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Advertisers Looking for New Opportunities in Virtual and Augmented Spaces
May 25, 2015 by Alan Rothman
"P1030522.JPG", Image by Xebede
Are virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies about to start putting up "Place Your Ad Here" signs in their spaces?
Today's advertising firms and their clients are constantly searching for new venues and the latest technologies with which to compete in evermore specialized global marketplaces. With so many current and emerging alternatives, investing their resources to reach their optimal audiences and targeted demographics requires highly nimble planning and anticipating risks. Effective strategies for both of these factors were recently explored in-depth in the March 22, 2015 Subway Fold post entitled What's Succeeding Now in Multi-Level Digital Strategies for Companies.
Just such a new venue to add to the media buying mix might soon become virtual worlds. With VR is the early stages of going more mainstream in the news media (see the May 5, 2015 Subway Fold post entitled The New York Times Introduces Virtual Reality Tech into Their Reporting Operations), and even more so in film (see the March 26, 2015 Subway Fold post entitled Virtual Reality Movies Wow Audiences at 2015's Sundance and SXSW Festivals), it seems inevitable that VR might turn out to be the next frontier for advertising.
This new marketplace will also include augmented reality, involving the projection of virtual/holographic images within a field of view of the real world. Microsoft recently introduced a very sleek-looking headset for this called the HoloLens, which will be part of their release of Windows 10 expected sometime later this year.
A fascinating report on three new startups in this nascent field entitled Augmented Advertising, by Rachel Metz, appeared in the May/June 2015 edition of MIT Technology Review. (Online, the same article is entitled "Virtual Reality Advertisements Get in Your Face".) I will sum up, annotate and pose a few additional questions to this. As well, I highly recommend clicking through on the links below to these new companies to fully explore all of the resources on their truly innovative and imaginative sites.
As the VR and AR headsets are set to enter the consumer marketplace later in 2015, manufactured by companies including Oculus, Sony, Microsoft (see the above links), Magic Leap and Samsung, consumers will soon be above to experience video games and movie formatted for these new platforms.
The first company in the article working in this space is called Mediaspike. They develop apps and tools for mobile VR. The demo that the writer Metz viewed with a VR headset placed that her in a blimp flying over a city containing billboards for an amusement ride based on the successful movie franchise that began with Despicable Me. The company is developing product placement implementations within these environments using billboards, videos and other methods.
One of the billboards was showing a trailer for the next movie in this series called Minions. While Metz became a bit queasy during this experience (a still common concern for VR users), she nonetheless found it "a heck of a lot more interesting" than the current types of ads seen on websites and mobile.
The second new firm is called Airvertise. They are developing "virtual 3-D models that are integrated with real world locations". It uses geographic data to create constructs where, as a virtual visitor, you can readily walk around in them. Their first platform will be smartphone apps followed by augmented reality viewers. At the SXSW Festival last March (please see the link again in the third paragraph above to the post about VR at SXSW), the company demo-ed an iPad app that, using the tablet's motion sensors, produced and displayed a virtual drone "hovering above the air about 20 feet away" with a banner attached to it. As the user/viewer walks closer to it the relative size and spatial orientation of it correspondingly increases.
The third startup is called Blippar. Their AR-based app permits commercial content to be viewed on smartphones. Examples include seeing football players when the phone is held up to a can of Pepsi, and shades of nail polish from the cosmetics company Maybelline. The company is currently strategizing about how to create ads in this manner that will appropriately consumers engage consumers but not put them off in any way.
My questions are as follows:
Will VR and AR advertising agencies and sponsors open up this field to user-generated ads and commercial content which has already been successful in a number of ad campaigns for food and cars? Perhaps by open-sourcing their development platforms, crowdsourcing the ads, and providing assistance with such efforts this new advertising space can gain some additional attention and traction.
What is exactly about VR and AR experience that will provide the most leverage to advertising agencies and their clients? Is it only limited to the novelty of it – – that might well wear off after a while – – or is there something unique about these technologies that will inform and entertain consumers about goods and services in ways neither previously conceived of nor achieved? Is a critical must-have app or viral ad campaign going to be needed for this to reach a tipping point?
Might countering technologies also appear to block VR and AR advertising? For example, Ad Block Plus is a very popular browser add-on that enables users to filter out today's banner ads and pop-ups online. How might advertisers positively reaction to such avoidance?
Just as the leading social media services such as, among others, Facebook (which now owns Oculus), Twitter and Intagram, where advertisers have major presences, do VR and AR similarly lend themselves to being populated by advertisers on such a web-wide scale?
Posted in Business Strategy, Industry Trends, Markets, Media, Startups, Virtual and Augmented Reality	| Tagged Advertising, Airvirtise, Augmented Reality, Augmented Reality Advertising, Blippar, Blippar Maybelline, Blippar Pepsi, Despicable Me, HoloLens, Magic Leap, Maybelline, Mediaspike, Oculus, Pepsi, Samsung Gear VR, Sony Project Morpheus VR, Startups, Subway Fold, Virtual Reality, Virtual Reality Advertising, VR, Windows 10 | 1 Comment |
A Legal Thriller Meets Quantum Physics: A Book Review of "Superposition"
"Gyroscope", Image by Frank Boston
Quantum physics is not a subject for the scientifically faint of heart. Those nutty particles and waves are behaving in some very weird ways down there at the nanoscale level. They probably think no one is looking so they can party all they want. However, plenty of students, professors, engineers, scientists and cryptographers have variously been watching them for many years. Even the old comedy troupe called The Firesign Theater named one of their albums, albeit unintentionally, with the spot on quantum descriptive title How Can You be In Two Places at Once When Not Anywhere at All.
Undeterred by the many brain-bending challenges of this highly specialized field of physics, those involved in it in any manner are keenly aware of the fundamental principle that merely observing any of this activity can change can change the quantum state of things. This puts a whole different, well, spin on those pesky electrons.
Taking these principles and integrating them into a wildly imaginative plot, writer David Walton, himself an engineer, has just spun this volatile mixture into a delightfully over-the-top new novel called Superposition (Pyr, 2015). He has craftily thrown sci-fi, mystery and trial drama ingredients into his literary blender and poured out a very cool smoothie of a story. Moreover, he has given his narrative and characters enough original twists and turns to make the producers of Lost envious.
The story gets off to a furious start, set sometime in the near future. A college professor named Jacob Kelly receives a visit a home one night from one of his colleagues named Brian Vanderhall. Although it is anything but a "Hi, how ya doing?" stop over, but rather, he is brandishing a gun and claiming to be pursued by an intelligent alien who has crossed over from the quantum universe. Brian then demonstrates several seemingly impossible physical actions, starting with a gyroscope, that offer proof of his seemingly delusional claims. Then he points the gun at Jacob's wife and that when things get really bizarre in both the normal and quantum realms. Joe allegedly kills Brian while protecting his wife and family but a second and identical Brian is also soon found murdered at a nearby abandoned physics research lab at their university where Joe and Brian work.
But this is all just getting started because a second and identical Joseph likewise appears. One is arrested and put on trial for murdering Brian while the second one is free and, along with his surviving daughter (his wife and two other children were later found inexplicably dead), trying to solve this infuriating and thickening skein of puzzles.
Could Brian have been telling the truth about his breakthrough into the quantum universe where he learned to control seeming impossible phenomena and drawn the murderous attention of a highly intelligent alien who inhabits that "place"? Are the two Josephs and Brians the same "people" or are they different beings? Could Joe's family be dead in one universe only to have possibly survived in another and, if so, can he bring them back across the breach? Do the events in one universe somehow "entangle" (in quantum physics speak) and affect events in the other?
