The development of machine learning and deep learning (DL) in the field of AI (artificial intelligence) is the direct result of the advancement of nano-electronics. Machine learning is a function that provides the system with the capacity to learn from data without being programmed explicitly. It is basically a mathematical and probabilistic model. DL is part of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks, simply called neural networks (NNs), as they are inspired by the biological NNs that constitute organic (...) brains. Despite its similarity to biological organs such as human brains, major problems arise in trying to attribute moral responsibility to autonomic systems based on hardware including nano-electronic devices, which are sought to replace humans (moral agents) in the context of AI. It is suggested that the required emotional environment which enables actions according to reasons in humans is not witnessed at AI devices. Though AI technology raises an enticing resemblance to human actions, this resemblance is to be considered with a skeptical eye. It is because actions are associated with reasons while causes are connected to operations. Human agents are capable of acting upon their reasons, while AI devices are limited only to operations as they are conditioned by their programming, which is considered as an embodiment of some causes. As moral responsibility goes hand in hand with the capacity to act (according to reasons), attributing moral responsibility to AI devices is revealed to be but a misleading metaphor. (shrink)

The precautionary principle (PP) is thought by many to be a useful strategy for action and by many others useless at best and dangerous at worst. We argue that it is a coherent and useful principle. We first clarify the principle and then defend it against a number of common criticisms. Three examples from nanotechnology are used; nanoparticles and possible health and environmental problems, grey goo and the potential for catastrophe, and privacy risks generated by nanoelectronics.

The development of ever smaller integrated circuits at the sub-micron and nanoscale—in accordance with Moore’s Law—drives the production of very small tags, smart cards, smart labels and sensors. Nanoelectronics and submicron technology supports surveillance technology which is practically invisible. I argue that one of the most urgent and immediate concerns associated with nanotechnology is privacy. Computing in the twenty-first century will not only be pervasive and ubiquitous, but also inconspicuous. If these features are not counteracted in design, they will (...) facilitate ubiquitous surveillance practices which are widely available, cheap, and intrusive. RFID technology is an instructive example of what nanotechnology has in store for privacy. (shrink)

In this paper, we report the development of a design knowledge management system, called DDMS. By composing design documents during design, DDMS encourages a designer to externalize his/her knowledge and facilitates sharing and reuse of such externalized design knowledge in later stages. DDMS works as a front end to KIEF, which we have been developing over years. DDMS is capable of guiding designers with design process knowledge based on a model of synthesis, combined together with KIEF that can integrate multiple (...) design object models, and maintain consistency among these models. DDMS automatically generates design documents after analyzing design log data based on the model of synthesis. We also illustrate an example of laser lithography design to demonstrate the features of DDMS. (shrink)

Bien connues, les dix-sept lithographies conçues par Eugène Delacroix d’après le Faust de Goethe, insérées dans un livre imposant paru en 1828 sous la double enseigne du libraire Auguste Sautelet et de l’imprimeur-lithographe Charles Motte, constituent une série souvent analysée par les historiens de l’art dans la perspective de l’œuvre du peintre. En modifiant cette approche, l’article la considère sous l’angle de son support, le livre dans lequel elle a été insérée, et en relation avec ce qui l’entoure, le texte (...) de la tragédie et les propos de Delacroix, en valorisant un faire de l’imagination, d’inspiration multiple et de facture inter-iconique. Grâce au collationnement d’une quinzaine d’exemplaires du livre, conservés dans les dépôts publics de plusieurs pays, on découvre en quoi la quinzième lithographie, l’apparition de Marguerite au sabbat, est exceptionnelle. L’interprétation proposée se fonde sur le rôle de l’ imagination dans ce Faust français, la pratique graphique de Delacroix, le passage afférent, et Le Voyage en Italie de Goethe. Quelques rectifications sur la manière usuelle de considérer cette œuvre sont apportées. (shrink)

The rich body of understudied imagery constituting the culture of satire in pre-World War I Paris represents the work of scores of contributing artists, ranging from mockery of manners to biting critique of government policy. While František Kupka is recognized as a major Parisian contributor to the development of modernism and abstraction, his career as a satirist has been sidelined. In 1900, Kupka wrote to his friend the Czech poet Josef S. Machar that he would devote himself in future mainly (...) to lithography and graphics as these media are more "democratic". Kupka published scores of cartoons in France in the prewar period and was recognized at the time as a leading satirist. Here I explore his work... (shrink)

