Serious Games; Nature Happens
Beal researchers contributed their thoughts and ideas to a collective presentation on serious games, including guest contributions. (Contact: )
Research Associate Isabelle Rousset presented an update to her project Nature Happens in preparation for the Digifest 2008 conference.
As water levels continue to fluctuate across the globe, escalating and depreciating beyond comfortable margins of predictability or what the market will bear, the specter of our activity comes into sharp focus under the glare-free scope of a precision instrument - human cognition. Isabelle Rousset will deliver an update to the project Nature Happens in view of upcoming digifest participation at the end of March. This installment will attempt to draw the necessary connections to unify a body of research, scenarios, disclosures and opportunities determined.
Research Associate Annie Spencer introduced thoughts from her paper Imagining a Spiritual Economy: Corporate Response-Ability.
Spencer's research looks at current cultural signals alongside present thinking patterns around fuel consumption, while visualizing a future in which the shift towards spiritual embodiment of our world's most controversial resource, and a legacy-based economic model, support holistic sustainability from the bottom up. Scaling this ideology imposes new meaning on the term corporate responsibility, increasing the ability for companies to respond to the environment without massive disruption.
Spiritual Economy; Asymmetrical Literacy
Beal researchers contributed their thoughts and ideas to a collective presentation on the Spiritual Economy, a project currently being explored by research associate Annie Spencer. Guest contributions are welcome and
help with capstone project in the field of spiritual economy research is also welcome.
Research Associates Mathew Lincez and Richard Thomas introduced Asymmetrical Literacy, an investigation into the evolution of literacy; its functions, meanings and roles in empowering imagination and creative potential.
This investigation further seeks to understand how conventional, traditional, and otherwise symmetrical conditions can be observed, understood and transformed into disruptive, unconventional, and asymmetrical opportunities for innovation.
Innovation and Sustainability
Beal researchers contributed their thoughts and ideas to a collective presentation on Innovation and Sustainability. (Contact: )
Research Associate Jenn Court introduced her MES major paper research project, called Innovation and Sustainability: Design, Progress, and Technology. In this project she addresses the role of design within the larger context of society and the economy, and explores innovative and forward looking approaches to sustainable design.
Research Associate Mark Outhwaite presented an overview of his paper entitled Science, Industry and Human Nature in the Anthropocene:
"If a certain element of the danger that exists in the world is a byproduct of human ingenuity and engineering, does it ever occur to ask whether human nature, especially in relation to our use of science and technology is something that should be actively shaped?"
With the existential threat of a post-biological future in which humankind and many of the Earth's complex lifeforms are either extinct or in irreversible decline, circumstances relating the actions of industrial civilization to its unfolding consequences now indicate that a transition between geological epochs is apparently close at hand.
If the 'anthropocene' is a veritable byproduct of industrialization, it portends a need on our part to effect a transition in our use of science and technology. First, as a means of redacting some of the errors that a minority of humankind have written into the world. Second, to question the social construction of the human body as a thing possessing a sacred, inviolable nature. If emerging fields in science and technology indicate that synthetic biology is a way forward, the effect may be to 'pull' human evolution along this path also, so that the 'part' of which an individual is representative is indissociable from the 'whole' of ecosystems, industries and economies comprising future models for sustainable human habitation, production and organization. The conception of the body may be the first casualty in our efforts to live and survive in the 'anthropocene.'
Chief Scientist Dr. Robert Logan on "What is Information?"
Show & Tell featured Robert Logan presenting "What is Information?, What is Life? and How are They Connected?: BioInformatics 2.0", an exploration of the nature of all living organisms.
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