Bøger udgivet af MIT Press

An examination of the ethical issues raised by the possibility of human life extension, including its desirability, unequal access, and the threat of overpopulation. Life extension--slowing or halting human aging--is now being taken seriously by many scientists. Although no techniques to slow human aging yet exist, researchers have successfully slowed aging in yeast, mice, and fruit flies, and have determined that humans share aging-related genes with these species. In New Methuselahs, John Davis offers a philosophical discussion of the ethical issues raised by the possibility of human life extension. Why consider these issues now, before human life extension is a reality? Davis points out that, even today, we are making policy and funding decisions about human life extension research that have ethical implications. With New Methuselahs, he provides a comprehensive guide to these issues, offering policy recommendations and a qualified defense of life extension. After an overview of the ethics and science of life extension, Davis considers such issues as the desirability of extended life; whether refusing extended life is a form of suicide; the Malthusian threat of overpopulation; equal access to life extension; and life extension and the right against harm. In the end, Davis sides neither with those who argue that there are no moral objections to life enhancement nor with those who argue that the moral objections are so strong that we should never develop it. Davis argues that life extension is, on balance, a good thing and that we should fund life extension research aggressively, and he proposes a feasible and just policy for preventing an overpopulation crisis.

A provocative attempt to think about what was previously considered unthinkable: a serious philosophical case for the rights of robots. We are in the midst of a robot invasion, as devices of different configurations and capabilities slowly but surely come to take up increasingly important positions in everyday social reality--self-driving vehicles, recommendation algorithms, machine learning decision making systems, and social robots of various forms and functions. Although considerable attention has already been devoted to the subject of robots and responsibility, the question concerning the social status of these artifacts has been largely overlooked. In this book, David Gunkel offers a provocative attempt to think about what has been previously regarded as unthinkable: whether and to what extent robots and other technological artifacts of our own making can and should have any claim to moral and legal standing. In his analysis, Gunkel invokes the philosophical distinction (developed by David Hume) between "is" and "ought" in order to evaluate and analyze the different arguments regarding the question of robot rights. In the course of his examination, Gunkel finds that none of the existing positions or proposals hold up under scrutiny. In response to this, he then offers an innovative alternative proposal that effectively flips the script on the is/ought problem by introducing another, altogether different way to conceptualize the social situation of robots and the opportunities and challenges they present to existing moral and legal systems.

How making and sharing video games offer educational benefits for coding, collaboration, and creativity. Over the last decade, video games designed to teach academic content have multiplied. Students can learn about Newtonian physics from a game or prep for entry into the army. An emphasis on the instructionist approach to gaming, however, has overshadowed the constructionist approach, in which students learn by designing their own games themselves. In this book, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke discuss the educational benefits of constructionist gaming--coding, collaboration, and creativity--and the move from "computational thinking" toward "computational participation." Kafai and Burke point to recent developments that support a shift to game making from game playing, including the game industry's acceptance, and even promotion, of "modding" and the growth of a DIY culture. Kafai and Burke show that student-designed games teach not only such technical skills as programming but also academic subjects. Making games also teaches collaboration, as students frequently work in teams to produce content and then share their games with in class or with others online. Yet Kafai and Burke don't advocate abandoning instructionist for constructionist approaches. Rather, they argue for a more comprehensive, inclusive idea of connected gaming in which both making and gaming play a part.

