A materialist conception of the lifeworld: Enzo Paci's social phenomenology of technology and the environment

Enzo Paci offers a critical phenomenology of the human-technology-environment interface. Revisiting Paci makes two contributions: (1) a critical social phenomenology of technology and (2) a conception of the lifeworld as environment-dependent. Birthed from a conversation between Husserl and Marx, his theory of the lifeworld as need and the satisfaction of need directs attention to humanity's necessary interaction with the environment as well as an understanding of techniques as means to satisfy needs in historically specific social contexts. “Technistic alienation” occurs when these techniques dominate their authors, from the atomic bomb to industrial labor, and their consciousness - for instance, when misplaced science is used to justify unjust social conditions. “Intentional technology” refers to the potential of “returning” technology to its authors to formulate a rational society.     

Contesting the Visualization of Gaza

During July?August 2014 it is estimated that Israel dropped 18?20,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, which led to the deaths of over 2,100 people, with homes, hospitals, schools and whole districts obliterated to rubble. Photographs played a crucial role in mediating this devastation within corporate media, social media as well as in street protests and pickets. Through an analysis of imagery used in BBC news reports for the first day of the bombing, this paper explores the dominant visual discourses in the mainstream media, which through both regulatory frameworks as well as political positioning supported Israeli PR agendas, to normalize Israeli perspectives and reinscribe Palestinians as both political and social “other”. It then considers the success with which citizens both within Gaza and outside — as protestors and journalists — acted to challenge the corporate media’s control over the visual mediation of the bombing. While recognizing that photographs of abject suffering can operate to simply consolidate an image of Palestinians as “other” and different from ourselves, the article argues that through employing Ariella Azoulay’s notion of a “citizenry of photography” and reflecting on the wider communication ecologies in which photographs operated (on social media and in street protests), we can identify the ways in which images of suffering, placed in personal narratives and within a wider visual discursive field did play a role in influencing the public’s understanding of the Palestinian plight, turning despair to indignation to demand action.     

Keineswegs

In his lecture course “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics” (1929–1930) Martin Heidegger repeatedly alludes to experiments with insects as examples for the relation of animals to the world. One report deals with a photograph made through the compound eye of a glow worm. By questioning what the glow worm might see, Heidegger separated animal vision from human vision as ontologically incomparable. In my paper I first show the source of Heidegger’s report and then discuss how deeper knowledge of the original investigation might shed new light on Heidegger’s presentation and his conclusions.     

Association Analysis on Pro-Environmental Behaviors and Environmental Consciousness in Main Cities of East Asia

An association analysis of people’s environmental consciousness and their proenvironmental behaviors was performed using a statistical survey data set collected in Beijing, Seoul, Taipei and Tokyo, the four largest cities in East Asia, based on random sampling in 2005 and 2006. Although there were remarkable differences in people’s attitudes toward environmental issues under the different environmental qualities, economic situations and social institutions in each city, statistical analysis demonstrated that six pro-environmental actions, including “buying eco-good”, “recycling”, “water saving”, “energy saving”, “riding a public transportation” and “buying organic vegetable”, were closely related to people’s recognition of environmental changes, their intrinsic values and demographic attributes. The author also found that cultivation of environmental consciousness is an important factor in evoking people’s pro-environmental behaviors. Especially, it is necessary to construct an international framework of harmony with regard to environmental issues in which the diversity of environmental consciousness in different social backgrounds in East Asia is taken into account.

     

亨利·列斐伏尔的设计批评视角

亨利·列斐伏尔(Henri Lefebvre)是法国20世纪最有影响力的社会理论家、批评家之一,其理论影响了20世纪下半叶社会思想的走向。然而,他在我国设计学界却长期被忽视。日常生活批判、城市社会学和空间生产理论是构成列斐伏尔理论体系的三大支柱。其“日常生活批判”从哲学批判转向微观的社会学批判,对于现代设计文化的研究具有认识论和方法论意义;他对资本主义消费社会的社会学批判为设计批评的理论研究打开了一个全新的消费主义批判视角;而列斐伏尔的“空间生产”理论将现代城市空间作为研究对象,可视为不可多见的设计批评理论,对设计批评的理论构建具有范式性意义。     

