Journal articles: 'C[plus plus] (computer program langauge)' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

Data from gypsiferous soils on an oven-dry basis cannot be compared with similar data from nongypsiferous soils because gypsum loses most of its crystal water on drying at 105 °C. A short computer program that uses the successive-approximation technique was developed to convert percent gypsum values determined on an air-dry basis or on an oven-dry basis into percent gypsum values determined on an oven-dry basis plus crystal water of gypsum. Percent gypsum and percent moisture of the analyzed soil samples are the required input data. The program calculates the corrected percent moisture and the percent gypsum on an oven-dry basis plus crystal water of the gypsum. The output of the program allows a comparison of gypsum contents, and any other properties, of gypsiferous soils after obtaining the correct moisture contents of the gypsiferous soils and makes these properties comparable with those of nongypsiferous soils. Key words: Percent gypsum, computer program, water content, gypsiferous soils

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Background: Pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN) plus ribavirin combination was themain treatment for chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients in Pakistan till 2016. An important sideeffect of this combination was thyroid dysfunction (TD). Objectives: To evaluate thyroid functionabnormalities in Chronic Hepatitis C patients treated with PEG-IFN and ribavirin. Study Design:Descriptive study. Setting: Outpatient Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology,Nishtar Hospital Multan. Period: January to September 2016. Methods: Using non-probabilityconsecutive sampling. There were 337 CHC patients enrolled in the study who fulfilled theinclusion criteria. Patients were given PEG-IFN plus ribavirin combination therapy and at 12weeks their serum Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) levels were measured to identify any TD.Data was entered and analyzed by computer program SPSS-17. Results: Of these 337 cases,211 (62.6%) were male patients while 126 (37.4%) were female patients. Mean age of our caseswas noted to be 30.92 ± 5.84 years. Mean disease duration was 16.19 ± 6.42 months. In ourstudy 98 patients (29.1%) had genotype 2 while 239 (70.9%) had genotype 3. TD was seenin 28 (8.3%) patients, 70% of whom were females. Equal number of cases of Hypothyroidismand hyperthyroidism were seen (14 each). Hypothyroidism was significantly associated withrelatively older age group patients and genotype 3 (p value <0.05). A statistically significantassociation (p<0.05) was found between hyperthyroidism and genotype 3, female gender andyounger patients. Conclusion: PEG-IFN plus ribavirin combination therapy induces TD amongpatients with CHC with equal incidence of hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism.

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Anaerobic bacterial, clostridial, and Clostridium perfringens spores were enumerated in raw goose liver samples taken after evisceration of the birds (EB) in the slaughterhouse and after removal of blood vessels from the liver (RBVL) in the cannery. The samples taken after RBVL had significantly higher (P &lt; 0.05) spore counts than did those taken after EB, indicating contamination of livers during processing. The number of C. perfringens spores was one log cycle higher in the samples taken after RBVL than in those taken after EB (P &lt; 0.05). The confirmation of C. perfringens according to the profiles of Rapid ID 32 A tests was carried out by means of the ATB Plus computer program. With an identification percentage of 99.9 and a T-value of 0.65, the suspect colonies proved to be C. perfringens. Therefore, the importance of an appropriate cleaning and sanitation program and of personnel hygiene should be emphasized in the industry.

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PURPOSE Efficacy and toxicity are both important outcomes in cancer clinical trials. Nonetheless, most statistical designs for phase II trials only provide rules for evaluating treatment efficacy, and moreover only allow early stopping after fixed cohorts of patients have been treated. We illustrate a new statistical design strategy for monitoring both adverse and efficacy outcomes on a patient-by-patient basis in phase II and other single-arm clinical trials. DESIGN The new strategy is used to design a phase II trial of the experimental regimen idarubicin plus cytarabine (ara-C) plus cyclosporine for treatment of patients with intermediate-prognosis acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). The design requires a maximum of 56 patients and provides continuous monitoring boundaries to terminate the trial if the toxicity rate is unacceptably high or the complete remission (CR) rate is unacceptably low compared with the rates of these events with the standard regimen of anthracycline plus ara-C. RESULTS The design has an 88% to 91% probability of stopping the trial early with a median of 15 to 18 patients if the toxicity rate of the experimental regimen is .05 to .10 above that of the standard and there is no improvement in the CR rate. If there is a .15 improvement in the CR rate and the toxicity rate is no more than .05 above that of the standard, then there is at least an 83% probability that the trial will run to completion. CONCLUSION The proposed monitoring strategy provides a flexible, practical means to continuously monitor both safety and efficacy in single-arm cancer clinical trials. The design strategy can be implemented easily using a freely available menu-driven computer program, and provides a scientifically sound alternative to the use of ad hoc safety monitoring rules.

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Objectives: The purpose of this in vitro study was to evaluate gaps or voids occurring in roots filled with three different sealers.Methods: Thirty extracted human single-rooted teeth were decoronated, instrumented using NiTi rotary instruments, divided into three groups (n=10 per group) and obturated with one of the following: Epiphany with Resilon, MetaSEAL with gutta-percha or AH Plus with gutta-percha using the match-taper single-cone technique. After storage for one week in 100% humidity at 37°C, the teeth were horizontally sectioned (n=10). Photographs were taken from the coronal, median and apical parts of the roots using a stereomicroscope at 10X magnification, and the images were then transferred to a computer. The mathematical method known as the ‘Affine Transformation’ was used for the transformation of pixel coordinates to ground coordinates in the Netcad Software program. The mean areas (μm2) of the gaps between the sealer and root dentin or gutta percha/resilon and the gaps between the sealer and/or voids inside the sealer mass were measured, scored on a 0-3 scale and statistically analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis test.Results: The mean total area of gaps or voids for each sealer was 4631.80 μm2 for the Epiphany- Resilon, 3826.80 μm2 for the MetaSEAL-gutta-percha and 31334 μm2 for the AH Plus-gutta-percha. The MetaSEAL-gutta-percha group showed more gap or void-free interfaces. No significant differences were found among the sealers in the scores for the gap areas (P<.05), and the MetaSEAL showed similar interfaces with Epiphany.Conclusions: No significant differences in the mean areas of gaps or voids were found among the tested resin-based sealers. (Eur J Dent 2010;4:101-109)

