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Editorial

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Tackling Simplified Sign System Handshapes: Five Basics to Get You Started

Tackling Simplified Sign System Handshapes: Five Basics to Get You Started

by Tracy T. Dooley

Signing can seem like a daunting task for hearing people who have never before tried to communicate using a sign language. The full and genuine sign languages of Deaf persons that are used around the world have their own distinct handshapes, vocabularies, grammars, and rules for usage within their societies. Studying one or more of the natural sign languages of Deaf persons can provide a fascinating look into the many fruitful and creative means of expression used by people from diverse sociocultural perspectives and life experiences.

My academic mentor, colleague, and beloved friend, John Bonvillian, spent his life dedicated to learning more about the sign languages of Deaf people and the ways in which manually produced signs could benefit the many individuals who struggle to communicate verbally and/or exist within a world dominated by speech. When John heard Gail Mayfield’s heartfelt entreaty to create a sign-communication system comprised of signs that would be easier to learn and form, he enthusiastically dedicated himself to that task with a joyful heart (see his brother William’s blogpost on The Possibility of Signs).

John’s linguistic research with Ted Siedlecki, Jr. in the 1990s regarding the formational parameters of American Sign Language  (ASL) signs and how they are learned by the typically developing hearing and deaf children of Deaf parents (see Simplified Signs, Volume 1, Chapter 3) provided a sound foundation for the development of a sign system comprised mostly of easier-to-form handshapes. Their analysis found that forming correct handshapes was the most difficult task for young signing children to master.  This was because the children’s ability to produce the more complex handshapes often present in Deaf sign languages frequently lagged behind the children’s ability to control the fine motor skills of their hands necessary to produce such complex handshapes.

Since many non-speaking or minimally verbal individuals may also have difficulties with fine motor control, particularly with the oromotor skills necessary for fluent speech and the manual motor skills necessary to produce recognizable signs, it is vital that signs used by such persons be relatively easy to form. In addition to noting the specific ASL handshapes that were more difficult to form by young signing children, Bonvillian and Siedlecki’s investigations found that certain handshapes were produced easily and accurately from a relatively young age.  These handshapes included such basic handshapes as the flat-hand, the pointing-hand, the fist, and the spread- or 5-hand.

Not surprisingly, then, a preliminary analysis that I performed in 2015 of the handshapes used in the Simplified Sign System (SSS) showed that these four handshapes, along with the tapered- or O-hand, were the most prevalent handshapes in the first 1000 signs of the system. The flat-hand alone accounts for nearly 26% of the handshape usage. The pointing-hand, fist, and spread- or 5-hand account for roughly another 38.5%, and the tapered- or O-hand for 6.50%.  These five handshapes together make up nearly 71% of all of the handshape usage in the initial lexicon. Thus, the majority of the signs available in Simplified Signs, Volume 2, Chapter 11 should be highly accessible to persons experiencing temporary or chronic difficulties with their motor skills.

In keeping with the ethos of universal design (see Simplified Signs, Volume 1, Preface and Acknowledgments), in which the development of a product, service, or environment takes into account the needs of people with a range of abilities, the Simplified Sign System should also be easy to use not only by non-speaking persons with motor impairments, but also by their family members, friends, work colleagues, and people in their communities. Indeed, we all benefit from such things as elevators, ramps, and other modifications to our environments, even if we forget the origins of these inventions in civil rights movements. In fact, one can argue that it is the presence of persons with various abilities and disabilities that helps to drive innovation, technological advancement, and positive societal changes that benefit everyone.

Plus, signing is not as daunting a task as you might think. In fact, accompanying our speech with manual gestures, facial expressions, and other bodily movements is something that many people do on a regular basis. Furthermore, such incorporation of communicative gestures with speech may be so prevalent that we do it without even thinking about it or being consciously aware of it. Try this fun experiment with someone you know and trust: when in the middle of a typical conversation with that person, stop moving your body, your arms, your hands, and your head. Also, stop using facial expressions—no eyebrow raises, no pursed lips, no smiles, no frowns, no rolls of the eyes, no gazing at anything or anyone except the person with whom you’re talking—and see how long you can keep it up. If the two of you aren’t laughing within minutes (or even seconds) of the switch, then you have truly overlooked the many ways in which our bodies and the parts of our bodies speak for us. Indeed, it can be extremely difficult to NOT use some form of communicative gesturing when speaking with others, especially with people you do not know.

As a result, many of you out there already have the basics of gestural communication in your skill set, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. So, do yourself a favor—let go of your fears, flex your fingers, and try to produce the following five most frequently used handshapes in the Simplified Sign System. If you don’t do it “right” the first time, try again! There’s no judgment here and no deadlines to meet.  There is, however, quite a bit of room for laughter, fun, and the joy and satisfaction that come from learning to communicate with your hands.

