Group items tagged

socio-cultural

two levels

New Media« are media based technically on digitalisation, miniaturisation, data compression, networking and convergence.

current media development

(PCs with multimedia capability, Internet, mobile radio

different levels of Internet use

cultural content

groups and humanity as a whole

Changes in readership and reading behaviour

dramatic changes in reading strategies

reading motivation

example

social sciences

almost general expansion of the concept of culture

a renewed interest in the culture of the individual

between cultural and media development

This makes cross-border movements, interculturalism and hybridisation more important for cultural theory; media development, transnational cultural relationships, intercultural exchange and migration become even more important topics for research.

recent debates

finally the increase in the importance for the understanding of culture of new (or what are perceived as new) cultural communities, groups and contexts.

the current status of the concept of culture in science and politics is not a fashionable phenomenon, but rather »evidence of a significant social development«, a »development from the domination of things to a domination of knowledge«

In dealing with the interactions between the change in concepts of culture and recent media development, the mutually impacting trends of individualisation and cultural globalisation become issues leading to further depths. Both issues are extremely important for the current debate on media development.

individualisation« or »personalisation

media services with a customised nature

economic globalisation

cultural globalisation

show on the one hand that the development of the New Media has aroused (often vague-seeming) fears and hopes, while euphoria over technology and pessimism over culture are relatively evenly divided between the political and social trends. Conversely, there is also the tendency in these debates to pursue older scientific arguments and view the development of the New Media in the context of specific media-historical, social-theoretical or philosophical considerations.

The current crisis in traditional concepts of culture is apparently closely connected with the recent development in the media, as the New Media change the cultural significance of physical proximity and separation

She brought a one-year-old African gray parrot she named Alex into her lab to teach him to reproduce the sounds of the English language.

They were simply machines, robots programmed to react to stimuli but lacking the ability to think or feel. Any pet owner would disagree.

many scientists believed animals were incapable of any thought.

controversial.

How, then, does a scientist prove that an animal is capable of thinking—that it is able to acquire information about the world and act on it?

Certain skills are considered key signs of higher mental abilities: good memory, a grasp of grammar and symbols, self-awareness, understanding others' motives, imitating others, and being creative.

chimpanzees use a variety of tools to probe termite mounds and even use weapons to hunt small mammals; dolphins can imitate human postures; the archerfish, which stuns insects with a sudden blast of water, can learn how to aim its squirt simply by watching an experienced fish perform the task.

Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas have been taught to use sign language and symbols to communicate with us, often with impressive results.

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still a hard core of people who are very resistant

doing invasive experiments on animals

made a difference with the way the world views chimpanzees

Has it made a difference in the way scientists view them

It's much better to cling to the old ideas that animals are just little machines and they have stimulus and response

It's a communication

sophisticated brains

haven't during evolution developed a sophisticated spoken language

not capable of planning the distant future

can't

discuss an idea

communication is very immediate

Mike learned to use empty kerosene cans because he was very low ranking

He accidentally hit an empty 4-gallon kerosene can and noticed that other chimps ran away

Within 4 months, he'd risen to the top

never saw him fight

Only Mike capitalized on that and developed the technique and won.

we are omnivorous.

same arrangement of internal organs and bones

many of the same diseases

share several important blood types

Unlike apes, our arms are relatively short and weak compared to our legs

modern human brain is 3 times larger in volume

toes became shorter and the big toe moved up into line with the others.

The pelvis

Nature very likely selected for longer legs

downside of the evolutio

we are quite similar to the African apes anatomically and genetically, especially to the chimpanzees and bonobos

minor anatomical differences between humans and apes

46 chromosomes

longer legs require less up-and-down movement while running and, therefore, reduce the amount of energy needed to move rapidly

allow humans to travel farther with the same calorie expenditure

A partial evolutionary solution to this birth difficulty for humans was fetuses being born at a less mature stage, when their bodies are smaller.  The trade off is that human newborn babies are more vulnerable.

Evolving a larger brain comes at a steep energy cost.  The human brain uses about 25% of the energy derived from the nutrients that we consume and 20% of the oxygen.

mental levels equivalent to a 3-4 year old human child

Female chimpanzees, gorillas, and other non-human primates usually remain capable of conception and giving birth even when they are very old

comparative psychology,

animal intelligence

mostly concerns mammals, especially primates, cetaceans, and elephants, as well as dogs, cats, and rodents.

and fish,

began in the late 1950s

John Lilly

other animals do have minds and that humans should approach the study of their cognition accordingly.

bottlenosed dolphins

particularly monkeys

Spatial cognition

The ability to properly navigate and search through the environment is a critical task for many animals.

Research in 2007 shows that chimpanzees in the Fongoli savannah sharpen sticks to use as spears when hunting, considered the first evidence of systematic use of weapons in a species other than humans.

