In sports discourse, the relationship between athletics and technology is often paradoxical. On the one hand, modern sports rely on technology at every level, from training and tracking of players to the equipment and apparel used by athletes to the game strategies and playing fields themselves. Nearly all of these technologies are intended to increase athletic performance on some level. And yet, certain performance enhancement technologies can be criticized for being antithetical to the spirit of sports, which is framed as being a strictly natural and pure human endeavor. Using a rhetorical-cultural methodological approach, popular sports discourse is analyzed to investigate how arguments in contested spaces between sports and technologies get (re)negotiated and (re)articulated to fit within a sports social language that emphasizes "pure" and "natural" ideals of sport. This often results in a dichotomy where the sport/technology relationship is either black boxed, thus being subsumed in the sport social language and becoming transparent and the relationships unarticulated, or the technology is regulated out of the sport through rules and bans. The reason for this articulation is attributed in large part to the deep humanism embedded in the sport social language. How a shift to a posthuman perspective would effect sports discourse is explored. These conclusions about underlying values in sports discourse lead to the formation of a new theoretical framework called disciplinary mythologies. Building off of Foucault's disciplinary power, Scott's disciplinary rhetorics, and Barthe's mythologies, disciplinary mythologies are discrete units of persuasion that both construct and constitute claims by drawing upon layered narratives and shifting associations that lose their context when entering the realm of myth. Two specific disciplinary mythologies are discussed—the level-playing-field topos and the nostalgia enthymeme—and it is shown how sports discourse often draws upon them to shape arguments and actions.

В современном обществе остро встают моральные проблемы, связанные с деятельностью искусственного интеллекта и других интеллектуальных систем. В работе исследуются проблемы, связанные с влиянием сильного искусственного интеллекта на человеческое общество: проблемы определения прав и свобод искусственных когнитивных единиц, взаимодействия человека и постчеловека, а также этические проблемы, потенциально возникающие при создании ИИ. Объектом исследования является философское течение постгуманизм. Предметом исследования является морально-этическая составляющая подраздела постгуманизма под названием эссенциокогнитивизм. Целью является изучение моральных принципов сильного искусственного интеллекта и других интеллектуальных агентов, или, если точнее, постчеловечества, преломленное сквозь призму морально-этических учений прошлого и современности. Методами исследования являются сравнение с уже существующими моральными системами, анализ актуальных морально-нравственных концепций, конструирование (дизайн) и прогнозирование хода развития постгуманистической концепции. Актуальность представленного исследования основана на росте внимания к идеям научно-технического прогресса и технологической сингулярности, актуализации этических проблем слабого искусственного интеллекта, возникновении новых научных открытий, имеющих неоднозначное значение для человечества. В результате исследования установлено, что постчеловечество и ИИ способны положительно повлиять на жизнь человечества, поэтому их возникновение представляется отличной возможностью решить глобальные проблемы, стоящие перед человечеством уже сейчас. / In modern society, the moral problems associated with the activities of artificial intelligence and other intellectual systems are acute. The paper examines the problems associated with the influence of strong artificial intelligence on human society: the problem of determining the rights and freedoms of artificial cognitive units, the interaction between man and postman, as well as ethical problems that potentially arise when creating AI. The object of the research is the philosophical course of posthumanism. The subject of the research is the moral and ethical component of posthumanism subsection called essentiocognitivism. The goal is to study the moral principles of strong artificial intelligence and other intellectual agents, or, more precisely, post-humanity, refracted through the prism of the moral and ethical teachings of the past and present. The research methods are comparison with already existing moral systems, analysis of current moral and ethical concepts, design and forecasting the course of development of the post humanistic concept. The relevance of the presented research is based on the growth of attention to the ideas of scientific and technological progress and technological singularity, the updating of the ethical problems of weak artificial intelligence, the emergence of new scientific discoveries that have ambiguous significance for humanity. As the result of the research it was established that post-humanity and the AI have positively effect on the life of mankind, therefore, their appearance is an excellent opportunity to solve global problems facing humanity now.

Den här studien syftar till att undersöka vilka figurationer om rösträtten, rösträttsbäraren och icke rösträttsbäraren som framkommer i samtal med barn. En vägledande fråga för studien har varit att lyfta barns röster i egenskap av att de dels är exkluderade från att delta i rösträtten, dels för att det finns en avsaknad av barns egna röster inom forskning om rösträtten. För att belysa den generativa kraft som figurationer besitter presenteras inledningsvis historiska figurationer om barn och barndom. Tillsammans med den svenska rösträttens historia agerar de etablerade figurationerna grund för den kommande analysen och diskussionen. För att finna vilka figurationer som återfinns genomfördes intervjuer med 13 barn. Intervjuerna strukturerades i enlighet med en dialogisk intervjumetod. Intervjuerna generade fem texter i novellformat där barnens figurationer om rösträtten, rösträttsbärare och icke rösträttsbärare framträder. Texterna som är skapade av mig utgör studiens resultat och analys. Analysen visar på att majoriteten av barnen tar fasta på figurationer där den vuxne agerar rösträttsbärare och barnet agerar en icke rösträttsbärare. Ett fåtal av barnen talade om egenskaper, mer eller mindre, lämpade för att inneha rösträtt. Egenskaper som både barn och vuxna kan besitta.

