George Cheney, Daniel J. Lair, Dean Ritz, and Brenden E. Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195182774
- eISBN:
- 9780199871001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182774.003.0006
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability
This chapter focuses on the modern organization as a unit of life experience that is taken for granted yet little understood, showing how organizational culture shapes and sustains integrity (or ...
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This chapter focuses on the modern organization as a unit of life experience that is taken for granted yet little understood, showing how organizational culture shapes and sustains integrity (or doesn't). Considering a number of root metaphors for the organization, including machine, organism, person, and family, the chapter looks at the various ways ethics are cast in each case. Reviewing the typical ways that organizations engage ethics, including through codes of ethics, ethics officers, and the movement toward corporate social responsibility, the chapter concludes that all of them are valuable yet limited in scope. By showing how ethics can be woven into the entire fabric of messages and interactions in an organization, the chapter advances a wider perspective on virtue and culture in organizational life.Less
This chapter focuses on the modern organization as a unit of life experience that is taken for granted yet little understood, showing how organizational culture shapes and sustains integrity (or doesn't). Considering a number of root metaphors for the organization, including machine, organism, person, and family, the chapter looks at the various ways ethics are cast in each case. Reviewing the typical ways that organizations engage ethics, including through codes of ethics, ethics officers, and the movement toward corporate social responsibility, the chapter concludes that all of them are valuable yet limited in scope. By showing how ethics can be woven into the entire fabric of messages and interactions in an organization, the chapter advances a wider perspective on virtue and culture in organizational life.
B. Jack Copeland
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780198565932
- eISBN:
- 9780191714016
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198565932.003.0001
- Subject:
- Mathematics, History of Mathematics
This introductory chapter discusses the development of Alan Turing's ‘universal computing machine’, better known as the universal Turing Machine. The earliest large-scale electronic digital ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the development of Alan Turing's ‘universal computing machine’, better known as the universal Turing Machine. The earliest large-scale electronic digital computers, the British Colossus (1943) and American ENIAC (1945), did not store programmes in memory. In 1936, Turing came up with an idea for a machine with limitless memory, in which both data and instructions were to be stored. By 1945, groups in Britain and the US began developing hardware for a universal Turing machine. Turing headed a group at the National Physical Laboratory in London that designed the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), the first relatively complete specification of an electronic stored-programme digital computer.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the development of Alan Turing's ‘universal computing machine’, better known as the universal Turing Machine. The earliest large-scale electronic digital computers, the British Colossus (1943) and American ENIAC (1945), did not store programmes in memory. In 1936, Turing came up with an idea for a machine with limitless memory, in which both data and instructions were to be stored. By 1945, groups in Britain and the US began developing hardware for a universal Turing machine. Turing headed a group at the National Physical Laboratory in London that designed the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), the first relatively complete specification of an electronic stored-programme digital computer.
Robin A. Vowels
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780198565932
- eISBN:
- 9780191714016
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198565932.003.0015
- Subject:
- Mathematics, History of Mathematics
This chapter describes the origins and development of the English Electric DEUCE (Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine), the production machine derived from the ACE Pilot Model. The DEUCE ...
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This chapter describes the origins and development of the English Electric DEUCE (Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine), the production machine derived from the ACE Pilot Model. The DEUCE was an outstanding commercial success due to its high speed, huge programme and subroutine library, fast magnetic drum, enhanced peripheral equipment, and extraordinary reliability. The first DEUCE was installed in early 1955. Most DEUCEs saw a decade of service, and approximately twenty were still operating in 1965, some continuing to the end of the decade.Less
This chapter describes the origins and development of the English Electric DEUCE (Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine), the production machine derived from the ACE Pilot Model. The DEUCE was an outstanding commercial success due to its high speed, huge programme and subroutine library, fast magnetic drum, enhanced peripheral equipment, and extraordinary reliability. The first DEUCE was installed in early 1955. Most DEUCEs saw a decade of service, and approximately twenty were still operating in 1965, some continuing to the end of the decade.
Robert Aunger (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780192632449
- eISBN:
- 9780191670473
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780192632449.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
The publication in 1998 of Susan Blackmore's bestselling The Meme Machine re-awakened the debate over the highly controversial field of memetics. In the past couple of years, there has been an ...
