The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Polaquitos
Sergio Berensztein
PARA LA NACION
21 DE JULIO DE 2017
El sábado pasado hubiera cumplido 90 años. Con apenas 10, Hershel (el tío Enrique) llegó en el buque Asturias con mi babe Fanny, escapando de la muerte segura y de las persecuciones de siempre de su Staszow natal.
Corría el año 1937, Polonia estaba a punto de caer en manos de Hitler. El zeide Rubén había llegado unos años antes para probar suerte y preparar el terreno para traer a la familia. Vivieron durante muchos años en la trastienda del boliche de la Calle Sarmiento esquina Yatay. Lo anotaron en la escuelita Manuel Solá de la calle Lambaré al 700, donde el director se quedaba después de hora para que pudiera hacer cuatro años en uno y se integrara con los pibes de su edad. Terminó sexto con trece y hablando castellano sin acento. Fue siempre el mejor alumno de la clase, incluso en el comercial Hipólito Vieytes, donde estudió de noche porque de día trabajaba de cadete. Con sus ahorros ayudaba en la casa y pudo comprarle el primer piano a Juanita, la luz de sus ojos claros, mi mamá. Ella pudo concretar su sueño: tocar Bach, Mozart, Chopin y Beethoven. También un buen tango, si era de Discépolo mejor. A los 23 años, se recibió de contador en la UBA. Se dedicó con ahínco al trabajo, aunque tuvo tiempo para convertirse en políglota: además de su polaco y suidish maternos, estudió italiano, alemán, inglés, francés y algo de hebreo. Enamorado de la Argentina y de la vida, murió tranquilo luego de frecuentar cuatro de los cinco continentes. En particular, conoció Australia, donde su único hijo, mi primo Osvaldo, también músico y un gran arquitecto, se radicó cuando el país comenzaba a declinar.
Fue luego de la crisis de la deuda, en los albores de la recuperada democracia. Justo cuando aquella Argentina dejaba de transformar polaquitos, rusos, turcos, gallegos y tanos pobres en profesionales, pequeños comerciantes, obreros calificados, buscavidas con chances de hacer la América, para transformarse en una fábrica inmoral de estos nuevos polaquitos. Los de esta Argentina donde la mayoría de los pobres son niños, en la que la mayoría de los niños son pobres. Nacen y (sobre) viven casi en el infierno, abandonados a un destino de privaciones e incertidumbre sin fin. Caen a menudo en la trampa de la droga, soldaditos de un ejército apátrida, asesino. Les damos la espalda, los usamos, los condenamos, nos peleamos en su nombre. Nos peleamos por todo. Nos entretenemos en otras miserias. Profundizamos las causas que los multiplican. ¿Condenamos a los mensajeros que recuerdan su existencia?
Somos muy raros, escriben libros sobre nosotros. Supimos avanzar bastante en la añorada senda del desarrollo inclusivo. Tuvimos una notable infraestructura física. Un sistema educativo ejemplar. Pero hace más de siete décadas que nos empantanamos, perdimos el rumbo y construimos un complejo y endiablado círculo vicioso que no podemos romper, del que no sabemos salir.
Es hora de reconocer que fracasamos. Que todos tenemos una cuota de responsabilidad. Y que al margen del mero resultado de una elección, de la hoguera de vanidades y productos del marketing político que suelen imperar en estos tiempos, necesitamos encarar, con audacia y pasión, un proyecto colectivo que nos reinvente como nación. Que nos ponga de nuevo a flote, nos permita volver a soñar. Con mística transformadora, con la ambición que hace tanto perdimos. Con la certeza de que implicará un enorme esfuerzo, pero que dejaremos de producir estos polaquitos: los convertiremos en verdaderos ciudadanos. Ciudadanos en serio, con derechos plenos. En un país donde la pobreza deje de ser un negocio de vivos y de necios para volver a ser una situación pasajera que, con el mismo esfuerzo que pusieron Enrique y todos aquellos polaquitos, sea pronto tan sólo un duro recuerdo.
Fuente:www.lanacion.com.ar
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Friday, July 21, 2017
Thursday, July 20, 2017
DÍA DEL AMIGO
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
20 DE JULIO
DÍA DEL AMIGO
AVENTURAS INIGUALABLES
MOMENTOS ÚNICOS
IDEAS ALOCADAS
SINCEROS ABRAZOS
TIEMPOS COMPARTIDOS
ALEGRÍAS INFINITAS
DIVERSIÓN IRREPETIBLE
Fuente: Google Images/Palabras de Clara Moras
20 DE JULIO
DÍA DEL AMIGO
AVENTURAS INIGUALABLES
MOMENTOS ÚNICOS
IDEAS ALOCADAS
SINCEROS ABRAZOS
TIEMPOS COMPARTIDOS
ALEGRÍAS INFINITAS
DIVERSIÓN IRREPETIBLE
Fuente: Google Images/Palabras de Clara Moras
GINT/POL/SOC-Algunas reflexiones ...
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Hoy pienso que los únicos culpables de lo que sucede en nuestro país somos los Argentinos.
Nos cuesta discernir, rebobinar, colaborar, reconocer, y separar lo intrínsecamente emocional de lo racional.
Ayer vi el programa de Luís Novarecio por América. Seis invitados, de los cuales dos eran artistas extranjeros; dos actrices nacionales; un periodista de televisión y un humorista y actor.
El programa abrió con una humorada de este último, que en rápido monólogo, hizo una síntesis de la decadencia argentina de los últimos setenta años.
Su compactada simplificación terminó con las siguientes palabras: "Y al final vino Macri con Cambiemos para no cambiar nada".
Ninguno de los presentes reaccionó, evidenciando con su silencio una tácita aprobación.
Entonces pensé en el Banco Central de Marcó del Pont, dilapidando reservas a disposición del ejecutivo; y el BCRA actual, manteniendo su independencia con determinación de bajar la inflación. Esto no es un cambio?
En el INDEC dibujado por Moreno, con pobreza inferior a la de Alemania; y en el INDEC actual, en manos profesionales, mostrando la realidad sin tapujos ni mentiras. Esto tampoco es un cambio?
En un presidente que dona su sueldo a la obra de Margarita Barrientos, congelando su patrimonio para garantizar que cuando deje la función pública, lo hará con el mismo capital con que llegó a ella. Comparado con Menem, Nestor y Cristina; no representa un cambio?
La idoneidad ejecutiva de exitosos empresarios que desistieron de ganar abultados sueldos en la actividad privada para ponerse al servicio de un país que necesita de su patriotismo; no es acaso un cambio, luego de muchos años de políticos ávidos de llenarse los bolsillos?
La Provincia de Buenos Aires paralizada por el abandono de Daniel Scioli, que en menos de dos años y pese a su quiebre económico, ya muestra obras hidráulicas, de pavimentación, de cloacas, de transporte, de iluminación y de desarrollo: no es un cambio visible? A que debe su popularidad María Eugenia Vidal?
Y que me dicen del león del narcotráfico, ahora enardecido con quienes le arrancan los colmillos, luego de doce años de políticos acariciándole la barriga: tampoco es visible ese cambio? Y las purgas en la policía; y el respeto por la justicia independiente; y la cordialidad que reemplazó a la prepotencia; y el reconocimiento de errores que desterró la obcecación; y el diálogo que reemplazo al atropello: No son cambios elocuentes que merecen ser mencionados?
Y la obra pública que ahora, sin Lázaro en el medio, se contrata a un costo inferior al 50% de los precios de la dékada ganada, no es otro cambio para citar?
La lista de cambios realizados es tan larga como la de cambios que seguimos esperando y sin duda llegarán, si lejos de la emoción y del folklore, valoramos la verdad sobre la mentira y votamos racionalmente. Si no hubiera habido cambio, hoy podríamos mirarnos en el espejo de Venezuela. Sigamos cambiando para que el fenómeno de Santa Cruz no se extienda a toda la república, y no dejemos que nos intimiden con las máscaras y los palos de la anarquía K, hoy esgrimidos por Quebracho.
Muchas gracias a A.N. por esta contribución.
Intentemos todos juntos,aún con nuestras diferencias de toda índole; proponer, crear, trabajar, actuar, buscar algunos pilares que nos resulten comunes a todos nosotros, y a partir de allí hagámoslos valer, surgir, crecer para nuestro propio bien personal, como sociedad y también como Nación. C.M.
Fuente: Google Images/Palabras de A.N y C.M.
Hoy pienso que los únicos culpables de lo que sucede en nuestro país somos los Argentinos.
Nos cuesta discernir, rebobinar, colaborar, reconocer, y separar lo intrínsecamente emocional de lo racional.
Ayer vi el programa de Luís Novarecio por América. Seis invitados, de los cuales dos eran artistas extranjeros; dos actrices nacionales; un periodista de televisión y un humorista y actor.
El programa abrió con una humorada de este último, que en rápido monólogo, hizo una síntesis de la decadencia argentina de los últimos setenta años.
Su compactada simplificación terminó con las siguientes palabras: "Y al final vino Macri con Cambiemos para no cambiar nada".
