Our goal is to show how science fiction films have dealt with the augmentation of bodily and cognitive faculties. These cinematographic imaginaries allow us to question the interest of such innovations. They depict a world in which the artificialization and mechanization of many activities leads to a loss of control over them. This would mean that we would run the risk, in the long term, of being deprived of our human qualities. However, we will show that these films do not (...) question the viability of this type of society. Indeed, these fictions do not insist on the constraints that these transformations nevertheless impose on the environment. Faced with the ecological crisis, the hold of technological innovations on all societies, far from appearing as the solution, risks on the contrary being identified as part of the problem. (shrink)

In 1591, in a very innovative way, the doctor Juan de Cárdenas asserts in his Primera parte de los problemas y secretos maravillosos de las Indias, the superiority of the criollos (white people of Spanish origin, born in the American territory) over the Spaniards. His text considers American space as an element that “increases” the capacities of the body and, consequently, of the mind, making the criollos superior to the Spaniards. Cárdenas’ text appears to be a clear break with (...) other texts that consider, on the contrary, the colonial space as a space that “degrades” or “weaks” the body, reducing its physical, intellectual and moral capacities. In contrast to theories that assert that the tropical climate “diminishes” the individual, Juan de Cárdenas develops the idea of a body (and a mind) with enhanced capacities. This paper will analyse the implications and the imaginary mechanisms of this discourse, and its links to a specific social and political context. At the end of the sixteenth century, Mexico and, more broadly, the viceroyalty of New Spain saw the emergence of a new social class, the Creoles, who were increasingly occupying prestigious positions. The theory of the “augmented body” of the criollo, elaborated by Juan de Cárdenas, consolidates the new social hierarchies that were emerging at the same time in colonial Mexico. (shrink)

Sensory augmentation challenges current societal norms and views of what is conceived as a “normal” human being. Beginning with self reflections of a bodyhacker, the author proposes an extended view onto the human or respectively cyborg body. Based on cognitive theories, it is argumented that we are already mental cyborgs. Our brains plastically restructure themselves in order to meet new requirements of the technological extended human.

Anorexia nervosa, a disorder of voluntary food restriction leading to severe weight loss in female adolescents, remains an enigma. In particular, the appropriation of the starved thin body into the self-concept in AN is a process insufficiently researched and still poorly understood. Healthy humans undergoing starvation experience a slowing of movements and avoid voluntary exercise. By contrast, AN tends to be not infrequently associated with voluntary, sometimes excessive and/or compulsive exercise. Such deliberate exercise, not reported in starvation, seems to (...) be facilitated by an increased urge for movement and physical restlessness, particular to AN. The increased urge to move would reflect spontaneous daily activity, the energy expended for everything that is not sleeping, eating, or voluntary exercise. Our hypothesis is that the starvation-induced increased urge to move and restlessness may promote the development of AN. Reversal of the fasting state, by either high caloric food or by leptin administration, would be expected to reduce restlessness and the increased urge to move along with improvement in other symptoms in AN. This review explores the idea that such restless activation in AN, in itself and through accelerating body weight loss, might foster the integration of the starving body into the self-concept by enhancing the person’s sense of self-control and sense of achievement and through invigorating proprioception and through intensifying the perception of the changing body shape. Tentative evidence from studies piloting leptin administration in chronic AN patients which support this hypothesis is reviewed. The findings show that short term administration of high doses of leptin indeed mitigated depressive feelings, inner tension, intrusive thoughts of food, and the increased urge to be physically active, easing the way to recovery, yet had little influence on the patients’ personal commitment to remain at a low weight. Full recovery then requires resolution of the individuals’ personal unresolved psychological conflicts through psychotherapy and frequently needs specialized treatment approaches to address psychiatric co-morbidities. AN might be conceptualized as a hereditary form of starvation resistance, facilitated by the effects of starvation on fitness allowing for an exceptionally intense personal commitment to perpetuate food restriction. (shrink)

While many scholars have decried the erasure of the body in virtual reality (VR), this paper focuses on the body – and the physical reality for which it stands – as a critical component of any experience of virtual reality. Specifically, studying VR from the perspective of the physical body allows for a more nuanced appreciation of the unique reality of this «virtual» reality. Moreover, this paper argues that the body should not be seen as a (...) distraction from the immersive potential of VR, but rather as a potential tool for augmenting what virtual reality can currently offer. (shrink)

Using three paradigm cases of persons living with Parkinson's Disease (PD) the authors make a case for augmenting and enriching a Cartesian medical account of the pathophysiology of PD with an enriched understanding of the lived body experience of PD, the lived implications of PD for a particular person's concerns and coping with the illness. Linking and adding a thick description of the lived experience of PD can enrich caregiving imagination and attunement to the patient's possibilities, concerns and constraints. (...) The work of Merleau-Ponty is used to articulate the middle terms of the lived experience of dwelling in a lifeworld. Examining lived experience of embodied intentionality, skilled bodily capacities as highlighted in Merleau-Ponty's non-mechanistic physiology opens new therapeutic, coping and caregiving possibilities. Matching temporal rhythms can decrease the stress of being assisted with activities of daily living. For example, caregivers and patients alike can be taught strategies for extending their lived bodily capacities by altering rhythms, by shifting hyperactivity to different parts of the body and other strategies that change the perceptual experience associated with walking in different environment. A medical account of the pathophysiology of PD is nessessary and useful, but not sufficient for designing caregiving in ways that enrich and extend the existential skills of dwelling of persons with PD. The dominance of mechanistic physiology makes caregivers assume that it is the 'real discourse' about the disease, causing researchers and caregivers alike to overlook the equally real lived experience of the patient which requires different descriptive discourses and different sources of understanding. Lack of dialogue between the two discourses is tragic for patients because caregivers need both in order to provide attuned, effective caregiving. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to uncover the assumptions and concerns driving public debates about Google Glass and police body cameras. In doing so, it shows how debates about wearable cameras reflect broader cultural tensions surrounding race and privilege. Design/methodology/approach The paper employs a form of critical discourse analysis to discover patterns in journalistic coverage of these two technologies. Findings Public response to Glass has been overwhelmingly negative, while response to body cameras has been positive. Analysis indicates that this (...) contrasting response reflects a consistent public concern about the dynamics of power and privilege in the digital economy. While this concern is well-founded, news coverage indicates that technologists, policy makers and citizens each hold assumptions about the inevitability and unvarnished beneficence of technology. Research limitations/implications Since this qualitative approach seeks to discern broad emergent patterns, it does not employ a quantifiable and reproducible coding schema. Practical implications The article concludes by arguing that grassroots action, appropriate regulatory policy and revitalized systems of professional journalism are indispensable as the struggle for social justice unfolds in the emerging digital economy. Social implications These debates represent a struggle over what and how people see. Yet public discourse often glosses over the disadvantages of technological change, which impacts who is able to amass social power. Originality/value This comparative approach yields unique conceptual insight into debates about technologies that augment ways of seeing. (shrink)

