Posts Tagged ‘history’

research grant WWI

Research Grants Programme: 2018 Call for Submissions (Open)

Deadline: 5 October 2018 23:59 CET Theme: The First World War.

https://pro.europeana.eu/post/research-grants-programme-2018-call-for-submissions-open

Eligibility

The Research Grants Programme is intended for early career scholars of all nationalities and in any field of the Humanities. They must have a particular interest in cultural heritage and take a digital humanities approach. Applicants must hold a PhD, with no more than 7 years of experience after the completion of their PhD. With duly justified exceptions, their projects must be hosted by institutions, i.e. a university, a research centre, a library lab or a museum, working in one of the European Union member states.

ethics and AI

Ethik und Künstliche Intelligenz: Die Zeit drängt – wir müssen handeln

8/7/2108 Prof. Dr. theol. habil. Arne Manzeschke

https://www.pcwelt.de/a/ethik-und-ki-die-zeit-draengt-wir-muessen-handeln,3451885

Das Europäische Parlament hat es im vergangenen Jahr ganz drastisch formuliert. Eine neue industrielle Revolution steht an
1954 wurdeUnimate, der erste Industrieroboter , von George Devol entwickelt [1]. Insbesondere in den 1970er Jahren haben viele produzierende Gewerbe eine Roboterisierung ihrer Arbeit erfahren (beispielsweise die Automobil- und Druckindustrie).
Definition eines Industrieroboters in der ISO 8373 (2012) vergegenwärtigt: »Ein Roboter ist ein frei und wieder programmierbarer, multifunktionaler Manipulator mit mindestens drei unabhängigen Achsen, um Materialien, Teile, Werkzeuge oder spezielle Geräte auf programmierten, variablen Bahnen zu bewegen zur Erfüllung der verschiedensten Aufgaben«.

Ethische Überlegungen zu Robotik und Künstlicher Intelligenz

Versucht man sich einen Überblick über die verschiedenen ethischen Probleme zu verschaffen, die mit dem Aufkommen von ›intelligenten‹ und in jeder Hinsicht (Präzision, Geschwindigkeit, Kraft, Kombinatorik und Vernetzung) immer mächtigeren Robotern verbunden sind, so ist es hilfreich, diese Probleme danach zu unterscheiden, ob sie

1. das Vorfeld der Ethik,

2. das bisherige Selbstverständnis menschlicher Subjekte (Anthropologie) oder

3. normative Fragen im Sinne von: »Was sollen wir tun?« betreffen.

Die folgenden Überlegungen geben einen kurzen Aufriss, mit welchen Fragen wir uns jeweils beschäftigen sollten, wie die verschiedenen Fragenkreise zusammenhängen, und woran wir uns in unseren Antworten orientieren können.

Aufgabe der Ethik ist es, solche moralischen Meinungen auf ihre Begründung und Geltung hin zu befragen und so zu einem geschärften ethischen Urteil zu kommen, das idealiter vor der Allgemeinheit moralischer Subjekte verantwortet werden kann und in seiner Umsetzung ein »gelungenes Leben mit und für die Anderen, in gerechten Institutionen« [8] ermöglicht. Das ist eine erste vage Richtungsangabe.

Normative Fragen lassen sich am Ende nur ganz konkret anhand einer bestimmten Situation bearbeiten. Entsprechend liefert die Ethik hier keine pauschalen Urteile wie: »Roboter sind gut/schlecht«, »Künstliche Intelligenz dient dem guten Leben/ist dem guten Leben abträglich«.

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more on Artificial Intelligence in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=artifical+intelligence

Churchill and the Greek resistance

How Churchill broke the Greek Resistance

How Winston Churchill and the British government attacked the Greek Resistance and sowed the seeds of civil war.

