Monday, December 23, 2013
Designing Media with Blixa Bargeld with Erin Zhu
Blixa Bargeld, former guitarist with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, leads an innovative industrial Goth-rock band called Einsturzende Neubauten, based in Berlin. Band members work with whatever readymade scrapheap objects they can find to act as musical instruments, hence the label industrial rock. Blixa's wife, Erin Zhu, an American originally from China, has extensive experience working in Internet start-ups. Soon after their marriage, Erin was able to help the band develop an elaborate Web-based fan subscription experiment that bypasses the traditional music business, allowing them to release the album Alles Wieder Offen in 2007. They have continued to develop this model because without the sponsorship of a record company they rely on fans to donate subscriptions for exclusive editions of the CDs and DVDs plus privileged access to the musicians and the entire creative process.
Blixa Bargeld has been leading an innovative industrial rock band based in Berlin for decades and has accumulated a loyal and enthusiastic community of fans. Working in the traditional relationship to music publishers, he was never able to do more than cover the costs of production and even that level of support was steadily eroding. In the next interview, with Blixa and his wife, Erin Zhu, we learn how a band like his can bypass the traditional music business, developing a self-supporting economic model based on subscriptions from fans, enabled by the Internet. - http://www.designing-media.com/interviews/BlixaBargeldErinZhu#sthash.0CEfbG1t.dpuf
Friday, December 20, 2013
Dialogism: Texts and Directions
Dialogism is “the characteristic epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia. Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole - there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have the potential of conditioning others” (Bakhtin 2004 426). Applied more broadly, dialogism is a development out of dialectics, the process by which meaning and knowledge are created through change and the alignment of binary, oppositional forces that results in defined points in history and cycles. Dialogism is networked, multiple, fractal, complex and 'chaos' driven. It builds depths and surfaces, not cycles.
The Problem of Speech Genres and Other Late Essays
Mikhail Bakhtin
Bakhtin moves away from the novel and concerns himself with the problems of method and the nature of cultureDialogue in intercultural communities
Claudio Baraldi (editor)
a good text on dialogue in intercultural settings.Ethics, Politics and the Potential of Dialogism
Craig Brandist
Historical Materialism, Volume 5, Number 1, 1999Two Routes "to Concreteness" in the Work of the Bakhtin Circle
Craig Brandist
Article on the Bakhtin Circle and phenomenologyThe Bakhtin Circle: In the Master's Absence
Craig Brandist, David Shepherd, Galin Tihanov (eds)
Collection of articles about the work of the various members of what is now known as 'the Bakhtin Circle', other than Bakhtin himself. The volume also includes translations of original works by members of the Circle.The dialogics of critique: M.M.Bakhtin and the theory of ideology
Michael E. Gardiner
The dialogics of critique: M.M.Bakhtin and the theory of ideologySage Masters of Modern Thought: Bakhtin Vol. 1
Michael E. Gardiner
First in a four volume set that explores the thought and legacy of Mikhail Bakthin. This is extensive and very well done.Sage Masters of Modern Thought: Bakhtin Vol. 2
Michael E. Gardiner
Second in a four volume set that explores the thought and legacy of Mikhail Bakthin. This is extensive and very well done.Sage Masters of Modern Thought: Bakhtin Vol. 3
Michael E. Gardiner
Third in a four volume set that explores the thought and legacy of Mikhail Bakthin. This is extensive and very well done.Sage Masters of Modern Thought: Bakhtin Vol. 4
Michael E. Gardiner
Fourth in a four volume set that explores the thought and legacy of Mikhail Bakthin. This is extensive and very well done.Bakhtin and Cultural Theory
Ken Hirschkop (ed.) and David Shepherd (ed.)
Bakhtin, critical theory and literatureA Dialogue of Voices: Feminist Literary Theory and Bakhtin
Karen Ann Hohne and Helen Wussow
Dialogues on Bakhtin: Interdisciplinary Readings
Mika Lahteenmaki and Hannele Dufva
A collection of papers discussing the ideas of Bakhtin and the Bakhtin Circle from an interdisciplinary perspective.Dialectic and Dialogue
Dmitri Nikulin
This book considers the emergence of dialectic out of the spirit of dialogue and traces the relation between the two.Mikhail Bakhtin: The Word in the World
Graham Pechey
(book) Graham Pechey - Mikhail Bakhtin: The Word in the World
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Robots - Ethics and Realities
Robotics is the art and commerce of robots, their design, manufacture, application, and practical use. Robots will soon be everywhere, in our home and at work. They will change the way we live. This will raise many philosophical, social, and political questions that will have to be answered. In science fiction, robots become so intelligent that they decide to take over the world because humans are deemed inferior. In real life, however, they might not choose to do that. Robots might follow rules such as Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, that will prevent them from doing so. When the Singularity happens, robots will be indistinguishable from human beings and some people may become Cyborgs: half man and half machine.
Prominent robot ethics questions focus on liability and privacy concerns in the face of increasingly autonomous technology. A lesser-discussed issue is the emergence and effect of robots that are designed to interact with humans on a social level. Studies have begun to establish a tendency to perceive social robots differently than we do other objects. As more and more robotic companions enter into our lives and homes, our inclination to project life-like qualities onto robots could have some societal implications.
Kate Darling -- IP Research Specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and a Ph.D. candidate in Intellectual Property and Law & Economics at the ETH Zurich -- discusses some of the more interesting developments in the world of robot/human interaction, and where we might find ourselves in the coming decades.