EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Evocative Objects

Download or read book Evocative Objects written by Sherry Turkle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autobiographical essays, framed by two interpretive essays by the editor, describe the power of an object to evoke emotion and provoke thought: reflections on a cello, a laptop computer, a 1964 Ford Falcon, an apple, a mummy in a museum, and other "things-to-think-with." For Sherry Turkle, "We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with." In Evocative Objects, Turkle collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.These days, scholars show new interest in the importance of the concrete. This volume's special contribution is its focus on everyday riches: the simplest of objects—an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer—are shown to bring philosophy down to earth. The poet contends, "No ideas but in things." The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable. Whether it's a student's beloved 1964 Ford Falcon (left behind for a station wagon and motherhood), or a cello that inspires a meditation on fatherhood, the intimate objects in this collection are used to reflect on larger themes—the role of objects in design and play, discipline and desire, history and exchange, mourning and memory, transition and passage, meditation and new vision.In the interest of enriching these connections, Turkle pairs each autobiographical essay with a text from philosophy, history, literature, or theory, creating juxtapositions at once playful and profound. So we have Howard Gardner's keyboards and Lev Vygotsky's hobbyhorses; William Mitchell's Melbourne train and Roland Barthes' pleasures of text; Joseph Cevetello's glucometer and Donna Haraway's cyborgs. Each essay is framed by images that are themselves evocative. Essays by Turkle begin and end the collection, inviting us to look more closely at the everyday objects of our lives, the familiar objects that drive our routines, hold our affections, and open out our world in unexpected ways.

Book Evocative Objects

Download or read book Evocative Objects written by Sherry Turkle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autobiographical essays, framed by two interpretive essays by the editor, describe the power of an object to evoke emotion and provoke thought: reflections on a cello, a laptop computer, a 1964 Ford Falcon, an apple, a mummy in a museum, and other "things-to-think-with." For Sherry Turkle, "We think with the objects we love; we love the objects we think with." In Evocative Objects, Turkle collects writings by scientists, humanists, artists, and designers that trace the power of everyday things. These essays reveal objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.These days, scholars show new interest in the importance of the concrete. This volume's special contribution is its focus on everyday riches: the simplest of objects—an apple, a datebook, a laptop computer—are shown to bring philosophy down to earth. The poet contends, "No ideas but in things." The notion of evocative objects goes further: objects carry both ideas and passions. In our relations to things, thought and feeling are inseparable. Whether it's a student's beloved 1964 Ford Falcon (left behind for a station wagon and motherhood), or a cello that inspires a meditation on fatherhood, the intimate objects in this collection are used to reflect on larger themes—the role of objects in design and play, discipline and desire, history and exchange, mourning and memory, transition and passage, meditation and new vision.In the interest of enriching these connections, Turkle pairs each autobiographical essay with a text from philosophy, history, literature, or theory, creating juxtapositions at once playful and profound. So we have Howard Gardner's keyboards and Lev Vygotsky's hobbyhorses; William Mitchell's Melbourne train and Roland Barthes' pleasures of text; Joseph Cevetello's glucometer and Donna Haraway's cyborgs. Each essay is framed by images that are themselves evocative. Essays by Turkle begin and end the collection, inviting us to look more closely at the everyday objects of our lives, the familiar objects that drive our routines, hold our affections, and open out our world in unexpected ways.

Book Evocative Objects

Download or read book Evocative Objects written by Sherry Turkle and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 2007 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autobiographical essays, framed by two interpretive essays by the editor, describe the power of an object to evoke emotion and provoke thought: reflections on a cello, a laptop computer, a 1964 Ford Falcon, an apple, a mummy in a museum, and other "things-to-think-with."

