Monsters are disruptive characters, who cross boundaries and blend categories. They come in various kinds: Non-human monsters, such as Dracula, created-by-human monsters like Frankenstein, human monsters like Hitler, and more-than-human monsters such as the X-men. These monsters can either be dangerous or helpful to humanity. Dangerous monsters appear as infectious, viral forces, while helpful monsters are inoculative forces for positive change. In either case, they penetrate the borders set up between normatively separate categories. Critics and authors have long realized the connection between heroes and monsters, often portraying them as necessary to one another, as two sides of a single coin. However, this analogy is lacking, because it does not allow for the possibility that a single character can display varying degrees of both heroism and monstrosity. Mario Yerro and Bruna Husky present such characteristics in Yeti and Lágrimas en la lluvia, as evidenced by their physical appearance, their relations to scapegoats, the porosity of species and other boundaries, and the decisions they make in regards to the Other.

British speculative fiction writer, Diana Wynne Jones, has published over forty books for middle school to adult readers, and her work continues to receive many awards for its creativity and high quality. Jones is a prolific and talented writer who has contributed to and influenced speculative fiction. She uses magical contexts to comment on social situations in what she sees as an essentially non-magical world. Whether she is being humorous, drawing upon myths and legends, or using fantasy or science fiction, Jones reflects the contemporary unpredictable adolescent mind. Jones's unusual childhood has influenced her writing, and a brief biography of Jones's life provides insight into her work—why certain themes have greater interest to her over others. Recurring themes in her books include alienation, empowerment, and identification. Through often convoluted plots, she encourages her readers to think for themselves. From her stories, readers learn to appreciate and accept the complexity and inexplicability of life. While her themes are consistent, her work varies. Some of her work is humorous, some is based on myths, some leans more towards science fiction than fantasy, and some seems more like fantasy than science fiction. Despite this diversity, Jones consistently seeks to learn from her own work by questioning basic assumptions and endeavors to contribute wisdom to her readers through her fiction. Jones uses myth and the heroic ideal to encourage readers to question their motives and recognize the empowerment that comes from self-sacrifice.

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has previously been parallelized primarily by distributing the computation corresponding to particles across multiple processors. In this thesis we present a speculative approach to the parallelization of PSO that we refer to as SEPSO. In our approach, we refactor PSO such that the computation needed for iteration t+1 can be done concurrently with the computation needed for iteration t. Thus we can perform two iterations of PSO at once. Even with some amount of wasted computation, we show that this approach to parallelization in PSO often outperforms the standard parallelization of simply adding particles to the swarm. SEPSO produces results that are exactly equivalent to PSO; this is not a new algorithm or variant, only a new method of parallelization. However, given this new parallelization model we can relax the requirement of exactly reproducing PSO in an attempt to produce better results. We present several such relaxations, including keeping the best speculative position evaluated instead of the one corresponding to the standard behavior of PSO, and speculating several iterations ahead instead of just one. We show that these methods dramatically improve the performance of parallel PSO in many cases, giving speed ups of up to six times compared to previous parallelization techniques.

[pt] Esta tese propõe uma interpretação da filosofia de Deleuze a partir de questões aportadas pela Virada Especulativa. Argumenta-se que a filosofia de Deleuze pode ser compreendida enquanto uma metafísica especulativa construída a partir da reversão da crítica de Kant. A importância desse movimento, no mundo atual, seria dada pelas suas consequências práticas em termos ético-político. / [en] This thesis proposes an interpretation of Deleuze s Philosophy through problems imposed by the Speculative Turn. We argue that Deleuze s Philosophy may be understood as a speculative metaphysics constructed through a reversal of Kant s critique. The importance of this movement, contemporaneously, is given by its practical consequences in ethical and political terms.

The way we use interactive mobile technology everyday is changing the human cognitive landscape and how we are dealing with reality. In our daily life, SnT (Social-networking technology) has become something we cannot avoid using, as the need of being constantly updated and virtually connected to our social and working circle has prominently emerged. In this Interaction design thesis, I intend to explore the possible ways in which digital users, physical people in the first place, can prevent addictive loops of being constantly connected to such services and smartphones. Ethnographic research methods were performed along with iterative prototyping phases, leading to the development of speculative design interventions. Altering different responsiveness rates of a mobile user experience led me to design six bodystorming concepts and enact relative roleplay activities supposed to prevent SnT addiction and eventually help people being in control again of their spent digital time.