While Einstein expressed his doubts about entanglement, famously calling it "spooky action at a distance" (see Footnote 4 in the link immediately above), Walton's novel provides an abundance of spooky action way up close and personal. The novel is split along two timelines, one for the trial and the other as, well, the "other" Jacob, his daughter and his brother-in-law race off to track down the alien, the other members of their family, and the Brian's real murderer. Both tracks are highly compelling as the narrative pivots between the nearly hallucinatory events of the sci-fi mystery and the more firmly grounded murder trial unfold. Walton very cleverly transports the reader back and forth between these extremely familiar and unfamiliar environments while carefully opening and resolving tricky plot points on both sides of this dimensional divide.
Besides deftly mashing up what would otherwise seem to be the unmashable, the author's equally shrewd accomplishment is the valuable tutorial on quantum physics woven into his text. Speaking through his characters, he explains these often difficult to grasp concepts with enough clarity to draw his readers into the underlying science and, in turn, his plot lines been built upon it. College physics professors could both enlighten and entertain their students by assigning this novel as reading. It would very likely put them in a rather, well, super position going into the final exam.
Sci-fi, mystery and legal thriller fans will find the book satisfying and worthwhile because its audacity and creativity succeed on all levels. Furthermore, it raises some very intriguing issues of first impression about evidence, procedure and professional ethics during the course of the trail. Jacob's lawyer becomes fully aware of reality-defying events surrounding his client and does his best to defend him in court. However, there is no standard defense strategy where several of the victims and the accused may have been divided in two and one of the other suspects is from alternative world.
How can a scientific foundation be presented to the court for phenomena that no one knows exists much less can be tested in any way? How can an expert be qualified to testify under such bizarre circumstances? Does the attorney/client privilege attach to only the Joseph in jail who is being tried or to the second but identical Joseph who is trying to help the defense attorney? Do both of Joseph's iterations receive the exactly the same constitutional rights and protections? How can the prosecution rebut any evidence that these splits and dual events have even occurred? The author has done his research well in constructing a story where these issues arise.
A famous thought experiment in study of quantum physics is called Schrödinger's Cat. It is used to explain what "superposition" actually means in quantum physics and there is a reference to it in some dialog in the book. It is used to illustrate and interpret different possible quantum states, in this case whether the cat, under certain experimental circumstances involving a radioactive source and a flask of poison inside the box, is alive and dead or else alive or dead. Walton predicates the fates of Joseph and his family upon this concept and pulls it off with great finesses and drama. Any further explanation here would only give paws to letting that cat out of the box inside of this very impressive novel.
Superposition is not the first sci-fi novel to use quantum physics as part of a plot involving a murder mystery. This was done previously in a novel entitled Spin State (Spectra 2004) by Chris Moriarty. This is a vastly different type of story set far in the future. I highly recommend it to any and all dedicated sci-fi fans. As well, it was the just first installment in an outstanding trilogy that later included Spin Control (Spectra 2007) and Ghost Spin (Spectra, 2013).
Posted in Books, Movies, and Music, Law Practice and Legal Education	| Tagged David Walton, De Novo Legal Issues, Evidence, Firesign Theater, Gost Spin, Legal Thriller, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Particles, Quantum Physics, Quantum Waves, Schrodinger's Cat, Spin Control, Spin State, Subway Fold, Superposition, Trial Procedure | 1 Comment |
Thanks, Dave, for 33 Years of Great Entertainment
Tonight, May 20, 2015, will be David Letterman's final appearance as the host of The Late Show.There is a terrific Page 1 appreciation of his work and his retirement from the show on Page 1 of today's edition of The New York Times entitled David Letterman, Prickly Innovator, Counts Down to His Exit, by John Koblin. I highly recommend a click-through to read this in full. As well, I hope that you will be watching tonight's final show.
I have been a major fan of Letterman going back to his very early days on TV. He always managed to make me laugh out loud no matter how tired I might have been while watching him late at night.
I had an appointment this morning in midtown Manhattan and my route took me right past The Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway between 53rd and 54th Streets, the home of The Late Show. Above and below are four photos I took on this historic day in TV entertainment. In the pictures, you can see some of the media that was starting to gather outside. (I am about to upload this post at 12:35 EST.)
Thanks, Dave, for all of that great entertainment you have brought into everyone's homes each nigh for the past 33 years. The very best wishes on your retirement and whatever the future may hold for you.
Posted in Books, Movies, and Music, New York, Photo Essays	| Tagged David Letterman, Ed Sullivan Theater, Lettermans Final Show, New York | Leave a comment |
Recent Visualization Projects Involving US Law and The Supreme Court
"Copyright Sign in 3D", Image by Muses Touch
There have been many efforts over the past few decades to use visualization methods and technologies to create graphical representations of the law. These have been undertaken by innovative lawyers in diversity of settings including public and private practice, and in legal academia.
I wrote an article about this topic years ago entitled "Graphics and Visualization: Drawing on All Your Resources", in the August 25, 1992* edition of the New York Law Journal. (No link is currently available.) Not to paint with too broad a brush here, but things have changed dramatically since then in terms of how and why to create compelling legal visualizations.
Two very interesting projects have recently gotten significant notice online for their ingenuity and the deeper levels of understanding they have facilitated.
First are the legal visualizations of Harry Surden. He is a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law. He teaches, researches and writes about intellectual property law, legal informatics, legal automation and information privacy.
I had the opportunity to hear the professor speak at the Reinvent Law NYC program held in New York in February 2014. This was a memorable one-day event with about 40 speakers who captivated the audience with their presentations about the multitude of ways that technology is dramatically changing the contemporary marketplace for legal services.
On Professor Surden's blog, he has recently posted the following three data visualization projects he built himself:
US Code Explorer 1 consisting of a nested tree structure for Title 35 of the US Code covering patents. Clicking on each levels starting with Part I and continuing through V will, in turn, open up to the Chapters, Sections and Subsections. This is an immediately accessible interactive means to unfold Title 35's structure.
US Code Explorer 2 Force Directed Graph presents a different form of visualization for Title 17 of the US Code covering Trademarks. It operates as a series of clickable hub-and-spoke formations of the Code's text whereby clicking on any of the hubs will lead you to the many different sections of Title 17.
US Constitution Explorer is also presented in a nested tree structure of the Constitution. Clicking on any of the Articles will open the Sections and then the actual text.
Professor Surden's visualizations are instantly and intuitively navigable as soon as you view them. As a result, you will immediately be drawn into exploring them. For legal professionals and the public alike, he impressively presents these displays in a clear manner that belies the complexities of the underlying laws. I highly recommend clicking through to check out and navigate all of these imaginative visualizations. Furthermore, I hope his work inspires others to experiment with additional forms of visualization of the other federal, state and local codes, laws and regulations.
For a related visualization of the networks of law professors on Twitter, please see the February 5, 2015 Subway Fold post entitled Visualization, Interpretation and Inspiration from Mapping Twitter Networks.
The second new study containing numerous graphics and charts is entitled A Quantitative Analysis of the Writing Style of the U.S. Supreme Court, by Keith Carlson, Michael A. Livermore, and Daniel Rockmore, Dated March 11, 2015. This will be published later in Washington University Law Review 93:6 (2016). The story was reported in the May 4, 2015 edition of The New York Times entitled Justices' Opinions Grow in Size, Accessibility and Testiness, Study Finds, by Adam Liptak. This article focused upon the three main conclusions stated in the title. I highly recommend click-throughs to read both.
The full-text of the Law Review article contains the very engaging details and methodologies employed. Moreover, it demonstrates the incredible amount of analytical work the authors spent to arrive at their findings. Just as one example, please have a look at the network visualization on Page 29 entitled Figure 5. LANS Graph of Stylistic Similarity Between Justices. It truly brings the author's efforts to life. I believe this article is a very instructive, well, case where the graphics and text skillfully elevate each other's effectiveness.
* To get online then you needed something called a Lynx browser that only displayed text after you connected with a very zippy 14.4K dial-up modem. What fun it was back then!
