Archive for semantics
February 26, 2010 at 12:06 pm · Filed under bioinformatics, community interaction design, cybernetics, design ecology, energy, heterarchy, interaction, semantics
After writing yesterday’s post on psychology and climate change, I stumbled upon this article from the journal Ecological Economics entitled, “The art of the cognitive war to save the planet”.
The article details the proposition that our adaptive capacity–to respond to environmental feedback–to learn–is structured by the double bind, a concept coined by Gregory Bateson. A double bind is when an individual receives conflicting messages (intransitivity of preferences?) that disallows action on their part because responding to either message means being in conflict with the other. Wikipedia has a more detailed description here, but Bateson’s articulation of the concept can be found in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (2000, University of Chicago Press).
The author’s argument is that sustainability, or human-environment interactions that respond dynamically to each other, is constrained because beliefs about oneself and the community are increasingly biased towards individual level sustainability for two reasons. First, individual safety is increasingly linked to individual performance. Second, alienation from environmental feedback loops means that an amplification of uncertainty is taking place resulting many more belief ‘nodes’ about systems level relationships. This amplification results in greater propensity for conflict to develop between an individual’s assessment of the environment/system and their own well-being.
The task they outline is manifold–having many forms and elements. It means developing a shared cognitive base from which to develop mental models for collective action. The goal of a shared cognitive base is to help connect system level safety ideals to individual level belief nodes They argue that to do this requires “simple messages with the potential to shape individual belief systems”. Excessive information is to be avoided, while everyone should have access to the building blocks of conceptual blends that synthesize complex information.
The authors, Antal and Hukkinen, argue that more direct and influential injunctions should be exchanged to help reframe the context towards systems-individual linkages–not just individual. Thus an injunction, “Become a vegetarian” becomes the positive injunctive norm, “Become a vegetarian to maintain the status quo” and then makes more sense in terms of promoting sustainable behavior when coupled with a positive injunctive future norm, “Become a vegetarian so our civilization can survive.” This tactic seems similar to one described in the book Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein, Penguin Books, 2009) where they describe some forms of social nudges based on experiments in judgment and decision making.
Thaler and Sunstein describe how some forms of social nudges unfold. These include:
- Increasing compliance when one is informed that others are complying–i.e. drawing public attention to what others are doing.
- Emphasize the positive injunctive norm encourages behavior that helps maintain the commons. (e.g. “Please don’t do this in order to keep it this way.”)
- Show what the norm actually is, as opposed the the perceived norm.
- Small encouragements or discouragements can maintain or induce new norms.
The example of the positive injunctive norm seems to be what Antal and Hukkinen are advocating, but with a touch more bite.
Their case lies in creating cognitively accessible links between systems status and individual experience. An example of this might be an electricity brownout linked to CO2 accumulation or perhaps a full blackout each time species diversity is degraded.
Their conclusion that ICT services are needed to help these links form is predictable. Systems like smart grids, early warning systems, and other membership and signaling tools are appropriate, but the burning question is how to implement them in society where the tools themselves do not reflect the normative values.
One scenario I had after reading this is a case where an electrical power generation company that is responsible for supplying the city creates more direct informational links with its consumers. Neighborhoods in the city already experience frequent and irregular cuts in supply. Engineers, particularly in energy, tend to focus on maintaining supply based on certain assumptions. Sometimes we don’t always know what those assumptions are. Smart grids have been identified as a solution bridging consumption and supply (albeit from a supply perspective), but what if there was a more jugaad solution?
I am hereby coining the term Ener-geets™ to describe a form of information transfer between energy consumers and energy suppliers. Let’s say consumption is pretty high. It’s hot. Everyone has fans running, AND the big cricket match is on. Power suppliers have decisions to make in order to maintain a consistent supply, but what if they could provide realtime feedback to their customers that threshold levels were being reached and if their behavior didn’t change, they might loose the ability to follow the cricket match to its conclusion.
Cut the normal means of feedback out for the time being (an energy bill or brownout) and allow the power operator to send a message, perhaps in the form a tweet (from Twitter), to everyone following those tweets. Potential overshoots to the grid capacity could be avoided. But then, this would go against established channels of information flow and place a great deal of responsibility in the power operator’s hands–er..mobile phone.
To connect the feedback loop, individual consumers could also be sending messages, informing of power cuts, potential spikes in use (a festival perhaps), or other changes or observations about consumption at the individual level.
You start to get the picture. Now, how do w do it?
