Mediating the Human Body

Mediating the Human Body

Author: Leopoldina Fortunati

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781135626440

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 392

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The ever-increasing integration of technology and the human body is attracting attention from religious, business, and political leaders around the world, and the topic promises to be a significant social issue in the 21st century. In Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion, editors Leopoldina Fortunati, James E. Katz, and Raimonda Riccini bring together a thoughtful group of leading international scholars and analysts to explore the effects of new technologies on human beings. They focus specifically on the intersection of new communication technologies and the body, and offer novel insights based on recent theoretical progress and current research on new interpersonal technology. Through literary analysis, historical comparisons, analytical reports, and speculative interpretations, the contributors to this volume seek to understand the experience of the body as it is mediated among competing forces and intellectual domains. Arising from The Human Body Between Technologies, Communication and Fashion symposium held in Milan, Italy, contributions cover a wide array of topics and offer varied perspectives on how communication technologies are assimilated into people's lives, bodies, and homes, and thus become part of individuals' self-images and social relationships. From this multidisciplinary, multi-national base, the volume illuminates the sense and dimension of this interpenetration between body and technology. In its broad scope, the topics range from the wellsprings of consciousness to the use of technology as a fashion statement. Bringing together scholarship from a variety of disciplines, including communication, medicine, technology, and human-computer interaction, this distinctive anthology will provide new insights to scholars and advanced students exploring body-technology intersections and the attendant implications. Mediating the Human Body offers a unique contribution to future discussions, and will be relevant to continuing study and research in communication and technology, human-computer interaction, gender studies, social psychology, and design.

The Social Dynamics of Information and Communication Technology

The Social Dynamics of Information and Communication Technology

Author: Leslie Haddon

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781317015765

Category: Social Science

Page: 244

View: 233

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What shapes the role of Information and Communication Technologies in our everyday life? Despite the speed with which information and communication technologies such as the PC, mobile telephone and internet have found their way into society, there remains a good deal of debate surrounding their adoption and use. Through empirical studies covering a broad range of everyday life and work settings, this volume provides grounded insights into the social dynamics influencing how ICTs are both shaped and experienced. Specifically, the book examines the contributions of diverse disciplines to our understanding of these processes, the symbolic nature of technologies, the influence of design on the experience of ICTs, the role of users in influencing that design, the social constraints affecting the use of those technologies, and strategies for evaluating the social consequences of ICT innovations.

Realness through Mediating Body

Realness through Mediating Body

Author: Oleg Dik

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

ISBN: 9783847007197

Category: Religion

Page: 297

View: 475

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After the end of the civil war in 1990, the Charismatic/Pentecostal (C/P) movement in Beirut spread across various Christian denominations. C/P believers narrated how Jesus became real to them via the experience of the Holy Spirit. The author explains this impression of realness through embodiment. Ritual practices like testimony and experience of divine agency are experienced as fullness within a post war society and are extended into the every day sphere. This ethnographic account represents the beginning research of C/P Christianity's emergence in the Middle East and its contribution to social change.

Mediating Nature

Mediating Nature

Author: Sidney I. Dobrin

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9780429678165

Category: Computers

Page: 248

View: 444

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Mediating Nature considers how technology acts as a mediating device in the construction and circulation of images that inform how we see and know nature. Scholarship in environmental communication has focused almost exclusively on verbal rather than visual rhetoric, and this book engages ecocritical and ecocompositional inquiry to shift focus onto the making of images. Contributors to this dynamic collection focus their efforts on the intersections of digital media and environmental/ecological thinking. Part of the book’s larger argument is that analysis of mediations of nature must develop more critical tools of analysis toward the very mediating technologies that produce such media. That is, to truly understand mediations of nature, one needs to understand the creation and production of those mediations, right down to the algorithms, circuit boards, and power sources that drive mediating technologies. Ultimately, Mediating Nature contends that ecological literacy and environmental politics are inseparable from digital literacies and visual rhetorics. The book will be of interest to scholars and students working in the fields of Ecocriticism, Ecocomposition, Media Ecology, Visual Rehtoric, and Digital Literacy Studies.