Discussions of the use and limits of randomized control trials, considering the power of theory, external validity, gaps in knowledge, and what issues matter. The practice of development economics has undergone something of a revolution as many economists have adopted new methods to answer perennial questions about the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs. In this book, prominent development economists discuss the use and impact of one of the most significant of these new methods, randomized control trials (RCTs) and field experiments. In extended interviews conducted over a period of several years, they explain their work and their thinking and consider the broader issues of how we learn about the world and how we can change it for the better. These conversations offer specialists and nonspecialists alike a unique opportunity to hear economists speak in their own words, free of the confines of a particular study or econometric esoterica. The economists describe how they apply research findings in the way they think about the world, revealing their ideas about the power of theory, external validity, gaps in knowledge, and what issues matter. Also included are interviews with RCT observers, critics, sponsors, consumers, and others. Each interview provides a brief biography of the interviewee. Thorough annotations offer background and explanations for key ideas and studies referred to in the conversations. ContributorsAbhijit Banerjee, Nancy Birdsall, Chris Blattman, Alex Counts, Tyler Cowen, Angus Deaton, Frank DeGiovanni, Esther Duflo, Pascaline Dupas, Xavi Gine, Rachel Glennerster, Judy Gueron, Elie Hassenfeld, Dean Karlan, Michael Kremer, David McKenzie, Jonathan Morduch, Lant Pritchett, Jonathan Robinson, Antoinette Schoar, Dean Yang

An examination of Yayoi Kusama's work that goes beyond the usual biographical interpretation to consider her place in postwar global art history. Yayoi Kusama is the most famous artist to emerge from Japan in the period following World War II. Part of a burgeoning international art scene in the early 1960s, she exhibited in New York with Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, and other Pop and Minimalist luminaries, and in Europe with the Dutch Nul and the German Zero artist groups. Known for repetitive patterns, sewn soft sculptures, naked performance, and suggestive content, Kusama's work anticipated the politically charged feminist art of the 1970s. But Kusama and her work were soon eclipsed by a dealer-controlled art market monopoly of white male American artists. Returning to Japan in 1973, Kusama became almost as famous for her self-proclaimed mental illness and permanent residence in a psychiatric hospital as she was for her art. In this book, Midori Yamamura eschews the usual critical fascination with Kusama's biography to consider the artist in her social and cultural milieu. By examining Kusama's art alongside that of her peers, Yamamura offers a new perspective on Kusama's career. Yamamura shows that Kusama, who came of age in totalitarian wartime Japan, embraced art as an anticonformist pursuit, seeking a subjective autonomy that resulted in the singular expression of her art. Examining Kusama's association with European and New York art movements of the 1960s and her creation of psychedelic light-and-sound "Happenings," Yamamura argues that Kusama and her heterogeneous peers defied and undermined various pillars of modernity during the crucial transition from the modern nation-state to global free-market capitalism. The art market rediscovered Kusama in the 1990s, and she has since had a series of high-profile exhibitions. Recounting Kusama's story, Yamamura offers an incisive, penetrating analysis of postwar art's globalization as viewed from the periphery.

An introduction to the fundamental concepts of the emerging field of Artificial Chemistries, covering both theory and practical applications. The field of Artificial Life (ALife) is now firmly established in the scientific world, but it has yet to achieve one of its original goals: an understanding of the emergence of life on Earth. The new field of Artificial Chemistries draws from chemistry, biology, computer science, mathematics, and other disciplines to work toward that goal. For if, as it has been argued, life emerged from primitive, prebiotic forms of self-organization, then studying models of chemical reaction systems could bring ALife closer to understanding the origins of life. In Artificial Chemistries (ACs), the emphasis is on creating new interactions rather than new materials. The results can be found both in the virtual world, in certain multiagent systems, and in the physical world, in new (artificial) reaction systems. This book offers an introduction to the fundamental concepts of ACs, covering both theory and practical applications. After a general overview of the field and its methodology, the book reviews important aspects of biology, including basic mechanisms of evolution; discusses examples of ACs drawn from the literature; considers fundamental questions of how order can emerge, emphasizing the concept of chemical organization (a closed and self-maintaining set of chemicals); and surveys a range of applications, which include computing, systems modeling in biology, and synthetic life. An appendix provides a Python toolkit for implementing ACs.