Tackling Simplified Sign System Handshapes: Five Basics to Get You Started
FLAT-HAND 
Tackling Simplified Sign System Handshapes: Five Basics to Get You Started
POINTING-HAND
Tackling Simplified Sign System Handshapes: Five Basics to Get You Started
FIST

Tackling Simplified Sign System Handshapes: Five Basics to Get You Started
SPREAD- OR 5-HAND 
Tackling Simplified Sign System Handshapes: Five Basics to Get You Started
TAPERED- OR O-HAND

Illustrations by Val Nelson-Metlay.

This book is now available to read and download for free. Please, click here to access Vol. 1 and here for Vol.2.

We will be hosting an Online Book Launch for this title on the 3rd September 2020 at 4 p.m. BST/ 11 a.m. EST. You can RSVP here.

The Possibility of Signs

The Possibility of Signs

by William B. Bonvillian

Would it be possible?

With this question, Gail Mayfield, the director of an autism program in rural Virginia, inspired a project that would absorb the talents and passions of a virtual army of students and some faculty at the University of Virginia for over two decades. The project, called Simplified Signs, created an easy-to-learn sign-communication system that could “quite possibly” change the lives of the millions of people who face challenges with spoken communication, as well as their parents, teachers, caregivers, and friends.

In the late 1980’s, when Gail Mayfield first posed her question, some of the best special education programs in the United States for non-speaking children with autism used and taught American Sign Language (ASL) for communication. The late John Bonvillian was a professor of Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Virginia doing research on the use of signs by some of Mayfield’s students.  Bonvillian had been at the forefront of a movement to use sign language in special education programs and his research with Mayfield’s students with autism was part of his ongoing professional interest in sign language usage.

Bonvillian heard Mayfield’s simple and well-placed query and took it to heart.   Her students could learn and benefit from the use of signs, but they often had difficulty with some of the ASL handshapes, and their communicative progress was limited.  Mayfield felt that her students would be able to communicate more fluently if they had signs that were easier to form and to remember.   Would it be possible to develop such signs?

Bonvillian was, by nature, a careful academic, so he approached the question first by investigating the sign language acquisition of the typically developing children of Deaf parents.  He then could compare those findings against the signing difficulties encountered by Mayfield’s students and by other persons with motor and memory problems.   He found that such individuals often struggled with certain hand formations and with signs that required multiple movements.  He also found that many parents and caregivers had not become fluent signers themselves; as a result, the students did not experience the substantial benefit of living in an environment where signs were used and understood by everyone.

Working with a talented undergraduate student named Nicole Kissane, who later became one of his three coauthors, Bonvillian conceived of the Simplified Sign System project.  Together, Bonvillian and his research group took the first step toward the possibility of easier signs.  The project goals were to identify a modest working vocabulary of signs that were 1) easy to form because they did not include complex handshapes or movements and 2) easy to remember because they looked like what they  represented (that is, they were iconic).  Bonvillian and his team found many such signs in the dictionaries of Native American signs, previously developed sign systems, and the sign languages of Deaf persons.  When they couldn’t find pre-existing signs that met their criteria, they created some signs on their own.  They then tested each and every one of the potential signs on students at the University of Virginia to ensure that the signs met the project criteria for formation and recall.  The resulting product, which has been more than twenty years in the making, is Simplified Signs: A Manual Sign-Communication System for Special Populations.   It is a two-volume set consisting of a compendium of the research on signing (Volume 1) and a lexicon of signs (Volume 2).

Simplified Signs has proven that with dedication and persistence, what was once barely conceivable may indeed be possible.  Literally hundreds of people have participated in making Simplified Signs possible.  While John Bonvillian did not live to see the publication of his work, it survives as a living tribute to his talents, dedication, and generosity, as well as that of his coauthors and the many others who brought this project to completion.  It is published through Open Book Publishers and available online free of charge so that everyone may have access to the signs and use them.

Today the answer to Mayfield’s question “Would it be possible?” is an unqualified yes.  Simplified Signs are not only possible; they are here.

Let’s use some now!

The Possibility of Signs
HELPING
The Possibility of Signs
FRIENDS
The Possibility of Signs
SUCCEED

Written by William B. Bonvillian on behalf of his brother, John. Illustrations used on  banner and body text by Val Nelson-Metlay.

Axel Andersson: To Inherit Thinking-Bernard Stiegler In Memoriam

We know how it sounds when the voice of those who are absent animate their words as we read them, as if from the inside of the text. How long after a disappearance is a voice activated through a postcard, a note on a piece of paper or a book? I reach for Bernard Stiegler’s books soon after receiving the news of his death in early August. There are many in my shelf, but far from all of the more than thirty that he wrote since the first volume of “La technique et le temps” in 1994. I read and I hear.

We are always out of step with ourselves. To be inscribed into life as an individual is to let oneself, perpetually, be shaped by other individuals and the traces of those that are no longer among us. It is only in death that we catch up. It is in death and in our transition to becoming traces that we reach pure presence, Stiegler writes. There ceases the eternal change.

