of the world redeemed by Bispo as sacred uncaged tokens with divine destination. A virtuous unending cycle of human sensibility and creativity. As observers, we make the distinction of evolving processes in the realm of second-order cybernetics. (shrink)

The project “Artificial and Artistic Vision. Computer Vision and Art History in Practical-Methodical Cooperation” is interdisciplinary by definition and also in its personnel composition and combines the humanities, engineering, and natural sciences. Together, prototypes and methodological approaches to an automatic vision that assists art history are being developed in the form of basic research.

Fear and concerns regarding AI and robots have existed for a long time, and the emergence of strong artificial intelligence, on par with human intelligence, is likely just a few decades away. The primary purpose of this article is to establish a theoretical framework for navigating the relationship between humans and this advanced form of artificial intelligence. This article first points out that the most fundamental characteristic of life is its continuous process of evolution and iteration. By analyzing the developmental (...) history of intelligence in different species, it can be observed that intelligence also exhibits a similar evolutionary phenomenon. Therefore, from this perspective, intelligence can be defined as a new form of information life. Under this premise, similarities and differences between information life forms and conventional biological life become apparent. The most significant distinction lies in the fact that the survival of biological life is based on non-replicable matter and energy, leading to extensive competition and food chain phenomena within ecosystems. In contrast, the survival of information life relies more on replicable information, fostering tendencies towards peace and communication. Based on this theoretical premise, there is a potential for a harmonious coexistence between humans and AI. This theory also provides guidance for the positive development of human society. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin wrote his prophetic essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” almost a century ago, yet it is still pertinent today. Benjamin warned that as art becomes devoid of aura through reproduction, less attention is needed to engage with it. What role does aura play in AI-generated work? Despite recent advances in AI it produces “artwork” that for the most part operates as entertainment. It can’t produce work that has grown out of reckoning with culture (...) the way artists do in their efforts to provide space for grappling with deep questions that ultimately inform culture. Nevertheless, AI is potentially more disruptive to Art than to any other field. If AI becomes the dominant producer of art, this could lead to a sort of consensus trance with a generation of people consuming “art” that does not inspire questioning and new understandings of the world we live in. For centuries, the term “computer” referred to living, breathing humans. Today, no person can claim the title. Is this the fate of “artist”? By problematizing the ways we use AI, artists can help address the problem of how we as a culture should engage with it. (shrink)

continent. 2.1 (2012): 22–28. Jeroen Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene twice. First, in 2005, when he became a strong presence on the nascent Dutch poetry blogosphere overnight as he embarked on his critical project Dichtersalfabet (Poet’s Alphabet). And again in 2011, when to great critical acclaim (and some bafflement) his complete writings were published – almost five years after his far too early death. 2005 was the year in which Dutch poetry blogging exploded. That year saw the foundation (...) of the influential, polemical, and populistically inclined weblog De Contrabas (The Double Bass), which became a strong force for internet poetry in Dutch in the years to follow. In the summer of that year, a lively debate raged in the aftermath of Bas Belleman’s article “ Doet poëzie er nu eindelijk toe ?” (“Does poetry finally matter now?”), on a blog specifically devoted to this question. Up to that point, the poetical debate in the Netherlands had largely been confined to literary reviews (which were often subsidized), having become mostly marginalized in more mainstream media, where poetry could be covered by only a small number of so-called authorities. As a result, literary debate had acquired a rather placid quality. Though a variety of camps with different aesthetics could be discerned, most poetical positions shared a general acceptance of poetry as a form of art somewhat apart from fundamental political concerns. Late modernists would pursue subtlety and density of reference. Others would insist poetry was best understood as a form of entertainment that should ideally be accessible and work well on the stage. Still others would insist that poetry is mostly a play with forms. Linguistically disruptive strategies were valued highly by some, but mostly for their aesthetic effect. Values of disinterested playfulness reigned supreme everywhere. Any idea that poetry could be a field in which one confronts politics and the world was decidedly marginal. This led to a climate in which most attempts at polemics were DOA, often based on far too superficial positioning and analysis. The greatest polemical debates were revolving around the question of whether poetry should