Ninguno de los presentes reaccionó, evidenciando con su silencio una tácita aprobación.
Entonces pensé en el Banco Central de Marcó del Pont, dilapidando reservas a disposición del ejecutivo; y el BCRA actual, manteniendo su independencia con determinación de bajar la inflación. Esto no es un cambio?
En el INDEC dibujado por Moreno, con pobreza inferior a la de Alemania; y en el INDEC actual, en manos profesionales, mostrando la realidad sin tapujos ni mentiras. Esto tampoco es un cambio?
En un presidente que dona su sueldo a la obra de Margarita Barrientos, congelando su patrimonio para garantizar que cuando deje la función pública, lo hará con el mismo capital con que llegó a ella. Comparado con Menem, Nestor y Cristina; no representa un cambio?
La idoneidad ejecutiva de exitosos empresarios que desistieron de ganar abultados sueldos en la actividad privada para ponerse al servicio de un país que necesita de su patriotismo; no es acaso un cambio, luego de muchos años de políticos ávidos de llenarse los bolsillos?
La Provincia de Buenos Aires paralizada por el abandono de Daniel Scioli, que en menos de dos años y pese a su quiebre económico, ya muestra obras hidráulicas, de pavimentación, de cloacas, de transporte, de iluminación y de desarrollo: no es un cambio visible? A que debe su popularidad María Eugenia Vidal?
Y que me dicen del león del narcotráfico, ahora enardecido con quienes le arrancan los colmillos, luego de doce años de políticos acariciándole la barriga: tampoco es visible ese cambio? Y las purgas en la policía; y el respeto por la justicia independiente; y la cordialidad que reemplazó a la prepotencia; y el reconocimiento de errores que desterró la obcecación; y el diálogo que reemplazo al atropello: No son cambios elocuentes que merecen ser mencionados?
Y la obra pública que ahora, sin Lázaro en el medio, se contrata a un costo inferior al 50% de los precios de la dékada ganada, no es otro cambio para citar?
La lista de cambios realizados es tan larga como la de cambios que seguimos esperando y sin duda llegarán, si lejos de la emoción y del folklore, valoramos la verdad sobre la mentira y votamos racionalmente. Si no hubiera habido cambio, hoy podríamos mirarnos en el espejo de Venezuela. Sigamos cambiando para que el fenómeno de Santa Cruz no se extienda a toda la república, y no dejemos que nos intimiden con las máscaras y los palos de la anarquía K, hoy esgrimidos por Quebracho.
Muchas gracias a A.N. por esta contribución.
Intentemos todos juntos,aún con nuestras diferencias de toda índole; proponer, crear, trabajar, actuar, buscar algunos pilares que nos resulten comunes a todos nosotros, y a partir de allí hagámoslos valer, surgir, crecer para nuestro propio bien personal, como sociedad y también como Nación. C.M.
Fuente: Google Images/Palabras de A.N y C.M.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
GINT-¿Somos buenos por naturaleza?
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
¿Somos buenos por naturaleza?
Fabiana Fondevila
LA NACION
19 DE JULIO DE 2017
Personas durmiendo en la calle en pleno invierno. Ataques terroristas. Niños que asesinan. Discriminación, violencia y maltrato. Estas noticias salen a nuestro encuentro con suficiente frecuencia para hacernos dudar de la bondad esencial del ser humano. Debemos hacer un esfuerzo consciente por recordar que, por más terribles que sean estas realidades, son -por definición- excepciones a la regla, y que la mayor parte del tiempo no nos regimos por la crueldad y la indiferencia, sino por emociones más afines a lo que entendemos por la expresión "ser humano".
Emociones como la que movió a Alberto, un hombre de 68 años, a perdonar al asaltante que lo había golpeado, y a desearle una vida mejor. Gestos que avivan una añoranza profunda, más profunda que cualquier cinismo, de una esencia que recordamos pero que a veces no logramos encarnar.
¿Existe una naturaleza esencial de la especie? ¿Podemos descubrirla?
Hasta hace no tantos años, reinó en las ciencias sociales una imagen del hombre movido únicamente por el auto-interés, una interpretación poco fidedigna del legado de Charles Darwin y su "supervivencia del más apto" (llevada luego a la biología con la idea del "gen egoísta"). El mundo que pintó Darwin en "El origen de las especies" era, ciertamente, uno de competencia por el territorio, por el alimento, por las hembras, por el poder, por la vida misma. Doce años más tarde, en su menos conocida secuela "El origen del hombre", el inglés haría hincapié en otra clase de tendencias en el ser humano: la cooperación y la reciprocidad, el cuidado de los jóvenes, la proclividad a unirse en grupos y a preocuparse por lo que piensan o sienten de uno los otros miembros de esos grupos; en otras palabras, a pertenecer y pertenecernos.
En esta obra Darwin conjetura que nuestros impulsos morales nacen de la empatía y la compasión, que se forjan en el vínculo parental y familiar y se fortalecen con prácticas y hábitos sociales. Estos impulsos altruistas serían -según el científico- automáticos, instantáneos (no dando tiempo al pensamiento, ni a elegir por placer o displacer), y más fuertes que los impulsos de auto-preservación.
Hoy abundan los estudios que confirman esta hipótesis. Los más conocidos son los realizados con bebés y niños pequeños, que revelan que chicos de 1.5 años ayudan espontáneamente a un adulto que simula estar "en problemas", sin esperar nada a cambio. También prefieren al personaje "bueno" del "malo" en una obra de títeres, inclinándose decididamente por el primero cuando los personajes se acercan después de la obra a ofrecerles una galletita. Y yendo más atrás en el tiempo, bebés de apenas unas semanas lloran al escuchar el llanto de otros niños -las nenas en mayor proporción que los varones-, no por susto (no provocan la misma reacción otros ruidos más fuertes) sino por contagio emocional. En otras palabras, por empatía.
Pero hay sombras en el paraíso: a estas mismas tempranas edades, los impulsos altruistas de los niños compiten con inclinaciones tribales: bebés de tres meses de edad muestran preferencias claras por miembros de su propia raza, y chicos de un año se inclinan por personas que hablan su propio idioma. A esto se le suman luego influencias que cimentan esta proclividad, y nacen el racismo y la xenofobia. Está claro: nuestra naturaleza altruista tiene todavía importantes barreras que superar.
He aquí lo importante: vamos en ese camino. Dice el neurocientífico Steven Pinkler (sumándose a otras voces autorizadas): "Ciertamente, la violencia ha estado declinando durante grandes períodos de la historia, y hoy probablemente estemos viviendo en el momento más pacífico de nuestra especie en la tierra. En la década de Darfur e Irak, esta declaración puede parecer alucinatoria o hasta obscena. Pero si consideramos la evidencia, hallamos que la declinación de la violencia es un fenómeno fractal: podemos verlo disminuir a lo largo de milenios, siglos, décadas, y años".
Basta leer relatos autobiográficos de personas que vivieron en la Edad Media, por ejemplo, para entender lo mucho que ha cambiado nuestra forma de ser y de pensar. En esas historias, una persona podía apuñalar a otra por la calle solo porque le pareció que lo había mirado mal, y nadie arqueaba una ceja en señal de desaprobación. Es más, a veces el hecho era festejado como un inesperado espectáculo callejero.
Cuando "el otro" ya no es tan otro
Con el desarrollo de la conciencia nos enteramos de que los demás tienen una vida interior como la nuestra, que también sufren y añoran ser felices. Este conocimiento desalienta la discriminación y el prejuicio, y extiende nuestra empatía a círculos cada vez más grandes: del clan a la tribu, de la tribu a la nación, de la nación a todos los seres humanos (de cualquier género, raza o nacionalidad), de todos los seres humanos a todos los seres vivos (de cualquier especie).
Esta evolución se erige sobre máximas morales como la regla de oro: "Trata a los demás como te gustaría que te trataran a ti", o el imperativo categórico del filósofo Immanuel Kant: "Obra solo según aquella máxima por la cual puedas querer que al mismo tiempo se convierta en ley universal". Pero mucho antes de ese salto cognitivo, nuestro altruismo se expresó en emociones. Emociones como el amor, la compasión, el perdón, la generosidad, la gratitud; emociones que -al decir del investigador Dacher Keltner en su libro "Born to be good" (Nacidos para ser buenos)- nos abrieron el camino a una vida significativa, y siguen siendo la principal motivación de la mayoría de nuestras acciones cotidianas.
Quizás la pregunta importante no sea si nacimos buenos, si ya lo somos, si llegaremos a serlo. La pregunta es si estamos decididos a cultivar esas emociones esenciales, a contagiárselas a nuestros hijos, a defenderlas de nuestros propios instintos en contrario. Cada día somos libres de elegir, como los niños del estudio, como Alberto, entre el egoísmo que nos hunde en la soledad, y el amor que nos une y nos eleva. Elijamos bien.
Fuente:www.lanacion.com.ar/www.youtube.com
¿Somos buenos por naturaleza?