It was through books, during a five-year long incarceration (1978-83) when the rest of the world was denied him, that Stiegler approached philosophy. He became fascinated with how the discipline through its history had been uninterested in technics. It was technics, encompassing everything from scripture to the production of books, that had made it possible for the traces of philosophy to reach all the way to him: a jazz-club owner and before that peasant who had, in one of the vicissitudes of life, started to rob banks and that now with the help of the philosopher Gérard Granel (previously a regular at Stiegler’s club) studied in his little cell.

It was Granel who pointed Stiegler on the way to Jacques Derrida. A philosopher whose engagement with language as technics had led him to formulate a way to show how also the text was out of step with itself. Stiegler came to study with Derrida as his supervisor. It was the beginning of a brilliant career as a philosopher and a public intellectual for the former convict. Early on he became interested by the new digital technologies and made himself into one of the thinkers who most systematically and persistently analysed and criticised the society that the digital and automatic was giving birth to.

By a culture scared to be questioned, Stiegler was often dismissed as a tiresome Cassandra entertaining a bestiary of hellish predictions. What he feared most of all was that the technological development had taken a tragic turn towards the nightmarish desert of the exhaustive calculation where nothing, not thought and not even dreams, would survive. A catastrophic automation captured by a suicidal capitalism destroying all the necessities of life. The collective knowledge of man had led to a technology that could be used to destroy all knowledge.

In the 2016 book “Dans la disruption” (with the telling subtitle: “how not to go mad?”) Stiegler recounts a scene from 1993. It is Sunday morning after a party that he has been to with his children Barbara and Julien, at the time twenty-three and nineteen. Barbara suddenly asks him why he always is so silent and sombre. He answers that they are now ready to be addressed as adults. He is sombre as prison has taught him the measure and price of things, but also because he has understood that the world was approaching what seemed like a trial that could lead to its dissolution. Yet he promises to never stop studying this trial, to keep on looking for a way in which the worse can be turned to something better and, all this failing, leave traces to inheritors resembling ourselves, with the testimony that there were those that fought and did all in their power to find a way forward.

We are, claimed Stiegler, beings whose need of external technical support is foundational for our existence. But every new technical development is both a poison and a cure, with other words a “pharmakon”. Living together with the necessary technics demands constant care transforming therapeutically that which poisons us, into something capable of curing. Care is knowledge, thinking, investment, something able to create the improbable, a generative madness that leads to new dreams. Knowledge is also the realization that something will also always escape our understanding. Without knowledge we become proletarians forced to adapt ourselves instead of being able to adopt a technical object and make it ours. We risk self-inflicting stupidity and scream for someone to blame (a scapegoat, a “pharmakos”, linked to “pharmakon”) to numb our pain.

His texts are often concerned with the distance between the “I” and the “we”. The two are eternally joined, but hopefully not synonymous. Predatory industrial extraction of our attention through the new digital technologies have for aim to eradicate this difference. It leads to a totalitarian system that reduces us (even our children, those who have not become adult and that we were there to protect) to interchangeable consumers. The development has perverted our infinite desire to finite drives and let short-sighted stupidity take the places of long-term knowledge. Political, media, economic and ecologic system have been undermined by our carelessness.

In 2003 the old left-wing sympathizer Stiegler dedicated a book to the voters or the xenophobic France party Front National. Not because he shared their opinions, far from it, but because he, despite that enormous political distance that was between them and him, felt near their pain. Individuals in a society that has lost faith in itself lack the primary narcissism and desire that facilitates the conversions of an “I” to a “we”. It is in desperation to reach this “we” that the scapegoat is created. It was this that the extreme right had done with the immigrant, and that Stiegler refused to do with the voters of the extreme right.

The path from the poisoned side of the technologized industrial society, that makes both poor and rich miserable, was for Stiegler not less technology. Such a retreat was impossible. He disliked all talk of “resistance”. We had to, though knowledge and care, instead invent new turns. It was a labour taking place in the attempts to create a “we”. For this end he sought to initiate dialogues and collaborations with other researchers than those in philosophy and with those outside of academia: politicians, religious leaders, artists, activists and industrialists – even with the digital enterprises that for short-term gain profited on the decomposition of the social. One large project that was launched in collaboration with a number of disadvantaged municipalities in the north of Paris 2016 had for aim to build a practical laboratory for new ways of living with today’s technology and to create a “contributive economy”.

It is desperately sad that Stiegler died as the world had taken a sharp turn towards the valley of the shadow of death with a depressing combination of climate crisis, pandemic and systemic loss of knowledge. We who feel the shame stand to inherit his thought, but how is thinking inherited? I read and with a sorrow inside I can hear him stress the word “nous” in French (we) and the almost homonymous “nous” (νοῦς), the classic Greek concept for intellect and reasons. How can we find the courage to think a future like ours?

Stiegler readily acknowledged the inheritance from Derrida (and the poisonous inheritance from Martin Heidegger), but clarified: to be faithful an inheritance means to criticize it, explore its boundaries and venture beyond. A trace has to lead to new bifurcations that puts us in front of the unknown. Knowledge cannot be preserved through repetition alone.