Through the epistemic potential of speculative science fiction, this article offers a reflection on the impacts of technologies on the human body. More precisely, this article illuminates how literary texts anticipate the challenges which will arise in relation with the body of the future from our most awaited and fantasized technologies. Olga Ravn’s novel, The employees (2018), will be the basis of this article’s inquiry into how the augmented body, extraterrestrial life and artificial intelligence impact the (...) body and, by the same token, upset our own understanding of ourselves and the world which surrounds us. As a whole, this article illustrates that a future where technical advancement takes precedence on social progress can lead not only to a disembodied reality, but more importantly to an alienated humanity. (shrink)

With the rising influence of digitalization and its immense penetration intoeven everyday life, the last decade of the 20th Century addressed to a critical threshold in the successive transformation process of the spatiality in its long-term run. The advanced digital technologies of ubiquitous computing and generative design, as well as the invention of smart materials in late 90’s have all provoked the fluid characteristics of spatiality, and strengthen the transformative capacities of the architectural space through the emergence of computer-augmented (...) territories. Additionally, while they are becoming as the body extensions, the advent of novel apparatuses and gadgets further enhanced the inte- gration of the corporal and incorporal bodies with the spatio-temporal multiplicities, where the hyperdimensionality of the space has been triggered to its outmost range, in relation to the “soft and smart technologically augmented immanent millieu”, in Spuybroek terms. Thus, like Spuybroek points out as the “haptonomist” presence of the body merges itself with these diverse bodily extensions on one hand; and on the other hand, as the rising influence of nomadic view of the world further stimulates the unboundedness and endless fluidity of space, so that the spatiality becomes a landscape of successive transformations, a topology of emergence or a plane of becoming, which is merely defined by lines of forces, and occures as an alive territory rather than a limited space of predefined boarders. Therefore, this evolvable territory which is affectable and being affected by the lines of forces –inner and outer forces–, emerges as an animated existence, an interactive organism. So, by interacting with the Deleuzian Philosophy and their notions like lines of forces, folding, becoming, smooth space, territory, spatium, this article aims to reveal the relevance of these notions in architectural discourse, as well as the emergence of the smooth space in the contemporary architectural practice, by magnifiying one of the very initial examples of its kind; in terms of unfolding the Fresh Water Pavilion of NOX Architecture by Lars Spuybroek into question to reveal the essences of thecontemporary transformable-evolvable architectural spatiality. (shrink)

As the physical and digital worlds interact,some fields of technoscience have started toshift from an approach emphasizing simulation –in which the physical is replicated in thedigital – to one focusing on augmentation, inwhich the digital is utilized to enhance thephysical. A good place to study theimplications this shift has on the individualis the field of personal wearable technologies.Here, the body is not simply extended byinformation and communication technologies(ICTs), but also becomes their intimate host.This represents a new step in theconceptualization (...) of the synergy betweenindividual (body) and technology (environment),and also affects the ways in which the role andcharacter of each actor are defined. This paperexplores some of the theoreticalre-orientations underpinning the development ofwearable computers and how these shape therelationship between body and environment. (shrink)

In the special section ‘Body Hacking: Self-Made Cyborgs and Visions of Transhuman Corporeality’, attention is drawn to cyborgism, a set of cultural and very personal practices of experimentation with the human body that often take place outside the confines of institutionalised technoscience. Known, for example, as ‘body hackers’, ‘grinders’ or ‘self-made cyborgs’ and engaging in unusual forms of body modification, the practitioners are enthusiasts who do not necessarily have any ‘disability’ in the conventional sense of the (...) term. They consider the body a highly malleable material, a transformable, improvable, augmentable entity. The collection of papers in this special section encompasses first-hand accounts of cyborg practices as well as intellectual reflections on their implications. (shrink)

Richard Shusterman suggested that Maurice Merleau-Ponty neglected “‘lived somaesthetic reflection,’ that is, concrete but representational and reflective body consciousness.” While unsure about this assessment of Merleau-Ponty, lived somaesthetic reflection, or what the late Sam Mallin called “body phenomenology”—understood as a meditation on the body reflecting on both itself and the world—is my starting point. Another is John Dewey’s bodily theory of perception, augmented somewhat by Merleau-Ponty. -/- With these starting points, I spent roughly 20 hours with (...) St. Benedict Restores Life to a Young Monk (c. 1360), a work of tempera and gold leaf on panel, by Giovanni Del Biondo, active in Italy from 1356 to 1398, on display in the Art Gallery of Ontario’s permanent collection. Following Dewey’s suggestion that “[t]he eye ... is only the channel through which a total response takes place,” meaning that motor, emotional, intellectual and non-visual perceptual capacities become active when we encounter paintings, I describe how the work engaged a range of bodily modalities; and how reflecting on these, in turn, supplied phenomenal articulations of life negating, preserving and enhancing forces important in the culture that produced it, and famously discussed by Friedrich Nietzsche. By virtue of the approach adopted, I also demonstrate Dewey’s belief that intimate engagement with art entails a total coordination of one’s capacities around the artwork, while simultaneously reinforcing Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about perception and how we can find phenomenal articulations of concepts such as the Nietzschean ones just mentioned. While focusing on Del Biondo’s painting, my main purpose is to engage in body phenomenology practices, and to show, in the words of Shusterman, how “[w]e might sharpen our appreciation of art through more attention to our somaesthetic feelings involved in perceiving art” and indeed the world. (shrink)

This article examines soldier performance optimisation, enhancement, and augmentation across the three dimensions of physical performance, cognitive performance, and socio-cultural understanding. Optimisation refers to combatants attaining their maximum biological potential. Enhancement refers to combatants achieving a level of performance beyond their biological potential through drugs, surgical procedures, or even gene editing. Augmentation refers to a blending of organic and biomechatronic body parts such as electronic or mechanical implants, prosthetics, and brain–machine interfaces. This article identifies that soldier optimisation is a (...) necessity to protect individual combatants and to give them the ability to make legal and morally justifiable decisions in battle. While enhancement and augmentation of military personnel can lead to accelerated and more destructive warfare, it can also be argued that there is an ethical and moral responsibility to provide combatants the best opportunity for survivability, and that better functioning, less fatigued, and better informed military personnel can make better decisions in battle. There is also a moral responsibility of the state for the combatants themselves, and short-term military success must be balanced against the short- and long-term health and wellbeing of the personnel. This article concludes that it is both the intent and the degree that decide the acceptability. (shrink)