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The publication in 1998 of Susan Blackmore's bestselling The Meme Machine re-awakened the debate over the highly controversial field of memetics. In the past couple of years, there has been an explosion of interest in ‘memes’. The one thing noticeably missing though, has been any kind of proper debate over the validity of a concept regarded by many as scientifically suspect. This book pits intellectuals (both supporters and opponents of meme theory) against each other to battle it out and state their case. With a foreword by Daniel Dennett, and contributions from Dan Sperber, David Hull, Robert Boyd, Susan Blackmore, Henry Plotkin, and others, the result is a debate that will perhaps mark a turning point for the field and for future research.Less
The publication in 1998 of Susan Blackmore's bestselling The Meme Machine re-awakened the debate over the highly controversial field of memetics. In the past couple of years, there has been an explosion of interest in ‘memes’. The one thing noticeably missing though, has been any kind of proper debate over the validity of a concept regarded by many as scientifically suspect. This book pits intellectuals (both supporters and opponents of meme theory) against each other to battle it out and state their case. With a foreword by Daniel Dennett, and contributions from Dan Sperber, David Hull, Robert Boyd, Susan Blackmore, Henry Plotkin, and others, the result is a debate that will perhaps mark a turning point for the field and for future research.
Robert Wyatt and John Andrew Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195327113
- eISBN:
- 9780199851249
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327113.003.0036
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter presents an excerpt from the 1930 book Revolt in the Arts edited by Oliver Saylor, which describes George Gershwin as a composer in the Machine Age. The book suggested that the Machine ...
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This chapter presents an excerpt from the 1930 book Revolt in the Arts edited by Oliver Saylor, which describes George Gershwin as a composer in the Machine Age. The book suggested that the Machine Age and jazz has influenced Gershwin's original creation or work art. This is particularly applicable to his Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris.Less
This chapter presents an excerpt from the 1930 book Revolt in the Arts edited by Oliver Saylor, which describes George Gershwin as a composer in the Machine Age. The book suggested that the Machine Age and jazz has influenced Gershwin's original creation or work art. This is particularly applicable to his Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris.
Nira Wickramasinghe
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691159096
- eISBN:
- 9781400849895
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691159096.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter examines the role of the Singer sewing machine in fashioning a consumer market in colonial Lanka, now known as Sri Lanka. More specifically, it narrates the fashioning of a market ...
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This chapter examines the role of the Singer sewing machine in fashioning a consumer market in colonial Lanka, now known as Sri Lanka. More specifically, it narrates the fashioning of a market imaginary, which indexed modernity as desire installed through the Singer machine. The chapter first provides an overview of the Singer Sewing Machine Company and the market for sewing machines before discussing the company's global expansion. It then considers the Asian market for the Singer sewing machine and the Singer Company's venture in Ceylon/Lanka. It also analyzes the diffusion of the Singer sewing machine in Lanka and the marketing strategies used by Singer in the country. Finally, it explores how the Singer sewing machine intersected with the issue of race and the civilizing mission and how the market imaginary was exposed in circuits of communication such as advertisements, discourses of Sinhalese modern nationalism, and the economy of the machines itself.Less
This chapter examines the role of the Singer sewing machine in fashioning a consumer market in colonial Lanka, now known as Sri Lanka. More specifically, it narrates the fashioning of a market imaginary, which indexed modernity as desire installed through the Singer machine. The chapter first provides an overview of the Singer Sewing Machine Company and the market for sewing machines before discussing the company's global expansion. It then considers the Asian market for the Singer sewing machine and the Singer Company's venture in Ceylon/Lanka. It also analyzes the diffusion of the Singer sewing machine in Lanka and the marketing strategies used by Singer in the country. Finally, it explores how the Singer sewing machine intersected with the issue of race and the civilizing mission and how the market imaginary was exposed in circuits of communication such as advertisements, discourses of Sinhalese modern nationalism, and the economy of the machines itself.
André Nies
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199230761
- eISBN:
- 9780191710988
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230761.003.0002
- Subject:
- Mathematics, Logic / Computer Science / Mathematical Philosophy
This chapter develops the theory of plain Kolmogorov complexity, and then of prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity. A main technical tool for later chapters is the Machine Existence (or Kraft–Chaitin) ...
