Introduction

This paper addresses the European ICT research regime as an integral part of security research, as it emerged at EU level and also after 9/11. It focuses thereby on the unequal influence certain stakeholders from the high-tech development industry have on the biased directions of the research agenda. The market for civil security has globally grown by a factor larger than 10 since 2001, and, despite the Snowden revelations in 2013, the demand for surveillance ICT by public authorities and private facility operators is rapidly rising. ICT research policy is a core proactive form of public security and social policy, by creating a pool of solutions and measures to be drawn upon in the middle term. In this setting, ICT research success is premised upon a high-tech solutionist, economistic mantra of innovation after which research policy results are measured along econometric indicators. In this respect, reflection upon undesirable side effects of ICT and security-relevant technologies on society is currently methodologically neglected and side-stepped. What is more, the paper questions the capacity of the developed technologies to be “fit-for-purpose”, that is, to factually deliver on the comprehensive societal tasks they have been deployed for. The analysis is directed toward ICT function creep, that is, application of the developed technologies other than the originally envisioned, to intended and unintended “dual use” of ICT, that is, the unsolicited transfer of civil technologies to military use. The lack of agreed-upon, rigorous criteria for evidence, which makes (ex-post) evaluations, but also (ex-ante) assessment an arbitrary endeavour, should give place to institutionalization of impact assessment methodologies and practices in the interest of broader segments of society.

Methods

In this paper a threefold methodological approach is pursued: First, a scoping of EU policy documents is done in order to trace legal and policy contexts for ICT (research) policy; Second, a mapping of stakeholders with their diverging agendas within the organizational regime along an influence (power/interest) matrix. The author draws, lastly, on his experience from expert agenda consultations at both German and at EU level, concerning the current and the future ICT/security research programmes.

Results and Discussion

The European Security Research Programme:

Responding to the European Security Strategy (2003) the European Commission launched the mission-oriented research Programme to advance European security through Research and Technology (2004). Budgeted with € 1.4 B under FP7, and with € 1.7 B under Horizon 2020, it is tailored to address four key areas: Fostering Resilience against Disasters and Crises, Fighting against Crime and Terrorism, Border and External Security, and Digital Security. The programme focus is on CBRNE detection, telecommunication data mining technologies, such as DPI, profiling and predictive analytics, biometric identification and pattern recognition, location tracking technologies, as well as surveillance in the form of drones and CCTV. Security research should be mission-driven and serving the five priority areas of the European Union’s Internal Security Strategy (ISS): Disrupt international Crime Networks; Prevent terrorism and address radicalisation and recruitment; Raise levels of security for citizens/businesses in cyberspace; Strengthen security through border management; Increase Europe’s resilience to crises and disasters. Two major issues have already raised criticism, e.g. by Statewatch, and the European Parliament:

1) The programme is supply-led, promoting industrial interests and not serving the needs of end-users or of the citizens at large.

2) The funded technological research raises serious ethics and fundamental rights questions and is fostering societal insecurity instead of security.

The Challenge:

Security policy and, by default, security research are value-laden, contentious public policy fields. They ought to be informed both by expert evidence and by citizens’ values throughout the R&D&I process. Yet, problem definitions, goals, and innovation paths for security research are predominantly shaped by interest groups from the industry. This imbalance in stakeholder participation has, in turn led to a biased “high-tech” understanding of security.

Public concern is growing about how emerging as well as readily available ICT and security technologies, such as biometrics, pattern recognition and detection, risk profiling, and the use of remote sensing and surveillance ‘drones’, impact on society. What is at stake with such technologies goes beyond issues of data protection and privacy, and poses fundamental questions about the blurring military and civil applications (“Dual Use”), non-intended and non-anticipated consequences of their marketization, such as discrimination of minority social groups, and feasibility and desirability of maximum-security societies. If ethics and societal impacts are to be properly addressed in current and future EU ICT/security research programmes then comprehensive appraisal by experts and citizens themselves is required.

Power asymmetries in the leverage certain actors, such as high-tech Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs), or lobbyists from industry associations have, help them exercise disproportional influence upon the formulation of objectives and the programme of the EU ICT/security policy. c the issue of increasing and streamlining the engagement of civil society actors, being the ultimate beneficiaries of research on security technologies, during the policy cycle of security research in order to enhance both its legitimacy and its effectiveness. The three governance mechanisms recommended below contribute at different stages of the security research policy cycle to make both the process more accountable and responsive to the citizens’ needs, and the results more socially and ethically acceptable.  

Conclusions

In conclusion, three recommendations of institutional/organizational nature are at hand:     These are meant to make the ICT/security research governance regime more transparent and legitimate, but also more accountable and responsive to the needs and concerns of society, and not merely serve particularistic economic interests. Moreoever, strengthening checks and broadening participation would decisively contribute to minimizing negative non-intended effects of those technologies once applied.

1) Upstream & Streamline CSO Participation

There is a documented need to integrate civil society and its diverse organisations (CSOs) in the early stages of public policy decision making, particularly when the stakes are as high as in the civil security realm. The requirement to engage relevant societal stakeholders beyond organised interests is inscribed both in European Commission’s “White Paper on Good Governance” (2002), but also in the “Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing Horizon 2020” (2012). The implication for security research is that CSOs should not be any longer a “fig-leaf” add-on, promoting “acceptance” for new security technologies, but instead co-define the agenda of security research and make sure that 1) it meets the needs of society, 2) it benefits society, and 3) does not have negative impacts on society.

2) Conduct impact assessments and evaluations

Initiated after 2005 and under update pending for 2014, the European Commission’s “Guidelines for Regulatory Impact Assessment” prescribe continuous legitimacy/effectiveness crash tests for policies, such as security research, in order to guarantee that they are 1) fit for purpose (effective), 2) proportional (positive cost-benefit trade-off), 3) informed by scientific evidence, and 4) serving overarching EU values and principles. Specifically, this entails that security research delivers on its primary task, that is, it enhances European citizens’ security without infringing civil liberties along the “The Stockholm Programme - An open and secure Europe serving and protecting citizens” (2010), and complies with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (2010).

3) Rethink the meaning of Innovation

The current master narrative for innovation in the EU is preoccupied with market-driven, growth-oriented R&D. Yet, civil security is a public good and not merely a field of industrial competitiveness. Moreover, the dominant high-tech “solutionism” is ill-designed to address comprehensive societal security challenges, such as economic disparities, inequality, and discrimination, and it may even backfire, in terms of generating new problems. Already in 2010 the European Commission report “Empowering people, driving change; Social Innovation in the European Union” pointed towards the huge untapped potential of organisational and institutional innovation for making societies more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient in the spirit of the Lisbon Treaty, by funding non-technological research initiatives.

Acknowledgments

Part of this research has been enabled by the EU FP7 security research project SecurePART (2014-2016), Grant Agreement No. 608039.

Introduction

This paper is concerned with the commodification of invisible audience labour by social media platforms such as Facebook. Drawing on findings from focus groups, digital stories and a National Australian on-line survey with gender variant and sexuality diverse young people, we examine the invisible digital labour users/consumers perform when negotiating and choosing identities online. We also consider the material consequences of this labour. In so doing we articulate a number of iterations of digital labour as spaces of enquiry, including:

• Exploring and negotiating digital media and content for a range of purposes, including practices of identity formation or expression;
• Performing unpaid digital labour that has an economic dividend for businesses that capitalize concepts of leisure, freedom, privacy, entertainment and connectedness;

In 2014, Facebook (USA) has expanded the gender options available on the user profile page from three (male, female, blank) to 52 (Facebook, 2013). In reading this as the emergence of a new taxonomy of gendered subjectivity and consumer/subjects generated by the market, we contemplate the interactions with digital/new media technologies young people engage in and the ways in which these technologies facilitate online spaces for the production and consumption of identities.

Methods

This research draws from quantitative and qualitative data collected in online surveys, digital stories and focus groups with queer young people aged between 14 and 26 in Australia.

This work is framed theoretically by the work of Nikolas Rose. Drawing on the work of Rose (1996) we explore how Facebook provides a space for people to “be their authentic self” – and foreground the extent to which that authenticity is constituted and regulated by the practices through which online identities are created, recognised, expressed, embodied and performed as if originating in or from oneself. How much of who this authentic self has become is bound up in the decisions and choices made when representing oneself online? To what extent is this authenticity a product of the market and consumer choice? Do the categories and practices of identification fix into place a certain type and way of being, for example, trans, gender fluid or cisgendered? For Rose (1996), “human beings have come to understand and relate to themselves as ‘psy-chological’ beings, to interrogate and narrate themselves in terms of a psy-chological ‘inner life' that holds the secrets of identity, which they are to discover and fulfil, which is the standard which the living of an ‘authentic’ life is to be judged” (p. 22). To what extent, we ask, is the commodification of this invisible identity labour exploitative?

In our analysis we consider the digital labour involved in choosing or recognising oneself as a subject with particular identities, bodies and desires. We pay particular attention to the ways in which social media practices simultaneously open up and commercially exploit possibilities for being and becoming.

Results and Discussion

In thinking through these questions, we draw attention to the invisible user labour that occurs in the formation of identity as an activity that is being repurposed by social media sites, such as Facebook, as an expression of ‘individuality’ and the ‘authentic self’ as it creates value that can be exchanged for capital. In this discussion we foreground the extensive amount of time, invisible labour and emotional investment that goes into per/forming oneself as a queer subject. Goran Bolin (2008) argues that within the digital media environment “identity work” is manifesting into “productive labour, contributing to the economics of the production-consumption circuit” (p. 798). As research demonstrates the divide between online and offline practices is blurry, and for many young people their online profiles are becoming an extension of their offline life and part of their identity (Livingstone, 2008). We are interested then, in both the extent to which young people come to know themselves or the truth of themselves online, and in the commodification of this knowledge though which individuality is produced though practices of market segmentation – that is the production of ever more narrowly defined consumers to whom particular goods and services can be targeted. We are concerned with the material effects of this new taxonomy of genders, both in terms of embodied practices of identification and the capitalization and marketisation of queer identities.

Facebook operates on the model that users voluntarily sign up without any economic cost so they can participate, engage and connect with their individual social network. User data is then sold on to advertisers. The commodity logic of social media is a complex exchange of use-value that is realised in the act of not only consumption, but also through acts of production, as user activities create not only content for other consumers, but also the production of user data that is then sold on to advertisers. Andrew Ross (2012) argues that whilst free labour is not new (for example housework, internships and prisons rely on unpaid labour in order for capitalism to function), “untold revenue can be extracted from the steady erosion of the boundary between work and leisure time” and for users, digital labour is not experienced as exploitation but is instead constructed as self-discovery, leisure and participation.

