Platypus

‘Dynamic Totalities’: Data Surveillance as a Paradigm

 Ravi Chakraborty  June 16, 2020

In the zeitgeist of academia, surveillance has clearly an ominous connotation. However, is surveillance not fundamentally a way of looking? More formally, a way of looking at totalities. Whatever is studied, observed, or measured is part of a definitive totality. A virus is part of a sample. Families are part of a community. Workers are part of the factory. A scientist is part of a laboratory. One reason we are cautious about speaking of totalities is because we are scared of being reductive. But what if we could dynamically measure parameters defining the totalities which concern us. What if we could define our totalities at will and observe phenomena within its boundaries, track phenomena flowing out of it, or ingressing it? If this sounds like an uncanny ‘intelligent’ camera or rather a poetic job re-description of the individual in the CCTV room, then it is meant to be so. Data surveillance can offer perhaps a fresh paradigm for observation and analysis irrespective of the actual use of computers that enable it. (read more...)

MacHack VI: Computer chess and the roots of AI

 Rebecca Perry  June 10, 2020

On January 21, 1967, a mild winter Saturday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a couple of computer researchers from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) flagged down a taxi near Tech Square. Loading a bulky, 60-pound teletype called a 35 KSR (“Keyboard Send/Receive”) into the trunk, they set off for downtown Boston, across the river. A short while later, the cab pulled up at the Young Men’s Christian Union (YMCU), and the researchers wrestled the machine up the stairs to the second floor, where the Boylston Chess Club was setting up for a weekend tournament. (read more...)

On the social nature of toilet paper

 Matt Barlow  June 3, 2020

You would be forgiven for thinking that the first thing bought in a global crisis would be tinned, dried, and frozen foods; clean water; and medicines—things that enable the survival of you and your kin. Yet, when the number of COVID-19 cases in Australia hit 100 on March 10, 2020, it was the toilet paper aisles of supermarkets that were empty. Through what became the subject of memes depicting Australians sheltering from the ensuing pandemic wrapped only in toilet paper, and of men wearing lavish adornments of toilet paper rolls, daily bodily habits had hit center stage. (read more...)

A coincidence is a strange type of fact

 Charlie Lotterman  June 1, 2020

At the top of Václavksé náměstí, the central artery of Prague, in a solemnly gray but geometrically dynamic Socialist Realist hotel that today is jammed between currency exchange windows and fast-food restaurants, up one floor from the busy street and the purple velvet lobby, a young laborer is trying to make a fidget spinner move with just his mind. He looks at it intensely, with sadness and urgency in his face. He looks at it like this for about thirty seconds, then releases his gaze, relaxes, blinks purposefully, restoring his energy, and resumes his effort. Sometimes he twitches but the fidget spinner never spins. And sometimes during his breaks he apologizes to his audience – me and, also, the coordinators of Paranormální výzva, a collective of Czechs who are testing claims of paranormal ability. (read more...)

Honey, let we tell you! A speculative trans-species storytelling of the Maya Forest borderlands

 Micha Rahder  May 25, 2020

Editor’s note: This is the second post in an ongoing series called “The Spectrum of Research and Practice in Guatemalan Science Studies.” Previous scholars largely confined their studies of European honey bee (Apis mellifera, including Africanized hybrids) communication to the waggle dance, with the communication range limited to food gathering, hive site selection, and other simple collective tasks. Recent advances in therolinguistic interpretation have demonstrated that a hive structure’s 3-dimensional matrix, including differentially-deposited pheromones and scent signatures laid in wax, contain additional, semi-permanently recorded content, though without a functional grammar. Rather than fully-articulated communication, the hive contains references to broader concepts—such as joy, woe, growth, care, loss, hunger, abundance, battle, defense, and so on. Reading waggle dances in hive context reveals that basic communication is often interwoven with broader narratives. (read more...)

Roundtable: “COVID-19: Views from the Field”

 Baird Campbell, Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam, Caitlyn Dye, Kristina Jacobsen, Rebekah Ciribassi, Sonia Qadir  May 20, 2020

We’re wrapping up our five-part series, “COVID-19: Views from the Field,” with a pre-recorded roundtable. This roundtable brought our authors into conversation with each other, across continents and timezones, to discuss conducting—or not conducting—fieldwork in places not understood as COVID-19 “hotspots.” Check out the video here, and follow the links below to read the whole series, also available in the language of each field site. (read more...)

Abu Dhabi Soundmarks: Building Community in the Midst of the Pandemic, One Voice at a Time

 Kristina Jacobsen  May 19, 2020

هذا المحتوى متوفر أيضًا باللغة العربية

Editor’s note: This post is the fifth in our five-part series “COVID-19: Views from the Field.” Click here to read an introduction written by series organizer Rebekah Ciribassi. Editor’s note: Click the links throughout the article to experience the soundscape of Abu Dhabi under COVID-19 In March 2020, I arrived in Abu Dhabi from the island of Sardinia, Italy, to shelter in place with family members, here. As I recently documented elsewhere, after the lockdown was imposed in Italy, the soundscape of that place, and especially the culture of talking, physical contact and making face-to-face music, changed significantly. (read more...)

The Paradox of Autonomy and Care for Mothers of Adults with Disabilities in Brazil

 Helena Fietz  May 19, 2020

Este conteúdo também está disponível em português.

Since the early 2000s, Brazil has experienced a significant change concerning the rights of people with disabilities in the country. Based on the struggles of the Brazilian Disability Rights Movements, in 2009 the country promulgated the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) and in 2015 enacted the Brazilian Inclusion Law, also known as the Statute of People with Disabilities. The promotion of autonomy and the social participation of people with disabilities is at the core of these legislations. While these measures are not always accompanied by policies that can actually guarantee their implementation, they still impact people with disabilities in the way they foster such discourses around autonomy and independence. (read more...)