Fabiana Fondevila
LA NACION
19 DE JULIO DE 2017
Personas durmiendo en la calle en pleno invierno. Ataques terroristas. Niños que asesinan. Discriminación, violencia y maltrato. Estas noticias salen a nuestro encuentro con suficiente frecuencia para hacernos dudar de la bondad esencial del ser humano. Debemos hacer un esfuerzo consciente por recordar que, por más terribles que sean estas realidades, son -por definición- excepciones a la regla, y que la mayor parte del tiempo no nos regimos por la crueldad y la indiferencia, sino por emociones más afines a lo que entendemos por la expresión "ser humano".
Emociones como la que movió a Alberto, un hombre de 68 años, a perdonar al asaltante que lo había golpeado, y a desearle una vida mejor. Gestos que avivan una añoranza profunda, más profunda que cualquier cinismo, de una esencia que recordamos pero que a veces no logramos encarnar.
¿Existe una naturaleza esencial de la especie? ¿Podemos descubrirla?
Hasta hace no tantos años, reinó en las ciencias sociales una imagen del hombre movido únicamente por el auto-interés, una interpretación poco fidedigna del legado de Charles Darwin y su "supervivencia del más apto" (llevada luego a la biología con la idea del "gen egoísta"). El mundo que pintó Darwin en "El origen de las especies" era, ciertamente, uno de competencia por el territorio, por el alimento, por las hembras, por el poder, por la vida misma. Doce años más tarde, en su menos conocida secuela "El origen del hombre", el inglés haría hincapié en otra clase de tendencias en el ser humano: la cooperación y la reciprocidad, el cuidado de los jóvenes, la proclividad a unirse en grupos y a preocuparse por lo que piensan o sienten de uno los otros miembros de esos grupos; en otras palabras, a pertenecer y pertenecernos.
En esta obra Darwin conjetura que nuestros impulsos morales nacen de la empatía y la compasión, que se forjan en el vínculo parental y familiar y se fortalecen con prácticas y hábitos sociales. Estos impulsos altruistas serían -según el científico- automáticos, instantáneos (no dando tiempo al pensamiento, ni a elegir por placer o displacer), y más fuertes que los impulsos de auto-preservación.
Hoy abundan los estudios que confirman esta hipótesis. Los más conocidos son los realizados con bebés y niños pequeños, que revelan que chicos de 1.5 años ayudan espontáneamente a un adulto que simula estar "en problemas", sin esperar nada a cambio. También prefieren al personaje "bueno" del "malo" en una obra de títeres, inclinándose decididamente por el primero cuando los personajes se acercan después de la obra a ofrecerles una galletita. Y yendo más atrás en el tiempo, bebés de apenas unas semanas lloran al escuchar el llanto de otros niños -las nenas en mayor proporción que los varones-, no por susto (no provocan la misma reacción otros ruidos más fuertes) sino por contagio emocional. En otras palabras, por empatía.
Pero hay sombras en el paraíso: a estas mismas tempranas edades, los impulsos altruistas de los niños compiten con inclinaciones tribales: bebés de tres meses de edad muestran preferencias claras por miembros de su propia raza, y chicos de un año se inclinan por personas que hablan su propio idioma. A esto se le suman luego influencias que cimentan esta proclividad, y nacen el racismo y la xenofobia. Está claro: nuestra naturaleza altruista tiene todavía importantes barreras que superar.
He aquí lo importante: vamos en ese camino. Dice el neurocientífico Steven Pinkler (sumándose a otras voces autorizadas): "Ciertamente, la violencia ha estado declinando durante grandes períodos de la historia, y hoy probablemente estemos viviendo en el momento más pacífico de nuestra especie en la tierra. En la década de Darfur e Irak, esta declaración puede parecer alucinatoria o hasta obscena. Pero si consideramos la evidencia, hallamos que la declinación de la violencia es un fenómeno fractal: podemos verlo disminuir a lo largo de milenios, siglos, décadas, y años".
Basta leer relatos autobiográficos de personas que vivieron en la Edad Media, por ejemplo, para entender lo mucho que ha cambiado nuestra forma de ser y de pensar. En esas historias, una persona podía apuñalar a otra por la calle solo porque le pareció que lo había mirado mal, y nadie arqueaba una ceja en señal de desaprobación. Es más, a veces el hecho era festejado como un inesperado espectáculo callejero.
Cuando "el otro" ya no es tan otro
Con el desarrollo de la conciencia nos enteramos de que los demás tienen una vida interior como la nuestra, que también sufren y añoran ser felices. Este conocimiento desalienta la discriminación y el prejuicio, y extiende nuestra empatía a círculos cada vez más grandes: del clan a la tribu, de la tribu a la nación, de la nación a todos los seres humanos (de cualquier género, raza o nacionalidad), de todos los seres humanos a todos los seres vivos (de cualquier especie).
Esta evolución se erige sobre máximas morales como la regla de oro: "Trata a los demás como te gustaría que te trataran a ti", o el imperativo categórico del filósofo Immanuel Kant: "Obra solo según aquella máxima por la cual puedas querer que al mismo tiempo se convierta en ley universal". Pero mucho antes de ese salto cognitivo, nuestro altruismo se expresó en emociones. Emociones como el amor, la compasión, el perdón, la generosidad, la gratitud; emociones que -al decir del investigador Dacher Keltner en su libro "Born to be good" (Nacidos para ser buenos)- nos abrieron el camino a una vida significativa, y siguen siendo la principal motivación de la mayoría de nuestras acciones cotidianas.
Quizás la pregunta importante no sea si nacimos buenos, si ya lo somos, si llegaremos a serlo. La pregunta es si estamos decididos a cultivar esas emociones esenciales, a contagiárselas a nuestros hijos, a defenderlas de nuestros propios instintos en contrario. Cada día somos libres de elegir, como los niños del estudio, como Alberto, entre el egoísmo que nos hunde en la soledad, y el amor que nos une y nos eleva. Elijamos bien.
Fuente:www.lanacion.com.ar/www.youtube.com
Sunday, July 16, 2017
LANG/GINT-Words at Play: Different Ways to Say 'Nude'
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Words at Play
Different Ways to Say 'Nude'
You may suppose that being naked is an all-or-nothing state, but there's more than one way to be undressed
Birthday suit
image1112603760
Definition: unclothed skin; nakedness
Some people like to collect autoantonyms, words which mean a thing and its opposite, such as splice and cleave. No one ever seems to include birthday suit in these lists, even though the word has been used to mean both “a suit worn on one’s birthday” and “a state of nudity” (possibly because the clothing sense is now mostly obsolete). The use of birthday suit to indicate a state of nudity has been common since at least the middle of the 18th century.
The obliging Bride, to remove all incumbrances, stripp’d to her Buff, and two Women held a sheet between her and the Clergyman, while he performed his Office; but she having forgot her Cap at undressing, in the midst of the Ceremony it came into her Mind, and she pull’d that off too, and flung it on the Bed, and was married to her Spouse (if not in a Wedding Suit) in her Birth Day Suit.
—The Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia, PA) 18 Jun. 1752
Bare-assed
image698129811
Definition: in the nude; unclothed.
Bare-assed, which, you should know, is sometimes thought of as vulgar, is not a terribly new word. If you count it as a variant of the older British bare-arsed, it’s been used to refer to the unclothed for almost 400 years now.
There is nothyng more vayne, as your selfe tell can, Than to beg a breeche of a bare arst man.
—John Heywood, A Dialogue, 1546
Afore God you ar bare arst, in all your religion.
—John Philpot, The Examincaion of the Constaunt Martir of Christ, 1556
….whosoeuer shuld be chosen to be Christes vicar & Peters successour, he shuld first of al be set brechlesse & bare arsed in a certaine botomlesse chayre….
—Thomas Becon, The Reliques of Rome, 1563
The Purple garments wherein you long did playe, By which your honour here you did receaue, Shall off be plucked, and all things else beside, And then the bare arsed Ape shall plaine be spide.
—Barnabe Googe, A New Booke Calle the Shippe of Safegard, 1569
The residue like vnto the bare arssed rebels sculked to and fro; but in the end, they and the others were all dispersed, & durst not to appeare.
—Raphael Holinshed, The Second Volume of Chronicles, 1586
And yes, we know that’s more evidence for bare-arsed than you signed up for, but when you read a dictionary’s content you run the risk of 16th century ribaldry.
In the altogether
image590005156
Definition: not wearing any clothes: nude
Our definition of this word includes the descriptors “informal” and “old-fashioned,” and if we were to be slightly uncharitable we might include “borne of error” as well since the term appears to have come from a literary misreading. In the altogether is believed to have come from Trilby, the 1894 novel by Geoge du Maurier, in which the titular heroine describes how she models (she describes it as “the altogether,” rather than “in the altogether”). This ‘altogether’ modeling was not necessarily meant to describe nudity in the book, but the public was glad to believe that it did (a Massachusetts newspaper breathlessly reported “Trilby, the heroine, is an artist’s model who earns her living by posing, nude or draped, either in portions or in the ‘altogether.’”)
A La Trilby. Egypt’s Pose was to be in “The Altogether.” Boston Daily Globe, 13 Jan. 1897
Full frontal
image1822732619
Definition: a photograph or film of a nude subject, who is seen directly from the front without any impediments to viewing. Also, pertaining or relating to such an image.