Mines,mountains, and the making of a vertical consciousness in Germany ca. 1800

The insight that scientific theories are “practice-laden” has animated scholarship in the history of science for nearly three decades. This article examines a style of geographical thought that was, I argue, movement-laden. The thought-style in question has been described as a “vertical consciousness that engulfed science in the early nineteenth century,” and is closely associated with the geographical vision of Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Humboldt’s science spanned nature’s horizontal and vertical axes, from Saxon mines to Andean summits, and from the currents of the ocean to those of the aerial ocean. In probing the origins of Humboldt’s vertical thinking, this article opens up a broader history about the industrial practices and travel cultures that originally animated it. Humboldt’s “global physics” first emerged within a context of vertical travel, up mountains and into mines and caverns. Rhythms of the body—lethal for some, “sublime” for others—became rhythms of the mind. A view of nature as set of vertically complementary spaces rippled through mining culture, Romantic art, and the geographical sciences. To trace the earliest routes of Humboldt’s science is to acknowledge the many actors—some celebrated, most unsung—who took part in the making of a vertical consciousness.     

Psychische Störungen und sozialwissenschaftliche Katastrophenforschung, 1949–1985

During the second half of the 20th century several American multidisciplinary social science ?disaster research groups“ conducted numerous field studies after earthquakes, factory explosions and “racial riots”, both inside and outside of the United States. Their aim was to investigate the reactions and behavior of individuals, organizations and communities to disasters. All of these groups were either promoted or at least partly founded by different branches of the US military. This article will analyze the groups’ studies and findings on the question of disasters’ psychological effects. The main focus will be on the stance the scientists took on the diagnosis of psychological trauma—especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—and the post disaster therapeutic interventions that became widespread in the 1970s and early 1980s. The disaster researchers questioned the need for, as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of “disaster mental health”. At the same time they advocated early ideas of resilience, which later became one of the most important concepts in disaster management and beyond.     

Information metrics (iMetrics): a research specialty with a socio-cognitive identity?

“Bibliometrics”, “scientometrics”, “informetrics”, and “webometrics” can all be considered as manifestations of a single research area with similar objectives and methods, which we call “information metrics” or iMetrics. This study explores the cognitive and social distinctness of iMetrics with respect to the general information science (IS), focusing on a core of researchers, shared vocabulary and literature/knowledge base. Our analysis investigates the similarities and differences between four document sets. The document sets are drawn from three core journals for iMetrics research (Scientometrics, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and Journal of Informetrics). We split JASIST into document sets containing iMetrics and general IS articles. The volume of publications in this representation of the specialty has increased rapidly during the last decade. A core of researchers that predominantly focus on iMetrics topics can thus be identified. This core group has developed a shared vocabulary as exhibited in high similarity of title words and one that shares a knowledge base. The research front of this field moves faster than the research front of information science in general, bringing it closer to Price’s dream.     

A comprehensive value framework for design

The significance of human values in everyday life highlights the integral role of this concept in any design that aims to improve the quality of human life. By emphasizing the need for a comprehensive value framework for design, the present study explores a new value framework to be used as a common ground in design. For this purpose, we empirically investigate how different people group human values. By spreading the link of our Human Values Survey worldwide via the internet, a variety of participants with different cultural backgrounds were reached, and hierarchical cluster analysis was used to analyze the data. As a result, 568 complete answers were collected, from which nine value groups were concluded: “carefulness”, “justice”, “ecology”, “respect for others”, “meaningfulness”, “status”, “pleasure”, “respect for oneself” and “personal development”. After clustering our data, we propose a value framework with four themes, nine value groups, 42 key values, and 135 extra values. This framework, raising designers’ awareness and widening their view of human values, provides the opportunity to address a diverse range of human values in design.     

1984 A camptown story

This essay examines Kim Yongt’ae’s photocollage DMZ, which consists of photo-portraits he acquired from commercial photo studios in US military camptowns in South Korea. The co-founding member of the South Korean artist group Hy?nsilgwa par?n (Reality and Utterance), Kim visited camptowns in 1984. There, he found hundreds of studio photo-portraits depicting Korean women and American GIs serving United States Forces Korea (USFK). While discussions on “found” photographs often center on the discourses of archive, appropriation, or vernacularity appended by the cultural specificity of their origins, this essay proposes a new framework through which Kim’s work is explored: transnational militarism and “disidentification” — a concept put forth by José Esteban Muñoz on minoritarian performativity. Through this framework, DMZ challenges the binary reading of camptown subjects as victim and victimizer and proposes the performative formation of a new subjectivity.     

