The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World

The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World PDF

Author: Laurence Scott

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2016-08-09

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0393353087

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You are a four-dimensional human. Each of us exists in three-dimensional, physical space. But, as a constellation of everyday digital phenomena rewires our lives, we are increasingly coaxed from the containment of our predigital selves into a wonderful and eerie fourth dimension, a world of ceaseless communication, instant information, and global connection. Our portals to this new world have been wedged open, and the silhouette of a figure is slowly taking shape. But what does it feel like to be four-dimensional? How do digital technologies influence the rhythms of our thoughts, the style and tilt of our consciousness? What new sensitivities and sensibilities are emerging with our exposure to the delights, sorrows, and anxieties of a networked world? And how do we live in public with these recoded private lives? Laurence Scott—hailed as a “New Generation Thinker” by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC—shows how this four-dimensional life is dramatically changing us by redefining our social lives and extending the limits of our presence in the world. Blending tech-philosophy with insights on everything from Seinfeld to the fall of Gaddafi, Scott stands with a rising generation of social critics hoping to understand our new reality. His virtuosic debut is a revelatory and original exploration of life in the digital age.

Navigating the New Retail Landscape

Navigating the New Retail Landscape PDF

Author: Alan Treadgold

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-11-26

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0192639404

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The global retail industry is in the early stages of an era of profound and unprecedented, change. This book is intended to serve as a wide-ranging, robust, and practical guide to leaders of enterprises tasked with both understanding and delivering success in the new landscape of retailing. Part 1 describes the major directions and drivers of change that define the new retail landscape. Accelerating changes in technology, the rise to international prominence of internet enabled shoppers, and the rapid emergence of entirely new retail enterprises and business models are combining to re-shape the very fundamentals of the retail industry. No longer are shops central or even necessary to the business of retailing. No longer is choice for the shopper limited to the neighbourhood, town, or even country in which they live. No longer is the act of retailing solely the preserve of traditional retail enterprises as internet-enabled businesses, technology, logistics, suppliers, and financial services enterprises all seek direct relationships with the shopper. The new landscape of retailing is an unforgiving one. Success can be achieved more quickly than ever before, but failure is equally rapid. New opportunities are profound, but so too are the challenges. Part 2 of this book discusses the structures, skills, and capabilities that retail enterprises and their leaders will need if they are to be successful. This second edition presents more than 25 detailed case studies of innovative and successful enterprises alongside more than one hundred smaller examples to illustrate the themes discussed. A new afterword also presents ten central areas business leaders must focus on in order to build organizational resilienc in the wake of COVID-19 and the profound uncertainties retail enterprises now face. Frameworks and practical guidance are offered to help readers contextualise the nature of change occurring on a global scale, and identify the capabilities, skills, and perspectives that will be needed at both an enterprise and a personal leadership level.

Existential Media

Existential Media PDF

Author: Amanda Lagerkvist

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-06-14

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0190925566

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Tied to the profundity of life and death, media are and have always been existential. Yet, as they are deeply embedded in the lifeworld on both individual and global scales, they currently capitalize on human existence seemingly without limit, while being mythologized as boundless harbingers of the future and as solutions to the predicaments of a world now poised on the edge. In this situation it is imperative to move beyond either the habitual or the sublime, to recognize that media are in fact of limits--situated both in the middle of our lives and at the limit they constitute the building blocks and brinks of being. In order to remedy the existential deficit in the field, in Existential Media Amanda Lagerkvist revisits existential philosophy through a reappreciation of Karl Jaspers' philosophy, and of his concept of the limit situation: those ultimate moments in life--of loss, crisis and guilt--which we are called upon to seize. Introducing the field of existential media studies in conversation with disability studies, the new materialism and the environmental humanities, the book offers a media theory of the limit situation which brings limits, in all their shapes and forms, onto the radar when we interrogate media. Lagerkvist argues that the present age of deep techno-cultural saturation, and of escalating calamitous and interrelated crises, is a digital limit situation, in which there are profound stakes which heighten existential uncertainty, vulnerability as well as potential fecundity. Placing the mourner--the coexister--at the center of media studies, by entering into the slow fields of mourning, commemorating and speaking to the dead in the online environment, she brings out that existential media ambivalently offer metric parameters, caring lifelines and transcendent experiences which ultimately display post-interactive modes of being digital in slowness, silence and waiting. The book ultimately calls forth a different ethos which powerfully challenges ideals of limitlessness, quantification and speed, and seeks out alternate intellectual and ethical coordinates for reclaiming, imagining and anticipating a responsible future with existential media.