To die is to become a trace, something that contains both process and difference. Paradoxically, Stiegler also claimed that to die was to become a pure presence. Read through Derrida (who died in 2004, 74 years old, far too young like the now eternally 68-year old Stiegler) it is an enunciation hung over both sides of the scales of metaphysics. From the impossible perspective of the dead it is possible to be purely present, but then one can no longer exist. And the dead is unable to register how she is part of the constant developments between traces and fellow humans, even though she is still very much part. The thought as care must be extended to encompass and re-negotiate the “I”, the trace and the “we”, by the living through the dead.

Already in his first work Stiegler described the external (and therefor technical) memory as a process where lived history is “inscribed into death”. It lingers contrary to the “law of life”. Memory has, as he would later return to, therefore all the possibilities to continue life by other means than just life. A death that life needs to become new thoughts. Parts of the philosopher of techincs Stiegler, has now become technical objects himself. Even his equally warm as uncompromising voice, saved on thousands of recordings.

In 2009 Stiegler accepted to come and speak for a small and insignificant reading group that I organised together with Tania Espinoza at King’s College in Cambridge. In a somewhat confused time in my life he opened the door to a generous and intensively honest exchange that lasted up until, and beyond, his death. The history of the “I” is in its particulars rarely interesting, but because of its accidental nature there is sometimes no better illustration of the possible birth of the non-totalitarian “we” that Stiegler fought for. Contingency, as in personal meetings and singular circumstances, should not be reduced to “luck”. Through care we are capable of building conditions for that we cannot foresee. In the case of Stiegler, among other things a humane prison system (after his release partly destroyed) that allowed and facilitated his becoming a philosopher.

He who saves the life of one human, saves all of humanity. Thus it is written in both the Talmud and the Quran. As long as there is time, there is time for care. Towards the end Stiegler, himself without religious faith, affirmed that only a miracle could save us – often enunciated with the addition “God willing”: “Inshallah”.

Axel Andersson

(Swedish original published in Svenska Dagbladet 14 August 2020)

 

Podcast: Why data won’t redeem us

This summer Eurozine launched their podcast titled Gagarin. I was invited to join Réka Kinga Papp, editor-in-chief- of Eurozine, to talk about my book Frictie and the accompanying Eurozine essay Friction and the aesthetics of the smooth.

Listen to the episode over at Eurozine or find it in your podcast app.

“What does the worship of big data have to do with positivism, and how does friction help create resistance? Philosopher Miriam Rasch talks her essay in the inaugural episode of Gagarin, the new Eurozine podcast.”

More podcasts discussing Frictie, data ethics, de-automation, translation and poetry, and much more can be found here (mostly in Dutch).

Patrick Lichty: Zoom Burnout, Teletopics and the Age of Covid

Agony and the Ecstasy: Zoom Burnout, Teletopics and the Age of Covid by Patrick Lichty

The era of Covid lockdown is Zoom-time. Although at the time of this writing, the crest of the wave is starting to pass, its impact is evident. In over three months of lockdown, stay at home, 24/7 Zoom culture has come to dominate global telepresent communications, standing in for ever-present cyber-vernissages, online conferences, talks and visits. The need to work, communicate, and even socially function has necessitated the rise of platforms like Zoom and Adobe Connect[1], and what I have come to understand as platform politics and their neoliberal connotations.  Although places like The Well was founded and John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” [2] was created under the notion of cyberfreedom and fluid congregation outside of the agendas of capital, the Covid pandemic has created a scenario where the private sector has found tenterhooks into the foundations of institutional communications. This is not to say that Social Media (sic) does not do this, but one of the differences I want to allude to is the institution-in-itself (e.g. Facebook) as opposed to platform as channel of communication for institutions themselves.

Unlike a public utility, Zoom, as well as others like Adobe Connect and Facebook Rooms, are portals in which institutions found a necessity for network that was not facilitated by a commons, but by corporations, and by agendas of maximizing connections and communications. These two effects (institutional adoption of private protocols)[3] and the necessity of a will-to-connect)  are the poles in which capital has pushed further into the control regimes of markets, networks, and political engineering as to where private interests further govern sociocultural concerns. It even got the UAE to release its national ban on VoIP communications, which is usually fairly rigid[4], as it provides a significant revenue stream. Such a comment isn’t so much about any particular country, but the effect that Zoom has had on global communication under the Covid crisis.


Fig. 1 – The next Zoom Generation (Stock Photo, Shutterstock)

The idea of having online platforms be the lens for focusing social interaction isn’t new. Second Life, with its inherently capitalist foundations tried to tout itself as the 3D World Wide Web, almost like an analogy to the 3D Internet analogue in the Robert Longo movie, “Johnny Mnemonic”[5].  With the neoliberal dream of the Linden Dollar superceding John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, FOMO-driven corporations from Domino’s Pizza to American Apparel flooded into the platform.  Christian von Borries’ documentary, “The Dubai in Me,[6] imperfectly compares financial speculative evangelism between Second Life and the ‘Dubai Miracle’, much of which operated on the notion of rotating real estate speculation. For some time, this was reflected in Second Life, when the mythology of Chinese real estate trader Anshe Cheung  (FIG.1) announced that she had made her first million dollars on virtual real estate[7].