The words full and frontal were certainly used in tandem before the 1960s, but prior to this decade they did not appear to have a specific and fixed meaning that related to nudity (a “full frontal assault” typically would refer to an attack, either literal or figurative, made directly at a target). In the early 1960s the term was being used as an adjective, and by the beginning of the following decade had traded in any remaining clothes it might have had for another part of speech, and was being used as a noun as well.
The latest skirmish in film censorship, the case of Hugs and Kisses and the Full Frontal Nude (it sounds vaguely architectural, but apparently it’s a technical term in the trade) is rather characteristic.
—Penelope Houston, The Spectator (London, UK), 5 Apr. 1968
Au naturel
image1672024885
Definition: nude
Au naturel has not always, or even primarily, been used to refer to a state of undress. The English language borrowed it from French in the beginning of the 19th century, with the initial meaning of “in natural style or condition.” By the early 20th century au naturel was being employed to refer to a lack of clothing, rather than of artifice.
There were two other damsels on the stage who, though they had more clothes on, looked infinitely more au naturel. After all, it is not the quantity, it is the selection, which makes for a nude effect.
—The Tatler (London, UK), 15 Apr. 1914
In the buff
image1230051823
Definition: the bare skin
Some of the nudie words in English have etymologies that are pleasingly straightforward; starkers, for instance, comes from applying the -ers suffix to the stark portion of stark naked, which itself is the sense of stark meaning “to an absolute or complete degree”…um, that’s not actually so straightforward. Well, buff is in more or less the same convoluted vein, as it comes from the Italian word for buffalo, and came into English via the Middle French buffle. The nude buff and the enthusiast buff (as in theater-buff) both come from this same source. The enthusiast buff was originally applied to people who like to go watch fires (everyone needs a hobby), and who were so-called because of the overcoats worn by New York firefighters in the early 19th century, made of buff leather.
Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen
with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport.
Once I sunbathed in the buff, all brown and lean,
watching the toy sloops go by, holding court
for busloads of tourists.
—Anne Sexton, The Book of Folly, 1972
Adamite
image92542740
Definition: a person who imitates Adam in going naked; specifically : a member of any of various ascetic sects noted for practicing ritual nakedness in secret religious assemblies and dispensing with marriage on the basis of having entered a reborn state of heavenly innocence
For those occasions when you have the need of a single word with which you may describe a person who is not interested in wearing clothes, yet would prefer to eschew the use of nudist.
She is so pure, that sure she must
Be Transubstantiate, out of Dust .
She's free'd from, Passion, Hate, and Spite :
For Innocence, an Adamite:
Then learned Reader, tell (I pray)
If Angels can be made of Clay.
—Patrick Ker, Flosculum Poeticum, 1684
Source:https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-about-nudity/
Words at Play
Different Ways to Say 'Nude'
You may suppose that being naked is an all-or-nothing state, but there's more than one way to be undressed
Birthday suit
image1112603760
Definition: unclothed skin; nakedness
Some people like to collect autoantonyms, words which mean a thing and its opposite, such as splice and cleave. No one ever seems to include birthday suit in these lists, even though the word has been used to mean both “a suit worn on one’s birthday” and “a state of nudity” (possibly because the clothing sense is now mostly obsolete). The use of birthday suit to indicate a state of nudity has been common since at least the middle of the 18th century.
The obliging Bride, to remove all incumbrances, stripp’d to her Buff, and two Women held a sheet between her and the Clergyman, while he performed his Office; but she having forgot her Cap at undressing, in the midst of the Ceremony it came into her Mind, and she pull’d that off too, and flung it on the Bed, and was married to her Spouse (if not in a Wedding Suit) in her Birth Day Suit.
—The Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia, PA) 18 Jun. 1752
Bare-assed
image698129811
Definition: in the nude; unclothed.
Bare-assed, which, you should know, is sometimes thought of as vulgar, is not a terribly new word. If you count it as a variant of the older British bare-arsed, it’s been used to refer to the unclothed for almost 400 years now.
There is nothyng more vayne, as your selfe tell can, Than to beg a breeche of a bare arst man.
—John Heywood, A Dialogue, 1546
Afore God you ar bare arst, in all your religion.
—John Philpot, The Examincaion of the Constaunt Martir of Christ, 1556
….whosoeuer shuld be chosen to be Christes vicar & Peters successour, he shuld first of al be set brechlesse & bare arsed in a certaine botomlesse chayre….
—Thomas Becon, The Reliques of Rome, 1563
The Purple garments wherein you long did playe, By which your honour here you did receaue, Shall off be plucked, and all things else beside, And then the bare arsed Ape shall plaine be spide.
—Barnabe Googe, A New Booke Calle the Shippe of Safegard, 1569
The residue like vnto the bare arssed rebels sculked to and fro; but in the end, they and the others were all dispersed, & durst not to appeare.
—Raphael Holinshed, The Second Volume of Chronicles, 1586
And yes, we know that’s more evidence for bare-arsed than you signed up for, but when you read a dictionary’s content you run the risk of 16th century ribaldry.
In the altogether
image590005156
Definition: not wearing any clothes: nude
Our definition of this word includes the descriptors “informal” and “old-fashioned,” and if we were to be slightly uncharitable we might include “borne of error” as well since the term appears to have come from a literary misreading. In the altogether is believed to have come from Trilby, the 1894 novel by Geoge du Maurier, in which the titular heroine describes how she models (she describes it as “the altogether,” rather than “in the altogether”). This ‘altogether’ modeling was not necessarily meant to describe nudity in the book, but the public was glad to believe that it did (a Massachusetts newspaper breathlessly reported “Trilby, the heroine, is an artist’s model who earns her living by posing, nude or draped, either in portions or in the ‘altogether.’”)
A La Trilby. Egypt’s Pose was to be in “The Altogether.” Boston Daily Globe, 13 Jan. 1897
Full frontal
image1822732619
Definition: a photograph or film of a nude subject, who is seen directly from the front without any impediments to viewing. Also, pertaining or relating to such an image.
The words full and frontal were certainly used in tandem before the 1960s, but prior to this decade they did not appear to have a specific and fixed meaning that related to nudity (a “full frontal assault” typically would refer to an attack, either literal or figurative, made directly at a target). In the early 1960s the term was being used as an adjective, and by the beginning of the following decade had traded in any remaining clothes it might have had for another part of speech, and was being used as a noun as well.
The latest skirmish in film censorship, the case of Hugs and Kisses and the Full Frontal Nude (it sounds vaguely architectural, but apparently it’s a technical term in the trade) is rather characteristic.
—Penelope Houston, The Spectator (London, UK), 5 Apr. 1968
Au naturel
image1672024885
Definition: nude
Au naturel has not always, or even primarily, been used to refer to a state of undress. The English language borrowed it from French in the beginning of the 19th century, with the initial meaning of “in natural style or condition.” By the early 20th century au naturel was being employed to refer to a lack of clothing, rather than of artifice.
There were two other damsels on the stage who, though they had more clothes on, looked infinitely more au naturel. After all, it is not the quantity, it is the selection, which makes for a nude effect.
—The Tatler (London, UK), 15 Apr. 1914
In the buff
image1230051823
Definition: the bare skin
Some of the nudie words in English have etymologies that are pleasingly straightforward; starkers, for instance, comes from applying the -ers suffix to the stark portion of stark naked, which itself is the sense of stark meaning “to an absolute or complete degree”…um, that’s not actually so straightforward. Well, buff is in more or less the same convoluted vein, as it comes from the Italian word for buffalo, and came into English via the Middle French buffle. The nude buff and the enthusiast buff (as in theater-buff) both come from this same source. The enthusiast buff was originally applied to people who like to go watch fires (everyone needs a hobby), and who were so-called because of the overcoats worn by New York firefighters in the early 19th century, made of buff leather.
Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen
with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport.
Once I sunbathed in the buff, all brown and lean,
watching the toy sloops go by, holding court
for busloads of tourists.
—Anne Sexton, The Book of Folly, 1972
Adamite
image92542740
Definition: a person who imitates Adam in going naked; specifically : a member of any of various ascetic sects noted for practicing ritual nakedness in secret religious assemblies and dispensing with marriage on the basis of having entered a reborn state of heavenly innocence
For those occasions when you have the need of a single word with which you may describe a person who is not interested in wearing clothes, yet would prefer to eschew the use of nudist.
She is so pure, that sure she must
Be Transubstantiate, out of Dust .
She's free'd from, Passion, Hate, and Spite :
For Innocence, an Adamite:
Then learned Reader, tell (I pray)
If Angels can be made of Clay.
—Patrick Ker, Flosculum Poeticum, 1684
Source:https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-about-nudity/
SCIFI/GINT-Why Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Why Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction
MIT researchers Dan Novy and Sophia Brueckner argue that the mind-bending worlds of authors such as Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke can help us not just come up with ideas for new gadgets, but anticipate their consequences.
REBECCA J. ROSEN SEP 20, 2013 TECHNOLOGY
jonny2love/Flickr
How will police use a gun that immobilizes its target but does not kill? What would people do with a device that could provide them with any mood they desire? What are the consequences of a massive, instant global communications network?