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Concrete which undergoes a thermal treatment before (pre-casted concrete blocks) and during (concrete embedded in-situ) its life-service can be applied in plants operating at high temperature and as thermal insulation. Sintering is a process which occurs within a concrete structure in such conditions. Progression of sintering process can be monitored by the change of the porosity parameters determined with a nondestructive test method - ultrasonic pulse velocity and computer program for image analysis. The experiment has been performed on the samples of corundum and bauxite concrete composites. The apparent porosity of the samples thermally treated at 110, 800, 1000, 1300 and 1500 ?C was primary investigated with a standard laboratory procedure. Sintering parameters were calculated from the creep testing. The loss of strength and material degradation occurred in concrete when it was subjected to the increased temperature and a compressive load. Mechanical properties indicate and monitor changes within microstructure. The level of surface deterioration after the thermal treatment was determined using Image Pro Plus program. Mechanical strength was estimated using ultrasonic pulse velocity testing. Nondestructive ultrasonic measurement was used as a qualitative description of the porosity change in specimens which is the result of the sintering process. The ultrasonic pulse velocity technique and image analysis proved to be reliable methods for monitoring of micro-structural change during the thermal treatment and service life of refractory concrete.

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ABSTRACTIn 1979, Edward C. Harris invented and published his eponymous matrix for visualizing stratigraphy, creating an indispensable tool for generations of archaeologists. When presenting his matrix, Harris also detailed his four laws of archaeological stratigraphy: superposition, original horizontal, original continuity, and stratigraphic succession. In 2017, I created the first stratigraphic matrix for software, using as a test the 2016 video game No Man's Sky (Hello Games). Software (games or otherwise) obeys all four of Harris's laws, software applications/programs themselves being digital archaeological sites. I study the archaeology of the recent past, which includes digital technology, specifically that which is ephemeral: software. This article describes my underlying theory of software stratigraphy and explains how (and why) the Harris matrix is appropriate for documenting software development in a visual way. The article includes my complete data set as well as screen captures, plus overall and detail photos of my hand-drawn software matrix prototype, followed by a bullet-pointed how-to guide for others to use when documenting the history of any computer program. I also include Harris's personal comments that he shared with me after reviewing my preliminary results.

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The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the application of hom*ocysteine as well as its effect under the condition of aerobic physical activity on the activities of matrix metalloproteinases (MMP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and malate dehydrogenase (MDH) in cardiac tissue and on hepato-renal biochemical parameters in sera of rats. Male Wistar albino rats were divided into four groups (n = 10, per group): C: 0.9% NaCl 0.2 mL/day subcutaneous injection (s.c.); H: hom*ocysteine 0.45 µmol/g b.w./day s.c.; CPA saline (0.9% NaCl 0.2 mL/day s.c.) and a program of physical activity on a treadmill; and HPA hom*ocysteine (0.45 µmol/g b.w./day s.c.) and a program of physical activity on a treadmill. Subcutaneous injection of substances was applied 2 times a day at intervals of 8 h during the first two weeks of experimental protocol. Hcy level in serum was significantly higher in the HPA group compared to the CPA group (p < 0.05). Levels of glucose, proteins, albumin, and hepatorenal biomarkers were higher in active groups compared with the sedentary group. It was demonstrated that the increased activities of LDH (mainly caused by higher activity of isoform LDH2) and mMDH were found under the condition of hom*ocysteine-treated rats plus aerobic physical activity. Independent application of hom*ocysteine did not lead to these changes. Physical activity leads to activation of MMP-2 isoform and to increased activity of MMP-9 isoform in both hom*ocysteine-treated and control rats.

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Cholelithiasis (cholelithiasis) has become increasingly common in childhood. Currently, the features of the clinical course have been studied, the criteria for the diagnosis and prevention of cholelithiasis in children have been worked out. However, the features of metabolic disorders are still not studied, among which not the least role in the genesis of the formation of gallstones is played not only by the exchange of lipids, but also carbohydrates.The main role in the regulation of carbohydrate metabolism is played by insulin. The process of production of insulin in the body in the blood serum fully reflects the concentration of C-peptide. The ratio between insulin and C-peptide is not always constant. It may shift in one direction or another against the background of diseases of the internal organs, including the GI tract.The analysis for C-peptide and insulin allows you to identify not only hypo — or hyperglycemia, but also to determine insulin resistance, calculate the HOMA index and, accordingly, make a forecast for the development of dyslipidemia. In this regard, it was of interest to study the state of carbohydrate metabolism (glucose, insulin, C-peptide) in children with cholelithiasis.The purpose of the study. To improve the early diagnosis of the complicated course of cholelithiasis by studying the features of carbohydrate metabolism for practicing therapeutic tactics and preventive measures.Materials and methods. Under our supervision at the Department of Pediatrics infectious diseases, faculty of postgraduate education of physicians of the Russian national research medical University of Minzdrav of Russia (head.DEP. — M. D., Professor L. A. Kharitonov), city children’s polyclinic № 122 (chief doctor — PhD Bragin A. I.) were 140 children aged from birth to 15 years. Carbohydrate metabolism was studied in 140 children of the study group. Boys were 62, average age 10.0±4.9, girls were 78, average age 8.8±4.5. The parameters of serum glucose, insulin, and C-peptide were evaluated. The Homeostatic Model Assessment (NOMA) Insulin resistance Index will be calculated using the formula: NOMA-IR = (fasting plasma glucose (mmol/l) x fasting serum insulin (mkED / ml))/22.5 (Cuartero B., 2007). The physical development of children was evaluated according to WHO standards (2006) using the WHO Anthro Plus program (2009). We evaluated the values of the average values of body weight(MT), height (body length, DT) and body mass index (BMI) in five groups of newborns. The nutritional status was determined by the values of the Z-score value. Mathematical calculation of the results was carried out on a personal IBM — compatible computer using the statistical program Statistica 6.0.Results. In children with GI, there was a tendency to increase the NOME index, both in frequency and in absolute terms, from the age of 8 and persisted until the age of 15(0,65±0,14;0,42±0,04; 4,89±1,12; 4,86±0,44; according to the age periods, p< 0.005).Conclusion. Thus, disorders of carbohydrate metabolism in children with GI depend on the child’s age and body weight. In overweight children, an increase in C-peptide, insulin, and the resistance index was observed, which suggests that children with GI occurring against the background of overweight at the age of 8–11 and 12–15 years are threatened by the formation of metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus, and arterial hypertension.

