Matching Items (18)
Description
Science fiction themed video games, specifically Role Playing Games (RPGs) like Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DX:HR), that focus on an emerging technology, contain features that help to better inform anticipatory governance. In a game like DX:HR, players vicariously experience human-enhancement technology and its societal effects through their in-game character. Acting as the character, the player explores the topic of human-enhancement technology in various ways, including dialogue with non-player characters (NPCs) and decisions that directly affect the game's world. Because Deus Ex: Human Revolution and games similar to it, allow players to explore and think about the technology itself, the stances on it, and its potential societal effects, they facilitate the anticipatory governance process. In this paper I postulate a theory of anticipatory gaming, which asserts that video games inform the anticipatory governance process for an emerging technology. To demonstrate this theory I examine the parts of the anticipatory governance process and demonstrate RPG's ability to inform it, through a case study of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
ContributorsShedd, Jesse Bernard (Author) / Wetmore, Jameson (Thesis director) / Fisher, Erik (Committee member) / McKnight, John Carter (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Numerous studies have examined the attachments individuals have to the places they visit, and that those attachments are formed through experiencing a place in person. This study is unique in that it examines pre-trip place attachment formation via the use of mobile technology and social media. It proposes that media experienced through the use of a participant's smartphone can foster the development of positive emotions, which in turn, facilitates greater mental imagery processing that ultimately influences pre-trip place attachment formation. An experimental design was constructed to examine how text and video on a destination's Facebook page influences an individual's emotions, mental imagery, and subsequently attachment to that destination. Specifically, a 2 (narrative text vs. descriptive text) x 2 (short, fast-paced video vs. long, slow-paced video) between-subjects design was used. A total of 343 usable participant responses were included in the analysis. The data was then analyzed through a two-step process using structural equation modeling. Results revealed no significant influence of textual or video media on emotions although the choice in text has a greater influence on emotions than choice in video. Additionally, emotions had a significant impact on mental imagery. Finally, mental imagery processing had a significant impact on only the social bonding dimension of place attachment. In conclusion, while media had no significant impact on emotions, the effect of previous traveler's retelling of personal accounts on the emotions of potential travelers researching a destination should be examined more closely. Further, the study participants had no prior experience with the destination, yet emotions influenced mental imagery, which also influenced social bonding. Thus further research should be conducted to better understand how potential traveler's image of a destination can be affected by the stories or others.
ContributorsPlunkett, Daniel (Author) / Budruk, Megha (Thesis advisor) / Lee, Woojin (Thesis advisor) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Wise, Greg (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of this project was to document and explain what and why the 2014 School of Human Evolution and Social Change study abroad group experienced what they did in Fiji. Fiji is a third world country and it lacks important infrastructure that prevents many in Fiji form accessing basic medical supplies and medical treatment. Lack of infrastructure and, therefore, medical access and supplies is a result of the tumultuous ethnopolitical atmosphere that prevails in Fiji. Living with the Fijian locals in Votua Village made their struggle personal to the study abroad group. As a result, the group returned inspired to US determined to make an impact on the people that had made such a lasting impact on them. A new campus organization was created and nearly $4,600 was raised in order to help provide medical aid to the villagers in Fiji. The student's reaction in Fiji was westernized, but the program is not a complete and utter failure; students work directly with the villagers to acquire items they actually need. This ensures little waste and that the money collected is used efficiently. However, the student's project is not entirely sustainable; the implementation of the Funds For Fiji response has the potential to create lasting, unintended consequences. To make the program more sustainable, students need to figure out a way to broaden project involvement and to broaden the scope of the project to impact more people on the island of Fiji. Video Link https://youtu.be/9asWtj1u2BQ
ContributorsHowell, Colby Lee (Author) / Wetmore, Jameson (Thesis director) / Eder, James (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
This paper uses Facebook as a case study for other technological and social media companies given factors presented by the Digital Age. Three different pillars are used to analyze the company. First an examination of the manipulation of users on Facebook by Russian actors is presented. Next, the paper examines whether Facebook is promoting civic participation for good. Lastly, an analyzation of the rising trend of hate speech and extremists using the site is presented. This examination of Facebook then posed three questions regarding companies in the Digital Age as a whole. The first was "What is the extent of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age?" The second was, "What special obligations do for-profit companies have when it comes to safeguarding the privacy of individuals, or at least insuring that their stored information does not harm them?". The last question presented was, "How Can the Profit Motive and Corporate Morality Co-Exist in the Digital Age?" The findings of this case study showed that due to different factors that are presented in the Digital Age, these ideals of Corporate Social Responsibility, Privacy and Corporate Morality may be even more challenging to uphold during this Age of Information. Due to this fact, companies such as Facebook have an even greater responsibility to abide by these ideals of Corporate Social Responsibility, Privacy and Corporate Morality. This is because of an even larger potential for negative effects due to technological change. Regardless of the possibility for regulation by government, third-party organization or by the organizations themselves, Digital Age Corporations have the duty to protect their users from harm and maintain these three ideals.
