Library Staff-Presentations & Articles
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Browsing Library Staff-Presentations & Articles by Author "Evans, Woody"
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Item Derechos posthumanos: Dimensiones de los mundos transhumanos(Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2015) Evans, WoodyThere are at least three dimensions to rights. We may have and lack freedom to 1) be, 2) do, and 3) have. These dimensions reformulate Locke’s categories, and are further complicated by placing them within the context of domains such as natural or civil rights. Here the question of the origins of rights is not addressed, but issues concerning how we may contextualize them are discussed. Within the framework developed, this paper makes use of Actor-Network Theory and Enlightenment values to examine the multidimensionality and appropriateness of animal rights and human rights for posthumans. The core position here is that rights may be universal and constant, but they can only be accessed within a matrix of relative cultural dimensions. This will be true for posthumans, and their rights will be relative to human rights and dependent on human and posthuman responsibilities.Item Librarians need global credentials(Library Journal, 2016-04) Evans, WoodyUntil there is a body to take responsibility for reviewing LIS programs globally and granting the strong ones accreditation, a large number of librarians will be banned de facto from participating in our increasingly mobile information age economy.Item The path to government funding(Information Today, 2015-07) Evans, WoodyThe U.S. Department of Education and IES (Institute of Education Sciences) awarded their 2015 Small Business Innovation Research grants to 21 educational startups this spring (ies.ed.gov/ sbir/2015awards.asp). FedScoop reported that this year’s grants will total more than $9 million and cover initiatives in two phases. Phase I grants run for some 6 months and help startups develop prototypes for educational products; Phase II helps them move on to “fully scale their products over two years to be used in classrooms.” Nearly one-fourth of the grantees’ products focus on environment simulations through augmented and virtual realities.Item Review of On Trans-humanism(Science Open, 2022) Evans, WoodyA review of Sorgner's "On Trans-humanism." What to do with transhumanism? And – before we figure out how to categorize it, think about it and make actionable policy decisions with it – how should we define transhumanism? Stefan Lorenz Sorgner asks these questions in "On Trans-humanism" when he examines the idea’s provenance and the pedigree of related ideas. This approach turns out to be, on balance, a productive and useful way into a field that does not yet examine its own roots and relationships often enough. I go on to critique some aspects of his approach, pointing out his lack of attention to posthuman and ecosystemic sensibilities, etc. [This line at the bottom of page 272 was misprinted: "Imagine, instead, that we designate the after-transhuman posthuman as something like ‘post-transhuman’ or ‘posthuman’." It should read: "...as something like ‘post-transhuman’ or ‘posthuman-T’" with a superscript "T" after the second posthuman.]Item The Struggle for Open Mathematics Software(Information Today, Inc., 2015-03) Evans, WoodyGoogle announced in September 2014 that it would be working with SageMath to power the new SageMathCloud. The collaboration throws down a gauntlet against claims of ownership of mathematical truths. Wolfram Research is arguably the world's dominant mathematics software provider. Since its release in 1988, its flagship Mathematica software has become the world's definitive system for modern technical computing, as its own ad verbiage says. Mathematica contains libraries of mathematical functions, computational tools for everything from machine learning to data mining, and even "free-form" inputs for natural English queries. Due to the cost and "closedness" of proprietary software such Mathematica and MATLAB, many "open" mathematics software projects have begun to appear. Beginning in the 1990s, the advent of Berkley Software Distribution licenses have allowed flexibility, general openness, and compatibility with the "General Public License" for many new mathematics software projects.Item Why they won't save us: Political dispositions in the conflicts of superheroes(Organization for Transformative Works, 2014) Evans, WoodyComic book superheroes tend to be conservative and their opponents progressive. Here I explore the reasons for heroic conservatism, review recent disruptions to the trend, and consider what superhuman politics can tell us about our own transhuman and science fictional conditions.