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Introduction. Today we observed of tendency to reduction of honey bee population in the world what according to honey gathering. For example, in Ukraine, according to statistical data for 7 inhabitants of Poltava region accounts for 1 bee familie, compared with that of 300 years ago, it reached within 3 bee families per citizen. Science and practice open many secrets according biology of bees, allowing bee efficient manage vital functions for humans. But despite the opening of beekeeping is the only farm animal that over 100 years has not been the intervention of human hands to create a new breeds of honeybees. Genetic intensify the search in the field of beekeeping conditions in Ukraine needs to initiate breeding program as planned waste zoning and aspects of reproduction of bees. The aime of research: determining the characteristics of four intrapedigrees types in the Carpathian bee breed using the methods of population and molecular genetics. Materials and Methods: Sampling was performed from top five lines: Sinevir, Rakhiv, Vuchkivskyy and Hoverla bee colonies were taken 10 bee worker. For molecular genetic analysis used 20 insects of each Carpathian bees breed type with observance of the principle of representativeness. DNA extraction performed from hom*ogenate tissues using the standard commercial kit «DNA Sorb B», «Amplisense», this some modifications [1] during sample preparation. Reaction mix purification from bees wax leading this octane. The structure of the primers used for genotyping of bees and their code designations are: OPA-1(3’- CAG GCC CTT C -5’); OPA-4 (3’- AAT CGG GCT G -5’); B15 (3’- GGA GGG TGT T -5’); S1 (3’-AGC AGC AGC AGC AGC AGC C-5’). The program amplification of RAPD - primers: 1 cycle: 940 - 3min .; 2-35 cycle: 940 - 1 min., 360 - 30s., 720 - 1hv.36 cycle (final elongation): 720 - 10 min. The program amplification with primers S1: 1 cycle of 94 ° C - 4min 2 - 31 cycle: 57 ° C - 2 minutes; 72 ° C - 4min; 94 ° C - 1 minute, 32 cycle: 57 ° C - 3 minutes; 72 ° C - 7 minutes. Electrophoretic separation of amplified sections performed in 2% agarose gel in Tris borate buffer conditions. Size of amplification products control was carried out using molecular weight marker 1 kb - Ledder plus ( «Fermentas», Vilnius, Latvia). Processing of the profiles was performed in a standard computer program GELSTAT [4]. Genetic distances were calculated in terms of genetic similarity indices obtained GELSTAT program as follows: Dxy = - lnI Building a kladohramm performed according to the values of genetic distances TREE program and MEGA 4 [5; 6]. Statistical analysis of amplicon frequencies, heterozygosity, linage similarity, etc., performed by Fisher's algorithm [7]. Results and discussion. Molecular genetic studies on four primers made it possible to analyze 95 DNA fragments of different lengths, matching the same number of anonymous genetic loci of the genome of bees. Apply primer in RAPD - 15 made it possible to identify 18 amplification products in a range of molecular sizes from 410 to 1000 b. p. It noted that the DNA fragment size 410 b.p. 100% met all the members of Carpathian bees breed and described one genetic monomorfic locus. DNA size band 445 b. p. elektrophoregramme was found in only 20% of bees Vuchkivskiy type in the absence of individuals in other populations. Statistical comparisons (Fisher's criterion) frequency distribution of DNA fragments obtained with primer in -15 revealed a significant number of types of identification markers intrapedigrees of Carpathian bees. The largest number of DNA - fragments set for Vuchkivsksy type whose size is reached within the following limits: 1000, 630, 580 and 485b.p. DNA fragment of 1000 b.p. general was absent in bees Rakhiv type and Synevir, and its frequency in the population of Representatives Hoverla was 0.600 (p <0.001). As individuals, the members of such Synevir, observed no amplicon size 630 b. p. A fragment of a molecular weight of 710 b. p. observed with a frequency of 0.600 to 0.400 bees and type Rahiv, Goverla and 0,100 individuals in such Vuchkivskyy (p <0,05; p <0,01), respectively. Bees type Rahiv, Goverla and can be identified among other types of Carpathian breed presence significantly higher frequency amplification product whose size is 655, 515 b. p., 830 b. p, 530 b. p., respectively. Statistical analysis of the frequency distribution of the products of amplification bees four types derived from molecular genetic analysis of four primers in PCR was performed to identify the most characteristic identification of DNA fragments bees each of type [8]. Based on these characteristics were constructed genetic formula intrapedigrys types of Carpathian breed. According genetic formulas the highest number of specific DNA - fragments characterized by bees for types of Sinevir and Vuchkivskyy, that the overwhelming number of such markers has been found Sinevir system ISSR-S1 (four amplicons) and for the type of system was Vuchkivskyy informative method of RAPD B-15 primer (six DNA fragments). Type Rahiv different from the others by the presence of six DNA markers, such as bees of Hoverla characterized only four specific genetic loci. For the main parameters of population parameters highest level of genetic diversity characterized types Goverla and Rahiv because in terms of total heterozygosity significantly different from the type of bees from Sinevir and Vuchkivskyy values ​​of 0.362 and 0.354, respectively (p <0,01; p <0,001). Moreover, the type of bees Hoverla observed the largest number of polymorphic loci - 54.9%, with a minimum of meaning in a population of individuals Sinevir type, and the lowest value of intrapedigrys similarity (number of DNA fragments in the same study group) were observed for a sample of bees type Rakhiv (0.665, p <0.001). Determining the genetic distances between breeds in genealogical structure can be used as a methodical approach predicting the effectiveness of a combination of lines and types for heterosis effect on purebred descendants basis.The maximum value of genetic distance algorithm M. Ney was established between the types Synevir and Rakhiv (0.435), slightly less than this value typical of the combination VUChK - Synevir (0.426) and VUChK - Rakhiv (0.423). The smallest genetic distance calculated between individuals and types Hoverla ‒ Vuchkivskyy, which indicates their high genetic relationship and the undesirability of crossing the representatives of these types together. Application of unweighted pair-group clustering based on the calculated distances made it possible to analyze the nature of the genetic relationships between intrapedigrys types of Carpathian breed in graphic terms. According dendrogram representatives Synevir types and Rahiv presented by individual branches, indicating their genetic identity. The Goverla and Vuchkivskyy type of bees and united in a common underklaster, due not only to the minimum calculated measure of genetic distance between data types, but confirmed the historical part of the establishment pedigree group Hoverla, based line mares are exactly the type Vuchkivskyy and lost insect genealogical group of Kolochavskiy type. Conclusion Determining genetic specificity linage types of Carpathian breed bees allowed to obtain the following results: 1) chosen for the study of molecular genetic markers is sufficiently informative for determining the unique, specific features of each breed group and the identification of any sample Carpathian bees with the opportunity to consider linage certain type; 2) received genetic formula of Carpathian bees linage types are proof of the impact of breeding activities and can form the basis the protection of intellectual property of their authors; 3) used molecular genetic markers may serve as a forecasting tool optimal compatibility of linage types to obtain heterosis effect in their offspring. The prospect of the research of this area is to select as a methodological tool for measuring genetic polymorphism Carpathian breed more accurate, reproducible and standardized markers, locus-specific micro satellite analysis, STR, research of structural genes single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP analysis, accumulation and formation the databases to assess the state of development, management and preservation unique of Carpathian bees gene pool.

