theme 4

The Article I have chosen for this weeks theme is called:

"The Benefits of Facebook ‘‘Friends:’’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites" by Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe

1. This article is about the relationship between the use of social media platforms such as Facebook and the formation and maintenance of social capital. For instance this is based on a survey conducted on 286 students in USA which could be regarded as a quantitative method.  This method is a good way to get demographic information about users of the survey which can later be analyzed. The survey included several questions about Facebook, social capital, self esteem, well being and so forth. From the results of this survey the authors can try to find patterns and relationship between the different questions and answers in the survey, which could be used as argumentation and scientific proof. The limitations with a survey of this kind is that the quality of the answers is pretty low - only a few alternativ. With open answer questions the answer contains higher quality of information but in the same time it is more time demanding.

2. Quantitative methods should be used for finding general patterns in a big group. It is useable only with short answer questions such as yes or no questions.

3. The main issue with this method in this particular paper is that there is a lot of questions that could be linked to other circumstances than the use of Social media. I think this is an issue with a lot of quantitative research, especially within the health sector and the habit of people. If you would listen to all the research about what you should eat you can conclude that you can eat almost anything. It is hard to generalize something specific if you don't look at all the aspects of a problem and this is a very big challenge for research.

The benefit of quantitative methods is that you get a very general static result which reflects the opinions of the society which can be translated into percentage and numbers. By doing so it is easy to find patterns and relationships between different factors. The downside of this is that the answers contains only a little bit of information and sometimes a problem is to complex to be satisfied with a simple answer.

Qualitative methods are on the other hand very rich of information. The problem is quite the opposite to quantitative methods, qualitative methods are to time consuming to be able to be used on a larger scale and therefor the answers of such questions cannot be reflected upon a bigger crowd of people.

Theme 3 - reflection

Hello there!
I thought that this weeks theme was quite interesting and hopefully it will be of great help for the writing of my masters thesis. After picking and reading my text I was pretty convinced that the paper was mostly based on analyzing theory because of the comparison between different technologies. After the seminar I realized that the theories were a combination of different categories much more like a hybrid than a clean version of some sort. After reading it again it appears that the dominant part of the theory that has been used is theory of explaining with a touch of analyzing in the comparison between different technologies. There was no sense of prediction in the theory of my paper.

We discussed a lot about what prediction was and concluded that a prediction is a very strong and powerful supposition in a theory. As in the case of my paper we discussed that theories are seldom pure to one category but rather a hybrid of different sorts which are used as a backup structure for complex questions within the thesis. We discussed the difference between background and theory. Backgrounds are based on facts and passed events while theory is more of an argumentation.

Theme 2 Reflection

I found this weeks topic pretty interesting since it really touches on how media impacts the world we live in. Art and culture is something that have an massive impact on society even though most of use don’t see it as something important for the world. But as this weeks theme proves, art is all around us in form of media and that brings us to the question if we really could call anything art. This is what Benjamin did during the pre WWII years and he saw the power of art and how media can affect a group of people. I don’t really think the most important issue is whether an artifact is a piece of art or not but rather how it us used and what impact it has on society.

Unfortunately I could not attend to this weeks seminar due to a clash in my schedule. I’ve read some of the reflections and think it’s interesting how Adorno & Horkeimer critique how media can be manipulated and especially something that is believed to show the truth such as film. Film can easily be edited and the story & plot can be controlled by the director to show the audience the truth as the director sees it. This is a major issue with media even in todays society. In Sweden 80% of our media is controlled by one company, one company(Bonnier)! Since most of us get our information from the news this means that the flow of information is pretty much controlled by this company. Thankfully the internet has opened up more channels of information but it is still pretty scary with the ”fourth estate”. Take the Swedish election for example. It would be interesting to se how many of the voters who actually decides after taking the ”valbarometern” on Aftonbladet. The results are very much controlled by Aftonbladet in the way they interpret the answers to their questions  and this can probably make a huge impact on the outcome of the voting results.

What I'm trying to say with this is that with technology and reproduction of art we are able to affect millions of people to believe in something that is not necessarily the truth.  

