In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, _Virality_ does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors. It instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is not necessarily a positive or negative force of encounter; it is how society comes together and relates. Sampson argues that a biological knowledge of contagion has been universally distributed by way (...) of the rhetoric of fear used in the antivirus industry and other popular discourses surrounding network culture. This awareness is also detectable in concerns over _too much connectivity_, such as problems of global financial crisis and terrorism. Sampson’s “virality” is as established as that of the biological meme and microbe but is not understood through representational thinking expressed in metaphors and analogies. Rather, Sampson interprets contagion theory through the social relationalities first established in Gabriel Tarde’s microsociology and subsequently recognized in Gilles Deleuze’s ontological worldview. According to Sampson, the reliance on representational thinking to explain the social behavior of networking—including that engaged in by nonhumans such as computers—allows language to overcategorize and limit analysis by imposing identities, oppositions, and resemblances on contagious phenomena. It is the power of these categories that impinges on social and cultural domains. Assemblage theory, on the other hand, is all about relationality and encounter, helping us to understand the viral as a positively sociological event, building from the molecular outward, long before it becomes biological. (shrink)

This article develops a critical theory of human–computer interaction intended to test some of the assumptions and omissions made in the field as it transitions from a cognitive theoretical frame to a phenomenological understanding of user experience described by Harrison et al. as a third research paradigm and similarly Bødker :24–31; Bødker, Interactions 22):24–31, 2015) as third-wave HCI. Although this particular focus on experience has provided some novel avenues of academic enquiry, this article draws attention to a distinct bridge between (...) the conventional HCI disciplinary concerns with predominantly task-based digital work and use context and a growing business interest in consumer experiences in digital environments. Critical HCI addresses the problem of experience in two interrelated ways. On one hand, it explores the role market logic plays in putting user experiences to work. On the other hand, it engages with ontological understandings of experience hitherto realized in HCI by way of a phenomenological matrix. The article concludes by bringing in an old thinker to consider experience in novel ways that relate ontological concerns to a broader political concept of experience capitalism. (shrink)

Successfully explaining and replicating the complexity and generality of human and animal learning will require the integration of a variety of learning mechanisms. Here, we introduce a computational model which integrates associative learning (AL) and reinforcement learning (RL). We contrast the integrated model with standalone AL and RL models in three simulation studies. First, a synthetic grid‐navigation task is employed to highlight performance advantages for the integrated model in an environment where the reward structure is both diverse and dynamic. The (...) second and third simulations contrast the performances of the three models in behavioral experiments, demonstrating advantages for the integrated model in accounting for behavioral data. (shrink)

Slavoj Zizek is no ordinary philosopher. Approaching critical theory and psychoanalysis in a recklessly entertaining fashion, Zizek's critical eye alights upon a bewildering and exhilarating range of subjects, from the political apathy of contemporary life, to a joke about the man who thinks he's a chicken, from the ethicial heroism of Keanu Reeves in speed , to what toilet designs reveal about the national psyche. Tony Myers provides a clear and engaging guide to Zizek's key ideas, explaining the (...) main influences on Zizek's thought, most crucially his engagement with Lacanian psychoanalysis, using examples drawn from popular culture and everyday life. Myers outlines the key issues that Zizek's work has tackled, including: * What is a Subject and why is it so important? * The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real * What is so terrible about Postmodernity? * How can we distinguish reality from ideology? * What is the relationship between men and women? * Why is Racism always a fantasy? Slavoj Zizek is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the thought of the critic whom Terry Eagleton has described as "the most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in Europe for some decades.". (shrink)

This experiment tested alternative explanations of list method directed forgetting effects. Two word lists were studied by 135 subjects. Between lists, subjects were instructed to remember both lists , remember both lists as well as in which list words were studied , or to forget the first list and remember the second . All subjects took both recall and recognition tests with test order varied between subjects. Among subjects who took the recall test first, the forget group showed a directed (...) forgetting effect with both recall accuracy, recall typing time, and recognition reaction time measures. Contextual segregation of List 1 words by forget subjects was ruled out as a sufficient cause of the effect. Limited support was obtained for a differential rehearsal explanation of the effect. Within-group comparisons and findings of release from directed forgetting support inhibitory processes as the major cause of the directed forgetting effect. (shrink)