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Computer Program ILT15 developed to accompany a new leach test for solidified radioactive waste forms in the Hungarian NPP Paks. The program is designed to be used as a tool for performing the calculations necessary to analyse leach test data, a modelling program to determine if diffusion is the operating leaching mechanism (and, if not, to indicate other possible mechanisms), and a means to make extrapolations using the diffusion models. The ILT15 program contains four mathematical models that can be used to represent the data, diffusion through a semi-infinite medium, diffusion through a finite cylinder, diffusion plus partitioning of the source term and solubility limited leaching. The program is written in C++ in the Borland C++ Builder programming environment. A detailed description of application of this modelling computer program is given.

Abstract:

ABSTRACTIndividual, as well as multiple doses of 27Al+, 31p+, 28Si+, and 28Si+ plus 12C+ were implanted into (100) oriented monocrystallne β-SiC films+. A critical energy of =16 eV/atom required for the amorphization of β-SiC via implantation of Al and P was determined using the TRIM84 computer program for calculation of damage-energy profiles coupled with results of RBS/ion channeling analyses. In order to recrystallize amorphized layers created by the individual implantation of all four ion species, thermal annealing at 1600, 1700, or 1800°C was employed. Characterization of the recrystallized layers was performed using XTEM. Examples of SPE regrown layers containing; 1) precipitates and dislocation loops, 2) highly faulted, microtwinned regions, and 3) random crystallites were observed.

Abstract:

Abstract Background Firearms injuries present a major pediatric public health challenge in the United States. This study protocol describes research to develop and then conduct a randomized clinical trial to evaluate ShootSafe, an interactive, engaging, educational website to teach children firearms safety. ShootSafe has three primary goals: (a) teach children basic knowledge and skills needed to hunt, shoot, and use firearms safely; (b) help children learn and hone critical cognitive skills of impulse control and hypothetical thinking needed to use firearms safely; and (c) alter children’s perceptions about their own vulnerability and susceptibility to firearms-related injuries, the severity of those injuries, and their perceived norms about peer behavior surrounding firearms use. ShootSafe will accomplish these goals through a combination of interactive games plus short, impactful testimonial videos and short expert-led educational videos. Methods Following website development, ShootSafe will be evaluated through a randomized controlled trial with 162 children ages 10–12, randomly assigning children to engage in ShootSafe or an active control website. Multiple self-report, computer-based, and behavioral measures will assess functioning at baseline, immediately following training, and at 4-month follow-up. Four sets of outcomes will be considered: firearms safety knowledge; cognitive skills in impulse control and hypothetical thinking; perceptions about firearms safety; and simulated behavior when handling, storing and transporting firearms. Training in both conditions will comprise two 45-min sessions. Discussion If results are as hypothesized, ShootSafe offers potential as a theory-based program to teach children firearms safety in an accessible, engaging and educational manner. Translation into practice is highly feasible. Trial registration The study protocol was registered on 11/10/20 at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04622943).

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Zanotto, Lucas. LOOPIMAL. Music by Ulrich Troyer. Software by Niels Hoffmann. Vers. 1.1.0, YATATOY, 4 Feb 2016. Apple App Store. https://itunes.apple.com/app/loopimal/id964743113The team behind YAYATOY have created their third delightfully simple app. LOOPIMAL is a game of musical choreography which introduces computer sequencing to children.The game begins with one of the six of the adorable animals nodding along to some background music. Beneath the animal, differently coloured shapes are waiting to be dragged and dropped onto the sequencing bar. Each shape corresponds to a different sound and dance movement. Fortunately, the music is composed in C major so all of the endless combinations sound great together. This makes the game a safe space for creation without the risk of failure.Like their previous apps, it has a very intuitive non-lingual interface that would be easy for a very young child to navigate. There is only one simple visual menu, and it is easily located as a plus sign in the top right corner of the screen. Clicking it allows the user to choose a split screen sequence of two or four animals, which layers each animal’s sequence of music.The charming animal animations combine perfectly with the modern music to teach children how to connect symbols to actions, which is a core element of coding. The user can continually alter the loop by changing the sequence of the shapes, or they can simply swipe in either direction to try a different animal with a different sound.This app is an extremely original way to introduce basic coding concepts to very young children. As computers become omnipresent in our daily lives, it is crucial for children to be introduced to concepts like this early. Yet the app does not feel boringly didactic. It is extremely fun to tinker with, even as an adult. Indeed, it is difficult to not smile at an octopus using its legs as bass guitar strings.Highly recommended: 4 stars out of 4 Reviewer: Kyla LeeSuggested age range: 4-8Price: $5.49Kyla Lee is a first year student in the Library and Information Studies program at the University of Alberta, and a Library Assistant at EPL. She is very interested in helping youth develop digital literacy skills from a young age, and incorporating creative apps into programming.