Der Erfolg der „Dummheit“

The competition between the chess computer Deep Blue and the former chess world champion Garri Kasparov in 1997 was a spectacle staged for the media. However, the chess game, like other games, was also a test field for artificial intelligence research. On the one hand Deep Blue’s victory was called a “milestone” for AI research, on the other hand, a dead end, since the superiority of the chess computer was based on pure computing power and had nothing to do with “real” AI.The article questions the premises of these different interpretations and maps Deep Blue and its way of playing chess into the history of AI. This also requires an analysis of the underlying concepts of thinking. Finally, the essay calls for assuming different “ways of thinking” for man and computer. Instead of fundamental discussions of concepts of thinking, we should ask about the consequences of the human-machine division of labor.     

Traffic crash liability determination: Danger and Dodge model

By proposing a systematic set of rules for traffic crash liability determination, this paper attempts to prove the feasibility and practicability of legal liability in handling traffic crashes. Two sequential elements are identified for crash occurrence, i.e., the occurrence of a dangerous situation and failure in dodging the dangerous situation. A Danger and Dodge model is subsequently established for liability determination in a traffic crash. By investigating the basic mechanism of a crash occurrence, the specific contents of causalties and the effect of the parties’ acts in traffic crashes are specified. Based on the theories of social adequancy, the principle of reliance and the duty of care, the study further proposes to use the “peril” of a dangerous situation and the “possibility” of dodging the dangerous situation to appraise the effect of the parties’ acts upon a crash occurrence, with the rule of the “pattern deciding effect”. The proposed approach would be very helpful to the concreteness of the determination of liability in a traffic crash. Two case studies are presented for demonstration.     

The politics of the city: Critical theory of technology and urban design(s)

This article aims at approaching urban design from a philosophical point of view, specifically through Andrew Feenberg's critical theory of technology. It attempts to present the politics of urban design, rejecting an urban-technological determinism that refers to a specific technical environment as the only one possible. If technology is an open process with social implications and consequences, the same holds for urban technologies and designs. This approach argues that contemporary cities are formed within a specific socio-technical context which is seemingly the most functional for the current social, political and economic world, but since environmental and urban crises rise, there seems to be a need for rethinking over the form of current cities. Thus, this article attempts to offer a theoretical contribution to the debate over alternative urban designs through Andrew Feenberg's insights. Drawing upon some of his most crucial notions, like the “technical code”, the “interpretative flexibility” and the “operational autonomy” and presenting their role in a philosophy of the city, I attempt to highlight that current urban forms could be replaced by other functional alternatives. The choice over one or another urban design is political hence the need for the relation between the philosophy of the city and technical politics.     

Marketing in the material construction of artifacts: A case study of a Portuguese navigation systems company

This article examines the social construction of technological innovations, focusing on how marketers of an information and communication technology (ICT) product interact with engineers in the creation of that product. The main purpose is to develop in empirical terms the concept of “material semiotics' rhetoric”. To this end it takes an in-depth look at a medium-sized Portuguese firm, in which we have over a period of five years observed how a GPS navigation device is generated and developed. We use the notions of “rhetoric” and “frames of reference” in adopting “material semiotics” as the theoretical background for observing the behaviors and interactions of the different actors involved in the construction of this technological artifact. The results show how the rhetorical framework shapes the technology, and also reveals the roles of different professionals when negotiating technical possibilities within the communicational strategies of a firm. The paper highlights the specific role of symbolic aspects in the material development of technology, stressing a relation between rhetoric and material semiotics.     

India's National and Regional Innovation Systems: Challenges,Opportunities and Recommendations for Policy Makers

There is a need for continuous reforms in India's infrastructure, innovation culture and dynamic leadership to sustain the growth of innovation. The purpose of this empirical study is to gain a better understanding of India's innovation systems. A comprehensive analysis has been done on two levels: on both a national level and a regional level. First, the section about the national level explores and explains the challenges and opportunities of India's innovation capacity using a semi-structured questionnaire of the practitioners. Second, the section about the regional level discusses the clusters formed within India through a mapping of industrial firms, educational/research institutions and innovation parks. Both an empirical activity framework and a functional-based conceptual framework have been presented to highlight the themes of “building-upgrading-promoting” and “democracy-culture-infrastructure”. Finally, this paper makes a theoretical contribution by providing a conceptual framework for studying India's innovation system and giving recommendations to policy makers about sustaining the innovation.     