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This chapter develops the theory of plain Kolmogorov complexity, and then of prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity. A main technical tool for later chapters is the Machine Existence (or Kraft–Chaitin) Theorem. The chapter uses some probability theory to obtain statistical properties of incompressible strings.Less
This chapter develops the theory of plain Kolmogorov complexity, and then of prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity. A main technical tool for later chapters is the Machine Existence (or Kraft–Chaitin) Theorem. The chapter uses some probability theory to obtain statistical properties of incompressible strings.
Kumaraswamy Velupillai
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198295273
- eISBN:
- 9780191596988
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198295278.003.0001
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Macro- and Monetary Economics
The first chapter gives a summary of the methodological and epistemological underpinnings of computable economics. There are, in addition, concise chapter summaries and a brief excursion into a ...
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The first chapter gives a summary of the methodological and epistemological underpinnings of computable economics. There are, in addition, concise chapter summaries and a brief excursion into a discussion of the mathematical method in the formalization of economic theory.Less
The first chapter gives a summary of the methodological and epistemological underpinnings of computable economics. There are, in addition, concise chapter summaries and a brief excursion into a discussion of the mathematical method in the formalization of economic theory.
J.T. Ismael
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195174366
- eISBN:
- 9780199872121
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195174366.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter begins with a discussion of Dennett's view of self-representation. It introduces the so-called “Joycean Machine”, special narrative module in the brain charged with production of an ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of Dennett's view of self-representation. It introduces the so-called “Joycean Machine”, special narrative module in the brain charged with production of an autobiography. It is argued that the synchronic unity of the thinking subject is the unity of voice and agency wrought by the unifying activity of the Joycean Machine. In dynamical terms, the collective voice can have a causal role. Turned outward, it can mediate the communication between systems, allowing them to act as unified agents in interaction with one another. Turned inward, it can govern the activity of the components.Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of Dennett's view of self-representation. It introduces the so-called “Joycean Machine”, special narrative module in the brain charged with production of an autobiography. It is argued that the synchronic unity of the thinking subject is the unity of voice and agency wrought by the unifying activity of the Joycean Machine. In dynamical terms, the collective voice can have a causal role. Turned outward, it can mediate the communication between systems, allowing them to act as unified agents in interaction with one another. Turned inward, it can govern the activity of the components.
Arlindo Oliveira
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262036030
- eISBN:
- 9780262338394
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036030.001.0001
- Subject:
- Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
This book addresses the connections between computers, life, evolution, brains, and minds. Digital computers are recent and have changed our society. However, they represent just the latest way to ...
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This book addresses the connections between computers, life, evolution, brains, and minds. Digital computers are recent and have changed our society. However, they represent just the latest way to process information, using algorithms to create order out of chaos. Before computers, the job of processing information was done by living organisms, which are nothing more than complex information processing devices, shaped by billions of years of evolution. The most advanced of these information processing devices is the human brain. Brains enable humans to process information in a way unparalleled by any other species, living or extinct, or by any existing machine. They provide humans with intelligence, consciousness and, some believe, even with a soul. Brains also enabled humans to develop science and technology to a point where it is possible to design computers with a power comparable to that of the human brain. Machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies will one day make it possible to create intelligent machines and computational biology will one day enable us to model, simulate, and understand biological systems and even complete brains, with unprecedented levels of detail. From these efforts, new minds will eventually emerge, minds that will emanate from the execution of programs running in powerful computers. These digital minds may one day rival our own, become our partners, and replace humans in many tasks. They may usher in a technological singularity, may make humans obsolete or even a threatened species. They make us super-humans or demi-gods.Less
This book addresses the connections between computers, life, evolution, brains, and minds. Digital computers are recent and have changed our society. However, they represent just the latest way to process information, using algorithms to create order out of chaos. Before computers, the job of processing information was done by living organisms, which are nothing more than complex information processing devices, shaped by billions of years of evolution. The most advanced of these information processing devices is the human brain. Brains enable humans to process information in a way unparalleled by any other species, living or extinct, or by any existing machine. They provide humans with intelligence, consciousness and, some believe, even with a soul. Brains also enabled humans to develop science and technology to a point where it is possible to design computers with a power comparable to that of the human brain. Machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies will one day make it possible to create intelligent machines and computational biology will one day enable us to model, simulate, and understand biological systems and even complete brains, with unprecedented levels of detail. From these efforts, new minds will eventually emerge, minds that will emanate from the execution of programs running in powerful computers. These digital minds may one day rival our own, become our partners, and replace humans in many tasks. They may usher in a technological singularity, may make humans obsolete or even a threatened species. They make us super-humans or demi-gods.