in December 1944: Nazi troops were still resisting the Allies, which were making slow progress in Italy and being pushed back in the Ardennes faced with the Wehrmacht’s final counter-offensive. Yet the “bands” here targeted by Churchill were not groups of collaborators, but the partisans of the great National Liberation Front (EAM), which had for three years mounted mass resistance against the German occupiers.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the eastern Mediterranean had been the center of a rivalry between Britain and Russia. The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 having put an end to the latter country’s ambitions in the region, in the early 1940s, Greece was under unchallenged British influence. In this context, the country was of some strategic importance.
during the Quadrant Conference with Roosevelt in Quebec (August 17-24, 1943), Churchill saw his last hopes of an Allied landing in Greece vanish. Meanwhile, the Red Army’s advance beyond the USSR’s own frontiers was no longer in doubt. Churchill now took matters directly in hand, despite his advisers’ reticence, blocking off any possibility of negotiation and sending the EAM delegates home. At the same time, in a note to his high command, he drafted what would later become the MANNA plan: namely, to send an expeditionary corps to Greece after the German troops’ withdrawal.
The EAM-ELAS nonetheless succeeded in liberating a large part of the country. It established popular institutions which formed a counter-state. The worries among the British peaked in March 1944, when a “government of the mountains” was created that organized elections. Conversely, this approach awakened the enthusiasm of the Greek armed forces in Egypt, who immediately demanded that the Resistance be included in the exile government. Churchill replied with pitiless repression. He had “rebellious” elements deported to camps in Africa, and set up a praetorian guard prepared to return to Greece with the King and the British troops upon Liberation.
Everything was set for the application of the MANNA plan, which had been prepared the previous year. The victorious Red Army offensive in Bulgaria in September 1944 forced the Wehrmacht to withdraw from Greece, under attack from ELAS partisans. It was after this retreat that the British expeditionary corps arrived, accompanied by Papandreou and Scobie. Establishing themselves in the capital on October 18, the two men demanded that ELAS lay down its weapons, even as they rejected the disarming of the praetorian guard that had been formed in Egypt and, conveniently enough, transferred to Athens in early November.
December 3, 1944, saw a monster demonstration in Syntagma Square to demand Papandreou’s resignation and the constitution of a new government. The massacre that followed — the police opened fire on unarmed civilians, leaving over twenty dead and more than a hundred wounded — triggered the insurrection of the people of Athens. This was the pretext that Churchill had sought in order to be able to break the Resistance.
While the ELAS was still present across the rest of Greece’s territory, its leaders dreaded imposing new trials on an exhausted and famished population: 1,770 villages had been burned, more than a million people did not have a roof over their heads, and grain production had fallen by 40 percent. Meanwhile, the Allies’ aid only reached those who collaborated with them. With the Varkiza accord signed on February 12, 1945, the ELAS agreed unilaterally to give up its weapons. At the same time at Yalta, Churchill, together with Roosevelt and Stalin, solemnly proclaimed “the right of all peoples in liberated Europe to choose their own form of government.”
In breaking the Greek Resistance, the British had precipitated a civil war that would last — in open or latent forms — for some thirty years, with a brief lull between 1963 and 1965. It would only end with the fall of the colonels’ dictatorship in 1974. This “coup in Athens” reminds us that through its history, modern Greece has only enjoyed a very limited sovereignty.

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more on history in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=history

ordoliberalism

Germany’s iron cage

Germany adopted the social market system of economic rules separated from political democracy, known as ordoliberalism, after 1945; it was later used as the ideological basis of Europe Union economic policy.

by François Denord, Rachel Knaebel & Pierre Rimbert

https://mondediplo.com/2015/08/03ordoliberalism

Ordoliberals, like the Anglo-Saxon advocates of laissez-faire, believe the state should not distort the workings of the markets, but they also believe that free competition does not develop spontaneously. The state should establish a legal, technical, social, moral and cultural framework for the markets, and make sure everyone follows the rules.

The rise of ordoliberalism was part of a vast international renewal of liberal thought in the 1930s — neoliberalism. In this context, the ordos opposed those nostalgic for laissez-faire — Ludwig von Mises and his disciple Friedrich Hayek — who, Rüstow complained, “found nothing to criticise or to change in traditional liberalism.”

 

VR AR MR apps for education

4 Augmented and Virtual Reality Projects That Point to the Future of Education

By Justin Hendrix     Jan 3, 2018

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-01-03-4-augmented-and-virtual-reality-projects-that-point-to-the-future-of-education

At NYC Media Lab recent Exploring Future Reality conference, long-time educators including Agnieszka Roginska of New York University and Columbia University’s Steven Feiner pointed to emerging media as a way to improve multi-modal learning for students and train computer systems to understand the world around us.

the Lab has completed dozens of rapid prototyping projectsexhibited hundreds of demos from the corporate, university and entrepreneurship communities; helped new startups make their mark; and hosted three major events, all to explore emerging media technologies and their evolving impact.

Kiwi

Mobile AR

https://medium.com/@nycmedialab/14-virtual-and-augmented-reality-projects-emerging-from-nyc-media-lab-this-spring-af65ccb6bdd8

Kiwi enhances learning experiences by encouraging active participation with AR and social media. A student can use their smartphone or tablet to scan physical textbooks and unlock learning assistance tools, like highlighting, note creation and sharing, videos and AR guides—all features that encourage peer-to-peer learning. (my note, as reported at the discussion at the QQLM conference in Crete about Zois Koukopoulos, Dimitrios Koukopoulos Augmented Reality Dissemination and Exploitation Services for Libraries: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2018/05/21/measuring-learning-outcomes-of-new-library-initiatives/

Street Smarts VR

Training and simulations for police  https://streetsmartsvr.com/

Street Smarts VR is a startup that is working to provide solutions for a major issue facing America’s communities: conflicts between police officers and citizens.

NYC Media Lab recently collaborated with Bloomberg and the augmented reality startup Lampix on a fellowship program to envision the future of learning in the workplace. Lampix technology looks like it sounds: a lamp-like hardware that projects AR capabilities, turning any flat surface into one that can visualize data and present collaborative workflows.

Calling Thunder: The Unsung History of Manhattan

Calling Thunder: The Unsung History of Manhattan, a project that came out of a recent fellowship program with A+E Networks, re-imagines a time before industrialization, when the City we know now was lush with forests, freshwater ponds, and wildlife.

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more on VR and education
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=virtual+reality+education
more on AR in education
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=augmented+reality+education

Orban Hungary populism

PODCAST – Dean Starkman: “We are looking at the Golden Age of Public Corruption”

PODCAST – Dean Starkman: “We are looking at the Golden Age of Public Corruption”

Dean Starkman is a fellow at Center for Media, Data and Society and a visiting lecturer at the School of Public Policy at Central European University, Budapest. He and Ben Novak discuss the challenges facing public interest journalism, the transformation of journalism as whole, and where things are going from here.

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more on Hungary in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=hungary

more on populism in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=populism

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