Much discussion of the construction of participatory culture emphasises the extent to which audiences are empowered to participate in the production of cultural products (Jenkins, 2006; Burgess, 2006; Burgess & Green, 2009; Rosen, 2009). Within this context queer youth, as consumers and producers of media texts of identity and life-style, engage in temporally and spatially specific practices of digital labour to produce temporally and spatially specific identities. In this paper, we draw attention to the extent to which conceptualisations of participatory culture, as practices that open spaces for expressing one’s own interests within the emerging media ecology, are in tension with possibilities for self-expression in offline spaces. Fischer (2012) in pointing out that Facebook empowers users to contribute ‘to their own objectification’ (Fisher, 2012, p. 175), signals the extent to which Facebook is a technology for the constitution and regulation of subjects who invent themselves and express their freedom to be/come ‘who they really are’. Indeed, our data suggests that queer young people experience and use Facebook and other online platforms as spaces in which they can explore and experiment with their identity.

Figure 1. 52 gender categories available on Facebook.

(see PDF version for the Figure).

Conclusions

Audiences are becoming producers of media content and devoting their leisure time to the creation of these products as they operate online. Facebook provides a space for people to explore and experiment with their identity. It is the work young people undertake in identity formation of becoming, or becoming and the intersections with this labour and online practices that we are questioning.

Acknowledgments

The data we draw on in this presentation comes from a national online survey (conducted in 2012) of 1230 young people aged 17-26 in Australia who identify as gender variant and sexuality diverse. This project was supported by the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia (www.youngandwellcrc.org.au).

References and Notes

1. Burgess, J.; Green, J. Youtube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Polity: Cambridge, UK, 2009
2. Facebook. Facebook diversity. Facebook 2013,  www.facebook.com/facebookdiversity
3. Fisher, E. How Less Alienation Creates More Exploitation? Audience Labour on Social Network Sites. triple C-Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 2012, 10, 171-183.
4. Jenkins, H. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press: New York, USA, 2006
5. Jenkins, H.; Ford, S.; Green, J. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning In A Networked Culture. New York University Press: New York, USA, 2013
6. Livingstone, S. Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression. New Media & Society 2008, 10, 393-411
7. Rose, N.S. Inventing Our Selves : Psychology, Power, And Personhood, 1^st ed., Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1998
8. Scholz, T. Digital labour: the Internet as playground and factory. Routledge: New York, USA, 2013.

Introduction

The ethno- music/sound therapy of the North Caucasus Mountain region of the Republic of Adygea has caught great interest. Adygean therapeutic music is culturally significant and evolved over hundreds of years. The people living in the North Caucasus Mountains, where allopathic treatment is less available, rely on music therapy to a large degree—with a high percentage of healing wonders^[1]. Adygean music therapy is used for the treatment of any condition, which includes; Stress, pain, emotional imbalances, terminal illness/hospice^[2].

The study of ethno- music therapy influences further development and refinement of western music and sound therapy techniques^[3].

An interesting facet of Adygean music therapy compared to ethno- music therapies of other cultures is that, the backbone or the fundamental idea of the treatment is the actual sound source and tone itself, musicians select special tones or frequencies and manipulate accordingly.

Healing human ailments through sound therapy is the future, more information about sound and its healing powers are beginning to unravel, with the assistance of neuroscience^[4].

Methods

The Analysis of the following Adygean therapeutic melodies; Melody for Distraction from Pain (Figure 1) and Melody for the Operation of Removing a Bullet (Figure 2) has shown the important musical elements and their connectedness to our physical and psycholological states. These musical elements working in harmony, have a great influence over those states.

Figure 1. Melody for the Distraction from Pain (David Aldridge and Jorg Fachner, (e.d). Music and Altered States: Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addictions (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005), 79).

(see PDF version for the Figure).

Figure 2. Melody for the Operation of the Removing a Bullet ((David Aldridge and Jorg Fachner, (e.d). Music and Altered States: Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addictions (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005), 79).

(see PDF version for the Figure).

These melodies are used instead of sedation during the procedures, they are soothing and reduce the perception of pain greatly. Darcy Walworth demonstrates this in her present- day study^[5].

Listening to both melodies, they are pleasant to the ear. One study featured in the European ‘Journal of Pain’ confirmed that listening to pleasant music reduced pain drastically^[6].

Both melodies were performed loud in volume at the start. Immediate response to loudness is a evolutionary phenomenon, which was important to our survival. Loudness draws our attention instinctually and is experienced and perceived as “exciting”.

Adygean musicians focused on stimulating the sacculus in the ear by boosting the loudness of the low frequency sounds above 90dB. The sacculus has neural connections to parts of the brain associated with pleasure and reward. Loud music is a strong stimulant^[7].

In combination with loudness, the melodies are sung and played with the intensity that match the intensity of distress, then gradually reduce in tempo and dynamics^[8], their distress and pain will slowly diminish to a more balanced state^[9]. This process is known as Weaning Entrainment.

In the piece Melody for the Operation of Removing a Bullet, the choirs rhythm was composed with the purpose of creating entrainment. The held note entrains or synchronises the overly excited brain waves to the external pulses, after which heart and breath rate will follow^[10].

Music therapy performance with the intention of entrainment will alter the function of the nervous system^[11], in this instance to discharge it, thus calming the body.

Both pieces of music are in the lower register emphasises the low frequencies. During the procedure of removing a bullet or distraction from pain it is important to discharge the highly aroused nervous system. Electrical impulses converted from sound energy reaches the cortex then distributes it via vagus nerve branches throughout the body. The Cells of Corti in the basilar membrane are responsive to high frequencies, so transmit a greater amount of impulses to the cortex. Lower frequency sounds blunt motor responses and have a sedating effect on the body^[12].

The choir sings in a style similar to Gregorian chant, the fundamental tones are attenuated to some degree in order to enhance the richness of the harmonics^[13]. The harmonics are tones that vibrate above a fundamental tone and relate to the concept of wholeness and biological connectedness to nature i.e. the active constituent of sound therapy^[14].

The harmonic resonance produced from the combination of violin and choir effects the electrical fields of the body and stimulates the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve is one of the twelve cranial nerves and the only nerve, that connects the ear with the whole human body, including the heart, lungs, stomach, and abdominal organs^[15]. All the sounds present in this piece of music stimulate the vagus nerve activity, acting on the parasympathetic nervous system, by calming the body, promoting relaxation slowing down the heart rate and reducing of pain significantly^[16].

A clinical study in Belgium is looking at the negative effects of low vagus nerve activity and the influence it has over tumour growth. Stimulation of the vagus nerve with sound will be an effective supplement to cancer treatment, and other diseases including; epilepsy, treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease, morbid obesity, and migraine headaches^[17].

Only through sound therapy the vagus nerve will be maintained correctly. The study of this music leads to the exploration of a system capable of stimulating the positive vagus nerve activity via the ear. It will be possible to achieve this after discovering the exact resonant frequency of the nerve.

Nickalai Fedotov is currently working on a project capable of creating balance and symmetry in the human body with energetically forced, sympathetic resonance and entrainment. This sound therapy system will correct physiological and psychological imbalances. This system will include tuned acoustic church-bells as the pure tone source, a Kirlian camera operating in real-time to track progress of the correction procedures and the electromagnetic reaction to the sound vibrations. This system will also need to have an accurate technology to record the frequencies of cells. There are two methods that could assist in the search of accurate frequencies of cells.

Currently, a technology under development by Wright State University that uses a sensor to detect viral resonant frequencies^[18]. Elaborating on this technology will aid in finding accurate frequencies of any cell. The second method will be a guess and check procedure featuring a Kirlian camera filming the effects on cells whilst ringing bells. It is known through the experiments of Fabian Maman, that healthy cells resonate and expand whereas unhealthy cells don’t^[19].

Results and Discussion

Studies of the voice and all other instruments, both western and non- western, for therapeutical applications were explored. The harmonics and sound envelope were examined. Electronic sources were also examined but the harmonics do not function in a therapeutic sense.

The instrument chosen for ongoing studies and therapeutical applications is the church bell. Not all bells are created equal, they must have gone through years of refinement. Bells have a stronger and more penetrating natural vibration compared to other instruments or sound sources. The timbre of the sound and the structure of the instrument itself is what makes this possible. With a full- bodied sound the harmonics of the tones are accentuated, thus providing deeper penetration. The long- decay tone allows for extended therapeutic influence. The sound’s strong electromagnetic energy charges the body’s electromagnetic field to a greater degree, creating the perfect environment for healing.

Experienced bell ringers in Russia report being free of illnesses for many years and hereditary ringers tend to live a long life!^[20] Bell vibrations have a strong effect on the whole body, engineer- physicist Yuri Kornilov has studied bells and concluded that bells are harmonious with the human body, resonating organs and cells^[21]. The power and purity of church bells vibrate the body by stimulation of the vagus nerve and through bone conduction.

All projects will be based upon forced sympathetic resonance, an external sound matching the resonant frequency of another forces its tone upon it, applying enough force to explode the invading cell or organism^[22]. First we find the resonant frequency, then form a resonant system which the target object or cell^[23]. An example of forced resonance and how it will destroy foreign or defective cells could be compared to an opera singer’s voice shattering glass. To find the natural sound of the glass the singer taps it lightly. The sound is the natural resonant frequency of the glass. Then the singer holds steadily with a pure tone matching that frequency. The power of the amplitude of the vocal sound exceed the strength of the glass and therefore shatters^[24].

The bell creates a full spectrum of sound, which is imperative for balance and symmetry in the body.

The elevated energy of the tone and the changing amplitude over time produced, provides forced, sympathetic resonance and entrainment to occur not only at a faster rate but a more powerful connection is involved.

Conclusions

Evidence from historical sources shows the power that sound had in the past and the predictions for the future; the Old Testament in the christian Bible features a story of Joshua and the destruction of the walls of Jericho with a resonant sound tone^[25]; Edgar Cayce, a psychic predicted that the medicine of the future would be sound^[26]; Rudolf Steiner, a German philosopher predicted that “pure tones will be used for healing…”; Nostradamus foretold cancer cure with pure tones^[27]; the ancient Hebrew text explains how David played his Harp for refreshment of Saul’s soul (The Old Testament, I Samuel, Chap.16 verse 23); Thales cured a plague in Sparta with music in 600 B.C and Pythagoras stated that through music, mental disorders will be cured^[28].