Michael Fisch
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226558417
- eISBN:
- 9780226558691
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226558691.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network is an exploration of collective life formed at the interstices of human and machine operation within one of the most complex and ...
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Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network is an exploration of collective life formed at the interstices of human and machine operation within one of the most complex and large-scale technical infrastructures in the world. Adopting a simultaneous critical and optimistic approach, it is an attempt to think with the specific quality of relations formed within Tokyo’s commuter rail infrastructure in order to develop a mode of analysis adequate to the technological complexity of contemporary society and to explore emergent ontologies of human and machine co-constitution. In so doing, it draws attention not only to Tokyo’s commuter train network’s infamously packed trains and precision schedule but more importantly its operation at the extreme edge of sustainability beyond its structural capacity. Such a system, it posits, embodies the contradictory and unsustainable logic defining our contemporary relationship with technology. At the same time, through a theoretically novel approach that emphasizes the generative gaps within the network’s immersive mediation, Anthropology of the Machine advances Tokyo’s commuter train network as a unique setting through which to question received discourses on technology and to re-conceptualize the human relationship with machines toward a more sustainable future.Less
Anthropology of the Machine: Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network is an exploration of collective life formed at the interstices of human and machine operation within one of the most complex and large-scale technical infrastructures in the world. Adopting a simultaneous critical and optimistic approach, it is an attempt to think with the specific quality of relations formed within Tokyo’s commuter rail infrastructure in order to develop a mode of analysis adequate to the technological complexity of contemporary society and to explore emergent ontologies of human and machine co-constitution. In so doing, it draws attention not only to Tokyo’s commuter train network’s infamously packed trains and precision schedule but more importantly its operation at the extreme edge of sustainability beyond its structural capacity. Such a system, it posits, embodies the contradictory and unsustainable logic defining our contemporary relationship with technology. At the same time, through a theoretically novel approach that emphasizes the generative gaps within the network’s immersive mediation, Anthropology of the Machine advances Tokyo’s commuter train network as a unique setting through which to question received discourses on technology and to re-conceptualize the human relationship with machines toward a more sustainable future.
Mark Coeckelbergh
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035460
- eISBN:
- 9780262343084
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035460.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Most people assume that technology and romanticism are opposed. They share this assumption with many contemporary philosophers of technology, who tend to reduce romanticism to nostalgia. This book ...
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Most people assume that technology and romanticism are opposed. They share this assumption with many contemporary philosophers of technology, who tend to reduce romanticism to nostalgia. This book questions these assumptions and shows that the relation between romanticism and technology is much more complex.
For this purpose it delves into the history of technology and thinking about technology, from the early Romantics to hippie computing and today’s romantic cyborgs. The book updates the literature on technoromanticism, but also raises a new question: it seems that as machines become more human-like and informational, they disappear from view or merge with the human. Do we witness the end of the machine?
The author then discusses criticisms of romanticism and of “the end of the machine” vision he constructed. Yet the author avoids a simplistic rejection or defence of technoromantic visions; when it comes to understanding technology, the romantic tradition is more ambiguous and also more resourceful that we might suppose.
The book ends with the question if and how we could ever move beyond romanticism and beyond machine thinking. It turns out that, given the persistence of our modern-romantic form of life including language and technologies, the end of the machine is not even in sight. In the meantime, we have to live with our romantic machines, with our new cyborgs. That is, we have to live with ourselves as cyborgs: living meetings, mergers, and hybrids of romanticism and technology.Less
Most people assume that technology and romanticism are opposed. They share this assumption with many contemporary philosophers of technology, who tend to reduce romanticism to nostalgia. This book questions these assumptions and shows that the relation between romanticism and technology is much more complex.
For this purpose it delves into the history of technology and thinking about technology, from the early Romantics to hippie computing and today’s romantic cyborgs. The book updates the literature on technoromanticism, but also raises a new question: it seems that as machines become more human-like and informational, they disappear from view or merge with the human. Do we witness the end of the machine?