A mediated model on the adoption of social media and SMEs’ performance in developing countries

PurposeSmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can adopt and use social media (SM) for communicating information with stakeholders with minimal cost. The ability to access and share information influences the SMEs' performance, but there is little scholarship on the association between the adoption of social media and SMEs' performance. This research aims to investigate the effects of technology-organizational-environmental (TOE) factors on the adoption of SM and SMEs’ performance in developing countries.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed the TOE framework as determinants affecting the adoption of social media and SMEs' performance. The paper used a closed-ended questionnaire to gather data, through an online survey, from randomly selected respondents from SMEs operating in Pakistan. Partial-least-squares-structural-equation-modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for the path analysis of 423 responses from SMEs' owners, executives, and managers. The present study also explores the mediating role of SM between TOE characteristics and SMEs’ performance.FindingsThe findings revealed a direct positive relationship between TOE constructs, the adoption of SM, and SMEs' performance. Full mediation was found between technological factors and SMEs performance, and partial mediation was found between organizational and environmental factors and SMEs’ performance. Complementary mediation among the variables was also examined.Originality/valueThis paper has implications for practitioners and researchers interested in investigating social media adoption in SMEs. It builds an empirical, multi-dimensional hypothesized model, including several determinants that may influence the adoption of social media.     

事理学在概念产品设计定位中的应用

目的强调进行目标系统外部因素的研究,从方法论层面有望突破传统主要考虑内部因素的局限性,对于概念产品创新设计有重要意义。方法将事理学引入概念产品设计定位,在"事"的结构基础上,提出概念产品设计定位研究框架;基于"事""理"之间的联系,对外部因素研究的有序组织的具体研究方法进行探讨;具体阐述事理学中外部因素在概念产品设计定位中的实际应用。结论以主要面向"95后"人群的概念汽车内饰设计项目为案例,提出部分具体的设计定位研究方法,经过整合分析后得出设计定位阐释,为概念产品创新提供研究思路。     

Do socially disruptive technologies really change our concepts or just our conceptions?

New technologies have the potential to severely “challenge” or “disrupt” not only our established social practices but our most fundamental concepts and distinctions like person versus object, nature versus artificial or being dead versus being alive. But does this disruption also change these concepts? Or does it merely change our operationalizations and applications of the same concepts? In this paper, I argue that instead of focusing on individual conceptual change, philosophers of socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) should think about conceptual change as a change in a network of interrelated concepts. What really generates a potential social disruption are changes of inferential relations between concepts – whether or not this entails a change of the respective individual concepts. Philosophers of socially disruptive technologies are therefore in the privileged position of being able to avoid commitments regarding the individuation of individual concepts.     

What are socially disruptive technologies?

Scholarly discourse on “disruptive technologies” has been strongly influenced by disruptive innovation theory. This theory is tailored for analyzing disruptions in markets and business. It is of limited use, however, in analyzing the broader social, moral and existential dynamics of technosocial disruption. Yet these broader dynamics should be of great scholarly concern, both in coming to terms with technological disruptions of the past and those of our current age. Technologies can disrupt social relations, institutions, epistemic paradigms, foundational concepts, values, and even the nature of human cognition and experience – domains of disruption that are largely neglected in existing discourse on disruptive technologies. Accordingly, this paper seeks to reorient scholarly discussion around a broader notion of technosocial disruption. This broader notion raises three foundational questions. First, how can technosocial disruption be conceptualized in a way that clearly sets it apart from the disruptive innovation framework? Secondly, how does the notion of technosocial disruption relate to the concordant notions of “disruptor” and “disruptiveness”? Thirdly, can we advance criteria to assess the “degree of social disruptiveness” of different technologies? The paper clarifies these questions and proposes an answer to each of them. In doing so, it advances “technosocial disruption” as a key analysandum for future scholarship on the interactions between technology and society.