Shadows of Reality

Shadows of Reality PDF

Author: Tony Robbin

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 0300129629

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In this insightful book, which is a revisionist math history as well as a revisionist art history, Tony Robbin, well known for his innovative computer visualizations of hyperspace, investigates different models of the fourth dimension and how these are applied in art and physics. Robbin explores the distinction between the slicing, or Flatland, model and the projection, or shadow, model. He compares the history of these two models and their uses and misuses in popular discussions. Robbin breaks new ground with his original argument that Picasso used the projection model to invent cubism, and that Minkowski had four-dimensional projective geometry in mind when he structured special relativity. The discussion is brought to the present with an exposition of the projection model in the most creative ideas about space in contemporary mathematics such as twisters, quasicrystals, and quantum topology. Robbin clarifies these esoteric concepts with understandable drawings and diagrams. Robbin proposes that the powerful role of projective geometry in the development of current mathematical ideas has been long overlooked and that our attachment to the slicing model is essentially a conceptual block that hinders progress in understanding contemporary models of spacetime. He offers a fascinating review of how projective ideas are the source of some of today’s most exciting developments in art, math, physics, and computer visualization.

Forget School

Forget School PDF

Author: Martin Illingworth

Publisher: Crown House Publishing Ltd

Published: 2020-04-07

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 1781353557

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Written by Martin Illingworth, Forget School: Why young people are succeeding on their own terms and what schools can do to avoid being left behind is a wide-reaching, engaging enquiry into the things that young people actually need from their education. Schools are at a crossroads: either they respond to the real world of change, challenges and possibilities that face young people, or they become irrelevant. Young people need to network effectively, manage their finances responsibly, and be digitally proficient and alert to the world around them. If schools do not adapt their provision to nurture these capabilities, then today's youth will increasingly turn to alternative sources to seek out the education they need. Drawing on the experiences of young self-employed adults, Martin Illingworth's Forget School shares key insights into the ways in which education can be recalibrated to better support young people. In doing so he provides practical suggestions around how schooling culture, curriculum design and pedagogical approaches can be reconfigured in readiness for the emerging shifts and trends in 21st century life and employment. Martin sheds light on how young people perceive school's current provision, and offers greater insight into what they think needs to change if education is to work for generations to come. He also explores the importance of digital proficiency in the 21st century and how young people, as digital natives, both acquire it and leverage its benefits independently of school instruction. Essential reading for anyone working in education.

A Question of Inequality

A Question of Inequality PDF

Author: Christopher Steed

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-07-30

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1786733994

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Inequality is widening. In the twenty-first century, the gap between those who have more and those who have less is growing: 1 per cent of the world owns as much as the other 99 per cent. Should we be worried? Christopher Steed, author of the acclaimed A Question of Worth, argues that inequality does indeed matter: that economic fairness is one of the defining issues of our time. In a world conditioned by social media, enabling intensified social comparison, the anxieties and effects of contemporary inequality are a cause for huge concern. Despite a wealth of research around inequality most studies have concentrated on its quantitative aspects. In A Question of Inequality, Christopher Steed is concerned with exploring why inequality matters, what it means for those who find themselves victims of it, and what can be done about it. He probes what it means to experience inequality, drawing out case studies on the effects of poverty. In proposing a theory of social relativity the author provides new insights into the effects and meaning of inequality and makes an original and important contribution to a key issue facing the world today.