There is an overlooked similarity between three classic accounts of the conditions of object experience from three distinct disciplines. Sociology: the “inversion” that accompanies discovery in the natural sciences, as local causes of effects are reattributed to an observed object. Psychology: the “externalization” that accompanies mastery of a visual–tactile sensory substitution interface, as tactile sensations of the proximal interface are transformed into vision-like experience of a distal object. Biology: the “projection” that brings forth an animal’s Umwelt, as impressions on its (...) body’s sensory surfaces are reconfigured into perception of an external object. This similarity between the effects of scientific practice and interface-use on the one hand, and of sensorimotor interaction on the other, becomes intelligible once we accept that skillful engagement with instruments and interfaces constitutes a socio-material augmentation of our basic perceptual capacity. This enactive interpretation stands in contrast to anti-realism about science associated with constructivist interpretations of these three phenomena, which are motivated by viewing them as the internal mental construction of the experienced object. Instead, it favors a participatory realism: the sensorimotor basis of perceptual experience loops not only through our body, but also through the external world. This allows us to conceive of object experience in relational terms, i.e., as one or more subjects directly engaging with the world. Consequently, we can appreciate scientific observation in its full complexity: it is a socio-materially augmented process of becoming acquainted with the observed object that—like tool-use and perceiving more generally—is irreducibly self, other-, and world-involving. (shrink)

Today, new artistic practices incorporate scientific techniques linked to medical research that modify the body’s biological performance in vivo, transforming it into a singular laboratory object. In this way, some artists are making works of their bodies by subjecting them to various biotechnological procedures, often invasive. Augmented, the biological body of these performance artists becomes a site for experimentation. DIY (Do It Yourself) enthusiasts or accompanied by biologists and doctors, are these ‘bio-artists’ evidence of the changes brought (...) about by a new mechanisation of the human body, the complexity of which we are only just beginning to understand? Could there be, in the name of art, reasons that justify the creation of utopian bodies that are not eschatological, and that could make us believe in the worst or the best of all worlds? Based on performances by Stelarc, Yann Marussich, Marion Laval-Jeantet and the Quimera Rosa duo, our aim is to analyse what is at stake in this new fabrication of the body outside its biological limits. (shrink)

Table of contents -- Preface -- Editor's introduction: hermínio martins and the technocene -- The technocene: on bodies, minds, and markets -- Technology sublime: paths to the post-human -- Perpetual augmentation: from eugenics to human genetic capitalism -- The body vanishes! momenta of discarnation in technoscience today -- When universities become body-shops -- A select bibliography of hermínio martin's works.

In the current socio‐political climate pedagogies consistent with rationalism are in the ascendancy. One way to challenge the purchase of rationalism within educational discourse and practice is through the body, or by re‐thinking the nature of mind‐body relations. While the orientation of this paper is ultimately phenomenological, it takes as its point of departure recent feminist scholarship, which is demonstrating that attending to physiology can provide insight into the complexity of mind‐body relations. Elizabeth Wilson's account of the (...) role of the gut in psychological processes suggests a far less hierarchical relation between brain and body than rationalism allows. Such insights are also supported by recent phenomenological inquiries into cognition and the body. My question is, what implications do these insights have for how the nature of embodiment is understood, and, by extension, learning? This paper explores how informal, non‐cognitive modes of knowing, or of engaging with the world, inform learning in higher education contexts. More specifically, it raises the question of what role non‐cognitive modes of engagement, such as sensibility, have in augmenting, enabling or delimiting the learning process. (shrink)

Poovey has argued that the anesthetized “unresisting body” can offer no impediment to a doctor's interpretation of its conduct. In contrast, drawing on ethnographic data of anesthetic practice, this article suggests that the technological augmentation of the body required by present-day anesthesia enhances the ability of an unconscious body to convey its needs and shape the course of the anesthetic. In analyzing the expressions of anesthesia's cyborgs, the author draws on Haraway, Latour, and Suchman to reconsider the (...) characteristics of agency and how an unconscious body might “resist” or inform a doctor's interpretation. This attempt to explore the nature and distribution of agency within a collective is intended as a contribution to the debates surrounding medical dominance and those theorizing the role of technology in health care. (shrink)

As the pagan classical world was subsumed into Christianity sexually hyperactive gods and goddesses transmuted into saints, their former statues that glorified the perfection of their bodies smashed into pieces and reimagined as austere two-dimensional icons to be worshipped by the new faithful. That dualistic and polemic narrative, where the soul’s purpose was to annihilate the body, survives today in the distinction between software and hardware, algorithms and robots, the former as the “ghosts” that animate the empty vessels, the (...) “machines”. But how does this narrative impact our cultural and social fantasies in the twenty-first century as we accelerate toward coexisting, uniting, or merging with intelligent artifacts? How does “humanness” blur when it is claimed by no-biological human-like entities too, or when humans augment their perception, consciousness and physical power through genetic engineering, drugs, or software and mechanical prostheses? Suppose we are destined to remake ourselves in the image of our ancient gods. Will it be through the embodiment of technologies in the physical reality, or through the complete disembodiment of our minds inside virtual worlds? (shrink)

The theory of Participatory Discrepancies (or PDs) claims that minute temporal asynchronies (microtiming) in music performance are crucial for prompting bodily entrainment in listeners, which is a fundamental effect of the “groove” experience. Previous research has failed to find evidence to support this theory. The present study tested the influence of varying PD magnitudes on the beat-related body movement behavior of music listeners. 160 participants (79 music experts, 81 non-experts) listened to twelve music clips in either Funk or Swing (...) style. These stimuli were based on two audio recordings (one in each style) of expert drum and bass duo performances. In one series of six clips, the PDs were downscaled from their originally performed magnitude to complete quantization in steps of 20%. In another series of six clips, the PDs were upscaled from their original magnitude to double magnitude in steps of 20%. The intensity of the listeners’ beat-related head movement was measured using video-based motion capture technology and Fourier analysis. A mixed-design four-factor ANOVA showed that the PD manipulations had a significant effect on the expert listeners’ entrainment behavior. The experts moved more when listening to stimuli with PDs that were downscaled by 60% compared to completely quantized stimuli. This finding offers partial support for PD theory: PDs of a certain magnitude do augment entrainment in listeners. But the effect was found to be small to moderately sized, and it affected music expert listeners only. (shrink)