A multidisciplinary examination of cognitive mechanisms, shaped over evolutionary time through natural selection, that govern decision making. How do we make decisions? Conventional decision theory tells us only which behavioral choices we ought to make if we follow certain axioms. In real life, however, our choices are governed by cognitive mechanisms shaped over evolutionary time through the process of natural selection. Evolution has created strong biases in how and when we process information, and it is these evolved cognitive building blocks--from signal detection and memory to individual and social learning--that provide the foundation for our choices. An evolutionary perspective thus sheds necessary light on the nature of how we and other animals make decisions. This volume--with contributors from a broad range of disciplines, including evolutionary biology, psychology, economics, anthropology, neuroscience, and computer science--offers a multidisciplinary examination of what evolution can tell us about our and other animals' mechanisms of decision making. Human children, for example, differ from chimpanzees in their tendency to over-imitate others and copy obviously useless actions; this divergence from our primate relatives sets up imitation as one of the important mechanisms underlying human decision making. The volume also considers why and when decision mechanisms are robust, why they vary across individuals and situations, and how social life affects our decisions.

Twelve studies by eminent art historian James S. Ackerman. This collection contains studies written by art historian James Ackerman over the past decade. Whereas Ackerman's earlier work assumed a development of the arts as they responded to social, economic, political, and cultural change, his recent work reflects the poststructural critique of the presumption of progress that characterized Renaissance and modernist history and criticism. In this book he explores the tension between the authority of the past--which may act not only as a restraint but as a challenge and stimulus--and the potentially liberating gift of invention. He examines the ways in which artists and writers on art have related to ancestors and to established modes of representation, as well as to contemporary experiences. The "origins" studied here include the earliest art history and criticism; the beginnings of architectural drawing in the Middle Ages and Renaissance; Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches for churches, the first in the Renaissance to propose supporting domes on sculpted walls and piers; and the first architectural photographs. "Imitation" refers to artistic achievements that in part depended on the imitation of forms established in practices outside the fine arts, such as ancient Roman rhetoric and print media. "Conventions," like language, facilitate communication between the artist and viewer, but are both more universal (understood across cultures) and more fixed (resisting variation that might diminish their clarity). The three categories are closely linked throughout the book, as most acts of representation partake to some degree of all three.

Experts from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, ecology, and evolutionary biology assess the field of animal cognition. Do animals have cognitive maps? Do they possess knowledge? Do they plan for the future? Do they understand that others have mental lives of their own? This volume provides a state-of-the-art assessment of animal cognition, with experts from psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, ecology, and evolutionary biology addressing these questions in an integrative fashion. It summarizes the latest research, identifies areas where consensus has been reached, and takes on current controversies. Over the last thirty years, the field has shifted from the collection of anecdotes and the pursuit of the subjective experience of animals to a rigorous, hypothesis-driven experimental approach. Taking a skeptical stance, this volume stresses the notion that in many cases relatively simple rules may account for rather complex and flexible behaviors. The book critically evaluates current concepts and puts a strong focus on the psychological mechanisms that underpin animal behavior. It offers comparative analyses that reveal common principles as well as adaptations that evolved in particular species in response to specific selective pressures. It assesses experimental approaches to the study of animal navigation, decision making, social cognition, and communication and suggests directions for future research. The book promotes a research program that seeks to understand animals' cognitive abilities and behavioral routines as individuals and as members of social groups.

An argument that operational urban planning can be improved by the application of the tools of urban economics to the design of regulations and infrastructure. Urban planning is a craft learned through practice. Planners make rapid decisions that have an immediate impact on the ground--the width of streets, the minimum size of land parcels, the heights of buildings. The language they use to describe their objectives is qualitative--"sustainable," "livable," "resilient"--often with no link to measurable outcomes. Urban economics, on the other hand, is a quantitative science, based on theories, models, and empirical evidence largely developed in academic settings. In this book, the eminent urban planner Alain Bertaud argues that applying the theories of urban economics to the practice of urban planning would greatly improve both the productivity of cities and the welfare of urban citizens. Bertaud explains that markets provide the indispensable mechanism for cities' development. He cites the experience of cities without markets for land or labor in pre-reform China and Russia; this "urban planners' dream" created inefficiencies and waste. Drawing on five decades of urban planning experience in forty cities around the world, Bertaud links cities' productivity to the size of their labor markets; argues that the design of infrastructure and markets can complement each other; examines the spatial distribution of land prices and densities; stresses the importance of mobility and affordability; and critiques the land use regulations in a number of cities that aim at redesigning existing cities instead of just trying to alleviate clear negative externalities. Bertaud concludes by describing the new role that joint teams of urban planners and economists could play to improve the way cities are managed.