Such questions are relevant to many technologies on the market today, but their first iterations appeared not in lab prototypes but in the pages of science fiction.
This fall, MIT Media Lab researchers Dan Novy and Sophia Brueckner are teaching "Science Fiction to Science Fabrication," aka "Pulp to Prototype," a course that mines these "fantastic imaginings of the future" for analysis of our very real present. Over email, I asked Novy and Brueckner about the books they'll be teaching, the inventions that found their antecedents in those pages, and why Novy and Brueckner believe it is so important for designers working in the very real world to study the imaginary. An edited transcript of our correspondence follows.
What inspired you to teach a class at the Media Lab about science fiction? Why do you think it's important?
Dan Novy: One might assume that there would be many science fiction fans at the Media Lab, since many future and futuristic technologies are being created here daily. And yet we found this not to be the case.
Science fiction is often derided as too fanciful or not rigorous in thought. There is still a stigma against those who read it, and yet if you look at the great advances in science and technology during most of the 20th and 21st centuries, they are often preceded by descriptions in works of science fiction written decades before.
Just a few concrete examples are Arthur C. Clarke's description of Geostationary Satellite Communications in 1945; the invention of the TASER used by law enforcement worldwide ("TASER" is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle); and Winston Churchill’s attempt to create a “Death Ray” ("a staple of scientific and horror fiction during the 1920s and 1930s") to knock enemy planes out of the sky, which led to RADAR. With the help of MIT, the latter invention was responsible for winning the Battle of Britain.
The book that inspired the TASER
The number one goal of the class is to expose students to the genre, and hopefully affect the way they think and create. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Media Lab, often says that if industry could eventually build an idea you’re working on, you’re not being ambitious enough and should stop. Science fiction illuminates a path to following Nicholas’s advice.
Sophia Brueckner: Science fiction is incredibly relevant to the work going on at the MIT Media Lab. The Media Lab is made up of many different research areas like Biomechatronics, Tangible Media, or Fluid Interfaces, for example. Each of these groups has a corresponding subgenre of science fiction, often whose authors have explored related topics for decades. These authors do more than merely prophesy modern technologies -- they also consider the consequences of their fictional inventions in great detail.
DN: Some great Media Lab projects were inspired by reading science fiction stories. I have a project called the Narratarium, which is a context-aware immersive environment. It began as an idea from a brainstorming session with one of the members of the Lab, but I quickly realized that I was building a mashup of the immersive environments from Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” and The Young Lady’s Primer from Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age. The Narratarium environment surrounds you, but also takes input from you and alters the environment as you tell a story or experience a narrative.
The Narratarium (Dan Novy)
My realization about the science-fiction precursors made developing the Narratarium easier, and even suggested new features. This isn’t a direct relationship; I didn’t set out to build the exact video technology of the Veldt or an exact copy of the Young Lady’s Primer, but they informed and guided the design process. And that’s the relationship we’d like to see in projects in the class. No one knows exactly how Philip K. Dick’s Empathy Box operates in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and I think it would be great to see eight or nine different students' interpretations of it.
SB: I also am in the middle of building a kinetic sound sculpture inspired by J. G. Ballard’s short story “The Singing Statues” published in 1971. With incredible foresight, he imagined a world where art merges all the senses, is highly interactive, produces visual and sound compositions using algorithms, and even responds to the thoughts and feelings of its audience in real-time. I am trying to realize the concepts described in the story using computer programming and other technologies that are now available.
Overall, we want students to get an appreciation for the genre and be exposed to a large variety of authors and styles while focusing on books that discuss devices and other technologies that could inspire Media Lab projects. We are hoping to inspire the students to build functional prototypes of either ideas directly out of the books or encourage them to take their current research and combine it with more of a science fiction context.
What are some specific examples you'll be looking at?
SB: For example, we will be reading the classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, who is one of my favorite authors and is a master of crazy gadget ideas. The devices he describes in his writings can be very humorous and satirical but are truly profound. People have probably seen Blade Runner, an excellent movie based on this book, but the book is very different! Many of the most compelling devices from the book did not make it into the movie.
Wikimedia Commons
For example, the Mood Organ is a device that allows the user to dial a code to instantly be in a certain mood. The book contains multiple funny instances of people using this device, such as when one character plugs in the code 888 to feel “the desire to watch TV no matter what is on,” but Dick also points out some disturbing implications resulting from the existence of such a technology. “How much time do you set aside each month for specific moods?” asks one character. Should you be happy and energized to work all the time? This character eventually concludes that two days a month is a reasonable amount for feeling despair. Today, we are hoping science and technology will find the secret to forever happiness, but what will happen if we actually succeed?
"Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, 'Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive.' Science fiction looks at current technological and social trends and extrapolates them into the near or far future. It speculates on the consequences of these trends, both good and bad, if they continue unchecked."
Another one of my favorite gadgets from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the Empathy Box. A person holds the handles on the Empathy Box and is connected with all other people using it at the same time by sharing the feelings of a spiritual figure named William Mercer. Amazingly, even in 1968, Dick saw the potential for technology to not only connect people across long distances but to do so with emotional depth. Dick writes that the Empathy Box is “the most personal possession you have! It's an extension of your body; it's the way you touch other humans, it's the way you stop being alone.”
Actually, I just realized while answering this question that I’ve been attempting to build a version of the Empathy Box as part of my thesis! I believe people crave for their computers and phones to fulfill this need for connection, but they manage to do so only superficially. As a result, people feel increasingly estranged and alone despite being connected all the time. Like Dick, I also am intrigued by how to use technology to promote empathy and a greater sense of genuine interconnectedness with one another, and I am currently working on designing wearable devices to do this. Some of my best ideas stem from reading science fiction, and I often don’t realize it until later!
And, of course, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? had ersatz animals in it too! These didn’t end up in Blade Runner either, for the most part. In this case, Dick’s prophecies did come true, and we now have devices like PARO, a robotic harp seal, which is used as therapy in hospitals and extended care facilities.
What do such examples show about the relationship between fiction and reality?
DN: Fiction, specifically science fiction, is a way to see, as Cervantes would say, “life as it ought to be,” not just life as it is. Storytelling is how the human brain understands reality, by comparing the input it is currently sensing and comparing it to stories it’s experienced or heard before.
"Fiction allows you to live more lives in the space-time of one lifetime than you would normally be able to."
On the deepest levels, your consciousness doesn’t make a distinction between experiences you’ve had and the experiences of characters in stories you’ve heard. This is why fiction is so powerful and why human beings seem to need to tell, collect, and understand stories. Fiction allows you to live more lives in the space-time of one lifetime than you would normally be able to. It allows you to benefit from the outcome of simulations without being exposed to the dangers or time constraints that you would be forced to undergo if you had to live every experience that informs your reality by yourself. In a post-industrial society of tool using primates, like ours, technology is one of the defining factors, and so science fiction, with its tendency to emphasize technology, is a way of running exponentially iterative design processes to conceive and create new technologies.
One of my favorite authors of all time, although many people only know him for comic books, is Alan Moore. He shares a belief and definition of “magic” with Picasso, which basically states that magic is real, but only in the sense that the human mind can conceive of something that did not exist before and then make it. You have made something out of nothing. There is a thing now there that did not exist before. That’s magic. This is a power we attribute to deities and wizards. Science fiction is a form of this magic, suggesting solutions to problems or technologies to delight, entertain, and educate. I like to think that drawing them out into functional prototypes in the real world, as we are attempting in this class, is a way of completing this “creation” process.
SB: Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive.” Science fiction looks at current technological and social trends and extrapolates them into the near or far future. It speculates on the consequences of these trends, both good and bad, if they continue unchecked. In a way, these works are concerned with today’s reality far more than the future. For example, science fiction written during the Cold War often dealt with communism and themes of apocalypse, and recent science fiction commonly explores contemporary issues like genetic engineering, the hazards of being overly virtual, etc.
Your course description says that the "class ties science fiction with speculative/critical design as a means to encourage the ethical and thoughtful design of new technologies." What do you mean by this? What are you hoping students get out of the class?
DN: One of the ways science-fiction stories function is as cautionary tales. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Gothic biopunk cautionary tale about the repercussions of man using technology and science to “play God.”
Often, this cautionary aspect becomes central and depressing. “Watch out!” or “Think about what you’re doing!” become overbearing mantras, thus limiting the range of ideas in science fiction. The negative aspects of a new technology often come from failing to predict the human results that the technology will create. Science fiction allows you to test these human repercussions and possibly make alterations before a technology becomes real and lessen its negative impacts.
Here at the Media Lab we are encouraged to think about the repercussions from the very beginning. One of the first classes I took at the Lab was “Location Aware Computing” with Joe Paradiso. It’s a class about location and tracking technologies, ranging from using the stars to find your location in the galaxy (a system developed for the navigation of the SR-71 Reconnaissance plane) to GPS and on down to indoor systems that can locate a person or object to within 15 cm in a room or with submillimeter accuracy on a table top.