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There are some major advancements trending in Physical therapy field including wearable vibrating posture sensors, gait-correcting insoles monitoring devices such as Fitbit video games programmed to make treatment sessions moreenjoyable, and sensors for helmets that warn sports persons and physiotherapists of possible impacts causing concussion1. With the invention of the Ekso suit, an aluminum and titanium exoskeleton that allows patients/clients facing different stages of paralysis or hemiparesis with movement, the Berkeley-based Ekso Bionics Company set new standards in rehabilitation facilities and gait training. Moreover for patients/clients suffering from neurologicalimpairments which are traumatic brain injury, strokes, and cerebral paralysis, another promising option for rehab therapists are therapy robots, which help therapists with exercises and can accelerate recovery. More andmore clinicians have begun integrating the Xbox Kinect and Nintendo Wii into therapy plans over the past few years. Wii games are designed to use motion-sensitive controls and repeated motions equivalent to physical therapy. In addition tohelping victims of stroke and people suffering from knee surgery, video game workouts have been found to help people recover from brain injury and patients in ICUs. The application of virtual reality technology in PT has expanded afascinating, interactive treatment session in a virtual world to virtual reality rehab. The CAREN-Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment (CAREN) VR system is designed to support stroke patients or patients with seriousinjuries, geriatric population with disability and improve their sense of stability and mobility2. The Recovery Tracker software from Reflexing Health offers advised client-specific videos with proper instructions and guidelines, trainingresources, and exercises. The software allowstherapists to track client's success plus monitor his/her progress in real time and in addition allows them to visually check their clients carrying out the exercises with the help of Kinectcamera. In 2010, Chase Curtiss created “Sway”, a solution for concussion management that highlights the forever present risks linked with chronic or untreated head injuries, to assist "health professionals manage objective balanceand reaction time virtually testing in any setting.” Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions, Utah is working on wearables that notify when the gait speed of a patient decreases, so that they can intervene before a patient falls.These devices can be used within and outside of the clinic to monitor patients, while offering actual measures which avoid exhaustion or injury.Physical therapy is a hands-on field, and will always be, but for sure technology canalways play a significant part. Progresses in r o b o t i c s a n d b i o n i c s a r e h e l p i n g physiotherapists to diagnose more reliably and boost treatment efficiencies which in addition enhance patient/client involvement andcompliance with Home Exercise Program(HEP). All of this results in an improved patient/client experience, eventually leading to enhanced and long-term outcomes in return.