However, the differences between a foundation based on a technology (HTTP) and that based on a single-provider platform that clusters technologies under a single provider (Second Life), in that a provider (Linden Labs) takes a majority of the profit, and that the upsurge of traffic caused multiple technical issues, caused most of those glittering dreams to collapse within 2-3 years. Corporation after corporation pulled out of SL, and or years articles announced its demise.[8] With the Covid crisis, Second Life is in a resurgence, but this is driven by its community; not corporate buy-in. Another difference is that while the interaction with the World Wide Web is relatively simple, Second Life required a relatively powerful machine and at least a couple days learning SL’s rather cumbersome interface. In interaction and commerce design, the rule is that the least friction yields the greatest returns.

Fig. 1. Anshe Chung – First Millionaire in Second Life (Image published under Fair Use)

The socio(economic) frictionlessness is actually one of the more problematic points with platforms like Zoom, or Adobe Connect, and so on.  In the artworld, the friction that artists thought had to happen was a value proposition based on an exclusivity or access to an event or an object.  In cities large enough to have a community that harbors a consistent local art “scene” (e.g. Dubai, Istanbul, Tehrran, even Chelsea NYC), there are effects that come along with this social cohesion. Taking this in mind, with accessibility comes the expectation to attend.  Once you are there and become part of the scene, there are expectations to be met, places to go and to be seen. This is a crucial point – the demand to see and be seen. If a community like the art world, that in part is dependent on personal engagement, having access implies a demand to engage. Further linkage to privilege in the case of Zoom is multilayered, from communities that wish to engage, and from the company, wishing to focus social capital through its portal.  These sites of privilege include the access to equipment itself, and the fact that in order to have longer than 40-minute meeting access, one has to pay a fee to Zoom. This imposes another financial protocological layer beyond the assumed internet utility charge.

What is important about this will-to-access is not that it is from the community; it is resultant from the platform as well. These effects are the result of Galloway’s protocological layers in the sociotechnological network. The first layer of a demand-to-access is the expectation to attend by those in the mis-en-scene – but the other is that of the platform itself. In the end, the platform is a cybernetic system that is a control apparatus and a form of Deleuzian regime of control[9].  Although Adobe Connect has also been adopted widely (there is an understanding that it may go offline due to its dependence on Flash technology, which is being phased out by Apple), the frictionlessness of the Zoom platform has allowed it to be quickly adopted by the institutional community.  Again, without having a professional account, interactions are limited to 40 minutes.  This reiterates the socioeconomic limits to access to further neoliberalization of communications.  The emergence of a solution in a panic event-space mitigates an acritical adoption in light of necessity. The notion of panic adoption has resulted in the institutionalization of Zoom as one de facto standard without full best practices development.  There is a need, there has to be a solution, and the market supplies one, and it has to be adopted as soon as possible.  Just Do It.

The other challenge with post-COVID networked society is that the notion of access falls under the panoptic optical regime of neoliberal capitalism.  What this means is that, as Sara Cook noted in the discussions surrounding the Sleep Mode exhibition at Somerset House,[10] that internal documents by companies like Facebook consider sleep a challenge to their business model of attention optics. The show described sleep itself as a tactic against neoliberal infocapitalism’s need to consume and convert every possible resource into use-value. In another text, Event Horizons,[11] I describe that even if sleep were to be conquered, there would be the Malthusian limit of the sidereal day itself. How do you multiply the cognitive load of the attention span of one human being as convertible labor once the physical limits of the system are reached. Perhaps there are exotic solutions like parallel cognitive loading across multiple machines, monitor arrays like the bridge of the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar from the 1999 movie, The Matrix.[12] Perhaps there are even more abstract metaphors likening the deterioration of attention to the evaporation of a black hole due to Hawking Radiation – but the reality is far more simple. A human being is simply not going to stay awake 24 hours a day to comment on your cat video, and taken to extremes, we simply cannot fulfill Zoom’s, Second Life’s, or whoever’s desire for us to be alone together constantly, forever public, forever panoptic.  It is an ontological equivalent to the 2008 financial collapse – expectations for access, like capital productivity, continue to balloon until all methods to appease the machines collapse, mitigating solutionism.[13]

It’s just not going to happen. Computers, and digital networks for that matter, are simply not sustainable technologies.

With the Covid crisis in the foreground, and the Climate crisis looming behind it, the sociocultural terrain has changed.  With the Coronavirus not going anywhere soon, and the automation of the labor-site, even if that labor is merely visibility, collapsing into the home, institutions see no need to be entirely physical anymore, and like the “gig” economy, investiture in the physical space is no longer entirely necessary.  Therefore look for a more “hybrid” ontology.