be difficult or easy, with both camps defining their ideas of difficulty and accessibility in ways that were so utterly shallow as to make the entire point moot. Debates were performed, rather than engaged with. It was a postmodern hell of underarticulated poetics. Half-consciously, people were yearning for new forms of criticism that could put the oomph back into poetry. Weblogs provided for ways to explore debate directly outside of the clotted older channels of the reviews and the newspapers. Belleman’s essay and the resulting online activity had shown that there was a widespread eagerness to take poetry more seriously as a social art form. It was in this environment that Mettes started his remarkable project Dichtersalfabet . At that moment, Mettes was active mostly in academic circles, having become noted at Leiden University as a particularly gifted student of literary theory. Within the Netherlands, the field of literary theory has a very odd relationship to literature as it is practiced in the country. Academic theory tends to have a mostly international view and engage with international debates of cultural criticism, literary theory, and philosophy, with academics often publishing in English and attending conferences around the world. Literature itself however is much more concerned with domestic traditions. Consequently, in the Netherlands, there exists a language gap between academic theoretical practice (as it is studied in the literary theory departments) and literary practice (which, academically, gets studied in specialized departments of Dutch literature). The Dichtersalfabet can be seen as Mettes’s attempt to close this gap. It is also an attempt to bridge the divide between theory and practice, in which he could apply his theoretical knowledge in a very unorthodox and unacademic critical mode that moreover could reach far beyond the domain of conventional criticism. Mettes’s goal was to trace a diagonal through Dutch poetic culture, to “strangle” what he perceived to be its dominant oppressive traditions of agreeable irrelevance, in order to see whatever might be able to survive his critical assaults. But he could only do so by means of a very serious engagement with poetry itself. To this end, he would go systematically through the poetry bookshelf of the Verwijs bookshop (part of a mainstream chain of booksellers) in The Hague, buying one publication per blog item, starting from A and working his way through the alphabet, reading whatever he might encounter that way in the restaurant of the HEMA store (another big commercial chain in the country). He would subsequently write down his reading experiences, refraining however from trying to write a nuanced book review. Rather, he would write about anything that caught his attention and sparked his critical interest. This way of working would yield vast, at times somewhat rambling, dense, lively, and generally brilliant essays, in which he held no punches. He never hesitated to pull out his entire arsenal of concepts from the international theory traditions, while never degenerating into mere academic exercise and pointless intertextualities. The attempt was rather to live the poetry that he read, and to engage it with the full range of political, academic, cultural, and personal references that he had at his disposal—all that composed the individual named Jeroen Mettes as a reader. Often what he wrote would not be according to the standards of what we usually think of as a critical review of a book of poetry. Sometimes he would even be a little sloppy in his judgments of poets or representations of the books he read, for example by basing an entire essay on the blurb of a book rather than its poetry content. But what he did was always brilliant writing nonetheless—virtuoso riffs on poetic fragments randomly found within capitalist society, exposing an incisive and insistent poetical sensibility. Mettes read poetry for political reasons, to see whether poetry could offer him a way to deal with a political world he detested. The right-wing horrors of the Bush years, the Iraq war, and the turn of Dutch public opinion towards ever more conservative, narrow-minded, and xenophobic views alongside a complete failure of the political left to present any credible alternative, were weighing heavily on the times in which Mettes reported on his reading. Poetry was to measure this world, diagram it, to lay bare its inconsistencies and faults, to indicate where lines of flight might be found. Amid the ruins of a world wrecked by imperialist policies, corporate capitalism, and doctrinal neoliberalism it would have to show the possibility of a new community. And it was, through its rhythmical workings, to release the reading subject from his confinement to ideologically conditioned individuality and lead him into the immanent paradise of reading. The stakes were high. Much higher than anything Dutch poetry had seen for many years. Mettes’s blog was widely read from the start. His posts sparked lively debates. Some of these subsequently led to the publication of extensive essays on a few key poets in some literary journals, particularly Parmentier and the Flemish journal yang , for which Mettes would become a member of the editorial board, a few months after starting the Dichtersalfabet . This could have been the start of a brilliant career, but this was not to be. The initial manic energy that fueled the blog gradually subsided. The Alfabet was updated less and less