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Things would never be the same again. As sales went through the roof, with some breathless estimates in the region of a 200% increase overnight, marketers practically wet their pants at the phenomenal success of the chocolate bar seen by millions in ET: the Extraterrestrial. That was back in 1982. Though not the first instance of product placement ‘at the movies’, the strategic placement of Reese’s Pieces in ET is often hailed as the triumphant marketing moment heralding the onset of the era of embedded advertising in popular media. Today, much media consumption is characterised by aggressive branding strategies. We’ve all seen ostentatious product wrangling – the unnatural handling of items (especially chocolate bars and bottled drinks) to best display their logo (regardless of considerations of verisimilitude, or even common sense), and ungainly product mentions in dialogue (who can forget the early Jude Law shocker Shopping?) that have passed into the realm of satire. In television and feature filmmaking, props bearing corporate trademarks not only supplement, but often sustain production budgets. Some programs appear to be entirely contrived around such sponsors. Australian commercial television makes no secret of the increasingly non-existent line between ‘entertainment’ and ‘advertising’, though it still purports to describe ‘lifestyle’ shows as ‘reality’ television. With the introduction of technologies like TiVO which enable consumers to skip over ads, the move is from ‘interruptive’ style advertising between programs or segments, to products insinuated in the décor – and increasingly scripts – of programs themselves, with correspondent online shopping opportunities for digital consumers. An entire industry of middle-people – sometimes euphemistically self-described as ‘prop houses’ – has sprung up to service the lucrative product placement industry, orchestrating the insertion of branded products into television and films. The industry has grown to such an extent that it holds an annual backpatting event, the Product Placement Awards, “to commemorate and celebrate product placement” in movies, television shows, music etc. But ‘advertising by stealth’ is not necessarily passively accepted by media consumers – nor media makers. The shoe-horning of brands and their logos into the products of popular culture not only defines the culture industry today, but also characterises much of the resistance to it. ‘Logo-backlash’ is seen as an inevitable response to the incursion of brands into public life, an explicit rejection of the practice of securing consumer mindshare, and subvertisem*nts and billboard liberation activities have been mainstays of culture jamming for decades now. However, criticism of product placement remains highly problematic: when the Center for the Study of Commercialism argued that movies have become “dangerously” saturated with products and suggested that full disclosure in the form of a list, in a film’s credits, of paid product appearances, many noted the counterproductivity of such an approach, arguing that it would only result in further registration – and hence promotion – of the brand. Not everyone subscribes to advertising’s ‘any news is good news’ thesis, however. Peter Conheim and Steve Seidler decided to respond to the behemoth of product placement with a ‘catalogue of sins’. Their new documentary Value Added Cinema meticulously chronicles the appearance of placed products in Hollywood cinema. Here they discuss the film, which is continuing to receive rave reviews in the US and Europe. Danni Zuvela: Can you tell me a little about yourselves? Peter: I’m a musician and filmmaker living in the San Francisco Bay Area who wears too many hats. I play in three performing and recording groups (Mono Pause, Wet Gate, Negativland) and somehow found the time to sit in front of a Mac for six weeks to edit and mix VALUE-ADDED CINEMA. Because Steve is a persuasive salesperson. Steve: I’ve been a curator for the past decade and a half, showing experimental works week after week, month after month, year after year, at the Pacific Film Archive. It was about time to make a tape of my own and Peter was crazy enough to indulge me. DZ: Why product placement? Why do you think it’s important? Where did this documentary come from? S: Steven Spielberg released Minority Report last year and it just raised my hackles. The film actually encourages the world it seems to critique by stressing the inter-relationship of his alleged art with consumerism in the present day and then extending that into a vision of the future within the film itself. In other words, he has already realized the by-product of an alarming dystopia of surveillance, monolithic policing, and capital. That by-product is his film. The rumor mill says that he was reimbursed to the tune of $25 million for the placements. So not only can he not see a constructive path out of dystopia, a path leading toward a more liberating future, he makes millions from his exhausted imagination. What could be more cynical? But Spielberg isn’t alone within the accelerating subsumption of mainstream cinema into the spectacle of pure consumption. He’s just more visible than most. But to consider product placements more directly for a moment: during the past few years, mainstream cinema has been little more than an empty exercise in consumerist viewership. The market-driven incentives that shape films, determining story-lines, exaggerating cultural norms, striving toward particular demographics, whatever, have nothing to do with art or social change and everything to do with profit, pandering, and promulgation. Movies are product placements, the product is a world view of limitless consumption. Value-Added Cinema is about the product-that-announces-itself, the one we recognize as a crystallization of the more encompassing worldview, the sole commodity, spot-lit, adored, assimilated. So why Value-Added Cinema? You’ve got to start somewhere. DZ: Can you tell me a bit about the production process – how did you go about getting the examples you use in the film? Were there any copyright hassles? P: Steve did nearly all of the legwork in that he spent weeks and weeks researching the subject, both on-line and in speaking to people about their recollections of product placement sequences in films they’d seen. He then suffered through close to a hundred films on VHS and DVD, using the fast-forward and cue controls as often as possible, to locate said sequences. We then sat down and started cutting, based at first on groupings Steve had made (a bunch of fast food references, etc.). Using these as a springboard, we quickly realized the narrative potential inherent in all these “narrative film” clips , and before long we were linking sequences and making them refer to one another, sort of allowing a “plot” to evolve. And copyright hassles? Not yet! I say... bring ‘em on! I would be more than happy to fight for the existence of this project, and one of the groups I am in, Negativland, has a rather colourful history of “fair use” battles in the music arena (the most nefarious case, where the band was sued by U2 and their big-label music lawyers over a parody we made happened before I came on board, but there’s been some skirmishes since). We have folks who would be happy to help defend this sort of work in a court of law should the occasion arise. DZ: Can you talk to me about the cultural shift that’s occurred, where the old ‘Acme’ propmaster has been replaced by ‘product peddler’? What is this symptomatic of, and what’s its significance now? S: In the past, privacy existed because there were areas of experience and information that were considered off limits to exploitation. A kind of tacit social contract assumed certain boundaries were in place to keep corporate (and State) meddling at bay and to allow an uncontaminated space for disengaging from culture. Nowadays the violation of boundaries is so egregious it’s hard to be sure that those boundaries in fact exist. Part of that violation has been the encroachment, at every conceivable level, of daily experience by all manner of corporate messages—urinal strainers with logos, coffee jackets with adverts, decals on supermarket floors, temporary tattoos on random pedestrians. Engagement with corporate predation is now foisted on us 24 hours a day. It’s the GPS generation. The corporations want to know where we “are” at all times. Again: in the past there was a certain level of decorum about the sales pitch. That decorum has vanished and in its place is the inter-penetration of all our waking moments by the foghorn of capital. If that foghorn gets loud enough, we’ll never get any sleep. DZ: How do you think product placement affects the integrity of the film? P: Well, that’s definitely a question of the moment, as far as audience reactions to our screenings have been thus far. It really depends on the work itself, doesn’t it? I think we would be highly judgmental, and perhaps quite out of line, if we dismissed out of hand the idea of using actual products in films as some sort of rule. The value of using an actual product to the narrative of a film can’t be discounted automatically because we all know that there are stories to be told in actual, marketed products. Characterizations can develop. If a flustered James Cagney had held up a bottle of Fred’s Cola instead