What the Adygean musicians have been doing for hundreds of years is only now being verified by studies across the globe.

Adygean historical music/ sound therapy theory will continue to hold uphold close ties to present day therapeutical sound therapy system with the prime application of church bells, in the treatment and formation of balance and symmetry within the human body.

References and Notes

1. Aldridge, David., and Fachner, Jorg. (e.d). Music and Altered States: Consciousness, Transcendence, Therapy and Addictions. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2005.
2. Arem, Gaearth., and Arem, Kimba. 2013. “The Future of Sound Therapy”. http://gaearth.com/sound-as-medicine/the-future-of-sound-therapy/ (accessed January 18, 2015).
3. Blesser, Barry. (n.d). “The Seductive (Yet Destructive) Appeal of Loud Music” http://www.blesser.net/downloads/eContact%20Loud%20Music.pdf (accessed January 21, 2015).
4. Campbell, Don., Doman, Alex. Healing at the Speed of Sound: How What We Hear Transforms Our Brains and our Lives. New York: Plume Printing, 2012.
5. Darcy DeLoach Walworth, “Procedural-Support Music Therapy in the Healthcare Setting: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis,” Journal of Pediatric Nursing 20, no. 4 (2005): 276-84.
6. Gidron, Yori., De Couck, and De Leeuw, Inge. 2015. “Clinical research: Stimulation of the vagus nerve as a potential cancer treatment” http://www.anticancerfund.org/projects/clinical-research-stimulation-of-the-vagus-nerve-as-a-potential-cancer-treatment (accessed January 24, 2015).
7. Gilmor, M. Timothy., Madaule, Paul., Thompson, Billie. About the Tomatis Method. Toronto: The Listening Centre Press, 1989.
8. Goldman, Jonathan. The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing. New York: Hay House Inc, 2008.
9. Hall, Donald E. Musical Acoustics. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth, 1980.
10. Hannah, Jim. 2013. “Catching the bug: Researchers developing virus-detection technology” http://phys.org/news/2013-09-bug-virus-detection-technology.html (accessed January 28, 2015).
11. Kharlamova, Tatiana. (n.d). “Bell Ringing Heals Illness and Depression” http://www.russianbells.com/interest/zdorovie/zdorovie.html (accessed January 28, 2015).
12. Koen, D. Benjamin, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
13. Leeds, Joshua. The Power of Sound: How to Be Healthy and Productive Using Music and Sound. Vermont: Healing Arts Press, 2010.
14. Linda L. Chlan, William C. Engeland, Anita Anthony, and Jill Guttormson, “Influence of Music on the Stress Response in Patients Receiving Mechanical Ventilatory Support: A Pilot Study,” American Journal of Critical Care 16, no. 2 (2007): 141-45.
15. Mauskop, Alexander. “Music Relieves Migraine Headaches and Pain,” Headache News Blog, http://www.nyheadache.com/blog/?p=59. (accessed January 23, 2015).
16. McConnell, Randall. The Healing Forces of Music. Boston: Element, 1991.
17. Merriam, P. Alan. The Anthropology of Music. Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1964.
18. Shellock, G. Frank., Begnaud,, Inman, Michael. (n.d). “Vagus Nerve Stimulation Therapy System: In Vitro Evaluation of Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Related Heating and Function at 1.5 and 3 Tesla” http://www.imrser.org/pdf/vns_shellock_article.pdf (accessed January 23, 2015).

^[1] Jonathan Goldman, The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing (New York: Hay House Inc, 2008), 114

^[2] Ibid., 114

^[3] Benjamin D. Koen, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 303

^[4] Goldman, The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing , x

^[5] Darcy DeLoach Walworth, “Procedural-Support Music Therapy in the Healthcare Setting: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis,” Journal of Pediatric Nursing 20, no. 4 (2005): 276-84.

^[6] Don Campbell and Alex Doman. Healing at the Speed of Sound: How What We Hear Transforms Our Brains and our Lives (New York: Plume Printing, 2012), 106.

^[7] Barry Blesser (n.d). “The Seductive (Yet Destructive) Appeal of Loud Music” http://www.blesser.net/downloads/eContact%20Loud%20Music.pdf (accessed January 21, 2015).

^[8] Linda L. Chlan, William C. Engeland, Anita Anthony, and Jill Guttormson, “Influence of Music on the Stress Response in Patients Receiving Mechanical Ventilatory Support: A Pilot Study,” American Journal of Critical Care 16, no. 2 (2007): 141-45.

^[9] Dr. Alexander Mauskop, “Music Relieves Migraine Headaches and Pain,” Headache News Blog, http://www.nyheadache.com/blog/?p=59.

^[10] Joshua Leeds. The Power of Sound, 41

^[11] Ibid., 41

^[12] Timothy M. Gilmor, Paul Madaule and Billie Thompson. About the Tomatis Method (Toronto: The Listening Centre Press, 1989), 84

^[13] Joshua Leeds. The Power of Sound, 86

^[14] Joshua Leeds. The Power of Sound: How to Be Healthy and Productive Using Music and Sound. (Vermont: Healing Arts Press, 2010), 168.

^[15] Timothy M. Gilmor, Paul Madaule and Billie Thompson. About the Tomatis Method, 85

^[16] Gidron, Yori., De Couck Marijke., and De Leeuw, Inge. 2015. “Clinical research: Stimulation of the vagus nerve as a potential cancer treatment” http://www.anticancerfund.org/projects/clinical-research-stimulation-of-the-vagus-nerve-as-a-potential-cancer-treatment (accessed January 24, 2015).

^[17] Shellock, G. Frank., Begnaud, Jason., Inman, Michael. (n.d). “Vagus Nerve Stimulation Therapy System: In Vitro Evaluation of Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Related Heating and Function at 1.5 and 3 Tesla” http://www.imrser.org/pdf/vns_shellock_article.pdf (accessed January 23, 2015).

^[18] Hannah, Jim. 2013. “Catching the bug: Researchers developing virus-detection technology” http://phys.org/news/2013-09-bug-virus-detection-technology.html (accessed January 28, 2015).

^[19] Joshua Leeds. The Power of Sound, 38.

^[20] Tatiana Kharlamova, (n.d). “Bell Ringing Heals Illness and Depression” http://www.russianbells.com/interest/zdorovie/zdorovie.html (accessed January 28, 2015).

^[21] Ibid., http://www.russianbells.com/interest/zdorovie/zdorovie.html

^[22] Randall McConnell, The Healing Forces of Music (Boston: Element, 1991), 21

^[23] Joshua Leeds. The Power of Sound, 15

^[24] Donald E. Hall. Musical Acoustics (Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth, 1980), 233

^[25] Goldman, The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing , 75.

^[26] Ibid., x.

^[27] Gaearth Arem and Kimba Arem 2013. “The Future of Sound Therapy”. http://gaearth.com/sound-as-medicine/the-future-of-sound-therapy/ (accessed January 18, 2015).

^[28] Alan. P, Merriam. The Anthropology of Music (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 111.

Introduction

Today the diffusion of social networking and the emerging of a transmedia culture characterizes many different experiences of learning and distributed knowledge. The forms of Media Education and Digital Literacy growth in the last 30 years are the expression of the process of disembodiment and cross-fertilization occurred during the revolution from the Gutenberg Galaxy — printed paper, mass distribution — to the McLuhan Galaxy — new media, hypertext, cooperative writing (Castells, 1996). In this scenario, the dimension of literacy has moved from a semiotically-measured geometry (De Saussure, 1916; Hjelmslev, 1966) to a dislocation and a deconstruction of contents and channels that give expression to new products (Derrida, 1974; Landow, 1994; Bolter & Grusin, 1999). The impact of new, affordable, interconnected, powerful personal devices has redefined the role of the audiences. The author not only loses his/her traditional role, but becomes an icon of himself/herself, a collective-minded producer that is self-perceived through the extro-flexed eye of network in which he/she defines his/her narrative experience (De Kerckhove, 1998).

This research will try to shed light on the concept of Transmedia Literacy in order to foster a pattern recognition about theories, technologies, and social dimensions of the phenomena to offer a critical toolkit to understand and map out the emerging knowledge and practices related to this recent discipline.

From Secondary Orality to Transmedia Literacy

Every culture has been characterized by different systems to transfer and reproduce knowledge over time, generation after generation. The invention of the alphabet was the foundation for the definition of Western philosophy and for the sciences, as we know them today (Havelock, 1982; Castells, 1996). This invention helped to develop a conceptual discourse and “bridge from spoken tongue to language, thus separating the spoken from the speaker” (Castells, 1996). The introduction of printing press resulted in widespread literacy, where the paper was the medium that defined the shape of information. In this sense, according to many scholars of the Toronto School of Communication (Goody, Watt, McLuhan, Ong and Meyrowitz among the others), the introduction of literacy, in terms of written communication, has radically transformed the societies.

Telephone, radio, television and the various kind of sound tape, electronic technology has brought us into the age of ‘secondary orality’. This new orality has striking resemblance to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of a communal sense, its concentration on the present moment, and even its use of formulas. But it is essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently on the use of writing and print, which are essential for the manufacture and operation of the equipment and for it use as well. (Ong, 1982: 133)

Any mutual exchange without the need of co-presence transformed the way of mass aggregation, the definition of collecting and diffusing information and the human architecture on which collectivities create their social links. Intended in this direction, the “secondary orality” is one of the most important pattern that defined the shifting from communities to social systems.

Today we are experiencing a Transmedia Culture, a model based on the convergence of traditional and new media (Jenkins, 2006), where audiences have defined their role of prosumers (producers and consumers of information at the same time) that allows an “explosion of new forms of creativity at the intersections of various media technologies” (Jenkins, 2001: 93).

This Transmedia Culture offers a new cross-networked and multimodal literacy, considering that we are not facing a simple adaptation of different narrative/expressive forms from one media to another: different media and languages participate and contribute to the construction of a multi-layered environment. Since the invention of the alphabet, passing through the idea of a “second orality”, we are now facing a re-integration between written, oral, and audio-visual forms of human communication.