Posted in Intellectual Property, Law Practice and Legal Education, Visualization	| Tagged 3-D Data Visualization, Analysis of Justices Writing Styles, law practice, Law Professors Twitter Network, Legal Graphics, Legal Visualization, Lynx Browser, Professor Harry Surden, Reinvent Law NYC, Subway Fold, Title 17 US Code, Title 35 US Code, Twitter, US Code Explorer 1, US Code Explorer 2, US Constitution, US Constitution Explorer, US Supreme Court | 2 Comments |
IBM's Watson is Now Data Mining TED Talks to Extract New Forms of Knowledge
"sydneytocairns_385", Image by Daniel Dimarco
Who really benefited from the California Gold Rush of 1849? Was it the miners, only some of whom were successfully, or the merchants who sold them their equipment? Historians have differed as to the relative degree, but they largely believe it was the merchants.
Today, it seems we have somewhat of a modern analog to this in our very digital world: The gold rush of 2015 is populated by data miners and IBM is providing them with access to its innovative Watson technology in order for these contemporary prospectors to discover new forms of knowledge.
So then, what happens when Watson is deployed to sift through the thousands of incredibly original and inspiring videos of online TED Talks? Can the results be such that TED can really talk and, when processed by Watson, yield genuine knowledge with meaning and context?
Last week, the extraordinary results of this were on display at the four-day World of Watson exposition here in New York. A fascinating report on it entitled How IBM Watson Can Mine Knowledge from TED Talks by Jeffrey Coveyduc, Director, IBM Watson, and Emily McManus, Editor, TED.com was posted on the TED Blog on May 5, 2015. This was the same day that the newfangled Watson + TED system was introduced at the event. The story also includes a captivating video of a prior 2014 TED Talk by Dario Gil of IBM entitled Cognitive Systems and the Future of Expertise that came to play a critical role in launching this undertaking.
Let's have a look and see what we can learn from the initial results. I will sum up and annotate this report, and then ask a few additional questions.
One of the key objectives of this new system is to enable users to query it in natural language. An example given in the article is "Will new innovations give me a longer life?". Thus, users can ask questions about ideas expressed among the full database of TED talks and, for the results, view video excerpts where such ideas have been explored. Watson's results are further accompanied by a "timeline" of related concepts contained in a particular video clip permitting users to "tunnel sideways" if they wish and explore other topics that are "contextually related".
The rest of the article is a dialog between the project's leaders Jeffrey Coveyduc from IBM and TED.com editor Emily McManus that took place at Watson World. They discussed how this new idea was transformed into a "prototype" of a fresh new means to extract "insights" from within "unstructured video".
Ms. McManus began by recounting how she had attended Mr. Dario's TED Talk about cognitive computing. Her admiration of his presentation led her to wonder whether Watson could be applied to TED Talks' full content whereby users would be able to pose their own questions to it in natural language. She asked Mr. Dario if this might be possible.
Mr. Coveyduc said that Mr. Dario then approached him to discuss the proposed project. They agreed that it was not just the content per se, but rather, that TED's mission of spreading ideas was so compelling. Because one of Watson's key objectives is to "extract knowledge" that's meaningful to the user, it thus appeared to be "a great match".
Ms. McManus mentioned that TED Talks maintains an application programming interface (API) to assist developers in accessing their nearly 2,000 videos and transcripts. She agreed to provide access to TED's voluminous content to IBM. The company assembled its multidisciplinary project team in about eight weeks.
They began with no preconceptions as to where their efforts would lead. Mr. Coveyduc said they "needed the freedom to be creative". They drew from a wide range of Watson's existing technical services. In early iterations of their work they found that "ideas began to group themselves". In turn, this led them to "new insights" within TED's vast content base.
Ms. McManus recently received a call from Mr. Dario asking her to stop by his office in New York. He demo-ed the new system which had completely indexed the TED content. Moreover, he showed how it could display, according to her "a universe of concepts extracted" from the content's core. Next, using the all important natural language capabilities to pose questions, they demonstrated how the results in the form of numerous short clips which, taken altogether, were compiling "a nuanced and complex answer to a big question", as she described it.
Mr. Coveyduc believes this new system simplifies how users can inspect and inquire about "diverse expertise and viewpoints" expressed in video. He cited other potential areas of exploration such as broadcast journalism and online courses (also known as MOOCs*). Furthermore, the larger concept underlying this project is that Watson can distill the major "ideas and concepts" of each TED Talk and thus give users the knowledge they are seeking.
Going beyond Watson + TED's accomplishments, he believes that video search remains quite challenging but this project demonstrates it can indeed be done. As a result, he thinks that mining such deep and wide knowledge within massive video libraries may turn into "a shared source of creativity and innovation".
What if Watson was similarly applied to the vast troves of video classes used by professionals to maintain their ongoing license certifications in, among others, law, medicine and accounting? Would new forms of potentially applicable and actionable knowledge emerge that would benefit these professionals as well as the consumers of their services? Rather than restricting Watson to processing the video classes of each profession separately, what might be the results of instead processing them together in various combinations and permutations?
What if Watson was configured to process the video repositories of today's popular MOOC providers such as Coursera or edX? The same as well for universities around the world who are putting their classes online. Their missions are more or less the same in enabling remote learning across the web in a multitude of subjects. The results could possibly hold new revelations about subjects that no one can presently discern.
Two other recent Subway Fold posts that can provide additional information, resources and questions that I suggest checking out include Artificial Intelligence Apps for Business are Approaching a Tipping Point posted on March 31, 2015, and Three New Perspectives on Whether Artificial Intelligence Threatens or Benefits the World posted on December 27, 2014.
* See the September 18, 2014 Subway Fold post entitled A Real Class Act: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are Changing the Learning Process for the full details and some supporting links.
Posted in Big Data and Analytics, Computing Platforms, Law Practice and Legal Education, Markets, Medical and Biotechnology, New York, Smart Systems	| Tagged AI, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Analytics, Cognitive Computing, Coursera, Dario Gil, edX, Emily McManus, IBM Watson, Jeffrey Coveyduc, Macine Learning, Maintaining Professional Certification, MOOCs, New York, Online Courses, Professional Certification In accounting, Professional Certification in Law, Professional Certification in Medicine, Secret Squirrel, Smart Systems, Subway Fold, TED API, TED Blog, TED Talks, World of Watson | 1 Comment |
Book Review of "The Age of Cryptocurrency"
May 8, 2015 by Alan Rothman
"bitcoinlogo", Image by Dennis Sylvester Hurd
Many college students have had the experience of needing to take a required course in finance or economics that they were reluctant to register for because of the complexity of the subject matter. Nonetheless, they were soon pleasantly surprised to find that a talented and motivated instructor could make the subject spring to life. Indeed, a skillful prof can light up just about any topic. Recently, I had this type of experience again.
I had developed my own, well, academic interest in bitcoin during the past few years, following various events and tech developments in the news. Not overly curious, but just keeping an eye on developments. I felt no particular need to go out and learn too much more about it.
This changed for me on the very cold evening of February 9, 2015, when I attended a terrific presentation at the New York office of the law firm of Latham & Watkins entitled Bitcoin – No Boundaries: Innovation in Bitcoin. The event was very professionally and graciously organized by the financial firm Hedgeable. The agenda consisted of six brief demos by bitcoin startups followed by a panel discussion of experts. The link above contains full videos of the entire program, including links to the startups' websites, all of which I highly recommend viewing.
My completely unscientific poll of the attendees whom I left with on the elevator on the way out was unanimous that they learned a great deal from all of the speakers and presenters and, in turn, were motivated to go out and learn more about the bitcoin movement. Their enthusiasm reminded me of a favorite quote of mine attributed Nobel Prize winning physicist I.I. Rabi. I recalled it from years ago when I read Silicon Dreams: Information, Man and Machine by Robert Lucky (St.Matin's Press, 1989). To paraphrase it: When asked about the inspiration for his great scientific achievements, Rabi recalled that each day when he returned home from school and his mother greeted him, rather than asking him whether he knew the answers to the teacher's questions, instead she would ask him whether he asked any good questions.