Language

The modeling of human language in animals is known as animal language research.

Consciousness

The sense in which animals can be said to have consciousness or a self-concept has been hotly debated; it is often referred to as the debate over animal minds.

It has been suggested that metacognition in some animals provides some evidence for cognitive self-awareness.[11] The great apes, dolphins, and rhesus monkeys have demonstrated the ability to monitor their own mental states and use an "I don't know" response to avoid answering difficult questions. These species might also be aware of the strength of their memories.

This page was last modified on 26 November 2011 at 11:42.

This is the

Colorism can occur within one’s own community, or across racial and ethnic groups

any other “racial” group.

Our more systematic historical research shows that the importance of skin color on life chances dates back at least to the nineteenth century.

it may emerge as an indirect effect of the person’s ability to take advantage of the higher social status that has accrued over many generations to light-skinned African-Americans

skin tone within a given race or ethnicity is associated with socioeconomic outcomes.

Being dark-skinned has psychological as well as economic, educational, and temporal costs.

“colorism” may be a direct response to the behavior of or, more likely, the appearance of a person standing before the potential employer, judge, or teacher.

people who suffer from discrimination may not protest it because they are unaware of their unfair treatment, because they perceive no alternatives, or because they see no means of effective protest. 

Light-skinned blacks tend to come from families with relatively high status on these dimensions, so skin tone affects educational attainment indirectly.

light- and medium-skinned blacks received shorter sentences for all crimes than the darkest category of blacks.  In every case except property crimes [i.e. for drug, personal, and miscellaneous crimes], the darkest group of blacks received higher sentences, on average, than whites

sentences are 2 percent shorter for light-skinned blacks compared with whites, 4 percent longer for medium-skinned blacks, and 2 percent longer for dark-skinned blacks. Those differences seem small, but 4 percent of a 2,560 day sentence (the average length for whites) is over three months of prison time.

light-skinned African Americans are relatively advantaged in the social and economic arenas,

they have a similar advantage as voters and political actors, and that dark-skinned blacks perceive more discrimination.

Light-skinned blacks may be slightly more likely to perceive discrimination against other members of their race, and they are a little more likely to participate politically.

So why isn’t colorism an issue around which blacks organize politically?

Public opinion in this instance was ill informed, insensitive to some of the most important implications of the tax cuts, and largely disconnected from

a variety of relevant values and material interests

light-skinned blacks as roughly analogous to middle-class Americans – certainly not at the top of the distribution, but enjoying enough benefits from the unfair structure that they would be hesitant to disrupt it too much.

he implication is that dark-skinned blacks ought to perceive that they are doubly maltreated, that skin color hierarchy is just as unfair as the racial hierarchy within which it nests, and that protest is warranted. 

the task is to understand their values on their own terms.

Applying this logic to the case of skin color discrimination yields several hypotheses.  Perhaps dark-skinned blacks are aware of their doubly unfair treatment, but choose to ignore it because they too care more about some other political value, such as racial solidarity or individual autonomy.

Similarly, light-skinned African Americans may recognize,

that “for generations of black people, color and class have been inexorably tied together,” but they too care more about racial solidarity than about either taking advantage of or fighting this internal division. 

in short, one form of unfairness may be worth accepting or ignoring publicly for the sake of fighting another, or simply pursuing some unrelated goal.

The deeply religious, in short, vote their values, not their interests.

At the turn of the twentieth century, both black and white media frequently used “mulatto” (and sometimes “quadroon” and “octoroon”) – sometimes favorably, sometimes unfavorably, but to a surprising degree simply as a common and unremarkable descriptor.

those descriptors were never used or were terms of opprobrium or shock.

one can explain the lack of collective attention to the unfairness of skin tone discrimination by pointing to the dissemination of and allegiance to other, apparently stronger values.

Racial nationalists have traditionally been hostile to black feminists or black Marxists who seek to draw attention to unfair practices within the black community

they are similarly hostile to any discussion of skin color differentiation because it appears to be a strategy of “divide and conquer.

The leading proponents of this version of the argument are all associated with the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank based in the United States, and believe the designer to be the Christian deity.

The scientific community therefore considers intelligent design a pseudoscience

ID proponents have sought to overturn the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science, proposing that it be replaced by "theistic realism" or "theistic science" in which ID presents a broadly theistic understanding of nature.[12]

a single system which is composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning".[40]

mousetrap

Removal of any one piece destroys the function of the mousetrap

bacterial flagellum of E. coli,

Coyne responds that in light of the evidence, "either life resulted not from intelligent design, but from evolution; or the intelligent designer is a cosmic prankster who designed everything to make it look as though it had evolved"

problem of poor design in nature

"What designed the designer?"

Invoking an unexplained being to explain the origin of other beings (ourselves) is little more than question-begging.