The change of perspective, by the means of the integration of text, images and sounds in the same expressive environment, interacting from multiple points, on different channels, by various media, in real, delayed or symmetrical time along a global network, is not only changing culture because it is reshaping our languages (Postman, 1985): it is changing the way people learn, define their cultural assets, understand and communicate across all communications supports.

In this sense, we are now facing a discipline we can define Transmedia Literacy. An interdisciplinary model of research, in which the aim is not to analyze and interpret the transposition of different narrative forms from one channel to another, but to define an overall framework of observation and participation, in which different media, platforms, languages and formats contribute to create a meaningful environment for users.

Defining the patterns for a Transmedia analysis

What changed in this scenario of instant communication is not only the overall model to conceive education according to the relation between educator and discent. What changed has to be analyzed by the matter of new supports, the unlimited possibilities of an extended mind sustained by global information and a holistic ‘always on’ systemic knowledge (Ciastellardi, 2013). There is not a monolithic system neither a monopolistic model. As previously suggested, Transmedia Literacy is defining original codes based on several formats and different languages. According to educative purposes, this framework of production and consumption is changing the relation between auctoritas and audiences.

In order to define specific patterns to cross analyze the new artifacts and the processes at the base of Transmedia productions/practices, the present research proposes a mixed qualitative and quantitative method. It has been organized around three deeply interconnected approaches: a) historical, b) descriptive and c) analytic.

1. The historical approach try to discover the tendencies emerged over the years in the definition of new formats, languages, codes, narratives and devices that allowed the experience of specific contents.
2. The descriptive work rearrange the previous analysis to establish a critical taxonomy of artifacts and typologies of media/channels/supports and, consequently, to foster the analytic work. The theoretical models applied to analyze the corpus can be resumed in Semiotics, Literary Theory (rhetoric) and aspects of New Media Literacy, Critical Theory and Poststructuralist models of text analysis.
3. The analytic phase. The research will introduce a multimodal approach (Kress, 2003) to map out the transmedia processes and to recognize specific patterns in order to create a visual ontology.

It can be argued that traditional criteria of analysis cannot be applied in discussing transmedia artifacts and productions. In this sense, C. Hayles insists on the necessity of studying the specific materiality of the support or better she suggests the MSA – Media-Specific Analysis (Hayles, 2004).

The visual ontology will offer as principal outcomes:

1. The TransmediAtlas: a pattern tendencies toolkit to visually represent and map out the quantitative and qualitative analysis of case studies,
2. An action theoretical framework (reinterpreting Houkes, Vermaas, Dorst, Vries) to analyze supports, media and their behavior.
3. A Replication protocol analysis to compare and to forecast pattern tendencies in transmedia productions.

Transmedia experiences and artifacts are precious and flexible examples to connect the different peers of a network, and to connect not only contents with people but also people with other people, sharing information and increasing the level and the frequency of communication. In order to trace the possibilities behind every experience, the idea is to define the Transmedia features of every case (e.g. Table 1), maintaining updated via a public and open repository the different case studies.

Table 1. Transmedia features of the case study “The Cosmonaut” (2013).

(see PDF version for the Table).

Conclusions

The aim of this ongoing research is to offer, on one hand, the theoretical and critical tools to approach the concept of Transmedia Literacy as a new discipline, on the other hand, to understand and map out the emergent patterns and the different practices we can inscribe in this specific framework of comprehension. According to the idea that “the media are the expression of our culture. And our culture works primarily through the materials provided by the media” (Castells, 200: 365) the present research aims at defining an open ontology of transmedia practices, in order to understand the circular influence between our creative practices and our culture.

References and Notes

1. Bolter, J. D.; Grusin, R. Remediation: understanding new media. MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., USA,1999.
2. Castells, M. The rise of the network society. Information age v. 1. Blackwell Publishers: Malden, Mass., USA, 1996.
3. Ciastellardi, M. Education Overload. McLuhan and the Quest for New Patterns in the Era of Total Surround, International Journal of McLuhan Studies, 2013, 2, 19-25.
4. De Kerckhove, D. Connected intelligence: the arrival of the Web society. Kogan Page: London, UK, 1998.
5. De Saussure, F.; C. Bally; A. Sechehaye; A. Riedlinger; T. De Mauro, and L.J. Calvet. Cours de Linguis-tique Générale. Payot et Rivages: Paris, France, 1916/1995.
6. Derrida, J. Collection Digraphe. Éditions Galilée: Paris (9, rue Linné, 75005), France,1974.
7. Havelock, E.A. The literate revolution in Greece and its cultural consequences. Princeton University Press: Princeton, N.J., USA, 1982.
8. Hayles, N.K. Print is Flat, Code is Deep: the Importance of Media-Specific Analysis, Poetics Today, 2004, 1, 67-90.
9. Hjelmslev, L. Le Langage. Éditions de Minuit: Paris, 1966
10. Jenkins, H. Convergence culture: where old and new media collide. New York University Press: New York, 2006.
11. Jenkins, H. Coonvergence? I Diverge. Technology Review 2001, 6, 93.
12. Kress, G. Literacy in the New Media Age. Routledge: London, UK, 2003.
13. Landow, G.P. Hypertext in hypertext. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, USA, 1994.
14. Ong, W.J. Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word. Methuen: New York, USA,1982.
15. Postman, N. Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of show business. Viking: New York, USA, 1985.

Introduction

CATO, the Computer Algebra Taschenrechner (calculator) Oberfläche (surface), is a software intended to facilitate the use of computer algebra systems. In its availability and accessibility of information it is not limited to specialists, but the use of this scientific software should also be possible for users without a specialist’s background. Barriers to usage are overcome through user-guides.

Over the past 30 years, a special kind of mathematical software, the computer algebra (CA) system, has widely been used for calculation and solution of mathematical problems. In many sectors in mathematics, strict laws, rules and algorithms apply, and these can be converted into appropriate programs. As a result, computer algebra systems ease the performance of otherwise demanding and time-consuming calculations. So-called numerical analysis packages have existed since the 1950s. However, while they were suitable to perform calculations, their accuracy was limited and they could also not be used in those instances where mathematical methods or algorithms could not be transformed into a numerical algorithm.

The demand for better designs of user interfaces for CA systems is almost as old as the systems themselves. Kajler has described and developed his ideas for a perfect user interface in various works [1, 2, 3] and elaborated these in further works [4, 5]. Kajler has postulated that well-designed CA interfaces should afford intuitive access. As such, they should enable the entry of commands with more than one parameter in a two-dimensional fashion. This prevents syntactic and structural errors. In addition, all templates and masks should follow the convention of operating from left to right.

Intuitive interfaces should also apply conventional mathematical notations, and decouple the surface from the computer algebra system. The interface should be serviced independently, and regularly developed and updated. Ideally, it should understand a range of computer algebra systems.

Kaljer has responded to his own demand for such a surface for different systems with his development of CAS/Pi [3]. He wrote [5, pg. 151]: “…, it is desirable to produce a portable interface that handles lexical, syntactical, and functional differences between different CAS.”

The software CATO, which is a user interface for various computer algebra systems, enables the use of scientific software by any parties equipped with rudimentary knowledge; it can easily be learned by laypeople.

Methods

The author has taught mathematics for engineers for over twenty years at the University of Applied Sciences (HTWG) in Konstanz, Germany. CA systems have always belonged to the tools used in his teaching, and he has also always intended that these systems be used by students.

However, easy-to-use computer algebra systems have proven to be the exception, rather than the rule. The majority of CA systems are not really accessible to non-mathematicians, who have only occassional call upon them (for example, a non-mathematician wishing to use them once a week to solve set problems). CA systems are at the user-interface a mixture of a programming language and the corresponding mathematical terminology. That the necessary commands for use are often abbreviations, further compounds the hindrance current systems pose to their spontaneous use.

The question therefore is, what can be done to improve access to such scientific programs: Among other things, modification of the selection of commands and the configuration of the input parameters are necessary steps.

The use of a computer algebra system should not detract from the mathematics, or the problem to be solved. The use of such a system should also not be the goal in itself, or pose additional difficulty for teaching. It raises, in the author’s view, a more general question: What are, in this context, the distinguishing features of user-friendliness?

In programming CATO the author noticed that if an interface is to be developed in order to facilitate access to programs, ease-of-use cannot be limited to the input of the commands and their parameters. The following aspects should be observed:

First, the help itself should be prepared according to the users’ needs to use the computer algebra system. Therefore, it must have an extensive index that contains more than just the respective command name. Furthermore, in addition to being intelligible and providing comprehensible examples, the help text should always be designed in the same way and always be structured identically. Every help text for CATO is structured in the following way: The name of the command appears first (black), followed by the packages containing this command (green), and finally by a list of the computer algebra systems in which the command is available (red). The free text that follows contains first an abstract description, and then several comprehensible examples. Of course, the CATO help is written in HTML, and can therefore be read independently of the system itself [6].

Second, the choosing of a command must be simple. Selecting commands in CATO follows a hierarchical paradigm via 27 packages (4 of these consist of sub-packages). Packages group related commands together, but the same command may be included in more than one package. For instance, the command “Definition eines Vektors” (definition of a vector) is contained in the packages “Lineare Algebra” (linear algebra) and “Definitionen” (definitions). The help text will refer to both locations. This means that the user is not obliged to learn the command or its package.

The selection of a package is made using the combo box on the lower left of the surface of CATO; all the commands from this package are downloaded into the combo box directly to the right of the first one. The selection of a command is therefore performed from left to right.

Multi-parameter commands will always invoke a two-dimensional input graphical user interface. Each parameter has its own documented input row. The user does not need to know the right input order of parameters or the right kind of separators or brackets.

Finally, the transportation of the results should be simple. Each computer algebra system has a protocol, in which all inputs and outputs are written sequentially. The user can save the protocol at any time, and read the results later. In many computer algebra systems, the respective protocol can only be read after calling-up the program; in addition, some have a free log-reader. The CATO protocol in contrast can be read independently of CATO, using any editor.

Results and Discussion

The author [7, 8, 9, 10] has over the last ten years developed a German-language interface for computer algebra systems. In writing CATO, he has developed, adopted and implemented many ideas and concepts for ease-of-use. His primary aim was to allow casual use of computer algebra in his lectures. He further wished that the use of software would support teaching and also motivate the students to use CA systems at home.

