The Revival of Quantification: Reflections on Old New Histories
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Historians of Technology in the Real World: Reflections on the Pursuit of Policy-Oriented History
Historians of Technology in the Real World: Reflections on the Pursuit of Policy-Oriented History Richard F. Hirsh Technology and Culture, Volume 52, Number 1, January 2011, pp. 6-20 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/tech.2011.0039 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tech/summary/v052/52.1.hirsh.html Access provided by Virginia Polytechnic Inst. __ACCESS_STATEMENT__ St.University __ACCESS_STATEMENT__ (Viva) (6 Feb 2014 13:11 GMT) 02_52.1hirsh 6–20:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/22/11 7:49 AM Page 6 Historians of Technology in the Real World Reflections on the Pursuit of Policy-Oriented History RICHARDF.HIRSH Nearly all historians writing about their craft begin by explaining the value of studying the past. According to the authors of a popular primer, history represents a collective memory that provides an awareness of past events, helping us shape our present and future.1 History has great practical signif- icance, notes another academic, because “intelligent action” draws on past experience.2 As a consequence of the way pedagogues extol the relevance of their work, many high-school students can paraphrase Santayana’s dictum that “[t]hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”3 Despite widespread acceptance of the notion that history provides tan- gible benefits, historians usually remain reluctant to apply “lessons” to real- world situations, especially in the realms of public and business policy. Eager to be viewed as unbiased, dispassionate observers of events, most aca- demic historians seem happy to write primarily for their peers. -
Artificial Intelligence? 1 V2.0 © J
TU Darmstadt, WS 2012/13 Einführung in die Künstliche Intelligenz Einführung in die Künstliche Intelligenz Dozenten Prof. Johannes Fürnkranz (Knowledge Engineering) Prof. Ulf Brefeld (Knowledge Mining and Assessment) Homepage http://www.ke.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/lehre/ki/ Termine: Dienstag 11:40-13:20 S202/C205 Donnerstag 11:40-13:20 S202/C205 3 VO + 1 UE Vorlesungen und Übungen werden in Doppelstunden abgehalten Übungen Terminplan wird auf der Web-Seite aktualisiert Ü voraussichtlich: 30.10., 13.11., 27.11., 11.12., 15.1., 29.1. Tafelübungen What is Artificial Intelligence? 1 V2.0 © J. Fürnkranz TU Darmstadt, WS 2012/13 Einführung in die Künstliche Intelligenz Text Book The course will mostly follow Stuart Russell und Peter Norvig: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Prentice Hall, 2nd edition, 2003. Deutsche Ausgabe: Stuart Russell und Peter Norvig: Künstliche Intelligenz: Ein Moderner Ansatz. Pearson- Studium, 2004. ISBN: 978-3-8273-7089-1. 3. Auflage 2012 Home-page for the book: http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/ Course slides in English (lecture is in German) will be availabe from Home-page What is Artificial Intelligence? 2 V2.0 © J. Fürnkranz TU Darmstadt, WS 2012/13 Einführung in die Künstliche Intelligenz What is Artificial Intelligence Different definitions due to different criteria Two dimensions: Thought processes/reasoning vs. behavior/action Success according to human standards vs. success according to an ideal concept of intelligence: rationality. Systems that think like humans Systems that think rationally Systems that act like humans Systems that act rationally What is Artificial Intelligence? 3 V2.0 © J. Fürnkranz TU Darmstadt, WS 2012/13 Einführung in die Künstliche Intelligenz Definitions of Artificial Intelligence What is Artificial Intelligence? 4 V2.0 © J. -
Social History Would Be Termed ‘Social Geography’ There Has Been Too Jones E 1975 Readings in Social Geography
Social History would be termed ‘social geography’ there has been too Jones E 1975 Readings in Social Geography. Oxford University little interaction between those researchers working on Press, Oxford, UK developing and developed countries. There are, how- Johnston R J 1987 Theory and methodology in social geo- ever, some indications that this is changing with graphy. In: Pacione M (ed.) Social Geography: Progress and Prospect. Croom Helm, London greater appreciation of the implications of the globali- Johnston R L, Gregory D, Smith D M 1994 The Dictionary of zation of communication and economic relationships Human Geography, 3rd edn. Blackwell, Oxford, UK and the significance of diasporic cultures. Meinig D (ed.) 1979 The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes. For many social geographers the growth of cultural Oxford University Press, New York geography presents an opportunity to combine many Pahl R 1965 Trends in social geography. In: Chorley R J, of the themes of the two sub-disciplines in fruitful Haggett P (eds.) Frontiers in Geographical Teaching. Methuen, investigation of social inequality and difference and to London focus on and destabilize definitions of a wider range of Pahl 1975 Whose City? 2nd edn. Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK ‘social groups’—such as disabled people and gay and Rex J 1968 The sociology of a zone in transition. In: Pahl R E (ed.) Readings in Urban Sociology. Pergamon Press, Oxford, lesbian people. Social geographers’ tradition of pol- UK itical engagement and ethnographic research can Smith D 1977 Human Geography: A Welfare Approach. Edward combine positively with cultural geographers’ sen- Arnold, New York sitivity to discourse and symbolic expression of dif- Shevky E, Bell W 1955 Social Area Analysis. -
The Machine That Builds Itself: How the Strengths of Lisp Family