Book Countless Connecting Threads

Download or read book Countless Connecting Threads written by Deborah G. Douglas and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[T]hese countless connecting threads, woven into one indissoluble texture, form that ever-enlarging web which is the blended product of the world's scientific and industrial activity." -- William Barton Rogers, 1860, "Objects and Plan of an Institute of Technology "Inspired by an exhibition of 150 objects created by the MIT Museum to mark MIT's sesquicentennial, this lavishly illustrated volume is a unique collection of visual and written meditations about the making and meaning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The story of MIT is more than a simple tale of a founder's vision. It is greater than the sum of all the stories that have been or are yet to be told by the hundreds of thousands who have a direct personal connection with the Institute. Yet, with the assistance of the collective intelligence of the MIT community, the Museum was able to capture some of those "countless connecting threads" -- from a towering module for the first real-time digital computer to the famous Baker House Piano Drop. Part history, part catalog, part souvenir, "Countless Connecting Threads" invites readers to (re)discover, through some of the Institute's most evocative objects, the essence of the vast and varied tapestry that is MIT.

Book The Smithsonian s History of America in 101 Objects

Download or read book The Smithsonian s History of America in 101 Objects written by Richard Kurin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Smithsonian Institution is America's largest, most important, and most beloved repository for the objects that define our common heritage. Now Under Secretary for Art, History, and Culture Richard Kurin, aided by a team of top Smithsonian curators and scholars, has assembled a literary exhibition of 101 objects from across the Smithsonian's museums that together offer a marvelous new perspective on the history of the United States. Ranging from the earliest years of the pre-Columbian continent to the digital age, and from the American Revolution to Vietnam, each entry pairs the fascinating history surrounding each object with the story of its creation or discovery and the place it has come to occupy in our national memory. Kurin sheds remarkable new light on objects we think we know well, from Lincoln's hat to Dorothy's ruby slippers and Julia Child's kitchen, including the often astonishing tales of how each made its way into the collections of the Smithsonian. Other objects will be eye-opening new discoveries for many, but no less evocative of the most poignant and important moments of the American experience. Some objects, such as Harriet Tubman's hymnal, Sitting Bull's ledger, Cesar Chavez's union jacket, and the Enola Gay bomber, tell difficult stories from the nation's history, and inspire controversies when exhibited at the Smithsonian. Others, from George Washington's sword to the space shuttle Discovery, celebrate the richness and vitality of the American spirit. In Kurin's hands, each object comes to vivid life, providing a tactile connection to American history. Beautifully designed and illustrated with color photographs throughout, The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects is a rich and fascinating journey through America's collective memory, and a beautiful object in its own right.

Book Simulation and Its Discontents

Download or read book Simulation and Its Discontents written by Sherry Turkle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the simulation and visualization technologies so pervasive in science, engineering, and design have changed our way of seeing the world. Over the past twenty years, the technologies of simulation and visualization have changed our ways of looking at the world. In Simulation and Its Discontents, Sherry Turkle examines the now dominant medium of our working lives and finds that simulation has become its own sensibility. We hear it in Turkle's description of architecture students who no longer design with a pencil, of science and engineering students who admit that computer models seem more “real” than experiments in physical laboratories. Echoing architect Louis Kahn's famous question, “What does a brick want?”, Turkle asks, “What does simulation want?” Simulations want, even demand, immersion, and the benefits are clear. Architects create buildings unimaginable before virtual design; scientists determine the structure of molecules by manipulating them in virtual space; physicians practice anatomy on digitized humans. But immersed in simulation, we are vulnerable. There are losses as well as gains. Older scientists describe a younger generation as “drunk with code.” Young scientists, engineers, and designers, full citizens of the virtual, scramble to capture their mentors' tacit knowledge of buildings and bodies. From both sides of a generational divide, there is anxiety that in simulation, something important is slipping away. Turkle's examination of simulation over the past twenty years is followed by four in-depth investigations of contemporary simulation culture: space exploration, oceanography, architecture, and biology.