regularly. Mettes sometimes just disappeared for many weeks, then suddenly returning with a brilliant essay. Until, on September 21, 2006, he posted his final blogpost, consisting of no text whatsoever. That night I learned from his mentor at Leiden University that he had committed suicide. Mettes and I had had some fruitful exchanges on poetry, rhythm, music, and form, mostly on the blogs, but also by email. Three weeks before his death was the last time I heard from him: a very sudden, uncharacteristically curt note saying “My old new sentence epic.” Attached to that message I found a DOC-file of a work so major that I felt intimidated. This was N30 , a text he had been working on for over five years. After his death, it took me a long time before I dared to read it in its entirety. In the meantime, the work of preparing the manuscript for publication was entrusted by his relatives to his colleagues at yang magazine. It took them a few years to brush up the text and to edit the Dichtersalfabet -blog (which, apart from the Alphabet project itself, incorporated many other fragments of political, polemical, and theoretical writing) into book form along with the essays. The result of this labor was finally published in 2011 as a two-book set, and Mettes burst onto the Dutch poetry scene for the second time. The work was widely reviewed, on blogs, in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Many critics who had not followed the blogs in 2005 showed themselves surprised, baffled even, by the intensity of Mettes’s critical writing. But for those who had read the blog, the main surprise was in the poetry. During Mettes’s lifetime, some of his poems had already been published in Parmentier . Although these were strong texts by themselves, in no way did they prepare readers for N30 . Nothing like it had been written in Dutch before. Instead, N30 explicitly follows the American tradition of Language Writing, directly referencing Ron Silliman and his concept of The New Sentence. However, it would seem that much of the poetical thinking around his use of this technique puts him closer to a writer such as Bruce Andrews. For Mettes, using non sequiturs as a unit of poetic construction was not only a way of reinventing formal textual construction, but it was another way of finding the fault lines in the social fabric. From the perspective of the Language tradition, one may put N30 somewhere between Silliman and Andrews. N30 shares an autobiographical element with Silliman’s New Sentence projects, and as in Andrews, there is a concern for mapping out social totality within text—what Mettes refers to as a “textual world civil war.” Again this shows a formal textual strategy for allowing the person “Jeroen Mettes” to be absorbed by the world, which here appears as a whirlwind of demotic and demonic chatter, full of violence, humor, intensity, beauty, disgust, sex, commerce, and strife. Influenced as it may by American precursors, Mettes’s tone and form end up quite different from his American counterparts, consistently referencing a world that is Dutch, all too Dutch, taking on the oppressive orderliness of Dutch society with its endemic penchant for consensus by introducing chaos into its daily life and laying bare its implicit aggressions. The work’s 31 chapters each have a different feel and rhythmical outline, but none of them follow a predetermined pattern. Rather, Mettes would consistently edit and reedit the text, randomly rewriting parts of it, as he explains in his poetical creed Politieke Poëzie (Political Poetry). N30 – referring to the 1999 antiglobalist protest in Seattle – was to be the first text of a trilogy. The work itself was written “in the mode of the present.” A second text was to be written in the mode of the future, and a third one, in the mode of the past, was going to be an epic poem about the Paris Commune, and to form an alternative poetic constitution for the European project. I still deeply regret that Jeroen Mettes never got to complete those projects, just as I would be very keen on knowing what he might have had to say about more recent political developments. Instead, in 2006, he remained stuck in the horrors of the present, that ended up consuming him completely. He left Dutch literature with some of its most piercing criticism and its most profoundly moving, exciting and powerful poetry. Excerpts from N30 Translated by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei from Jeroen Mettes. "N30." In N30+ . Amsterdam: De wereldbibliotheek, 2011. Published with permission of Uitgeverij Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam. Chapter 1 1999. A day is a space too. And another man, who had chained himself, had his ribs crushed, and a motor has driven over somebody’s legs. Dutch health care system spends ±145 million guilders per year on worriers. A spiderweb vibrates as I pass by. Randstad renovating. She slaps her bag against her ass: “Hurry up!” OPINION IS TRUE FRIENDSHIP Your skin. It doesn’t express anything. “But the use of the sword, that’s what I learned, and you’ll need nothing more for the moment.” Just try to interrogate a guy like that. Gullit in Sierra Leone. Codes silently lying all around. But that’s simply what belongs to “that it’s just allowed”: that sigh of “world” (a word expressing that the trees are now standing along the water like black men with white bags in their hair); that’s nothing else right? And you see how everything has to move, and first of all what cannot