Although recurrent respiratory papillomatosis is a benign disease of the upper aerodigestive tract caused by infection with human papillomavirus, the disease process is unpredictable, ranging from mild disease and spontaneous remission to an aggressive disease with pulmonary spread and requirement for frequent surgical debulking procedures. It can present a protracted clinical course and cause potentially life-threatening compromise of the airways. Over recent decades, a number of alternative medical therapies to standard surgical treatment have been investigated, with modest outcomes overall. Currently, some additional therapies are being explored, together with novel surgical instrumentation that can help to avoid inevitable long-term stenotic complications, ultimately affecting quality of life. Hopefully, clinicians might soon be able to significantly improve the quality of treatment and outcomes for patients affected with recurrent respiratory papillomatosis, with human papillomavirus vaccination having a potentially important role.
This article deals with the groundbreaking phenomenon of AI voice, highlighting two possible meanings that are often not problematized: the voice embedded into AI-based devices and the voice created using AI algorithms. In order to clarify the distinctions and the intersections of these two meanings, the article uses an approach inspired by media archaeology and social constructionism. It argues that AI voice as a social phenomenon is constructed by the interaction of a discursive level of representations and a non-discursive level of material practices and operations. The interaction of these two levels results in a tension between anthropocentrism and posthumanism, which is a characteristic of AI voice. Such tension is investigated through two case studies: the commercial of the smart speaker Amazon Alexa and the phenomenon of ‘voice cloning’. While the first is an example of how at a discursive level the ‘voice in the machine’ is represented as a way to ‘personify’ AI technology, the second, which consists in the possibility of reproducing the features of an embodied and personal voice, is an example of how the materialization of that cultural idea depends on the technical possibilities and material practices required by data-driven algorithms.
In this essay, three recently published books are reviewed: Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment, by Jonathan Sterne, Failure, by Neta Alexander and Arjun Appadurai, and In Case of Emergency, by Elizabeth Ellcessor. The essay argues that these three works contribute to the debate about media and disability by proposing a non ableist perspective – that is a perspective which doesn’t consider ability as a normative assumption – which affects both media theory and media practices. In this regard, the essay identifies three keywords which are potentially game changers in media studies: impairment, failure, emergency. Emphasizing the ‘normal’, ‘banal’ or ‘habitual’ character of these terms, the books here reviewed show how these keywords may enable us to go beyond the traditional idea of media as prostheses, and call for a different approach toward media and media studies: one which does not metaphorize disability but understands media as part of the sociocultural, political and economic context where a certain idea of ability and disability is both defined and materially enacted. An approach, therefore, that aims to deconstruct that idea.
Assistive technologies, as most recently enhanced by artificial intelligence, are increasingly used by persons with disabilities to express their will. However, the current legal framework does not always allow the use of technological tools for the conclusion of valid legal transactions. More specifically, in this contribution, attention will be focused on the analysis of the rules governing succession law in order to show how the rigid testamentary formalism that characterizes our legal system is an obstacle to the finalization of a valid will by those who can only express themselves by means of technological devices. The social repercussions, from the perspective of organizational studies, of the contradictions arising from the lack of coordination between technological development, the legal framework and the specific needs of people with disabilities will also be examined.
In the scenario that sees the spread of enthusiastic, solutionist rhetoric about artificial intelligence (AI), Simone Natale's Deceitful Media is a real breath of fresh air. Not that cultural studies about AI are a new thing, but (among calls to materialism and socio-political approaches) what was missing was consideration of human-machine communication as essential to the development of knowledge and practices of AI. As the author argues, the long sustained separation between the fields of AI and human-machine communication is misleading, since the very idea of AI is historically, socially and epistemologically dependent on imagining a machine interacting and communicating with humans. A machine can show intelligence not only because it is interacting with humans, but also because communication (especially in its linguistic meaning) is itself one of the central representations of intelligence. It is not by chance that the form through which AI has gained a foothold in the contemporary world is that of speaking machines, such as the so-called 'voice assistants' embedded in smartphones and smart speakers. Voice is traditionally considered to be what makes humans human, so our imagination projects onto a machine endowed with voice the other characteristics of humanity as well, intelligence in primis (Dolar, 2006). From the very beginnings of AI, coming immediately after computer science, natural language has been considered the paradigm inspiring the attempt to produce an intelligent machine (Bianchini, 2007). At the same time, intelligent machines have been imagined as possessing a voice since the beginning of technological modernity, both in the scientific milieu and in popular representations, from novels to cinema (from 2001 A Space Odyssey or Star Wars to Her).Given such premises, Simone Natale suggests that a better way to investigate AI is to inscribe it within the genealogy of modern communication media, adopting the analytic and critical tools of media studies, cultural studies and media history. He does not explicitly refer to media archaeology as an influence, but readers familiar with the work of such authors as Erkki Huthamo and Jussi Parikka (2011) will definitely find connections. The central assumption is that AI is a social and historical phenomenon constructed through intertwining knowledge, imaginaries, narratives, desires and material operations. This is something scholars in media studies and science and technology studies have long argued, but what Natale adds to the frame is an anthropological consideration that the assemblage is kept together by the human's liability to be deceived. In a very original and brilliant way, he finds in the concept of 'banal deception' a vital driving force of the technological development of the last century.Natale's core thesis is that deception is not just a side effect or a possible malicious use of AI, but a constitutive element of modern media. All media, in fact, draw on deceitful effects: the cinema gives the illusion of moving images through the fast suc...
fatto, postfatto 21 1.2 Attraversando il guado. Sperando non sia la sponda 28 1.3 Lo studio è una passione inutile 34 1.4 Del "misurarsi la palla", ovvero il valore del valore 40 1.5 I testi "Senza Valore": un caleidoscopio rappresentativo 50 1.6 Conclusioni 55 2. Originalità Daniele Goldoni 55 2.1 Valutazione 57 2.2 Verso il nuovo e il meglio 59 2.3 Originalità assoluta 61 2.4 Effetti di un "gusto" 63 2.5 Nota. Con le fasce 64 2.6 L'originalità è un valore, ha valore? 65 2.7 Metamorfosi dell'originalità nella creatività 66 2.8 Che cosa è l'università? 67 2.9 Cultura senza virtù
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