New and intriguing questions, developments and events about bitcoin are now regularly covered by the media.
My own follow-up effort to further satisfy my heightened curiosity after the February 9th event was to soon thereafter acquire a copy of The Age of Cryptocurrency (St. Martin's Press, 2015) by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey. Mr. Casey was one of the four panelists that night as he can be seen in the video. This book has done much to help me to better grok bitcoin, with its deep and wide explanations about virtual currencies' fundamentals (including, among many others, "blockchain" "digital wallet", and "hashrates"), markets and histories.
More specifically, although bitcoin has only been around for six years, grasping the entirety and significance of its remarkable origin and originator (Satoshi Nakatomo), operations, concepts, implications, leaders, investors, benefits, technical flaws, security, encryption protocols, entrepreneurs, communities, supporters, critics, regulations and politics seems to involve more angles than a geometry textbook. Nonetheless, despite the daunting challenge of carefully introducing and then logically mapping out all of this, the authors have constructed, in a very internally consistent manner, a finely detailed travel guide exploring this new world.
Furthermore, The Age of Cryptocurrency can benefit the different levels of understanding about bitcoin being sought by a wide spectrum of readers. From those with just a passing who/what/where/why curiosity and then scaling up to people seriously involving themselves in this emerging realm, there is plenty in this text to ponder and consume.
One of bitcoin's technological operations involves setting up powerful computers (dubbed "mining rigs"), dedicated to solve difficult mathematical equations that will, in turn, release specific quantities of bitcoin on a regular basis. This process is called "mining". So, too, have authors Vigna and Casey comprehensively mined their subject matter to produce an accessible, informative and spirited book.
Posted in Bitcoin and Blockchain, Books, Movies, and Music, Computing Platforms, Markets, Startups	| Tagged Age of Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Miners, Bitcoin Mining Rigs, Bitcoin Wallets, Blockchain, Blockchain 2.0, Cryptocurrency, Digital Wallet, Hashrate, Hedgeable, I.I. Rabi, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Dreams, Strand Bookstore, Subway Fold | 4 Comments |
The New York Times Introduces Virtual Reality Tech into Their Reporting Operations
"Mobile World Congress 2015", Image by Jobopa
As incredibly vast as New York City is, it has always been a great place to walk around. Its multitude of wonderfully diverse neighborhoods, streets, buildings, parks, shops and endless array of other sites can always be more fully appreciated going on foot here and there in – – as we NYC natives like call it – – "The City".
The April 26, 2015 edition of The New York Times Magazine was devoted to this tradition. The lead off piece by Steve Duenes was entitled How to Walk in New York. This was followed by several other pieces and then reports on 15 walks around specific neighborhoods. (Clicking on the Magazine's link above and then scrolling down to the second and third pages will produce links to nearly all of these articles.) I was thrilled by reading this because I am such an avid walker myself.
The very next day, on May 27, 2015, Wired.com carried a fascinating story about how one of the issues' accompanying and rather astonishing supporting graphics was actually done in a report by Angela Watercutter entitled How the NY Times is Sparking the VR Journalism Revolution. But even that's not the half of it – – the NYTimes has made available for downloading a full virtual reality file of the full construction and deconstruction of the graphic. The Wired.com post contains the link as well as a truly mind-boggling high-speed YouTube video of the graphic's rapid appearance and disappearance and a screen capture from the VR file itself. (Is "screen capture" really accurate to describe it or is something more like "VR frame"?) This could take news reporting into an entirely new dimension where viewers literally go inside of a story.
I will sum up, annotate and pose a few questions about this story. (For another other enthusiastic Subway Fold post about VR, last updated on March 26, 2015, please see Virtual Reality Movies Wow Audiences at 2015's Sundance and SXSW Festivals.)
This all began on April 11, 2015 when a French artist named JR pieced together and then removed in less than 24 hours, a 150-foot photograph right across the street from the landmark Flatiron Building. This New York Times commissioned image was of "a 20-year-old Azerbaijani immigrant named Elmar Aliyev". It was used on the cover of this special NYTimes Magazine edition. Upon its completion JR then photographed from a helicopter hovering above. (See the March 19, 2015 Subway Fold post entitled Spectacular Views of New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas at Night from 7,500 Feet Up for another innovative project inject involving highly advanced photography of New York also taken from a helicopter.)
The NYTimes deployed VR technology from a company called VRSE.tools to transform this whole artistic experience into a fully immersive presentation entitled Walking New York. The paper introduced this new creation at a news conference on April 27th. To summarize the NYTimes Magazine's editor-in-chief, Jake Silverstein, this project was chosen for a VR implementation because it would so dramatically enhance a viewer's experience of it. Otherwise, pedestrians walking over the image across the sidewalk would not nearly get the full effect of it.
Viewing Walking New York in full VR mode will require an app from VRSE's site (linked above), and a VR viewer such as, among others, Google Cardboard.
The boost to VR as an emerging medium by the NYTimes' engagement on this project is quite significant. Moreover, this demonstrates how it can now be implemented in journalism. Mr. Silverman, to paraphrase his points of view, believes this demonstrates how it can be used to literally and virtually bring someone into a story. Furthermore, by doing so, the effect upon the VR viewer is likely to be an increased amount of empathy for certain individuals and circumstances who are the subjects of these more immersive reports.
There will more than likely be a long way to go before "VR filming rigs" can be sent out by news organizations to cover stories as they occur. The hardware is just now that widespread or mainstream yet. As well, the number of people who are trained and know how to use this equipment is still quite small and, even for those who do, preparing such a virtual presentation lags behind today's pace of news reporting.
Another journalist venturing into VR work is Newsweek reporter Nonny de la Pena's reconstruction of the shooting in the Trayvon Martin case. (See 'Godmother of VR' Sees Journalism as the Future of Virtual Reality by Edward Helmore, posted on The Guardian's website on March 11, 2015, for in-depth coverage of her innovative efforts.)
Let's assume that out on the not too distant horizon that VR journalism gains acceptance, its mobility and ease-of-use increases, and the rosters of VR-trained reporters and producers increases so that this field undergoes some genuine economies of scale. Then, as with many other life cycles of emergent technologies, the applications in this nascent field would only become limited by the imaginations by its professionals and their audiences. My questions are as follows:
What if the leading social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook (which already purchased Oculus, the maker of VR headsets for $2B last year), LinkedIn, Instagram (VR Instgramming, anyone?), and others integrate VR into their capabilities? For example, Twitter has recently added a live video feature called Periscope that its users have quickly and widely embraced. In fact, it is already being used for live news reporting as users turn their phones towards live events as they happen. Would they just as likely equally swarm to VR?
What if new startup social media platforms launch that are purely focused on experiencing news, commentary, and discussion in VR?
Will previously unanticipated ethical standards be needed and likewise dilemmas result as journalists move up the experience curve with VR?
How would the data and analytics firms that parse and interpret social media looking for news trends add VR newsfeeds into their operations and results? (See the Subway Fold posts on January 21, 2015 entitled The Transformation of News Distribution by Social Media Platforms in 2015 and on December 2, 2014 entitled Startup is Visualizing and Interpreting Massive Quantities of Daily Online News Content.)
Can and should VR be applied to breaking news, documentaries and news shows such as 60 Minutes? What could be the potential risks in doing so?
Can drone technology and VR news gathering be blended into a hybrid flying VR capture platform?
I am also looking forward to seeing what other applications, adaptations and markets for VR journalism will emerge that no one can possibly anticipate at this point.
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Waterfront Access North | Resource Systems Group, Inc.