From the “psychoplasmic” offspring in The Brood (1979) to the tattooed encodings in Eastern Promises (2007), David Cronenberg presents a compelling vision of embodiment, which challenges traditional accounts of personal identity and obliges us to ask how human beings persist through different times, places, and bodily states while retaining their sameness. Traditionally, the response to this question has emphasised the importance of cognitive memory in securing the continuity of consciousness. But what has been underplayed in this debate is the question (...) of how the body can both reinforce and disrupt the grounds for our personal identity. Accordingly, by turning the notoriously “body conscious” work of Cronenberg, especially his seminal The Fly (1986), I intend to pursue the relation between identity and embodiment in the following way. First, by augmenting John Locke’s account of personal identity with a specific appeal to the body, I will explore how Cronenberg’s treatment of embodiment as a site of independent experience challenges the idea we have that cognitive memory is the guarantor of personal identity. Cronenberg’s treatment of the “New Flesh” posits an account of the body that undermines the Cartesian and Lockean account of personal identity as being centred on the mind. In its place, I will argue that Cronenberg shows us how the body establishes a personality independently of the mind. Second, through focusing explicitly on body memory, I will explore how we, as embodied subjects, relate to our bodies in a Cronenbergian world. Approaching this relation between memory and embodiment via the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, I will argue that memory is at the heart of Cronenberg’s vision of body horror. I will conclude by suggesting that far from generating unity, Cronenberg’s vision of embodiment and identity is diseased (often literally) by a memory that cannot be assimilated by cognition. The result of this failure to assimilate body memory, is that memory itself occupies the role of the monster within. (shrink)

The dual-aspect monist conjecture launched by Pauli and Jung in the mid-20th century will be couched in somewhat formal terms to characterize it more concisely than by verbal description alone. After some background material situating the Pauli–Jung conjecture among other conceptual approaches to the mind–matter problem, the main body of this paper outlines its general framework of a basic psychophysically neutral reality with its derivative mental and physical aspects and the nature of the correlations that connect these aspects. Some (...) related approaches are discussed to identify key similarities to and deviations from the Pauli–Jung framework that may be useful for cross-fertilization. (shrink)

In March of 2019, with a modicum of superiority and significant financial strain, I made the decision to buy a Peloton bike. I was in good company; many other Americans reacted to social distancing measures and citywide closures by investing in personal exercise equipment, and I imagine at least some did for the same reasons as I did: namely, to avoid the pitfalls of pandemic-related weight gain aka Stay in Shape. I entered into my own personal "emergency maintenance" mode, unwilling (...) to allow the possibility that a global catastrophe might impact my body's size. The pressure only augmented as the pandemic dragged on, with the phrase "Quarantine 15" coined to describe the inevitable effects of our new sedentary... (shrink)

The thesis of the dissertation is that Husserl's phenomenological analyses of the human body are important in assessing the claim that phenomenology provides the basis for a "transcendental idealism". The central role of these analyses is to reconcile the sense of consciousness as a world-creating transcendental synthesis and as an empirical self: if successful, Husserl's idealism could boast a sensitivity to the empirical that would significantly augment its plausibility. ;The argument begins by setting up the problem vis-a-vis the experience (...) of the other person. The issue at hand is how the body of the other person expresses the presence of a consciousness. Yet the question that guides the analysis is: if "consciousness" means a world-creating, transcendental synthesis , then in what sense can we speak of an empirical consciousness that belongs to the world, thus of a person standing before us ? Part of the answer, it is asserted, lies in the expressive nature of a person's body: that is, the human body is a concrete thing in the world that yet expresses the sense of consciousness as world-creating, thereby providing for it a "worldly", empirical manifestation. ;The main part of the dissertation is a presentation of Husserl's analyses of the human body, which is described as a threefold unity of extension, materiality, and time. An understanding of each of these dimensions provides a piece of the puzzle as to how the body of the other is expressive of consciousness. ;The study ends with the problem of phenomenology as a transcendental idealism. The conclusion is that, for Husserl, consciousness is the condition for the manifestation of the "world" only as an empirical, bodily consciousness. I believe the tenability of this position can be demonstrated through Husserl's phenomenology of the human body, where the body is understood as a special mode of the expression of consciousness. For these analyses, taken as a whole, lend to his idealism a subtlety that significantly boosts both its plausibility and the force of its presentation. (shrink)

From the “psychoplasmic” offspring in The Brood (1979) to the tattooed encodings in Eastern Promises (2007), David Cronenberg presents a compelling vision of embodiment, which challenges traditional accounts of personal identity and obliges us to ask how human beings persist through different times, places, and bodily states while retaining their sameness. Traditionally, the response to this question has emphasised the importance of cognitive memory in securing the continuity of consciousness. But what has been underplayed in this debate is the question (...) of how the body can both reinforce and disrupt the grounds for our personal identity. Accordingly, by turning the notoriously “body conscious” work of Cronenberg, especially his seminal The Fly (1986), I intend to pursue the relation between identity and embodiment in the following way. First, by augmenting John Locke’s account of personal identity with a specific appeal to the body, I will explore how Cronenberg’s treatment of embodiment as a site of independent experience challenges the idea we have that cognitive memory is the guarantor of personal identity. Cronenberg’s treatment of the “New Flesh” posits an account of the body that undermines the Cartesian and Lockean account of personal identity as being centred on the mind. In its place, I will argue that Cronenberg shows us how the body establishes a personality independently of the mind. Second, through focusing explicitly on body memory, I will explore how we, as embodied subjects, relate to our bodies in a Cronenbergian world. Approaching this relation between memory and embodiment via the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, I will argue that memory is at the heart of Cronenberg’s vision of body horror. I will conclude by suggesting that far from generating unity, Cronenberg’s vision of embodiment and identity is diseased (often literally) by a memory that cannot be assimilated by cognition. The result of this failure to assimilate body memory, is that memory itself occupies the role of the monster within. (shrink)