Cross-Modal Analysis of Speech, Gestures, Gaze and Facial Expressions

Cross-Modal Analysis of Speech, Gestures, Gaze and Facial Expressions

Author: Anna Esposito

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

ISBN: 9783642033209

Category: Computers

Page: 434

View: 206

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This volume brings together the peer-reviewed contributions of the participants at the COST 2102 International Conference on “Cross-Modal Analysis of Speech, Gestures, Gaze and Facial Expressions” held in Prague, Czech Republic, October 15–18, 2008. The conference was sponsored by COST (European Cooperation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research, www. cost. esf. org/domains_actions/ict) in the - main of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for disseminating the research advances developed within COST Action 2102: “Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Nonverbal Communication” http://cost2102. cs. stir. ac. uk. COST 2102 research networking has contributed to modifying the conventional theoretical approach to the cross-modal analysis of verbal and nonverbal communi- tion changing the concept of face to face communication with that of body to body communication as well as developing the idea of embodied information. Information is no longer the result of a difference in perception and is no longer measured in terms of quantity of stimuli, since the research developed in COST 2102 has proved that human information processing is a nonlinear process that cannot be seen as the sum of the numerous pieces of information available. Considering simply the pieces of inf- mation available, results in a model of the receiver as a mere decoder, and produces a huge simplification of the communication process.

Mediating and Remediating Death

Mediating and Remediating Death

Author: Dorthe Refslund Christensen

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781317098621

Category: Social Science

Page: 298

View: 878

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From the ritual object which functions as a substitute for the dead - thus acting as a medium for communicating with the ’other world’ - to the representation of death, violence and suffering in media, or the use of online social networks as spaces of commemoration, media of various kinds are central to the communication and performance of death-related socio-cultural practices of individuals, groups and societies. This second volume of the Studies in Death, Materiality and Time series explores the ways in which such practices are subject to ’re-mediation’; that is to say, processes by which well-known practices are re-presented in new ways through various media formats. Presenting rich, interdisciplinary new empirical case studies and fieldwork from the US and Europe, Asia, The Middle East, Australasia and Africa, Mediating and Remediating Death shows how different media forms contribute to the shaping and transformation of various forms of death and commemoration, whether in terms of their range and distribution, their relation to users or their roles in creating and maintaining communities. With its broad and multi-faceted focus on how uses of media can redraw the traditional boundaries of death-related practices and create new cultural realities, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in ritual and commemoration practices, the sociology and anthropology of death and dying, and cultural and media studies.

Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman

Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman

Author: Dennis M. Weiss

Publisher: Lexington Books

ISBN: 9780739191781

Category: Philosophy

Page: 327

View: 906

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Though the progress of technology continually pushes life toward virtual existence, the last decade has witnessed a renewed focus on materiality. Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman bears witness to the attention paid by literary theorists, digital humanists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and designers to the crafted environment, the manner in which artifacts mediate human relations, and the constitution of a world in which the boundary between humans and things has seemingly imploded. The chapters reflect on questions about the extent to which we ought to view humans and nonhuman artifacts as having equal capacity for agency and life, and the ways in which technological mediation challenges the central tenets of humanism and anthropocentrism. Contemporary theories of human-object relations presage the arrival of the posthuman, which is no longer a futuristic or science-fictional concept but rather one descriptive of the present, and indeed, the past. Discussions of the posthuman already have a long history in fields like literary theory, rhetoric, and philosophy, and as advances in design and technology result in increasingly engaging artifacts that mediate more and more aspects of everyday life, it becomes necessary to engage in a systematic, interdisciplinary, critical examination of the intersection of the domains of design, technological mediation, and the posthuman. Thus, this collection brings diverse disciplines together to foster a dialogue on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.

Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology

Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology

Author: Marc Leman

Publisher: MIT Press

ISBN: 9780262122931

Category: Music

Page: 317

View: 664

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A proposal that an embodied cognition approach to music research—drawing on work in computer science, psychology, brain science, and musicology—offers a promising framework for thinking about music mediation technology. Digital media handles music as encoded physical energy, but humans consider music in terms of beliefs, intentions, interpretations, experiences, evaluations, and significations. In this book, drawing on work in computer science, psychology, brain science, and musicology, Marc Leman proposes an embodied cognition approach to music research that will help bridge this gap. Assuming that the body plays a central role in all musical activities, and basing his approach on a hypothesis about the relationship between musical experience (mind) and sound energy (matter), Leman argues that the human body is a biologically designed mediator that transfers physical energy to a mental level—engaging experiences, values, and intentions—and, reversing the process, transfers mental representation into material form. He suggests that this idea of the body as mediator offers a promising framework for thinking about music mediation technology. Leman proposes that, under certain conditions, the natural mediator (the body) can be extended with artificial technology-based mediators. He explores the necessary conditions and analyzes ways in which they can be studied. Leman outlines his theory of embodied music cognition, introducing a model that describes the relationship between a human subject and its environment, analyzing the coupling of action and perception, and exploring different degrees of the body's engagement with music. He then examines possible applications in two core areas: interaction with music instruments and music search and retrieval in a database or digital library. The embodied music cognition approach, Leman argues, can help us develop tools that integrate artistic expression and contemporary technology.