Relating to New Media Art of the 1990’s, There are some parallels largely minus the capital, when the network was the necessary channel for connection, then due to the small size of the community, now due to the necessity to distance.  But the frictions of infrastructural support are less with the privately funded model of Zoom.  In the neoliberal environment, when governments pull away from funding of infrastructures, favoring market politics, the ability to link capital to the network facilitates the platform. Period. Even incrementally, with minimal cost, this is a wringing out capital from the socioeconomic frame of need to solution, and Zoom life is the solution.

It’s a cost-benefit solution. Online portals like Zoom that create less frictioned telepresence give access to more programmes, create more opportunity to interact by the screen. But on the other hand, there is the pressure to take ten classes a month, be at twenty vernissages, call ten friends, up your productivity tenfold – from your home. A 2020 Washington Post article cites a National Bureau of Economic Research paper stating that the average American work week increased 48 minutes a day, and that meetings went up 13%.[14] And of course, this extra time behind screens will take mental and physical tolls in the techno-enabled world, like “Zoom anxiety”.[15]

It’s a win-win for neoliberal culture. Actually, it’s back to “The Matrix”, where we are tied into our scopophilic pods, viewing and being viewed. Zoom as new Panopticon, regulated by the frictions of the platform, epidemiology, and socioeconomic politics. As this writer sees the age of 60 on the horizon, speaking from a personal perspective, the cost-benefit of being increasingly online has not always realized itself, and in moving back to America in 2021 from the United Arab Emirates, there is a desire to be truly “hybrid”, that is to say, more engaged with the real, like more family time, friends, cooking, seeing nature, and being physically present.  This is also ironic in that VR artists are becoming more obsessed with realism through programs like Substance and ultra high rez scans, as can be seen on the Unreal Marketplace, an asset space for game-engine based media developers.[16] Reaching back into the real from the “Desert of the Real”.[17]

Fig. 3 “Welcome to the Desert of the Real”, Meme. (Author unknown, published under Fair Use guidelines)

But from this writer’s perspective, this is the frission that venturing closer to the event horizon of total access leads towards; the lure of connectedness while being paralyzed at the computer screen. In Virilio’s “The Third Interval”, from his volume. “Open Sky”,[18] he discusses the impact of networked presence on the body and the urban environment.  The notion of critical mass in the context of the lived environment is presented as analogy to develop the idea of critical space, in which the teletopia eliminated the body’s movement. He dates himself in centering on the megalopolis, where the Covid crisis points toward a return to the countryside, maybe not for the agricultural class, but the telematic class.

While the motor created a general mobilization of the population, collapsing space[19], telematic communication only requires the individual to be mobile on the spot. “Interactive desktop home shopping today”, as was coopted from a British advertisement for this writer’s Haymarket Riot Web series of critical rock videos[20], echoes paleofuturist ideas of pushbutton living, or even the idea of Holodeck technology from television shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation.[21] The conquest of real space by the motor, as Virilio states, is replaced by the control of real time with the frozen, instantaneous 24/7 access of the network.  Stephen Graham, in his introduction to Third Interval,[22] writes provocatively that the model for the future is that of the online disabled citizen; the paralyzed body that is saturated by endless telematic mobilities. While Virilio takes the critical stance toward this movement, contemporary Covid culture at least seems to be seeing the new teletopia with a more idealistic view.

The metaphor for the online disabled individual, constantly seen and viewed, frozen by the will to access, with neoliberal social media desiring the eyeball’ attention, leaves it to be constantly pointed at the screen, like a contemporary version of the scene from Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.[23] This leaves the McLuhanist individual of the electronic global village in a conundrum of the benefits of immobility, and the instrumentalization by neoliberal capitalism. Having everything you would want from your own Matrix pod is the existential paradox of Zoom-life. The teletopia is the new meme-dream, as long as one accepts its regimes of control and the technical, social and political blind spots that come with it. It is also a site of resistance, as it is neoliberal forces that encourage this effect, and as Sarah Cook suggested, perhaps sleep, managing willful disconnection and social intentionality are the things that will shape the post-Covid culture.  For the time being, the telematic necessity forces humanity’s lifeblood through the funnel of the online telecommunications portal, but the approach to the event horizon of the 86400 second a day attention span event horizon, reconsidering quality of life versus being servile to services begs questions in the time of Covid and the Zoom-time burnout.

References:

[1] Although at the writer’s institution Adobe Connect was discontinued; apparently this was just licensing, but as Adobe’s discontinuation of support for the Flash technology takes place at the end of 2020, the future of the platform is in question.

[2] J.P. Barlow, Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. Davos: Electronic Frontier Foundation. 1996.

[3] Alexander R. Galloway. “Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization” Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004.

[4] Bernd Debusmann. VoIP Services Banned in UAE, Telecoms Warn. ArabianBusiness.com, ArabianBusiness.com, 31 Dec. 2017, www.arabianbusiness.com/technology/386703-voip-services-banned-in-uae-telecoms-warn.