Now the students can learn the usage of CATO in less than 15 minutes. During term-time, CATO is used occasionally, when and as appropriate; sometimes just for exercises, sometimes more extensively. With every semester, the author has observed a desired effect of CATO: widespread independent exploration of the possibilities and potential of CA systems. CATO has facilitated access to this kind of mathematical software, which in turn, has encouraged many students to further explore it on their own.

Conclusions

There are, approximately, 500 commands for Mathematica (version 4.0 or higher), 400 commands for the mathematical toolbox of MATLAB, 300 commands for Maple (version 9.5 or higher), 300 commands for MuPAD 3.0, 200 commands for Yacas and 100 commands for MATLAB. In addition, there are approximately 50 CATO internal commands.

(Maple, Mathematica, the mathematical toolbox of MATLAB (an additional package), MuPAD and Yacas are computer algebra systems, the mathematical part of MATLAB itself is a numerical software.)

The author successfully established CA as a learning aid during lectures. If scientific software is made intelligible and accessible, the author’s experience has shown that also non-specialists readily integrate such programs into their work.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the IT Service Centre of the HTWG Konstanz for implementing CATO from the beginning as a program and for making it available in the IT-room every semester.

References and Notes

1. Kajler, N. CAS/PI: a portable and extensible interface for computer algebra systems. International Conference on Symbolic and Algebraic Computation, 1992, pp. 376-386,. ACM New York, NY, USA.
2. Kajler, N. Building a computer algebra environment by composition of collaborative tools. Lecture notes in computer science, 1993, pp. 85-85.
3. Kajler, N. User interfaces for symbolic computation: a case study. Proceedings of the 6th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, 1993, pp 1-10. ACM New York, NY, USA.
4. Kajler, N. Computer-human interaction in symbolic computation, 1998, Springer.
5. Kajler, N. and Soiffer, N. A survey of user interfaces for computer algebra systems. Journal of Symbolic Computation, 1998. Vol. 25, p. 127-159.
6. Janetzko, H.-D. Die Hilfe zu CATO, (revised regularly), available: http://www.computeralgebra.biz
7. Janetzko, H.-D. CATO - die universelle Computeralgebraoberfläche, Beiträge zum 7. Tag der Lehre, Hochschule Biberach, 2007; pp. 118-121, Publisher.: Studien-kommission für Hochschuldidaktik an Fachhochschulen in Baden-Württemberg.
8. Janetzko, H.-D. CATO - Eine deutschsprachige CA-Oberfläche. ÖMG - DMV Congress 2013, Innsbruck, 23.-27.09.2013, p. 166.
9. Janetzko, H.-D. CATO - beiläufiger, selbsterklärender Einsatz von Computeralgebra in Mathematikvorlesungen für Ingenieure. 48. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Didaktik der Mathematik, Koblenz Landau, 10.-14.03.2014, Beiträge zum Mathematikunterricht 2014, pp 567-570.
10. Janetzko, H.-D. CATO - ein einfacher Zugriff auf CA-Systeme, unter anderem die math. Toolbox von MATLAB. MNU-Bundeskongress 2014, Kassel, 10.-14.04.2014, pp 55

Introduction: Between Negative and Positive Notions of Naturalism – Spinoza and Deacon

Naturalism, in both its Darwinian and post-Darwinian forms, is concerned with evolution. Evolution requires both something that evolves (the “positive” side of evolution) and some forces that make up the selection pressures that contribute to the elimination of unfit forms (the “negative” side of evolution). In Spinoza's notion of “conatus” I wish to find a metaphor for the “positive” principle of evolution. In Darwin's notion of “natural selection” we find the metaphor for the “negative principle.” Both negative and positive principles are necessary to bring about the possibility of real-life evolution.

In this process, I bring in Terrence Deacon's theory of “Incomplete Nature” (2012). The tension between the "negative" mechanism of eliminating non-survivable processes, and the "positive" mechanism of maintaining survivable processes, might become understandable from a combination of Spinoza, Darwin and Deacon. Perhaps the principle of "conatus" can explain how physical, biological and mental processes share a mode of operation – arise, as they do, from a fixed set of laws of nature. But we also need an explanation of emergence of new laws and new dynamic systems. Darwin provides the tools to understand how negativity shapes the course of evolution, and Deacon helps to bridge the (alleged) gaps between the pre-Darwinian and the Darwinian “domains” of naturalism. His theory of the “absential” features of nature provides a fascinating starting point for such research.

The potential contribution of Spinoza's metaphysics to evolutionary theory

In “Ethics”, Spinoza attempted to provide the foundations for moral theory by a monistic, naturalistic account of theology. The method used in the process was deductive reasoning, inspired by Euclid, Descartes and Hobbes. It also bears some kinship to the work of Leibniz. In its monistic naturalism, it provides a challenge, but also some much-needed reinforcement, for modern science.

Ethics is often treated as separate from ontology and the natural sciences. But Spinoza saw ethics – normativity – as deriving from ontology and the natural sciences. The importance of this project for modern science and the philosophy of science lies in the naturalistic philosophical synthesis.

The central notion of the book is “conatus” - which is a difficult term but easy to understand. It can be summed up by saying that everything wishes to persevere in its own being. It can refer to Newton's first law of physical motion as well as the evolutionary imperative to survive. In the mental domain, it creates selfishness and intentionality. The “conatus” is not a teleological concept, since it does not postulate an end state beyond itself. But it does give rise to teleology, since if “conatus” wants to preserve in its own being, i.e. to prolong its own survival, this necessitates a struggle against external forces. In this struggle, teleological attachments may develop to things which aid in one's survival. Thus, human beings (and other animals) become attached to e.g. food and sexual reproduction. But the only principle required is the conatus - which is shared by biological and non-biological entities alike.

The materialistic implications of the principle were already developed by Thomas Hobbes, one of Spinoza's sources of inspiration. Hobbes's psychology is one of the most brutally “naturalistic” in the history of psychology. Both Spinoza and Hobbes are thus compatible, in dfferent ways, with the naturalistic research programmes of today. In early modern philosophy, from Hobbes to Spinoza, physics, biology, psychology, morality and politics were seen as extending across a single continuum. We need to recapture this ethos and methodology for today.

But to what extent is “conatus” a useful concept to describe the laws of physics, chemistry and biology? A lot of work needs to be done, and there is no need – or possibility – of rewriting physics to fit Spinoza. Its usefulness to, and kinship with, Darwinian theory, and the study of the human world, is, at least, suggestive. But we need to look carefully at how pre-biological “conatus” develops into biological “conatus”, and how this develops into anthropic “conatus”, to understand how cosmic evolution, up to human beings, is not only possible, but also – in some sense – probably necessary.

To enrich this theory of the conatus, we have to look at contemporary information science, semiotics and complex systems theory. We need to look at the work of evolutionary scientists, especially Deacon's recent work. Doing so will enable us to approach Spinoza in a new way.

Deacon's notion of “Incomplete Nature” and its relationship to Darwinism and Spinozism

Terrence Deacon's new book, “Incomplete Nature” (2012) provides an interesting bridge between the different realms of "dynamics" that exist in the different realms of the natural world - e.g. the pre-biological and the biological, or the non-mental and the mental. Building on the work of others, it provides an interesting (and often terminologically obtuse) synthesis, and a new framework for (non-reductionistic) evolutionary naturalism. Thus, it provides a much-needed injection against the increep of naíve anti-mentalist reductionism, while simultaneously safeguarding against the rebirth of mysticism.

The book attempts to describe how “although mental contents do indeed lack (…) material-energetic properties, they are still entirely products of physical processes and have an unprecedented kind of causal power that is unlike anything that physics and chemistry alone have so far explained” (quote from the blurb of the book). I will explore this view in some detail, and show how it jives with the monistic world-picture of naturalized Spinozism. I will analyze how emergentism, which emphasises the discontinuity between the past and the present, makes it difficult to bridge physics and chemistry, on the one hand, with biology and mentalism, on the other hand. I will also explore the hypothesis that a “causal role for absence” (p.3) is what is missing for the natural science of the mind. Then I will explore how Deacon's newfound emphasis on absence can be reconciled with the more positive notion of subsistence and selfishness inherent in Spinoza's metaphysics of the “conatus.”

The end result will be an emergentist framework that studies the physical, the biological and the psychological as aspects of evolutionary conatus. I wish to see how Deacon's project and Spinoza's project are compatible, and to explore (in a preliminary fashion) some points of comparison between theoretical philosophy and practical evolutionary science. This provides us new tools and categories for understanding the emergence of complex life-forms, consciousness and end-driven intentionality (“ententionality” in Deacon's parlance). It provides a link between physical natural laws and everything that man has made in the name of culture, language and politics – i.e. the seemingly non-natural lawlikeness of humanity. Thus we are led to a more naturalistic understanding of the motivations, drives and forces that guide us (and an understanding of “us” as naturally evolved “it”).

Conclusion: Why do we need philosophy for natural science?

Metaphysical assumptions need to be perennially checked in order to do good science. I wish to provide, as a methodological tool towards the elucidation of holistic naturalism, a combination of metaphysical (ontological) Spinozism and epistemological Darwinism (via Deacon).

This brings the study of the natural world closer to what Spinoza called “the species of eternity.” The key to this methodology is interpreting the Spinozist “conatus” in the framework of Deacon's book. This framework challenges Cartesian metaphysical assumptions about the inherent dualism of substances, and raises new research questions. Although it won't get us very far into new discoveries – at least not yet - it can at least enable a more robust theoretical framework for bridging the “gap” between non-normative and normative forces - or between determinism and freedom.

References and Notes

1. Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2000.
2. Deacon, Terrence W. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, 1^st ed. W.W. Norton and Company: New York, USA, 2012.

Introduction

This paper is devoted to one of the important problems in the modern humanitarian society: to consolidation of musicians through the Internet and cultural connections while using the social networks. In my presentation the new software-based possibilities of such collaboration will be shown by the example of international social networking service for the musicians Splayn.com running by the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory.

As we can see, the realm of Internet, which recently seemed to the most part of musicians as alien, soulless and hostile, nowadays becomes one of the essential components of our everyday life. The considerable increase of the social networks has been playing “first fiddle” in this process. Concurrently all the musicians (music performers and music theorists) begin to feel themselves even more public-oriented than other professional groups in the social networks because they need not to be so confidential in their occupation.

Methods

To disclose new tendencies, a sociological investigation based on the student’s written interviews has been implemented in 2012 at the Moscow Conservatory under the scientific direction by prof. Marina Karaseva [1]. As provided by these interview results it was turned out that the most part of the respondents would like to find in the social networks not only services for communication and entertainments but also (and first of all) – services for professional self-presentation as well as for artistic self-promotion, e.g. for making their full creative portfolio.