The author then discusses criticisms of romanticism and of “the end of the machine” vision he constructed. Yet the author avoids a simplistic rejection or defence of technoromantic visions; when it comes to understanding technology, the romantic tradition is more ambiguous and also more resourceful that we might suppose.
The book ends with the question if and how we could ever move beyond romanticism and beyond machine thinking. It turns out that, given the persistence of our modern-romantic form of life including language and technologies, the end of the machine is not even in sight. In the meantime, we have to live with our romantic machines, with our new cyborgs. That is, we have to live with ourselves as cyborgs: living meetings, mergers, and hybrids of romanticism and technology.
Carol J. Oja
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195058499
- eISBN:
- 9780199865031
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195058499.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
New York City witnessed a burst of creativity in the 1920s. This artistic renaissance is examined from the perspective of composers of classical and modern music who, along with writers, painters, ...
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New York City witnessed a burst of creativity in the 1920s. This artistic renaissance is examined from the perspective of composers of classical and modern music who, along with writers, painters, and jazz musicians, were at the heart of early modernism in America. The book also illustrates how the aesthetic attitudes and institutional structures from the 1920s left a deep imprint on the arts over the 20th century. Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Virgil Thomson, William Grant Still, Edgard Varèse, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, Marion Bauer, and Dane Rudhyar were the leaders of a talented new generation of American composers whose efforts made New York City the center of new music in the country. They founded composer societies—such as the International Composers' Guild, the League of Composers, the Pan American Association, and the Copland-Sessions Concerts—to promote the performance of their music, and nimbly negotiated cultural boundaries, aiming for recognition in Western Europe as much as at home. This book provides a new perspective on the period and a compelling collective portrait of the figures, puncturing many longstanding myths. American composers active in New York during the 1920s are explored in relation to the “Machine Age” and American Dada; the impact of spirituality on American dissonance; the crucial, behind-the-scenes role of women as patrons and promoters of modernist music; cross-currents between jazz and concert music; the critical reception of modernist music (especially in the writings of Carl Van Vechten and Paul Rosenfeld); and the international impulse behind neoclassicism. The book also examines the persistent biases of the time, particularly anti-Semitism, gender stereotyping, and longstanding racial attitudes.Less
New York City witnessed a burst of creativity in the 1920s. This artistic renaissance is examined from the perspective of composers of classical and modern music who, along with writers, painters, and jazz musicians, were at the heart of early modernism in America. The book also illustrates how the aesthetic attitudes and institutional structures from the 1920s left a deep imprint on the arts over the 20th century. Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Virgil Thomson, William Grant Still, Edgard Varèse, Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, Marion Bauer, and Dane Rudhyar were the leaders of a talented new generation of American composers whose efforts made New York City the center of new music in the country. They founded composer societies—such as the International Composers' Guild, the League of Composers, the Pan American Association, and the Copland-Sessions Concerts—to promote the performance of their music, and nimbly negotiated cultural boundaries, aiming for recognition in Western Europe as much as at home. This book provides a new perspective on the period and a compelling collective portrait of the figures, puncturing many longstanding myths. American composers active in New York during the 1920s are explored in relation to the “Machine Age” and American Dada; the impact of spirituality on American dissonance; the crucial, behind-the-scenes role of women as patrons and promoters of modernist music; cross-currents between jazz and concert music; the critical reception of modernist music (especially in the writings of Carl Van Vechten and Paul Rosenfeld); and the international impulse behind neoclassicism. The book also examines the persistent biases of the time, particularly anti-Semitism, gender stereotyping, and longstanding racial attitudes.
Carlton Jackson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813161051
- eISBN:
- 9780813165516
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813161051.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Military History
Colonel George M. Chinn, born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in 1902, grew up with a fondness for guns. After attending Millersburg Military Institute, he played football for Centre College. He spent his ...