John Kinsella’s poetry returns again and again to the landscape of the Western Australian wheatbelt. The wheatbelt is a region that was suddenly and violently re-made by capital in the service of cereal and fibre production during the course of the twentieth century. Despite this radical repurposing of land and the wholesale eradication of an ancient biome, the new farming zone quickly took on the halo of a natural landscape within state and nationalist ideologies. Against the backdrop of this event, (...) Kinsella’s wheatbelt can be viewed as a comprehensive deconstruction of the forces that have led the wheatbelt to where it is now and which still provide the material conditions of its existence. In this essay, Kinsella’s Divine Comedy: Journeys Through a Regional Geography is considered as exemplary of his wheatbelt poetry. The essay explores the basic conceits that animate Kinsella’s poetics of critique. It argues that Kinsella’s poetry offers a strategic intervention into the claims of “capitalist realism,” which is Mark Fisher’s term for the foreclosure of alternatives to profit-driven patterns of production and consumption. Capitalist realism, in the context of the wheatbelt, asserts that whether we like it or not, one cannot argue against the basic entitlement that productive imperatives have to use land as they see fit. This essay attempts to detail the kinds of ways that Kinsella’s poetry tries to fracture this claim to common sense that capitalist production monopolises. What it finds, somewhat counter-intuitively, is that Kinsella’s poetry draws together two things which are traditionally regarded as antinomies – the machine and the organism. In this respect, Kinsella’s poetry is distinctly different from conventional ecopoetry, which tends to uphold the distinction between an authentic nature and a corrupting technology. Kinsella’s Divine Comedy makes use of the tripartite layering of Dante’s eschatology to evolve new topologies of being in the wheatbelt, and indeed, being in the world. Further still, the essay makes the claim that Kinsella delivers us a “cybernetic wheatbelt,” which refigures nature as a communicative machine. (shrink)

Subcortical substrates for behavioural integration include the fore/midbrain nuclei of the basal ganglia and the hindbrain medial reticular formation. The midbrain superior colliculus requires basal ganglia disinhibition in order to generate orienting movements. The colliculus should therefore be seen as one of many competitors vying for control of the body's effector systems with the basal ganglia acting as the key arbiter. (Published Online May 1 2007).

Circumcision is often claimed to be simpler, safer and more cost-effective when performed in the neonatal period as opposed to later in life, with a greater benefit-to-risk ratio. In the first part of this paper, we critically examine the evidence base for these claims, and find that it is not as robust as is commonly assumed. In the second part, we demonstrate that, even if one simply grants these claims for the sake of argument, it still does not follow that (...) neonatal circumcision is ethically permissible absent urgent medical necessity. Based on a careful consideration of the relevant evidence, arguments and counterarguments, we conclude that medically unnecessary penile circumcision—like other medically unnecessary genital procedures, such as ‘cosmetic’ labiaplasty—should not be performed on individuals who are too young (or otherwise unable) to provide meaningful consent to the procedure. (shrink)

We use the Newell Test as a basis for evaluating ACT-R as an effective architecture for cognitive engineering. Of the 12 functional criteria discussed by Anderson & Lebiere (A&L), we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of ACT-R on the six that we postulate are the most relevant to cognitive engineering.

As computer-based information systems start to have a great impact on people, organizations, and society as a whole, there is much debate about information technology in relation to social control and privacy, security and reliability, and ethics and professional responsibilities. However, more often than not, these debates reveal some fundamental disagreements, sometimes about first principles. In this article the authors suggest that a fruitful and interesting way to conceptualize some of these moral and ethical issues associated with the use of (...) information technology is to apply the principles of Aristotle's ethics to this topic. They argue that framing the moral and ethical choices associated with information technology in Aristotelian terms draws attention to the fact that there are fundamental dilemmas to be addressed. These dilemmas are discussed in relation to the four areas suggested by Dejoie, Fowler, and Paradice (1991): (a) privacy, (b) information accuracy, (c) access to information, and (d) intellectual property rights. The dilemmas associated with all four areas are illustrated with references to recent legal developments in Australia and New Zealand. (shrink)