[5] Longo, Robert, William Gibson, Peter M. Hoffman, Don Carmody, Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Takeshi Bīto, Ice-T, Dina Meyer, Denis Akiyama, Henry Rollins, Tracy Tweed, Don Francks, Barbara Sukowa, and William Gibson. Johnny Mnemonic. Culver City, CA: Tri-Star Pictures, 2003.

[6] Christian Von Borries, THE DUBAI IN ME – Rendering the World. Masseundmacht, Film, 2010.

[7] Roger Parloff, Anshe Chung: First Virtual Millionaire. Fortune, Fortune, 27 Nov. 2006, fortune.com/2006/11/27/anshe-chung-first-virtual-millionaire/.

[8] Rather than include one of the endless articles that heralded one of the many gleeful announcements of Second Life’s “demise” (an effect that I attribute to the corporate sector’s bitterness on a failed ROI). included is an article on its persistence. Emanuel Maiberg, “Why Is ‘Second Life’ Still a Thing?, 2020, www.vice.com/en_us/article/z43mwj/why-is-second-life-still-a-thing-gaming-virtual-reality.

[9] Patrick Lichty.  Notes on Control by Patrick Lichty. Arebyte Gallery, 2018, www.arebyte.com/notes-on-control.

[10] Sarah Cook. Sleep Mode Broadcast. Somerset House – Sleep Mode Broadcast, Somerset House , 23 June 2020, www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/sleep-mode-broadcast.

[11] At this time, Event Horizons is currently a set of notes in development on the limits of the leverage of human attention and strategies of resistance.

[12] The Matrix. Village Roadshow, Film, 1999.

[13] Robert Reich. director. Who Rigged the System, 27 June 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_sjfchNsiM.

[14] As an academic who had to adjust to Covid-19 situations abroad, McGregor’s appraisal seems extremely accurate, or even somewhat modest. McGregor, Jena. Remote Work Really Does Mean Longer Days – and More Meetings. The Washington Post, WP Company, 4 Aug. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/04/remote-work-longer-days/.

[15] Constant online interaction has created new classes of pathology, like Isolation Sickness and Zoom Anxiety. Degges-White, Suzanne. Dealing With Zoom Anxiety. Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 13 Apr. 2020, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/lifetime-connections/202004/dealing-zoom-anxiety.

[16] The irony of this is that this quote came from one of the endless processions of online conferences that “Zoom-time” has facilitated, providing almost more insights and information than can be tracked.

[17] Although this quote, coined in the “Construct” scene of “The Matrix” is often attributed to Jean Baudillard in relation to his text, “Simulations and Simulacra”, it is actually the title of a title of Lacanian media theorist, Slavoj Zizek. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Verso Books, 2013.

[18] Paul Virilio, “The Third Interval” The Cybercities Reader, by Stephen Graham, Routledge, 2004.

[19] The notion of spatial collapse through the technological acceleration of the body through the motor in the form of transportation technology the central theme of  Paul Virilio, “The Art of the Motor” University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

[20] While Haymarket Riot is a progressive Southern Rock band founded in the 1980’s by frequent creative partner, sociologist Jon Epstein, during the 1990’s, it changed to an Industrial genre trio with Sam Seawell, in which I created a series critical/tactical theory rock videos that were inserted into American graduate sociology programs as a early tactical media intervention. The quote was included in the first of the “Web” series, “The Voice of World Control” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CIvqdVUH34&list=PLFrQ2uiujisaR7OuJOenh-bU65CbdcOMW&index=6&t=142s

[21]  “Star Trek – The Next Generation, Episode 13: The Big Goodbye. Video, Paramount, January 11, 1988.

[22] Actually, Graham does “The Third Interval” a service in teasing out the notion of the online disabled individual in the introduction, which is only inferred in the original Virilio text.

[23] Stanley Kubrick and Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange. Los Angeles: Warner Bros, 1971.

Biliography:

J.P. Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”. Davos: Electronic Frontier Foundation. 1996.

Sarah Cook, “Sleep Mode Broadcast.” Somerset House – Sleep Mode Broadcast, Somerset House , 23 June 2020, www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/sleep-mode-broadcast.

Bernd Debusmann, “VoIP Services Banned in UAE, Telecoms Warn.” ArabianBusiness.com, ArabianBusiness.com, 31 Dec. 2017, www.arabianbusiness.com/technology/386703-voip-services-banned-in-uae-telecoms-warn

Alexander R. Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004.

Stanley Kubrick and Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange. Los Angeles: Warner Bros, 1971.

Patrick Lichty, “Text: Notes on Control by Patrick Lichty.” Arebyte Gallery, 2018, www.arebyte.com/notes-on-control.

Robert Longo, William Gibson, Peter M. Hoffman, Don Carmody, Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Takeshi Bīto, Ice-T, Dina Meyer, Denis Akiyama, Henry Rollins, Tracy Tweed, Don Francks, Barbara Sukowa, and William Gibson. Johnny Mnemonic. Culver City, CA: Tri-Star Pictures, 2003.

