ALBERT

Description: Our societies have now gone almost fully digital, which is bound to impact the ways in which the self apprehends itself, constructs itself and takes part in society. This collective essay draws upon philosophy, logics, literature and media studies to explore a variety of responses to what is currently at stake in the recomposition of the subject through our daily digital experience. Attempting to chart the digital traces human beings leave behind them, in writing or in archives, it situates them in the larger political, economic and financial frame of our times.

Description: As smartphones mediate more of our activities, they are changing our relationship with meaning. To a teenager, for example a “conversation” is just as likely to refer to an exchange of text messages as it is a face-to-face discussion. Meanwhile, Facebook has redefined what friendship means, Snapchat what a memory means, etc. The kinds of changes smartphones bring are happening at rapid pace: TikTok reached a billion users in just over three years, whereas it took the telephone 75 years to reach a tenth of that number of people. Meaningful Technologies: How Digital Metaphors Change the Way We Think and Live by Eric Chown and Fernando Nascimento offers systematic reconsideration of the ways in which digital technologies impact our lives both individually and collectively. Metaphors aren’t just a clever way to describe technology, they are also changing the way we think. When we click on a picture of a shopping cart it connects a complex set of technologies to represent a simple idea that we’re all familiar with. A heart icon under a photo is understood as an easy way to express appreciation. We aren’t required to understand how technology works, just how we interact with it. The ambiguity of metaphors, and the complexity of technology can also hide important realities about what is being described. “The cloud,” for example, actually consists of very real data centers, which consume huge amounts of natural resources to keep running. Meanwhile, pressing that heart icon on a photo is a signal to the artificial intelligences running in your app that you want to see more things like that photo and that it should adjust what it knows about you accordingly. There is a constant feedback loop between us and the digital technologies we use. We are constantly using them and they are changing us through their usage. Meaningful Technologies focuses on this loop from the perspectives of hermeneutic philosophy and cognitive science. Through the former, the authors examine meaning and how it changes over time. Through the latter, they gain understanding of how this feedback loop impacts individuals, especially in terms of learning and attention. Chown and Nascimento argue that, on the one hand, apps have a kind of agency never before possible in a technology, but also that, armed with a critical framework for examining such apps, we can regain some of our own agency. This book will appeal to scholars of digital media digital and computational studies, and those interested in issues related to ethical impacts of digital technologies.

Description: La scène pense. Mais encore ? Elle engage des rapports aux savoirs qui lui sont propres et qui ne sauraient exister autrement. Qu’il s’agisse de conférences performées, de spectacles documentaires ou de recherche-création, le théâtre et la performance affichent aujourd’hui une prédilection pour la recherche. Mais qu’est-ce que déployer un processus de recherche sur un plateau, dans un studio ou une salle de classe lorsque l’on est artiste, chercheur·e ou… un peu des deux ? Quels sont les enjeux des pratiques actuelles de recherche et de création qui performent des savoirs ? Quels sont les gestes critiques, les dispositifs sensibles, les corps et les voix qui permettent de générer ces expériences de pensée singulières ? Cet ouvrage propose de mettre en partage quelques-uns des outils heuristiques et expérientiels mobilisés par celles et ceux qui inventent des hybridations inédites entre recherche, création et pédagogie. Il réunit des témoignages d’artistes et de chercheures qui interrogent, voire mettent en crise, le cheminement de leur pensée ainsi que la forme et le contenu de leurs savoirs, que ce soit dans les façons de faire recherche ou dans les modalités de transmission imaginées. À travers une grande diversité d’écritures, de l’essai théorique à la provocation polémique, de la partition au protocole de performance, en passant par le récit d’expérience ou la trace d’un atelier, c’est la force épistémique et épistémologique de l’acte théâtral et performatif que ce livre postule et examine.

Description: As smartphones mediate more of our activities, they are changing our relationship with meaning. To a teenager, for example a “conversation” is just as likely to refer to an exchange of text messages as it is a face-to-face discussion. Meanwhile, Facebook has redefined what friendship means, Snapchat what a memory means, etc. The kinds of changes smartphones bring are happening at rapid pace: TikTok reached a billion users in just over three years, whereas it took the telephone 75 years to reach a tenth of that number of people. Meaningful Technologies: How Digital Metaphors Change the Way We Think and Live by Eric Chown and Fernando Nascimento offers systematic reconsideration of the ways in which digital technologies impact our lives both individually and collectively. Metaphors aren’t just a clever way to describe technology, they are also changing the way we think. When we click on a picture of a shopping cart it connects a complex set of technologies to represent a simple idea that we’re all familiar with. A heart icon under a photo is understood as an easy way to express appreciation. We aren’t required to understand how technology works, just how we interact with it. The ambiguity of metaphors, and the complexity of technology can also hide important realities about what is being described. “The cloud,” for example, actually consists of very real data centers, which consume huge amounts of natural resources to keep running. Meanwhile, pressing that heart icon on a photo is a signal to the artificial intelligences running in your app that you want to see more things like that photo and that it should adjust what it knows about you accordingly. There is a constant feedback loop between us and the digital technologies we use. We are constantly using them and they are changing us through their usage. Meaningful Technologies focuses on this loop from the perspectives of hermeneutic philosophy and cognitive science. Through the former, the authors examine meaning and how it changes over time. Through the latter, they gain understanding of how this feedback loop impacts individuals, especially in terms of learning and attention. Chown and Nascimento argue that, on the one hand, apps have a kind of agency never before possible in a technology, but also that, armed with a critical framework for examining such apps, we can regain some of our own agency. This book will appeal to scholars of digital media digital and computational studies, and those interested in issues related to ethical impacts of digital technologies.