Khomtchouk et al. OPINION NOTE The Machine that Builds Itself: How the Strengths of Lisp Family Languages Facilitate Building Complex and Flexible Bioinformatic Models Bohdan B. Khomtchouk1*, Edmund Weitz2 and Claes Wahlestedt1 *Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract 1Center for Therapeutic Innovation and Department of We address the need for expanding the presence of the Lisp family of Psychiatry and Behavioral programming languages in bioinformatics and computational biology research. Sciences, University of Miami Languages of this family, like Common Lisp, Scheme, or Clojure, facilitate the Miller School of Medicine, 1120 NW 14th ST, Miami, FL, USA creation of powerful and flexible software models that are required for complex 33136 and rapidly evolving domains like biology. We will point out several important key Full list of author information is features that distinguish languages of the Lisp family from other programming available at the end of the article languages and we will explain how these features can aid researchers in becoming more productive and creating better code. We will also show how these features make these languages ideal tools for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. We will specifically stress the advantages of domain-specific languages (DSL): languages which are specialized to a particular area and thus not only facilitate easier research problem formulation, but also aid in the establishment of standards and best programming practices as applied to the specific research field at hand. DSLs are particularly easy to build in Common Lisp, the most comprehensive Lisp dialect, which is commonly referred to as the “programmable programming language.” We are convinced that Lisp grants programmers unprecedented power to build increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence systems that may ultimately transform machine learning and AI research in bioinformatics and computational biology. -
Testing Civics: State-Level Civic Education Requirements and Political Knowledge
Testing Civics: State-Level Civic Education Requirements and Political Knowledge Professor David E. Campbell Department of Political Science 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN 46556 Phone: 574-631-7809/ Fax: 574-631-4405 [email protected] Professor Richard G. Niemi Department of Political Science University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627 Phone: 585-275-5364/Fax: 585-271-1616 niemi@[email protected] Forthcoming, American Political Science Review Abstract Do state-level exams in civics have an impact on young people’s civic knowledge? We hypothesize that civics exams have the biggest effect in states where they matter most—i.e., where they are a requirement for high school graduation—the incentive hypothesis. We further hypothesize that civics requirements have the biggest effect on young people with less exposure to information about the U.S. political system at home, specifically Latinos and, especially, immigrants—the compensation hypothesis. We test these hypotheses with two sources of data—first, from high school students with the 2006 and 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics test, and second, from a large national survey of 18-24 year-olds. Across the two datasets, we find modest support for the incentive hypothesis and strong support for the compensation hypothesis. 1 Policymakers and political scientists alike have long recognized the importance of formal civic education for youth.1 Currently, “each state’s constitution or public education establishment statutes and codes acknowledge the civic mission of schools” (Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools 2015). Historically, schools have served as the key institution to educate immigrants about the nation’s system of governance and thus equip them for involvement in the nation’s political life (Gutmann 1999; Hochschild and Scovronick 2003; Macedo 2005). -
Backpropagation with Callbacks
Backpropagation with Continuation Callbacks: Foundations for Efficient and Expressive Differentiable Programming Fei Wang James Decker Purdue University Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47906 West Lafayette, IN 47906 [email protected] [email protected] Xilun Wu Grégory Essertel Tiark Rompf Purdue University Purdue University Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47906 West Lafayette, IN, 47906 West Lafayette, IN, 47906 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract Training of deep learning models depends on gradient descent and end-to-end differentiation. Under the slogan of differentiable programming, there is an increas- ing demand for efficient automatic gradient computation for emerging network architectures that incorporate dynamic control flow, especially in NLP. In this paper we propose an implementation of backpropagation using functions with callbacks, where the forward pass is executed as a sequence of function calls, and the backward pass as a corresponding sequence of function returns. A key realization is that this technique of chaining callbacks is well known in the programming languages community as continuation-passing style (CPS). Any program can be converted to this form using standard techniques, and hence, any program can be mechanically converted to compute gradients. Our approach achieves the same flexibility as other reverse-mode automatic differ- entiation (AD) techniques, but it can be implemented without any auxiliary data structures besides the function call stack, and it can easily be combined with graph construction and native code generation techniques through forms of multi-stage programming, leading to a highly efficient implementation that combines the per- formance benefits of define-then-run software frameworks such as TensorFlow with the expressiveness of define-by-run frameworks such as PyTorch. -