Emanue Maiberg, Why Is ‘Second Life’ Still a Thing?, 2020, www.vice.com/en_us/article/z43mwj/why-is-second-life-still-a-thing-gamling-virtual-reality.

“The Matrix.” Village Roadshow, Film, 1999.

Jena McGregor. “Remote Work Really Does Mean Longer Days – and More Meetings.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 4 Aug. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/04/remote-work-longer-days/.

Roger Parloff,.“Anshe Chung: First Virtual Millionaire.” Fortune, Fortune, 27 Nov. 2006, fortune.com/2006/11/27/anshe-chung-first-virtual-millionaire/.

Robert Reich. Who Rigged the System. Who Rigged The System, 27 June 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_sjfchNsiM.

“Star Trek – The Next Generation, Episode 13: The Big Goodbye. Video, Paramount, January 11, 1988

Paul Virilio, The Art of the Motor, University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

Paul Virilio, Paul. “The Third Interval, .” The Cybercities Reader, by Stephen Graham, Routledge, 2004.

Christian Von Borries. director. THE DUBAI IN ME – Rendering the World. Masseundmacht, Film, 2010.

Slavoj Zizek. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. Verso Books, 2013.

Vulnérabilités, santé et société en Afrique contemporaine. Expériences plurielles

Sous la direction de Bouma Fernand Bationo et Augustin Palé

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Comment, en Afrique francophone, comprendre la vulnérabilité médicale de personnes ou de groupes sociaux au regard de leur genre, de leur âge ou de leur statut socioéconomique? Quelles stratégies déployer pour endiguer les facteurs qui fragilisent la santé et l’accès aux soins de santé des plus vulnérables? L’intérêt des sciences sociales pour la notion de vulnérabilité n’a fait que s’amplifier durant la dernière décennie. Cet ouvrage collectif aborde ce thème en dix contributions d’auteurs et autrices aux profils variés qui, dans leurs travaux de recherche, ont privilégié la parole des patient-e-s et de leurs accompagnant-e-s qui font face à ces vulnérabilités, ainsi que celle du personnel soignant. Les nombreux témoignages permettent de saisir avec plus d’acuité toutes les dimensions non seulement sanitaires, mais également historiques, socioculturelles, économiques, relationnelles, juridiques qui interviennent dans la vulnérabilisation des individus et des populations face aux questions de santé. Les différents chapitres de cet ouvrage apportent des pistes de réflexion et de solution utiles pour les scientifiques et les soignant-e-s préoccupé-e-s par la réduction des inégalités dans l’accès à un droit fondamental : la santé.

ISBN version imprimée : 978-2-924661-78-9
ISBN ePub : 978-2-924661-80-2
ISBN PDF : 978-2-924661-79-6

DOI :

220 pages
Couverture réalisée par Kate McDonnell, photographie de Florence Piron
Date de publication : mai 2020

Table des matières

Préface. La vulnérabilité : un concept émancipatoire ou un vii modèle politique contrôlant?
Maryvonne Charmillot

Introduction – Bouma Fernand Bationo et Augustin Palé

  1. Femmes atteintes du cancer du col de l’utérus et accès aux 5 soins dans la ville de Ouagadougou
    Salifou Zeba
  2. Vulnérabilité sociale et accouchements en milieu 37 hospitalier dans le district sanitaire de Diapaga
    Joseph Bazié et Bouma Fernand Bationo
  3. Soins palliatifs, vulnérabilité d’accès aux soins cliniques et 51 pratiques populaires émergentes au district sanitaire de
    Nouna
    Hamidou Sanou, Moubassira Kagoné, Ilario Rossi, MauriceYé, et Ali Sié
  4. Perception et riposte au VIH chez les personnes âgées 81 dans la ville de Bobo-Dioulasso
    Adjara Millogo, Anselme Sanon, Abdramane Berthé,
    Blahima Konaté, Isidore Tiandiogo Traoré, et Patrice Toé
  5. Don et consommation néonatale du colostrum 95Pratiques, représentations et enjeux de santé publique au Burkina Faso
    Ludovic Ouhonyioué Kibora et Roger Zerbo
  6. Santé et entreprenariat au féminin. Réflexions sur le cas du 115 Burkina FasoMarie-Thérèse Arcens Somé
  7. Expériences associatives dans l’action publique en faveur 133 des populations vulnérables
    Cas des associations African Solidarité et REVS+ au Burkina
    FasoKamba André Soubeiga
  8. La vulnérabilisation des femmes africaines et séropositives 157 en contexte migratoire
    Laura Mellini, Francesca Poglia Mileti, et Michela Villani
  9. Éduquer et soigner avec Kant : la route éducative vers 177 l’humainFatié Ouattara

Les autrices et les auteurs

Résumés en français

Résumés en dioula – Bakurubafɔ

Résumés en moore

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