title: Parsing Technology-entanglement for Thick-things: The Complication or Complexity of Media and Technologies

authors: Nicholson, Shaun

subjects: Digital media

abstract: Can an interpretive framework untangle distributed forms of technology-enabled media? The thesis develops an interpretive framework to provide an antidote to reckless imaginations that privilege concealment and encourage explanations of technology-enablement as social or automagical. The framework is a response to Latour's call to modify explanations given simply as 'social' and Kittler's observation of software as an unrecognizable layering of linguistic extensions. 

The interpretive framework is developed from successive encounters with technology-enablement associated with a particular geospatial use of Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality that accesses photos embedded with geospatial information depends on multiple distributed technologies ranging from smartphones to satellites. This contemporary form of technology-enabled media is demonstrated by a Panoramio geospatial layer of tourist photos accessed using the software product Layar. The encounters are with an image collection, WIFI router, 3G cellular data network, iPhone, geospatial location service and Layar. These enabling technologies have been gathered and inspected for human and nonhuman agencies during project encounters that followed an ethnographic approach. A dialogue with technology practitioners informs the analytical engagement with Augmented Reality to provide an alternative vocabulary for theoretical access to those vastly distributed and indescribable technology-enablers.

The framework is developed through successive propositions. The encounters pursue the trajectory of a digital image from a technology-enabled visual representation that can be created or consumed with ease to distributed image collections that operate as a contemporary site of interoperability. Photos are transformed in proposition 1 from a visual surface to a realm of specificity that is a stratified and expansive construction of exchangeable data. The second proposition establishes technologies as constructed from atomic building blocks that are combined in either complicated or complex formations. The second proposition asserts that it is necessary to distinguish between complication and complexity. Propositions 1 and 2 are extended by a debate between respective positions of an extremely flat ontology and an expansive materialism represented by Bryant, Barad, Latour and Bennett. The flat ontology is rejected and a thick account of things is asserted as a position that better accounts for the entanglement of humans and nonhumans interoperating amongst a synthetic ecology of media technologies. The third proposition is that the technology-enablement of media is a complicated or complex form of technology-entanglement. The thesis demonstrates this interpretive framework before concluding with a ‘how-to’ that guides researchers adapting this methodology for their own projects.

text: Parsing Technology-entanglement for Thick-things: The Complication or Complexity of Media and Technologies Can an interpretive framework untangle distributed forms of technology-enabled media? The thesis develops an interpretive framework to provide an antidote to reckless imaginations that privilege concealment and encourage explanations of technology-enablement as social or automagical. The framework is a response to Latour's call to modify explanations given simply as 'social' and Kittler's observation of software as an unrecognizable layering of linguistic extensions. 

The interpretive framework is developed from successive encounters with technology-enablement associated with a particular geospatial use of Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality that accesses photos embedded with geospatial information depends on multiple distributed technologies ranging from smartphones to satellites. This contemporary form of technology-enabled media is demonstrated by a Panoramio geospatial layer of tourist photos accessed using the software product Layar. The encounters are with an image collection, WIFI router, 3G cellular data network, iPhone, geospatial location service and Layar. These enabling technologies have been gathered and inspected for human and nonhuman agencies during project encounters that followed an ethnographic approach. A dialogue with technology practitioners informs the analytical engagement with Augmented Reality to provide an alternative vocabulary for theoretical access to those vastly distributed and indescribable technology-enablers.

The framework is developed through successive propositions. The encounters pursue the trajectory of a digital image from a technology-enabled visual representation that can be created or consumed with ease to distributed image collections that operate as a contemporary site of interoperability. Photos are transformed in proposition 1 from a visual surface to a realm of specificity that is a stratified and expansive construction of exchangeable data. The second proposition establishes technologies as constructed from atomic building blocks that are combined in either complicated or complex formations. The second proposition asserts that it is necessary to distinguish between complication and complexity. Propositions 1 and 2 are extended by a debate between respective positions of an extremely flat ontology and an expansive materialism represented by Bryant, Barad, Latour and Bennett. The flat ontology is rejected and a thick account of things is asserted as a position that better accounts for the entanglement of humans and nonhumans interoperating amongst a synthetic ecology of media technologies. The third proposition is that the technology-enablement of media is a complicated or complex form of technology-entanglement. The thesis demonstrates this interpretive framework before concluding with a ‘how-to’ that guides researchers adapting this methodology for their own projects.