do so. Without Elysium and without savings, barbarians lashing out, horny for an enemy, staring across the water, staring into the air—staring to get out of it. “You’ve never showed me more than the mall,” she said. All those “dreams” in the end—and now? It was lying on the stairway, so I picked it up and took it upstairs. Chapter 3 “You know what?” Telecommunication. For love… I don’t really like that cheap cultural pessimism, but… The holy city is on pilgrimage in the earthly bodies of the faithful until the time of the heavenly kingdom has come. The end of an exhausting autumn day behind the computer, my eyes filled with tears of fatigue. KITCHEN / INSTALLATION / SPECIALIST. Network integration. In the sun, stretched out on a sheet. (…) I don’t believe what I’m reading, because I want to believe something else. An illusion? Suits me. There’s a variety of shapes and tastes… “So what?” you may think. 102 dalmatians can’t be wrong. But I want more, dear… A feel good movie. I’m smashing the burned body. So what? We continue to save the European civilization. What’s there to win? Plato with poets = Stalin without gulag? Ball against the crossbar. No wonder. She comes straight to her point. She’s standing in the kitchen eating an apple. (…) The godless Napoleon had used her as a stable and wanted to have her taken down. “Our” Rutger Hauer. Ready or not here I come. Psst… are you also wearing a string? Nobody understands our desire. Cliffs breaking the waves and shattering the sunset. I used to be a real romantic (as a poet). A typical fantasy used to be the one in which I brutally raped mother and daughter Seaver from the sitcom Growing Pains . Nevertheless you only contain bad words. Eyelashes. Automatic or manual? That your skin always in the afternoon. Integration. The air is empty. Too bad! Hand in hand on their lonely way. Alaska! Chapter 12 May 5, 2001 [10:00-10:30] A dust cloud on a hill. Globe. Indian (British) (tie) / pope. Damascus. Rape. We’re carrying the ayatollah’s portrait through the streets. At the moment the girl is mostly suede jacket with white ribbons on her sleeves. A small explosion flares up/impact. Camouflage. Close up. We’re analyzing the situation. He’s dead right? Dead dead. Dead. Everything without, these, and only with the body. Indices signal death. Dollar bills are printed in factories. Holes. Light patch. Globe in a box. Microphone. What’s the situation? Grey impact on a green hill (field?). The water is blue. He has no lips. Interns on the background with skirts that are too long. This is an example of a sonnet. An Islamic woman pushes against the door of an electronics shop. Arrows (percentages (prices)). Is this what awaits the American? Touch screen interface. The word, an island, can only be a sign in that situation. We pull up a chair, join in on the fun. On the shelves only books about computers. One glance in the distance is enough to lighten up a luna park in the distance. She’s really desperate, especially when she laughs. Click. Ah. Next. And now it’s raining, but that’s ok. Yellow stains sliding over the south. Shallow caves light: clothes, boots, electrical equipment. 45. 22:10. Nothing gives you the right to eat more than people starving to death. The Hague. Slam dunk. Traffic light. Two H’s, one L (standing for the L (little prick)). We’re happy to say something. Clouds, small suns, temperatures, cities. The truth is never an excuse. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Green. Green. Yellow. Will you email me? Skeleton: “No.” Ex-nerds in brand-new and brightly red sport cars. $$$. I love. Shihab. Hooves in the sand. Skinny senior with over-sized sunglasses; old jockey (cap, trophy) smiling in slow motion. And there I am again, flashback, crying with my head in between my hands. Sometimes I’ve got the feeling that cannibals. Eyes: blue. Cancer. Why would I wait until tomorrow? Golden beams protruding from the lifted/lit earth. May 5, 2001 [11:30-12:45] You’ll remember this for the rest of your life. Graphs, diagrams. Bu$ine$$. Blue shirt, white collar, no neck (porn star). A name lights up. I’m hysteric. Will you join us? Letters falling in their words. Fingers set up a tent and start to dance. Young entrepreneurs from poor neighborhoods (read: black) guided by Microsoft. Kinda makes me happy, that sort of kitsch. A sense of exhaustion/impotence to see anything but the present. (…) Wouldn’t you like to? Orange explosion in an industrial zone. YOU’RE DOING THIS FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. Would you. A familiar face. Clouds and blossom. Sunflowers. Supermodels. Mountainous area in a rectangle: shades of brown, from dark to beige, more green toward the south. Tents and next to them (it’s all a blur) people. Plane. Stadium. Geometrical block of people. No, I ain’t crying. I don’t speak no more. I just want. Quote + photo. (Positive:) screaming crowd. Three-piece suit, seen from the back, before entering the arena. On the back: “Daddy abused me.” Oh, bummer. State of emergency has been declared and everyone has to cooperate. She’s cut her wrists. What we do know (…) is that there’s never been a unique word, an imperative name, nor will there ever be. [Click here for work that suits you.] Barefooted children are watching it (coherent pieces revelation of what’s lying below). Who knows how she’s changed during those two years. “Everything used to be better” + sigh. And here we are. An empty field of parquet. A city lying behind it. Explosion. Blue. A