For a theory to qualify as scientific,[n 21][106][n 22] it is expected to be:

Consistent

Useful

Empirically testable

Based on multiple observations (often in the form of controlled, repeated experiments)

Typical objections to defining intelligent design as science are that it lacks consistency,[107] violates the principle of parsimony,[n 23] is not scientifically useful,[n 24] is not falsifiable,[n 25] is not empirically testable,[n 26] and is not correctable, dynamic, provisional or progressive.[n 27][n 28][n 29]

There is a gap in scientific knowledge. The gap is filled with acts of God (or intelligent designer) and therefore proves the existence of God (or intelligent designer).[124]

Blacks and whites experience myriad pressures that keep them separate, a fact that becomes clear when you attempt to straddle the race line, talk to people who have, or simply read the newspaper.

The aversion to whites is so strong that, even in schools where few are present, black students who excel academically are ridiculed for "acting white." This is a serious problem.

black cliques erect insuperable cultural barrier of tastes and behavior that are unintelligible to whites

blacks excommunicated for "acting white," whites who adopt black culture are likely to face resistance at home and in their former cultural community. They're labeled "wannabes" and "wiggers."

makes developing deep friendships hard

Assume that there were salamanders living in some grasslands. Suppose, Lamarck argued, that these salamanders had a hard time walking because their short legs couldn't trample the tall grasses or reach the ground. Suppose that these salamanders began to slither on their bellies to move from place to place. Because they didn't use their legs, the leg muscles wasted away from disuse and the legs thus became small.

passed this acquired trait

Darwin disliked school

no legs.

by inheriting the acquired characteristic of

Darwin's Background

o have extraordinary talents.

genius, did not at first appear

legless salamanders evolved

d observing birds and collecting insects to study.

sent to medical school in Scotland

"intolerably dull

interested in attending natural history lectures.

university at Cambridge, England, in 1827.

Darwin be chosen for the position of naturalist on the ship the HMS Beagle.

thousands

Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell,

In the Andes he observed fossil shells of marine organisms in rock beds at about 4,300 m.

One reason that Darwin was so eager to study life on land was that he suffered from terrible seasickness and couldn't wait to get off the Beagle.

to collect specimens, make observations, and keep careful records of anything he observed that he thought significant.

trekked hundreds of miles through unmapped region.

catalog his specimens and write his notes.

praised by the scientific community.

experts for study.

bird specialist

Darwin's bird collections from the Galapagos Islands, located about 1,000 km west of South America.

13 similar

Other experts

believe that species change over time.

evidence f

In 1837 Darwin began his first notebook on evolution. For several years Darwin filled his notebooks with facts that could be used to support the theory of evolution.

fossils of similar relative ages are more closely related than those of widely different relative ages.

He ran his own breeding experiments and also did experiments on seed dispersal.

Chimpanzees become sexually mature between the ages of 10 and 13

both have an insatiable appetite for play, are extremely curious, learn through observation and imitation,

The anatomy of the chimpanzee brain and central nervous system is startlingly similar to our own.

Chimpanzees and humans belong to the animal order “primates”

belong to the superfamily hominoid

Chimpanzees and humans belong to the animal order “primates”.

Large brains

opposable thumbs

flexible joints

belong to the superfamily hominoid

chimpanzees and humans share the most similar genetic makeup, sharing 98.6% of our genes.

Females show their first very small sexual swellings at age eight or nine, but are not sexually attractive to the older males until they reach age 10 or 11.

almost every young chimp gets lost from their mother at some point during their exploration.

chimps have a long childhood

Bonds

likely to persist throughout life.

This learning is the means by which certain actions are passed from one generation to the next—the beginnings of culture.

capable of intellectual performances

capable of reasoned thought

memory

symbolic representation

feel and express emotions

chimpanzees can be taught human languages

skills on computers

wide range of complex emotions

possess an almost human-like enjoyment of physical contact, laughter, and community.

chimpanzees can learn from humans

Language is believed to have played a major role:

exploring the effects of new media on society and culture

The knowledge is all around people and a lot of advanced technology is so ubiquitous that it makes connection, organising, sharing and learning easier than ever before

new culture and environment

they mediate relationships. Media changes, relationships change and the culture changes.

media helped the people there in a big way

Media is therefore not just tools and communication

Think about how we watch TV. We watch TV for the content, but the content drives relationships. We watch TV while at dinner, we congregate in groups to watch sport. These are the conversations that create our culture

a brief history of the phrase

it's a way for people to raise their personality and not be indistinguishable. More people want to be important today - more people want to be the new American Ido

We all need identity and recognition and the media keeps bombarding us with messages of the kind of people we should become. The search for the authentic self leads us towards self-centered modes of self-fulfillment and disagreement on several things - values, views, approaches. We're more disengaged and more fragmented. The new media revolution is creating the cultural background for this kind of a change.

micro-learning