Humans and machines Essay Example for Free

Humans and machines Essay The interesting feature about discussing the interactions of humans and machines is the inadequacy of language describing these interactions or the ambiguity of the connections between humans and machines. What is really at the center of the debate is how society should view the place of machines or non-human elements within human society. In addition, the application of the technological use of non-human elements in the modern machinery of war exposes the problem of how humans have changed the practice of warfare starting in WWI and how it made war evolve from a â€Å"human† experience to an â€Å"inhuman† experience instead of a â€Å"non-human† experience. The scope of this paper is to analyze the relationships of humans and machines in general as well as in the context of war. Discussion What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be non-human? According to Casper, the human identity is not a natural state of â€Å"being†, rather it is a constructed identity in relation to the context that society gives it. (Casper, 1994) In fact, the recognition of human social identity and the positions or functions attached to it are based on our interpretation of where these elements should be placed, for example, in order to understand or define something, we place it in ‘mental boxes’ that simplify our recognition of identity and function within society. However, Casper argues that we cannot fully justify why we assign human identities to non-human elements or vice-versa. (Casper, 1994) In order to illustrate the lack of consistency as to what we call human or non-human, she uses the example of the fetus that is considered alive for surgery, â€Å"a potential human† with human qualities but also a non-human agent for medical research using fetal tissue (p. 843). Casper mentions The Actor Network Agency (ANT) movement who finds that we should do away with natural/technical and social/cultural labels, which confuses our notions of what is human and what is not. However, this â€Å"analytical symmetry† treatment forgets to explain how we interpret the identities of agents and assign labels. Understanding how and why we label humans and non-humans may help diffuse the confusion over agent identities that bother sociologists and society so much since they cannot seem to make sense of it, for example, some people talk to their car like it was a person but a car is not a person but why do some people have the need to anthropomorphize their car whereas they would call their dog â€Å"it†? Some people would insist that animals are living beings therefore that they deserve to be referred to as he or she. (Casper, 1994) Another example in our technological society is the factory worker who gets laid off and replaced by a robot. The worker knows that he or she is better than a robot. Yet, the robot does his or her job consistently, faster, and without breaks. So, is the worker a sophisticated robot or is the robot a sophisticated worker? Bruno Latour would agree on that ambiguity because of our inadequate handling of situations in which non-human entities are mixed with human agents, especially from the perspective of sociologists. (Latour, 1988) Latour deals with this debate skillfully using an illustration to make his points: the door in a wall, opening and closing thanks to hinges (non-human element) and a human door keeper who has been assigned to close the door each time it is opened. He argues that ‘the hinge always does its work’, precise and consistent while at some time, the human doorkeeper may falter. So, the door keeper could be replaced by a non-human element the ‘door keeper number 2’ to prevent the faltering. The fact that we call the non-human element the door keeper even though it is not human, shows that we do not have ascribed what Latour calls â€Å"a coherent vocabulary† to distinguish humans from non-humans. Thus, his conclusion (p. 310) is that the reason why we have not done that is because â€Å"the delegation of competences and our social interactions imply the participation of non-humans. † The confusion is that non-humans exist within a context of figurative/non-figurative speech, not a human/non-human context. In essence, that is why we anthropomorphize our car. (Latour, 1988) Consequently, it seems that our lives are intimately intertwined with the use of technology, machines, and other tools, including robots as well as computers that all are non-human agents indispensable to our way of life. In fact, one particular illustration of such a reasonable conclusion can be found with computer hackers who, for the most part, are not considered part of ‘normal functioning society. ’ Sherry Turckle investigated MIT A. I. lab students who also are considered hackers. The main recurring idea among these students (almost exclusively male) is the fear of social interactions with other people due to a lack of trust or understanding of social interactions. Hackers are known to be loners and self-admittedly feel in control of their computer and its actions. In fact, on p. 212, this one student states: â€Å"computers have become an extension of my mind. † (Turckle, ) Their self-esteem, their existence become defined only through their medium, resulting in a gradual elimination of life experiences that paralyze them, adding to their needs to mask their personal fears of the world that exists beyond their machine. (p. 208) In contrast, there are people who even today cannot use a computer because they are afraid of revealing to others their lack of computer knowledge that has become essential in our modern society. Some may get help to improve their computer skills whereas others become so angry with the machine, taking their anger, originating from their own lack of confidence in learning new things, onto this ‘stupid’ machine; some may even become technophobic. Unfortunately for