Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Memetic Memory As Vital Conduits Of Troublemakers In Digital Culture, Alexander O. Smith, Jordan Loewen-Colón

School of Information Studies - Post-doc and Student Scholarship

Recent fears of data capitalism and colonialism often argue using implicit assumptions about cybernetic technology’s ability to automate data about culture. As such, the level of data granularity made possible by cybernetic engineering can be used to dominate society and culture. Here we unpack these implicit assumptions about the datafication of culture through memes, which both act as cultural data and cultural memory. Using Alexander Galloway’s critical method of protocological analysis and descriptions of media tactics, we respond to fears of cybernetic domination. Protocols – the source by which cybernetic technologies enable automated datafication – enables us to respond to …

Supporting South Korea’S Aging Population: How Ai And Iot Acceptance Connects The Young And Old, Bobby Im

Master's Projects and Capstones

In 2024, South Korea surpassed every other nation by becoming the country with the lowest fertility rate (below 0.7%). Population decline will hinder future ability to care for their aging population and although the government and private corporations are investing millions of dollars on developing Artificial Intelligence-Internet of Things (AI-IoT) devices to support the aging, the acceptance levels and the amount of family support required is undervalued. By examining AI-IoT’s current use and role in South Korea’s public health system this paper shows how intergenerational support helps optimize existing procedures and equipment, increases the level of acceptance and use, and …

Artificial Sociality, Simone Natale, Iliana Depounti

Human-Machine Communication

This article proposes the notion of Artificial Sociality to describe communicative AI technologies that create the impression of social behavior. Existing tools that activate Artificial Sociality include, among others, Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, voice assistants, virtual influencers, socialbots and companion chatbots such as Replika. The article highlights three key issues that are likely to shape present and future debates about these technologies, as well as design practices and regulation efforts: the modelling of human sociality that foregrounds it, the problem of deception and the issue of control from the part of the users. Ethical, social and cultural …

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

S8e8: How Will Ai Impact Our Lives?, Ron Lisnet, Salimeh Sekeh, Vikas Dhiman

The Maine Question

Artificial intelligence, or “AI,” is a hot topic in 2023. AI and machine learning make headlines every day, with stories ranging from the technology’s helpful capabilities, like self-driving cars, to its scariest potential — think “deep fake” videos fooling the public, or human workers being made obsolete by tools like ChatGPT.

At the University of Maine, AI is central to research and classroom activities across disciplines, from forestry and farming to sensors and satellites.

In this episode, we speak with two UMaine researchers who are at the forefront of AI research. Salimeh Sekeh is an assistant professor of computer science …

Sex With Robots And Human-Machine Sexualities: Encounters Between Human-Machine Communication And Sexuality Studies, Marco Dehnert

Human-Machine Communication

Sex robots are a controversial topic. Understood as artificial-intelligence enhanced humanoid robots designed for use in partnered and solo sex, sex robots offer ample opportunities for theorizing from a Human-Machine Communication (HMC) perspective. This comparative literature review conjoins the seemingly disconnected literatures of HMC and sexuality studies (SeS) to explore questions surrounding intimacy, love, desire, sex, and sexuality among humans and machines. In particular, I argue for understanding human-machine sexualities as communicative sexuotechnical-assemblages, extending previous efforts in both HMC and SeS for more-than-human, ecological, and more fluid approaches to humans and machines, as well as to sex and sexuality. This …

Usability Of Health-Related Websites By Filipino-American Adults And Nursing Informatics Experts, Kathleen Begonia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Filipino-Americans are an understudied minority group with high prevalence and mortality from chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Facing barriers to care and lack of culturally appropriate health resources, they frequently use the internet to obtain health information. It is unknown whether they perceive health-related websites to be useful or easy to use because there are no published usability studies involving this population. Using the Technology Acceptance Model as a theoretical framework, this study investigated the difference between website design ratings by experts and the perceptions of Filipino-American users to determine if usability guidelines influenced the perceived ease …

S4e9: How Can We Get The Most Out Of Technology?, Ron Lisnet, Richard Corey, Nicholas Giudice, Caitlin Howell

The Maine Question

Refrigerators tell us when we’re out of juice. Digital assistants schedule appointments and alert us to the weather forecast. Driverless cars slide into tight parallel parking spaces. Today, many of us increasingly rely on devices, apps and artificial intelligence in our daily lives.

