Tag: Comments for Renée’s EDC blog

Comment on Lifestream, Tweets by Renee Furner

Lifestream

Thanks for your comment, Jeremy. You are quite right, the link to cybercultures is tenuous at best! Having recently readSiân Bayne’s (2015) paper, I was more focused on the ‘what is wrong with technology’ criticism of TEL terminology (i.e. narratives which separate technology from social practice). Here the connection is, as you have highlighted, more directly linked to our block on algorithmic cultures. I guess, though, in my mind there is also a loose connection (not made in my post!) between these new ‘smart’ toys and those of J.F. Sebastian in Blade Runner. I find that world to be quite a lonely one, where human-human friendships are replaced by human-machine ones.

Also, there’s the idea of enhancement, in that if we extend the discussion beyond toys with voice recognition that collect data and ‘speak back’ to include the full range of digital technologies marketed at children, we encounter dialogues which position the said toys as necessary for children’s development of digital literacies and future life opportunities, and which will enhance their cognitive growth. As Bayne (2015, p. 11) highlights, such narratives of cognitive enhancement create ‘a discursive link with transhumanism’.

On this last point, a friend who is parent to an eleven-year-old and a seven-year-old in Hong Kong recently raised her concerns about the pressures placed on parents (I would say largely by corporate marketing but also from within education and between parents) to future-proof their children through giving them access to digital tools, and programmes which teach them to code, for example. My friend argued that it was more important to focus on developing distinctly human qualities, such as empathy and imagination, but that her focus on this was at odds with the educational and cultural perspectives surrounding her. While I don’t disagree with the need for development of empathy and imagination, I also don’t see (digital) technology-rich environments as necessarily limiting these. There still seems to be a this or that / technological or human / scientific or creative tension at play, which is reflective of the human / cyborg opposition within much of cyberpunk. To me, there seems to be room for more non-binary thinking within discussions of who we (or our children) might be as humans in the future/within an age so enmeshed in digital technologies.

from Comments for Renée’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/2kYivUf
via IFTTT

Comment on Lifestream, Tweets by jknox

Lifestream

Great article to bring in here, I really like Ben Williamson’s work. I was wondering how you were linking this to the ‘cybercultres’ themes? I can certainly see how this will link to our algorithmic cultures block later in the course – worth keeping it in mind for then.

Thinking about your post on ethics and AI (from Ghost in the Shell), there might be something in thinking about how this article points to other (and more critical perhaps!) ethical perspectives. Rather than thinking about the ‘human rights’ of the machine (the classic ‘cyberculture’ kind of position), we might think about the ethics of human/machine relations. The ones described here – the accounting of participation, the normalisation of linear progress, the persistent comparison of human behaviour to data sets – seem to be relations with significant ethical dimensions.

Where technology influences culture (and clearly vice versa), should we be talking more about ‘ethical relations’ than assigning ‘rights’?

from Comments for Renée’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/2jZlCh5
via IFTTT

Comment on Ethics in the age of androids and cyborgs by jknox

Lifestream

Excellent to reflect on Ghost in the Shell here Renée (and in your other post), it’s a classic! The sequel is good too, but the original film is pretty hard to beat. I might go and see the Hollywood remake (supposedly this year), but it might spoil it!

Memory seems to be a key theme in this kind of SciFi doesn’t – Bladerunner as you say is another classic example here. I can’t help thinking it is a bit of an easy slippage to equate what we (humans) experience as memory, and the kind of data storage we find in computers. I tweeted a panel talk from John Searle and Luciano Floridi earlier this week (https://t.co/VRUXpQi47V) which offers a useful critique of AI. Searle’s (rather classic) ‘Chinese room’ argument is that computers can only deal with syntax (the arrangement of symbols), whereas ‘us’ humans necessarily also deal with semantics (meanings behind and connected to symbols).

In that sense, machines are immensely powerful, but quite stupid. I wonder then, is there a more pressing need for ‘ethics’? Not for some imagined intelligent machine, but for the increasing use of rather stupid machines to make decisions on our behalf? Might be a good way into critiquing TEL there…

Also, I couldn’t get tube chop to work, but I know the scene well. Hadn’t thought about it in particular before, but it is compelling isn’t it? Is it perhaps that the hacked garbage collector had lost his ‘authenticity’ as a human, because his memories had been replaced. In that sense he was seen as rather pathetic because he was no longer human, going by the general premise that memories make us human.

from Comments for Renée’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/2jZ0SX6
via IFTTT

Comment on Week 2 Summary by jknox

Lifestream

Super summary here Renée,

The DeBaets paper looks great, thanks for sharing that, it’s now on my reading list! Transhumanism, for me, trends to inherit something of the Eurocentric humanism that has privileged a particular model of human being (white, male, rational), and assumed this to be an underlying authentic kind of universalism. From that position, ‘enhancement’ through technological means is rather specific, and limited, and directed towards particular ideas around cognition, and reason.