"A media theory genealogy of the material and infrastructural features of networking practices, a kind of pre-history of networked society"--

"A platform studies approach to the Intellivision computer system"--

"This book is for anyone who wants to learn category theory, beginning with an introduction to category theory and taking the reader on a journey through cutting-edge research areas"--

"Rethinking Merger Analysis develops our ability to determine mergers' likely effects, identifies defects in existing methods, and provides guidance for the regulation of horizontal mergers"--

A study of urban nature that draws together different strands of urban ecology as well as insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought. Postindustrial transitions and changing cultures of nature have produced an unprecedented degree of fascination with urban biodiversity. The "other nature" that flourishes in marginal urban spaces, at one remove from the controlled contours of metropolitan nature, is not the poor relation of rural flora and fauna. Indeed, these islands of biodiversity underline the porosity of the distinction between urban and rural. In Natura Urbana, Matthew Gandy explores urban nature as a multilayered material and symbolic entity, through the lens of urban ecology and the parallel study of diverse cultures of nature at a global scale. Gandy examines the articulation of alternative, and in some cases, counterhegemonic, sources of knowledge about urban nature produced by artists, writers, scientists, as well as curious citizens, including voices seldom heard in environmental discourse. The book is driven by Gandy's fascination with spontaneous forms of urban nature ranging from postindustrial wastelands brimming with life to the return of such predators as wolves and leopards on the urban fringe. Gandy develops a critical synthesis between different strands of urban ecology and considers whether "urban political ecology," broadly defined, might be imaginatively extended to take fuller account of both the historiography of the ecological sciences, and recent insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought.

"The Aesthetics of Stealth proposes a cultural analysis as well as a political theory of stealth in its various aesthetic articulations"--

How play and gaming culture have mainstreamed far right ideology through social media platforms. From #Gamergate to the ongoing Big Lie, the far right has gone mainstream. In Gaming Democracy, Adrienne Massanari tracks the flames of toxicity found in the far right and "alt right" movements as they increasingly take up oxygen in American and global society. In this pathbreaking contribution to the fields of internet studies, game studies, and gender studies, Massanari argues that Silicon Valley's emphasis on meritocracy and free speech absolutism have driven this right-ward slide. These ideologies have been coded into social media spaces that implicitly silence marginalized communities and subject them to rampant abuse by groups that have learned to "game" the ecology of platforms, algorithms, and attention economies. While populist movements are not new, phenomena such as QAnon, parental rights activism, and COVID denialism are uniquely "of the internet" with supporters demonstrating both technical acumen and an ability to use memes and play as a way of both building community and fomenting dissent. Massanari explores the ways that the far right uses memetic humor and geek masculinity as a tool to create both a sense of community within these leaderless groups and to obfuscate their intentions. Using the lens of play and game studies as well as the concept of "metagaming," Gaming Democracy is a novel contribution to our understanding of online platforms and far right political activism.

