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Assembling a Medical Condition. Adermatoglyphia Case.
Iormark, Daniel ; Tremčinský, Martin (advisor) ; Tesárek, Jan (referee)
The thesis addresses the adermatoglyphia medical condition. It used the theoretical framework based on the Foucauldian thought and ANT ideas as well as the mix of methods they suggest, in order to study how various actors and forces are enacted by scientists in their articles in order to assemble adermatoglyphia. The thesis revealed that a detour into the identification and authorization requirements, the description of fingerprinting, the figure of a healthy patient, the presence of biopolitial, technological and biomedical dispositifs as well as the equal treatment of both human and nonhuman actors are characteristic for the studied articles. The contingency of adermatoglyphia on the mechanisms of biopolitics and disciplinary power, fingerprinting technological solution and western biomedical science, the pathologisaion of people with adermatoglyphia, the problems of betrayal and translation were addressed in the thesis. It also contains a macro perspective of adermatoglyophia as well as the attempt to use the concept of extended phenotype in order to equalize technomachines and intellectual constructs.
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Sociological Aspects of Aritificial Intelligence
Zálešák, Tomáš ; Bureš, Jiří (advisor) ; Tremčinský, Martin (referee)
This text is a literature review with the goal of introducing the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) as a sociologically relevant phenomenon to research. The text has three chapters that together form a basic platform to understand many different aspects of the topic. The first chapter is concerned with the technical aspects of AI and is based on technical literature. These aspects are important for understanding of the current surge of interest in AI that has arisen in the recent years. The technical aspects also help us understand the strengths and weaknesses of AI by understanding its inner workings. The second chapter introduces an overview of sociologically relevant works of authors dealing with the social effects and other aspects of AI. Works of four of these authors are chosen as examples of the breadth of possible ways of looking at AI and as sources for further understanding. The third chapter chooses two examples from the vast amount of areas of application AI in the real world to deepen the overall understanding. This chapter balances out the previous more theoretical chapters by looking at the state of the art in the fields of medicine and transportation and applies knowledge acquired in the previous chapters. The output of the text is a sort of introductory guide through the...
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Identity plug-ins: Towards post-human theory of informational privacy
Tremčinský, Martin ; Grygar, Jakub (advisor) ; Numerato, Dino (referee)
The text is concerned with informational privacy in infosphere. Infosphere according to Luciano Floridi presents a new type of techno-scientific ecology in which western societies organize themselves and operate. Privacy is conceptualized as a labor of division in the infosphere, where every (quasi)subject is mobilizing various actors in order to protect her outer boundaries and resist objectification. The labor of division in infosphere is then compared with similar types of labor in different ecologies and societies (i.e. Amazonia and Mongolia) in sake of identification of crucial agents carrying out this labor of division based on negotiations of categories such as human/non-human or self/non-self. The text distinguishes three types of actors of division according to three interconnected intruders; traders, overseers and criminals. The argument then is that through mobilization of various dividing actors depending on the type of intruder, different (quasi)subjects emerge, thus subjectivity in the infosphere is a political project co- constructed by non/human dividing actors. The last chapter than proposes general ethical directions which might be helpful in the future, when considering the problems of lack of privacy.
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Reenactment and Gender Aspects in the Reconstructions of World War 2 Events
Blažková, Eliška ; Balon, Jan (advisor) ; Tremčinský, Martin (referee)
This research focuses on the Czech community of people interested in World War II, the so-called reenactors. This community focuses on an authentic depiction of the past. In this context, I deal in depth with the gender aspects of the reconstruction of the events of World War II through the reenacting scene. Whether women in the community accept their roles and whether they do not mind returning to the original position that women had in the 1940s. The key is to understand how the members of the reenactment think about the role of man and woman during the Second World War and how they produce this idea to this day in the reenactment scene. The motivations of members to participate and their ideas of the body are also important. This research is based on existing socio-anthropological frameworks. The qualitative method has been used. A total of nine interviews were conducted with members of this group to keep the gender ratio the same. In the end, five men and four women took part in the interviews. Women do not feel limited in their opportunities, when in fact they are limited by their dichotomously divided gender roles. Women, like men, are led to participate by a love of history and a reminder of the merits of men and women who took part in the fighting during World War II.
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Analysis of the Internet Discussions According to Goffman's Theory of Focused Interaction
Čížková, Anna ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Tremčinský, Martin (referee)
This bachelor thesis examines the phenomenon of internet discussions on Facebook. The starting theoretical framework for the thesis is Erving Goffman's focused interaction and the principles of fun in games theory in terms of focused interaction. The aim of this study is to find out whether the elements of fun occur in the researched environment and what form they take up. Research units were specified as discussions on the official Facebook websites of chosen online news portals. These discussions are embodied in the comments section below shared political article. 70 research units were subjected to conversation analysis. The results of the analysis show that most of the examined internet discussions can be determined as focused interaction and the elements of the game are strongly present in the discussions. The real situation in a virtual environment, however, differs from the way game elements manifest themselves in the face-to-face interaction, in which Goffman defined the concept of focused interaction originally. This work also deals with the situation of the participants leaving the interaction. In this case, it appeared that not all the characteristics of the internet discussions can be interpreted in terms of fun in games theory. Some aspects of the interaction in a virtual environment...
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Sociology of PC gamers and its overlap into the "offline" world based on the Blitzchung Controversy
Sadovský, Samuel ; Tremčinský, Martin (advisor) ; Tesárek, Jan (referee)
In October 2019 the gaming world was "shaken" by the so called Blitzchung controversy, an incident during which a professional player of the videogame Hearthstone Ng Wai "Blitzchung" Chung was penalized after he supported the Hong Kong protestors during a live inteview of an official tournament. Chung was basically denied the basic human right of free speech. Considering the importance of this incident in the context of the gaming world, it is a unique case which showcases the potential existance of the causal relationship of games → real world. This study showcases relationships between the gaming world and other nongaming areas and subjects (education, government, politics and others) which are presented using selected studies and cases which are further expanded by the case study based on the Blitzchung controversy that chronologically describes observed phenomenons and characterizes participating actors. Structured interviews with selected respondents supplement the case study findings. This work mainly draws from theories that target gamers and the gaming world and tries to find answers to questions connected to the influence of the gaming world, it's potential as an environment suitable for political and other discussions and relevancy of gaming communities in the local and global discourse.
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The clash of hyperobjects: plastic oceans strike back
Kvizda, Jakub ; Tremčinský, Martin (advisor) ; Sedláčková, Tereza (referee)
Ocean plastics permeate ever deeper into the lives of a growing number of humans and nonhumans and as such present an enormous environmental problem. However, its form is not self-evident, as well as the fact that we speak of a problem at all. In this paper, therefore, I trace processes of reality enactment of ocean plastics that were and still continue to be performed in many practices (e.g. scientific or activist), and their framing as a problem. With the help of Bruno Latour's concept of collective, I put the emergence of the whole problem into historical context. Ocean plastics were for many years of their gradual accumulation not visible, leading to their growth into a massive and dangerous hyperobject. It was registered by work of many particular practices thanks to which we have gradually learned to see ocean plastics. However, this was not merely a neutral discovering of their reality - this reality was being in these practices variously enacted which had as an effect its multiplication. Thus, I analyze realities forming within three projects - The Ocean Cleanup, Wasteland, Adidas x Parley - including mutual negotiations about ontology and aesthetics (sensual perception) of the problem that make possible speaking of a single ocean plastics problem. Its important part is an imaginary. Most...
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