New pharmacological therapies, often dubbed `lifestyle drugs', demonstrate the enactment of yet another interface between technologies and bodies that promises a re-fashioning of the body with transformative, life-enhancing results. This article analyzes the emergence of one lifestyle drug, Viagra, from a technoscience studies perspective, conceptualizing Viagra as a new medical technology of the body. Through an analysis of promotional materials for Viagra, we argue that this pharmaceutical device performs ideological work through its discursive scripts that serves to reinforce (...) and augment dominant cultural narratives in relation to material bodies, particularly those of hegemonic masculinity and male (and female) sexuality. We conclude that Viagra carries the potential to reify and reinforce these dominant and hegemonic narratives, while at the same time, through ensuring an open market for heterogeneous users, it provides spaces for alternatives to these normative ideals and assumptions. (shrink)

Although consumers and physicians alike have long described the goal of aesthetic surgery as the production of an “improved” but still “natural-looking” body, interviews with women who had cosmetic surgery between 1990 and 2007 suggest that the “artificial” is becoming increasingly prevalent within consumers’ narratives of breast enlargement. This article explores that change in relation to processes of conspicuous consumption, the growing cultural emphasis on continual self-transformation, and the increasing normalization of cosmetic modification. Following Fraser, it treats consumers’ accounts (...) not as the reflection of “reality” or a “true self” but instead as indicators of the kinds of options, expressions, assumptions, and perspectives that are available for use in communication about cosmetic surgery. The analysis also draws on feminist writings about the social construction of “breastedness” in femininity. In so doing, it seeks to conceptualize the cultural significance of breasts that are “too good to be real.”. (shrink)

This article employs Foucauldian and feminist analytics to advance a critical approach to wearable digital health- and activity-tracking devices. Following Foucault’s insight that the growth of individual capabilities coincides with the intensification of power relations, I argue that digital self-tracking devices (DSTDs) expand individuals’ capacity for self-knowledge and self-care at the same time that they facilitate unprecedented levels of biometric surveillance, extend the regulatory mechanisms of both public health and fashion/beauty authorities, and enable increasingly rigorous body projects devoted to (...) the attainment of normative femininity. These technologies of surveillance, normalization, and discipline thus function to augment, and facilitate the cooperation of, neoliberal-era biopower and post-feminist patriarchal power. My analysis of digital self-tracking devices’ instrumentality to biopower and patriarchy contributes to the emergent field of critical digital health studies and builds new connections between political, social, and feminist theories of embodiment; biopower studies; fat studies; and trans-disciplinary body studies. (shrink)

Academic bioethics does not appear to be interested in communication and its ethical concerns unless communication is to do with issues such as capacity, consent, truth telling and confidentiality. In contrast practitioners are interested in actually communicating with their patients and they are often particularly perplexed when it comes to people with profound disabilities where communication appears disrupted. Although some new and not so new communication strategies, and especially intensive interaction, are available, little has been written on either the ethical (...) concerns these may present or the deeper concepts that underpin them. This article explores the practical applications of some of these communication strategies. By engaging these strategies with theology, and specifically Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body, this article identifies and addresses some significant ethical issues that may arise, notably the risk of dualism and of objectifying the human person. Moreover it provides communication strategies with a rationale that goes beyond practicalities to one based on respect for human dignity, justice and solidarity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early ChinaEdward SlingerlandMaterial Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China. By Mark Csikszentmihalyi. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Pp. vi + 402. Hardcover $180.00.Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China by Mark Csikszentmihalyi is a fascinating and meticulously researched study of early Chinese discussions of virtue and moral education in the period following what we might call (...) the "physiological turn," marked by a growing interest in the body and the embodiment of social ideals that begins sometime in the fourth century B.C.E. In Csikszentmihalyi's usage, the phrase "material virtue" refers "narrowly to descriptions of the virtues in terms of their quasi-material properties. More generally, such descriptions are characteristic of the view that, once cultivated, the virtues manifest themselves through physiological changes in the body that can be observed by others" (p. 5). This early Chinese development of this sort of nondualistic model of the self is a topic of growing interest to scholars of early China, with relevance to many contemporary debates about ethics and the mind-body relationship. This study's focus on a recently discovered archeological find, the text of the Wuxing 五行 (datable to sometime before 300 B.C.E.), also places it at the center of one of the most exciting recent developments in the field: the trove of newly discovered and, in many cases, previously unknown texts that are in the process of enriching and transforming our understanding of early Chinese thought. The two versions of the Wuxing that Csikszentmihalyi discusses come from Guodian (tomb closed ca. 300 B.C.E.) and Mawangdui (tomb closed 168 B.C.E.; this version also includes what seems to be a later commentary), two of the richest finds from the perspective of early Chinese philosophical and religious thought. Two substantial appendixes contain critical annotated editions of both texts, which summarize the state of the field with regard to their textual scholarship—an invaluable resource in itself.As Csikszentmihalyi notes, one important aspect of these finds is how they "have augmented the [received textual] record with different kinds of texts, challenging received notions of school and genre" (p. 1). This is one of the more interesting contributions of Csikszentmihalyi's study, part of a recent trend among scholars of early China to move beyond traditional "school" labels. Csikszentmihalyi presents the Wuxing, which modern scholars attribute to the disciple Zisi 子思,1 as a hitherto unheard voice in "an important conversation about the nature of the virtues in early China from the fourth through the second centuries B.C.E." (p. 2), and by doing so significantly increases the subtlety of our picture of the early Chinese philosophical [End Page 694] landscape. For instance, in place of a more-or-less linear picture of the development of "Confucian" thought, originating with Kongzi and then diverging with the two followers Mengzi and Xunzi, Csikszentmihalyi argues for a view of the ru 儒 tradition that sees it as consisting of many competing disciple lineages, united by a shared technical vocabulary and the acknowledgment of Kongzi as an authority, but much more internally diverse than traditionally thought.Csikszentmihalyi contextualizes his discussion of the Wuxing by placing it firmly in the Mengzi-Zisi lineage that appears as one of Xunzi's targets in his famous "Against Twelve Masters" chapter. He makes a strong case for doing so: besides Xunzi's comment that the misguided followers of Mengzi and Zisi "created a theory, and called it 'Five Kinds of Action' (wuxing)" (p. 60), there are many textual and conceptual parallels between the Wuxing and the Mengzi. Csikszentmihalyi also makes a strong case that both the Mengzi and the Wuxing can be seen as springing from a similar motivation: defending Confucianism from Primitivist charges of moral hypocrisy by arguing for a more internalist conception of virtue, grounded in the physical body and its animating qi. As he notes, "The 'psychologizing' or 'embodiment' of moral self cultivation implies that genuine virtue cannot be simulated because it is an observable physical process" (p. 86). For instance, in his interesting discussion of the Mencian concept of haoranzhiqi 浩然之氣 (usually translated as "flood-like" qi), Csikszentmihalyi follows... (shrink)