So, it is great to see you reflecting on some of the ethical issues surfaced in ‘cybercultures’. The normalising of particular human conditions seems to be apparent here doesn’t it? certainly, that would be one productive way of analysing the film clips we have viewed. If you can get hold of Braidotti’s book ‘The Postman’ (http://ift.tt/2kGHEUi), that provides some good critical post humanist perspectives in this area.

Following Helen, I liked your final point her about asking questions about the ‘purpose’ of using technology. This reflect Bayne’s point about the commitments and values we have for teaching, I think, and how we might bring these to bear own our decisions about technology use.

Coming back to the politics of Transhumanism – for which I really need to read that paper! – there is something to be said here for ‘taking a position’ in relation to humanism. This is precisely where critical posthumanism differs from anti-humanism: it’s not necessarily a rejection of all those Eurocentric, essentialist ideas, but rather an opportunity to (re)evaluate them. That, to me, sounds like an ethical way of working with the theory.

Well, lots to make me think here, thank you! Now, must get on to reading your analysis of Ghost in the Shell, sounds interesting!

from Comments for Renée’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/2jL8tYQ
via IFTTT

Comment on Week 2 Summary by hwalker

Lifestream

Having spent the week at BETT, where many vendors are trying to sell technologies into schools, your last paragraph struck a chord. Bayne’s observation of the complex interrelationship between the human and the digital is also key to thinking about the use of technology in education; the ‘complex entanglements’ of the human and the technical must be considered. At BETT, I frequently heard TEL perspectives and assumptions reiterated.

(And yes: thank you for the help with getting the IFTTT streams established!)

from Comments for Renée’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/2jjO7rf
via IFTTT

Comment on Ethics in the age of androids and cyborgs by lmclagan

Lifestream

Renée, I enjoyed this post and the content delivered in visually creative way. I believe the discussion of ethics are important in a world where implications may occur. Çakir (2016) states that the makers of technology are creating a world while ignoring the legalities of the products they make. Should they consider law, morals and ethics? After all the intellectual and social entity involves people…..

Linzi #mscedc

Çakir, E. A, (2016). Cyber-humans – our future with machines. Journal of Behaviour & Information Technology,Volume 35, 2016 – Issue 6

http://ift.tt/2jCl94c

http://ift.tt/2jIYKA6

from Comments for Renée’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/2jCpaWF
via IFTTT

Comment on Lifestream, Liked on YouTube: If we create female robots as perfect women, how will this affect us? by Renee Furner

Lifestream

Thanks for sharing your insight, Linzi. Your experience highlights the complexity of influences on body-image anxiety. You’ve encouraged me to do a little more research, in an attempt to pinpoint what it is about social media that has such an influence. Richard Perloff (2014) suggests that reasons social media has such an impact include:

-the 24/7 availability of social media allows ‘for exponentially more opportunities for social comparison and dysfunctional surveillance of pictures of disliked body parts than were ever available with the conventional mass media’ (p. 366)

-based on social comparison theory, ‘upward social comparisons with attractive peers can actually lead to more negative self-attractiveness ratings than comparisons with attractive advertising models, who are perceived as less similar and therefore a less diagnostic comparison group (Cash et al. 1983)’ (p. 369)

It’s probably also significant that appearance is critical within the many of the commonly held values of “today’s youth” (in inverted commas because (a) my data is old – 2007 and (b) I’m not sure such a generalisation is fair): in 2007 the top-ranked values were fame, achievement (defined as ‘being very successful’), popularity, image and financial success (Uhls & Greenfield, 2011).

It’s worth noting that in attempting to identify the cause of the changes in tween values Uhls and Greenfield identify that changes in communitarian values correlate with the ‘explosion of communication technologies’, increased Internet access and the advent of social networking sites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.

So – you asked if will we have ‘perfect’ women or will the perfection just be lived out digitally. Good question. I suspect both.

from Comments for Renée’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/2krW21I
via IFTTT

Comment on Lifestream, Liked on YouTube: If we create female robots as perfect women, how will this affect us? by lmclagan

Lifestream

Renee , I work with dancers of all ages and I teach in a variety of educational settings. However, I particularly work with teenage girls in High School and most young girls that I come across have insecurities about their physical appearance. Through conversation I am overwhelmed at how many wish they looked like they did on social media. Through numerous apps, and online make up tutorial the girls have created a perfect image of themselves for the world to see. Looking through their online activity the girls seem confident, enthusiastic and proud of their identity. The comparison to women online is unfortunately causing the next generation to not only have insecurities but they are depressed that they do not look like their online avatar. I am left perplexed that pupils are suffering from depression and readily willing to undergo surgery to alter their physical appearance; like they do through their smartphone apps. If surgery and augmentation is starting earlier, will we have women in the future looking perfect, or will their be implications and the perfection will only be through technology?

from Comments for Renée’s EDC blog http://ift.tt/2jb0T6l
via IFTTT