Vol 3 No 2: The Human Machinehttps://www.doria.fi:443/handle/10024/1346582024-03-28T15:41:06Z2024-03-28T15:41:06ZConcluding Statement: The Human Machine at the Aboagora SymposiumHaapalainen, Annahttps://www.doria.fi:443/handle/10024/1346762017-09-23T05:17:48Z2017-04-27T13:04:22ZConcluding Statement: The Human Machine at the Aboagora Symposium
Haapalainen, Anna
Aboagora 2013 discussed the complex relationships between man and machine, where not only may the human being itself be viewed as a corporeal machine, but it is also possible to interpret the machine as an extension of the human sensory system. After three days of lectures and workshops about the multifaceted relationship between man and the machine, the ontological dividing line between humans and machines was open to question. For example, while the human body can be defined as the ultimate machine – an assemblage of forces, actions and mechanisms ranging from the optics of the eye to the processes of cognition – the boundaries between man and machine may be blurred as technological devices are used as integral parts of the human body. Where do we draw the line between man and machine in such situations? The Aboagora symposium on 'The Human Machine' raised important questions about the ontological qualities and delineations of various entities.
MA Anna Haapalainen is coordinator of the Aboagora symposium and doctoral candidate in comparative religion, University of Turku.
2017-04-27T13:04:22ZDeveloping twenty-first century skills: insights from an intensive interdisciplinary workshop Mosaic of LifeMilosevic, TamaraDella Penna, Alicehttps://www.doria.fi:443/handle/10024/1346752017-09-23T05:17:46Z2017-04-27T13:01:17ZDeveloping twenty-first century skills: insights from an intensive interdisciplinary workshop Mosaic of Life
Milosevic, Tamara; Della Penna, Alice
The Baltic Sea, one of the world’s largest semi-enclosed seas, which, with its very low salinity and quasi-isolation from the big oceans cannot decide whether it is a sea or a large lake. This geologically-unique environment supports an even more surprising and delicate marine ecosystem, where a complex community of fishes, marine mammals and important microscopic organisms creates a magical mosaic of life. Humans have enjoyed the abundance of life in the Baltic Sea for thousands of years, and major Scandinavian and Baltic cities have oriented themselves towards this geo-ecosystem in order to develop and seek ecological, economical and cultural inspiration and wealth. The ‘Mosaic of Life’ workshop aimed at going beyond the obvious in examining the meaning of the Baltic Sea by gathering together a selection of young, creative minds from different backgrounds ranging from the arts and economics to geology and life sciences. This intensive workshop was designed as a unique training opportunity to develop essential twenty-first century skills – to introduce and develop creative, critical and interdisciplinary thinking and collaborative teamwork, as well as to foster a visual and scientific literacy, using project-based learning and hands-on activities. Our final goal has been to be inspired by the resulting connections, differences and unifying concepts, creating innovative, interdisciplinary projects which would look further than the sea – further than the eye can see and further into the future.
Tamara Milosevic, PhD, is a curriculum designer on the bachelor’s programme ‘Frontiers in Life Science’ at Paris Descartes University, France. In parallel with her postdoctoral research on learning through research methods in higher education, she is teaching several intensive, project-based courses at the undergraduate level. She finished her master’s studies in biology at Zagreb University in 2006 and completed her PhD in interdisciplinary life sciences at Paris Descartes University in 2011. She has since then been actively involved in innovative science education and teaching transversal skills. She is focused on designing courses aimed at developing critical thinking, creativity, interdisciplinary connections and project-based learning. She has international experience in managing projects and groups and organizing events and activities of different profiles (clubs, associations, workshops, symposia, international projects, administrative/research/teaching coordination teams).
Alice Della Penna, M.S., is a PhD student in Marine Science between LOCEAN (Paris, France) and University of Tasmania (Hobart, Australia) through the interdisciplinary life sciences Frontieres du Vivant programme. Besides her research interests in marine biology and oceanography, she is interested in science communication through science interactive exhibits and workshops in schools and interdisciplinarity.