The development of AAC technologies is of critical importance to the many people who are unable to speak intelligibly due to a communication disorder, and to their many everyday interlocutors. Advances in digital technologies have revolutionized AAC, leading to devices that can “speak for” such individuals as aptly as it is illustrated in the case of the world famous physicist, Stephen Hawking. However, given their dependence on prefabricated language, current AAC devices are very limited in their ability to mediate everyday (...) interactions. We argue here that the limits of AAC are firstly theoretical — grounded in prosthetic models that imagine AAC devices as replacements for damaged body parts and in transmission models of language production as communication. In contrast, our multidisciplinary team aims to design pseudo-intelligent mediators of communication by blending strengths of human mediators with features of current AAC technologies. To inform the design process, we report here our initial situated studies focusing on the distributed nature of everyday communicative activities conducted with potential AAC/PIM users. Our analysis focuses on the discursive alignments of these participants and their interlocutors, attending especially to the various ways their personal aides function as human mediators. Specifically, we focus on mapping the communicative activity around each of these differently-abled individuals as they navigated a university campus. We profile the everyday interactional patterns within functional systems and across settings, and present close discourse analysis of one interaction to highlight the diverse roles personal aides adopted in mediating communication. Finally, we argue that attending to differently “abled” bodies as they move through everyday communicative environments pushes CHAT to more fully theorize physicality, individual mobilities, and the roles of bodies in the laminated assemblage of functional systems. (shrink)

Academic interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be traced back to the 1930s. Since then an impressive body of empirical data and theory-building has been amassed, mainly located in the fields of management studies and business ethics. One of the most noteworthy recent conceptual contributions to the scholarship is Midttun’s (Corporate Governance 5(3):159–174, 2005 ) CSR-oriented embedded relational model of societal governance. It re-conceptualises the relationships between the state, business, and civil society. Other scholars (In Albareda et al. (...) Corporate Governance 6(4):386–400, 2006 ; Business Ethics: A European Review 17(4):347–363, 2008 ; Lozano et al., Governments and Corporate Social Responsibility, 2008 ) have recently successfully used the model as the basis for their analytical framework for researching CSR activities in a large number of western European countries. While this research offers valuable insights into how CSR is operationalised, it also suffers from a number of significant limitations. To develop a stronger analytical framework with which to explore CSR, this article draws more deeply on political science literature concerned with governance and public policy analysis. This represents the main purpose of this article. In addition, this article also addresses a second and more modest aim: to reflect on the ways in which relational governance-inspired frameworks could be adapted and applied to politico-economic systems where state-industry-third sector relations differ from those found in North America and Western Europe. Both lines of argument are illustrated using vignettes from a case study of the Evenkia Hydro-Electric Station building project in the Russian Federation. (shrink)

This paper comprises a feminist phenomenological exploration of women’s experiences with breast augmentation and breast reduction. Situating the results of semi-structured interviews in the context of body schema, this study discloses how women perceive, think, feel and respond to bodily change created by elective breast surgery. Women’s narratives express that breast augmentation and reduction shifted their conception of the lived body and its possibilities by provoking bodily reorientations and adjustments as well as changes in bodily sensations. In contrast (...) with body image studies that emphasize elective breast surgery as transforming attitudes towards the body, this phenomenological investigation reveals that elective breast surgery also galvanizes a relearning of the world and a rearticulation of embodied doing. (shrink)

The experience of breast cancer and related treatments has notable effects on women's mental health. Among them, the subjective perception of the body or body image is altered. Such alterations deserve to be properly treated because they augment the risk for depression and mood disorders, and impair intimate relationships. A number of studies revealed that focused psychological interventions are effective in reducing BI issues related to breast cancer. However, findings are inconsistent regarding the dimension of such effects. This (...) meta-analysis synthesizes and quantifies the efficacy of psychological interventions for BI in breast cancer patients and survivors. Additionally, since sexual functioning emerged as a relevant aspect in the BI distortions, we explored the efficacy of psychological interventions on sexual functioning related to BI in breast cancer patients and survivors. The literature search for relevant contributions was carried out in March 2020 through the following electronic databases: Scopus, PsycINFO, and ProQUEST. Only articles available in English and that featured psychological interventions for body image in breast cancer patients or survivors with controls were included. Seven articles with 17 dependent effect sizes were selected for this meta-analysis. Variables were grouped into: Body Image and Sexual Functioning Related to the Body Image in breast cancer patients and survivors. The three-level meta-analysis showed a statistically significant effect for Body Image [g = 0.50; 95% CI ; p < 0.05] but no significant results for Sexual Functioning Related to Body Image [g = 0.33; 95% CI ; p = 0.19]. These results suggest that psychological interventions are effective in reducing body image issues but not in reducing sexual functioning issues related to body image in breast cancer patients and survivors. Future review efforts may include gray literature and qualitative studies to better understand body image and sexual functioning issues in breast cancer patients. Also, high-quality studies are needed to inform future meta-analyses. (shrink)

Beyond simple verbal or technical strategies aimed at extending man’s physical capacities and range of action, our modern times provide unusual means of emancipating ourselves from the limitations and imperfections of the body. Science and the arts inspire each other when they discuss the new possibilities offered by chemistry, genetics, devices, cybertechnologies (A.I.), scientific achievements in the field of transsexuality, developments in digital imaging and immersive 3D virtual experiences, and speculation on the potential of so-called quantum therapies, which most (...) scientists scoff at—while other therapeutic avenues based on the use of certain frequencies are being opened up by neuroscience. Some performances are veritable medical experiments, turning the strangely metamorphosed body into an object of art, another mutant. Recent discoveries are multiplying ordinary capacities tenfold, sometimes raising the question of the unity of mind and body, undermined by the cybernetic development of the human being. The arts seek to be pioneers in addressing these issues, as does speculative science fiction, which attempts to anticipate the risks created by these innovations. (shrink)