"Science fiction, with its tendency to emphasize technology, is a way of running exponentially iterative design processes to conceive and create new technologies."
Instead of blindly moving forward, Joe brought in one of the world's foremost experts on privacy from the Harvard Law School and we devoted several class periods to defining, exploring, and debating how privacy should operate on any of these systems and on any projects we would be building in class. Privacy wasn’t an afterthought. We were determined not to be surprised that someone, a government or criminal organization, was misusing our technology. We said “what if” a lot, and developed with possible negative repercussions in mind. This how how the Lab operates in general. Or at least how we’re encouraged to operate.
Engraving from the 1831 edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Wikimedia Commons)
Sometimes we still fall into the Frankenstein trap and push ahead to see our creations live, but science fiction allows you to see the possible negative repercussions at the same time as it suggests a technology and then offers a safe path should you decide to create that technology. Frederick Pohl once said that it wasn’t the job of science fiction authors to create the automobile but to describe the traffic jam.
It follows that it is our job as technologists not to avoid creating the automobile, but to look at the traffic jam and design so that doesn’t happen. Thinking about these things at the beginning and iteratively throughout the process allows us to create better technology. Just as storytelling gives you more lives to live, speculative design or science fiction prototyping gives you more iterations to consider before your creation goes out into the wild and becomes hard to control. Once a genie is out of the bottle, it isn't inclined to allow itself to be stuffed back in. Once an abusable technology is in the hands of a fascist government or rogue nation-state, its leaders aren’t likely to return that technology for an upgrade that removes the features they’re using to spy or express their political agenda. Designing the genie so he can’t be used that way, before he gets out of the bottle, is the safest choice.
And to be less dour, science fiction and science-fiction prototyping also allow you to develop, explore, and test new features and affordances while it is still cheap to do so. The “napkin drawing” phase is as inexpensive as the ink, paper, and cocktail that came with the napkin. And if most of the work of design can be hashed out here, or in similar “design fiction” documents, then you have more chances, and a greater chance that your product will be strong and well received.
Alfred Hitchcock storyboarded all of his films in excruciating detail. He spent a vast amount of time in this stage, trying every possible combination of shot and camera angle, every style of cut or transition, ensuring that he had the best telling of that particular story. Actors often complained that once Hitch got to set he was really only there to get the full motion version of his storyboard shots, and that he “herded” them through shooting like they were cattle. In his mind the film was already complete, he just had to capture the images and put them together to match his ink and paper prototype.
It is this kind of “sketching in hardware” or paper prototyping that is encouraged at the Lab. We often say, “Build it to see if there is a there there.” Science fiction, in the written form, is an even earlier and easier form of prototyping these ideas and a more forgiving sandbox or petri dish than even the hot glue and duct tape prototypes created in excited all-nighters here at the Lab.
Before coming the the Media Lab, I spent 16 years in Hollywood as a Visual Effects Technical Supervisor. There, I created many “design fictions,” as Bruce Sterling would call them, of how technologies would operate and then designed them to operate within the limited two-dimensional medium of film. One of my favorites was creating the interfaces for the flexible display laptops in the film Red Planet, starring Val Kilmer and Carrie Ann Moss. Having a laptop that unrolled like a scroll and was transparent and could be used as a AR camera and medical scanning device was quite a challenge, and we had to show exactly how it operated, down to how the icons moved and the buttons were pressed.
The Fluid Interfaces group's "Flexpad" (MIT)
I found out the other day that a project developing flexible, transparent displays was underway in the Fluid Interfaces group and they were using clips of Red Planet without realizing that the guy who had created the interface they were studying was now working one floor below them! So here’s another example of a technology that was conceived in a work of science fiction, prototyped to a working state for the purposes of a film, and is now being turned into reality at the Media Lab. I love that kind of thing! And that’s what I’m hoping this class will do for generations of Media Lab designers and engineers.
"Reading science fiction is like an ethics class for inventors."
SB: Before coming to the Media Lab, I was a software engineer in Silicon Valley, and what I built did indeed affect millions of people. I was struck by Silicon Valley’s frenzied culture of building and launching projects as quickly as possible without considering their social impact in the long term. Unfortunately, the makers of technology are generally not encouraged to be introspective or reflect too deeply on what they are making, and this really worries me.
inRead invented by Teads
Once any sort of technology has users, it becomes extremely difficult to change it -- even if you know it should or must be changed. Usually the only thing you can do is tack on more features, but it can be impossible to change the core structure. And once something has thousands, millions of users, the impact of every design decision is huge. Millions of people will be engaging in the same interactions possibly even hundreds of times a day, and this is reinforcing very particular pathways in the brain.
How is that affecting our social structure and values? How is that changing the way we view ourselves and even the way we understand our own mental functioning? I got my first computer, a Commodore 64, when I was two years old, and I often wonder how constantly interacting with computer interfaces and code since a young age has affected my thought processes and my perceptions of other people and my environment.
Reading science fiction is like an ethics class for inventors, and engineers and designers should be trying to think like science fiction authors when they approach their own work. The projects we build here at the Media Lab often become widely adopted or serve as examples that influence countless other projects, and I feel with great urgency that we need to very thoughtfully consider what we build as well as encourage that same thoughtfulness out in the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
REBECCA J. ROSEN is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where she oversees the Business Channel. She was previously an associate editor at The Wilson Quarterly.
Source:https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/why-todays-inventors-need-to-read-more-science-fiction/279793/
Why Today's Inventors Need to Read More Science Fiction
MIT researchers Dan Novy and Sophia Brueckner argue that the mind-bending worlds of authors such as Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke can help us not just come up with ideas for new gadgets, but anticipate their consequences.
REBECCA J. ROSEN SEP 20, 2013 TECHNOLOGY
jonny2love/Flickr
How will police use a gun that immobilizes its target but does not kill? What would people do with a device that could provide them with any mood they desire? What are the consequences of a massive, instant global communications network?
Such questions are relevant to many technologies on the market today, but their first iterations appeared not in lab prototypes but in the pages of science fiction.
This fall, MIT Media Lab researchers Dan Novy and Sophia Brueckner are teaching "Science Fiction to Science Fabrication," aka "Pulp to Prototype," a course that mines these "fantastic imaginings of the future" for analysis of our very real present. Over email, I asked Novy and Brueckner about the books they'll be teaching, the inventions that found their antecedents in those pages, and why Novy and Brueckner believe it is so important for designers working in the very real world to study the imaginary. An edited transcript of our correspondence follows.
What inspired you to teach a class at the Media Lab about science fiction? Why do you think it's important?
Dan Novy: One might assume that there would be many science fiction fans at the Media Lab, since many future and futuristic technologies are being created here daily. And yet we found this not to be the case.
Science fiction is often derided as too fanciful or not rigorous in thought. There is still a stigma against those who read it, and yet if you look at the great advances in science and technology during most of the 20th and 21st centuries, they are often preceded by descriptions in works of science fiction written decades before.
Just a few concrete examples are Arthur C. Clarke's description of Geostationary Satellite Communications in 1945; the invention of the TASER used by law enforcement worldwide ("TASER" is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle); and Winston Churchill’s attempt to create a “Death Ray” ("a staple of scientific and horror fiction during the 1920s and 1930s") to knock enemy planes out of the sky, which led to RADAR. With the help of MIT, the latter invention was responsible for winning the Battle of Britain.
The book that inspired the TASER
The number one goal of the class is to expose students to the genre, and hopefully affect the way they think and create. Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Media Lab, often says that if industry could eventually build an idea you’re working on, you’re not being ambitious enough and should stop. Science fiction illuminates a path to following Nicholas’s advice.
Sophia Brueckner: Science fiction is incredibly relevant to the work going on at the MIT Media Lab. The Media Lab is made up of many different research areas like Biomechatronics, Tangible Media, or Fluid Interfaces, for example. Each of these groups has a corresponding subgenre of science fiction, often whose authors have explored related topics for decades. These authors do more than merely prophesy modern technologies -- they also consider the consequences of their fictional inventions in great detail.
DN: Some great Media Lab projects were inspired by reading science fiction stories. I have a project called the Narratarium, which is a context-aware immersive environment. It began as an idea from a brainstorming session with one of the members of the Lab, but I quickly realized that I was building a mashup of the immersive environments from Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” and The Young Lady’s Primer from Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age. The Narratarium environment surrounds you, but also takes input from you and alters the environment as you tell a story or experience a narrative.
The Narratarium (Dan Novy)
My realization about the science-fiction precursors made developing the Narratarium easier, and even suggested new features. This isn’t a direct relationship; I didn’t set out to build the exact video technology of the Veldt or an exact copy of the Young Lady’s Primer, but they informed and guided the design process. And that’s the relationship we’d like to see in projects in the class. No one knows exactly how Philip K. Dick’s Empathy Box operates in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and I think it would be great to see eight or nine different students' interpretations of it.
SB: I also am in the middle of building a kinetic sound sculpture inspired by J. G. Ballard’s short story “The Singing Statues” published in 1971. With incredible foresight, he imagined a world where art merges all the senses, is highly interactive, produces visual and sound compositions using algorithms, and even responds to the thoughts and feelings of its audience in real-time. I am trying to realize the concepts described in the story using computer programming and other technologies that are now available.