Ref: Miklos Antal, Janne I. Hukkinen, The art of the cognitive war to save the planet, Ecological Economics, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 3 February 2010, ISSN 0921-8009, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.01.002.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VDY-4Y9HP0Y-2/2/8effb7b70d90787bc2250323ffeef134)
Keywords: Human-environment interaction; Belief systems; Environmental strategy; Climate change communication; Cognitive studies
February 3, 2010 at 9:59 am · Filed under critical theory, interdisciplinary, making it public, narration, science, semantics, teaching and learning
There is a fantastic series of podcasts produced by the CBC a few years back. The podcasts interviews many noted historians, philosophers, sociologists, and scientists to help distill what science is, how it’s claims to knowledge and facts are produced, and what many of the critical themes and questions are that science has to wrestle with including objectivity, fallacies of “historicity-turned-relativism”, and others.
Many influential authors contribute including: Richard Lewontin, Peter Gallison, Lorraine Daston, Steven Shapin, Bruno Latour, and James Lovelock..among many others.
You can download all the podcasts here:
http://castroller.com/podcasts/inrecentyears?page=1
July 25, 2008 at 8:04 pm · Filed under cognitive justice, community interaction design, critical theory, evolution, metaphors, semantics
I’m picky when it comes to using metaphors. They reveal so much about the biases and commitments that underscore our thinking and, more importantly, how that thinking gets translated into physical manifestations and action.
Cathy Davidson at HASTAC has written a sharp brief on the use of the word ‘selection’ as it pertains to evolution and natural selection. She writes,
Having spent a day pulling book after book after book off my shelf, and looking at the proforma and obligatory evolutionary argument that almost inevitably comes in the final chapter of an otherwise careful description and discussion of brain functionality, I am convinced that the word “selection” has a lot to answer for.
The point she makes in the article is that the use of the word selection is directly linked to ideology. I think she is right here, and it should have been incumbent on the evolutionary biology community to recognize this and have proffered a solution early in its history. My fear is that, to do so, would be seen as a mocking retort to creationists that so recently cloaked their arguments in the guise of intelligent design. Well, maybe that a good thing.
Expanding on the relationship of the selection metaphor and its connection to ideology, Margret Evans, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, studies some of the ways that children, potential users of evolution, acquire evolutionist and creationist beliefs. Evans describes how Western religious and philosophical traditions emphasize essentialism, teleology, and intention, and in the process limit the cognitive appeal of natural explanations for the origins of species. She argues that because these ideas tend to show up repeatedly in public representations, they constrain the inferential reasoning capacities of the developing mind. It’s an observation that suggests science’s own predilection for categorization is at the root of evolutionary biology’s social friction.
Maybe we ought to have namethis.com come up with a new term.
November 28, 2007 at 12:32 am · Filed under biotechnology, genes, genomics, semantics
“Genetics Just Got Personal” is the new tagline for 23andme, a new start-up that aims to take people’s saliva samples, genotype them, and make their genetic “plot points” accessible and searchable. Individuals can compare their single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to identify ancestral locations, compare them with celebrities, and see what diseases are associated with these SNPs. If an entire family submits their samples for testing, each of them can compare themselves to each of their family members. 
In 23andme’s letter to the medical community, they state that “the information [23andme service] provides is tailored to genotypes, not to individuals”.
It’s surprising then, given the history of genetics, that 23andme decided to use the “Genetics Just Got Personal” tagline. When someone says that something just got personal, it usually points to conflict, and that a specific individual, rather than a group, stands to loose as a result. Likewise, when someone says it’s not personal, it often refers to some effect that has had an asymmetrical effect on an individual even though it was not directly intended for them. The 23andme tagline sounds like something Arnold Shartzeneggar would say. It does sound tough and too the point, but it also raises suspicions about what getting personal means. Does this mean that my SNPs, which were previously unknown to me, will enter the forefront of my individual decision-making and social interactions? Will it become a part of the design ecology that other will consider when making medicines, devices, or services?
If genetic information does enter our everyday decision-making processes, a central concern is how that information is conveyed and how the information design biases or constrains the decisions we make. Given that 23andme is providing incomplete information, should I make a health decision based on what’s available? I don’t think they’re advocating that anyone make health or reproductive decisions based on the information they provide. They do, after all, provide suggestions for a range of resources (including genetic counseling) for contextualizing the costs and benefits of these kinds of decisions.
Still, I’m left with questions about how the visual design of bioinformatic resources like 23andme creates and constrains different ways of thinking about and engaging with the information.
23andme’s stated goals include advancing research and being world’s most trusted source of genetic information. Can we imaging any scenarios where these goals would come into conflict?
Given that the value of the resource increases with each additional genotype, are those that contribute to the resource entitled to any of the database’s value over time?