Theme 3 - 
I have chosen the paper "Smart Grid Technologies: Communication Technologies and Standards" by Vehbi C. Güngör from the journal IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics with an impact factor of 8,785.

This article adress the issues with how the old power grids designed for the 20th century are now being outdated and too inefficient for the demands of the 21st century. Because of this new concepts called smart grids have emerged and they can be seen as a modern electric power grid infrastructure with smart components and communication such as ICT, high power converters, sensors etc. The smart grids are much more complex then the old grids whom are based on a solid information and communication infrastructure. The smart grids are dynamic and takes many more factors in to account which now can be measured because of innovative technology. The paper adress critical issues with smart grids, primarily in terms of ICTs issues and opportunities. The objective is to provide a contemporary look at the current art of smart grids as well as adress and discuss research issues at this field.

The article chooses to present its argument by comparing different types of smart grids against each other. Both technical and practical features are being investigated and then compared to the needs of the 21st century. The theoretical framework is of analytic style according to the paper by Gregor with a very descriptive style of the different systems whom are being analysed against the stated reality of the 21st century.

q1.
Hi first year student!
Theoretical methodology is used to establish a basic theory about a question. It is a lens to view and explain the world we live in.
There are five different characteristics of theory: 
(1) theory for analyzing - A description of a phenomena of interest and the analysis between relationships among different constructs such as two different systems and in which degree this could be generalized.

(2) theory for explaining, The theory provides an explanation of how, why, and when things happened. It is often used to promote greater understanding by others.

(3) theory for predicting,  Prediction. The theory states what will happen in the future if certain preconditions hold. 

(4) theory for explaining and predicting. Says what is, how, why, when, where, and what will be. Is similar to 2 but it also tries to calculate future predictions

(5) theory for design and action. - Says how to do something.

The theory gives explicit prescriptions (e.g., methods, techniques, principles of form and function) for constructing an artifact. 

Theory is not references, data, list of variables or constructs, diagrams, hypotheses and predictions because these things are static artefacts that are not put in to a specific context of explaining a phenomenon.

q2. As already mentioned in earlier text. My article is mainly using analyzing theory.

q3. Benefits is that it is easy to know what to look for and what is relevant for the research. The limitations is that we live in a complex world and with selected theories we might rule out theories that are relevant to the conclusion of the research.

Theme 2

1. Dialectic of Enlightenment

a. What is "Enlightenment"?

I believe that enlightenment is when people uncover myths and the unknown with believable truth such as knowledge and facts. This can be complex discoveries where theories are suddenly believable because of better reasoning. The human mind does not feel comfortable with not knowing, we don’t accept it. That is why we always strive for enlightenment in the world we live in.

b. What is "dialectic"?

The dialectic methodology is a way of discover the truth by a discourse between different point of views. With reasoned arguments the truth will finally be unveiled 

c. What is "nominalism" and why is it an important concept in the text?

Nominalism is a direction within philosophy which argues that universal concepts does not say anything about the object but is merely not more than a name and that is the only thing that makes the objects related to each other. Universal concepts are nothing more than empty words. I believe it is important since Universal concepts often comes with pre assumptions about the object which not always is correct.

d. What is the meaning and function of "myth" in Adorno and Horkheimer's argument?

Myth is something that is used to explain the unexplainable and by doing so it has the same effect on the human mind as enlightenment does, it removes fear of the unknown and it creates dominant power out of belief.

2. "The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproductivity"

. In the beginning of the essay, Benjamin talks about the relation between "superstructure" and "substructure" in the capitalist order of production. What do the concepts "superstructure" and "substructure" mean in this context and what is the point of analyzing cultural production from a Marxist perspective?

The substructure is the tangibles that reflects upon the superstructure. It is the forces of production such as the labor that create things and the superstructure is the intangibles that exists in society such as beliefs, ideology and culture. The marxist perspective is to focus on the ones that are dominating the substructure and the rulers of technological reproductivity,

b. Does culture have revolutionary potentials (according to Benjamin)? If so, describe these potentials. Does Benjamin's perspective differ from the perspective of Adorno & Horkheimer in this regard?