Allthough small business accounts for over 90% of businesses in U.K. and indeed elsewhere, they remain the largely uncharted area of ethics. There has not been any research based on the perspective of small business owners, to define what echical delemmas they face and how, if at all, they resolve them. This paper explores ethics from the perspective of small business owner, using focus groups and reports on four clearly identifiable themes of ethical delemmas; entrepreneurial activity itself, conflicts of personal (...) values with business needs, social responsibility and the impact of owners' personality on business ethics. The mechanisms for resolving ethical dilemmas is not at all clear, as there appears to be a web of filters which are used in an inter-connected way. However a common starting point for resolving an ethical delemma which involves others is based on identifying who it is (e.g., a friend or institution) and the quality of the relationship with that person. The research yielded a rich source of material on business ethics and it is clear that future researchers must focus on this sector if business ethics is to make significant advances. (shrink)

Visual working memory is a construct hypothesized to store a small amount of accurate perceptual information that can be brought to bear on a task. Much research concerns the construct's capacity and the precision of the information stored. Two prominent theories of VWM representation have emerged: slot-based and continuous-resource mechanisms. Prior modeling work suggests that a continuous resource that varies over trials with variable capacity and a potential to make localization errors best accounts for the empirical data. Questions remain regarding (...) the variability in VWM capacity and precision. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, we demonstrate that VWM facilitates search and exhibits effects of fixation frequency and recency, particularly for prior targets. Whereas slot-based memory models cannot account for the human data, a novel continuous-resource model does capture the behavioral and eye tracking data, and identifies the relevant resource as item activation. (shrink)

Aristotle's definition of time as 'a number of motion with respect to the before and after' has been branded as patently circular by commentators ranging from Simplicius to W. D. Ross. In this book Tony Roark presents an interpretation of the definition that renders it not only non-circular, but also worthy of serious philosophical scrutiny. He shows how Aristotle developed an account of the nature of time that is inspired by Plato while also thoroughly bound up with Aristotle's sophisticated (...) analyses of motion and perception. When Aristotle's view is properly understood, Roark argues, it is immune to devastating objections against the possibility of temporal passage articulated by McTaggart and other 20th century philosophers. Roark's novel and fascinating interpretation of Aristotle's temporal theory will appeal to those interested in Aristotle, ancient philosophy and the philosophy of time. (shrink)

By focusing on the caloric composition of hunted prey species, optimal foraging research has shown that hunters usually make economically rational prey choice decisions. However, research by meat scientists suggests that the gustatory appeal of wildlife meats may vary dramatically. In this study, behavioral research indicates that Mayangna and Miskito hunters in Nicaragua inconsistently pursue multiple prey types in the optimal diet set. We use cognitive methods, including unconstrained pile sorts and cultural consensus analysis, to investigate the hypothesis that these (...) partial preferences are influenced by considerations of meat flavor. Native informants exhibit high agreement on the relative appeal of different meats. Given the absence of other noteworthy differences between spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) and howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata), the unappealing flavor of howler monkeys seems to be a factor in the partial preference for this species. (shrink)

It was most often Engels who had the task of presenting the future society, by commenting and developing the indications by Marx, and then, after the death of this latter, in making corrections of great importance. The aim of the article is to show that Engels did not defend just one single notion of socialism, but several. Inhis mind they corresponded to different stages in the construction of communism. For the period of transition following the coming to power of the (...) proletariat, he envisaged a state controlled market socialism. For the period of socialism, as such, he recommended integral planning, abolishing the market. But later he moved away from this idea and approached an associative socialism, more in tune with the aims of communism: in brief, co-operatives, and a plan of orientation, which correspond to two levels of democracy. Finally, the article presents a certain number of critical commentaries in the light of past history and of current research on models of socialism. (shrink)

Many of the reforms being required or recommended to ensure that for-profit companies achieve greater transparency and more effective governance are similarly being promoted for adoption by nonprofit health care organizations. The demands are coming from a variety of sources - government officials, donors, business partners, companies that provide directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance, the media, and directors themselves. To meet these demands, nonprofit health care boards and executives need to assess whether they have the right number, mix, and (...) caliber of board members, and to modify their recruitment and/or retention strategies where they don't. -/- The following discussion is another in an ongoing Inquiry series called "Dialogue," a collaboration with the Alliance for Advancing Nonprofit Health Care to provide a variety of voices on current, major issues in the nonprofit health care sector. (shrink)