Individualization and the aporias of modernity

Ulrich Beck’s musings on individualization have been described as a theory that provides a convincing explanation of what is happening in society, but has it seemed convincing because of its superior explanatory power or because it says what those who have been convinced wanted to hear anyway? This paper argues that, far from explaining more or better, the theory is haunted by intractable contradictions and paradoxes and that, at the root of these problems, is the sociological imagination itself, which insists on treating modernity as an empirical reality. This paper’s contention, by contrast, is that there is no such thing as modernity in society and history. It is an empty signifier, a phantom or, to use Beck’s own colourful terminology, a ‘zombie category’

Cosmopolitanism, sociology and the otherness of the other

This article is concerned with the ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in sociology and examines the ways in which the discipline attempts to come to terms with the otherness of the other as a corrective to its own Eurocentrism. It examines in particular the pluralisation of the notion of modernity and argues that although this strategy allows sociology to maintain its disciplinary identity, it falls short of the aim of transforming the discipline into a cosmopolitan discourse. More broadly, the article argues that cosmopolitanism is not a possible object of experience. Like other idealisations, it is plagued by what Derrida calls ‘autoimmunity’ – the tendency to self-destruct

Museum Experience Design: A Modern Storytelling Methodology

In this paper we propose a new direction for design, in the context of the theme “Next Digital Technologies in Arts and Culture”, by employing modern methods based on Interaction Design, Interactive Storytelling and Artificial Intelligence. Focusing on Cultural Heritage, we propose a new paradigm for Museum Experience Design, facilitating on the one hand traditional visual and multimedia communication and, on the other, a new type of interaction with artefacts, in the form of a Storytelling Experience. Museums are increasingly being transformed into hybrid spaces, where virtual (digital) information coexists with tangible artefacts. In this context, “Next Digital Technologies” play a new role, providing methods to increase cultural accessibility and enhance experience. Not only is the goal to convey stories hidden inside artefacts, as well as items or objects connected to them, but it is also to pave the way for the creation of new ones through an interactive museum experience that continues after the museum visit ends. Social sharing, in particular, can greatly increase the value of dissemination

Independent Cyprus? Postcoloniality and the spectre of Europe

This essay reflects on the postcolonial condition in Cyprus and argues that political independence does not mean the end of colonialism. Power is not merely what prevents people from doing what they wish to do but also, and more importantly, what colonises the mind and predisposes them to think and act in specific ways. The main contention of the essay is that 'independent' Cyprus is ruled by the idea of Europe and the desire to be recognised and confirmed as a modern European society. The essay further argues that it is largely because of this idea that Greek and Turkish Cypriots have not managed to live together on this island. They have been trying to reach this phantom destination - modernity - travelling apart

Ontology, ‘hauntology’ and the ‘turn’ that keeps anthropology turning

© 2016, © The Author(s) 2016. Twentieth-century anthropology has been operating with the assumption of one nature and many cultures, one reality experienced and lived in many different ways. Its primary job, therefore, has been to render the otherness of the other understandable, to demonstrate that although different it is also the same; in short, to show that although other, others are people like us. The latest theoretical paradigm, known as the ‘ontological turn’, appears to reverse this assumption and to posit many natures and one culture. Whether it does in fact reverse it and constitutes a meta-ontology, as critics have pointed out, or it is only a heuristic, methodological device, as some of the proponents of the ‘turn’ have recently argued, the contention of my article is the same: first, this move – the ontological – is made in the hope of doing a better job in redeeming otherness than earlier anthropological paradigms; second, it fails as they did – in the same way and for the same reasons

Progression and Verification of Situation Calculus Agents with Bounded Beliefs

We investigate agents that have incomplete information and make decisions based on their beliefs expressed as situation calculus bounded action theories. Such theories have an infinite object domain, but the number of objects that belong to fluents at each time point is bounded by a given constant. Recently, it has been shown that verifying temporal properties over such theories is decidable. We take a first-person view and use the theory to capture what the agent believes about the domain of interest and the actions affecting it. In this paper, we study verification of temporal properties over online executions. These are executions resulting from agents performing only actions that are feasible according to their beliefs. To do so, we first examine progression, which captures belief state update resulting from actions in the situation calculus. We show that, for bounded action theories, progression, and hence belief states, can always be represented as a bounded first-order logic theory. Then, based on this result, we prove decidability of temporal verification over online executions for bounded action theories. © 2015 The Author(s

