Taking Control: the critical and creative uses of digital tools and the now, the past, the foreseeable future and beyond.

Announcement: Call-for-Papers:

 

International edited collection titled:

 

Taking Control: the critical and creative uses of digital tools and the now, the past, the foreseeable future and beyond.

 

I am seeking a number of academics and professionals in the field who might like to send me an abstract for consideration for inclusion in the book.

 

Due to the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic, we have extended the deadline date for abstracts.

Abstracts now due: 30 March 2023.

The aim of Taking Control is to highlight the human-computer blend and AI as a vibrant inter- and multidisciplinary area where we urgently need better understanding and clear parameters to judge success and failure, and to consider the direction of human and social futures.

Taking Control seeks to examine the current uses, and the potential for expansion and extension, and possible future uses of the computer-human blend and/or AI technology in relation to human creativity: This can be in terms of, for example: literature; biography (this could include epitaphs); music; the creative arts; the visual arts; visual culture narratives (including historical artefacts and cultural objects); interactive texts (including mapping/maps, and e-books, etc.); science and the environment  (physical spaces, built spaces); and critical and theoretical approaches. There are also the little explored angles of cultural criticism and cultural and social meaning in human-computer collaborations and/or AI technology. This raises the query of whether, through the forms outlined here, human-computer collaborations and/or AI technology can bring about changes that affect the human physically and/or psychologically.

Suggestions for potential contributions to consider, include, but are not limited to, are, how the use of the human-computer blend and/or AI in creative productions may:

 

  • expand the range of imaginative invention through new techniques and themes;
  • challenge audience perception of the boundary between human and machine;
  • further an understanding of how people learn, and how they absorb information and data;
  • provide a link between the past and the present, affording insights, and building onto people’s knowledge and cultural knowledge, and hence an understanding of their world;
  • create platforms that can allow audiences and users to interact, assist in the exchange of information;
  • facilitate the transfer of knowledge;
  • enable researchers to share data;
  • introduce entirely new genres and modes;
  • reach audiences in new ways born of big-data studies of human cognition;
  • provide new immersive interactivity for audiences;
  • include perspectives from a vastly increased range of groups and individuals globally;
  • eliminate the limitations of included content based on the cognitive capacities of the human creative team and analogue physical formats.

 

Potential contributions in relation to critical and interpretative methods include, but are not limited to, how the use of the computer may:

  • allow entirely new insights into the future for AI technology; and for the human-computer blend and/or AI in creative works (and especially in large collections);
  • provide models of the reception of creative works and productions in audiences, which can be interrogated to test theories of how such works have their impact, at levels down to the subliminal;
  • gather knowledge about the environment and physical spaces or built spaces to add to the human understanding and potential management of such areas;
  • lead to new hypotheses about such technology and works of art, based on multiple overlapping layers of context in time, space, other works in the same and different genres, cultures, and physical and mental environments; and build on to knowledge about the potential of AI technology in terms of the human experience.

 

Technology can be misused; yet in the human-computer blend, and in the rapidly advancing discoveries in AI technology, humans have the power to intervene. In these interactions, there is the potential to take things to a different level. The power of the human, the ability to think differently, and critically and creatively, together with the technical abilities of the computer for holding, sorting, and providing masses of big data, and for AI to hold out the possibility of expanded human creativity. When you use the computer, and choose and use information fairly, it makes the outcome compelling and accurate. AI affects what people look for, what they enter into the computer and how they respond, and what that reveals and changes about the people can affect our societies and cultures. Wherever you add questions about our environment, for instance, AI sharpens it so we can relate to it.  Thus, how it relates to the human experience, to our world, and human society, much depends on how we manage it, where we take it and what we do with it.