How can technology be designed to do the most good? How can scientists make it easy to use and put people, rather than the technology, in charge? This is the work of the University of Maine VEMI Lab. VEMI stands for Virtual Environment and Multimodal Interaction. This week, directors Rick Corey, Nick Giudice and Caitlin Howell talk …

A Feel For The Game: Ai, Computer Games And Perceiving Perception, Marc A. Ouellette, Steven Conway

English Faculty Publications

I walk into the room and the smell of burning wood hits me immediately. The warmth from the fireplace grows as I step nearer to it. The fire needs to heat the little cottage through the night so I add a log to the fire. There are a few sparks and embers. I throw a bigger log onto the fire and it drops with a thud. Again, there are barely any sparks or embers. The heat and the smell stay the same. They don’t change and I do not become habituated to it. Rather, they are just a steady stream, …

Expectations Of Artificial Intelligence And The Performativity Of Ethics: Implications For Communication Governance, Aphra Kerr, Marguerite Barry, John D. Kelleher

Articles

This article draws on the sociology of expectations to examine the construction of expectations of ‘ethical AI’ and considers the implications of these expectations for communication governance. We first analyse a range of public documents to identify the key actors, mechanisms and issues which structure societal expectations around artificial intelligence (AI) and an emerging discourse on ethics. We then explore expectations of AI and ethics through a survey of members of the public. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the role of AI in communication gover- nance. We find that, despite societal expectations that we can design …

Rethinking Algorithmic Bias Through Phenomenology And Pragmatism, Johnathan C. Flowers

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

In 2017, Amazon discontinued an attempt at developing a hiring algorithm which would enable the company to streamline its hiring processes due to apparent gender discrimination. Specifically, the algorithm, trained on over a decade’s worth of resumes submitted to Amazon, learned to penalize applications that contained references to women, that indicated graduation from all women’s colleges, or otherwise indicated that an applicant was not male. Amazon’s algorithm took up the history of Amazon’s applicant pool and integrated it into its present “problematic situation,” for the purposes of future action. Consequently, Amazon declared the project a failure: even after attempting to …

Human Supremacy As Posthuman Risk, Daniel Estrada

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

Human supremacy is the widely held view that human interests ought to be privileged over other interests as a matter of public policy. Posthumanism is an historical and cultural situation characterized by a critical reevaluation of anthropocentrist theory and practice. This paper draws on Rosi Braidotti’s critical posthumanism and the critique of ideal theory in Charles Mills and Serene Khader to address the use of human supremacist rhetoric in AI ethics and policy discussions, particularly in the work of Joanna Bryson. This analysis leads to identifying a set of risks posed by human supremacist policy in a posthuman context, specifically …

Difference Between Algorithmic Processing And The Process Of Lifeworld (Lebenswelt), Domenico Schneider

Computer Ethics - Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) Proceedings

The following article compares the temporality of the life-world with the digital processing. The temporality of the life-world is determined to be stretched and spontaneous. The temporality of the digital is given by discrete step-by-step points of time. Most ethical issues can be traced back to a mismatch of these two ways of processing. This creates a foundation for the ethics of the digital processing. Methodologically, phenomenological considerations are merged with media-philosophical considerations in the article.

