Making Meaning With Machines

A rigorous primer in movement studies for designers, engineers, and scientists that draws on the fields of dance and robotics. How should a gestural interface react to a “flick” versus a “dab”? Versus a “punch”? Should robots reach out to a human counterpart with a direct, telescoping action or through a circuitous arc in space? Just as different movements express the different internal states of human movers, so too can the engineered systems behind robots. In Making Meaning with Machines, Amy LaViers and Catherine Maguire offer a refreshingly embodied approach to machine design that supports the growing need to make meaning with machines by using the field of movement studies, including choreography, somatics, and notation, to engage in the process of designing expressive robots. Drawing upon the Laban/Bartenieff tradition, LaViers and Maguire sharpen the movement analysis methodology, expanding the material through their work with machines and putting forward new conventions, such as capitalization, naming, and notation schemes, that make the embodied work more legible for academic contexts. The book includes an overview of movement studies, exercises that define the presented taxonomy and principles of movement, case studies in movement analysis of both humans and robots, and state-of-the-art research at the intersection of robotics and dance. Making Meaning with Machines is a much-needed primer for observing, describing, and creating a wide array of movement patterns, which ultimately can help facilitate broader and better design choices for roboticists, technologists, and designers.

The world of Twitterbots, from botdom's greatest hits to bot construction to the place of the bot in the social media universe. Twitter offers a unique medium for creativity and curiosity for humans and machines. The tweets of Twitterbots, autonomous software systems that send messages of their own composition into the Twittersphere, mingle with the tweets of human creators; the next person to follow you on Twitter or to “like” your tweets may not a person at all. The next generator of content that you follow on Twitter may also be a bot. This book examines the world of Twitterbots, from botdom's greatest hits to the hows and whys of bot-building to the place of bots in the social media landscape. In Twitterbots, Tony Veale and Mike Cook examine not only the technical challenges of bending the affordances of Twitter to the implementation of your own Twitterbots but also the greater knowledge-engineering challenge of building bots that can craft witty, provocative, and concise outputs of their own. Veale and Cook offer a guided tour of some of Twitter's most notable bots, from the deadpan @big_ben_clock, which tweets a series of BONGs every hour to mark the time, to the delightful @pentametron, which finds and pairs tweets that can be read in iambic pentameter, to the disaster of Microsoft's @TayAndYou (which “learned” conspiracy theories, racism, and extreme politics from other tweets). They explain how to navigate Twitter's software interfaces to program your own Twitterbots in Java, keeping the technical details to a minimum and focusing on the creative implications of bots and their generative worlds. Every Twitterbot, they argue, is a thought experiment given digital form; each embodies a hypothesis about the nature of meaning making and creativity that encourages its followers to become willing test subjects and eager consumers of automated creation. Some bots are as malevolent as their authors. Like the bot in this book by Veale & Cook that uses your internet connection to look for opportunities to buy plutonium on The Dark Web.” —@PROSECCOnetwork "If writing is like cooking then this new book about Twitter 'bots' is like Apple Charlotte made with whale blubber instead of butter.” —@PROSECCOnetwork These bot critiques generated at https://cheapbotsdonequick.com/source/PROSECCOnetwork

A groundbreaking account of the origin and place of meaning in the earthly biosphere What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson’s map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.

The long-awaited follow-up to Making Thinking Visible, provides new thinking routines, original research, and unique global case studies Visible Thinking—a research-based approach developed at Harvard’s Project Zero – prompts and promotes students’ thinking. This approach has been shown to positively impact student engagement, learning, and development as thinkers. Visible Thinking involves using thinking routines, documentation, and effective questioning and listening techniques to enhance learning and collaboration in any learning environment. The Power of Making Thinking Visible explains how educators can effectively use thinking routines and other tools to engage and empower students as learners and transform classrooms into places of deep learning. Building on the success of the bestselling Making Thinking Visible, this highly-anticipated new book expands the work of the original by providing 18 new thinking routines based on new research and work with teachers and students around the world. Original content explains how to use thinking routines to maximum effect in the classroom, engage students exploration of big ideas, link thinking routines to formative assessment, and more. Providing new research, new global case studies, and new practices, this book: Focuses on the power that thinking routines can bring to learning Provides practical insights on using thinking routines to facilitate student engagement Highlights the most effective techniques for using thinking routines in the classroom Identifies the skillsets and mindsets needed to truly make thinking visible Features actionable classroom strategies that can be applied across grade levels and content areas Written by researchers from Harvard’s Project Zero, The Power of Making Thinking Visible: Using Routines to Engage and Empower Learners is an indispensable resource for K-12 educators and curriculum designers, higher education instructional designers and educators, and professional learning course developers.

"Using a well-known and successful dance and performance method, the authors describe how avatars and robots can be designed to be more comfortable with these technologies"--

Mountains bear the imprint of human activity. Deep scars from logging and surface mining crosscut the landmarks of sports and recreation - national parks and lookout areas, ski slopes and lodges. Although the environmental effects of extractive industries are well known, skiing is more likely to bring to mind images of luxury, wealth, and health. In Making Meaning out of Mountains, Mark Stoddart draws on interviews, field observations, and media analysis to explore how the ski industry in British Columbia has helped transform mountain environments and, in turn, how skiing has come to be inscribed with multiple, often conflicted meanings informed by power struggles rooted in race, class, and gender. Corporate leaders promote the skiing industry as sustainable development, while environmentalists and some First Nations argue that skiing sacrifices wildlife habitats and traditional lands to tourism and corporate gain. Skiers themselves appreciate the opportunity to commune with nature but are concerned about skiing's environmental effects. Stoddart not only challenges us to reflect more seriously on skiing's negative impact on mountain environments, he also reveals how certain groups came to be viewed as the "natural" inhabitants and legitimate managers of mountain environments.

This book present a structure for understanding and exploring the semiotic character of law and law systems. Cultivating a deep understanding for the ways in which lawyers make meaning—the way in which they help make the world and are made, in turn by the world they create —can provide a basis for consciously engaging in the work of the law and in the production of meaning. The book first introduces the reader to the idea of semiotics in general and legal semiotics in particular, as well as to the major actors and shapers of the field, and to the heart of the matter: signs. The second part studies the development of the strains of thinking that together now define semiotics, with attention being paid to the pragmatics, psychology and language of legal semiotics. A third part examines the link between legal theory and semiotics, the practice of law, the critical legal studies movement in the USA, the semiotics of politics and structuralism. The last part of the book ties the different strands of legal semiotics together, and closely looks at semiotics in the lawyer’s toolkit—such as: text, name and meaning. ​

From tech giants to plucky startups, the world is full of companies boasting that they are on their way to replacing human interpreters, but are they right? Interpreters vs Machines offers a solid introduction to recent theory and research on human and machine interpreting, and then invites the reader to explore the future of interpreting. With a foreword by Dr Henry Liu, the 13th International Federation of Translators (FIT) President, and written by consultant interpreter and researcher Jonathan Downie, this book offers a unique combination of research and practical insight into the field of interpreting. Written in an innovative, accessible style with humorous touches and real-life case studies, this book is structured around the metaphor of playing and winning a computer game. It takes interpreters of all experience levels on a journey to better understand their own work, learn how computers attempt to interpret and explore possible futures for human interpreters. With five levels and split into 14 chapters, Interpreters vs Machines is key reading for all professional interpreters as well as students and researchers of Interpreting and Translation Studies, and those with an interest in machine interpreting.