of Pepsi in the climactic shot of One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder’s 1963 co*ke-executive comedy), it wouldn’t have resonated very well. And it’s an incredibly memorable moment (and, some might say, a little dig at both cola companies). But when you get into something like i am sam, where Sean Penn’s character not only works inside a Starbucks, and is shown on the job, in uniform and reading their various actual coffee product names aloud, over and over again, but also rides a bus with a huge Nike ad on the side (and the camera tracks along on the ad instead of the bus itself), plus the fact that he got onto that bus underneath an enormous Apple billboard (not shown in our work, actually), or that his lawyer has a can of Tab sitting on an entirely austere, empty table in front of a blank wall and the camera tracks downward for no other discernable purpose than to highlight the Tab can… you can see where I’m going with this. The battle lines are drawn in my mind. PROVE to me the value of any of those product plugs on Penn’s character, or Michelle Pfeiffer’s (his lawyer). DZ: What do you make of the arguments for product placement as necessary to, even enhancing, the verisimilitude of films? Is there a case to be made for brands appearing in a production design because they’re what a character would choose? S: It’s who makes the argument for product placements that’s troublesome. Art that I value is a sort of problem solving machine. It assumes that the culture we currently find ourselves strapped with is flawed and should be altered. Within that context, the “verisimilitude” you speak of would be erected only as a means for critique--not to endorse, venerate, or fortify the status quo. Most Hollywood features are little more than moving catalogs. P: And in the case of Jurassic Park that couldn’t be more explicit – the “fake” products shown in the amusem*nt park gift shop in the film are the actual tie-in products available in stores and in Burger King at that time! Another film I could mention for a totally different reason is The Dark Backward (1991). Apparently due to a particular obsession of the director, the film is riddled with placements, but of totally fake and hilarious products (i.e. Blump’s Squeezable Bacon). Everyone who has seen the film remembers the absurdist products… couldn’t Josie and the puss*cats have followed this format, instead of loading the film with “funny” references to literally every megacorporation imaginable, and have been memorable for it? DZ: What do you think of the retroactive insertion of products into syndicated reruns of programs and films (using digital editing techniques)? Is this a troubling precedent? P: Again, to me the line is totally crossed. There’s no longer any justification to be made because the time and space of the original television show is lost at that point, so any possibility of “commentary” on the times, or development of the character, goes right out the window. Of course I find it a troubling precedent. It’s perhaps somewhat less troubling, but still distressing, to know that billboards on the walls of sports stadiums are being digitally altered, live, during broadcast, so that the products can be subtly switched around. And perhaps most disturbingly, at least here in the states, certain networks and programs have begun cross-dissolving to advertisem*nts from program content, and vice-versa. In other words, since the advertisers are aware that the long-established “blackout” which precedes the start of advertising breaks on TV causes people to tune out, or turn the volume off, or have their newfangled sensing devices “zap” the commercial… so they’re literally integrating the start of the ad with the final frames of the program instead of going black, literally becoming part of the program. And we have heard about more reliance of products WITHIN the programs, but this just takes us right back to TV’s past, where game show contestants sat behind enormous “Pepsodent” adverts pasted right there on the set. History will eat itself… DZ: Could you imagine a way advertisers could work product placement into films where modern products just don’t fit, like set in the past or in alternate universes (Star Wars, LOTR etc)? P: Can’t you? In fact, it’s already happening. Someone told us about the use of products in a recent set-in-the-past epic… but the name of the film is escaping me. S: And if you can’t find a way to insert a product placement in a film than maybe the film won’t get made. The problem is completely solved with films like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—most of the characters are available in the store as action figures making them de facto placements. In Small Soldiers just about every toy-sized character was, in fact, nicely packaged by Hasbro. DZ: What is the role of the logo in product placement? S: There are the stars, and there are the many supporting roles—the logo is just one of them. We’re hoping to see this category at the next Oscars. P: And categories like “Best Song” are essentially product placement categories already… DZ: I’ve heard about the future of product placement being branding in computer games, interactive shop-at-home television – what other visions of the (branded) future can you imagine? P: The future is now. If you can’t watch a documentary on so-called public television in this country without having text boxes pop up on screen to suggest “related” web sites which “might be of interest” to the viewer, you’re already well on the way to being part of a branded environment. Computer games already have ads built-in, and shop-at-home already seems plenty interactive (and isn’t internet shopping, also?). I think if the various mega-corporations can not only convince people to wear clothing emblazoned with their logo and product name, but so successfully convince us to pay for the privilege of advertising them, then we are already living in a totally branded future. Where else can it go? It may seem a trite statement but, to my mind, wearing an entire Nike outfit is the ultimate. At least the British ad company called Cunning Stunts actually PAYS their human billboards… but those folks have to agree to have the company logo temporarily tattooed onto their foreheads for three hours as they mingle in public. I’m not joking about this. DZ: Is there any response to product placement? How can audiences manage their interactions with these texts? S: Films have been boycotted for culturally heinous content, such as racist and hom*ophobic characters. Why not boycott films because of their commodity content? Or better yet boycott the product for colluding with the filmmakers to invade your peace of mind? What I hope Value-Added Cinema does is sensitize us to the insinuation of the products, so that we critically detect them, rather than passively allow them to pass before us. When that happens, when we’re just insensate recipients of those advertising ploys, we’re lost. DZ: Do you have anything to add to contemporary debates on culture jamming, especially the charge that culture jamming’s political power is limited by its use of logos and signs? Anne Moore has written that detourning ads ends up just re-iterating the logo - “because corporate lifeblood is profit, and profit comes from name recognition”, culture jammers are “trafficking in the same currency as the corporations” – what do you think of this? P: It’s an interesting assertion. But the best culture jams I’ve seen make total mincemeat of the product being parodied; just as you can’t simply discount the use of actual products in films in the context of a narrative, you can’t NOT try to reclaim the use of a brand-name. Maybe it’s a dangerous comparison because “reclaiming” use of the word co*ke is not like reclaiming the use of the word “queer”, but there’s something to it, I think. Also, I wear t-shirts with the names of bands I like sometimes (almost always my friends’ bands, but I suppose that’s beside the point). Am I buying into the advertising concept? Yes, to a certain extent, I am. I guess to me it’s about just what you choose to advertise. Or what you choose to parody. DZ: Do you have any other points you’d like to make about product placement, advertising by stealth, branding, mindshare or logos? P: I think what Steve said, that above all we hope with our video to help make people aware of how much they are advertised to, beyond accepting it as a mere annoyance, sums it up. So far, we’ve had some comments at screenings which indicate a willingness of people to want to combat this in their lives, to want to “do something” about the onslaught of product placement surrounding them, in films and elsewhere. Works Cited ET: The Extraterrestrial. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Prod. Kathleen Kennedy & Steven Spielberg, M. Universal Pictures 1982. Shopping. Dir. Paul Anderson. Prod. Jeremy Bolt , M. Concorde Pictures,1993. http://www.cspinet.org/ http://www.productplacementawards.com/ Links http://www.cspinet.org/ http://www.productplacementawards.com/ Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Zuvela, Danni. "An Interview with the Makers of Value-Added Cinema" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/03-valueadded.php>. APA Style Zuvela, D. (2003, Jun 19). An Interview with the Makers of Value-Added Cinema. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/03-valueadded.php>