Prof. Karaseva and the conservatory post-graduate student Sergei Uvarov have also examined all the existing Internet models of social networks for musicians [1]. The conclusions were as following: these networks are as usual: 1) not numerous, 2) local, 3) not oriented to classical academic music (but mainly to pop and rock music), 4) practically stagnant in its growth

Results and Discussion

In 2013 new social network for musician Splayn has been presented at the Moscow Conservatory (Site founder – S. Uvarov, co-founder and conservatory supervisor – M. Karaseva). Splayn [3] has some features which technologically distinguish it from other social networking services like facebook.com and vkontakte.ru. Splayn has been created by musicians, taking into account their professional and pedagogical needs. The new core concept of the delivery platform in Splayn contains, one might say, three driving principles: 1) engine for detecting the real authorship of music and video which are intended to upload on one’s personal site page, 2) engine for the personal rating calculation, 3) site’s open style: each internet user can enter Splayn without registration (at the same time he can do it if he wants to use the additional Splayn services). Thus, if the first principle decides to great extent the problem of restraint of the copyright piracy, the second one gives the possibility for each user to raise his rating.

In this connection, one should say some more words about the Splayn rating. Every Splayn user as well as every Splayn musical record has its own rating (calculated automatically in grades). This professional rating is very important for getting a way to the Splayn main page. Personal rating is formed by the amount of listening and downloading actions. The rating is also formed by comments and reviews of other users. A user rating is formed from the overall rating of his musical records (by now the site supports audio tracks in MP3 format and video tracks in MOV – iPhone, MP4, AVI, WMV, DivX and XviD) and their amounts, from a number of reviews which this user wrote and also from notes in his blog. So, the higher is user’s rating the more well-known becomes the user for other Splayn-users. In the context of Splayn organization it is additionally important because even the young beginner in performing art, each musician from some distant region can get a lucky chance not to sink in the huge “Internet sea”. Such a beginner can be noticed by music master, conservatory professor. Therefore, it may turn also a possibility for musician to be invited (as a player or composer) to the concert or festival at the Moscow conservatory or at some other famous cultural places.

Conclusions

All these Splayn features serve as real helpers for achieving geopolitical (as well as geo-cultural and popularizational) aims of spreading out good quality music (including classical, academic contemporary, folk and jazz) all over the world. Since the Splayn interface is bilingual (Russian and English), Splayn also have good opportunities for the successful international connections and collaborations between musicians and music lovers.

More program features of Splayn will be delivered in my presentation including its opportunities for music educational as well as presentational and pedagogical aspects (master classes, distant communications “professor – student”), and also its orientation to music organizations as a whole through the technologies of collective account on Splayn.

References and Notes

1. Karaseva, M.V.; Uvarov, S.A. Musician and Internet: about specificity of cognition of new technologies in the professional humanitarian society. Cultural and Political Aspects of American Studies. Russian State Humanitarian University. Moscow 2013, 308-318.
2. Karaseva M.V.; Amrachova A.A. Splayn as a new social network for musicians. Musiqi Duniasi 2013 4/57, 50-53.
3. http://www.splayn.com/

Introduction

This short paper discusses aspects of the interplay between ideology, technology, power and economics in the field of Higher Education, in the context of the crisis in neoliberalism. It continues a discussion begun in 2014 at the annual teaching and learning conference of Goldsmiths University, London. The title of the paper conveys the tensions between the perceived concepts and cultural forms of the university and the powerful forces changing our society - the tensions between manners and economics that underlie much of Jane Austen's work. The ‘Belly of the Beast’ is a colloquialism describing incarceration in prison or, more generally, to be trapped in a bad situation with few positive options, it provides a suitable metaphor for the dilemmas facing academics in the neoliberal university described by Hall (1).

The current scale of development in open education is both massive and diverse, making analysis difficult, as the authors of a recent study conclude in 'Open education: A study in disruption' [2]. Our approach is to begin to map some of the major landmarks and features in this space. This paper is part of a series of 'working sketches’, with the aim of identifying the forces and powers at work below the surface of higher educational establishments. We see this mapping activity as providing a useful foundation upon which to develop alternatives, inside and outside the university, that can overcome existing problems and limits to teaching and researching about the Internet from a critical and radical perspective.

We begin by describing the background to our work and identify some important forces and ideas affecting universities and then continue with two of our working sketches, concluding with a summary. The two sketches presented in this paper are:

1 - The Uses of Language

How language, ideas and the use of (new) media both form and limit discourse to produce a ‘monoculture’, in relation to technology and education in particular and, more generally, the open education agenda.

2 - Who Runs This Place?

An overview and infographic representation that identifies the power structures at work and begins to map the political and economic interests in this space.

Background

The university sector has provided much of the 'intellectual soundtrack' for neoliberalism (as well as some principled opposition) and until relatively recently, the social capital of its inhabitants had been sufficient to avoid its worst effects. But, in the last 15 years or so the pressure from the neoliberal agenda has greatly intensified, through instrumentalist views of education, alignment with economic policy targets and calls for greater efficiency. The response to these pressures has been the 'massification' of higher of education, at first through simply building larger lecture theatres, more recently with technology. The problem at the heart of this situation is that the traditional university model of education is based on an economic and educational philosophy of scarcity, which has remained unchanged. The result is a university system that has been ‘bulked up’ like a bodybuilder on steroids that is hugely expensive to run, using poor educational methods to produce graduates who have fewer career opportunities, lower incomes and enormous debts they will never repay - educated into a form of financial and industrial servitude [3].

In the academic workplace, there is a growing culture of managerialism and intensification of labour to service much larger numbers of students with less staff. It is accompanied by a myopic short-term focus on budgets, producing intense stress in staff [4] and a strategic vacuum that is easily filled by techno-hype. This is part of a global trend where previously secure middle class workforces are forced into an increasingly precarious existence [5]. As in other parts of the public sphere, this is accompanied by state-sponsored privatisation, as this extract from a UK government white paper makes clear:

“The government aims to ‘drive competition and innovation’, through a more market-based approach to higher education, allowing students to choose between a range of providers.” [6]

As the crisis deepens and spreads, austerity becomes a permanent economic and cultural control mechanism and in the process its political deliriums become less credible. In some ways this ideological breakdown can be seen most clearly in the university sector, until recently a central element of neoliberal economic development theory was the concept of the ‘knowledge economy’ and the key role of higher education was driving it forwards. This has shaped educational policy in the UK and around the world but its rationale is looking increasingly like a mystification as it is sharply contradicted by reality. The globalised economy is a low wage economy from which only a small minority can escape, as a UK educational research report concedes: “highly rewarded, creative and autonomous work is likely to be restricted over the coming two decades to ever smaller global elites” [7]

This broad observation provides the backdrop and context to our work in the turbulent space where technology, ideology, education, power and economics meet.

The Uses of Language

Our approach in this section has been inspired by Hoggart’s work on literacy and culture [8] and their relation to mass media, updated to include social media. In this connection, we examine how and why discourse in the area of education and technology appears to create a monoculture that is both ‘apolitical’ and aseptic. We identify a consistent element in this as being the language of fear, an essential function of the media under neoliberalism [5], especially the fear of being left behind others. This, together with intense commercial pressures, goes some way to explain the highly self-norming nature of debate within the educational technology community, acting as a powerful apparatus of control [9]. A recent example of this narrative of fear is "An Avalanche is Coming", published by a think tank [10], designed to manage the policy debate in favourable directions for commercial interests. The reference language of university management now closely aligns to commercial entities; managers, customers, marketing, product, innovation, ROI, etc. The “product” being the graduate envisaged by and designed for society as a useful asset to the labour market - a market that is rapidly shrinking.

This narrative is supported by a recurring stereotype of young people being more digitally literate and capable than they are in reality (so-called ‘digital natives’), demanding more digital delivery of education, although research consistently refutes this distortion [11, 12, 13]. The role of ‘celebrity experts’ (often connected with universities) in constructing and projecting these narratives is an important one, the work of Mark Prensky [14] being notable. A recent example of the genre is Sebastian Thrun: “Higher education in 50 years will be provided by no more than 10 institutions worldwide” [15]

The UK government Minister of State for Universities and Science duly regurgitated this line afterwards at a public meeting with University leaders [16]. We will examine the role of the celebrity expert and the use of traditional and social media in section two of this paper Who Runs This Place?

Who Runs This Place?

In this section, we take our lead from the work of Anthony Sampson [17] who recorded and charted the changes to the structures of the UK establishment over a 40-year period reflecting the impact of globalisation. An innovation by Sampson that we will reuse is to create an info-graphical representation that represents how the different players are connected to each other and the size of their relative influence.

Corporate interests have long seen education as a huge global prize for privatisation, this was signalled by the inclusion of the trade in higher education services in the WTO GATT agreements [18] that laid the foundations for the current marketisation of the sector. One of the vectors for corporate entry has been the promotion of the use of technologies, such as interoperability standards, to make education more 'efficient'. The IT corporation CISCO and others were heavily involved in promoting this concept (imported from the military and industry training sectors) during the ‘dot-com’ boom and accompanying e-learning bubble of the late 1990’s. As the CEO of CISCO stated: "The next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make e-mail usage look like a rounding error" [19]

Things did not work out that time and many of the e-learning enterprises and initiatives failed shortly afterwards in the dot-com crash, including the UK government sponsored UK e-University that tried to implement the interoperable philosophy of ‘learning objects’ [20].

Now, those arguments are being reactivated, as Weller observes [21] there is a media campaign, again with celebrity experts promoting the concept of a crisis in public education using the catch phrase ‘education is broken’ and proposing that the fix is a technical one [22]. As Klein [23] describes, the language of crisis as well as the actuality, is often used in political campaigns for the privatisation of publicly owned goods and services.

This is the context in which we discuss the relationships between universities, celebrity experts, IT corporations, think tanks, NGOs and charities, etc. For instance, the Mozilla foundation charity is involved in open education initiatives and is heavily funded by Google - who stand to gain from access to this new crop of analytic and demographic data.

Summary

In this short paper we have begun to map the turbulent space where technology, ideology, education, power and economics meet, concentrating on the uses of language and the forms and relations of the powers involved. We contend that in order to develop alternatives to the existing systems of education and overcome their problems and limits we should know from where we are starting.