"Mailland places lawyers and the law at the center of the history of videogames, reconstructing traditional histories of games to include the social impact of lawyers and the law"--

A novel theory of argument structure based on the order in which verbs and their arguments combine across a variety of languages and language families.Merge is the structure-building operation in Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. In When Arguments Merge, Elise Newman develops a new Merge-based theory of the syntax of argument structure, taking inspiration from wh- questions. She uncovers new connections between disparate empirical phenomena and provides a unified analysis of patterns across many languages and language families, from Mayan to Bantu to Indo-European languages (among others). The result is a syntactic theory with a small inventory of features and categories that can combine in a limited number of ways, capturing the range of argument configurations that we find cross-linguistically in both declarative and interrogative contexts.    Newman’s novel approach to argument structure is based on the time at which different kinds of arguments merge and move in the verbal domain. Assuming that all kinds of Merge are driven by features, she proposes that subset relationships between elements bearing different sets of features can constrain the distribution of arguments in unexpected ways and that different feature bundles can predict unusual interactions between arguments in many contexts. The positions of arguments in different contexts have consequences for agreement alignment and case assignment, which are reflected in the Voice of the clause. Examining the order in which verbs and their arguments are combined, she explores the consequences of different orders of combination for the kinds of utterances observed across languages.

"A collection of profiles of important women in the field of interaction design"--

"An intellectual history of the first 50 years of AI written by a major figure who has been involved since AI's inception"--

A novel interpretation of the history and theory of technology from the perspective of toys, play, and play objects. Toy Theory addresses the relationships between toys and technology in two distinct, but overlapping ways: first, as under-examined cultural artifacts and behaviors with significant technical attributes, and secondly, as playful and toy-like dimensions of technology at large. Seth Giddings sets out a "toy theory" of technology that emphasizes the speculative, the experimental, and non-instrumental in technological paradigms and argues that children's playthings, rather than being the most ephemeral and inconsequential of technical devices, instead offer analytical and anthropological resources for understanding the materiality and imaginaries of technology over time. After defining toy theory in general and conceptual terms, Giddings examines different types of toys to explore shifting relationships between the microcosmic symbolic or mimetic content, material and technical constitution, and modes of play of toys and toy-related artifacts on the one hand, and prevailing, macrocosmic, technological paradigms and imaginaries on the other. Taking a broad historical and genealogical view, Giddings traces contemporary postdigital toy and play culture to precedents from the neolithic through to the Enlightenment to consumer culture from the early nineteenth century to the present day.

"Veridical Data Science gives a complete and comprehensive overview of the world of data science using a problem/solution-oriented prospective"--

A highly original exploration of the history of architecture in relation to fish, shedding light on the connection between marine environments and terrestrial landscapes. Architecture Follows Fish is set in the North Atlantic, and its protagonist is fish. In this book author and architect André Tavares explores the notion of fishing architecture, a concept coined to describe architectural practices that are spawned by fisheries. To encompass the scope of fishing architecture, and to establish the connections between marine ecology and architectural practice, the book oscillates between different continents, centuries, and species. Fisheries are unique, and this book sheds light on that uniqueness through an articulated narrative and a wealth of iconography. Up until now there has been no history of architecture from the perspective of fish, although there are counterparts for meat, timber, oil, and many other industries. Tavares provides a counter-narrative to the traditional history of marine environments, which is typically focused on water ecosystems, and instead forms a bridge between what happens at sea and what happens on land. The hope is that, after reading this book, readers will better understand life in the sea in relation to urban growth and terrestrial landscapes.

"A concise articulation of Neurobiological Emergence -- a theory that solves the "hard problem" of consciousness while also showing its widespread existence in nature (beyond just humans)"--

"A critical and timely intervention into the human-centered, technocratic, capitalist modes of urban development that calls for new ways of re-thinking, re-seeing, and re-storying cities"--

"The story of twelve exemplary planning and urban design interventions illustrates a holistic framework for pursuing equity-centered urban resilience in the face of climate change"--

"Mapping dominant climate propagandas and their worldviews, Staal shows how culture shapes understanding-and misunderstanding-of the world and how to influence a future characterized by regeneration"--

"A anthology of computationally generated text from throughout history"--

Forthcoming from the MIT Press