The Fairy Robot

A miniscule masterpiece, which is reminiscent of something Leonardo da Vinci could have drawn, the four-winged robot that resembles a jellyfish and a little fairy, was created by Leif Ristroph and his colleagues at New York University. Weighing a mere 2 grams, the tiny mechanical creature needs no sensors and little effort to fly unlike robots designed after birds and insects, explains the New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24638-fourwinged-robot-flies-like-a-jellyfish.html#.UrMb_Z8o6Ag

Time says it could "usher in a new generation of smaller, cheaper drones".
http://science.time.com/2013/11/26/a-flying-robot-jellyfish-now-exists/

Here is the YouTube video, which I first saw when Clive Thompson, writer for Wired and author of "Smarter than you Think", posted it on his Twitter (worth following for cool updates @pomeranian99. He agreed that it was really "quite charming in flight!" http://twitter.com/pomeranian99/status/40518878255279308

                      

At any rate, it truly looks like a little fairy robot!

From the Clouds to the Earth

This is a short summary of a fascinating article on WIRED by Balaji Srinivasan http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/software-is-reorganizing-the-world-and-cloud-formations-could-lead-to-physical-nations/ which discusses the already present and the possible future where virtual communities existing and coming into existence in the clouds are taking physical shape on the Earth in real-life communities, groups and will perhaps even form new nations. "Software *is* reorganizing the world."

I find it important to touch upon this subject now as, I believe, we will sooner than we think be quite caught by surprise by new communities and a new world surrounding us and springing forth, as it would seem, from nowhere.

As our generation is, unfortunately, getting poorer, Srinivasan tells us that we are taking our minds to the clouds and are sort of "emigrating" there to seek work opportunities, like-minded individuals and, being of a social nature, communities to which we may belong. We may not have the slightest clue as to who our neighbour is but we may know someone as far as thousands of kilometres away like the backs of our own hands. Srinivasan calls this process, which "starts out internationally distributed and ends up physically concentrated" the "reverse diaspora". But the definitive tangible form of this new frontier is, as of yet, unknown to us.

For the present, Stanford, MIT, and others present us available quantitative studies with "cloud cartographies" that, instead of "mapping nation states" map the "states of our minds" by using the newer metric "geodesic distance" instead of just using the physical measuring unit "geographical distance". The former shows us the "number of degrees of separation between two nodes in a social network". I suppose these will be able to predict where and how the new geographical communities will take shape.

Reading the full article is worth the time. I certainly have much to learn and to find in the online world and I would not be surprised if my virtual explorations took me to places I have never even dreamt of. So we don't get left out of this brave new world let us, with caution of course, venture to connect online.

Virtually Everywhere

Technology, space, time and everything in between...countless opinions either in favour of this digitalized world or against it but the question of whether it is one of the most fascinating phenomenons of our time must indubitably have an affirmative reply. Just as much as the online world kept me in awe as can be read in my posts in 2009 so does it keep me amazed now.

We do not need to move in the physical space in order to be present at any event. Par example, the Large Hadron Collider exhibition at the Science Museum in London was easily accessible via live-stream, courtesy of The Guardian where we could enjoy the company of both Professor Higgs in the morning and Stephen Hawking in the afternoon. http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/nov/12/stephen-hawking-large-hadron-collider-live-stream-video?CMP=twt_gu

We could also view a cool photo of them both on @sciencemuseum's Twitter page: http://twitter.com/sciencemuseum/status/400675840775565312

But if the value and beauty of women in science were topics of interest to us we were able to hop over to Brussels and take a look at the inauguration of the "Science needs Women" photo exhibition held at the European Parliament http://twitter.com/4womeninscience/status/400400078516801536 or to travel to Moscow, Russia to see the nominees for L'Oreal's Women in Science awards http://twitter.com/4womeninscience/status/400307121771642880

All this on November 12, 2013, in one day!