Book Kelly Wearstler  Evocative Style

Download or read book Kelly Wearstler Evocative Style written by Kelly Wearstler and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For her first book in ten years, Kelly Wearstler, one of the most irreverent and fascinating designers working today, continues to push boundaries with her inventive and opulent interiors, here inviting readers into her latest creations including her newly designed home. Celebrated for luxurious interiors that capture the swankiness of old-world Hollywood with a modern pop sensibility, Wearstler is known for her decadent designs of residences and boutique hotels, such as the line of Viceroys and the tastemakers Maison 140 and Avalon. Her ornate interiors are distinctive for layers of bold textures, patterns, and rich colors juxtaposed with lustrous surfaces, adding up to a whimsical and elegant look that has been called "mod baroque." Here Wearstler shares her creative world, profiling in detail her latest residential and commercial designs (several previously unpublished) and her sumptuous new San Francisco Proper Hotel, as well as her creative process. Full of ideas and with beautiful images of many never-before-photographed interiors, Kelly Wearstler: Evocative Style is an inspirational look at the designer's inventive work. Filled with new work, this volume is a must for other designers and homeowners looking for elegant design inspiration and ideas.

Book Falling for Science

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sherry Turkle
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2008
  • ISBN : 0262201720
  • Pages : 331 pages

Download or read book Falling for Science written by Sherry Turkle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passion for objects and love for science: scientists and students reflect on how objects fired their scientific imaginations.

Book The Evocative Object World

Download or read book The Evocative Object World written by and published by Routledge. This book was released on with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Evocative Object World

Download or read book The Evocative Object World written by Christopher Bollas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-10-27 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Evocative Object World Christopher Bollas builds on Freud's account of dream formation, combining it with perceptive clinical, theoretical and cultural insights to show how the psychoanalytical method can provide a rich understanding of what has traditionally been regarded as 'the outside world'. Moving from the fundamentals of the free associative technique, through an examination of how architecture and the built environment interact with individual and societal dream life, Bollas extends the work of psychoanalysis beyond relations with literature and culture to the actual objects which surround us. As with the evocative external structures of our environment, Bollas describes how the family, with its inherited genetic structures, likewise constitutes a pre-existent unconscious formation into which we are placed, and demonstrates that there is more to this multifaceted unit than the traditional psychoanalytical notion of the Oedipal triangle. In the process, Bollas also provides a fascinating and comprehensive review of how his own theories have evolved over the past three decades: a period during which, in his view, Western society has increasingly neglected – or even become actively hostile towards – unconscious life. Throughout this engaging and accessible text, Bollas rejects the simplistic notion that mental life is unconsciously determined. Instead he provides a compelling study of how unconscious life is shaped by a diverse array of both internal and external factors, and how the work of the Freudian pair provides the best means to gain insight into our dreams, our surroundings, our families – and our mental life as a whole.

Book Fantasmic Objects

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kirsten L. Scheid
  • Publisher : Indiana University Press
  • Release : 2022-12-06
  • ISBN : 0253064260
  • Pages : 438 pages

Download or read book Fantasmic Objects written by Kirsten L. Scheid and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Lebanon, the study of modern art—rather than power or hierarchy—has compelled citizens to confront how they define themselves as a postcolonial nation. In Fantasmic Objects, Kirsten L. Scheid offers a striking study of both modern art in Lebanon and modern Lebanon through art. By focusing on the careers of Moustapha Farrouk and Omar Onsi, forefathers of an iconic national repertoire, and their rebellious student Saloua Raouda Choucair, founder of an antirepresentational, participatory art, Scheid traces an emerging sense of what it means to be Lebanese through the evolution of new exhibition, pedagogical, and art-writing practices. She reveals that art and artists helped found the nation during French occupation, as the formal qualities and international exhibitions of nudes and landscapes in the 1930s crystallized notions of modern masculinity, patriotic femininity, non-sectarian religiosity, and citizenship. Examining the efforts of painters, sculptors, and activists in Lebanon who fiercely upheld aesthetic development and battled for new forms of political being, Fantasmic Objects offers an insightful approach to the history and formation of modern Lebanon.