 

Questions remain: In what ways can human-computer assisted treatment and examination of those areas identified above, and the little explored angles of cultural criticism and cultural and social meaning in human-computer collaborations and/or AI technology, affect the human experience? In turn, how does this offer us the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, our worlds, our environment and spaces, and bring about change?  How do these works address cultural criticism, and social and cultural meanings, in ways that afford insights into our cultures, ourselves, and society? What is the potential for exploring human experience and that connect to our world, and the possible import of these productions for the future? One important dimension of human-computer collaboration is the impact of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning; and another important dimension is the rapid advancement in and uses of AI technology. Admittedly, there are differing views and opinions on the future of AI. Some think an Artificial General Intelligence can or has the potential to exist independently of human input, and others think not—that artificial intelligence requires human input, control, and computer skills. What does all this mean for human creativity in our future society and culture?

At this initial stage, in lieu of “chapters,” this proposed work, Taking Control, is taking extended abstracts for consideration for inclusion in the book.

Submission instructions:

  1. The extended abstracts must be more than 1,000 and less than 1,700 words.

(Full-length chapters of approximately 7,000 words each will be solicited from these abstracts.)

  1. When writing avoid the use of the personal voice and first person, rather use the more academic impersonal voice and third person. Other than in quoted material, any use of first person will deleted or edited out.
  2. Please keep in mind that your essay-chapter will stem from your extended abstract. Your abstract will carry the same title as your essay-chapter.
  3. Abstracts must be in English, and submitted as a Word document.
  4. When writing your abstract use Times New Roman point 12, and 1.5 spacing.
  5. At the beginning of your extended abstract, immediately after the title of your work and your name, add 5 to 8 keywords that best relate to your work.
  6. Use the Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition.
  7. Use English spelling not American English spelling.
  8. Use endnotes, not footnotes, use counting numbers not Roman numerals, and keep the endnotes to a bare minimum, working the information into the text where possible.
  9. Do cite all your work in your extended abstract as you would in a full chapter.
  10. a) in the body of the abstract, add parenthetical in-text citations (family name of author and year, and page number/s) (e.g. Smith 2019, 230);
  11. b) fully reference all in-text citations in alphabetical order, in the References list at the end of your abstract.
  12.   Please send your abstract and your documents as attachments to an email. At the same time as

submitting your extended abstract, in separate documents please send the following:

  1. Your covering letter, giving your academic title/s, affiliation, your position, and your home and telephone, and email contact details;
  2. A short bio of no more than 200 words;
  3. Your C.V., giving your publications to date, and the publishing details and dates.

Papers should be forwarded to:

Jo Parnell Jo.Parnell@newcastle.edu.au  alternatively annette.parnell@newcastle.edu.au  or joandbobparnell@bigpond.com

 

Dr Jo (Joan-Annette) Parnell. PhD | Honorary Lecturer

School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Science (HCISS)

College of Human and Social Futures

University of Newcastle, Australia

International author and editor

Reviewer: Auto/ Fiction International; Cambridge Press; Palgrave Macmillan

Reviewer, and editor independent: other works

Member: International Autobiography Association (IABA World)

IABA European Chapter

IABA Asia-Pacific Chapter

British Sociological Association Auto/Biography Study Group

(Recent past member) PCA/ ACA (Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association)

Oral History NSW Inc., Australia

Australian Book Review (ABR)

Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), International.

Blog site: http://www.wordsforsam1.worpress.com/

Latest books:

Representation of the Mother-in-Law in literature, film, drama, and television (Lexington Books USA, 2018).

New and Experimental Approaches to Writing Lives (Macmillan International Higher Education, Red Globe Press, 2019).

The Bride in the Cultural Imagination: Screen, Stage, and Literary Productions (Lexington Books USA, 2020).

Taking Control: critical and creative uses of digital tools in the now, the past, the foreseeable future and beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2023/24).

Writing Australian History on Screen: television and film period dramas “down under” (with Julie Anne Taddeo) (Lexington Books, USA, releasing 15 January 2023).

Cultural Representations of the Second Wife: Literature, Stage, and Screen (Lexington Books, USA, forthcoming 2023).

The University of Newcastle

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Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia

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I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land in which the University resides and pay my respect to Elders past, present and emerging.
I extend this acknowledgement to the Awabakal people of the land in which the Callaghan campus resides and which I work.

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