Suchergebnisse

Juncture (concerning Vectors): The "Internet of Actual Occasions" (Andrew Murphie)Proposition 1: Following on from the emerging Internet of things, someone recently proposed an "Internet of nano-things". Is this going too far? Maybe this isn't going far enough. Or maybe this is the wrong question. Now that we can, in very different ways—via technics, via micropolitics, via metaphysics—seem to get near to the very basis of events, what can/should we do? This proposition concerns that which has until now been known, and thought, as "media", "communication", "networks", "algorithms" and related concepts/technics. Start with this speculative-pragmatic proposition: let us assume that we can go as far as possible, that an "internet of actual occasions" is possible. How would it work? Would it be desirable? If we could, should we use it? What difference would it make to think with it, work with it, organize in partnership with it? Do we, in reality, already have it? Is it called the world "as medium for the transmission of influences", as discussed by the under-recognized media and communications thinker, Alfred North Whitehead? If it is already "there", what would it's relationship be to (more-than-)human-designed technics?Juncture: Something like "media", "communication", "networks", "algorithms" and related concepts/technics have been at the heart of power during the last hundred years. A great deal has followed from this (in philosophy, education, management, politics, economics, social organisation and more). These concepts/technics have always been contested. Yet they have also, in practice, long produced interventions in worlds that are many and major. Thus they perform a particular and important speculative pragmatics. In mainstream culture certain versions of these concepts/technics could even now be said to be "protected" concepts/technics. This protection is almost of a religious order, in that many of these concepts.concepts have become fundamental articles and rituals of a secular faith (Shannon & Weaver, cognitivism, etc). The culture energised by this "faith" has been a large factor in what Brian Massumi has discussed as a "becoming-environmental of power" (Ontopower), via the extension of media and communications into more of "world", and in finer gradations of intervention in "world", in "bare life" (Massumi), in geontology (Povinelli) and more. This is largely an ecologically destructive extension of power with no limit to it's appetite (if the "internet of actual occasions" was a real technical possibility there could be little doubt that it would be quickly colonized as a new site for power). Yet what, really, are communication, media, computing, networks, algorithms? In concept? As ongoing propositions in varieties of speculative pragmatics? As designed technics? As themselves imperfect refractions of world? There is another way to think this. There has recently been what we might simply call a return of the world. This is a world beyond, if still at times working within, the (more than) human (Erin Manning 2015). This world exceeds the reach of even the extended technics of the human. The "return" to this world is found for example in climate change and other environmental challenges, and has always been accepted in process philosophy and other philosophies tending towards the ecological. It is also found in the increasing acceptance that plants have sophisticated modes of "communication", and of social networking and action. Such a "return" of the world was also anticipated by Whitehead, in his idea of the "world as a medium for the transmission of influences", for the vector transmission of feeling. What is now happening at the juncture between these two; the "mediated" becoming-environmental of power and the world as medium? Or, to move away from the bifurcation of the mediating and the mediated (which becomes a "trifurcation" etc up to n-1), what precisely is this juncture itself, where both have to be considered at once, as on the same plane? How might we approach this juncture with the rigor of attention to immanence it needs (Manning 2015)?Proposition 2: What would it mean to think/design "media", "communication", "networks", "algorithms" and related concepts/technics without a bifurcation of nature?

Publishing has always ghosted the 'public'. It is only a question of the manner of haunting.As with many ghosts, however, in the past publishing as a process (as opposed to the contents published) has tended to be seen, only occasionally, out of the corner of one's eye. It has been conveniently ignored the rest of the time by most people, with the exception of 'experts, specialists and professionals'.That all this has now changed is well known. Everyone is now a publisher. Indeed, we are all increasingly forced to publish, whether in refereed academic journals or on Facebook.The crises that have arisen are many: about the nature of the new forms of haunting; about which publics are haunted by which new forms of publishing and vice versa; and about who gets to be the publicly validated expert, specialist or professional (the 'journalist', the 'academic', the 'activist', the 'intellectual', the 'artist'). Most importantly, perhaps, the opening up of the processes of publishing has led to a series of institutional crises (in universities, in newspapers and other in mainstream media, in museums, in the sciences and in political organisational forms as basic as the party).Here I will briefly sketch a series of ideas that unashamedly attempt to describe some general principles by which to approach the contemporary state of 'publishing'. I am particularly concerned with publishing's relation to what I am calling the 'unacknowledged collective' that I see as crucial to the transformation of the circulation of ideas.

Recently some scientists studying what happens in neurons when animals move freely created a bizarre media assemblage. This combined the generation of virtual world events for worms (by tampering with their neurons via optogenetics) with these worms "free" movement through their actual surroundings. Contemporary media and world are indeed finding many strange continuities and overlaps. Yet this paper suggests that what looks strange in such assemblages has always been the case. Contemporary media only draw attention to this more because, first, they possess more technical power to work within the entire world as medium, and, second, they increasingly diagram media/world relations with an acceptance of world as medium and media as world.Long ago, Alfred North Whitehead wrote of this 'world as medium'—for him, a medium for the 'vector transmission' of feeling. For Whitehead, "worlds" are worlds of feeling (feeling as worlding). Signal, the basis of media and communication, is feeling in movement, which is to say the world in movement, which is to say the world communicating itself in feeling as it creates itself. Things or events—both of which we can consider as what Whitehead terms "actual occasions"—do something special within the world as medium. They maintain their intensity. This paper will outline a theory of affect, signal, intensity and world, drawing largely from Whitehead and Deleuze. It will also provide a quick series of propositions concerning affect and politics that arise from thinking the world as medium. It draws attention not only to Whitehead's usefulness for thinking media and world but to Whitehead's own media philosophy (and in a couple of footnotes yet to be developed, to Whitehead's importance to media and communications theory and practice in the 20th century).

Research Report—'Education, work and Australian society in an AI world: A review of research literature'1. Research BackgroundThe research was in the field of education. The Gonski Institute for Education commissioned us to research and write a report on current research literature concerning artificial intelligence and education. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence has become an issue for education in two ways—in terms of changing provision and practices within education itself, and in terms of education's crucial role in preparing for the future, especially but not only the future of work. Policy makers are seeking guidelines as to how to respond. The report's key aim was to review the literature in order to present policy recommendations. 2. Research Contribution The report contributes to knowledge by synthesising and evaluating the current literature and presenting 6 key policy recommendations in order to safeguard the future of Australian education and to foster social innovation. Its main concern is the organisation and administration of education in a world in which AI is becoming an increasingly powerful social force. The recommendations include: forming a cross-sector representative body; providing professional development opportunities for teachers; working towards the ethical and effective procurement of AI systems; introducing adaptive and personalised learning in a way that ensures a focus on educational and equity principles; providing appropriate data protection and legislation; focusing on AI-complimentary skills. 3. Research Significance & Evidence of Excellence The significance of this research is that it enables education policy influencers, policy makers and other stakeholders to frame appropriate responses to the emergence of AI. Its value is attested to by the following indicators: • Accepted and published by the Gonski Institute for education • Invited to publish an article based on the report for the Journal of Professional Learning published by The NSW Teachers Federation's (NSWTF) Centre for Professional Learning (CPL) [written and published January 2019]• Has received responses international from various teacher's group (e.g. from Canada)