our society, science and technology have been used for warfare. Historically, wars always needed improvement in their methods of killing. As a consequence, the development of technology became a part of warfare while its propaganda glorified science and technology as the agents of victory. (Virillio, 1988) (Delanda, ) This became especially true as scientific knowledge evolved in physics, engineering, and chemistry. When WWI broke out in 1914, the weapons available then were the first of their kinds, the most inhuman of their kinds, killing many soldiers remotely: either gassing soldiers with the deadly gas phosgene or using machine guns or canons with an extended range to kill as many enemy soldiers as possible. (Visvanathan, ) In WWII, planes, tanks, and ships became more and more sophisticated with technological advances like radar and sonar. The advent of using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki horrified the scientists who naively believed that their work would be used to deter, not to destroy. (Kaempffert, 1941) â€Å"Fat Man† and â€Å"Little Boy† were dropped on these two Japanese cities; ironically, these two deadly bombs were named as if they were human themselves. To the Japanese, the nuclear catastrophe and its aftermath on the population promoted the creation of the character â€Å"Godzilla†, a pre-historic mutant monster. With the Cold War, more weapons gradually became stealth weapons instead of ‘front’ weapons. Nowadays, machines have turned into non-human extensions of their makers or rather their military masters, for example, long-range surveying equipment on satellites allowing spying activities on neighboring nations. Yet, is it appropriate to say ‘non-human’ when modern weapons like continental missiles can kill so horribly and from the comfort of a military base on the other side of the world? The military is relying on technology more than ever by using computers, artificial intelligence research, simulation modules that mimic a battlefield or even war video games whose graphics have been rendered so life-like that video gamers who are soldiers may not know reality from fiction, killing enemy soldiers without any care, as if they were video game characters, non-human or human? In conclusion, the relationship between human and non-human agents is complex but not impossible to characterize if the realization is made that non-human agents are part of our environment and society. In fact, they occupy a greater place today than 10 years ago (computer technology, for example). The key to their seamless integration in our society is the figure/non-figurative reference style proposed by Latour as it is already used unconsciously by many of us. References Casper, M. (1994).Reframing and grounding non-human agency: what makes a fetus an agent? The American Behavioral Scientist, 37(6): 839-856. Delanda, Latour, B. (1988). Mixing humans and non-humans together: the sociology of a door-closer. Social Problems, 35(3): 298-310. Kaempffert, W. (1941). War and Technology. The American Journal of Sociology, 46(4): 431-444. Turckle, S. (n. d. ) The new computer cultures: the mechanization of the mind. Book? , publisher, year? Virillio, P. (1988). War and Cinema. Visvanathan.

MacDonald Essay -- Business, Protective Tariffs Policy

Although they represented differed political parties, Sir John A. MacDonald and Sir Wilfred Laurier pursued the same goals while in office. MacDonald recognized Canada's need for protective tariffs on exported goods, the need of settlement in the west, and the need for a railway to unify the nation. MacDonald immediately implemented protectionism and the establishment of a railway. On the other hand, Laurier took these goals and expanded on them. John A. MacDonald outlined the goals of Canada in the National Policy and these goals were accomplished in the period of the Laurier Boom. The first goal of MacDonald's National Policy was the establishment of protective tariffs on goods. Although formerly a supporter of free trade, MacDonald decided that the current circumstances were favorable to protectionism (Stevenson, 194). His advocacy for protective tariffs had great impact on Canadians, so much that the nation voted MacDonald into office in 1878. For the next eighteen years after the establishment of the National Policy, the Liberals held to a rigid free trade philosophy and â€Å"directed its main attack upon the tariff system and the anti-protectionist case came to enjoy wide acceptance† (194). When MacDonald first implemented protectionism, Laurier, like many other liberals, was against the idea. However, once in power, Laurier was prompted by British preference to maintain the policy of high protection (194). However, the tariff issue was banished once the boom took flight as Canada's export markets were thriving. The country experienced great prosp erity, rapid development as well as expansion, especially for the railways (194). Once the country's prosperity began to slow down, farmers of the west that were â€Å"the chief sufferer... ...s National Policy and Wilfred Laurier accomplished it in his time in office, the period known as the Laurier Boom. This goes to show that the different political parties do not vary so much in their ideas, but more so in the ways of which they execute them. These two men exemplify their political parties; although both parties are equally motivated, when executing their practices, conservatives tend to be more laid back and behind the scenes and liberals are more diligent and in the forefront. For example, MacDonald came up with and outlined the policy, and Laurier took the policy into application. Although their approaches are different, the ideas and actions of these two men together are the reason for the development of Canada as a nation. Therefore, with this in mind, both the Laurier government and the MacDonald government created the nation of Canada.