RSG is working with the Community & Economic Development Office and Burlington's Department of Public Works on the Waterfront Access North transportation improvement project. This is the second phase of a larger waterfront design project. The first phase, including the reconstruction of lower College Street, reconfiguration of the Pease parking lot, and construction of a new information building with public bathrooms, is now complete. The Waterfront Access North project involves rebuilding the end of Lake Street, realigning and upgrading portions of the bike path, brownfield remediation, utility undergrounding, consolidating parking, putting in a new Skatepark, sidewalks, plantings and lighting improvements, and all other needed public improvements.


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Iter Gateway » Iter Press » You are here
Bathhouses and Riverbanks: Sodomy in a Renaissance Republic
By Umberto Grassi
Bathhouses and Riverbanks carries out, for the first time in English, a thorough examination of the criminal records dealing with sodomy in the Republic of Lucca from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. It does this by analysing the work and activities of the Office of Decency, the magistracy entirely devoted to the disciplining of sexual non-conformity. The great tableau that emerges depicts a reality marked by conflicts and contradictions. Diving deeply into the everyday life of people from all social levels, this book provides new insights into early modern men who were sexually attracted to men, debunking the myth of pederasty as the only form of homoeroticism expressed in early modern societies. It also offers one of the richest discussions so far of early modern male-female sodomy. In examining these records, Grassi's research raises a fresh new perspective on the religious conflicts that shook Italy in the sixteenth century when the control of sexual behaviour became a bone of contention between State and Church and the debates revolving around its regulation anticipated the themes of mature eighteenth-century jurisdictionalism.
"With this meticulously researched and provocative book Umberto Grassi makes an important contribution to the history of sodomy in early modern Italy and, more generally, Europe."
- Cristian Berco, Bishop's University
"Bathhouses and Riverbanks: Sodomy in a Renaissance Republic is an utterly moving, deeply researched, and meticulously contextual urban history that deserves pride of place among the most outstanding books in sexuality studies."
- Helmut Puff, University of Michigan
"This fascinating book offers an important corrective to the widely accepted claim that male/male sex in the premodern world was merely a practice unrelated to perceptions of identity, especially sexual. Here instead we have in vivid details drawn from criminal records of Renaissance Lucca revealing accounts of the ways in which it often entailed deeper relationships, self-perceptions, and even a more spiritual vision of love."
- Guido Ruggiero, University of Miami
UMBERTO GRASSI is a Marie Skłodowska Curie global fellow at the Research Centre PoliTeSse (Politics and Theories of Sexuality, Università di Verona) and at the Department of History of the University of Maryland (College Park). He is also an honorary research fellow at the Centre for the History of Emotions at the University of Western Australia. Grassi is the author of Sodoma. Persecuzioni, affetti, pratiche sociali (2019) and many articles on the history of sexuality, religious dissent, and emotions.
Bathhouses and Riverbanks carries out, for the first time in English, a thorough examination of the criminal records dealing with sodomy in the Republic of Lucca from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. It does this by analysing the work and activities of the Office of Decency, the magistracy entirely devoted to the disciplining of sexual non-conformity. The great tableau that emerges depicts a reality marked by conflicts and contradictions. Diving deeply into the everyday life of people from all social levels, this book provides new insights into early modern men who were sexually att...
Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies
Essays and Studies 49
USD$ 39.95 ISBN 978-0-7727-2200-3 Order Ebook
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John Carpenter's The Thing [Tuesday Jan. 18 9:30pm]
Terror comes in all shapes and sizes.
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John Carpenter's The Thing [Tuesday Jan. 18 9:30pm] quantity
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At an Antarctic research station, a startling discovery from another world soon brings terror and paranoia to a team of researchers. The situation becomes so scary, not even Kurt Russell's beard or Keith David's voice can make you feel safe.
John Carpenter expertly crafts the film your horror loving friend will likely tell you is among their favorites. It holds up, and deserves to be seen in a theater.
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Manchester Friends of the Earth news releases will have contact details for the specific campaign leads.
You can also email coords[at]manchesterfoe.org.uk which goes to both Ali and Catherine.
View our news releases and coverage in the media.


Original design by the artist OMOCAT screen-printed on a UNISEX 100% cotton, 30 single 4.3 oz t-shirt. It also glows in the dark. Model is 5'2" and wearing size S.
OMOCAT is an internationally-renowned Asian-American artist. Her continuum of work which includes illustration, comics, and clothing designs is heavily influenced by Japanese media and pop culture. OMOCAT started an online shop initially at the request of fans who wished to purchase her work. In 2013, she shifted focus to designing clothing and has since then designed fashion collections for Pokémon Company International and Bandai Namco Entertainment (Tamagotchi). She is currently working from home, managing OMOCAT Shop and producing her own video game OMORI.


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Supernatural or Natural? Anthropology and the Paranormal
Cuma, 28 Aralık 2012 20:47
The term 'paranormal' was first introduced in the early twentieth century to replace the more loaded term 'supernatural,' originally used in its Latin form supernatural is by theologians in the thirteenth century to refer to the miraculous events documented in the Bible (Bartlett 2008). Miracles, such as Moses' vision of the burning bush, and Jesus' transformation of water into wine, curing of the sick and resurrection of the dead, for example, were interpreted as manifestations of the power of God, with the aim of producing faith in those who bore witness to them.
This association with the direct action of God, and the idea that such phenomena were somehow separate from nature, did not appeal to those who sought to investigate similar claims (such as visions, apparitions, telepathy and psychokinesis), using scientific methods in the late nineteenth century. By implementing the term 'supernormal,' and later 'paranormal,' defined as referring to phenomena beyond the scope of current scientific understanding, as opposed to 'supernatural,' which implies phenomena firmly beyond the laws of nature, researchers were attempting to demonstrate that paranormal occurrences, if real, were as much a part of the natural world as anything else, and as such were amenable to scientific investigation (Hansen 2001:21).
Anthropological fieldworkers, immersed in the lifeways of different cultures, have regularly highlighted the inadequacy of Western distinctions between the 'natural' and the 'supernatural' when addressing the beliefs of their informants. In considering Sudanese Azande beliefs in witchcraft, for example, E.E. Evans-Pritchard noted that:
To us supernatural means very much the same as abnormal or extraordinary. Azande certainly have no such notions of reality. They have no conception of 'natural' as we understand it, and therefore neither of the 'supernatural' as we understand it. Witchcraft is to Azande an ordinary and not an extraordinary, even though it may in some circumstances be an infrequent, event. It is a normal, and not an abnormal happening (Evans-Pritchard 1976:30).
Such distinctions are, therefore, culturally constructed and, as such, are in no way universal. Phenomena that we would classify as supernatural, or paranormal, are not necessarily conceived of in the same way in other cultural, and sub-cultural, systems. Indeed, the founding sociologist Émile Durkheim highlighted precisely this issue when he noted that the modern notion of the supernatural is a recent one in the history of human thought, coinciding with the rise of enlightenment science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He writes:
In order to call certain phenomena supernatural, one must already have the sense that there is a natural order of things, in other words, that the phenomena of the universe are connected to one another according to certain necessary relationships called laws...But this notion of universal determinism is very recent...This idea is a triumph of empirical sciences; it is their basic postulate and has been demonstrated by their progress. Yet as long as this notion was absent or was not firmly established, the most marvellous events never seemed inconceivable (Durkheim 2008:28)
In recent decades the term 'paranormal' itself, which had originally been intended as a means to naturalize the supernatural, has also been subjected to similar criticisms. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake, for example, has argued that the paranormal is, in fact, normal, owing to the extremely widespread belief in, and experience of, phenomena such as telepathy and precognition. Sheldrake has, therefore, expressed his preference for the more neutral term 'psychic' (2005:12), which does not aim to distinguish such occurrences from other normal and natural phenomena. Some scholars refer to 'non-ordinary,' or 'extraordinary' (Young & Goulet 1994; Straight 2007), experiences when discussing paranormal experience in an attempt to distance their discussions from the negative connotations of the paranormal, a term by now often associated with notions of irrational thinking and charlatanism.