Book The Inner History of Devices

Download or read book The Inner History of Devices written by Sherry Turkle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memoir, clinical writings, and ethnography inform new perspectives on the experience of technology; personal stories illuminate how technology enters the inner life. For more than two decades, in such landmark studies as The Second Self and Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle has challenged our collective imagination with her insights about how technology enters our private worlds. In The Inner History of Devices, she describes her process, an approach that reveals how what we make is woven into our ways of seeing ourselves. She brings together three traditions of listening—that of the memoirist, the clinician, and the ethnographer. Each informs the others to compose an inner history of devices. We read about objects ranging from cell phones and video poker to prosthetic eyes, from Web sites and television to dialysis machines. In an introductory essay, Turkle makes the case for an “intimate ethnography” that challenges conventional wisdom. One personal computer owner tells Turkle: “This computer means everything to me. It's where I put my hope.” Turkle explains that she began that conversation thinking she would learn how people put computers to work. By its end, her question has changed: “What was there about personal computers that offered such deep connection? What did a computer have that offered hope?” The Inner History of Devices teaches us to listen for the answer. In the memoirs, ethnographies, and clinical cases collected in this volume, we read about an American student who comes to terms with her conflicting identities as she contemplates a cell phone she used in Japan (“Tokyo sat trapped inside it”); a troubled patient who uses email both to criticize her therapist and to be reassured by her; a compulsive gambler who does not want to win steadily at video poker because a pattern of losing and winning keeps her more connected to the body of the machine. In these writings, we hear untold stories. We learn that received wisdom never goes far enough.

Book The Innocence of Objects

    Book Details:
  • Author : Orhan Pamuk
  • Publisher : ABRAMS
  • Release : 2012-09-25
  • ISBN : 1613123892
  • Pages : 278 pages

Download or read book The Innocence of Objects written by Orhan Pamuk and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nobel Prize winner’s catalog of his Istanbul museum is like “wandering past the illuminated windows of an arcade. . . . This book spills over with pleasure”(The New York Times). The culmination of decades of omnivorous collecting, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul uses his novel of lost love, The Museum of Innocence, as a departure point to explore the city of his youth. In The Innocence of Objects, Pamuk’s catalog of this remarkable museum, he writes about things that matter deeply to him: the psychology of the collector, the proper role of the museum, the photography of old Istanbul (illustrated with Pamuk’s superb collection of haunting photographs and movie stills), and of course the customs and traditions of his beloved city. The book’s imagery is equally evocative, ranging from the ephemera of everyday life to the superb photographs of Turkish photographer Ara Güler. Combining compelling visual images and writing, The Innocence of Objects is an original work of art and literature.