Law and Political Economy in a Time of Accelerating Crises
Angela P. Harris, School of Law, UC Davis James J. (“Jay”) Varellas III, Department of Political Science, UC Berkeley* Introduction: Law and Political Economy in a Time of Accelerating Crises Abstract In this time of accelerating crises nationally and worldwide, conventional understandings of the relationships among state, market, and society and their regulation through law are inadequate. In this Editors’ Introduction to Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Journal of Law and Political Economy, we reflect on our current historical moment, identify genealogies of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) project, articulate some of the intellectual foundations of the work, and finally discuss the journal’s institutional history and context. Keywords: Law and Political Economy I. Introduction Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises contains this famous exchange: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” In the United States and around the world, we are facing intertwined crises: skyrocketing economic inequality, an increasingly destabilizing and extractive system of global finance, dramatic shifts in the character of work and economic production, a crisis of social reproduction, the ongoing disregard of Black and brown lives, the rise of new authoritarianisms, a global pandemic, and, of course, looming above all, the existential threat of global climate change. From the vantage point of mid-2020, it is impossible to avoid the sense that these crises, like Mike’s bankruptcy, have emerged both suddenly and as the result of problems long in the making. It is also clear that these interlocking crises are accelerating as they collide with societies whose capacities to respond have been hollowed out by decades of neoliberalism. -
Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artijcial Intelligence: a Modem Approach *
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Artificial Intelligence ELSEVIER Artificial Intelligence 82 ( 1996) 369-380 Book Review Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artijcial Intelligence: A Modem Approach * Nils J. Nilsson Robotics Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA 1. Introductory remarks I am obliged to begin this review by confessing a conflict of interest: I am a founding director and a stockholder of a publishing company that competes with the publisher of this book, and I am in the process of writing another textbook on AI. What if Russell and Norvig’s book turns out to be outstanding? Well, it did! Its descriptions are extremely clear and readable; its organization is excellent; its examples are motivating; and its coverage is scholarly and thorough! End of review? No; we will go on for some pages-although not for as many as did Russell and Norvig. In their Preface (p. vii), the authors mention five distinguishing features of their book: Unified presentation of the field, Intelligent agent design, Comprehensive and up-to-date coverage, Equal emphasis on theory and practice, and Understanding through implementation. These features do indeed distinguish the book. I begin by making a few brief, summary comments using the authors’ own criteria as a guide. l Unified presentation of the field and Intelligent agent design. I have previously observed that just as Los Angeles has been called “twelve suburbs in search of a city”, AI might be called “twelve topics in search of a subject”. -
The Dartmouth College Artificial Intelligence Conference: the Next
AI Magazine Volume 27 Number 4 (2006) (© AAAI) Reports continued this earlier work because he became convinced that advances The Dartmouth College could be made with other approaches using computers. Minsky expressed the concern that too many in AI today Artificial Intelligence try to do what is popular and publish only successes. He argued that AI can never be a science until it publishes what fails as well as what succeeds. Conference: Oliver Selfridge highlighted the im- portance of many related areas of re- search before and after the 1956 sum- The Next mer project that helped to propel AI as a field. The development of improved languages and machines was essential. Fifty Years He offered tribute to many early pio- neering activities such as J. C. R. Lick- leiter developing time-sharing, Nat Rochester designing IBM computers, and Frank Rosenblatt working with James Moor perceptrons. Trenchard More was sent to the summer project for two separate weeks by the University of Rochester. Some of the best notes describing the AI project were taken by More, al- though ironically he admitted that he ■ The Dartmouth College Artificial Intelli- Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon, and never liked the use of “artificial” or gence Conference: The Next 50 Years Nathaniel Rochester for the 1956 “intelligence” as terms for the field. (AI@50) took place July 13–15, 2006. The event, McCarthy wanted, as he ex- Ray Solomonoff said he went to the conference had three objectives: to cele- plained at AI@50, “to nail the flag to brate the Dartmouth Summer Research summer project hoping to convince the mast.” McCarthy is credited for Project, which occurred in 1956; to as- everyone of the importance of ma- coining the phrase “artificial intelli- sess how far AI has progressed; and to chine learning. -