rain drop falling in my coffee. May 5, 2001 [14:30-15:30] A young Arafat on video speaking with raised finger. “I’m calling from my convertible.” Names on walls, victims, numbers… Tourists. Yellow. Yellow. “Your own child! Really, what kind of human are you?” I don’t want to hear it no more. A woman jumping out of the water in a yellow bikini against a background of fireworks and the Cheops pyramid. Thy sorrow shall become good fortune, thy complaints laudation. All planets will float and wander. Wo die Welt zum Bild wird, kommt das System (…) zur Herrschaft. It is something, but is it? May 5, 2001 [18:30-19:00] Iris. Leaves. NASDAQ. Open / and white and. For the one who’s doing nothing, just waiting. (…) NO DEFEAT is made entirely up of defeat -- since / the world it opens is always a place / formerly / unsuspected. October 2002. “Jeroen, I’m leaving for the cemetery, byeeee.” The rise of the middle class. My entire oeuvre is an ode to the. My entire head is a fight against the. God always demands what you cannot sacrifice. You may take that the easy way, but… “The state hasn’t made us, but we make the state” (Hitler). A stork exits the elevator. Skeletons of. Moscow. Helsinki. Palermo. Paris. Chapter 30 Like your paradises: nothing. United Desire, as only remaining superpower. And even though the sea is now calmer and the wind is blowing pleasantly in my face… Heart! Who determines whether a tradition is “alive”? The yellow leaf or the white branch? Mars. This sentence is a typical example. Most Dutch people are happy. No consolation. When I see a girl sitting at a table with a book, a notepad, a pen, a bottle of mineral water, her hand writing in the light—then I consider that one thing. “Presents,” “poetry,” “classics.” We are what we cannot make from ourselves. “Left”: mendicant orders, missionaries. Saint-Just: “A republic is founded on the destruction of its enemies.” She crosses the street with a banana peel between her fingers. (…) We chose our own wardens, torturers, it was us who called all this insanity upon ourselves, we created this nightmare… But “no”? Girl (just like a beach ball) talking rapid Spanish (Portuguese?) in a mobile phone. Do I have a chance now that her boyfriend is getting bold? CLIO, horny bitch. What else do you want? An old woman, between the doors of the C1000, is suddenly unable to go on; her husband stretches out his hand, speaking a few encouraging words. Selection from. Der Führer schenkt den Jüden ein Stadt. How can it reach us if we haven’t been already reached somehow? It doesn’t “speak.” No problem. Each word she uses is a small miracle, as if she doesn’t belong to it, to language, but wanders around with a pocket light looking for the exit; she’s never desperate (maybe a little nervous), lighting up heavy words from the inside. But indeed, we’re free. But the predicate is not an attribute, but an event, and the subject is not a subject, but a shell. That’s why also samurai, knights, and warriors raised the blossom as emblem: they knew how to die. Locked up in a baby carriage with a McDonald’s balloon. Blue helicopter, the blue sky. Whether you want to refer? The point is. How / Motherfucker can I sing a sad song / When I remember Zion? You’ll feel so miserable and worthless that you think: “If only I were dead!,” or: “Just put an end to it!” “So you’re an economist?” Her card—two little birds building a nest, her handwriting shaking—is still on the mantelpiece. Guevara: “No, a communist.” A straw fire, such was our life: rapidly it flared up, rapidly it passed. I’m fleeing, coming from nowhere. (…) Eazy-E drinking coffee with the American president. If I’d scream, would that be an event? Drown it: the cleaner it will rise up from the depths. No! The night, so fast… As if there’s something opened up in that face. Come on, we may not curse life. He shows me his methadone: “If you drink that all at once, you’ll die instantly.” The last one dictates how we should behave to deserve happiness. One shine / above the earth. “I want to go to Bosnia,” I said bluntly. I don’t even know the name of the current mayor. Let’s despise our success! “There is no future; this is the future. Hope is a weakness that we've overcome. We have found happiness!” Sun. Sushi. Volvo. I feel like a bomb about to explode at any moment. Makes a difference for the reconstruction right? The decor moves forward. Daughter of Nereus, you nymphs of the sea, and you Thetis, you should have kept his tired head above the waves! Alas! This sentence has been written wearing a green cap. I receive my orders from the future. A frog jumps into it. Her husband has turned the Intifada, which he follows daily on CCN, into his hobby, “to forget that he doesn’t have his driver’s license yet." Suddenly the sun slides over the crosswalk. Her (his?) foot is playing with the slipper under the table. Is this how I’m writing this book now? I’m not a fellow man. I hate you and I want to hurt you. These are my people. Their screaming doesn’t rise above the constantly wailing sirens which we've learned to ignore. My whole body became warm and suddenly started to tremble. Unfortunate is he who is standing on the threshold of the most beautiful time, but awaits a better one. Arafat’s “removal” is contrary to American interests. Jeep drives into boy. What you can do alone, you should do alone. A food gift from the people of the United States of America. Two seagulls. [...]. (shrink)