The Geopolitics of Real Estate

The Geopolitics of Real Estate

Author: Dallas Rogers

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

ISBN: 9781783483341

Category: Political Science

Page: 224

View: 207

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A historical analysis of the geopolitics of real estate with settler-colonialism on the one side and the rise of über-wealthy foreign real estate investors on the other.

Perspectives: Redemption, Economics, Law, Justice, Mediation, Human Rights

Perspectives: Redemption, Economics, Law, Justice, Mediation, Human Rights

Author: Michael A. Pennacchia

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

ISBN: 9781469168364

Category: Political Science

Page: 111

View: 261

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Michael A. Pennacchia has earned a MA in Diplomacy with a concentration in Conflict Resolution from Norwich University in Vermont. A BA in Political Science from New Jersey City University where he also interned at the United Nations for one year under Dr. Harris Schoenberg, the UN NGO Chairman for Human Rights. He is certified as an experienced Civil and Family Mediator in the State of Texas. He is retired from GM Corp. where he learned to empathize with the plight of working men and women. He resides in New Jersey where he proudly serves his country and community in the US Coast Guard Auxiliary. When writing the six research papers which comprise the content of this book, the authors underlining theme has been the importance of each and every individual human being. He has endeavored to emphasis the value of the individual human soul when writing on ever present geopolitical themes.

Mediating Dangerously

Mediating Dangerously

Author: Kenneth Cloke

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 0787959294

Category: Family & Relationships

Page: 272

View: 813

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Sometimes it's necessary to push beyond the usual limits of themediation process to achieve deeper and more lasting change.Mediating Dangerously shows how to reach beyond technical andtraditional intervention to the outer edges and dark places ofdispute resolution, where risk taking is essential and fundamentalchange is the desired result. It means opening wounds and lookingbeneath the surface, challenging comfortable assumptions, andexploring dangerous issues such as dishonesty, denial, apathy,domestic violence, grief, war, and slavery in order to reach adeeper level of transformational change. Mediating Dangerously shows conflict resolution professionals howto advance beyond the traditional steps, procedures, and techniquesof mediation to unveil its invisible heart and soul and to revealthe subtle and sensitive engine that drives the process of personaland organizational transformation. This book is a major newcontribution to the literature of conflict resolution that willinspire and educate professionals in the field for years to come.

What Causes Human Behavior

What Causes Human Behavior

Author: Stephen F. Ledoux

Publisher: Dogwise Publishing

ISBN: 9781617812125

Category: Pets

Page: 432

View: 840

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What experts are saying about What Causes Human Behavior: Stephen Ledoux's book, is a strong non-compromising, theoretical and philosophical argument that the answers come from behaviorology, the natural science of behavior, that the answers do not come from astrology, theology, etc., or from psychology, the mentalistic unnatural science of the mind. And he supports his argument with examples of effective, science-based applications of applied behaviorology (applied behavior analysis) and with analyses of human behavior in everyday life, going from simple behaviors, to complex verbal behavior, with suggestions that behaviorology is crucial to the solutions of the world problems of overpopulation, sustainability, and global warming. But also, he's not afraid to make these complex topics more readable by using an occasional contraction, an informed expression, and even a little humor, i.e. he's way cool. Richard Malott, Ph.D. (Professor, Western Michigan University) Professor Ledoux has written a primer on a newly emerging discipline: behaviorology. It is the natural science of environment-behavior relations and an intellectually challenging subject, one that variously intersects with astrology, psychology, philosophy, education, and physiology plus other biological and behavioral sciences. Ledoux's discussion of explanatory fictions and a variety of other explanatory fallacies alone, however, is worth the price of admission. And there is so much more! John Stone Ph.D. (Professor, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, and President, Education Consumers Foundation at www.education-consumers.org)