References

1. Hall, G. Pirate Radical Philosophy. Radical Philosophy, 173, May-June 2012.
2. van Mourik Broekman, P.; Hall, G; Byfield, T.; Hides, S; Worthington, S. Open education: A study in disruption. Rowman & Littlefield International: London, 2014.
3. Debt campaigners tear up student loans, Pippa Stephens, BBC News 22-10-14
4. Death in academia and the mis-measurement of science, Arran Frood, EuroScience, 2015.
5. Hardt, M.; Negri, A. Empire, Harvard University Press, 2001
6. UK Government, The 2011 Higher Education White Paper, 2013
7. Facer, K. Final Report of the Beyond Current Horizons Research Programme, Future Lab: London, 2009
8. Hoggart, R. The Uses of Literacy, Penguin: London, 1966.
9. Foucault, M. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979, Editor Senellart, M, Palgrave Macmillan,: New York, 2008.
10. Barber, M.; Donnelly, K.; Rizvi, S. An Avalanche is Coming, Institute for Public Policy Research: London, 2013.
11. Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future, UCL: London 2008.
12. Jones, C.; Shao, B. (2011). The net generation and digital natives: implications for higher education, Higher Education Academy: York, 2011.
13. Kandiko, C.; Mawer, M. Student Expectations and Perceptions of Higher Education. QAA: Gloucester, 2013.
14. Marc Prensky – Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Prensky, 2015.
15. The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever. Sebastian Thrun Interview, Steven Leckart, Wired Magazine: 20/3/12
16. Remarks made by David Willets at, ‘Open and online learning:, Universities UK (16/5/13) Woburn House Conference Centre, London, 2013
17. Sampson, A. WhoRuns This Place? John Murray: London, 2004
18. Knight, J. Trade in Higher Education Services: The Implications of GATS, The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education: London 2002.
19. Next, It's E-ducation, Thomas Friedman, New York Times: (17 November), p. A29, New York, 1999.
20. Hefce pulls the plug on UK e-university, Donald MacLeod, The Guardian: London march 2004.
21. Weller, M. The Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn't feel like victory, Ubiquity Press: London, 2014.
22. Morozov, E. To Save Everything, Click Here, Allen Lane, Penguin Books: London 2013.
23. Klein, N. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Allen Lane, Penguin Books: London, 2008.

Introduction

The debates on the Internet, as well as on ICTs, still largely revolve around the promises of a more democratic and better society, and inquiries whether these promises have proven true. Considering the fundamentally social nature of communication technologies, it cannot be claimed that there is an enclosed process for ICTs; even though the “profit-led” trends have predominant position over these technologies. As was emphasized by Raymond Williams, communication technologies are not static and totally predictable processes, rather they are shaped by social relations and struggles [10]. In this respect, manifesting emancipatory praxes in order to build “alternative” ways for communication and contributing to a critical understanding on the possibilities of ICTs in order to form a “counter-hegemonic” discourse are crucial. In this framework, the study examines Çapul TV, one of the non-profit “alternative” communication spaces/platforms of the Gezi Resistance in Turkey, by focusing on Raymond Williams’ understanding on the relationship between communication technologies and social change. This study aims to contribute to a Marxist materialist position on the relationship between communication technologies and social change in order to achieve a critical and holistic analysis on the emancipatory and revolutionary potentials of ICTs. Such a questioning seems especially important when the increasing academic inquiries on the relationship between “social movements” and “alternative” usages of ICTs are taken into consideration.

Gezi Resistance and its Communication Spaces/Platforms

The very beginning of a social rebellion was witnessed and experienced in the last days of May 2013 at the Taksim Gezi Park, which is one of the few green spaces left in the city center. On May 27^th, with the entering of bulldozers into the Gezi Park to uproot the trees in order to begin the construction of a new shopping mall in Istanbul, a group of activists began to defend the park. A small-scale peaceful resistance was turned into urban uprisings by the violent attacks of the police. While Turkish media ignored what happened during the beginning and spreading of the resistance around the country, questioning about the legitimacy of the mainstream media was started. Mainstream media became unable to fulfill its most fundamental function, which is to give information to people, due to the complex relationships based on financial gain between the ruling party and the media owners. In this respect, the information produced and distributed by the mainstream media depends on the interests of the cooperation between capital and political power, and is remarkably anti-labour in character [2].

Nevertheless, the resistance achieved to produce its own information and to distribute it. Gezi Postası (Gezi Mail) as the daily newspaper of the park, Gezi Radyo (Radio Gezi), Revoltistanbul and direnisteyiz.net are among the examples of non-profit alternative communication spaces/platforms of the resistance. Additionally, from the outset of the resistance, activists were using social media such as Facebook and Twitter in order to share information and to mobilize people, just like in the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring and the other recent protest movements.

Korkut Boratav defines the Gezi Resistance as an “immature class reaction”, but he underlines that it was a rebellion of “working-class”, even though it did not display the common characteristics of “labour class movement”: Because there were skilled, educated workers and students, who will be a part of labour class or the reserve army of labour in the short run, and they were opposing the consolidation of political power and bourgeoisie that grabs the commons [3]. Therefore, Gezi Resistance was reactive in the sense that it was against to the existing economic, social and political structure characterized by “neoliberal authoritarianism”. It was a backlash against the cooperation between conservative political power and capital that penetrates directly into everyday life. Furthermore, it was a reflection of the dissatisfaction with the understanding of political participation process that is reduced to election periods. On the other hand, it was also proactive in the sense that it created “alternative” communication experiences. It was not just a protest movement; it was in fact a social rebellion moment which makes “social change” more visible. One of the crucial outcomes of the resistance is the creation of non-profit “alternative” communication spaces/platforms. Çapul TV, which was the only channel on air in the Gezi Park, is the unique example of these experiences and became the permanent channel of the resistance as well as other resistances around the country. Before delving into this ongoing Çapul TV experience, there is a fundamental question that needs to be answered: How a critical and holistic way of thinking on the relationship between communication technologies and social change can be achieved?

Raymond Williams’ Materialist Position on Communication Technologies

Williams’ conceptualizations of communication and communication technologies can be taken as a starting point to attain a critical and holistic comprehension on the question. Williams puts the communication and communication technologies question at the hub of the material and symbolic (re)production of social relations. He describes communication as a process which makes “unique experience into common experience” [12]. Thereby basic purpose of communication is “the sharing of human experience” [11]. He says that “the process of communication is in fact the process of community: the sharing of common meanings, and thence common activities and purposes; the offering, reception and comparison of new meanings, leading to tensions and achievements of growth and change” [12]. The comprehension of “communication as a whole social process” [12] provides also an understanding of communication technologies as a process in which social relations are materialized, transformed and modified [4].

Williams rejects simple cause and effect explanations of technological determinism, but he also recognizes the hegemonic position of technological determinist thinking. Therefore he warns us against the resurgence of technological determinism that comes with every new technology [7]. Additionally, he is against “the notion of a determined technology”, which closes off all alternative meanings and usages of new technologies [10]. Another important point is his rejection of “the idea that technologies would necessarily be used in the precise ways envisaged by the developers” [5]. He emphasizes that both communication process and communication technologies have social complications which are not totally predictable [9]. There is a clear example of this: In the 19^th century, religious and political authorities were “arguing that the poor must be able to read the Bible, as a means to their moral improvement, overlooked the fact that there is no way of teaching a man to read Bible which does not also enable him to read the radical press” [9]. Williams reminds us the emancipatory potentials of communication technologies for alternative and democratic usages, even those technologies are predominantly intended to fulfill the priorities of dominant groups.

Williams’ materialist position on the relationship between technology and social change must be associated with his understanding on the notion of “determination” as “setting bounds or limits and exertion of pressure” [8]. This understanding also makes possible his rejection of both technological determinism and the notion of determined technology. At this point, reminding Henri Lefebvre’s definition for determinism(s) seems important in order to achieve a clear comprehension on the dialectic relationship between mechanisms setting bounds and praxes. Lefebvre defines determinism(s) as following: “[They] are inherited from the past; they are forms, systems, structures that somehow survive more or less intact and have yet to be superseded or have as yet been only incompletely superseded: they continue to exert an active influence upon the present. Determinisms do not rule out accident, contingency, or creative efforts on the part individuals and groups to do away with such survivals” [6]. Therefore, that allows us to claim that social processes as a whole are shaped by dialectical relationships. Such materialist position makes also possible to shed light on the complex nature of communication technologies as a dialectic process in which the spectrum of technological possibilities are marked by the interest of dominant groups, but also can be formed by social struggles. Furthermore, that provides us a critical framework for understanding contemporary communication technologies with their emancipatory possibilities.

Questioning the “Alternative”: Çapul TV versus Penguins of Mainstream Media

In this part of the study, there will be an effort to answer the following fundamental questions in order to critically evaluate and understand the emancipatory and revolutionary possibilities of ICTs: What are the main aspects of this “alternative” communication space/platform experience? How the actors of those experiences define their positions? How they include communication technologies in this process? How can we describe and conceptualize such communication space/platform experiences and practices? Can the concept of “alternative” provide an inclusive framework? How can we evaluate those experiences and practices regarding to the emancipatory potential of communication technologies?

Even though, to some extent, the concept of “alternative” seems inadequate to describe such experiences and practices, it may provide a plausible and inclusive framework to define those practices as an exploration for communication spaces/platforms. As was mentioned by Funda Başaran and Önder Özdemir, founders of Association of Alternative Media (AAM) and Çapul TV, Çapul TV emerged and started to live broadcast as a result of the need for a medium to inform people about what was going on at the Gezi Park, while leading news channels ignored the resistance and penguin documentaries were on air [1-2]. However, Çapul TV is an outcome of more than ten years of non-profit “alternative” media experiments, such as sendika.org, live broadcasting of TEKEL workers’ resistance via sendika.tv, International Labor Film & Video Festival [1]. The main aspects of Çapul TV experience can be listed as the following: At the hub of those experiences is to produce and distribute the information of people who are ignored by the mainstream media. The actors of those practices define themselves as “activists” and they emphasize that they are not just the witnesses of the events but also the subjects of the events [13]. They describe their activities as a part of class struggle. Furthermore, they include communication technologies in this process as a part of class struggle.

There is not a simple answer for the questions elaborated it this paper. Given the conceptualization of Williams, we should not expect such answers. Nevertheless, this does not mean that social experiences such as Gezi Resistance cannot show us the path of emancipation.