November 16, 2007 at 9:31 pm · Filed under bioinformatics, genes, genomics, semantics
Well, it looks like 23andMe finally went online. It’s been over a year since I did this sketch (left) and less than that since Google invested heavily in their startup costs. So when I opened up the New York Times today and saw their article on 23andMe’s launch (that’s effective PR), I still couldn’t help but be surprised that they had gotten going so quickly.
The key question for me is about their interface and interaction design. Will it compare to the same old bioinformatic machine style gene representations (square genes; primary colors), or will there be evidence of a concerted effort to push the visual language of the genome into something that connects with the wide array of meaning associated with genes? After I’ve had a chance to browse their site a bit, I’ll
report back with some visual analysis. One thing is certain; they’ve definitely internalized the web 2.0 visual style of rounded corners and big type!
July 4, 2007 at 12:49 pm · Filed under biotechnology, semantics
In her New York Times column, Re:framing, Denise Caruso addresses recent discoveries in human genetics as they relate to the current platform for biotechnology and gene patenting guidelines.
The article begins by stating that:
THE $73.5 billion global biotech business may soon have to grapple with a discovery that calls into question the scientific principles on which it was founded.
Over at Evolgen, many commentators debate the scientific accuracy of Caruso’s arguments. I think it’s a mistake to make the argument that the scientific accuracy of her article is what’s at stake. Caruso’s point is that there is a gap between the science, the policy, and the biotech industry’s tactics. We’ve known for awhile that genes are not discrete entities. Unfortunately, it takes a direct hit to the human psyche for people to realize that the biological world applies to them too.
I’m not out to defend Caruso, but I do share her perspective that many perspectives are needed to address these issues. In response to what I thought was a fairly limited set of responses to her article, I contributed my own comment to the Evogen blog:
I agree that it’s easy to misunderstand Caruso’s arguments, especially if one takes a linear perspective towards them. I would have definitely preferred more background on the ENCODE project, but given the nuance of the science involved, perhaps her tactic of stating that the landscape (pun intended) is more complex than public policy reflects is more appropriate for the Times.
For one thing, Caruso’s argument doesn’t seem to be based at the molecular level at all. Caruso takes a population level perspective that’s needed to recognize and understand what is relevant to ownership and commodification of genetic processes. Genomics is only the vector; what she’s really talking about is capitalism.
Though it’s not clear if she is using “network effect” to refer to intragenomic interactions or intergenomic ones, her examples of bacterial resistance and malaria suggest that she’s referring to intergenomic interactions. My take on what she is reacting to is the observation that genetic interactions have many epistatic or non-linear effects while the prevalent assumption for biotech and policy-makers is that that genes are predominantly additive and that a predictable relationship exists between gene identity and outcome.
Starting with popular science is enough. The way genes are portrayed in popular culture suggests that there are genes for heart disease and genes for aggression and so on. That’s how biotech gets funded, no? By stipulating that specific genes have appreciable effects on health, the value of those genes can be measured, built, and sold as a product. This is misleading. Yes, we can associate disease variation with specific loci, but it’s is never the case that genes cause anything. Genetic material is one component of a very non-linear system that includes developmental timing and environmental interactions. As every evolutionary geneticist knows, selecting on a single trait often results in correlated responses across many other traits. Given that traits are based on the interactions of many genes, moving genes among individuals doesn’t bring the whole system along in the manner that, say, artificial selection does.
By stating that a gene has a distinct function, we are in essence naming it and categorizing it according to that function. For genes to be patented, a recognizable function has to be ascribed to them. We can say that the “terminator gene” has a protein binding function, but can’t we also say that the “terminator gene” also has a social unrest function if we expand our observations beyond the lab? Though we can’t directly establish a cause and effect relationship between large-scale social interactions and political protests and the gene, we know intuitively that the effect of of this transgene isn’t limited to corn or cotton.
It’s true that the science isn’t particularly new. What’s new is that people are starting to ask relevant questions about how the ownership and practices of industry takes into account the mechanistic possibilities for creating value as well as the relevant downstream biological and social process. This is not something that any single individual or profession can either validate or invalidate.
I’ll agree that “the economic and regulatory foundation on which the entire biotechnology industry is built” is probably a mix of a lot of different factors. But why isn’t it based on “the presumption that genes operate independently”? When was the last time you heard a company say that a disease was attributed to many genes and only in certain contexts and we’re not entirely sure how and when, but please still buy our product? People want certainty and hope, especially when their health is involved. Reducing the message down to single genes does that. All that Caruso is saying is that this may mean bigger problems down the line if we don’t actually revise our policy and language to match what we actually know about the world.
A correction to the original article at the HybridVigor blog
January 13, 2007 at 12:06 pm · Filed under critical theory, digital design, semantics
digital print on silk
8 1/2″ x 14″
2006
