Relation between control, objectivity and technology can be traced back since it beginning. In ancient time, human tries to defeat the nature through simple tools called technology. Technology is seen as human representation to conquer nature. By time, technology has became part of capital owned by several people. This several people use technology to dominate other. For instance, attendance machine to control labour salary. Technology is assumed to be objective and neutral.

The same assumptions occur in e-gov, online system made the community possible to monitor the system. In this system, hybrid control occur. Man and machine. The technology make the monitor possible, while on the other side, who decide the technology is still human.

But in ethical point of view, is mapping credit card a right thing to do? Who have the access to seegoods that we buy?

How technology influence human life can be seen in a absent machine. Every morning we arrive at the office, we are asked to put our ID card or finger print on a machine. As a tools, the absent machine is considered as a neutral agent, therefor it is difficult to cheat on them. But by opening the black box, every thing can be reconstructed. The absent machine can be cracked, either technically or socially.

Dizzling…

In much C. elegans work, researchers introduce mutations or otherwise manipulate the genome to see the impact on the developing organism. Large numbers of the worms (which are about one-twentieth of an inch long) are used, and they often have to be examined through a microscope, one by one, to see the effects. Often the work involves sorting the worms into two groups, based, for instance, on if the manipulation resulted in certain cellular changes.

Some efforts have been made to speed up this process. The latest comes from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where scientists have created what amounts to an automatic worm sorter on a chip.

As described by Kwanghun Chung, Matthew M. Crane and Hang Lu in the journal Nature Methods, the sorter is a microfluidic device, with tiny channels and gates fabricated in an organic polymer. The worms are suspended in liquid, which flows into the chip under constant pressure. A first gate allows only one worm through at a time, and the opening of another gate downstream draws the worm into an observation chamber. There it is briefly immobilized through cooling, and imaged using a digital camera through a high-magnification lens.

Computer software then controls the opening of one of two final gates, sending the worm into one receiving chamber or another based on the software’s interpretation of what the camera saw.

The researchers say their system has a high “throughput,” up to several hundred worms per hour, and can reduce the time needed to complete an experiment from months to just days.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/science/

24obworm.html?_r=1&ref=science&oref=slogin

The Importance of Being Frightened

By Gisela Telis
ScienceNOW Daily News
16 June 2008

Why do we wrinkle our noses in disgust or widen our eyes with fear? A new study shows that doing so might help keep us alive.

The idea that facial expressions confer a survival advantage was first posited, perhaps not surprisingly, by Charles Darwin. In 1872, 13 years after he published On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote a lesser-known tome, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In it, he observed that some human expressions occur across cultures and even in some other animals. He cited the wide-eyed gasp of surprise as an example. Darwin speculated that these emotional faces might serve a biological function, such as getting a good look at an enemy.

Darwin’s hypothesis went untested until 3 years ago, when cognitive neuroscientist Adam Anderson, graduate student Joshua Susskind, and their colleagues at the University of Toronto in Canada decided to apply new technology to the century-old idea. The researchers computer-generated a “classic” fear face: one with raised brows, popping eyes and flaring nostrils. They also mocked up a disgust face: the wrinkled nose, raised lip, and narrowed eyes familiar to anyone who’s smelled rotten eggs or stepped in something foul. The team then asked volunteers to mimic these faces while taking vision and breathing tests.

Emotional faces weren’t just for looks. The team found that a fearful visage improves peripheral vision, speeds up eye movement, and boosts air flow, potentially allowing a person to more quickly sense and respond to danger. Squinty, scrunched-up disgusted faces had the opposite effect, limiting vision and decreasing air flow, ostensibly to keep out substances that might be harmful to the eyes or lungs.

The findings, reported online this week in Nature Neuroscience, are “pretty radical,” says Anderson, because most research on expressions has focused on their function in communication, not their physiological or evolutionary underpinnings. “No one’s ever shown this in a scientific way,” adds neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps of New York University in New York City. “The best kind of study seems obvious on the one hand, but no one’s demonstrated it before,” says Kevin Ochsner, a cognitive neuroscientist at Columbia University. “This is one of those studies.”

The same question can we propose in wayang case. Does wayang performance imply Indonesian culture or it has been imposed by Wali Songo as technology to influence the community (dakwah)? Who have the right to asses whether a technology is good or bad? Can it be judged by seeing it sustainability or other?

Being in a field where technology is the main topic, I realize that technology performance is not enough, although significant. In newspaper, we can read that almost every day new invention has born. In Indonesian research mapping, food sector dominated Indonesia’s research–represented by number of doctor, research conducted, fund used, but why Indonesia still facing famine, malnutrition and food security issues?

The same problem occur in energy. There are several local knowledge about technology that failed to sustain toward centralization of energy in New Order era. Everything-has-to-be-similar thing also occur when Indonesian government proposed Green Revolution. The revolution has forced farmers to leave their local potential and uniqueness. Maybe identity issues can be entered here: when technology lose it context and ‘miracle.’

In Indonesia, there are some cases where villages has been introduced to ICT and being adopted by the residence to improve their life. Success story occur when the residence/local community blend the new technology into their daily lives. Jembrana and Sragen regency for example, support the ICT with bureaucracy reformation, regulation change and an appropriate human resources. In one side, what happened in those regency imply top-down approach (initiated by the local government), but in the other side, it also imply local understanding on how they can improve their own life (self-reliance).

Maybe trichotomy: top, middle, down aren’t suitable on how to manage the technology. In my opinion, it is a matter on how we can understand our community and built our own scenario from it. Some operational issues still need to be answered: who have the right to say that something is good or bad for the community? Furthermore, how can this ’saying’ being coordinated?