Raising Humans in a Digital World

Raising Humans in a Digital World PDF

Author: Diana Graber

Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0814439802

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The Internet can be a scary, dangerous place especially for children. This book shows parents how to help digital kids navigate this environment. Sexting, cyberbullying, revenge porn, online predators…all of these potential threats can tempt parents to snatch the smartphone or tablet out of their children’s hands. While avoidance might eliminate the dangers, that approach also means your child misses out on technology’s many benefits and opportunities. In Raising Humans in a Digital World, digital literacy educator Diana Graber shows how children must learn to handle the digital space through: developing social-emotional skills balancing virtual and real life building safe and healthy relationships avoiding cyberbullies and online predators protecting personal information identifying and avoiding fake news and questionable content becoming positive role models and leaders Raising Humans in a Digital World is packed with at-home discussion topics and enjoyable activities that any busy family can slip into their daily routine. Full of practical tips grounded in academic research and hands-on experience, today’s parents finally have what they’ve been waiting for—a guide to raising digital kids who will become the positive and successful leaders our world desperately needs.

Text Me

Text Me PDF

Author: Jeffrey Schein

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-10-24

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0761871799

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Common sense tells us that technology can either be a blessing or curse in our lives. The assertion flows easily but deceptively from us. Beneath the flowing assertion, lay many cross currents and much complexity. These complexities are named and laid out for individual and group exploration throughout the book. They provide mirrors for the reader and groups of readers to discover their own affirmations and arguments with their own digital profiles based on Jewish/humanistic religious values. The iterative analysis points back to the double-entendre in the book’s title, "text me" can be a command to engage in the famously quick communication as in receiving a text on our smart phones and "text me" can also serve as an imperative to explore the wisdom contained in Jewish texts. The synergies, gaps, creative tensions, and paradoxes living within this double use of “text me” permeate the volume. Though rooted in Jewish sources the tools of analysis can be used by Christians, Muslims, and people who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Indeed, the book is an invitation to all who live in the digital age which is to say all of us. Commentaries provided by scholars of all three of the western, monotheistic faiths highlight this universal dimension.

Human Dimension and Interior Space

Human Dimension and Interior Space PDF

Author: Julius Panero

Publisher: Watson-Guptill

Published: 2014-01-21

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0770434606

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The study of human body measurements on a comparative basis is known as anthropometrics. Its applicability to the design process is seen in the physical fit, or interface, between the human body and the various components of interior space. Human Dimension and Interior Space is the first major anthropometrically based reference book of design standards for use by all those involved with the physical planning and detailing of interiors, including interior designers, architects, furniture designers, builders, industrial designers, and students of design. The use of anthropometric data, although no substitute for good design or sound professional judgment should be viewed as one of the many tools required in the design process. This comprehensive overview of anthropometrics consists of three parts. The first part deals with the theory and application of anthropometrics and includes a special section dealing with physically disabled and elderly people. It provides the designer with the fundamentals of anthropometrics and a basic understanding of how interior design standards are established. The second part contains easy-to-read, illustrated anthropometric tables, which provide the most current data available on human body size, organized by age and percentile groupings. Also included is data relative to the range of joint motion and body sizes of children. The third part contains hundreds of dimensioned drawings, illustrating in plan and section the proper anthropometrically based relationship between user and space. The types of spaces range from residential and commercial to recreational and institutional, and all dimensions include metric conversions. In the Epilogue, the authors challenge the interior design profession, the building industry, and the furniture manufacturer to seriously explore the problem of adjustability in design. They expose the fallacy of designing to accommodate the so-called average man, who, in fact, does not exist. Using government data, including studies prepared by Dr. Howard Stoudt, Dr. Albert Damon, and Dr. Ross McFarland, formerly of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Jean Roberts of the U.S. Public Health Service, Panero and Zelnik have devised a system of interior design reference standards, easily understood through a series of charts and situation drawings. With Human Dimension and Interior Space, these standards are now accessible to all designers of interior environments.

Turing's Cathedral

Turing's Cathedral PDF

Author: George Dyson

Publisher: Pantheon

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0375422773

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Documents the innovations of a group of eccentric geniuses who developed computer code in the mid-20th century as part of mathematician Alan Turin's theoretical universal machine idea, exploring how their ideas led to such developments as digital television, modern genetics and the hydrogen bomb.