year: 2016

title: High exposure of global tree diversity to human pressure.

authors: Guo, Wen-Yong

subjects: biodiversity

abstract: Safeguarding Earth's tree diversity is a conservation priority due to the importance of trees for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services such as carbon sequestration. Here, we improve the foundation for effective conservation of global tree diversity by analyzing a recently developed database of tree species covering 46,752 species. We quantify range protection and anthropogenic pressures for each species and develop conservation priorities across taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity dimensions. We also assess the effectiveness of several influential proposed conservation prioritization frameworks to protect the top 17% and top 50% of tree priority areas. We find that an average of 50.2% of a tree species' range occurs in 110-km grid cells without any protected areas (PAs), with 6,377 small-range tree species fully unprotected, and that 83% of tree species experience nonnegligible human pressure across their range on average. Protecting high-priority areas for the top 17% and 50% priority thresholds would increase the average protected proportion of each tree species' range to 65.5% and 82.6%, respectively, leaving many fewer species (2,151 and 2,010) completely unprotected. The priority areas identified for trees match well to the Global 200 Ecoregions framework, revealing that priority areas for trees would in large part also optimize protection for terrestrial biodiversity overall. Based on range estimates for >46,000 tree species, our findings show that a large proportion of tree species receive limited protection by current PAs and are under substantial human pressure. Improved protection of biodiversity overall would also strongly benefit global tree diversity.

text: High exposure of global tree diversity to human pressure. Safeguarding Earth's tree diversity is a conservation priority due to the importance of trees for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services such as carbon sequestration. Here, we improve the foundation for effective conservation of global tree diversity by analyzing a recently developed database of tree species covering 46,752 species. We quantify range protection and anthropogenic pressures for each species and develop conservation priorities across taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity dimensions. We also assess the effectiveness of several influential proposed conservation prioritization frameworks to protect the top 17% and top 50% of tree priority areas. We find that an average of 50.2% of a tree species' range occurs in 110-km grid cells without any protected areas (PAs), with 6,377 small-range tree species fully unprotected, and that 83% of tree species experience nonnegligible human pressure across their range on average. Protecting high-priority areas for the top 17% and 50% priority thresholds would increase the average protected proportion of each tree species' range to 65.5% and 82.6%, respectively, leaving many fewer species (2,151 and 2,010) completely unprotected. The priority areas identified for trees match well to the Global 200 Ecoregions framework, revealing that priority areas for trees would in large part also optimize protection for terrestrial biodiversity overall. Based on range estimates for >46,000 tree species, our findings show that a large proportion of tree species receive limited protection by current PAs and are under substantial human pressure. Improved protection of biodiversity overall would also strongly benefit global tree diversity.

year: 2022-06-21

title: Ōpōtiki Mai Tawhiti Kapa Haka

authors: Maxwell, Te Kahautu

abstract: Ōpōtiki Mai Tawhiti competed in Te Matatini World Championship Kapa Haka Competition and placed second overall out of 45 kapa haka. Placed 1st Male Leader, 1st Waiata a Ringa Composition, 1st, Poi Composition, 2nd Haka Composition, 1st overall composition, 1st Waiata Tira, 1st Waiata a Ringa, 3rd Whakakeke, 2nd Poi.

text: Ōpōtiki Mai Tawhiti Kapa Haka Ōpōtiki Mai Tawhiti competed in Te Matatini World Championship Kapa Haka Competition and placed second overall out of 45 kapa haka. Placed 1st Male Leader, 1st Waiata a Ringa Composition, 1st, Poi Composition, 2nd Haka Composition, 1st overall composition, 1st Waiata Tira, 1st Waiata a Ringa, 3rd Whakakeke, 2nd Poi.

year: 2015