People of the World: Jean-Dominique Bauby, Partner-Assisted Scanning, and Letter Frequency Usage

   As one of the greatest writers said once, “I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix” (The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone, Arthur Conan Doyle). 

   Human brain is a smart machine that is capable of generating amazing ideas; an apparatus that stores diverse solution to many complicated problems. 

Unfortunately, smart ideas sometimes are needed not for technological advancement, but for survival in presence of terrible illnesses or disabilities.

   Jean Dominique Bauby was a French journalist who was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome after having a stroke. He was paralyzed physically, but his fully functioning mental abilities were still inside his body that was no longer governable.  The only physical ability that he could use to communicate with people was the ability to blink with only his one eyelid. But being imprisoned in his own body was not a reason for Jean-Dominique to give up. He used an idea of partner-assisted scanning in order to express himself; he even wrote a book by dictating every single letter and word to his assistant using the blink of his eyelid every time that the letter shown by his assistant was the one he wanted to use. In this, a brilliant idea of analyzing letter frequencies in particular languages were very useful (another smart idea!). Instead of using the regular alphabet (French), letters for dictating were used  by their frequencies: the most used letters come first, which made the job easier and faster. 

   Note: The book that he wrote is called "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and there is also a movie based on the book. 

   Letter Frequencies are very interested to analyze. There are many reports that give approximate frequencies of letters based on analysis of samples of random documents for particular language. For example, the analysis of random 40 000 words in English was reported by Cornell University here. 

Public/Private Spheres vs Women in Relation to Global/International Politics

Fig. 1.  “The Gang’s All Here.” Online Image. Flickr. Flickr, 5 August 2010.Web.11 June 2014.

It is very common to find private and public spheres associated with genders separated from each other throughout the history in works of scholars and political scientists. Public sphere is a big sector of social life that consists of important systems such as government with its president, Judiciary, Congress, and laws. It includes also trade system with detailed discussions of businesses and corporations. One of the largest portions of public sphere is military system. Education, media, religion have their places in this sphere also. Public sphere is basically a sphere where power operates and it is associated with masculine gender. The picture becomes contrasting when we think about the private sphere. This sector of society includes family and all its functions, marriage and sexual life. Food, fashion, and everything that is within the domestic domain are considered in the private sphere which in its turn is associated with women and feminine gender. Private sphere itself is usually ignored in the explorations and analysis of historical or present events while public sphere is in the center of discussions. Therefore it seems that men are in charge of the public sphere, and women are assigned to be in the private sphere. Accordingly, when we take a look at only public sphere and we eliminate women and private sphere from the discussions, we limit our understanding of international politics because society as a whole cannot exist with only public sphere and without intersection and connection of both spheres. Considering only public sphere will stereotype our understanding of international politics; hearing only “masculinized stories” will create  so-called “single story” about historical and present facts that will turn to be far from the reality. Therefore, we need to take into account the private sphere along with the public sphere and hear stories from both men and women in order to understand the whole picture of international politics.

To see how the separation of public/private spheres affect our understanding of international politics and women in relation to global politics, the example of Carmen Miranda and her role in international politics will be a good example to discuss.

Her example shows that the separation of spheres does not make sense because both spheres are operating depending on each other. Her example also shows that women are effective not only for private sphere operations but also for improving the relationships in global international politics between countries, i.e. women belong not only in the private sphere. Carmen Miranda was an actress, a singer and as a woman she was a representative of the private sphere (by definition). She has been also “chosen” by a corporation of a public sphere for promoting the production (bananas), and it was using her  in order to push the business of bananas forward by targeting women in private sphere and by advertising bananas using a well thought character of a woman.

Facebook: The Panopticon of Modern Age

Fig. 1. Grigoryan, Sona. “Facebook: The Panopticon of Modern Age.” Online Image. Flickr. Flickr Creative Commons, 9 March 2014. Web. 2 Feb 2014.