Literature Final

â€Å"Annabel Lee† stands as one of the most famous â€Å"death† poems of the nineteenth century, although it’s stature is certainly matched by Walt Whitman’s â€Å"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,† a poem which uses a number of   similar poetic devices, but rests upon an entirely different form. Like Poe’s most famous poem â€Å"The Raven,† his â€Å"other† famous poem â€Å"Annabel Lee† is steeped in musical diction and meter, with a view toward creating a lyric tension between the sweetness and musicality of the poem’s meter and form and the more profound and perhaps less idealized potency of the poems themes: which is human mortality. By combining technical precision with a theme of magnitude, Poe pursued his policy and prescription for poetic composition as outlined in his essays â€Å"The Poetic Principle† and the â€Å"Rational of Verse† â€Å"The Philosophy of Composition:† â€Å"the notions of his negligible ‘Philosophy of Composition' and ‘The Poetic Principle'. Its resources seem devices. Every effect seems due to an expedient. The repetend and the refrain are reliances with him — not instrumental, but thematic. At least they constitute rather than create the effect — which has therefore something otiose and perfunctory about it† (Foerster 239). The opening lines: â€Å"It was many and many a year ago/ In a Kingdom by the Sea† signal the intention not only to create a musical pattern with words as by the deliberate redundancy of â€Å"many and many† but also to posit and idealized world against that of grim reality. The repetition of many reveals that the ideal time of a â€Å"Kingdom by the Sea† has passed and this generates an immediate thematic tension. Similarly, Whitman’s poem begins with an evocation of time past: â€Å"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,/And the great start early dropp’d in the western sky in the night.† In both  poems, the hearkening back toward an idealized time first glimpsed at the poem’s beginning will recur throughout the body of the poem in both imagery and diction: in Poe’s poem, as an obvious refrain, in Whitman’s as a series of extended modulations of the original theme; with the free-verse poem flowing through many permutations of the original â€Å"lilac-nostalgia† imagery. It is worth noting that the formality of Poe’s stanza forms with carefully placed rhyme and  enjambment contrasts not only technically, but thematically, with Whitman’s sprawling free-verse form. The former carefully predicts the poem’s ending in the meter, the inevitable sway toward a definite conclusion, like fate. The latter’s form, loosed from metrical and rhyme constraints seems to â€Å"grow† rather than follow its inevitable almost mathematically destined end. The technical consequences are obvious: Poe’s poem will impress itself upon memory much more easily than Whitman’s and thus be received more organically; whereas Whitman’s (according to Poe’s doctrines) is apt to fascinate by virtue of individual images and lines. The thematic consequence is a different matter. Poe’s succinct and mathematical form serves to enhance the poem’s grave themes of personal loss and morning, sparking within the poem an indelible timelessness, an eternal melancholy, which is precisely the theme of the poem. One can imagine the poems meter and rhyme scheme quite easily projected into a musical melody without words which would result in much the same manner of â€Å"bright† misery. On the other hand, the free-verse   form of Whitman’s poem, were it projected as a musical number, might be more aptly described as an improvisational melody with a â€Å"pop† arrangement. The impact of the form on the theme of mortality, is to set in motion, the imagination’s perception that death contains within it motion, growing, an evolution of life and rebirth. â€Å"I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.† This line with its conspicuous use of the word  Ã¢â‚¬Å"ever-returning† rather than â€Å"every†indicates the poem’s death-rebirth cyclical theme. Poe’s poem, by contrast, closes in a monochromatic, monotonic— one might say paralytic submission to death. Though there is a hint of release in the poem’s narrator rejoining his departed lover’s corpse, there is no indication of rebirth or of growth beyond this mutual oblivion. â€Å"In the sepulchre there by the sea,/In her tomb by the sounding sea.† This close is simultaneously an urge toward and away from death: but that ambiguity is trumped by the over-reaching reality of the â€Å"sea† which, in terms of the poem, indicates oblivion. At the close of Whitman’s poem, nature is viewed as sympathetic and in harony wiht the mourning of the observer; a cleansing and cathartic experience is implied. â€Å"For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands— and/this for his dear sake,/Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,/There in the fragrant pines and cedars dusk and dim.