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Colonel George M. Chinn, born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in 1902, grew up with a fondness for guns. After attending Millersburg Military Institute, he played football for Centre College. He spent his next few years coaching football at various colleges, including a successful run at Catawba College. He soon returned to Kentucky to open Chinn’s Cave House, a bar/gas station/business that was very successful during Prohibition. He also worked in Frankfort, becoming well known to many members of the government. Too old and too overweight, he nonetheless joined the Marines for World War II and became renowned as a military weapons expert, eventually authoring the definitive work The Machine Gun. While he had never received formal training in either weapons or engineering, he is best known today for his work with military weapons. When in Kentucky and not around the country (or out of it) advising on the engineering and repair of military weapons, he became director of the Kentucky Historical Society, despite vitriolic conflicts with “professional” historian Dr. Thomas D. Clark. A noted historian nonetheless, Chinn used his later years to write several books and lead the KHS. He continued in a consulting role for the military before his death in 1987.Less
Colonel George M. Chinn, born in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in 1902, grew up with a fondness for guns. After attending Millersburg Military Institute, he played football for Centre College. He spent his next few years coaching football at various colleges, including a successful run at Catawba College. He soon returned to Kentucky to open Chinn’s Cave House, a bar/gas station/business that was very successful during Prohibition. He also worked in Frankfort, becoming well known to many members of the government. Too old and too overweight, he nonetheless joined the Marines for World War II and became renowned as a military weapons expert, eventually authoring the definitive work The Machine Gun. While he had never received formal training in either weapons or engineering, he is best known today for his work with military weapons. When in Kentucky and not around the country (or out of it) advising on the engineering and repair of military weapons, he became director of the Kentucky Historical Society, despite vitriolic conflicts with “professional” historian Dr. Thomas D. Clark. A noted historian nonetheless, Chinn used his later years to write several books and lead the KHS. He continued in a consulting role for the military before his death in 1987.
Chris Baldick
- Published in print:
- 1990
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122494
- eISBN:
- 9780191671432
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122494.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
For Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth century was to be defined not just as the Machine Age—as if technology were the end of the problem—but more fully as a Galvanic World in which the inward sanctuary ...
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For Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth century was to be defined not just as the Machine Age—as if technology were the end of the problem—but more fully as a Galvanic World in which the inward sanctuary of organic human authenticity has been abandoned to the rule of the corpse. The galvanic world is ushered in by the greatest ever convulsion of the body politic—the French Revolution, in which Sansculottism leads a disturbed ‘galvanic-life’, while in the movements of the counter-revolution, the dead Church ‘is not allowed to lie dead; no, it is galvanized into the detestablest death-life’. Carlyle's galvanic metaphor is employed consistently to contrast the faithless society with the organic order inspired by transcendental truths. Of this galvanic wasteland, Charles Dickens is the Dantean poet. Those tics and mannerisms that mark so many of his characters are symptoms of Carlyle's galvanic world being absorbed into Dickens's morbid humour, his distinctive melancholy of anatomy.Less
For Thomas Carlyle, the nineteenth century was to be defined not just as the Machine Age—as if technology were the end of the problem—but more fully as a Galvanic World in which the inward sanctuary of organic human authenticity has been abandoned to the rule of the corpse. The galvanic world is ushered in by the greatest ever convulsion of the body politic—the French Revolution, in which Sansculottism leads a disturbed ‘galvanic-life’, while in the movements of the counter-revolution, the dead Church ‘is not allowed to lie dead; no, it is galvanized into the detestablest death-life’. Carlyle's galvanic metaphor is employed consistently to contrast the faithless society with the organic order inspired by transcendental truths. Of this galvanic wasteland, Charles Dickens is the Dantean poet. Those tics and mannerisms that mark so many of his characters are symptoms of Carlyle's galvanic world being absorbed into Dickens's morbid humour, his distinctive melancholy of anatomy.
Carol J. Oja
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195058499
- eISBN:
- 9780199865031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195058499.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Leo Ornstein and Edgard Varèse began imagining the dimensions of American modernism during the 1910s. But on the whole, the 20th century dawned for American composers in the 1920s. This was a decade ...