    In 2004, a Harvard university undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook — a small social network for Harvard students to help to identify each other. Gradually, it spread to other universities, and eventually became popular among all colleges, universities, schools, the military, companies in the United States and in the whole world (Westlake 24). Nowadays, Facebook has about 1.19 billion active users who share and post personal information, photos, videos, personal thoughts, and “stay connected with their friends and family” (Navratil 51). By voluntary posting personal or general information Facebook users participate in collaborative creation of a giant database of information (qtd. in Keen). This information is under the constant surveillance not only by their friends and family, but also by Facebook that uses it for its own profit; this surveillance also generates sorted information about users and their preferences to be sold to advertising companies (Navratil 52). Facebook changes the ways of communication and interaction of users by simply keeping them under the constant surveillance. Consideration of Facebook’s surveillance will be interesting to look from panoptic perspective invented by Jeremy Bentham in 1791. The Panopticon was a design of a perfect prison, architecture of which allowed “to see constantly and recognize immediately” (Foucault 200). Furthermore, the Panopticon gave the rise of the disciplinary societies; the transformation of mechanisms that allows exercising power not only on a small enclosed institution, but also on bigger social bodies (Foucault 217). In this research paper, I will argue that there is the relevance between surveillance of Facebook and the surveillance in the Panopticon model, and although the concept of the Panopticon is an old phenomenon, it is still applicable in our digital century.

In order to show the relevance between surveillance of Facebook and the surveillance in the Panopticon, I will first introduce the main physical architecture of Panopticon and its purpose. I will then draw parallels between the elements of the design of the Panopticon and Facebook (see fig. 1). I will show that despite the fact that the Panopticon was meant to be an actual real building and Facebook is a virtual digital entity, they have many similarities. Next, I will introduce the idea of Facebook having a technique of disciplining the users, as well as mechanism of shaping their subjectivities, and I will argue that this is based on the panoptic gaze of surveillance and it comes from the roots of Panopticism. And lastly, I will depict that Facebook itself is a platform that collects knowledge from user posts and information for capitalistic purposes, effective performance of work, and increase of productivity, which in their turn are the criteria for tactics of power in economic process of formation of the disciplinary society.

The Development of Food Production

 Fig. 1. Grig, Sona. “Wheat.” Online Image. Flickr. Flickr Creative Commons, 5 March 2013. Web. 15 Dec 2013.

Around 10,000 years ago, groups of hunters and gatherers left behind their foraging lifestyle and gradually became food producers: farmers and herders. At that time plant cultivation and animal domestication started in the Middle East, then in about 5,000 B.P. it spread to Western Europe and another 500 years later – to Northern Europe. Independent of the Middle East food production was also invented in Andean Region. Somewhere in between 8,000 B.P. – 4700 B.P. the invention of food production took place in different parts of China and Mesoamerica, around 4500 B.P. in Eastern United States, and 4000 B.P. in Sub-Saharan Africa. These inventions and their spread afterwards played major role in the human history of city and state development. But the main topic that scientists were interested in was the reason that triggered the switch from hunting and gathering to food production. So the main goal of this paper is to explore the facts and understand what led to the development of food production by humans and why they domesticated those particular crops and animals.

One of the reasons that triggered food production was the climate change. With the end of the Ice age and ice sheets melting, tundra and steppe vegetation with their inhabitants gradually moved north, and a rich variety of food appeared to be available for people. It allowed them to be less dependent and, consequently, specialized on hunting big animals, and let them explore and experiment with the broader spectrum of food resources. Although hunting was still the important part of people’s economy, they started to pay attention to different available species of plants, fish, and much smaller animals. Over time, people built up larger populations by merging small communities and took advantage of wild resources. As mentioned in Peter Richerson’s book, in this period people were developing seed grinding, digging and other tools which can be considered as preadaptation to plant cultivation. In addition to the latter, people were interested in small animals much more than bigger ones. For example, in Andes, the amount of deer bones declined, while the amount of guinea pig bones increased. The end of the Ice Age brought rich variety of plants and animals: some areas were so rich of wild resources that people could settle down, develop villages, and live nearby sufficient amount of food to sustain their families.

Sedentary life in villages was another trigger to food production. As a result of sedentary lifestyle, population size of the villages were growing; thus wild resources nearby became no longer enough for supporting families of the communities. So for the first time this forced people to think about using naturally less favorable lands in order to control the reproduction of plants and animals. For example, according to Kottak, Natufians were one of the groups of people who started to settle in villages around 12,500 – 12,000 B.P. in Hilly Flanks zone. They had year-around villages; they was collecting wild cereals and hunting gazelles, and were able to stay in the same place because of the availability of resources. At some point, they had to build villages near stands, because they needed storage for harvested grain. At the same time their animals could graze on stubble after harvesting had been done. Around 11,000 B.P. this pattern was threatened by a second dryer climate change, as a result of which optimal zones shrunk and Natufians were forced to stay in areas close to water. Because their population was growing and the collected wild grain was not enough to sustain it, for the first time Natufians tried to relocate wild cereal to well watered areas, where they put a start to cultivation. Sedentary life and attempts of plant cultivation also triggered animal domestication; people could not follow animals, which are mobile. They had to think of something which would give them easy and fresh meat.