Book Psychoanalytic Politics

Download or read book Psychoanalytic Politics written by Sherry Turkle and published by Guilford Publication. This book was released on 1992 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freud prophesied in 1914 that the ``final decisive battle' for psychoanalysis would take place ``where the greatest resistance [had] been displayed.' Wary of America's too easy acceptance, he suspected a dilution and distortion of his most vital and therefore most unacceptable doctrines. Among Western countries, France may well be the one that resisted Freud the longest. Yet quite suddenly, in the late 1960s, France was seized by an ``infatuation with Freudianism.' By the end of that decade, France had more than a psychoanalytic movement: it had a widespread and deeply rooted psychoanalytic culture. At the heart of this development was Jacques Lacan's reconstruction of Freudian theory, a ``reinvention' of psychoanalysis that resonated with French culture in the aftermath of the uprisings of 1968. While, in America, psychoanalysis has become increasingly identified with an essentially conservative medical establishment, the French rediscovery of Freud, in a dramatic enactment of Freud's prophesy, became associated with the most radical elements of French philosophical and political life. The story of Lacan, and why his work so profoundly influenced the French psyche, is told clearly and unerringly by Sherry Turkle in this groundbreaking work. Already acclaimed as ``an absolutely indispensable contribution to the history of psychoanalysis,' this second edition of PSYCHOANALYTIC POLITICS contains two illuminating new additions. The preface explicates Lacan's impact on the French by laying out a theory of the conditions for the dissemination and acceptance of a set of philosophical positions by a culture. The final chapter, Dynasty 1991, provides a fascinating portrayal of the last years of Lacan's life, the intrigue and power struggles that resulted in the break-up of the Freudian School he founded, and the events which unfolded in the years following his death in 1981. The heart of the book is Sherry Turkle's first-hand account of the psychoanalytic culture that developed in France--as a politicized, Gallicized, and poeticized Freudianism, deeply marked by the work of Jacques Lacan. The clearest introduction in English to Lacan's teaching, the work explores how cultures appropriate theories of mind. It is an intimate sociology of how ideas come to connect with individuals. Providing an ``inner history' of the sciences of the mind, this book will be invaluable reading for anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis, history, social theory, communications, film theory, and contemporary literary criticism.

Book Alone Together

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sherry Turkle
  • Publisher : Basic Books
  • Release : 2017-11-07
  • ISBN : 0465093663
  • Pages : 463 pages

Download or read book Alone Together written by Sherry Turkle and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking book by one of the most important thinkers of our time shows how technology is warping our social lives and our inner ones Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a deep solitude. MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Based on hundreds of interviews and with a new introduction taking us to the present day, Alone Together describes changing, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, and families.

Book Sensitive Objects

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jonas Frykman
  • Publisher : Nordic Academic Press
  • Release : 2016-04-12
  • ISBN : 918816862X
  • Pages : 291 pages

Download or read book Sensitive Objects written by Jonas Frykman and published by Nordic Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some objects seem especially personal and important to us - be it a quickly packed suitcase, an inherited vase, or a photograph. In Sensitive Objects the authors discuss when, how, and why particular objects appear as 'sensitive'. They do so by analyzing the objects' affective charging in the context of historically embedded practices. Sensitive Objects is a contribution to the upcoming field of 'affect research' that has so far been dominated by psychology and cultural studies, and the authors examine the potential for epistemic gain by connecting the studies of affect with the studies of material culture. The contributors, predominantly ethnologists and anthropologists, use fieldwork to examine how people project affects onto material objects and explore how objects embody or trigger affects and produce affective atmospheres.

Book Left to Our Own Devices

Download or read book Left to Our Own Devices written by Margaret E. Morris and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-12-25 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unexpected ways that individuals adapt technology to reclaim what matters to them, from working through conflict with smart lights to celebrating gender transition with selfies. We have been warned about the psychological perils of technology: distraction, difficulty empathizing, and loss of the ability (or desire) to carry on a conversation. But our devices and data are woven into our lives. We can't simply reject them. Instead, Margaret Morris argues, we need to adapt technology creatively to our needs and values. In Left to Our Own Devices, Morris offers examples of individuals applying technologies in unexpected ways—uses that go beyond those intended by developers and designers. Morris examines these kinds of personalized life hacks, chronicling the ways that people have adapted technology to strengthen social connection, enhance well-being, and affirm identity. Morris, a clinical psychologist and app creator, shows how people really use technology, drawing on interviews she has conducted as well as computer science and psychology research. She describes how a couple used smart lights to work through conflict; how a woman persuaded herself to eat healthier foods when her photographs of salads garnered “likes” on social media; how a trans woman celebrated her transition with selfies; and how, through augmented reality, a woman changed the way she saw her cancer and herself. These and the many other “off-label” adaptations described by Morris cast technology not just as a temptation that we struggle to resist but as a potential ally as we try to take care of ourselves and others. The stories Morris tells invite us to be more intentional and creative when left to our own devices.