Laruelle: Against the Digital Alexander R. Galloway Series: Posthumanities Copyright Date: 2014 Published by: University of Minnesota Press Pages: 304 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1287nfc Summaries extracted from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1287nfc introduction The Oldest Prejudice (pp. xvii-xxxvi) “Inebriated and bastardised by Plato, liquified and cogitated into concentrate by Descartes, moralised by Kant, whipped by Sade, devoured by Hegel,… Continue reading Laruelle: Against the Digital – Alexander R. Galloway
Category: Theory
Moral Panic
A moral panic is a feeling of fear spread among many people that some evil threatens the well-being of society.[1][2] It is “the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media“.[3] In recent centuries the mass media have become important players in the dissemination of moral indignation, even when they do not appear to be consciously… Continue reading Moral Panic
Position and Voice
Activity ONE What is the author’s topic? & 2. What is the author’s opinion on this topic? In Declaration of Rebellion, the authors, compelled by the threat of inevitable planetary-scale ecological disasters combined with a lack of governmental preventive action, declare themselves in rebellion against their government and other ‘corrupted, inept institutions’… Continue reading Position and Voice
The Computational Propaganda Research Project
The Computational Propaganda Research Project (COMPROP) investigates the interaction of algorithms, automation and politics. This work includes analysis of how tools like social media bots are used to manipulate public opinion by amplifying or repressing political content, disinformation, hate speech, and junk news. We use perspectives from organizational sociology, human computer interaction, communication, information science,… Continue reading The Computational Propaganda Research Project
AI as a Black Box
Extract from: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/ The workings of any machine-learning technology are inherently more opaque, even to computer scientists, than a hand-coded system. This is not to say that all future AI techniques will be equally unknowable. But by its nature, deep learning is a particularly dark black box. You can’t just look inside a deep neural… Continue reading AI as a Black Box
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a new solitude. We turn to new technology to fill the void, but as MIT technology… Continue reading Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
Sleep Is Literally a Deep Clean for Your Brain
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/new-study-sleep-is-literally-a-deep-clean-for-your-brain.html “What she discovered was that during non-REM sleep, large, slow waves of cerebrospinal fluid were washing over the brain. The EEG readings helped show why. During non-REM sleep, neurons start to synchronize, turning on and off at the same time,” explains Wired’s Sara Harrison. “Because the neurons had all momentarily stopped firing, they didn’t need as much… Continue reading Sleep Is Literally a Deep Clean for Your Brain
Noam Chomsky on Jordan Peterson, Post-Modernism, Foucault and Ali G
Gestalt therapy
extracted from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_therapy Gestalt therapy is an existential/experiential form of psychotherapy which emphasizes personal responsibility, and focuses upon the individual’s experience in the present moment, the therapist-client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person’s life, and the self-regulating adjustments people make as a result of their overall situation. Edwin Nevis, co-founder of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, founder… Continue reading Gestalt therapy
Sleep Monitoring Software
SEV – Open source software for sleep analysis https://web.stanford.edu/~hyatt4/software/sev The SEV is a MATLAB toolbox built for viewing biological data collected from nocturnal polysomnogram sleep studies. It can be used to investigate brain activity (spectral power and spindle density), eye movements during rapid eye movement sleep in patients with post traumatic stress disorder, and the… Continue reading Sleep Monitoring Software