Overall, we want students to get an appreciation for the genre and be exposed to a large variety of authors and styles while focusing on books that discuss devices and other technologies that could inspire Media Lab projects. We are hoping to inspire the students to build functional prototypes of either ideas directly out of the books or encourage them to take their current research and combine it with more of a science fiction context.
What are some specific examples you'll be looking at?
SB: For example, we will be reading the classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, who is one of my favorite authors and is a master of crazy gadget ideas. The devices he describes in his writings can be very humorous and satirical but are truly profound. People have probably seen Blade Runner, an excellent movie based on this book, but the book is very different! Many of the most compelling devices from the book did not make it into the movie.
Wikimedia Commons
For example, the Mood Organ is a device that allows the user to dial a code to instantly be in a certain mood. The book contains multiple funny instances of people using this device, such as when one character plugs in the code 888 to feel “the desire to watch TV no matter what is on,” but Dick also points out some disturbing implications resulting from the existence of such a technology. “How much time do you set aside each month for specific moods?” asks one character. Should you be happy and energized to work all the time? This character eventually concludes that two days a month is a reasonable amount for feeling despair. Today, we are hoping science and technology will find the secret to forever happiness, but what will happen if we actually succeed?
"Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, 'Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive.' Science fiction looks at current technological and social trends and extrapolates them into the near or far future. It speculates on the consequences of these trends, both good and bad, if they continue unchecked."
Another one of my favorite gadgets from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the Empathy Box. A person holds the handles on the Empathy Box and is connected with all other people using it at the same time by sharing the feelings of a spiritual figure named William Mercer. Amazingly, even in 1968, Dick saw the potential for technology to not only connect people across long distances but to do so with emotional depth. Dick writes that the Empathy Box is “the most personal possession you have! It's an extension of your body; it's the way you touch other humans, it's the way you stop being alone.”
Actually, I just realized while answering this question that I’ve been attempting to build a version of the Empathy Box as part of my thesis! I believe people crave for their computers and phones to fulfill this need for connection, but they manage to do so only superficially. As a result, people feel increasingly estranged and alone despite being connected all the time. Like Dick, I also am intrigued by how to use technology to promote empathy and a greater sense of genuine interconnectedness with one another, and I am currently working on designing wearable devices to do this. Some of my best ideas stem from reading science fiction, and I often don’t realize it until later!
And, of course, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? had ersatz animals in it too! These didn’t end up in Blade Runner either, for the most part. In this case, Dick’s prophecies did come true, and we now have devices like PARO, a robotic harp seal, which is used as therapy in hospitals and extended care facilities.
What do such examples show about the relationship between fiction and reality?
DN: Fiction, specifically science fiction, is a way to see, as Cervantes would say, “life as it ought to be,” not just life as it is. Storytelling is how the human brain understands reality, by comparing the input it is currently sensing and comparing it to stories it’s experienced or heard before.
"Fiction allows you to live more lives in the space-time of one lifetime than you would normally be able to."
On the deepest levels, your consciousness doesn’t make a distinction between experiences you’ve had and the experiences of characters in stories you’ve heard. This is why fiction is so powerful and why human beings seem to need to tell, collect, and understand stories. Fiction allows you to live more lives in the space-time of one lifetime than you would normally be able to. It allows you to benefit from the outcome of simulations without being exposed to the dangers or time constraints that you would be forced to undergo if you had to live every experience that informs your reality by yourself. In a post-industrial society of tool using primates, like ours, technology is one of the defining factors, and so science fiction, with its tendency to emphasize technology, is a way of running exponentially iterative design processes to conceive and create new technologies.
One of my favorite authors of all time, although many people only know him for comic books, is Alan Moore. He shares a belief and definition of “magic” with Picasso, which basically states that magic is real, but only in the sense that the human mind can conceive of something that did not exist before and then make it. You have made something out of nothing. There is a thing now there that did not exist before. That’s magic. This is a power we attribute to deities and wizards. Science fiction is a form of this magic, suggesting solutions to problems or technologies to delight, entertain, and educate. I like to think that drawing them out into functional prototypes in the real world, as we are attempting in this class, is a way of completing this “creation” process.
SB: Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive.” Science fiction looks at current technological and social trends and extrapolates them into the near or far future. It speculates on the consequences of these trends, both good and bad, if they continue unchecked. In a way, these works are concerned with today’s reality far more than the future. For example, science fiction written during the Cold War often dealt with communism and themes of apocalypse, and recent science fiction commonly explores contemporary issues like genetic engineering, the hazards of being overly virtual, etc.
Your course description says that the "class ties science fiction with speculative/critical design as a means to encourage the ethical and thoughtful design of new technologies." What do you mean by this? What are you hoping students get out of the class?
DN: One of the ways science-fiction stories function is as cautionary tales. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a Gothic biopunk cautionary tale about the repercussions of man using technology and science to “play God.”
Often, this cautionary aspect becomes central and depressing. “Watch out!” or “Think about what you’re doing!” become overbearing mantras, thus limiting the range of ideas in science fiction. The negative aspects of a new technology often come from failing to predict the human results that the technology will create. Science fiction allows you to test these human repercussions and possibly make alterations before a technology becomes real and lessen its negative impacts.
Here at the Media Lab we are encouraged to think about the repercussions from the very beginning. One of the first classes I took at the Lab was “Location Aware Computing” with Joe Paradiso. It’s a class about location and tracking technologies, ranging from using the stars to find your location in the galaxy (a system developed for the navigation of the SR-71 Reconnaissance plane) to GPS and on down to indoor systems that can locate a person or object to within 15 cm in a room or with submillimeter accuracy on a table top.
"Science fiction, with its tendency to emphasize technology, is a way of running exponentially iterative design processes to conceive and create new technologies."
Instead of blindly moving forward, Joe brought in one of the world's foremost experts on privacy from the Harvard Law School and we devoted several class periods to defining, exploring, and debating how privacy should operate on any of these systems and on any projects we would be building in class. Privacy wasn’t an afterthought. We were determined not to be surprised that someone, a government or criminal organization, was misusing our technology. We said “what if” a lot, and developed with possible negative repercussions in mind. This how how the Lab operates in general. Or at least how we’re encouraged to operate.
Engraving from the 1831 edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Wikimedia Commons)
Sometimes we still fall into the Frankenstein trap and push ahead to see our creations live, but science fiction allows you to see the possible negative repercussions at the same time as it suggests a technology and then offers a safe path should you decide to create that technology. Frederick Pohl once said that it wasn’t the job of science fiction authors to create the automobile but to describe the traffic jam.
It follows that it is our job as technologists not to avoid creating the automobile, but to look at the traffic jam and design so that doesn’t happen. Thinking about these things at the beginning and iteratively throughout the process allows us to create better technology. Just as storytelling gives you more lives to live, speculative design or science fiction prototyping gives you more iterations to consider before your creation goes out into the wild and becomes hard to control. Once a genie is out of the bottle, it isn't inclined to allow itself to be stuffed back in. Once an abusable technology is in the hands of a fascist government or rogue nation-state, its leaders aren’t likely to return that technology for an upgrade that removes the features they’re using to spy or express their political agenda. Designing the genie so he can’t be used that way, before he gets out of the bottle, is the safest choice.
And to be less dour, science fiction and science-fiction prototyping also allow you to develop, explore, and test new features and affordances while it is still cheap to do so. The “napkin drawing” phase is as inexpensive as the ink, paper, and cocktail that came with the napkin. And if most of the work of design can be hashed out here, or in similar “design fiction” documents, then you have more chances, and a greater chance that your product will be strong and well received.
Alfred Hitchcock storyboarded all of his films in excruciating detail. He spent a vast amount of time in this stage, trying every possible combination of shot and camera angle, every style of cut or transition, ensuring that he had the best telling of that particular story. Actors often complained that once Hitch got to set he was really only there to get the full motion version of his storyboard shots, and that he “herded” them through shooting like they were cattle. In his mind the film was already complete, he just had to capture the images and put them together to match his ink and paper prototype.
It is this kind of “sketching in hardware” or paper prototyping that is encouraged at the Lab. We often say, “Build it to see if there is a there there.” Science fiction, in the written form, is an even earlier and easier form of prototyping these ideas and a more forgiving sandbox or petri dish than even the hot glue and duct tape prototypes created in excited all-nighters here at the Lab.
Before coming the the Media Lab, I spent 16 years in Hollywood as a Visual Effects Technical Supervisor. There, I created many “design fictions,” as Bruce Sterling would call them, of how technologies would operate and then designed them to operate within the limited two-dimensional medium of film. One of my favorites was creating the interfaces for the flexible display laptops in the film Red Planet, starring Val Kilmer and Carrie Ann Moss. Having a laptop that unrolled like a scroll and was transparent and could be used as a AR camera and medical scanning device was quite a challenge, and we had to show exactly how it operated, down to how the icons moved and the buttons were pressed.