Similarly, Robert Shanafelt has proposed the term 'marvel,' which he defines as 'an event of extraordinary wonder, thought to have physical consequences, claimed to be the result of ultra-natural forces,' because it 'encompasses divine interventions, supernatural wonders, and other paranormal phenomena without the implied hierarchy of monotheism or traditional anthropology' (2004:322).
Others prefer the term 'anomalous,' or 'anomalistic,' with its implication that such phenomena will one day find a place within our scientific understanding of the universe, whether as genuine occurrences or simple misinterpretations of otherwise mundane events (Wescott 1977:345-346; Holt et al. 2012).
Irrespective of the nomenclature we employ, it is clear that we are referring to essentially the same set of experiences and phenomena, regardless of whether we call them supernatural, paranormal, extraordinary or anomalous (Marton 2010:11-13). Parapsychologists have labeled these 'psi' phenomena. Social psychologist and parapsychological researcher Daryl Bem provides a useful definition of psi as denoting 'anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms' (2011:407).
Psi is, therefore, an umbrella term used in reference to the supposed human faculties of psychokinesis (PK) and extrasensory perception (ESP), which itself encompasses telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition. Such phenomena, if real (as the parapsychological literature would appear to suggest), must be thought of not as somehow separate from the natural world, but rather as inherent aspects of it.
Although he denied the existence of the types of phenomena just mentioned, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson made a salient point concerning our cultural dichotomy between 'supernaturalism' and 'materialism' when he called for a middle way in conceptualizing the mind, which since René Descartes has popularly been thought of as somehow distinct from the natural world (Matthews 2005:9). Bateson called for an interpretation of consciousness that is 'neither supernatural nor mechanical.' He wrote:
These two species of superstition, these rival epistemologies, the supernatural and the mechanical, feed each other. In our day, the premise of external mind seems to invite charlatanism, promoting a retreat back into materialism which then becomes intolerably narrow. We tell ourselves that we are choosing our philosophy by scientific and logical criteria, but in truth our preferences are determined by a need to change from one posture of discomfort to another. Each theoretical system is a cop-out, tempting us to escape from the opposite fallacy (Bateson & Bateson 2005:51)
I agree with Bateson's call for a theory of consciousness that is neither supernatural nor mechanistic. The difficulty in this instance, however, lies in developing a model that is able to accommodate the phenomenology of out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences, as well as countless varieties of ecstatic flight, astral travel and remote viewing, which seem to suggest that consciousness is not always permanently located in the body, but can occasionally leave the body and travel to distant locations (Monroe 1972; Muldoon & Carrington 1973 [1951]; Blackmore 1992; Sinclair 2001 [1930] amongst numerous others).
Bateson overcomes this problem by dismissing outright the claims of those who have apparently experienced disembodied consciousness when he writes: 'I regard all such accounts as either dreams or hallucinations or as frank fiction' (Bateson & Bateson 2005:55), but I think this too is a 'cop-out.'
What is required is a model that, rather than bracketing out such experiences, is able to accommodate them in all of their complexity, including apparent veridical perceptions of distant events (Sartori et al. 2006), while also overcoming the difficulties we have in conceptualizing the mind-body relationship, which arose from Cartesian dualism. This model, I speculatively imagine, will likely be based on the principles of quantum physics. Quantum physical effects appear to possess many characteristics that would, if they occurred in the macro-realm, be called paranormal.
Indeed, Albert Einstein famously referred to the quantum phenomenon known as 'entanglement' (whereby two separate particles, after having interacted with one another, continue to possess the same properties, even over great distances), as 'spooky action at a distance.' Given that such properties are seemingly inherent in the structure of the universe at a fundamental level, it is not inconceivable to imagine that they are also integrally present in larger scale phenomena (Radin 2006). If, for example, consciousness was in some sense entangled with other aspects of the universe (whether with other minds or particles), phenomena such as the out-of-body experience could be described in a manner, to use Bateson's terms, that is 'neither supernatural nor mechanical,' and in terms that are able to overcome the philosophical problems of Cartesian dualism without bracketing out the most salient aspects of the OBE (i.e. consciousness beyond the physical body).
Consciousness could, then, be located both within the body and outside of the body simultaneously. Entanglement might also provide a framework through which phenomena such as clairvoyance and telepathy can be understood, indeed recent experiments have begun to test the entanglement hypothesis as it relates to telepathy with promising results (Persinger et al. 2008, for example).
Quantum models of consciousness are gradually proliferating in the field of consciousness studies, and are beginning to receive a degree of serious thought amongst philosophers, psychologists and physicists. It is entirely possible that such models will be able to shed light on many so-called 'paranormal' experiences (Jahn & Dunne 1986; Radin 2006), and as such an awareness of these theories may be of vital importance for anthropologists dealing with accounts of such experiences in the field. In highlighting the potential for an explanatory framework for the paranormal grounded in quantum physics, however, it is not my aim to suggest that quantum physics provides the only means through which we can approach these issues.
Different cultures across the globe have developed perfectly workable systems for the interpretation and explanation of the paranormal as an integral aspect of reality. Rather, what I am attempting to do is to demonstrate that there is room for the paranormal even within the most rigorously tested dominant philosophy of Western culture.
Having discussed different modes of conceiving of the paranormal, we will now examine more closely anthropology's relationship with it, from the early theories of its founders to more recent approaches.
Anthropology's Founders and the Paranormal
Since its earliest incarnation in the nineteenth century, anthropology has expressly concerned itself with attempting to understand the supernatural and religious beliefs of human beings around the world. E.B. Tylor, who held the first chair of anthropology at Oxford University, argued that religion could best be understood through an examination of the supernatural beliefs of 'primitive' cultures, because in beliefs about spirits and supernatural powers could be found the seeds of the great world religions (Tylor 1920 [1871]:426; Bowker 1973:9-10).
These beliefs, Tylor thought, could be explained by the assumption that so-called 'savages' were unable to make accurate inferences about their experiences of the world around them, even if their interpretations were founded on a rational effort to understand the world (Evans-Pritchard 1972:26). He suggested, for example, that primitive man had great difficulty distinguishing real death from sleep and trance states and so, from observations of such phenomena, erroneously posited the existence of a personal life-force, or spirit, that was able to both enter and leave the physical body under certain conditions (Tylor 1930:88-89).
Progressing from the inference that human beings possessed an immaterial centre of life-force and personality, Tylor argued that it was not a huge leap to believing that other entities, such as animals, plants and rocks, also possessed spirits/souls, and so the supernatural realm was born. Tylor labeled this way of living in, and thinking about, the world 'animism,' and deduced that it was from animism that all religious ideas ultimately stemmed.
Andrew Lang, a pupil of Tylor's, criticized his emphasis on misinterpreted experience, arguing that 'savage man' might not have been the irrational observer Tylor made him out to be. By drawing comparisons between ethnographic accounts of supernatural beliefs and contemporary reports of psychic phenomena (an approach Lang termed 'comparative psychical research'), such as those investigated by the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), Lang argued that the perceived cognitive gap between Europeans and Non-Europeans was not quite as wide as had initially been thought. If modern, rational, Europeans of high respectability, like the early members of the SPR, had experienced phenomena which they considered to be genuinely paranormal in nature, then why should the experiences and beliefs recorded in the ethnographic literature not also be taken seriously?
Lang suggested, in contrast to Tylor's misinterpretation theory, that supernatural beliefs might have their foundations in genuine anomalous experiences (Lang 2010 [1894]:260). Indeed, in his book The Making of Religion (1900 [1898]), Lang went so far as to hypothesize that paranormal experiences might have been major contributing factors in the early development of religious ideas. In other words, Lang suggested that supernatural beliefs need not be considered irrational if they were founded upon genuine paranormal experiences, rather than on misinterpreted experiences (de Martino 1972:183).
