Skip to main content

Home/ Digital Civilization/ Group items tagged humanities

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Sean Watson

John Locke - 0 views

  • E arli er writers such as Chillingworth had argued that human understanding was limited, Locke tries to determine what those limits are
  • "Though the familiar use of the Things about us, takes off our Wonder; yet it cures not our Ignorance."
  • arli
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • We can, he thinks, know with certainty that God exists. We can also know about morality with the same precision we know about mathematics, because we are the creators of moral and political ideas
  • Locke gives us a theory of natural law and natural rights which he uses to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate civil governments, and to argue for the legitimacy of revolt against tyrannical governments.
Megan Stern

Pepe Escobar: Don't Mess With My Burqa, Monsieur - 0 views

  •  
    One of the great virtues that the French Revolution promoted was tolerance. If the French society was to follow through with its contractual obligations, it would be rising up in rebellion against its government about now.
Madeline Rupard

Linguists, robots, or aliens? - 0 views

  •  
    Flipping back to our conversation about getting computers to understand our language, this google video explains the very interesting method which Google Translate utilizes for understanding human language.
Kevin Watson

Wikimedia Foundation - 0 views

    • Kevin Watson
       
      It's interesting how many teachers will not allow you to use Wikipedia as a source, but in light of this digital civilization class, isn't it a form of Open Access Information, and shouldn't it be praised in a way?
  • Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment.
Andrew DeWitt

Throw Grammar from the Train - 0 views

    • Andrew DeWitt
       
      Fascinating!  You could subscribe to the Boston Globe to read "The Word" written by this author, or you could read her blog.  I'm thinking: open source, free media, etc.
  • Jan Freeman has written The Word, a weekly Boston Globe column
  •  
    A Blogspot "Blog of Note" that emphasizes the fascinating power of words, grammar and punctuation.  A modern-day renaissance humanist
Shaun Frenza

Motorized Hub - 1 views

  •  
    Science fiction in action - or at least in a website. Should have posted as Singularity Hub.
Shaun Frenza

Ray Kurzweil - technology will develope human evolution - 1 views

  •  
    Very interesting talk on the growth of computers and computing power - its evolution - and how it will help us to evolve. All in all a great site to learn about our digital culture!!!!
James Wilcox

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs,... - 0 views

  •  
    John Locke's philosophy on Nature vs Nurture.  He concludes that its all based off of observation and our environment in which we live and grow.
Bri Zabriskie

Plover: Freeing Stenography | Geek Feminism Blog - 0 views

  • overlap between the stenographic and computer geek worlds is bafflingly small, considering how vital efficient text entry is to virtually every tech field
  • on-commercial applications for stenographic technology.
  • into any X window using a $45 off-the-shelf keyboard.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Steno is the only text input system that’s functionally equivalent to conversational human speech.
  • wearable computing is unlikely to really take off until we get the head-mounted display issue worked out, and I don’t currently have any idea of how to make that happen on a practical level.
  • could be attached to thighs, belly, biceps, or wherever,
    • Bri Zabriskie
       
      initial reaction? weird, weird weird weird!
  • phonetic system in your muscle memory.
    • Bri Zabriskie
       
      which is why TypeWell which expands words when you type all the consonants is so much easier to remember. Plus you can program your own abbreviations. It' makes mroe sense for the general public. And how are Deaf/ HoH people supposed to learn the phonetic system of what to them is a foreign language? That seems a bit short sighted to me. 
  • hackathon
    • Bri Zabriskie
       
      a what?
  •  
    Interview with someone who's created an open source stenograpic keyboard emulator for transcription services. I work in transcription so I think this is pretty stinking awesome.
Morgan Wills

Freud, "Civilization and its Discontents," 1930 (excerpt) - 0 views

  • If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, and everyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men.
  • But I am able to recognize that the psychological premises on which the systems based are an untenable illusion.
    • Megan Stern
       