Also the National Science Foundation was live-tweeting from the Gender Summit in Washington on the following day  http://twitter.com/NSF/status/400660834919018496

So thanks to our digital presence it is this facile today to be virtually anywhere and everywhere.

The Suit and Tie Conundrum

I have just read a very good article featured in the Daily Beast by Alizah Salario entitled "Daily Woes for Women in Tech" http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/2013/11/19/dating-in-the-stem-fields-can-women-in-science-be-sexy-and-successful.html
Women in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) are faced with what Eileen Pollack  http://nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 calls the "double whammy", the sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't situation when being too feminine, attractive and good-looking will stigmatize women (of course not only those working in STEM fields) with the preconceived and stereotypical image of them not being serious or of them most probably being simply dumb and when being dressed in a labcoat or looking dorky enough will make women seem not worth dating. So is there a solution to these contradictions?

Pollack says she doesn't think "most of us challenge these paradigms" and that "we simply absorb them" and she is right.

I certainly think that the stereotypical images of women should be challenged but I also believe that those of men should be examined and changed as well. In some of my future posts I would like to take a look at men and fashion and how I think the "suit and tie conundrum" leaves us with men giving us the delusion that only they can always look smart. Intelligent in nerdy attire and smart, classy and sexy when all dressed up. A few questions I pose; must men look so boringly repetitive when it comes to fashion? Why does the suit and tie solve the problem for men of what to wear for dinner, meetings, job interviews, dates, etc. etc. but not for women? Should women have such an all-purpose uniform or should men be allowed to start wearing new types of attire even for formal occasions? I would opt for the latter so that the male vs. female image could be redefined and gender equality would be able to gain more ground.

A Tale of Two Worlds

Ah yes! "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" to quote the amazing Dickens. I do derive joy and I smile inwardly when reviewing my older posts from several years ago when the carefree days of my time at University allowed me to occupy the free hours with little adventures in the virtual world of Final Fantasy. I nonetheless explored the communities more than I played. It was the digital phenomenon of Actuality's veiled online presence that fascinated me and fascinates me still.

I hope to be able to continue this blog in a more organized and systematic fashion with interesting topics on the virtual and the real life world. Desirably, the blog will develop into a specific yet unique source for many things digital in a harmonized tone...something very much like a "virtual concerto".

Before I conclude this post I must return to Dickens and include the continuation of his magnificent introduction to his "A Tale of Two Cities" whilst bearing in mind our Digital Age;

"...it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going the other way - in short, the period was (...) far like the present period..."

The Paradigm of Bruno Latour in Contemporary Sociology of Science (rough copy in English by Giselle Rakobowchuk) BA in Sociology at University of Pécs 2010 BA Thesis

1.     Science: Its own Master?. 2

2.     From Scientific Truth to Social Construction. 3

3.     The ANT of the Laboratory That Engulfed the World. 6

4.     Science, Society and Chickens: Did the Chicken Ever Cross the Road?. 10

5.     The Social After and Before Bruno Latour 18

6.     Sociology: 20

BIBLIOGRAPHY.. 22

1.    Science: Its own Master?

Until the relatively recent emergence of the study of science as a field of scientific research and perhaps since the triumph of the French Revolution’s rational principles, the questions of truth, knowledge and reason have been entrusted to the care of the ‘nobility of science’, the princes, duchesses and counts donned in their uniform mantles of ‘white lab coats’ and the scholastic decrees issued by these scientists have been accepted as the correct and the only plausible interpretations of the world surrounding us. With the appearance of Thomas S. Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” in 1962, a revolution of its own swept through Francis Bacon’s fort of ‘una scientia universalis’ (Bacon), fracturing it into the myriad fragments of postmodern thought and inquiry. Latour – fortress of sociology? The objectivity of science and its established principles are today in the impregnable ivory towers of the scientists themselves being continually evaporated though it is still feasible to say what Robert Merton stated in 1970, that “even now, there are scholars who would argue that science goes its own way, unaffected by changes in the environing social structure” (Merton 1973: 176).

Continued after break line...