† Rather than oblivion, nature offers brotherhood and renewal, as implied by the continuous symbol of the lilacs. Poe’s poem acknowledges and imparts the sense of life and death being in continuous friction â€Å"The angels not so happy in Heaven,?Went envying her and me† while Whitman vies death in life in continuous balance and integration â€Å"Come lovely and soothing death,/Undulate around the world. Serenely arriving, arriving,/In the day, in the night, to all, to each,/sooner or later delicate death.† Nothing could illustrate the contrast between the two poems and poets more than Whitman’s phrase â€Å"delicate death.† In â€Å"Annabel Lee, the delicate ones are the people, the humans who must succumb to death; for Whitman humanity is stronger than death and death is viewed as a part of the universal extension of human experience: it is delicate, not oppressive. This essential difference in the poems is reflected in their form and expression.   The more  controlled and fatalistic intonations of Poe and the â€Å"organic† reflective and lyrically introspective tribute by Whitman. In each case, the poet confronts the death of a beloved and reaches through their deep identification with the departed to a summation of the nature of death: for Poe is it everlasting oblivion, an for Whitman it is cyclical renewal. For both poets, the subject of human mortality provided fertile ground to create lasting poems that resonate across time. SECTION 2 Using a story each by Edgar Allen Poe and Washington Irving, describe how the Romantic writer used the supernatural to engage the reader’s imagination and then explain why Romantics were drawn to the supernatural Though many Gothic writers have earned a deserved reputation for a preoccupation with the supernatural, it is often the case that this same fascination, slanted toward the rational or â€Å"debunking† of commonly held superstitions and idea about supernatural forces, has been overlooked. Two good examples of this tendency are Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe, both of whom are well-revered as writers of â€Å"ghost stories† or â€Å"scary stories† which deal with the fantastic. However, both Poe and Irving posit a rational, anti-superstitious motif in their well-known stories: as a cases in point we may review â€Å"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow† by Irving and â€Å"The Sphinx† by Edgar Allen Poe. â€Å"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,† rather than celebrating supernatural forces or positing them as actual forces at work in the real world, uses the idea or fallacious belief in supernatural forces to drive the story’s plot and them: â€Å"Irving's denial of the fantastic begins with The Sketch Book, and, although his strategy changes, the goal remains the same in all four works. John Clendenning has noted the debunking of the Gothic tradition in the three famous inserted stories of The Sketch Book: â€Å"Rip Van Winkle†, â€Å"The Spectre Bridegroom†, and â€Å"The Legend of SleepyHollow† (Brodwin 53). The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is based in â€Å"the uncanny,† a genre which allows the reader to decide â€Å"that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described. In this case, we know that it is really Brom Bones, not the Galloping Hessian, who has pursued Ichabod Crane†(Brodwin 54). This is seemingly an anti-romantic idea: de-emphasizing imaginary or delusional aspects for those drawn out of pure rationality. Similarly, Poe in â€Å"The Sphinx†posits opposite minded characters, confronted with an uncanny experience, one which disavows the supernatural, the other, the narrator who claims :†A favorite topic with me was the popular belief in omens— a belief which, at this epoch in my life, I was almost seriously disposed to defend.† This is opposite the attitude of Ichabod Crane who expresses a disbelief in supernatural forces, but harbors a secret fear of them. â€Å"Because there is already a legend about the Hessian, Ichabod's disappearance can be explained by recourse to the supernatural, although the schoolmaster's rivalry with Brom Bones over Katrina van Tassel is the obvious cause. Once again the possibility of the fantastic is raised for the sole purpose of being denied;† in this way, Irving emphasizes the role of rationality in a disordered world. â€Å"Such a strategy indicates that Irving was not just parodying the excesses of contemporary Gothic and romantic fiction, which can be commended† he was also attempting to magnify the scope of fiction as both philosophically and morally instructive (Brodwin 54) Poe’s â€Å"The Sphinx† also posits the possibility of a grand â€Å"supernatural†event, only forthe purposes of debunking it through rational faculties. â€Å"Poe was also a born humorist equally inspired by parody and self-mockery. In an anti-romantic vein so common among the popular humorists of his time, he enjoyed applying