Emily L. Hunt, Vincent S. Carpenter, Kyle W. Cook
et al.
While almost everything that astronomers study occurs in the vacuum of space, astronomy itself does not `happen in a vacuum'. Interactions between scientists, as well as outreach to members of the public, improve extensively from access to good communication tools. Social media has become a key tool for communication in astronomy, being widely used by individuals and organizations alike for networking, outreach, and more. However, traditional social media is reliant on benevolent corporations providing a free service without compromising on quality, and the recent takeover and decline of Twitter has shown how vulnerable these platforms can be. In this proceeding, we present The Astrosky Ecosystem, which is an initiative to develop open-source tools and integrations for social media, principally the Bluesky social network. We explain how our project enables the astronomy community to operate its own social media infrastructure, independent of for-profit corporations. We also discuss some of the project's technical aspects, including its use of the AT Protocol for social networking, before concluding with ideas for the future.
El artículo aborda la segunda estancia que, entre 1916 y 1918, Luis Emilio Recabarren realizó en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Desde una perspectiva transnacional, analiza sus planteos sobre el sindicalismo socialista y, en particular, el rol que en el desarrollo de esas ideas tuvo la Argentina como espacio referencial.
1789-, Labor in politics. Political activity of the working class
Henrique M. Borges, Vítor V. Vasconcelos, Flávio L. Pinheiro
Recently, social debates have been marked by increased polarization of social groups. Such polarization not only implies that groups cannot reach a consensus on fundamental questions but also materializes in more modular social spaces/networks that further amplify the risks of polarization in less polarizing topics. How can network adaptation bridge different communities when individuals reveal homophilic or heterophilic social rewiring preferences? Here, we consider information diffusion processes that capture a continuum from simple to complex contagion processes. We use a computational model to understand how fast and to what extent individual rewiring preferences bridge initially weakly connected communities and how likely it is for them to reach a consensus. We show that homophilic and heterophilic rewiring have different impacts depending on the type of opinion spread. First, in the case of complex opinion diffusion, we show that even polarized social networks can reach a population-wide consensus without reshaping their underlying network. When polarized social structures amplify opinion polarization, heterophilic rewiring preferences play a key role in creating bridges between communities and facilitating a population-wide consensus. Secondly, in the case of simple opinion diffusion, homophilic rewiring preferences are more capable of fostering consensus and avoiding a co-existence (dynamical polarization) of opinions. Hence, across a broad profile of simple and complex opinion diffusion processes, only a mix of heterophilic and homophilic rewiring preferences avoids polarization and promotes consensus.
Socialism passes through three stages, which capture the qualitative transformation of the relations of production caused by changes in the productive forces. Specifically, the primary stage = public ownership as central (private ownership as supplement) + market-based distribution according to labor as central (distribution according to capital as supplement) + state(plan-) dominated market economy. The intermediate stage = multiple forms of public ownership + multiple commodity-type distribution according to labor + state-dominated planned economy (market adjustment as supplement). Finally, advanced socialism = single-form public ownership by entire society + product-based distribution according to labor + complete planned economy. Communism = single-form public ownership by entire society + product-based distribution according to need + fully planned economy. By contrast, the modern capitalist economic system = private ownership + distribution according to capital + state-directed market economy. This new theory of the three stages of socialism reasonably coordinates the various systemic criteria in the Marxist classics, and helps reveal the inherent connection between the primary stage of socialism and the great systemic goal of communism.
In the 1960s, Soviet ideology came face to face with new challenges and threats, both internal and external. The leadership of the USSR was aware of these challenges and decided to rework the ideology on the basis of the concept of ‘Developed Socialism’ created in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. In the Soviet Union, this concept became the ideological basis of the ‘Brezhnev’s society’ and was used to respond to domestic and foreign policy challenges faced by the Soviet Union. In addition, it was based on the idea that the country had achieved a high degree of economic development sufficient for the requirements of modern times, and assumed that the completion of communism would be postponed to an indefinite future. The concept of ‘Developed Socialism’ adopted in the USSR simultaneously had progressive features (an attemptto bringthe ideology in linewiththe dictates ofthetime,taking into accountthe ideological experience of othercountries, a departure from the illusion of rapid construction of communism), conservative features (a return to the Stalinist concept of transition from socialism to communism), and ‘utopian’ features (communism remained as the goal). In general, this ideological concept had significant disadvantages that hindered its effectiveness in the long term perspective.
As virtual reality (VR) technologies have improved in the past decade, more research has investigated how they could support more effective communication in various contexts to improve collaboration and social connectedness. However, there was no literature to summarize the uniqueness VR provided and put forward guidance for designing social VR applications for better communication. To understand how VR has been designed and used to facilitate communication in different contexts, we conducted a systematic review of the studies investigating communication in social VR in the past ten years by following the PRISMA guidelines. We highlight current practices and challenges and identify research opportunities to improve the design of social VR to better support communication and make social VR more accessible.