Observation of edge waves in a two-dimensional Su-Schrieffer-Heeger acoustic network

In this work, we experimentally report the acoustic realization the two-dimensional (2D) Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model in a simple network of air channels. We analytically study the steady state dynamics of the system using a set of discrete equations for the acoustic pressure, leading to the 2D SSH Hamiltonian matrix without using tight binding approximation. By building an acoustic network operating in audible regime, we experimentally demonstrate the existence of topological band gap. More supremely, within this band gap we observe the associated edge waves even though the system is open to free space. Our results not only experimentally demonstrate topological edge waves in a zero Berry curvature system but also provide a flexible platform for the study of topological properties of sound waves

On Deterministic Linearizable Set Agreement Objects

A recent work showed that, for all n and k, there is a linearizable (n,k)-set agreement object O_L that is equivalent to the (n,k)-set agreement task [David Yu Cheng Chan et al., 2017]: given O_L, it is possible to solve the (n,k)-set agreement task, and given any algorithm that solves the (n,k)-set agreement task (and registers), it is possible to implement O_L. This linearizable object O_L, however, is not deterministic. It turns out that there is also a deterministic (n,k)-set agreement object O_D that is equivalent to the (n,k)-set agreement task, but this deterministic object O_D is not linearizable. This raises the question whether there exists a deterministic and linearizable (n,k)-set agreement object that is equivalent to the (n,k)-set agreement task. Here we show that in general the answer is no: specifically, we prove that for all n ? 4, every deterministic linearizable (n,2)-set agreement object is strictly stronger than the (n,2)-set agreement task. We prove this by showing that, for all n ? 4, every deterministic and linearizable (n,2)-set agreement object (together with registers) can be used to solve 2-consensus, whereas it is known that the (n,2)-set agreement task cannot do so. For a natural subset of (n,2)-set agreement objects, we prove that this result holds even for n = 3

Bright and Gap Solitons in Membrane-Type Acoustic Metamaterials

We study analytically and numerically envelope solitons (bright and gap solitons) in a one-dimensional, nonlinear acoustic metamaterial, composed of an air-filled waveguide periodically loaded by clamped elastic plates. Based on the transmission line approach, we derive a nonlinear dynamical lattice model which, in the continuum approximation, leads to a nonlinear, dispersive and dissipative wave equation. Applying the multiple scales perturbation method, we derive an effective lossy nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation and obtain analytical expressions for bright and gap solitons. We also perform direct numerical simulations to study the dissipation-induced dynamics of the bright and gap solitons. Numerical and analytical results, relying on the analytical approximations and perturbation theory for solions, are found to be in good agreement

Bounded Disagreement

A well-known generalization of the consensus problem, namely, set agreement (SA), limits the number of distinct decision values that processes decide. In some settings, it may be more important to limit the number of "disagreers". Thus, we introduce another natural generalization of the consensus problem, namely, bounded disagreement (BD), which limits the number of processes that decide differently from the plurality. More precisely, in a system with n processes, the (n, l)-BD task has the following requirement: there is a value v such that at most l processes (the disagreers) decide a value other than v. Despite their apparent similarities, the results described below show that bounded disagreement, consensus, and set agreement are in fact fundamentally different problems. We investigate the relationship between bounded disagreement, consensus, and set agreement. In particular, we determine the consensus number for every instance of the BD task. We also determine values of n, l, m, and k such that the (n, l)-BD task can solve the (m, k)-SA task (where m processes can decide at most k distinct values). Using our results and a previously known impossibility result for set agreement, we prove that for all n >= 2, there is a BD task (and a corresponding BD object) that has consensus number n but can not be solved using n-consensus and registers. Prior to our paper, the only objects known to have this unusual characteristic for n >= 2 (which shows that the consensus number of an object is not sufficient to fully capture its power) were artificial objects crafted solely for the purpose of exhibiting this behaviour