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Leo Ornstein and Edgard Varèse began imagining the dimensions of American modernism during the 1910s. But on the whole, the 20th century dawned for American composers in the 1920s. This was a decade when iconoclastic ideas blasted through hallowed traditions, with machines often providing the horsepower to do so. The decade quickly became known as the “Machine Age”—a rubric that in a broader sense has been used to cover the entire interwar period. For modernist composers in the United States, the machine had two powerful manifestations: it yielded new sound sources, and it provided new means of preserving and transmitting performances. One important facet of the machine movement in modernist music was the invention of new musical instruments. In New York City, these instruments were the Theremin, the Clavilux, the Crea-tone, the Vitaphone, and the Martenot. By no means a circumscribed movement that yielded a few art works and then ended, the machine aesthetic projected outward like a beam of light, illuminating future potential and suggesting unexplored aesthetic territory.Less
Leo Ornstein and Edgard Varèse began imagining the dimensions of American modernism during the 1910s. But on the whole, the 20th century dawned for American composers in the 1920s. This was a decade when iconoclastic ideas blasted through hallowed traditions, with machines often providing the horsepower to do so. The decade quickly became known as the “Machine Age”—a rubric that in a broader sense has been used to cover the entire interwar period. For modernist composers in the United States, the machine had two powerful manifestations: it yielded new sound sources, and it provided new means of preserving and transmitting performances. One important facet of the machine movement in modernist music was the invention of new musical instruments. In New York City, these instruments were the Theremin, the Clavilux, the Crea-tone, the Vitaphone, and the Martenot. By no means a circumscribed movement that yielded a few art works and then ended, the machine aesthetic projected outward like a beam of light, illuminating future potential and suggesting unexplored aesthetic territory.
Bruce Vermazen
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195372182
- eISBN:
- 9780199864140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372182.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
In October 1914, the Six Brown Brothers were given a featured spot in Chin Chin, a Broadway musical produced by C. B. Dillingham and starring Fred Stone and David Montgomery. Theresa Valerio danced ...
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In October 1914, the Six Brown Brothers were given a featured spot in Chin Chin, a Broadway musical produced by C. B. Dillingham and starring Fred Stone and David Montgomery. Theresa Valerio danced in the chorus. Chin Chin lasted until December 1915 in New York, then toured the United States until April 1917, when Montgomery died. Because of their appearance in the show, the Brown Brothers became more famous and resumed their recording career, this time with the Victor Talking Machine Company. In 1916, F. Henri Klickmann became their chief arranger. This chapter describes the prior careers of Montgomery and Stone, Chin Chin, the Brown Brothers' first Victor records, and the growth of the Brown Brothers' fame. For this show, five Brown Brothers began wearing Pierrot clown costumes, a trademark of the act until its dissolution, while Tom continued to work in blackface.Less
In October 1914, the Six Brown Brothers were given a featured spot in Chin Chin, a Broadway musical produced by C. B. Dillingham and starring Fred Stone and David Montgomery. Theresa Valerio danced in the chorus. Chin Chin lasted until December 1915 in New York, then toured the United States until April 1917, when Montgomery died. Because of their appearance in the show, the Brown Brothers became more famous and resumed their recording career, this time with the Victor Talking Machine Company. In 1916, F. Henri Klickmann became their chief arranger. This chapter describes the prior careers of Montgomery and Stone, Chin Chin, the Brown Brothers' first Victor records, and the growth of the Brown Brothers' fame. For this show, five Brown Brothers began wearing Pierrot clown costumes, a trademark of the act until its dissolution, while Tom continued to work in blackface.
Lappi Otto and Anna‐Mari Rusanen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199574131
- eISBN:
- 9780191728921
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574131.003.0011
- Subject:
- Mathematics, Logic / Computer Science / Mathematical Philosophy
A body of recent literature has proposed that explanation in neurosciences, including cognitive neuroscience, is mechanistic. It has also been argued that the mechanistic model could be extended to ...
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A body of recent literature has proposed that explanation in neurosciences, including cognitive neuroscience, is mechanistic. It has also been argued that the mechanistic model could be extended to cover explanations in computer sciences and cognitive sciences. Mechanistic explanation as standardly conceived is a form of causal explanation, and it requires that the explanatory mechanisms are concrete, implemented mechanisms. However, ‘computing mechanisms’ can mean two things. On the one hand, it can refer to concrete — causal — computing mechanisms, such as brains (ex hypothesi) or man‐made computers, etc. On the other hand, it can also refer to abstract computing mechanisms such as abstract Turing machines. Therefore, the notion of computation can be used in cognitive science in at least two ways. Since there are computational explanations, in which Turing machines are considered as abstract mechanisms, the current formulation of mechanistic explanation does not cover those explanations.Less
A body of recent literature has proposed that explanation in neurosciences, including cognitive neuroscience, is mechanistic. It has also been argued that the mechanistic model could be extended to cover explanations in computer sciences and cognitive sciences. Mechanistic explanation as standardly conceived is a form of causal explanation, and it requires that the explanatory mechanisms are concrete, implemented mechanisms. However, ‘computing mechanisms’ can mean two things. On the one hand, it can refer to concrete — causal — computing mechanisms, such as brains (ex hypothesi) or man‐made computers, etc. On the other hand, it can also refer to abstract computing mechanisms such as abstract Turing machines. Therefore, the notion of computation can be used in cognitive science in at least two ways. Since there are computational explanations, in which Turing machines are considered as abstract mechanisms, the current formulation of mechanistic explanation does not cover those explanations.
