The idea of synthetic companions is not novel.
I got my first robot at around four or five – the Alphie II. For the mid-80s, it was an incredibly novel experience: insert different cards and Alphie would teach you basic skills in math, spelling, and problem solving. Though Alphie didn’t have the capacity for improvised conversations, my young self quickly formed a bond with the little robot. I’ve no doubt that he’s the locus of my persistent curiosity with artificial persons.
The following is a transcript of my brief remarks from a session at The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) 2020 conference. I served as the theoretical anchor for a panel titled “Experiencing Pleasure in the Pandemic”. The panel featured Naomi Smith (@deadtheorist) and her work on ASMR, and Alexia Maddox (@AlexiaMaddox) & Monica Barratt (@monicabarratt), who talked about digital drugs—an emergent technology using binaural beats to replicate the drug experience in the brain. Together, the papers on this panel addressed the fraught relationship between embodied pleasure and wellness discourse, focusing on their intersection in pandemic times.
During the Q&A discussion, we decided on ‘wellness washing’ as our preferred term to describe the virtuous veneer of wellness framing and its juxtaposition against pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Full video here.
When you think of September, what comes to mind? Children returning to school? Apple cider in the markets? Autumn colors? New beginnings?
What about abstaining from porn and masturbation?
That’s a new September tradition that recently formed subreddit, r/NoSimpSeptember, is hoping to make a reality. The group of now more than 2,300 members encourages men to avoid online interaction with women—particularly with online sex workers and porn performers.
The following is an edited transcript of a brief talk I gave as part of the ANU School of Sociology Pandemic Society Panel Series on May 25, 2020.
The rapid shift online due to physical distancing measures has resulted in significant changes to the way we work and interact. One highly salient change is the use of Zoom and other video conferencing programs to facilitate face-to-face communications that would have otherwise taken place in a shared physical venue.
A surprising side effect that’s emerging from this move online has been the seemingly ubiquitous, or at least widespread, experience of physical exhaustion. Many of us know this exhaustion first-hand and more than likely, have commiserated with friends and colleagues who are struggling with the same. This “Zoom fatigue,” as it’s been called, presents something of a puzzle.
Interacting via video should ostensibly require lower energy outputs than an in-person engagement. Take teaching as an example. Teaching a class online means sitting or standing in front of a computer, in the same spot, in your own home. In contrast, teaching in a physical classroom means getting yourself to campus, traipsing up and down stairs, pacing around a lecture hall, and racing to get coffee in the moments between class ending and an appointment that begins 2 minutes sooner than the amount of time it takes you to get back to your office. The latter should be more tiring. The former, apparently, is. What’s going on here? Why are we so tired? more...
The term “meme” first appeared in the 1975 Richard Dawkins’ bestselling book The selfish gene. The neologism is derived from the ancient Greek mīmēma, which means “imitated thing”. Richard Dawkins, a notorious evolutionary biologist, coined it to describe “a unit of cultural content that is transmitted by a human mind to another” through a process that can be referred as “imitation”. For instance, anytime a philosopher ideates a new concept, their contemporaries interrogate it. If the idea is brilliant, other philosophers may eventually decide to cite it in their essays and speeches, with the outcome of propagating it. Originally, the concept was proposed to describe an analogy between the “behaviour” of genes and cultural products. A gene is transmitted from one generation to another, and if selected, it can accumulate in a given population. Similarly, a meme can spread from one mind to another, and it can become popular in the cultural context of a given civilization. The term “meme” is indeed a monosyllable, which resembles the word “gene”. more...
Minimalism has a way of latching on to people that want
nothing to do with it. None of the artists contained in Kyle Chayka’s Longing
for Less wanted to be associated with the term, and yet here they are,
mostly posthumously, contained in a book subtitled Living with Minimalism.
Chayka nevertheless pulls together midcentury artists like Philp Glass and
Donald Judd and contemporary pop culture icons like Marie Kondo and the author
of the 2016 self-help-through-minimalism book The More of Less Joshua
Becker into a single, slim volume against their will.
When it comes to sensitive political issues, one would not necessarily consider Reddit the first point of call to receive up-to-date and accurate information. Despite being one of the most popular digital platforms in the world, Reddit also has reputation as a space which, amongst the memes and play, fosters conspiracy theories, bigotry, and the spread of other hateful material. In turn it would seem like Reddit would be the perfect place for the development and spread of the myriad of conspiracy theories and misinformation that have followed the spread of COVID-19 itself.
How is robot care for older adults envisioned in fiction? In the 2012 movie ‘Robot and Frank’ directed by Jake Schreier, the son of an older adult – Frank – with moderate dementia gives his father the choice between being placed in a care facility or accepting being taken care of by a home-care robot
Living with a home-care robot
Robots in fiction can play a pivotal role in influencing the design of actual robots. It is therefore useful to analyze dramatic productions in which robots fulfill roles for which they are currently being designed. High-drama action packed robot films make for big hits at the box office. Slower paced films, in which robots integrate into the spheres of daily domestic life, are perhaps better positioned to reveal something about where we are as a society, and possible future scenarios. ‘Robot and Frank’ is one such film, focusing on care work outsourced to machines. more...
The best way I can describe the experience of summer 2019-2020 in Australia is with a single word: exhausting. We have been on fire for months. There are immediate threats in progress and new ones at the ready. Our air quality levels dip in and out of hazardous, more often in the former category than the latter. This has been challenging for everyone. For many, mere exhaustion may feel like a luxury.
In the trenches of the ongoing fires are the Australian emergency service workers, especially the “fireys,” who have been tireless in their efforts to save homes, people, and wildlife. While the primary and most visible part of their work is the relentless job of managing fires, there is also a secondary–though critical–task of public communication, keeping people informed and providing material for anxious-refreshers looking for information about “fires near me.” In the last few days, as fires have approached the Canberra suburbs where I live, an interesting variant of public safety communication has emerged: Instagramable photography. more...
Drew Harwell (@DrewHarwell) wrote a balanced article in the Washington Post about the ways universities are using wifi, bluetooth, and mobile phones to enact systematic monitoring of student populations. The article offers multiple perspectives that variously support and critique the technologies at play and their institutional implementation. I’m here to lay out in clear terms why these systems should be categorically resisted.
The article focuses on the SpotterEDU app which advertises itself as an “automated attendance monitoring and early alerting platform.” The idea is that students download the app and then universities can easily keep track of who’s coming to class and also, identify students who may be in, or on the brink of, crisis (e.g., a student only leaves her room to eat and therefore may be experiencing mental health issues). As university faculty, I would find these data useful. They are not worth the social costs. more...