ranshumanism is a philosophical, cultural and political revolutionary movement. It proposes a radical trans- formation of the human being and the society in which it develops. Transhumanism is revolutionary on a philosophical level because it collects ontological traditions of the past that posed this transformation, from British Marxist and non-Marxist left-wing thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries to Soviet and Russian cosmism. But going further back one can find proto- transhumanist proposals from Christian theologians and Enlightenment philosophers. And it is revolutionary at a political level because it can be traced back to proto-transhumanist ideas in political revolutionaries of the past. The revolutionary doctrine par excellence of the 19th and 20th centuries is Marxism. Marxism also influenced certain transhumanists authors, although there are no transhumanist movements that claimed to be Marxist themselves, because none of them put into question capital as the basic social relation of capitalism. In the texts of Marx, Engels and Lenin there can be found proto-transhumanist ideas. Philosophical connections between Marxism and transhumanism are numerous. But beyond this, in this article we suggest that it is possible to develop a Marxist transhumanism movement that exceeds the actual individualistic and pro-capitalist prism on transhumanism. Also, we suggest transhumanism can serve to revitalize Marxist materialism in this 21st century and for the future. Marxist transhumanism would comply with the definition of communism of Marx and Engels, and it could even be said that Marxism is, essentially, transhumanist in its foundations, even when it defines posthumans as New Men, or Men Made In Property. And it could even be said that transhumanism is, in essence, Marxist. In this article, we present a historical cartography of inherent class relations in techno-scientific development and try to show the ideological impact that these relations made on transhumanists. We describe actual transhumanism as transcapitalism, and analyze its theoretical influences, proposing a theoretical itinerary for Marxist transhumanism, from Marx to more contemporary authors that would pave its political and philosophical roots. In addition, we define transcapitalism as BTA-Politics – biopolitics, thanatopolitics and anatomopolitics – in the sense of Michel Foucault. Finally, we propose that it is precisely the inherent contradictions of current Transcapitalism that set the paths for the construction of Marxist transhumanism.
Entre los años 1926 y 1934, Elías Castelnuovo estrena seis obras de teatro vinculadas con distintos proyectos colectivos, que se configuran como los iniciadores del teatro “independiente” argentino: Teatro Libre (1927), Teatro Experimental del Arte (1928) y Teatro Proletario (1934). La hipótesis de que estas obras teatrales se proponen criticar la cultura y la sociedad dominantes, al igual que su producción narrativa anterior, a partir de la apelación a un tono tragicómico y de la apropiación de rasgos vanguardistas permite reconsiderar su recepción mayoritaria y advertir la singularidad del entramado entre estética y política de su apuesta literaria.
1789-, Labor in politics. Political activity of the working class
Socialism: A Very Short Introduction looks at the history of socialism and its contemporary relevance. Is socialism an outdated ideology today? This VSI provides an overview of socialism’s origins, its relationships to communism and social democracy, its different manifestations around the world and throughout history, and its intersections with issues of ethnicity and gender. Examples of the practical implementation of socialist values are provided by case studies of social democracy in Sweden and communism in Cuba. The rise of the ‘New Left’ midway through the 20th century included feminist and green movements, followed up by radical anti-capitalist and climate justice protests and political movements.
Abstract Many scholars have asked themselves if and for how long they should use the concept of “post-socialism.” We review some ways in which post-socialism is no longer used productively and suggest that one way to analyze the enduring effects of socialism (a useful role for the concept of post-socialism) is by paying attention to how economic and political elites in Central and Eastern Europe continue to use the ghost of state-socialism as the ultimate boogeyman, disciplinary device, and “ideological antioxidant.” We call this blend of post-1989 anti-communism and neoliberal hegemony “zombie socialism,” and we argue that it is a key component of contemporary capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe. We illustrate briefly some cases of zombie socialism, using data such as EU 28 statistics on labor, wages, work–life (im)balance, income tax, housing, and housing policies to show the effects of this hegemonic discourse. The presence of zombie socialism for almost three decades in Central and Eastern Europe made some of these countries “more” capitalist than countries with longer capitalist traditions in Europe. We join others who have suggested that there is nothing to transition any longer, as the “transition” is long over.
After the demise of state socialism, public space became an issue of contention that occupied an important place within societies’ efforts to come to terms with the recent past. Extant scholarship documented extensively how postcommunist societies in Central and Eastern Europe have reconfigured the public space by removing the symbolic presence of the former regime (e.g., monuments and statues, but also place- and street names). However, there is a scarcity of research done on exploring the reception of these broad changes brought to the public statuary and urban nomenclature. In this study, we aim to contribute to this nascent strand of literature by investigating the generational differences in social attitudes towards the symbolic transformation of public space in postcommunist Romania. Data collected through a national web-survey conducted in February 2021 (n = 1156) revealed significant intergenerational differences regarding the removal of monuments and the renaming of streets. In particular, higher approval of such memory work was found among the generations born during communism in comparison to the postcommunist generation. Taking stock of these generational differences, as well as the factors underpinning them, contributes to a better understanding of how ordinary people relate to the politics of memory enacted in transforming societies.
In this paper we take into account both social and linguistic aspects to perform demographic analysis by processing a large amount of tweets in Basque language. The study of demographic characteristics and social relationships are approached by applying machine learning and modern deep-learning Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, combining social sciences with automatic text processing. More specifically, our main objective is to combine demographic inference and social analysis in order to detect young Basque Twitter users and to identify the communities that arise from their relationships or shared content. This social and demographic analysis will be entirely based on the~automatically collected tweets using NLP to convert unstructured textual information into interpretable knowledge.
Reseña de Mujeres que trabajan. Labores femeninas, Estado y sindicatos (Buenos Aires,1910-1960), Buenos Aires, Grupo Editor Universitario-EUDEM, 2020, 178 pp.
1789-, Labor in politics. Political activity of the working class