Observer

Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory of the society of the spectacle. In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing the historical construction of the observer. He insists that the problems of vision are inseparable from the operation of social power and examines how, beginning in the 1820s, the observer became the site of new discourses and practices that situated vision within the body as a physiological event. Alongside the sudden appearance of physiological optics, Crary points out, theories and models of "subjective vision" were developed that gave the observer a new autonomy and productivity while simultaneously allowing new forms of control and standardization of vision. Crary examines a range of diverse work in philosophy, in the empirical sciences, and in the elements of an emerging mass visual culture. He discusses at length the significance of optical apparatuses such as the stereoscope and of precinematic devices, detailing how they were the product of new physiological knowledge. He also shows how these forms of mass culture, usually labeled as "realist," were in fact based on abstract models of vision, and he suggests that mimetic or perspectival notions of vision and representation were initially abandoned in the first half of the nineteenth century within a variety of powerful institutions and discourses, well before the modernist painting of the 1870s and 1880s.

Wall Street Journal Best Selling Book The two anchors in Kat's frenzied life have been her father; a famous baseball pitcher turned team manager, and her son, who is following in his grandfather's footsteps. When both anchors become unstable, Kat's life tips dangerously out of balance. The market and her finances flip, and relationships start slipping through her fingers. Eager for solutions, she turns to find uncanny wisdom from places she never expected. The Observer unpacks the idea of 180-degree thinking, which changes everything for Kat. Now, seemingly impossible goals come into focus with crystal clear clarity. As Kat focuses on the right things, the impossible becomes her new reality. Imparted with truth and wisdom, The Observer is a classic for discovering the peak performer within yourself. This timeless story of success principles is more important today than it has ever been before as uncertainty lurks right around the corner. “A powerful work with insights that, once applied, will help you lift your life to a completely new level.” —Robin Sharma, #1 bestselling author of The 5AM Club and The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari Kat has it all—money, success, recognition, influence—except the one thing she desperately desires: a fulfilled life. A business entrepreneur in the high-end sportswear industry, Kat is driven in relentless pursuit of ever-greater success.

While it documents a remarkable career, Participant Observer is also a personal chronicle in which William Foote Whyte reflects on his childhood, his education, his courageous struggles with polio and with the crises of family and academic life. Beginning with the study of gangs in Boston's North End recorded in Street Corner Society, Whyte listened to what working people had to say, becoming a powerful voice for worker participation and workplace democracy. His career is a model for the social sciences, and his story should be read by any serious student of them.

Time calls the shots. Unwitting time traveler Joseph Bridgeman is adjusting to life in the present and wondering if his traveling days are behind him. But when he’s contacted by the Continuum, an organized group of time travelers based in the future, he learns his career is just getting started. The Continuum needs Joe’s help. One of their operatives is missing, last seen in nineteenth-century Paris, and they believe Joe’s ability to see the past might be the only way to find him. Teamed up with Gabrielle Green, an acerbic, wisecracking traveler, Joe heads back to 1873 on his most dangerous mission yet, one that will take him deep inside a burning opera house. But how will Joe succeed when his new companion clearly hates his guts, the missing traveler disappears the second anyone sets eyes on him, and a familiar foe threatens to trap them in the past for good? With help on hand from his best friend, Vinny, and mysterious clues hidden in his sister Amy’s paintings, Joe must hone his gift, develop new skills, and figure out a way to complete his mission before the blazing inferno comes crashing down around them all.

The Freak Observer is rich in family drama, theoretical physics, and an unusual, tough young woman—Loa Lindgren. For eight years, Loa Sollilja's world ran like one of those mechanical models of the solar system, with her baby sister, Asta, as the sun. Asta suffered from a genetic disorder that left her a permanent infant, and caring for her was Loa's life. Everything spun neatly and regularly as the whole family orbited around Asta. But now Asta's dead, and 16-year-old Loa's clockwork galaxy has collapsed. As Loa spins off on her own, her mind ambushes her with vivid nightmares and sadistic flashbacks―a textbook case of PTSD. But there are no textbook fixes for Loa's short-circuiting brain. She must find her own way to pry her world from the clutches of death. The Freak Observer is a startling debut about death, life, astrophysics, and finding beauty in chaos.

Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory of Perception provides information pertinent to the fundamental aspects of perception. This book provides an approach to the study of perception that attempts to be both general and rigorous. Organized into 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the structure of perceptual capacity. This text then presents the relationship between observers and Turing machines. Other chapters provide a formal framework in which to describe an observer and its objects of perception, and then develop from this framework a perceptual dynamics. This book discusses as well the conditions in which an observer may be said to perceive truly and discusses how stabilities in perceptual dynamics might permit the genesis of higher level observers. The final chapter deals with the relationship between the formalisms of quantum mechanics and observer mechanics. This book is a valuable resource for physicists, psychophysicists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, and perceptual psychologists.

Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This book explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences.

Some engage in politics; others observe it, but the author of this political memoir is among the few that have had the chance to do both. In these pages, Henry Milner shares his experiences as a student and community activist, an anglophone insider and strategist in the Parti Québécois, and a close observer over several decades of social democracy in practice in Scandinavia and beyond. Milner was born in a bunker in American occupied Germany. His parents, who had survived the war in the Soviet Union, moved the family to Canada, where they settled in Montreal. Earning a BA from McGill and his MA and PhD at Carleton, he spent his teaching career first at Vanier College and then based at the University of Montreal. He has also taught extensively in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Participant/Observer is Milner’s eleventh book. His writings, notably in Inroads, the Canadian Journal of Opinion, which he and John Richards founded in 1991, have led to opportunities to teach and conduct research in Scandinavia, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Findings from these experiences have found their way into public policy discussion in Canada through the media and public forums. Milner’s recent focus has been on civic literacy, on the democratic institutions that underly social and economic progress, working closely with the movements seeking to reform the voting system in Canada and a number of provinces. He and his wife, Frances Boylston, divide their time between Montreal and the Dominican Republic, where they are closely involved with the Meeting Place, a not-for-profit International Resource Centre they founded to help “snowbirds” to get to know the country and to provide locals and Haitian migrants with English-language and other resources to be better equipped for employment in a tourism-oriented economy. Participant/Observer is a political autobiography of a generation, one that reached maturity in the 1960s and 1970s, told through one person’s story. In concluding, Milner holds out hope that this account of his generations’ successes—and failures—can be of use to current generations as they face the threat posed by populist and authoritarian forces, most dramatically to the capacity of contemporary democracies to meet the challenge of climate change.