The promise of smart cities to deliver new urban efficiencies and optimizations for sustainability is increasingly being questioned for its anthropocentric, universal, and top-down perspectives. Framingcities as computers has been critiqued for its limiting understanding of cities, as well as its lack of dealing with the complexities of real messy cities, with diverse knowledge and lived experiences. However, smart technologies have also been highlighted as having the potential to help us better understand more-than-human perspectives and to reconnect us to the world around us. Situated in thefield of design for social innovation, this thesis contributes to the emerging body of work that is exploring how digital urban environments can include local knowledge and more-than-human perspectives. In a co-design process with the urban agriculture community of Sjöbergen in the city of Gothenburg in Sweden, this thesis explores how local knowledge and values about- and in urban nature can help us think differently about the future of sustainable smart city concepts. With a design process guided by research through design and co-design, this thesis is imagining other smart city narratives that go away from the current top-down and universal perspectives and instead are inspired by values of Sjöbergen of reuse, maintenance, collectivity, and knowledge sharing. The design contribution of this work is a design proposal of a smart city service that reuses old smartphones of citizens into smart city technologies for individual and situated purposes. The design proposal aims to show an alternative view of smart cities grounded in local values and more-than-human perspectives.

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<p>The boundaries of science fiction, as with any genre, are relational rather than fixed, and critical engagements with Western/Northern technoscientific knowledge and practice and modern human identity and being may be found not just in science fiction “proper,” or in the scholarly field of science and technology studies, but also in the related genres of fantasy and paranormal romance. This thesis offers an interdisciplinary examination – a science-fictional and posthumanist reframing – of the lines of affinity and relationality between these discursive and imaginative domains. Bringing together genre theory and critical posthumanism – itself informed by postmodern and poststructuralist feminism, postcolonialism, science and technology studies, and critical animal studies – with readings of several series in print (Christine Feehan’s Ghostwalkers, Kim Harrison’s The Hollows, and Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity) and on television (Fringe, True Blood, and Sanctuary), I argue that such narratives’ powerful abiding interest in the domains of knowledge, experience and imagination that lie within, along and outside the margins of scientific orthodoxy, registers a broader cultural apprehension of the conditions and critical perspectives by which Western/Northern humanism, anthropocentrism, modernity, and technoscientific authority have been and can be seen to be destabilized.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study investigates the possibilities of human life in outer space and the implications ofremoving the numinous dimension from creation, using Olga Ravn's novel The Employees.The main question is: How is human life portrayed in Olga Ravn's novel The Employees?What happens when the numinous is removed from creation, and what can this, throughliterature's defamiliarizing potential, reveal about human life? Using Ravn's novel,Stevensson's theory of human nature and Rudolf Otto's concept of the numinous, three keythemes are detected: relationships and emotional life, the dissolution of boundaries, andseparation. The theme of relationships and emotional life presents a technocratic societyvaluing efficiency over emotions, where contact with artifacts from the planet “NewDiscovery” transforms and increases humanity both born (humans) and unborn (cyborgs). Thedissolution of boundaries blurs lines between beings, suggesting human identity and life-deathdistinctions are fluid and interconnected. Separation highlights the loss of belonging, usingthe allegory of mother-child separation to emphasize attachment needs between human andearth. The study concludes that human life requires a society valuing emotions, relationships,and a sense of belonging to a greater whole, challenging the idea of human supremacy

Informed by post-humanism, my research examines the entanglement of more-than-human forces at the Bread Loaf School of English. The oldest professional development institution of its kind, the Bread Loaf School of English has invited teachers to spend six-weeks each summer studying at its mountain campus since the summer of 1920. When the physical campus was forced to close indefinitely on the eve of its one-hundredth anniversary at the start of the pandemic, the loss of this physical space prompted meditations on over a century of institutional tradition as teachers shared their stories of the mountain campus. Bread Loaf’s landscape is teeming with narrative—stories that blossom like wildflowers each summer before fading with the coming winter. Within those narratives, like the Deleuzoguattarian “orchid and wasp,” the human and non-human transform one another in an intra-active entanglement of bodies. What happens when we pause and attempt to follow the threads of these entangled narratives in order to better understand how more-than-human bodies meet, collide, and contaminate one another over time to constitute the assemblage of the Bread Loaf School of English? The rich tapestry that begins to unfold offers a model for more-than-human storytelling well beyond the mountain, spanning the manifold landscapes teachers return to at the end of the summer.

Technology-based music educators are uniquely situated within the shifting landscape of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) education. This dissertation investigates the lived experiences, perceptions, and teaching practices of secondary music teachers who teach through technology, exploring how they navigate the interdisciplinary connections between music, science, and technology. By employing a phenomenological methodology, the research reveals a transformation from an initially structured inquiry into a rhizomatic exploration, uncovering STEAM’s potential to challenge and transcend traditional educational paradigms. Drawing on metaphors of the tree and skunk, this dissertation contrasts hierarchical, binary models of knowledge with the rhizomatic thinking advanced by Deleuze and Guattari. Music technology educators thrive in these fluid, interdisciplinary spaces, which resist categorization and require constant adaptation. Situated in the epistemological ecotone between music and STEM fields, these educators embody a philosophical challenge to modernist, arborescent models of learning, embracing a post-humanist perspective that recognizes the interconnectedness and relationality of knowledge. The findings highlight how STEAM education, particularly within music, dissolves rigid disciplinary boundaries, offering students new ways to engage with music beyond traditional frameworks of performance and composition. Technology-based music educators serve as agents of change, creating opportunities for innovative teaching and learning that reflect the complexity of the contemporary world. Ultimately, this dissertation argues for a re-envisioning of music education as a liberal art through the lens of STEAM, one that acknowledges the philosophical and post-humanist implications of our rapidly evolving, interconnected world. In doing so, it positions music technology educators as vital contributors to a new renaissance in education, leading the way with their rhizomatic, transdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning. .