The article discusses the possibilities of the formal analysis of the fine-art painting composition on the basis of the classical definitions of beauty and computational aesthetics’ approaches of the second half of the 20th century he authors define the problem and consider solutions for the formalization of aesthetic perception in the context of aesthetic text, i.e., as part of the fine arts composition – a formal sequence of signs simply ordered in accordance with the syntactic rules’ system. The methodology (...) of the research is defined by the general semiotics, distinguishing semantics, syntax, and pragmatics of a sign, by the aesthetic analysis’ methods, ranging according to the author’s message aesthetics, receptive aesthetics, and text aesthetics, as well as by the computational analysis methods connected with neural network means of defining the images’ symmetry. The article reveals preconditions for the emergence and also the current state of computational aesthetics as an interdisciplinary branch of knowledge. Analyzing the problem from the perspective of philosophy, aesthetics, semiotics, and technology, the authors draw attention to the need to improve the computational aesthetics methods. Firstly, the existing methods do not always enable to describe the fine-art object adequately. Secondly, there exists the so-called reduction of aesthetic assertion transforming it into the assertion concerning the object’s external characteristics. As a result, the authors assume that the increasing complexity of the current mathematical models and the experts’ subjective assessment support will allow to reach a compromise solution that enables the development of computational aesthetics as a branch of knowledge. Enhancement and development of the mathematical models, taking into account the rules of semiotics and subjectivism of the human perception, is the relevant objective of computational analysis of the aesthetic fine-arts text. The results of the present research supports the classic statement regarding the underivability of semantic and pragmatic propositions from syntax. The research concludes that relevant objectives are to find a correlation between, one the one hand, the axes and points of symmetry, deriving from the neural simulation, and, on the other hand, aesthetic effect, emerging from the perception of fine-art paintings. (shrink)

Advanced technologies such as drones, intelligent algorithms and androids have grave implications for human existence. With the purpose of exploring their basis for doing so, the paper proposes a framework for investigating the complex relationship between such devices and human practices and language-mediated cognition. Specifically, it centers on the importance of the typically neglected intermediate layer of culture which not only drives both technophobia and philia but also, more fundamentally, connects pre-reflective experience and socio-material practices by placing advanced technologies in (...) the loop. Theoretically, the paper draws on contributions from performativist Science and Technology Studies and Radically Embodied Cognitive Science and pushes new grounds by stressing their compatibility. Yet, it also emphasizes the importance of the enlanguaged side of cognition which is a requirement for human-style socio-material practices and, hence, the emergence of cultures that fetishizes certain technologies. (shrink)

As humanoid social robots are developed rapidly in recent years and experimented in social situations, comparing them to humans provides insights into practical as well as philosophical concerns. This study uses the theoretical framework of communication constraints, derived in human–human communication research, to compare whether people apply social-oriented constraints and task-oriented constraints differently to human targets versus humanoid social robot targets. A total of 230 students from the University of Hawaii at Manoa participated in the study. The participants completed a (...) questionnaire, which determined their concern for the five communication constraints (feelings, non-imposition, disapproval, clarity, and effectiveness) in situations involving humans or robots. The results show people were more concerned with avoiding hurting the human’s feelings, avoiding inconveniencing the human interactive partner, and avoiding being disliked by the human and less concerned with avoiding hurting the robot’s feelings, avoiding inconveniencing the robot partner, and avoiding being disliked by the robot. But people did not differ in their concerns of the two task-oriented constraints (clarity and effectiveness) in response to humans versus humanoid robots. The results of the research suggest that people are more likely to emphasize the social-oriented constraints in communication with humans. (shrink)

Artists and humanists who work in universities are generally ambivalent about the idea of defending their enterprises in terms of social utility: on the one hand they do not want to claim that the Arts and Humanities are such exalted and selfjustifying endeavors that no one need bother explainingwhy such things are worth pursuing, yet on the other hand they are rightly skeptical that cost-benefit analyses of academic labor will do justice to disciplines devoted to the varieties of human (...) cultural expression rather than to the research and development of patentable forms of knowledge. This essay explores this ambivalence and suggests an alternative way of thinking about the ‘utility’ of cultural work. (shrink)