On the Mythical Origin of Yajñopavīta

Purānas which get written in accordance with the Vedas recreate the āstika ethos in a completely different social, temporal, and geographical context. Devānga Purāna dated to around 1532 CE and written after the social revolution in Kalyana in the twelfth century reaffirms the strength of the Vedic tradition by embracing the liberal and esoteric elements in Upanishadic thought. In this essay I look at the formation of Vedic ethos by focusing on a mythological narrative concerning the origin of yajñopavīta. I claim that the yajñopavīta was invented to intensify the will to non-knowledge.

Museums and Digital Culture: From Reality to Digitality in the Age of COVID-19

Museums increasingly recognize the need to address advances in digital culture which impact the expectations and needs of their audiences. Museum collections of real objects need to be presented both on their own premises and digitally online, especially as digital and social media becomes more and more influential in people’s everyday lives. From interdisciplinary perspectives across digital culture, art, and technology, we investigate these challenges magnified by advances in digital and computational media and culture, looking particularly at recent and relevant reports on changes in the ways museums interact with the public. We focus on human digital behavior, experience, and interaction in museums in the context of art, artists, and human engagement with art, using the observational perspectives of the authors as a basis for discussion. Our research shows that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many of the changes driving museum transformation, about which this paper presents a landscape view of its characteristics and challenges. Our evidence shows that museums will need to be more prepared than ever to adapt to unabated technological advances set in the midst of cultural and social revolution, now intrinsic to the digital landscape in which museums are inevitably connected and participating across the global digital ecosystem where they inevitably find themselves entrenched, underscoring the central importance of an inclusive integrative museum model between physical and digital reality.

Friendship Online

The online social revolution has seen the pursuit of friendship online become core business of the internet and part of the friendships and social lives of most of us. This chapter provides an overview of the burgeoning contemporary research concerning online friendship and of the main themes, since Aristotle, on the nature and value of friendship. It also aims to provide some substantial fresh research for future analyses. It argues that the pursuit of friendship relies heavily upon the rich, face-to-face dynamic of plural modes of self-expression and communication that we have engaged in for thousands of years. Our social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, flatline much of this territory, and as a result much of the moral universe that we have built upon it is lost or distorted online. The chapter concludes by suggesting that we need to better understand this social dependence of our values and valuing, both to improve the value-sensitive design of life online, and, where this social dependence cannot be well captured, to also improve our engagement in our traditional worlds and so help get us offline.

Museums and Digital Culture: From Reality to Digitality in the Age of Covid-19

Museums increasingly recognize the need to address advances in digital culture which impact the expectations and needs of their audiences. Museum collections of real objects need to be presented both on their own premises and digitally online, especially as social media becomes more and more influential in people’s everyday lives. We investigate these challenges magnified by advances in digital and computational media and culture looking particularly at recent and relevant reports on changes in the ways museums interact with the public. We find that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated many of the changes driving museum transformation. We believe that museums must be more prepared than ever to adapt to unabated technological advances set in the midst of cultural and social revolution, now intrinsic to the digital landscape in which museums are inevitably connected and participating across the global digital ecosystem where they inevitably find themselves entrenched.

Pendampingan Pembuatan Data Digital Manggis pada Kelompok Tani Bina Mandiri Dusun Nyiurbaye Gawah, Lombok Barat

A digital database of agricultural commodities is indispensable in the 4.0 and social revolution eras of 5.0. The creation of a mangosteen agricultural information system at the Bina Mandiri farmer group is vital to support the sustainability of farming activities in preparation for future export administration. This dissemination was carried out in collaboration with members of the Bina Mandiri farmer group, Nyiurbaye Gawah hamlet, Batu Mekar village, West Lombok district. The purpose of this activity is assistance in digitizing mangosteen trees in making digital maps of mangosteen distribution in the Bina Mandiri farmer group. The implementation of this activity includes: socializing the importance of digital data, collecting primary data and creating a mangosteen agriculture information system that can be connected to a WebGIS page. The result of this activity is the transfer of knowledge and technology of mangosteen mapping to the Bina Mandiri farmer group. In addition, the Bina Mandiri farmer group has digital data related to land and mangosteen trees so that it can be useful for sustainable management and utilization of the remaining space on land for planting mangosteen trees and knowledge of spacing errors that have occurred in the practice of planting mangosteen.

A PROPOSITION OF AN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES EXPECTATIONS MODEL: AN EXAMPLE OF STUDENT ATTITUDES TOWARDS BLOCKCHAIN

The paper proposes an Emerging Technologies Expectations Model (ETEM) that aims at explaining the differences in perception of new technologies as well as the expectations towards them. These Expectations, classified into Technology Evolution, Technology Revolution, Social Evolution and Social Revolution are explained by Knowledge and Usage that in turn are shaped by Information Sources. The Information Sources factor, which influences both Expectations and Knowledge, and the Usage factor both play an important role in the model. The application of this model was illustrated using blockchain as an example of an emerging technology, and data from a survey conducted among IT university students in Cracow, Poland. The proposed model contributes to filling the research gap concerning a comprehensive explanation of people’s expectations towards emerging technologies, considering the way people absorb knowledge and undertake the usage of technology based on various information sources. It also provides practical implications, since the knowledge of the factors that can influence people’s expectations towards emerging technologies might be useful in shaping these expectations.

Lost and Found: Bourgeois Dependency Theory and the Forgotten Roots of Neodevelopmentalism

Neodevelopmentalism emerged in Brazil and Argentina in the aftermath of the demoralization of the Washington Consensus. Although its intellectual proponents place it within the long tradition of Latin American developmentalism, an important theoretical origin of neodevelopmentalism—dependency theory—has so far been ignored. The term appeared for the first time in 1978 as an expletive in the heated controversy between Ruy Mauro Marini and Fernando Henrique Cardoso and José Serra in the Revista Mexicana de Sociología. Breaking with the supposition that underdevelopment could be overcome only through social revolution, Cardoso and Serra embraced a perspective of long-term social transformation based on class alliances with fractions of the national bourgeoisie and international capital. This perspective was gradually weakened and finally abandoned in favor of full-fledged neoliberalism when Cardoso became president of Brazil in 1994, only to be resuscitated by so-called pink-tide administrations after 2002. O neodesenvolvimentismo surgiu no Brasil e na Argentina após a desmoralização do Consenso de Washington. Embora seus proponentes intelectuais o coloquem dentro da longa tradição do desenvolvimentismo latino-americano, uma importante origem teórica do neodesenvolvimentismo - a teoria da dependência - até agora foi ignorado. O termo apareceu pela primeira vez em 1978 como um palavrão na polêmica acalorada entre Ruy Mauro Marini e Fernando Henrique Cardoso e José Serra na Revista Mexicana de Sociología. Rompendo com a suposição de que o subdesenvolvimento só poderia ser superado por meio da revolução social, Cardoso e Serra abraçaram uma perspectiva de transformação social de longo prazo baseada em alianças de classe com frações da burguesia nacional e do capital internacional. Essa perspectiva foi gradualmente enfraquecida e finalmente abandonada em favor do neoliberalismo completo quando Cardoso se tornou presidente do Brasil em 1994, apenas para ser ressuscitada por administrações da chamada maré rosa após 2002.