The Fluid Interfaces group's "Flexpad" (MIT)
I found out the other day that a project developing flexible, transparent displays was underway in the Fluid Interfaces group and they were using clips of Red Planet without realizing that the guy who had created the interface they were studying was now working one floor below them! So here’s another example of a technology that was conceived in a work of science fiction, prototyped to a working state for the purposes of a film, and is now being turned into reality at the Media Lab. I love that kind of thing! And that’s what I’m hoping this class will do for generations of Media Lab designers and engineers.
"Reading science fiction is like an ethics class for inventors."
SB: Before coming to the Media Lab, I was a software engineer in Silicon Valley, and what I built did indeed affect millions of people. I was struck by Silicon Valley’s frenzied culture of building and launching projects as quickly as possible without considering their social impact in the long term. Unfortunately, the makers of technology are generally not encouraged to be introspective or reflect too deeply on what they are making, and this really worries me.
inRead invented by Teads
Once any sort of technology has users, it becomes extremely difficult to change it -- even if you know it should or must be changed. Usually the only thing you can do is tack on more features, but it can be impossible to change the core structure. And once something has thousands, millions of users, the impact of every design decision is huge. Millions of people will be engaging in the same interactions possibly even hundreds of times a day, and this is reinforcing very particular pathways in the brain.
How is that affecting our social structure and values? How is that changing the way we view ourselves and even the way we understand our own mental functioning? I got my first computer, a Commodore 64, when I was two years old, and I often wonder how constantly interacting with computer interfaces and code since a young age has affected my thought processes and my perceptions of other people and my environment.
Reading science fiction is like an ethics class for inventors, and engineers and designers should be trying to think like science fiction authors when they approach their own work. The projects we build here at the Media Lab often become widely adopted or serve as examples that influence countless other projects, and I feel with great urgency that we need to very thoughtfully consider what we build as well as encourage that same thoughtfulness out in the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
REBECCA J. ROSEN is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where she oversees the Business Channel. She was previously an associate editor at The Wilson Quarterly.
Source:https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/why-todays-inventors-need-to-read-more-science-fiction/279793/
GINT-Why Everyone Should Read More Science Fiction
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
THE BLOG
Why Everyone Should Read More Science Fiction
By Amie Kaufman , Meagan Spooner
12/09/2013 | Updated Feb 08, 2014
Science fiction is a genre long-dismissed by many as “for nerds,” conjuring up the image of a glasses-wearing, pasty-faced, video-game-playing introvert. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Between us, we’ve got those categories nailed.) Some think of pulpy movies from the 1960s, featuring silver lycra-clad girls and UFOs on strings. Some say visions of the future mean nothing to teens more interested in their own lives. But it’s never been cooler to be a nerd, and science fiction is enjoying a long-overdue comeback. From Doctor Who to Pacific Rim, fans of the genre are enjoying a renaissance of science fiction books, movies and TV—and they’re not taking those dismissals lying down. Science fiction matters, and the fans know it.
A true science fiction fan already knows exactly how to argue against the traditional dismissals. There’s a difference between pulp and SF—just as there’s a difference between schlock horror and Stephen King. By proposing possible visions of the future, science fiction asks questions of us—of humanity, of Earth, of individuals—that we wouldn’t ordinarily ask ourselves. Who are we? Where are we going? Does what we do today matter? Real science fiction is as close to an intense discussion of philosophy as you can get while still reading fast-paced, page-turning fiction. And it doesn’t always give us the answers. Sometimes it leaves us to answer those questions ourselves, and that discussion is one readers of all stripes relish.
Which leads us to the most baffling assumption of all about science fiction: that it will go right over the heads of today’s teenagers. Part of this stems from the (regrettable, but true) fact that the majority of young adult fiction readers are female, and girls aren’t supposed to like science fiction. Try telling that to the girls and women of all ages embracing science fiction fandom at every level. Part of it is because adults still have an inexplicable tendency to assume that young people can’t, or don’t wish to, understand things beyond their immediate realm of personal experience.
A few years ago an article popped up on The Wall Street Journal criticizing the young adult genre for being too dark, and for addressing subjects teens weren’t ready to understand. It resulted in a knock-down drag-out fight on the internet as authors and readers leapt to the genre’s defense. Supporters of young adult fiction pointed out that for some teens struggling with dark issues, these “ever-appalling” books were the only place they could look for answers. These fictional characters were the only ones troubled teens could turn to in order to figure out their own lives.
Science fiction in the young adult genre serves this same purpose. The extreme popularity of young adult fiction in general among readers of all ages is linked with the universality of the teenage experience. We all remember what it was like to be that age; to wonder who we were, whether we mattered, whether we were alone in the things we struggled with every day. Teenagers are constantly changing who they are, deciding who they want to be. As adults, it’s hard to change. But teens are just discovering themselves, and they do that by asking those very questions that make some people think YA fiction is too dark.
Science fiction asks those same questions, just on a larger scale: what does it mean to be human? What’s our place in the universe? Do we matter?
Are we alone?
In an age where science fiction television shows like Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica are huge favorites among teenage audiences, it’s a bit silly to keep on thinking that young adult readers have no interest in science fiction. If anything is, and always will remain, relevant and important for young people to read about, to talk about, to dream about, it’s the future. All our futures. Bleak futures and hopeful futures. The plausible, the impossible, and everything in between. Keep them thinking, keep them asking questions.
Keep them looking around and asking themselves, “Who am I? And who do I want to be?”
Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner are the authors of the new book These Broken Stars.
Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amie-kaufman/why-everyone-should-read-_b_4414521.html
THE BLOG
Why Everyone Should Read More Science Fiction
By Amie Kaufman , Meagan Spooner
12/09/2013 | Updated Feb 08, 2014
Science fiction is a genre long-dismissed by many as “for nerds,” conjuring up the image of a glasses-wearing, pasty-faced, video-game-playing introvert. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Between us, we’ve got those categories nailed.) Some think of pulpy movies from the 1960s, featuring silver lycra-clad girls and UFOs on strings. Some say visions of the future mean nothing to teens more interested in their own lives. But it’s never been cooler to be a nerd, and science fiction is enjoying a long-overdue comeback. From Doctor Who to Pacific Rim, fans of the genre are enjoying a renaissance of science fiction books, movies and TV—and they’re not taking those dismissals lying down. Science fiction matters, and the fans know it.
A true science fiction fan already knows exactly how to argue against the traditional dismissals. There’s a difference between pulp and SF—just as there’s a difference between schlock horror and Stephen King. By proposing possible visions of the future, science fiction asks questions of us—of humanity, of Earth, of individuals—that we wouldn’t ordinarily ask ourselves. Who are we? Where are we going? Does what we do today matter? Real science fiction is as close to an intense discussion of philosophy as you can get while still reading fast-paced, page-turning fiction. And it doesn’t always give us the answers. Sometimes it leaves us to answer those questions ourselves, and that discussion is one readers of all stripes relish.
Which leads us to the most baffling assumption of all about science fiction: that it will go right over the heads of today’s teenagers. Part of this stems from the (regrettable, but true) fact that the majority of young adult fiction readers are female, and girls aren’t supposed to like science fiction. Try telling that to the girls and women of all ages embracing science fiction fandom at every level. Part of it is because adults still have an inexplicable tendency to assume that young people can’t, or don’t wish to, understand things beyond their immediate realm of personal experience.
A few years ago an article popped up on The Wall Street Journal criticizing the young adult genre for being too dark, and for addressing subjects teens weren’t ready to understand. It resulted in a knock-down drag-out fight on the internet as authors and readers leapt to the genre’s defense. Supporters of young adult fiction pointed out that for some teens struggling with dark issues, these “ever-appalling” books were the only place they could look for answers. These fictional characters were the only ones troubled teens could turn to in order to figure out their own lives.
Science fiction in the young adult genre serves this same purpose. The extreme popularity of young adult fiction in general among readers of all ages is linked with the universality of the teenage experience. We all remember what it was like to be that age; to wonder who we were, whether we mattered, whether we were alone in the things we struggled with every day. Teenagers are constantly changing who they are, deciding who they want to be. As adults, it’s hard to change. But teens are just discovering themselves, and they do that by asking those very questions that make some people think YA fiction is too dark.
Science fiction asks those same questions, just on a larger scale: what does it mean to be human? What’s our place in the universe? Do we matter?
Are we alone?
In an age where science fiction television shows like Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica are huge favorites among teenage audiences, it’s a bit silly to keep on thinking that young adult readers have no interest in science fiction. If anything is, and always will remain, relevant and important for young people to read about, to talk about, to dream about, it’s the future. All our futures. Bleak futures and hopeful futures. The plausible, the impossible, and everything in between. Keep them thinking, keep them asking questions.
Keep them looking around and asking themselves, “Who am I? And who do I want to be?”
Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner are the authors of the new book These Broken Stars.
Source:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amie-kaufman/why-everyone-should-read-_b_4414521.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
The following information is used for educational purposes only. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the next generation Alex Cu...
-
The following information is used for educational purposes only. We the Future | September 2018 Michael Green: The global goals we´ve ...
-
The following information is used for educational purposes only. Aprender un nuevo idioma es bueno para el cerebro Los investigadores desc...