Herodotus and the Origins of Political Philosophy the Beginnings of Western Thought from the Viewpoint of Its Impending End
Herodotus and the Origins of Political Philosophy The Beginnings of Western Thought from the Viewpoint of its Impending End A doctoral thesis by O. H. Linderborg Dissertation presented at Uppsala University to be publicly examined in Engelska Parken, 7-0042, Thunbergsvägen 3H, Uppsala, Monday, 3 September 2018 at 14:00 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The examination will be conducted in English. Faculty examiner: Docent Elton Barker (Open University). Abstract Linderborg, O. H. 2018. Herodotus and the Origins of Political Philosophy. The Beginnings of Western Thought from the Viewpoint of its Impending End. 224 pp. Uppsala: Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University. ISBN 978-91-506-2703-9. This investigation proposes a historical theory of the origins of political philosophy. It is assumed that political philosophy was made possible by a new form of political thinking commencing with the inauguration of the first direct democracies in Ancient Greece. The pristine turn from elite rule to rule of the people – or to δημοκρατία, a term coined after the event – brought with it the first ever political theory, wherein fundamentally different societal orders, or different principles of societal rule, could be argumentatively compared. The inauguration of this alternative-envisioning “secular” political theory is equaled with the beginnings of classical political theory and explained as the outcome of the conjoining of a new form of constitutionalized political thought (cratistic thinking) and a new emphasis brought to the inner consistency of normative reasoning (‘internal critique’). The original form of political philosophy, Classical Political Philosophy, originated when a political thought launched, wherein non-divinely sanctioned visions of transcendence of the prevailing rule, as well as of the full range of alternatives disclosed by Classical Political Theory, first began to be envisioned. -
The Political History of Nineteenth Century Portugal1
The Political History of Nineteenth Century Portugal1 Paulo Jorge Fernandes Autónoma University of Lisbon [email protected] Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses National University of Ireland [email protected] Manuel Baiôa CIDEHUS-University of Évora [email protected] Abstract The political history of nineteenth-century Portugal was, for a long time, a neglected subject. Under Salazar's New State it was passed over in favour of earlier periods from which that nationalist regime sought to draw inspiration; subsequent historians preferred to concentrate on social and economic developments to the detriment of the difficult evolution of Portuguese liberalism. This picture is changing, thanks to an awakening of interest in both contemporary topics and political history (although there is no consensus when it comes to defining political history). The aim of this article is to summarise these recent developments in Portuguese historiography for the benefit of an English-language audience. Keywords Nineteenth Century, History, Bibliography, Constitutionalism, Historiography, Liberalism, Political History, Portugal Politics has finally begun to carve out a privileged space at the heart of Portuguese historiography. This ‘invasion’ is a recent phenomenon and can be explained by the gradual acceptance, over the course of two decades, of political history as a genuine specialisation in Portuguese academic circles. This process of scientific and pedagogical renewal has seen a clear focus also on the nineteenth century. Young researchers concentrate their efforts in this field, and publishers are more interested in this kind of works than before. In Portugal, the interest in the 19th century is a reaction against decades of ignorance. Until April 1974, ideological reasons dictated the absence of contemporary history from the secondary school classroom, and even from the university curriculum. -
The History of Computing in the History of Technology
The History of Computing in the History of Technology Michael S. Mahoney Program in History of Science Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (Annals of the History of Computing 10(1988), 113-125) After surveying the current state of the literature in the history of computing, this paper discusses some of the major issues addressed by recent work in the history of technology. It suggests aspects of the development of computing which are pertinent to those issues and hence for which that recent work could provide models of historical analysis. As a new scientific technology with unique features, computing in turn can provide new perspectives on the history of technology. Introduction record-keeping by a new industry of data processing. As a primary vehicle of Since World War II 'information' has emerged communication over both space and t ime, it as a fundamental scientific and technological has come to form the core of modern concept applied to phenomena ranging from information technolo gy. What the black holes to DNA, from the organization of English-speaking world refers to as "computer cells to the processes of human thought, and science" is known to the rest of western from the management of corporations to the Europe as informatique (or Informatik or allocation of global resources. In addition to informatica). Much of the concern over reshaping established disciplines, it has information as a commodity and as a natural stimulated the formation of a panoply of new resource derives from the computer and from subjects and areas of inquiry concerned with computer-based communications technolo gy.