Of the two interpretations of psychical experience and belief proposed by Tylor and Lang, however, it was Tylor's that became dominant within academic anthropology, and its influence can still be felt today in cognitive theories of religion, which essentially see supernatural beliefs and experiences as byproducts of misinterpreted cognitive processes (Guthrie 1980; Boyer 2001).
Social-Functionalism
Although Tylor's interpretation of supernatural beliefs as 'primitive survivals' became orthodox within anthropology, there still remained room for a theory that explained the purpose of irrational beliefs in ghosts, witchcraft, magic, spirit possession and the like, if they were nothing more than the products of delusional speculation. After all, according to the Darwinian theory of natural selection, around which the early anthropologists constructed their theories, only the 'fittest' ideas should have persisted through the development of human societies. As Evans-Pritchard writes of Herbert Spencer's theory for the origin of religion:
It does not seem to have occurred to him to ask himself how, if the ideas of soul and ghost arose from such fallacious reasoning about clouds and butterflies and dreams and trances, the beliefs could have persisted throughout millennia and could still be held by millions of civilized people in his day and ours (1972:24)
An attempt at a solution to this problem came in the form of social-functionalism, a theory which suggests that supernatural beliefs (as well as other social institutions such as kinship systems, economic systems, and so on), persist only because they perform specific functions for a given society. This position developed from the writings of Émile Durkheim, who argued that religious beliefs and practices are essentially a form of social glue that help to ensure the cohesion and solidarity of social groups.
Durkheim conceived of religion as a means for social groups to maintain cohesion through collective worship of the sacred, which he defined as nothing more than an abstract expression of society itself (Durkheim 2008:159-160). To Durkheim, then, religion was essentially a means for society to worship itself, providing its members with a common ideal and sense of social unity.
Perhaps the best example of a social-functional approach to paranormal belief is I.M. Lewis' theory of peripheral spirit possession, which sees spirit possession as a means for repressed individuals, usually women, to protest against their conditions in a socially acceptable manner, allowing for a controlled venting of frustration while maintaining the social status quo (Lewis 1971). Similar models have been applied to other systems of supernatural belief such as witchcraft, for example, which has been interpreted as a means by which incidences of misfortune can be understood and dealt with (Evans-Pritchard 1976), and as a method for ensuring civility between group members for fear of being labeled a witch (Van de Castle 1977:28).
The social-functional perspective, then, combined with the Tylorean misinterpretation hypothesis, seemed to provide an all-encompassing explanation for the persistence of apparently irrational supernatural beliefs. The traditional social-functional approach fundamentally ignored both the significance of subjective experience for believers (attributing any psychical experiences that might be had purely to self-delusion), and the possibility that genuine psi phenomena might exist.
The standard social-functionalist approach assumes from the outset that the objects of supernatural beliefs, in line with Tylor's view, could not possibly possess any form of independent ontological reality. While social-functionalists were happy to accept that ritual practices engaging the world of the supernatural might perform an essential social function, they were unwilling to entertain the possibility that the supernatural realm was anything more than delusional fantasy, or the product of outright fraud. Through interpreting belief systems and their associated practices in this way, anthropologists were attempting to reduce the complexity of social phenomena into manageable schematic systems, but in order to achieve this the most fundamental aspects of the cultural system were bracketed out and negated.
John Bowker provides a good illustration of this flaw in social functional reductionism in the context of funerary rites:
The fundamental mistake of social-functional explanations conceived as primary is that they take as axiomatic [the] argument that funerals benefit the living not the dead...But this is an over rationalistic comment to the effect that the dead clearly cannot be benefitted, because in the [twenty-first] century we happen to know that nothing continues through death. (Bowker 1973:69)
The fact is that funerary rites, in the majority of the world's societies, are geared towards the benefit of the dead in the afterlife and are experienced in that way by those who participate in them. The ritual behaviors associated with funerary rites cannot be truly understood without an appreciation of the beliefs that underlie them, and none of this can be divorced from the experiences of those who participate in them.
What understanding has really been gained of a culture if these fundamental aspects are bracketed out and negated? The same can be said of spirit possession practices, as Janice Boddy has highlighted in her study of the Sudanese Zar spirit possession cult:
Such approaches [physiological and social-functional] may prove fruitful in assessing and translating specific cases of possession illness, but since they neither account for possession forms, nor adequately credit the taken-for-grantedness of spirits in the everyday lives of the possessed, ultimately they distort and impoverish what they propose to understand. If the aim of the enterprise is to comprehend the scope of possession phenomena, to situate them in their cultural contexts, ethnographers must attend to their informants' experiences of possession and not seek merely to explain them away as something at once less dramatic and more clinical than they appear (Boddy 1988:4).
This is where the central significance of respect for the experiences of our informants comes into the anthropology of the paranormal. If we really wish to understand the lifeworlds of our informants, to comprehend the meaning of their beliefs and practices, and through this to further our understanding of what it means to be human, then we need to treat experience seriously:
...if the anthropologist's creed rejects a basic factor of man's nature, much of the work of the anthropologist must fail to be meaningful. If what is rejected by that creed is essential to man's nature and central to his cultures, the efforts of the anthropologist will not have significance (Walker 1977:54)
The idea here is not to dismiss social-functional interpretations completely, but rather to highlight the fact that social-functionalism cannot provide an absolute explanation for such complex human phenomena as, for instance, shamanism and spirit possession, which have, at their very core, a significant experiential component, which in itself is potentially bound up with the issue of psi.
Social-functional explanations should not, therefore, be seen as complete explanations, rather they need to be supplemented by other approaches (Donovan 2000). It wasn't until the late 1960s and early 1970s that certain anthropologists began, like Andrew Lang over sixty years previously, to question whether reductionist and functionalist frameworks really were the optimum, and only, models for understanding supernatural beliefs and experiences.
Castaneda's Influence and the Return of Experience
For many it was the publication in 1968 of Carlos Castaneda's infamous book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (Castaneda 1976 [1968]) that rekindled the paranormal debate in anthropology (Schwartz 2000:5-7; Schroll 2010). Castaneda's book describes his experiences as a young anthropology graduate, learning the ways of the brujo (sorcerer/medicine-man/shaman) with Don Juan Matus a Yaqui Native American in Mexico.
The book documents the author's unusual experiences while consuming sacred psychoactive plants and presents them in an autobiographical ethnographic account. There has been a great deal of debate as to whether Castaneda's book represents a genuine ethnographic description of real events and experiences, or whether it is simply a work of imaginative fiction. Nevertheless, and regardless of its veracity, the influence of the book on subsequent anthropologists was enormous and inspired many to follow similar courses of ethnographic fieldwork in other societies (Schwartz 2000).
Once ethnographers began to participate, in an immersive manner, with the belief systems and ritual practices of their hosts, a whole new world of experience (or in Castaneda's terms A Separate Reality (1978 [1971])) emerged as a valid field of ethnographic inquiry. Such an approach was to become known as the anthropology of experience, or the anthropology of consciousness.
In his introduction to The Teachings of Don Juan, Walter Goldschmidt highlighted the importance of this development in anthropological thought when he wrote:
The central importance of entering into worlds other than our own -- and hence of anthropology itself -- lies in the fact that the experience leads us to understand that our own world is also a cultural construct. By experiencing other worlds, then, we see our own for what it is and are thereby enabled also to see fleetingly what the real world, the one between our cultural construct and those other worlds, must in fact be like (in Castaneda 1976:10).
The experiences of anthropologists entering into the lifeworlds of other cultures do indeed seem to provide tantalizing glimpses of the underlying nature of reality, a world occupied by spiritual beings, non-physical intelligences and paranormal powers, as we shall now see.
Anomalous Experiences in the Field
Ethnographers such as Joseph Long (1977), Bruce Grindal (1983), Paul Stoller (1989) and Edith Turner (1998) composed detailed ethnographies in which they described not only the beliefs and practices of their hosts, but also their own anomalous experiences while immersed in the lifeways of different cultural systems.