ContributorsBrandt, Madeline (Author) / Zachary, Gregg (Thesis director) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This essay explores the role of religion, science, and the secular in contemporary society by showing their connection to social and political legitimacy as a result of historical processes. In Chapter One, the essay presents historical arguments, particularly linguistic, which confirm science and religion as historically created categories without timeless or essential differences. Additionally, the current institutional separation of science and religion was politically motivated by the changing power structures following the Protestant Reformation. In Chapter Two, the essay employs the concept of the modern social imaginary to show how our modern concept of the political and the secular subtly reproduce the objectified territories of science and religion and thus the boundary maintenance dialectic which dominates science-religion discourse. Chapter Three argues that ‘religious’ worldviews contain genuine metaphysical claims which do not recognizably fit into these modern social categories. Given the destabilizing forces of globalization and information technology upon the political authority of the nation-state, the way many conceptualize of these objects religion, science, and the secular will change as well.
ContributorsBianchi, Joseph Anthony (Author) / Bennett, Gaymon (Thesis director) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This study, using personal experience as a basis for curiosity, seeks to explore why some portion of engineering students change their majors, whom I am calling "switchers." Another set of students are "persisters," or students who are still currently enrolled in engineering but have considered other paths. In collecting data, two students from each set, within the author's social network, were interviewed. Articles primarily concerning attrition and retention within engineering education were surveyed in this study. The literature's reasons for leaving engineering were tabulated and used to code these interviews, then the trends outside of this table were studied. The literature and all interviewees both stated that engineering students struggle with poor teachers, poor teaching methods, poor curriculum, and a lack of time. Outside of the literature, job prospects caused the interviewed students to feel trapped in engineering. Whether to take this study beyond the exploratory stage, and how to do that, is being considered currently.
ContributorsBaskin, Arizona Gray (Author) / Wetmore, Jameson (Thesis director) / Garbee, Elizabeth (Committee member) / School for the Future of Innovation in Society (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Concerns about the environmental and social impacts of anthropogenic climate change have called into question the efficacy, efficiency, and equity of energy systems. People committed to renewable energy transitions, and those who defend fossil-based systems, are simultaneously envisioning energy futures and seeking to build them. In the process, they are changing both energy technologies and how social life is organized around them. In this dissertation, I examine how ideas and materialities around distributed solar power become inscribed into energy policies, etched into urban landscapes, and embedded into city life. These processes engender particular kinds of embodied communities, which I define as solar communities. I study the visual and affective dimensions of emerging solar communities in Arizona and Italy using the qualitative methods of semi-structured interviews, photo-documentation, and observation. The dissertation consists of three papers. In Chapter 2, I explore how rooftops are constructed as newly productive sites for electricity generation through economic, legal, cartographic, and political negotiations, and how they become sites of struggle over who has access to them. I describe a case study in Phoenix about a proposed change in compensation for residential rooftop solar customers and the affective dynamics of a protest around it. In Chapter 3, I examine how a variety of photovoltaic applications are appearing in urban landscapes in Treviso, Italy and Flagstaff, Arizona. I investigate how aesthetic and environmental values are imbued in the physical forms those installations ultimately take, and the role that in/visibility plays in shaping these decisions. I use photography to document these emergent solar communities and argue that there is value to seeing photovoltaics in your city. In Chapter 4, I describe a workshop I led on the human dimensions and ethical trade-offs of renewable energy transitions using interactive activities and case studies from Ethiopia and Appalachia. I show how decisions about energy transitions have far-reaching impacts on people’s lives, health, the way they work, and geopolitical relationships. Together, these chapters begin to form a picture of the governance around, and visuality of, photovoltaic designs that emerge as fixtures of both landscape and society, which in turn inform solar communities.