2017-04-27T13:01:17ZSocial media: implications for everyday life, politics and human agencyLövheim, MiaJansson, AndréPaasonen, SusannaSumiala, Johannahttps://www.doria.fi:443/handle/10024/1346742017-09-23T05:17:45Z2017-04-27T12:56:45ZSocial media: implications for everyday life, politics and human agency
Lövheim, Mia; Jansson, André; Paasonen, Susanna; Sumiala, Johanna
With the current saturation of digital devices in contemporary society, the boundaries between humans and machines have become increasingly blurred. This digitalization of everyday life both obscures and reminds us of the fact that identity, agency and power cannot be attributed to the individual or the machine alone: rather, they are the outcome of interactions and negotiations within a network of actors. Social media, such as Facebook, blogs, Twitter and YouTube, show clearly that the ‘meaning’ or ‘effect’ of digital technologies is formed through the practices in which they are used and the social relations and institutions that develop around them. This article presents views expressed during a panel discussion on the implications of social media for everyday life, politics and human agency at the Aboagora Symposium, held on 14th August 2013. The panel was organized as a dialogue between the participants and the discussion was structured around three questions, presented below. The participants in the panel were; Professor André Jansson (Karlstad University), Professor Susanna Paasonen (University of Turku) and adjunct Professor Johanna Sumiala (University of Helsinki). The panel was chaired by Professor Mia Lövheim (Uppsala University).
Mia Lövheim is professor of sociology of religion at the Uppsala University. Her research focuses on media as an arena for expressing and negotiating religious and cultural identities in late modern Swedish society, with a particular focus on youth and gender. Her current research concerns representations of religion and modernity in the Swedish daily press, and the interplay between religion and mediatization. Some of her recent publications are ‘Mediatization of religion: a critical appraisal’ (Culture and Religion, 2011), ‘Young women’s blogs as ethical spaces’ (Information, Communication and Society, 2011), ‘Halal-tv: negotiating the place of religion in Swedish public discourse’ (Nordic Journal of Religion and Society, 2011) and the edited collection Media, Religion and Gender: Key Issues and New Challenges (Routledge 2013).
André Jansson is professor of media and communication studies at Karlstad University, Sweden. His research deals primarily with issues related to media, globalization and cultural identity. His most recent project studied perceptions of various forms of mediated surveillance, including the significance of new (social) media at the intersection of cosmopolitanization and social monitoring. Currently he leads a project focusing on the role of various (trans)media technologies for sustaining close relationships among globally mobile class factions. Jansson’s research is influenced by cultural sociological as well as human geographical and phenomenological theoretical traditions, notably in the spirit of Pierre Bourdieu.
Susanna Paasonen is professor of media studies at the University of Turku. With an interest in studies of popular culture, internet research, affect theory and pornography, she is most recently the author of Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography (MIT Press 2011) and coeditor of Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences (Routledge 2010) and Networked Affect (MIT Press, forthcoming). Her current research focuses on affect, technology and materiality.
Johanna Sumiala is docent at the Department of Social Research/Media and Communication Studies at the University of Helsinki and Kone Senior Research Fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Sumiala is a media scholar specializing in media anthropology, social media, ritual studies, death and visual culture. She has published widely including such journals as Media, Culture & Society, Social Anthropology and Communication, Culture and Critique. Her most recent book is Media and Ritual: Death, Community and Everyday Life (Routledge 2013).
2017-04-27T12:56:45ZTime, space, and the new media machine of the terrorphoneArmitage, Johnhttps://www.doria.fi:443/handle/10024/1346732017-09-23T05:17:44Z2017-04-27T12:51:25ZTime, space, and the new media machine of the terrorphone
Armitage, John
In this short article, the author is concerned with how the contemporary form of the telephone, a new media machine which was of deep-rooted significance for Marshall McLuhan, promotes our obsession with forms of shared participation and social implosion. The author argues that the form of the telephone involves a complex abolition of our sense of space, interwoven with unexpected socio-cultural effects, which then create new subjectivities as well as new forms of decentralization that are intuited but not fully understood. To politicize these effects, and following the revelations of the American whistleblower Edward Snowden, the author identifies the form of the mobile telephone as a new form of media and argues that it is no longer an ‘extension of man’, as McLuhan suggested, but an extension of the US State, which is producing new forms of socio-cultural collapse. The author then explores how the remote-controlled time and space of what he calls the ‘terrorphone’ cultivates, among other things, the contemporary visualization of speech. Finally, he questions the desirability of unrelenting mobile telephone interaction as our only ‘intelligent’ choice today when such interaction is, contrary to McLuhan, not a great extension of our central nervous system, but in fact a danger to it.
John Armitage is Professor of Media Arts at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK. He is the founder and co-editor, with Ryan Bishop and Douglas Kellner, of the Duke University Press journal Cultural Politics, the author of Virilio and the Media (Polity Press 2012), co-editor, with Ryan Bishop, of Virilio and Visual Culture (Edinburgh University Press 2013), and, most recently, editor of The Virilio Dictionary (Edinburgh University Press 2013).
2017-04-27T12:51:25Z