When applied to a dipole source subjected to acceleration which is violent and long lasting (“extreme acceleration”), Maxwell's equations predict radiative power which augments Larmor's classical radiation formula by a nontrivial amount. The physical assumptions behind this result are made possible by the kinematics of a system of geometrical clocks whose tickings are controlled by cavities which are expanding inertially. For the purpose of measuring the radiation from such a source we take advantage of the physical validity of a spacetime (...) coordinate framework (“inertially expanding frame”) based on such clocks. They are compatible and commensurable with the accelerated clocks of the accelerated source. By contrast, a common Lorentz frame with its mutually static clocks won't do: It lacks that commensurability. Inertially expanding clocks give a physicist a window into the frame of a source with extreme acceleration, and thus can locate that source and measure radiation from it without being subjected to such acceleration himself. The conclusion is that inertially expanding reference frames reveal qualitatively distinct aspects of nature which would not be accessible if inertial frames were the only admissible frames. (shrink)

De Synthèse breaks with the concept of the organic body as a producer of meaning. By dividing identity and opening it up to the transcendent, the novel challenges the fundamental Cartesian distinction between a singular body and a soul. Using everything in her power, the protagonist-narrator aspires to complete liberation from her organic body. For the protagonist, blood and flesh gradually become more abstract than the virtual augmented bodies she creates for herself. Instead of defining her (...) individuality through her organic body, the protagonist transfers her existence to a virtual place, degrading her organic body into a body-machine that is definitively outside her subjectivity. In the end, the protagonist’s effort to transform herself into an image merely distracts from the fact that the story in fact follows the most classic pattern of novels, that of the family quest. (shrink)

Reconstruction of the basilica that preceded the present abbey church at Conques lends itself to exploring the notion of “sacred space”. Like its successor, the original basilica, probably built around 900, was dedicated to St Foy and held her remains. Textual evidence, augmented with (albeit scarce) archeological data, enables a reconstruction of what emerges as an unusual building containing a “physical” sacred space clearly conceived as a place into which the whole cult of St Foy could be “condensed”. At (...) the same time, textual evidence, mainly in the Liber miraculorum sanctae Fidis, hints at the existence of a “mental” sacred space in which specific movements performed in venerating the saint, as well as the comings and goings of pilgrims and other worshippers, formed a sacred space that was more fluid but no less central to understanding Conques as a place of devotion. Going farther, the analysis here suggests a notion of “sacred space” that includes the terrain surrounding a place of devotion: once worshippers’ senses of hearing, sight, and touch were activated, the natural setting itself became a place of holiness and protection. (shrink)

Touch requires that one move in concert with one's tactile object. This provokes the question how joint movement of this sort yields perception of tactile qualities of the object vs. tactile qualities of an object-augmented body. Phenomenological analysis together with results of dynamic systems theory (in psychology) suggest that the difference stems from 'resonant' vs. 'reverberant' modalities of body-object movement. The further suggestion is that tactile movement is itself a form of discriminative intelligence, and that the peculiar (...) intimacy of touch and movement can shed light on a general role of movement in perception, subject-object relations, and intelligence. (shrink)

This thesis aims to clarify the intrinsic characteristics of ‘image’ of everything for the image in the society of the fourth industrial revolution by the phenomenological dimention based on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, and to clarify the value of image, the intrinsic characteristics of ‘painting-image’, ‘photo-image’ and ‘film-image’. It will reveal that ‘thing-image’, ‘artifact-image’, ‘digital image’, ‘robot-image’ become the images for society of humanities by these clarifications. The image of everything is ‘appearance-image’ to reveal itself, ‘expression-image’ from the phenomenological, ontic point of (...) view, and ‘image-being’ as ‘being as image and being image’ from the phenomenological, ontological point of view. The augmented reality-image is the image of fusion of virtual image+real image+body-subject image. Things-images in the world of Internet of Things(IoT) become things-images of digital communication. Painting-image, photo-image, film-image are text-images. The painting to paint a correspondence of perceptive phenomena and natural affairs themselves means the painting of the image to fuse the diverse images on horizon-image of natural affairs themselves by the multilateral, intentional vision. The sense of the intentional photo-image, the meaning of being of body-subject, and the facticity and singularity of object itself of photo shoot reveal the intrinsic characteristics of photo-image. The film-images in film manifest the intrinsic characteristics of the connective flesh between them mutually. Finally, it is necessary that the value of the intrinsic characteristics of image in the society of the fourth industrial revolution becomes the value for the righteous personality. (shrink)

Intelligence augmentation was one of the original goals of computing. Artificial Intelligence (AI) inherits this project and is at the leading edge of computing today. Computing can be considered an extension of brain and body, with mathematical prowess and logic fundamental to the infrastructure of computing. Multimedia computing—sensing, analyzing, and translating data to and from visual images, animation, sound and music, touch and haptics, as well as smell—is based on our human senses and is now commonplace. We use data (...) visualization and sonification, as well as data mining and analysis, to sort through the complexity and vast volume of data coming from the world inside and around us. It helps us ‘see’ in new ways. We can think of this capacity as a new kind of “digital glasses”. The Internet of Living Things (IOLT) is potentially an even more profound extension of ourselves to the world: a network of electronic devices embedded into objects, but now with subcutaneous, ingestible devices, and embedded sensors that include people and other living things. Like the Internet of Things (IOT), living things are connected; we call those connections “ecology”. As the IOT becomes increasingly synonymous with the IOLT, the question of ethics that is at the centre of aesthetics and the arts will move to the forefront of our experience of and regard for the world in and around us. (shrink)

The body of measures promulgated to deal with the emergency of the depression is frequently linked up with the idea of a planned economy. That emergency measures have little or no essential connection with planning is the central thesis of this essay.The author discusses the four most important premises of the emergency measures : the intensity of the depression, the degree of organization reached by the country in depression, its social stratification, and its political set-up. Two emergency methods are (...) distinguished. On the one hand, an attempt is made to set the price mechanism in operation by lowering production costs, principally wages but also interest rates, rents, etc. The same adaption is aimed at by measures of state intervention which try to boost prices particularly by restriction of production and of imports. The second method, which has been used in an unprecedented manner during the present depression, attempts to stop the cumulative deflationary process by credit and monetary measures, as well as by public works.The effects of the emergency measures in some of the more important countries are discussed briefly. The author believes that a major part of these measures was necessitated by the course of events, but that their effect will be conflicting and of only short duration.Le but du travail est d'indiquer les idées les plus importantes pour comprendre et juger la politique de crise et de montrer qu'il ne saurait être question de considérer aucune des mesures prises comme un véritable plan. Par politique de crise, on entend les mesures destinées à atténuer ou surmonter une crise économique existante, par opposition à une „politique de conjoncture“ qui tend à une économie sans crise.L'auteur analyse les quatre prémisses fondamentales d'une politique de crise : profondeur de la dépression, degré d'organisation économique, structure sociale et organisation politique du pays atteint par la crise. On distingue deux méthodes employées pour combattre la crise. La politique d'adaptation, sous sa forme libérale, cherche à renforcer l'automatisme du marché, en diminuant les frais de production, etc. Les procédés d'intervention, dans la politique d'adaptation, ont pour objet l'augmentation des prix, avant tout à l'aide de restrictions de production et d'importation. La deuxième méthode, appliquée dans la crise actuelle avec une ampleur jamais encore connue, tâche d'arrêter le processus de déflation par des mouvements contraires. Les moyens principaux sont des mesures qui concernent le crédit et la monnaie, et des travaux publics. L'action d'ensemble de la politique de crise dans quelques pays importants est rapidement étudiée, à la fin de l'article. Encore que l'auteur considère une grande partie des mesures prises contre la crise comme inévitables, il tient leur action pour contradictoire et à courte échéance. (shrink)