The new inventions of media, the way we can visualize and transport information, has widened our culture and our definition of culture which has a revolutionary effect on the masses. Media is much more powerful in the way it can affect people with the technological effects such as editing and sound. 

Benjamin does not approve of new media since he believes that it should not be possible to recreate art with technology . Adorno and Hockheimer  believes that it is important to be able to reproduce art since this makes it easier to spread knowledge to society which is important for the enlightenment.

c. Benjamin discusses how people perceive the world through the senses and argues that this perception can be both naturally and historically determined. What does this mean? Give some examples of historically determined perception (from Benjamin's essay and/or other contexts).

Perception is something that is either experienced first hand or passed on to us thru stories and history. Perception is formed by everything we experience and since we have the possibility to experience stories as if it was an actual event we can understand how the characters in the stories feel and think. One example is Benjamin discussion about how the Roman art not only changed the culture, but also our perception.

d. What does Benjamin mean by the term "aura"? Are there different kinds of aura in natural objects compared to art objects?

It means that a work of art who has an aura is unique and authentic. Benjamin believes that reproduction of art makes this aura go away. I believe that the aura he talks about is the mystery about one object, the stories behind it and the feelings it creates. So yeah, there are different kinds of auras.

Reflection on seminar, theme 1, group 1

Hello again!
The first seminar was a rather quiet seminar and you could tell that the topic of metaphysics is quit heavy for the rational engineer student. We started with rehearsing some of the lecture material and then we discussed the questions. Most of the discussion was about trying to clarify the argumentation of Kant and what he really means. With some appropriate metaphors about the real world and the importance of purpose for our way of understanding the world, we could finally, in a pretty abstract way, understand what Kant was going for. Furthermore we discussed some of the different paradigm shifts in what we believe is knowledge.
I prepared for this seminar by reading the text and trying to find some additional summaries and thoughts about these texts. What I learned is that it is important that we realize what we mean when we talk about knowledge and how that affects the way we do research and what we say is the truth.

Theme 1: Theory of knowledge and theory of science

1.In the preface to the second edition of "Critique of Pure Reason" (page B xvi) Kant says: "Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects. On that presupposition, however, all our attempts to establish something about them a priori, by means of concepts through which our cognition would be expanded, have come to nothing. Let us, therefore, try to find out by experiment whether we shall not make better progress in the problems of metaphysics if we assume that objects must conform to our cognition." How are we to understand this?

Immanuel Kant 1724 - 1804

What we can assume from this is that our cognition is evolving from how we experience the world around us which enriches our understanding and knowledge. However, Kant suggests that instead of originate from our perspective, with the knowledge we have and the science we know, we could learn more about the world, looking from the perspective of other things. As in his example with Copernicus, if Copernicus wasn’t so busy with looking at the rotating stars, maybe he would realize that maybe, he is the one that is rotating.

2. At the end of the discussion of the definition "Knowledge is perception", Socrates argues that we do not see and hear "with" the eyes and the ears, but "through" the eyes and the ears. How are we to understand this? And in what way is it correct to say that Soctrates argument is directed towards what we in modern terms call ”empiricism”?

Socrates & Plato 507 B.C.E

What Socrates means is that when we perceive something, such as temperature, our experiences of the same object or element is perceived different and thus we think differently of the same experience. He takes the example of the perception of a gust of wind which appear warm to a person and cold to another person. If both the persons tried to explain the temperature of the wind to a third person which one would be correct? This would be a rather difficult situation to straighten out. But what if a fourth person entered the discussion and also claimed that the wind actually was hot. Would it be more true then? We can’t know for sure but we are more likely to believe that the wind was in fact hot since more people said so. This is how modern empiricism works where we bring up argument for our thesis with facts and knowledge from past documentation and experiences to make it more believable for other persons. It still does not make our thesis necessarily true but people will believe it and thus it is accepted as knowledge in our world. Another example could be colors. If we show a hue to 100 people and 100 of them point it out as red then it is very likely that the hue we showed is indeed red. All people have different perceptions of red and it is very unlikely that we share the exact same perception of color. But still, our perception of red is so similar that we agree upon that the hue is red. Does this fact make our shared statement 100% true to each person or do we need to reconsider?