This text deals with the relationships between the phenomenalizations of hand and engraving art, especially against the background of Gaston Bachelard’s philosophical commentaries on the works of Albert Flocon. Special space is devoted to the interpretation of Flocon’s engraving of two hands in connection with Escher’s similar lithography. Another thematic field is the role of the tool and the hand equipped with the tool. However, the central axis of this thinking is the interconnection or intertwining of body and matter, (...) the interactive relationship between human being and matter, between visual observation and dynamic haptics, which require a certain force and thus also experience the back pressure of matter. The conclusion of the text draws attention to a specific engraving, such as writing, especially the writing of a philosophical text, as we read about it in Bachelard’s book The Flame of a Candle, the last word of which is—surprisingly—engraving. (shrink)

Rock Records explores the intricate entanglements between Anthropos and Geos through a wide range of writings about stone, from media theory and ecophilosophy to the role of stones in art and the aesthetics of viewing stones. Authors engage the activity, vitality, and relationality of lithic matter and articulate multiple modalities of 'geo-affection,' as well as forms of geo-mythology, geo-sociality, and occult lithography. As the initial issue in a new digital/intermedial series of SubStance aimed at interweaving creative and critical work, (...) Rock Records also features digital versions of essays with photo-rich content, as well as a virtual exhibition of viewing stones and a series of speculative studies in... (shrink)

This paper takes as its point of departure Roland Barthes’s proposition in La Chambre claire that the nineteenth century “invented History and Photography,” that the era of photography is one of revolutions, and that the photograph’s “testimony” has diminished our capacity to think in terms of “duration.” Barthes also asserts that the French photographer Nadar is “the greatest photographer in the world,” but takes no account of Nadar’s acute receptivity to the history of the nineteenth century. The paper argues that, (...) though he fully recognized the unique properties of the new medium, Nadar himself was overridingly preoccupied with assessing photography’s role in a period when war and revolution were compromising the onward march of social and economic progress. Throughout his life, he was committed to the progressive ideas that he assimilated while growing up in Paris and Lyon in the 1830s. He wrote of the emergence of a Bohemian culture in the Latin Quarter of Paris, and remained keenly aware of the visual impressions that he had received in his youth from the popular lithographs of the pre-photographic era. He became a supporter of the artistic avant-garde, which led him to purchase important work by the landscape painter Daubigny. In his art criticism, he excoriated the later portraits of Ingres, which might have competed with his own reputation as a photographic portraitist. Yet, in his admiration for Delacroix, he emphasized the lengthy initiation necessary for the appreciation of the master’s paintings, implying a direct contrast with the “instantaneity” of the photographic process. By common consent, the period of Nadar’s great success as a portraitist, which secured his posthumous fame, occupied a short phase in his career as a whole. But his writings show that it was his lively intuition of the wider ramifications of photography that impelled him to move on—experimenting successfully with the first aerial photographs and documenting the catacombs of Paris with the aid of magnesium lighting. Though he could never experience television, he left a narrative in which the feasibility of transmitting images over a distance was presented as being startlingly realistic. In short, Nadar’s published work can be viewed as a sustained meditation on the interaction of historical experience and the media, which not only records but anticipates photography’s impact within the wider framework of visual culture. (shrink)

While nanosciences and nanotechnologies appear as new concepts developed at the end of the twentieth century, we show that metallic nanoparticles have already been used since ancient times, in particular as colorant in the glass and ceramic industries. Moreover, a lot of natural nanomaterials are also present in the mineral, vegetal and animal worlds. Nevertheless, the breakthrough of nanotechnology has been permitted in the past few decades by the advent of apparatus allowing the manipulation and observation of the nanoworld. Indeed, (...) nowadays, nanomaterials and nanoparticles are used for many applications in our daily life, such as in the fields of electronics, catalysis, optics, biology, and medicine. This article presents an overview about nanotechnologies, with applications from ancient times till the present. (shrink)