Long documented an unusual apparition in Jamaica in which a self-propelled coffin was seen to move through a busy market square accompanied by vultures and a disembodied voice (Schwartz 2000:7-8)*; Bruce Grindal vividly described the reanimation of a corpse during a traditional Sisala death divination in Ghana:
What I saw in those moments was outside the realm of normal perception. From both the corpse and goka came flashes of light so fleeting that I cannot say exactly where they originated...A terrible and beautiful sight burst upon me. Stretching from the amazingly delicate fingers and mouths of the goka, strands of fibrous light played upon the head, fingers, and toes of the dead man. The corpse, shaken by spasms, then rose to its feet, spinning and dancing in a frenzy (Grindal 1983:68-69).
Paul Stoller became a sorcerer's apprentice amongst the Songhay in Niger, only to be forced to return home for fear of magical attacks from rival sorcerers:
Suddenly I had the strong impression that something had entered the house. I felt its presence and I was frightened. Set to abandon the house to whatever hovered in the darkness, I started to roll off my mat. But my lower body did not budge...My heart raced. I couldn't flee.
What could I do to save myself? Like a sorko benya, I began to recite the genji how, for Adamu Jenitongo had told me that if I ever felt danger I should recite this incantation until I had conquered my fear...I began to feel a slight tingling in my hips...The presence had left the room (Stoller & Olkes 1989:148).
Edith Turner described her climactic experience of a spirit-form at the culmination of the Ihamba healing ceremony of the Ndembu in Zambia:
I saw with my own eyes a giant thing emerging out of the flesh of her back. This thing was a large gray blob about six inches across, a deep gray opaque thing emerging as a sphere. I was amazed-delighted. I still laugh with glee at the realization of having seen it, the ihamba, and so big! We were all just one in triumph.
The gray thing was actually out there, visible, and you could see Singleton's hands working and scrabbling on the back and then the thing was there no more (Turner 1998:194).
Other ethnographers, past and present, have also claimed anomalous experiences in the field. To name just a couple of high profile examples; Bronislaw Malinowski described an occasion on which, while walking at night, his guides heard the distinctive sound of a Kosi (a trickster ghost) in a yam garden on the island of Kiriwina (1916:365), and Evans-Pritchard described anomalous lights, believed to be 'witchcraft substance' out on an errand to devour the organs of innocent victims, amongst the Azande in Sudan (1976:11). These are just two amongst many other examples (Devereux 2007; Hunter 2011).
Transpersonal Anthropology and the Anthropology of Consciousness
Such experiences are often referred to as 'transpersonal.' Charles Laughlin defines transpersonal experiences as 'those experiences that bring the cognized-self into question' and transpersonal anthropology as 'the cross-cultural study of the psychological and sociocultural aspects of transpersonal experience' (Laughlin 1994:5). A transpersonal anthropologist is, therefore, 'one that is capable of participating in transpersonal experience; that is, capable of both attaining whatever extraordinary experiences and phases of consciousness enrich the religious system, and relating these experiences to invariant patterns of symbolism, cognition and practice found in religions and cosmologies all over the planet' (Laughlin 1997).
Through participating fully in the host culture, to the extent of accessing culturally relevant experiences, the transpersonal anthropologist is able to gain a perspective on a particular culture that could not be attained through any normal means of objective observation.
Writing on his experiences with the Yanomami of the Orinoco Valley, Zeljko Jokic, for example, describes how his own subjective experiences under the influence of the hallucinogenic snuff Yopo represented a point of intersubjective entry into the Yanomamo life-world (Jokic 2008:36). In attaining such culturally significant experiences as, for example, witnessing the extraction of a malignant spirit from the back of an afflicted patient (Turner 1993; 1998), the ethnographer is essentially, at least for the duration of the experience, becoming one with their informants.
Following her experience during the ihamba ceremony Edith Turner explained how, in order to fully understand a culture, 'anthropologists need training to see what the Natives see' (1993:11).
Methodologies and Approaches
In order to 'see what the Natives see,' as Edith Turner puts it, and to make use of transpersonal experiences as ethnographic data in the anthropology of the paranormal, it is necessary to immerse oneself fully in the culture under investigation.
Jean Favret-Saada has highlighted the necessity in the study of supernatural beliefs, for the ethnographer to participate in another mode of conceiving of the world. Writing on her research into witchcraft beliefs in rural France, she suggests that: 'one cannot study witchcraft without agreeing to take part in the situations where it manifests itself, and in the discourse expressing it' (1980:20).
Similarly, Fiona Bowie (2010) proposes a methodology, which she terms 'cognitive empathetic engagement,' as a means to achieve this goal. Cognitive empathetic engagement is defined as a method by which 'the observer...approaches the people or topic studied in an open-minded and curious manner, without presuppositions, prepared to entertain the world-view and rationale presented and to experience, as far as possible and practical, a different way of thinking and interpreting events' (Bowie 2010: 5).
Patric Giesler (1984) has proposed a methodology more geared towards the verification of psi phenomena as objective events during ethnographic fieldwork in an approach referred to as 'psi in process,' which 'studies ostensible paranormal functioning in a natural cultural or subcultural context with the rigor of experimental control and statistical evaluation...without (or minimally) altering or disturbing the context' (Giesler 1984:289).
The emphasis in these approaches is on the necessity for ethnographers to participate in the cultures they study in an effort to understand the processes through which transpersonal experiences arise, and are interpreted, in their natural setting.
If psi phenomena are real, as the evidence from parapsychological research and ethnographic accounts would appear to indicate, traditional anthropological theories of magico-religious beliefs and practices will, by necessity, require some very significant revisions.
The blanket dismissal of ostensible paranormal phenomena advocated by early anthropologists such as E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer, for example, would no longer be useful. Similarly, as has already happened to a certain extent, the old evolutionist schemes that see supernatural beliefs as somehow 'primitive' or 'irrational' would be rendered meaningless.
Social-functionalist interpretations of supernatural beliefs and practices would need to be adjusted to include the notion that the magico-religious practices and beliefs of a society do more than simply maintain its structure and are actually directed towards psi-conducive goals, which may perform significant social functions in themselves.
Psi and the Universe
Writing at the dawn of the twentieth century, the philosopher and early pioneer of psychology, William James, summed up what I consider to be, potentially, the most important contribution of the anthropology of consciousness, and the anthropology of the paranormal, to our understanding of the universe as a whole, when he wrote that 'no account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.'
The unusual phenomena investigated by parapsychologists, and the range of altered states of consciousness and supernatural beliefs encountered during ethnographic fieldwork, are aspects of the world in which we live and the cultures that have developed in it, and as such should not be ignored by the social sciences. Although we are a long way from the outright acceptance of paranormal phenomena as valid subjects for serious investigation by mainstream anthropology, it is promising to see that both contemporary anthropologists and parapsychologists are coming to realize the mutual benefits each discipline can receive from the type of interdisciplinary collaboration suggested by Andrew Lang at the end of the nineteenth century (Giesler 1984; Young & Goulet 1994; Goulet & Miller 2007; Bowie 2010; Luke 2010; Wilson 2011; Young 2011).
Over the course of the discipline's development, anthropology has shifted its focus from attempting to explain away supernatural beliefs to an approach that accepts the significance of subjective anomalous experience in the development of such beliefs without applying a reductive interpretation.
This is a positive step forward for our understanding of the ways in which consciousness and culture interact to create reality/realities, and I look forward to further research in this direction.
Sections of this article were first published in Edgescience: The Magazine for the Society for Scientific Exploration, Issue 10 (March 2012), pp. 14-18.
* It was Joseph Long's unusual experience in Jamaica that ultimately led to the publication of Extrasensory Ecology in 1977. I think of this anthology as a companion to Long's groundbreaking book on the connections between anthropology and parapsychology.