References and Notes

1. Aydoğan, A. Çapul TV: Önder Özdemir. In Alternative Media and Participation. Cost Action ISO906. D. Beybin Kejanlıoğlu, Salvatore Scifo, Eds, January 2014, pp.21-23. http://www.cost-transforming audiences.eu/system/files/alternative%20media%20and%20participation-19-02-14.pdf (Accessed 21 December 2014).
2. Başaran, F. The Resistance Prevails! So the Resistance’s Media As Well!, 18 June 2013, http://www.sendika.org/2013/06/the-resistance-prevails-so-the-resistances-media-as-well-funda-basaran/ (Accessed 19 June 2013).
3. Boratav, K. “Olgunlaşmamış Bir Sınıfsal Başkaldırı”, 22 June 2013, http://www.sendika.org/2013/06/her-yer-taksim-her-yer-direnis-bu-isci-sinifinin-tarihsel-ozlemi-olan-sinirsiz-dolaysiz-demokrasi-cagrisidir-korkut-boratav/ (Accessed 27 June 2013).
4. De la Haye, Y. Marx and Engels on the Means of Communication: The Movement of Commodities, People, Information and Capital, International General: New York, 1980: 55.
5. Freeman, D. A Technological Idiot? Raymond Williams and Communication Technology. Information, Communication & Society 2002, 5(3), 425-442.
6. Lefebvre, H. The Sociology of Marx, New York: Coloumbia University Press, 1982[1966]; pp.55.
7. McGuigan, J. Raymond Williams: A Short Counter-Revolution – Towards 2000 Revisited, Sage: London, 2015; pp. 19-46.
8. Williams, R. Keywords, Oxford University Press: New York, 1985[1976]; pp. 98-99.
9. Williams, R. “Communications Technologies and Social Institutions.” In Contact: Human Communication and its History, edited by Raymond Williams, London: Thames and Hudson, 1981; pp. 230-231.
10. Williams, R. Television: Technology and Cultural Form, Routledge: London and New York, 2003[1975]; pp. 133.
11. Williams, R. Communications, Penguin: London, 1973[1962]; pp.32.
12. Williams, R. The Long Revolution, Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1965[1961]; pp. 55.
13. The part of the study is based on the discussions of Alternative Media Workshop which was held within the LaborComm-2015, International Labor and Communication Conference, on May 09-10, 2015.

Introduction

The organisation of life into the public/private nexus has long been a site of contestation for feminism. In the highly politicised culture of the 1960s and 1970s, second-wave feminists argued that the public/private nexus was repressive in nature and function because the purportedly ‘natural’ assignment of women to the private realm represented their exclusion from social and political life (Rossler, 2005), thus rendering them publically invisible and depriving women of their civil liberties. Feminists then, fought to dismantle this gendered catergorisation via twofold grounds. First, they sought to increase the visibility of women in public life, and secondly, sought to politicise ‘the personal’ by arguing that the self of the private realm had its roots in wider social, political and economic contexts, and was ultimately organised in, and regulated by, the public sphere. By carrying the slogan ‘the personal is the political’, feminists expanded the boundaries of contestation beyond socioeconomic distribution, to include housework, sexuality and reproduction. Consequently, ‘the problem with no name’, which was previously characterised as isolated and individual, was now recognised as a social-systemic struggle—predicating a collective identity for women as women (Ang, 2001) and enabling a politicised interpretation of needs to enter public discourse and the agenda of the welfare-state (Fraser, 2013). While this paradigmatic change in the meaning of ‘political’ promised to invoke a gender-sensitive revision of democracy and justice (Markus, 1995), it is my thesis that this political imaginary has been grossly distorted some fifty years later through its appropriation by contemporary feminism.

By examining in some detail the discursive registers of Everyday Sexism^[1], an online feminist campaign that puts forth the claim of systemic sexism by cataloguing personal life narratives from women across the globe, I argue that contemporary feminism is engaged in a dangerous double entanglement with the highly individualised idiom of therapy culture. Dovetailed with ascending neoliberalism, this liaison threatens to depoliticise the political, and undo the doings of second-wave feminism.

Discussion

Today, in a digitally mediated world, the partition between the public/private is arguably dissolved as technologies such as the mobile phone invoke an “intersection of worlds” (Schegloff, 2002, p. 286) and as the public sphere becomes saturated with the exposure of private life (Burkart, 2010). Through the widespread publicising of private matters via acts of confession, a therapeutic sensibility premised on emotionalisation has become one of the dominant ways in which actors express, shape and understand themselves and society (Furedi, 2004; Illouz, 2007). This is evidenced in a plethora of social and cultural sites, for example, in social media (i.e. Facebook’s ‘What’s on your mind?’), Internet dating, reality TV, celebrity ‘tell all’ interviews, and the growing corpus of self-help and autobiographical literature.

The blurring of the public and the private and the emotional turn is a manifestation of, and tribute to, therapy culture (Furedi, 2004; McGee, 2005; Ouelette and Hay, 2008). Therapy culture is marked by the spill of the therapeutic ethos from clinical spaces, in which it emanated, into wider cultural structures, institutions and vernaculars. At the crux of the therapeutic ethos is the belief that “the psychological self, as opposed to the physical or social self or the wider society, is the source of its problems and the main resource for providing potential solutions to these problems” (Swan, 2008, p. 88). As a large body of literature has noted, a key feature of therapy culture is its neoliberal rationality in which “citizen-subjects” (Ouelette and Hay, 2008) are trained to see themselves as “individualized” (Larner, 200, p. 13) and responsible for their own well-being and well-doing (Hazleden 2010). Therapy culture then, predicates the formation of new political subjectivities and forms of selfhood.

Feminism and therapy culture

Everyday Sexism, the hugely popular feminist website^[2] rolled out to 17 countries within the first year of its inception, is representative of a larger cultural shift whereby contemporary feminism has not managed to secure immunity from the influences of therapy culture. Rather, the two are engaged in a “double entanglement” (McRobbie, 2004).

On one hand, the affective makeup of Everyday Sexism—the fact that it relies on therapeutic techniques of confession and emotionalism as the basis of its activism, appears to foster the politicisation of the personal by creating discursive spaces for women’s personal pains to gain legitimacy in the public sphere. This invokes Lauren Berlant’s notion of “intimate publics” (1997) whereby individuals form community through mutual affective ties, in this case, a collective suffering through sexism. The 80,000 testimonials collected by the campaign worldwide have indisputably contributed to the resurgence of public discussion and social self-reflexivity about sexism. Further, since political participation is enacted through the medium of talk (Fraser, 1995), Everyday Sexism mobilises participation by volunteering a feminist vocabulary to its actors, which, as Maria Markus has noted, is a necessary tool for participation in public discourse (Markus, 1995).

At the same time that therapy culture mobilises these opportunities for feminism and the feminist subject, a problematic co-existence of challenges also exist. The emphasis on individualised anecdotes and experiences in Everyday Sexism catalyse a rhetorical reframing of sexism that is personalised and isolated rather than thematic and systematic. This mobillises a feminist subject that translates sexism from a structural problem to an individual affair and cultivates an imperviousness to the role of social, cultural and economic forces in producing inequalities, therefore espousing the therapeutic rationality which renders the life of the individual as a private matter. Consequently, this results in Everyday Sexism’s feminist collective being fragmented into a sum aggregation of atomised, autonomous and self-governing persons (Rimke, 2000), which sit in contraposition to feminist precepts of solidarity and collectivity.

Should contemporary feminism continue its dangerous flirtations with the individual idiom of therapy culture, it will mobilise a world where the individual once again becomes the site to which societal problems are raised and where it will be perceived they need to be resolved, thus depoliticising the political, and threatening to undo the victories of second-wave feminism.

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the intellectual support and guidance of Associate Professor Pauline Johnson.

References

Ang, I 2001, On not speaking Chinese: living between Asia and the West. Routledge, London & New York.

Berlant, L 1997, The queen of America goes to Washington city: essays on sex and citizenship. Duke University Press Books, Durham.

Burkart, G 2010, ‘When privacy goes public: new media and the transformation of the culture of confession’, in H Blatterer et al. (eds), Modern privacy: shifting boundaries, new forms, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 23-38.

Brown, W 2005, ‘Neo-liberalism and the end of liberal democracy’, Theory & Event, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 37-59.

Cloud, D 1998, Control and consolation in American culture and politics. Sage, London.

Fraser, N 2013, Fortunes of feminism: from state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis. Verso, London & New York.

Furedi, F 2014, Therapy culture: cultivating vulnerability in an uncertain age. Routledge, London & New York.

Hazleden, R 2010, ‘“You have to learn these lessons sometime”: persuasion and therapeutic power relations in bestselling relationship manuals’, Continuum, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 291-305.

Illouz, E 2007, Cold intimacies: the making of emotional capitalism. Polity, Cambridge.

Larner, W 2000, ‘Neo-liberalism: policy, ideology, governmentality’, Studies in Political Economy, vol. 63, pp. 5-25.

Markus, M 1995, ‘Civil society and the politisation of needs’, in K Gavroglu et al. (eds) Science, politics and social practice: essays on Marxism and science, philosophy of culture and the social sciences, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston & London, pp. 161-179.

McRobbie, A 2004, ‘Postfeminism and popular culture’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 255-264.

Negra, D 2014, Claiming feminism: commentary, autobiography and advice literature for women in the recession, Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 275-286.

Rimke, HM 2000, Governing citizens through self-help literature, Cultural Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 61-78.

Rossler, B 2005, The value of privacy. Polity, Cambridge.

Rottenberg, C 2014, ‘The rise of neoliberal feminism’, Cultural Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 418-437.

Schegloff, EA 2002, ‘Beginnings in the telephone’, in JE Katz & MA Aakus (eds) Perpetual contact: mobile communication, private talk, public performance, Cambridge University Press, pp. 284-300.

Swan, E 2008, ‘You make me feel like a woman’: therapeutic cultures and the contagion of femininity, Gender, Work and Organization, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 88-107.

^[1] Everyday Sexism was established in April 2012 by a 25-year-old English woman named Laura Bates. To date, Everyday Sexism has accrued 80,000 testimonials of sexism worldwide.

^[2] While Everyday Sexism began as a website-based campaign, it has, as campaigns do in digital media cultures, expanded onto various social media platforms. Everyday Sexism was also published into book form in 2014.