This article examines the breathing and breathless body in Camille-Vidal Naquet’s Sauvage. Respiration has been characterised by Peter Sloterdijk, in the first volume of his Sphären trilogy, as the first extension of the womb. The air we breathe is a “nobject” that escapes the subject-object relation, like the placenta before it. Sauvage engages the respiratory, alongside the placental and the acoustic, as three pre-oral “nobjects” for exploring what Leo Bersani has termed the body’s “somatic receptivity”. Duration, framing, lighting, (...) and camera movements cultivate a spectator’s receptivity to these “nobjects” and participate in acts of sphere formation. This provides a framework for thinking about how cinema itself might function as a “nobject”: a connective medium or sphere that supports and augments a subject, providing a field of protection and attention. However, the film’s presentation of breathlessness also signals a blocked receptivity, an inability to take in, introducing friction and resistance to the discourse of immediacy and exchange that characterises philosophical reflections on breath. Breathlessness has implications for thinking about bodily autonomy and forms of freedom that speak to the queer politics of Sauvage, as well as questions about movement and stillness, animation and lifelessness, that reflect back on the medium of film itself. (shrink)

A growing body of evidence suggests that cognition is embodied and grounded. Abstract concepts, though, remain a significant theoretical chal- lenge. A number of researchers have proposed that language makes an important contribution to our capacity to acquire and employ concepts, particularly abstract ones. In this essay, I critically examine this suggestion and ultimately defend a version of it. I argue that a successful account of how language augments cognition should emphasize its symbolic properties and incorporate a view of (...) embodiment that recognizes the flexible, multi- modal and task-related nature of action, emotion and perception systems. On this view, language is an ontogenetically disruptive cognitive technology that expands our conceptual reach. (shrink)

Women’s bodies, states Benhabib (Dignity in adversity: human rights in troubled times, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011: 168), have become the site of symbolic confrontations between a re-essentialized understanding of religious and cultural differences and the forces of state power, whether in their civic-republican, liberal-democratic or multicultural form. One of the main reasons for the emergence of these confrontations or public debates, says Benhabib (2011: 169), is because of the actual location of ‘political theology’. She asserts that within the context (...) of globalization, the concept of ‘political theology’ is complicated by its unstable location between religion and the public square; between the private and official; and between individual rights to freedom of religion versus state security and public well-being. Ultimately, therefore, the nature of the tension between religion as a political theology and the forces of state power can at best be described as a clash between identities of a collective nature (as envisaged by the nation-state) and identities of an individual nature (as manifested in different religions and cultures). Ongoing attempts to counter the ascendancy of religion, and as will be discussed in this article, specifically the ascendancy and visibility of Islamic identity as practiced by Muslim women, has brought into serious debate the notion of a (post) secular society and its implications for religious rights. What emerges from the state’s insistence that individuals not be allowed to enter the public discourse as religious beings, are, on the one hand, the constraints imposed on Muslim women by liberal democracies, and on the other hand, that Islam, as represented by Muslim women, is not constitutive of democratic citizenship. Will the inclusion and recognition of Muslim women, therefore, necessarily augment a democratic citizenship agenda, and will it lead to an alleviation of the conflict? Then, in exploring a re-articulation of an inclusive citizenship—one which is held accountable by its minimization of social inequality—what ought to be the parameters of inclusion and how should it unfold differently to what is already happening in liberal democracies? (shrink)

Aims To examine the understanding of the ethical dilemmas associated with Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) among Jordanian medical students, physicians in training, and senior practitioners. Methods We implemented a literature-validated questionnaire to examine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the target population during the period between April and August 2023. Themes of ethical debate included privacy breaches, consent, ownership, augmented biases, epistemology, and accountability. Participants’ responses were showcased using descriptive statistics and compared between groups using t-test or (...) ANOVA. Results We included 466 participants. The greater majority of respondents were interns and residents (50.2%), followed by medical students (38.0%). Most participants were affiliated with university institutions (62.4%). In terms of privacy, participants acknowledged that Big Data and AI were susceptible to privacy breaches (39.3%); however, 59.0% found such breaches justifiable under certain conditions. For ethical debacles involving informed consent, 41.6% and 44.6% were aware that obtaining informed consent posed an ethical limitation in Big Data and AI applications and denounced the concept of “broad consent”, respectively. In terms of ownership, 49.6% acknowledged that data cannot be owned yet accepted that institutions could hold a quasi-control of such data (59.0%). Less than 50% of participants were aware of Big Data and AI’s abilities to augment or create new biases in healthcare. Furthermore, participants agreed that researchers, institutions, and legislative bodies were responsible for ensuring the ethical implementation of Big Data and AI. Finally, while demonstrating limited experience with using such technology, participants generally had positive views of the role of Big Data and AI in complementing healthcare. Conclusion Jordanian medical students, physicians in training and senior practitioners have limited awareness of the ethical risks associated with Big Data and AI. Institutions are responsible for raising awareness, especially with the upsurge of such technology. (shrink)

When thought overwhelms the mind, the mind uses the body and the world. Several studies reveal ways that people alone or together use gesture and marks on paper to structure and augment their thought for comprehension, inference, and discovery. The studies show that the mapping of thought to gesture or the page is more direct than the arbitrary mapping to language and suggest that these forms of visual/spatial/action representation are used to “translate” language into mental representations. It is argued (...) that actions in space create patterns in the world that reflect abstractions, that the actions are incorporated into gestures and the patterns into diagrams, a network that integrates gesture, action, the designed world, and abstraction dubbed spraction. (shrink)