Antonio Torralba and Adolfo Plasencia
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036016
- eISBN:
- 9780262339308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036016.003.0027
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
Antonio Torralba, member of MIT CSAIL, opens the dialogue by describing the research he performs in the field of computer vision and related artificial intelligence (AI). He also compares the ...
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Antonio Torralba, member of MIT CSAIL, opens the dialogue by describing the research he performs in the field of computer vision and related artificial intelligence (AI). He also compares the conceptual differences and the context of the early days of artificial intelligence—where hardly any image recording devices existed—with the present situation, in which an enormous amount of data is available. Next, through the use of examples, he talks about the huge complexity faced by research in computer vision to get computers and machines to understand the meanings of what they “see” in the scenes, and the objects they contain, by means of digital cameras. As he explains afterward, the challenge of this complexity for computer vision processing is particularly noticeable in settings involving robots, or driverless cars, where it makes no sense to develop vision systems that can see if they cannot learn. Later he argues why today’s computer systems have to learn “to see” because if there is no learning process, for example machine learning, they will never be able to make autonomous decisions.Less
Antonio Torralba, member of MIT CSAIL, opens the dialogue by describing the research he performs in the field of computer vision and related artificial intelligence (AI). He also compares the conceptual differences and the context of the early days of artificial intelligence—where hardly any image recording devices existed—with the present situation, in which an enormous amount of data is available. Next, through the use of examples, he talks about the huge complexity faced by research in computer vision to get computers and machines to understand the meanings of what they “see” in the scenes, and the objects they contain, by means of digital cameras. As he explains afterward, the challenge of this complexity for computer vision processing is particularly noticeable in settings involving robots, or driverless cars, where it makes no sense to develop vision systems that can see if they cannot learn. Later he argues why today’s computer systems have to learn “to see” because if there is no learning process, for example machine learning, they will never be able to make autonomous decisions.
William Howland Kenney
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195171778
- eISBN:
- 9780199849789
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171778.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The history of the phonograph clearly demonstrates important ways in which economic and cultural forces have shaped technological inventions in the world. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first ...
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The history of the phonograph clearly demonstrates important ways in which economic and cultural forces have shaped technological inventions in the world. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first functioning prototype of the phonograph, but others subsequently patented major improvements and, in the process, reinvented and reconstructed the phonograph and means of recording sound. In some ways, phonograph technology did determine the broad outlines of sound recording from the popular music in the 1890s to opera in the 1910s. All of the great pioneers of the phonograph industry—Thomas A. Edison; Emile Berliner, inventor of the flat disc; Edward Easton; and Eldridge Reeves Johnson, founder and director of the Victor Talking Machine Company—agreed that their invention should become a permanent part of every American home. The Victor Talking Machine Company reinforced the upper and middle levels of an American musical hierarchy in recorded music. This aesthetic stance influenced the initial desire to make records abroad and the subsequent program of recording within the United States for sale to this country's immigrants.Less
The history of the phonograph clearly demonstrates important ways in which economic and cultural forces have shaped technological inventions in the world. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the first functioning prototype of the phonograph, but others subsequently patented major improvements and, in the process, reinvented and reconstructed the phonograph and means of recording sound. In some ways, phonograph technology did determine the broad outlines of sound recording from the popular music in the 1890s to opera in the 1910s. All of the great pioneers of the phonograph industry—Thomas A. Edison; Emile Berliner, inventor of the flat disc; Edward Easton; and Eldridge Reeves Johnson, founder and director of the Victor Talking Machine Company—agreed that their invention should become a permanent part of every American home. The Victor Talking Machine Company reinforced the upper and middle levels of an American musical hierarchy in recorded music. This aesthetic stance influenced the initial desire to make records abroad and the subsequent program of recording within the United States for sale to this country's immigrants.