Social Media: On Tech-Caves, Virtual Panopticism, And The Science Fiction-Like State In Which We Unwittingly Find Ourselves, Michael Major

Theses

Making use of three historic philosophical thought experiments, this paper blends psychological perspectives with philosophical reasoning to show how social media is corrupting our perception of reality, the result of which is ultimately detrimental to society as a whole. This is accomplished by first using Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” to analyze and discuss the ways in which social media is limiting humanity’s access to real knowledge. Next, Michel Foucault’s analysis of punishment in its social context, Discipline and Punish, is used to discuss the ways in which social media is adversely affecting our behavior. Finally, Robert Nozick’s “Experience …

Examining Social Network Site Usage By Older Adults: A Phenomenological Approach, Betsy Baugess

CCE Theses and Dissertations

The Internet has infiltrated our daily lives in many ways. Social networking on the Internet is a great example of how the Internet has expanded interpersonal communication. Many individuals have made social networking sites, like FaceBook and Twitter, an essential part of their lives and use these platforms to communicate daily. Until recently, young people have been the primary participants in this fast-growing phenomenon, and older adults' participation in the Internet, specifically social networking sites, has lagged far behind. However, in recent years, there has been a noteworthy increase in the number of older adult participants. The increase in older …

Inequalities And Asymmetries, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

The availability of data is not evenly distributed. Some organizations, agencies, and sectors are better equipped to gather, use, and analyze data than others. If data is transformative, what are the consequences of defense and security agencies having greater capacity to leverage data than, say, education or social services? Financial wherewithal, technical capacity, and political determinants all affect where data is employed. As data and analytics emerge, who benefits and who doesn't, both at the individual level and the institutional level? What about the asymmetries between those who provide the data and those who collect it? How does uneven data …

Inferences & Connections, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

Data-oriented systems are inferring relationships between people based on genetic material, behavioral patterns (e.g., shared geography imputed by phone carriers), and performed associations (e.g., "friends" online or shared photographs). What responsibilities do entities who collect data that imputes connections have to those who are implicated by association? For example, as DNA and other biological materials are collected outside of medicine (e.g., at point of arrest, by informatics services like 23andme, for scientific inquiry), what rights do relatives (living, dead, and not-yet-born) have? In what contexts is it acceptable to act based on inferred associations and in which contexts is it …

Predicting Human Behavior, Tamara Kneese

Media Studies

Countless highly accurate predictions can be made from trace data, with varying degrees of personal or societal consequence (e.g., search engines predict hospital admission, gaming companies can predict compulsive gambling problems, government agencies predict criminal activity). Predicting human behavior can be both hugely beneficial and deeply problematic depending on the context. What kinds of predictive privacy harms are emerging? And what are the implications for systems of oversight and due process protections? For example, what are the implications for employment, health care and policing when predictive models are involved? How should varied organizations address what they can predict?

Peering Into The Discourse Of Industrial Design Training Through A Sustainability Lens, Norman M. Su, Haodan Tan, Eli Blevis

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Now well established in HCI, the lens of sustainability may be applied to educational practices in industrial design and interaction design. By sustainability, we mean to include notions of mitigation of the environmental effects of climate change. In this paper, we present an analysis of student projects in a junior and senior industrial design class dataset. Drawing from discourse analysis, we examine how the industrial design classroom serves as a space to socially construct the philosophies and goals inherent in “good” design. We then examine how the lens of sustainability is implicated into the industrial design “way” as espoused by …

Towards Self-Emancipation In Ict For Development Research: Narratives About Respect, Traditional Leadership And Building Networks Of Friendships In Rural South Africa, Kirstin Krauss

The African Journal of Information Systems

In this paper, the author contends that if the outsider-researcher involved in Information and Communication Technology for Development really wants to make a difference and honestly address the emancipatory interests of the developing community, social transformation will have to occur on both sides of the “development divide.” This statement implies both an understanding of the researcher’s own ethnocentrism, prejudice, assumptions and inabilities as well as local concerns, needs, expectations and realities. Using critical social theory as a position of inquiry and learning from the enculturation phases of critical ethnographic fieldwork in a deep rural part of South Africa, the paper …