his acumen to deride the outpourings of emotions too often surging from mediocre fiction and poetry† (Royot 57). If â€Å"The Sphinx† can be profitably viewed as Poe’s gesture toward self-humor and also as a gesture toward the supremacy of rational thought over superstition it is no surprise. Other tales deal in this fashion with the same themes most notably the â€Å"Dupin† stories: Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, and The Mystery of Marie Roget. But Poe also dealt with â€Å"ratiocination† in other celebrated stories such as â€Å"The Gold Bug† and â€Å"Maelzel’s Chessplayer. For Poe, it was possible for supernatural forces to exist, as well as for misapprehension of known forces for those of supernatural origin. However, as a plot device in fiction, Poe was notably against the sue of supernatural forces without organic cause:â€Å"Objecting to incredible or improbable elements in the narrative, Poe claims that unraveling a plot by awkwardly appealing to the supernatural constitutes an affront to artistic standards. This censure of Bird's idiosyncratic characters and extraordinary plot devices may seem like an early call for realism in fiction, but the review calls for more than minute attention to credible detail† (Ljungquist 9) In fact ‘The Sphinx† hardly reconciles its dichotomy of the known and unknown, the real and imagined: as a case in point we view his â€Å"explanation† for the apparition in the story, of the so-called Sphinx, which turns out to be nothing more than a beetle! However, the beetle in question posited as a scientific explanation for irrational experience is, in itself, a fancy of Poe’s! â€Å"Indeed, this synthetic bug is probably, through the story, the best known of all beetles, even if, like the â€Å"sea coast of Bohemia,† it never existed. Poe at times had almost an impish delight in the inaccuracy of unessentials. (Quinn 131) The appeal of the supernatural to Gothic and Romantic writers was both genuine and also as a sub-genre within to create cautionary tales regarding the integrity of human rationality in the face of what appear to be illogical, or supernatural occurrences. References Brodwin, S. (Ed.). (1986). The Old and New World Romanticism of Washington Irving. New York: Greenwood Press. Foerster, N. (Ed.). (1930). American Critical Essays, XIXth and XXth Centuries. London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press. Ljungquist, K. P. (2002). 1 The Poet as Critic. In The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Hayes, K. J. (Ed.) (pp. 7-19). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Quinn, A. H. (1941). Edgar Allan Poe A Critical Biography. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Royot, D. (2002). 4 Poe's Humor. In The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, Hayes, K. J. (Ed.) (pp. 57-70). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.                                       

Financial Crisis Of The United States - 951 Words

Financial Crisis in the United States American debt held by households is rising ominously, plus our economic policies change. That debt balloon powered by radical income inequality will become the next bust. It drives by spending on domestic demand or more likely consumer spending not just by the wealthy, but by everyone else. An important explaining about the unity that emerged from our latest research has shown as relatively that ten percent were prosperous, saving, and investment in which natural and interests to find the path of them in the financial markets, but primarily ninety percent had borrowed. As the result many Americans concern about the financial crisis and the cartoon uses to sarcasm, irony, and logos to convey its message. The cartoon creates to entertain people and mostly advertise about financial crisis or in political. My cartoon describes the United States’ debt and each part of the picture symbolizes America’s current state. For example, the hot air balloon is usually used for travel floating in the air; however, the artist uses a lead balloon to present the speed of America’s fallen. The artist also uses chain to symbolize the United States is being imprisoned. The artist uses the cliff to remind the audience of downfall of the United States, and also uses a thin cloth bucket to hold a person and that image points out the size of the U.S. budget. Finally, the artist draw a blind person to symbolize the blindness of our president, and the ways he usesShow MoreRelatedFinancial Crisis Of The United States1000 Words   |  4 PagesFinancial Crisis in the U.S. In 2008, the world experienced a horrific financial crisis which has been considered one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression of the 1930s. After posing an enormous negative effect on the U.S. economy, the financial crisis started to spread across Europe and the rest of the world. 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