In the project "moving between futures" I explored through an interactive design exhibition and a performative event on the streets how design can be used to encourage and to reflect on ones own wishes and fears regarding the future in relation to the climate crisis which we are living and facing. Part of the exploration process were a story gathering workshop and engagement with activists. This is a project about you, me, us. About the total sum of being alive, feeling alive and breathing in reality. It is about a deep unconscious knowledge that we never learned to process and act upon. It is about listening first and taking action later, together. About understanding that we are alive at the same time, at the edge of no return. It is about the stories we tell each other when we dream and the ones we tell each other when we wake up screaming from a nightmare - the inbetween and the million, trillion directions we can decide to take from here. This project is about the climate disaster we are facing and how we need to find agency within ourselves together. We can still move between these futures.

This project is examining the possibility of reusing a space taken by a transportation structure, the Nuselský most, a bridge located in Prague, and speculates about its uses in a carless future.  A bridge structure is perceived as a connection, a shelter, or a barrier, but how can we use the space In Between the Bridge? The project is connecting future living desires with remains from the past and utilizing a structure that might become obsolete while proposing a vertical community for a post-materialistic generation oriented towards health, nature, self-realization, individualism, and sustainability, supporting social interactions in society.It is an investigation of an ability of a structure to be flexible in response to the demands of society and the ability to expand over time while using space already taken by the bridge. Modularity is used as a tool to achieve higher freedom in populating the void and in combining different typologies in one structure. Relation between horizontal and vertical city life is presenting new opportunities for community meeting points, unexplored urban spaces, and forming new connections within the city.

The Jubilant City Almanac is a collection of short stories set in the magical Jubilant City, a city founded by a group of Black women in 1736. These stories bridge the whimsical and magical with the realities of poverty, classicism, addiction, abuse and health disparities. “Got His Alligator” follows the journey of two codependent addicts as they try to get their fashion designs onto Jubilant City’s premiere drama, Girl, Please. The characters in “Carbon Copy” use a magical phone to bring Denzel Washington to the city. “Jeremiah the Conqueror” summons Black American folk legend, High John. THrough an exploration of magical realism and speculative fiction, The Jubilant City Almanac tells the stories of Black families and Black complexity.

Solving future problems is a part of the masterprogram of transportation design, where thepossibilities and the push are to tackle socialand environmental problems. In this thesis, thedesigner was keen to investigate the value ofshared vehicles in future megacities since thesedense urban areas will face more challenges thantoday with the increased demands in housing,education, health, leisure and transportation.In order to investigate the future problems thatmegacities will face, the designer focuses ona speculative design approach that is used tohelp navigate the scenarios and determine themost applicable one, enabling him to determinethe values of a shared vehicle. The speculativefuture suggested a formation of segregated sub-societies within the city where individuals areforced to share certain mobility services. However,this segregation will have a reverse effect onhow the mobility behaviour of individuals mightchange in avoiding certain mobility services dueto its association with a sub-society other thanthe one they belong to, for example, people withdifferent ethnicity or social classes.Since mobility systems and vehicles areconsidered facilitators of such segregation andsub-societies formation, the solution can beprovided as a shared mobility vehicle. Such avehicle will form a focal interaction between twostrangers sharing the same route. Using ancientarchitectural techniques (the velarium andoculus), the vehicle creates a humble gatheringexperience that crosses economic, social andethnic differences.To achieve such a design, the designer useddifferent techniques in 2D design and 3Dmodelling to push for multiple directions that led to the formation of one concept, Velaria. TheVelaria is an autonomous oval-shaped vehiclewhere the rounded form, the velarium and theoculus at the roof provide an experience ofhumbleness and gathering by introducing thesky and the light as a higher umbrella or domethat brings users from different backgroundstogether. This technique was used in romanbuildings like the Pantheon and the Colosseum,and carried on to modern art and architecture.This project provides a glimpse of the implicationsof current mobility systems regarding theformation of social sustainability. Thereforethe project gives a clear direction of what thefuture values of the vehicle can be and how thevehicle can be the starting point of weaving thesocial fabric to achieve a resilient society thatcan change the future scenario of mobility andsociety in future megacities.

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