      Freud says something worthwhile.
  • It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • horrors of the recent World War
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Something people would like to forget, but which shapes their world views. 
    • Morgan Wills
       
      definitely. Looking at much of Europe's reticence to join the US in armed conflict is a case in point.
  • s the factor which disturbs our relations with our neighbor and which forces civilization into such a high expenditure [of energy]
  • civilized society is perpetually threatened with disintegration
    • Erin Hamson
       
      Tyranny to Anarchy to Tyranny
  • instinctual passions are stronger than reasonable interests.
  • commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself -- a commandment which is really justified by the fact that nothing else runs so strongly counter to the original nature of man
  • liverance from our evil
  • The communists believe they have found  the path to de
  • Since everyone's needs would be satisfied, no one would have any reason to regard another as his enemy; all would willingly undertake the work that was necessary.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      The problem is that people have more than needs. 
  • but we have in no way altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property
  • If we were to remove this factor, too, by allowing complete freedom of sexual life and thus abolishing the family, the germ-cell of civilization, we cannot, it is true, easily foresee what new paths the development of civilization could take; but one thing we can expect, and that is that this indestructible feature of human nature will follow at there.
  • We can now see that it is a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier
  • n this respect the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of the countries that have been their hosts;
  • find its psychological support in the persecution of the bourgeois
  • s Civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man's sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization.
  • primitive man was better off in knowing no restrictions of instinct.  To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any length of time were very slender.
  • Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security.
    • Erin Hamson
       
      John Locke
  • But I shall avoid the temptation of entering upon a critique of American civilization; I do not wish to give an impression of wanting myself to employ American methods.
Kristi Koerner

Theories of Religion in Early 20th Century Psychology@Everything2.com - 0 views

  • Freud believed humanity is moving through three stages of development: Tribal, Religious, Scientific.  He believed society would eventually cast off the unnecessary and unfounded ideals of religion in trade for the exactitudes and truth offered by the scientific method.
  • Unlike Sigmund Freud, who believed religion to be an illusory wish fulfillment for the weak minded, Carl Jung advocated religion as an indispensable part of an individual's psychological development. Jung viewed the mind as having three components: the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. Freud's vision of the mind did not include a collective unconscious. Instead, Freud proposed a moral super-ego, which grew to become the mind's administrator according to a learned sense of morality. Jung believed the self-actualizing properties of Freud's super ego pre-exist in the mind as a collective unconscious which is to be discovered through introspection as opposed to learned from experience.
  •  
    Good contrast btw Freud and Jung
anonymous

The Aeron Chair - 0 views

  •  
    This chair is an example of how important human interfaces are in not only the computer world, but with real projects as well
James Wilcox

Alan Turing: a short biography - 5 - 0 views

  • Turing was captivated by the potential of the computer he had conceived. Although his 1936 work had shown the absolute limitations of the computable, he had become fascinated by what Turing machines could do, rather than by what they could not. He had long abandoned his youthful expectations of finding free will or free spirits through quantum mechanics. His later thought was strongly determinist and atheistic in character. And by the end of the Second World War he had turned against the tentative idea that there were steps of 'intuition' in human thought corresponding to uncomputable operations. Instead, he held that the computer would offer unlimited scope for practical progress towards embodying intelligence in an artificial form.
Andrew DeWitt

History of Computers and Computing, Internet, Dreamers, Murray Leinster - 2 views

  • Leinster made one of the first descriptions of a personal computer (called a "logic") in science fiction
  • Leinster envisioned logics in every home, linked through a distributed system of servers (called "tanks"), to provide communications, entertainment, data access, and even commerce
  • Information runs rampant as every logic worldwide crunches away at problems too vast in scope for human minds to have attempted. Societal chaos quickly ensues, the situation became critical.
  •  
    Sweet story!
LeeAnne Lowry

Freud a Fraud? - 0 views

  •  
    So pretty much no one is buying what he's selling.
Megan Stern

Three Special Events in the History of Technology for Creating, Organizing, and Sharing... - 0 views

  •  
    Captures the whole spirit of our class.
‹ Previous 21 - 37 of 37
Showing 20 items per page