The Harvard classics /

Vols. 1-49 indexed in The Idexicon.

The Open Data Smart City: A Case Study of Smart City Progress through Open Data Initiatives

Smart cities, cities that are supported by an extensive digital infrastructure of sensors, databases and intelligent applications, have become a major area of academic, governmental and public interest. Simultaneously, there has been a growing interest in open data, the unrestricted use of organizational data for public viewing and use. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), Urban Studies and Political Economy, this thesis examines how digital processes, open data and the physical world can be combined in smart city development, through the qualitative interview-based case study of a Southern Ontario Municipality, Anytown. The thesis asks what are the challenges associated with smart city development and open data proliferation, is open data complimentary to smart urban development; and how is expertise constructed in these fields? The thesis concludes that smart city development in Anytown is a complex process, involving a variety of visions, programs and components. Although smart city and open data initiatives exist in Anytown, and some are even overlapping and complementary, smart city development is in its infancy. However, expert informants remained optimistic, faithful to a technologically sublime vision of what a smart city would bring. The thesis also questions the notion of expertise within the context of smart city and open data projects, concluding that assertions of expertise need to be treated with caution and scepticism when considering how knowledge is received, generated, interpreted and circulates, within organizations.

The Internet as opportunity and challenge in contemporary social movements

This paper explores the relationship between the rise of “new” social movements (15-M and Occupy) and the Internet. The new social media gives rise to new kinds of social movements  which embed this technology from the moment of conception. The future of social movements will be characterised by movinets, which will have the effect of developing new efficient ways of activism. The movinets, with their embedded technology and capacity to circulate ideas among different spheres of reality, have a potential to alter the dynamics of social mobilisation.

Original sin: divine and symbolic violence in the turn to the Apostle Paul

When we take a step back from the imposing figure of physical violence, it becomes possible to examine other structurally violent forces that constantly shape our cultural and political landscapes. One of the driving interests in the “turn to Paul” in recent continental philosophy stems from wrestling with questions about the real nature of contemporary violence. Paul is positioned as a thinker whose messianic experience began to cut through the violent masquerade of the existing order. The crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah (a slave and a God co-existing in one body) exposed the empty grounding upon which power resided. The Christ-event signifies a moment of violent interruption in the existing order which Paul enjoins the Gentiles to participate in through a dedication of love for the neighbour. This divine violence aims to reveal and subvert the “powers,” epitomised in the Roman Empire, in order to fulfil the labour of the Messianic now-time which had arrived. The impetus behind this research comes from a typically enigmatic and provocative section of text by the Slovene philosopher, cultural critic, and Christian atheist Slavoj Žižek. He claims that 'the notion of love should be given here all its Paulinian weight: the domain of pure violence… is the domain of love' (2008a, 173). In this move he links Paul’s idea of love to that of Walter Benjamin’s divine violence; the sublime and the cataclysmic come together in this seemingly perverse notion. At stake here is the way in which uncovering violent forces in the “zero-level” of our narrative worldviews aids the diagnosis of contemporary political and ethical issues. It is not enough to imagine Paul’s encounter with the Christ-event as non-violent. This Jewish apocalyptic movement was engaged in a violent struggle within an existing order that God’s wrath will soon dismantle. Paul’s weak violence, inspired by his fidelity to the Christ-event, places all responsibility over creation in the role of the individual within the collective body. The centre piece of this re-imagined construction of the Pauline narrative comes in Romans 13: the violent dedication to love understood in the radical nature of the now-time. 3 This research examines the role that narratives play in the creation and diagnosis of these violent forces. In order to construct a new genealogy of violence in Christianity it is crucial to understand the role of the slave of Christ (the revolutionary messianic subject). This turn in the Symbolic is examined through creating a literary structure in which we can approach a radical Nietzschean shift in Pauline thought. The claim here, a claim which is also central to Paul’s letters, is that when the symbolic violence which manipulates our worldviews is undone by a divine violence, if even for a moment, new possibilities are created in the opening for a transvaluation of values. Through this we uncover the nature of original sin: the consequences of the interconnected reality of our actions. The role of literature is vital in the construction of this narrative; starting with Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, and continuing through works such as Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, this thesis draws upon the power of literature in the shaping of our narrative worlds. Typical of the continental philosophy at the heart of this work, a diverse range of illustrations and inspirations from fiction is pulled into its narrative to reflect the symbolic universe that this work was forged through. What this work attempts to do is give this theory a greater grounding in Paul’s letters by demonstrating this radical kenotic power at the heart of the Christ-event. Romans 13 reveals, in a way that has not yet been picked up by Critchley, Žižek, and others, that Paul opposed the biopolitical power of the Roman Empire through the weak violence of love that is the labour of the slaves of Christ on the “now-time” that had arrived.

La estética de lo sublime, un camino para entender el arte posmoderno desde Jean-François Lyotard

El presente trabajo de investigación está orientado a comprender el arte posmoderno desde la perspectiva estética de Jean François Lyotard.La categoría principal que abordamos es lo sublime y su vinculación con la producción artística. Para esto realizamos un breve estudio histórico de esta categoría, hasta el pensamiento del filósofo francés. Luego ahondamos en la posmodernidad según Lyotard, pues es el contexto de sus reflexiones. El germen de lo que hoy se conoce como mundo posmoderno, fue identificado por Lyotard en la década de los setenta. Llamó condición posmoderna a la deslegitimación de los metarrelatos modernos y al auge de las tecnologías como un apoyo al capitalismo. En su conceptualización recurriría a lo sublime y establecería una relación con las artes de las vanguardias, de aquí se desprenden dos acepciones: lo sublime moderno y lo sublime posmoderno.

The Museum of Doubt

Is there a God? Does my bum look big in this? Why doesn’t my house cost only the materials used to build it? Is Video Art dead? When Peter Hill curated his first Museum of Doubt exhibition at Zeppelin Projects in Brunswick, these were some of the questions his artist friends wrote on one wall of the gallery. Those artists included Jon Cattapan, Phil Edwards, Julian Goddard, Ceri Hahn, and Peter Ellis. Others, who are also in this second outing of The Museum of Doubt, include Louise Weaver, Patrick Pound, Josh Foley and Michael Vale. How do we know what is true or false in any given visual statement? How willing are we to suspend our disbelief? And does that even matter if the artworks can be enjoyed for their own formal beauty, angst, or inquisitiveness?“I have a great sympathy with both doubt and faith as beacons for navigating this sublime universe,” says Peter Hill. “Remembering that the sublime in art, as in life and death, hovers between beauty and terror. Doubt and faith are both on the same side of the same coin – a coin that has “certainty” on the reverse. Most of the problems we face today are caused by individuals and nations being “certain” that they have the answer. Don’t listen to them. Be skeptical. The truth can be approached, as Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science tells us, but it can rarely be found. It can only be falsified.”So bring your doubt and your faith to this Wunderkammer of Super Fictions and enjoy the lightness, the darkness, and the strangeness in the works of: Glen Clarke, Josh Foley, Tony Garifalakis, Grant Hill, Peter Hill, Patrick Pound, Michael Vale, Louise Weaver and Robert Zhao.