ContributorsFuller, Jennifer Lynn (Author) / Miller, Clark A (Thesis advisor) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Graffy, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
There is a lack of prior research about factors and conditions relating to the underdevelopment of infrastructure on Navajo Nation, especially from a community-centered perspective. As a Diné researcher, the intersection created via the fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS), American Indian Studies (AIS), and Diné Studies creates a means by which developmental policy and futures planning can be discussed. Through qualitative inquiry, specifically cross-case analysis, oral histories, and archival review from a Diné perspective, this work establishes the relationship between roads, energy, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the Navajo Nation in relation to the historical underdevelopment of infrastructure on the reservation, especially from 2000 to 2020. Roads and energy infrastructures make way for ICT deployments, and together, these three infrastructures shape futures planning for the Nation, including governance decisions relating to partnerships, and internal versus external development. Relationships between infrastructural efforts, past colonial practices of the United States (U.S.), and relations between the U.S. and tribes during this era shape the development of relevant expertise within Navajo Nation entities and also impact access to and uses of significant funding opportunities available via the early 21st century American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. A Diné-centered concept of care through long-term infrastructure deployment relates tribal sovereignty and Indigenous ways of knowing to Indigenous Science and Technology Studies (STS) and suggests new directions for applied Diné studies in the field of Indigenous STS.
ContributorsGeorge, Alaina Sarah (Author) / Duarte, Marisa E (Thesis advisor) / Richter, Jennifer (Thesis advisor) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
In this dissertation, I explore the possibility of Latin American Futurism/s because Latin American visions of the future are primarily absent from the global conversation of alternative or counter futures. In three chapters, I expose three interrelated yet methodologically different approaches to understanding the emerging phenomenon of Latin American Futurism/s: A exploration of the connections between notions of visions of technology/futures for El Salvador's Bitcoin and South Cone's robots, the experiences and practices of local future-makers and their communities; and artifacts that characterize expressions of regional futuring. To comprehend the region's technological paradigms, I offer these socio-technical accounts of Future-making and Future-knowledge for/from Latin America as a geo-political region. Each element contributes, with its different interdisciplinary perspective, to characterizing "Latin American Futurism/s" as a form of technological rationality and regional futuring as an expression of shared paradigms about science and technology. These characterizations allow for an appreciation of the paradigms, strategies, and artifacts that configure domestic and professional futurity in Latin America, focusing on its objects and visions as mediators and sense-makers of what ought to come. In this manuscript, I offer a characterization of Latin American futurism/s to facilitate its recognition and understanding and to put in value the production of forward-oriented knowledge produced by people thinking and living in Latin America.
ContributorsPérez Comisso, Martín Andrés (Author) / Smith, Lindsay A (Thesis advisor) / Keeler, Lauren W (Thesis advisor) / Bennett, Michael G (Committee member) / Wetmore, Jameson (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
This dissertation seeks to identify an ecology of knowledge to serve as a theoretical lens for understanding the state of the electronic waste management industry in the United States. Semi-structured interviews of stakeholder groups such as e-waste recyclers, manufacturers, government agencies, refurbishers, and other interested organizations were used to determine the current status of used electronics management in the US. The focus is on how the electronics reuse and recycling industry is being affected by the rapid changes in consumer electronic device technology as well as the lack of recycling infrastructure, insufficient consumer engagement with electronics reuse and repair, and inconsistent regulation. The stakeholders which are being impacted by the changing industry are also participating in shaping it either in terms of initiating the changes, or in how they are reacting and adapting to them. Furthermore, electronics reuse
and recycling have been widely considered two aspects of the same industry despite increasing evidence of bifurcation and competition for material flows. Based on stakeholder response, the ecology of knowledge that exists within this industry suggests that recyclers should shift their business to incorporate more repair and resale in addition to recycling to remain profitable. Case studies involving participant observation, additional semi-structured interviews, and policy comparisons were utilized to serve as representations for the three primary stakeholder groups: electronics recyclers, electronics refurbishers, and government agencies regulating electronics recycling and e-waste disposal. These three
stakeholder groups and their ability to capture electronics at the end of their useful life drive the percentage of discarded electronics which are recycled or reused. The used electronics infrastructure, institutions, and stakeholder networks along with the knowledge generated within make-up an ecology of knowledge which explains how changes in newer consumer electronic devices are antagonistic to recycling systems couched in a slow-to-change scrap industry. Intellectual property laws prevent the repair and reuse of used electronic devices. Finally, inconsistent, patchwork e-waste recycling
laws do not sufficiently capture used electronics at the end of their useful life. These factors have had a significant impact on the larger socio-technical system of end-of-life consumer electronic device management in the United States.
ContributorsNafe, Christopher Micheal (Author) / Wetmore, Jameson (Thesis advisor) / Dooley, Kevin (Thesis advisor) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024