Abstract:

‘Complex(ity)’ is currently fashionable in the humanities. Fashions come and go, but in this article I argue that the interest in complexity connects with something deeper, an intellectual revolution that began before complexity became trendy, and will continue after the spotlight passes on. Yet to make this case, and understand and advance this revolution, we need a better take on ‘complexity’. ‘Complex’ is of course complex. In common use it refers to something ‘composed of many interrelated parts’, or problems ‘so complicated or intricate as to be hard to deal with’. I will call this popular meaning, with its positive and negative values, complexity-1. In science it has a more negative sense, complexity-2, referring to the presenting complexity of problems, which science will strip down to underlying simplicity. But recently it has developed positive meanings in both science and humanities. Complexity-3 marks a revolutionarily more positive attitude to complexity in science that does seek to be reductive. Humanities-style complexity-4, which acknowledges and celebrates the inherent complexity of texts and meanings, is basic in contemporary Media and Cultural studies (MaC for short). The underlying root of complex is plico bend or fold, plus con- together, via complector grasp (something), encompass an idea, or person. The double of ‘complex’ is ‘simple’, from Latin simplex, which less obviously also comes from plico, plus semel once, at the same time. ‘Simple’ and ‘complex’ are closer than people think: only a fold or two apart. A key idea is that these elements are interdependent, parts of a single underlying form. ‘Simple(x)’ is another modality of ‘complex’, dialectically related, different in degree not kind, not absolutely opposite. The idea of ‘holding together’ is stronger in Latin complex, the idea of difficulty more prominent in modern usage, yet the term still includes both. The concept ‘complex’ is untenable apart from ‘simple’. This figure maps the basic structures in ‘complexity’. This complexity contains both positive and negative values, science and non-science, academic and popular meanings, with folds/differences and relationships so dynamically related that no aspect is totally independent. This complex field is the minimum context in which to explore claims about a ‘complexity revolution’. Complexity in Science and Humanities In spite of the apparent similarities between Complexity-3 (sciences) and 4 (humanities), in practice a gulf separates them, policed from both sides. If these sides do not talk to each other, as they often do not, the result is not a complex meaning for ‘complex’, but a semantic war-zone. These two forms of complexity connect and collide because they reach into a new space where discourses of science and non-science are interacting more than they have for many years. For many, in both academic communities, a strong, taken-for-granted mindset declares the difference between them is absolute. They assume that if ‘complexity’ exists in science, it must mean something completely different from what it means in humanities or everyday discourse, so different as to be incomprehensible or unusable by humanists. This terrified defence of the traditional gulf between sciences and humanities is not the clinching argument these critics think. On the contrary, it symptomises what needs to be challenged, via the concept complex. One influential critic of this split was Lord Snow, who talked of ‘two cultures’. Writing in class-conscious post-war Britain he regretted the ignorance of humanities-trained ruling elites about basic science, and scientists’ ignorance of humanities. No-one then or now doubts there is a problem. Most MaC students have a science-light education, and feel vulnerable to critiques which say they do not need to know any science or maths, including complexity science, and could not understand it anyway. To understand how this has happened I go back to the 17th century rise of ‘modern science’. The Royal Society then included the poet Dryden as well as the scientist Newton, but already the fissure between science and humanities was emerging in the elite, re-enforcing existing gaps between both these and technology. The three forms of knowledge and their communities continued to develop over the next 400 years, producing the education system which formed most of us, the structure of academic knowledges in which culture, technology and science form distinct fields. Complexity has been implicated in this three-way split. Influenced by Newton’s wonderful achievement, explaining so much (movements of earthly and heavenly bodies) with so little (three elegant laws of motion, one brief formula), science defined itself as a reductive practice, in which complexity was a challenge. Simplicity was the sign of a successful solution, altering the older reciprocity between simplicity and complexity. The paradox was ignored that proof involved highly complex mathematics, as anyone who reads Newton knows. What science held onto was the outcome, a simplicity then retrospectively attributed to the universe itself, as its true nature. Simplicity became a core quality in the ontology of science, with complexity-2 the imperfection which challenged and provoked science to eliminate it. Humanities remained a refuge for a complexity ontology, in which both problems and solutions were irreducibly complex. Because of the dominance of science as a form of knowing, the social sciences developed a reductivist approach opposing traditional humanities. They also waged bitter struggles against anti-reductionists who emerged in what was called ‘social theory’. Complexity-4 in humanities is often associated with ‘post-structuralism’, as in Derrida, who emphasises the irreducible complexity of every text and process of meaning, or ‘postmodernism’, as in Lyotard’s controversial, influential polemic. Lyotard attempted to take the pulse of contemporary Western thought. Among trends he noted were new forms of science, new relationships between science and humanities, and a new kind of logic pervading all branches of knowledge. Not all Lyotard’s claims have worn well, but his claim that something really important is happening in the relationship between kinds and institutions of knowledge, especially between sciences and humanities, is worth serious attention. Even classic sociologists like Durkheim recognised that the modern world is highly complex. Contemporary sociologists agree that ‘globalisation’ introduces new levels of complexity in its root sense, interconnections on a scale never seen before. Urry argues that the hyper-complexity of the global world requires a complexity approach, combining complexity-3 and 4. Lyotard’s ‘postmodernism’ has too much baggage, including dogmatic hostility to science. Humanities complexity-4 has lost touch with the sceptical side of popular complexity-1, and lacks a dialectic relationship with simplicity. ‘Complexity’, incorporating Complexity-1 and 3, popular and scientific, made more complex by incorporating humanities complexity-4, may prove a better concept for thinking creatively and productively about these momentous changes. Only complex complexity in the approach, flexible and interdisciplinary, can comprehend these highly complex new objects of knowledge. Complexity and the New Condition of Science Some important changes in the way science is done are driven not from above, by new theories or discoveries, but by new developments in social contexts. Gibbons and Nowottny identify new forms of knowledge and practice, which they call ‘mode-2 knowledge’, emerging alongside older forms. Mode-1 is traditional academic knowledge, based in universities, organised in disciplines, relating to real-life problems at one remove, as experts to clients or consultants to employers. Mode-2 is orientated to real life problems, interdisciplinary and collaborative, producing provisional, emergent knowledge. Gibbons and Nowottny do not reference postmodernism but are looking at Lyotard’s trends as they were emerging in practice 10 years later. They do not emphasise complexity, but the new objects of knowledge they address are fluid, dynamic and highly complex. They emphasise a new scale of interdisciplinarity, in collaborations between academics across all disciplines, in science, technology, social sciences and humanities, though they do not see a strong role for humanities. This approach confronts and welcomes irreducible complexity in object and methods. It takes for granted that real-life problems will always be too complex (with too many factors, interrelated in too many ways) to be reduced to the sort of problem that isolated disciplines could handle. The complexity of objects requires equivalent complexity in responses; teamwork, using networks, drawing on relevant knowledge wherever it is to be found. Lyotard famously and foolishly predicted the death of the ‘grand narrative’ of science, but Gibbons and Nowottny offer a more complex picture in which modes-1 and 2 will continue alongside each other in productive dialectic. The linear form of science Lyotard attacked is stronger than ever in some ways, as ‘Big Science’, which delivers wealth and prestige to disciplinary scientists, accessing huge funds to solve highly complex problems with a reductionist mindset. But governments also like the idea of mode-2 knowledge, under whatever name, and try to fund it despite resistance from powerful mode-1 academics. Moreover, non-reductionist science in practice has always been more common than the dominant ideology allowed, whether or not its exponents, some of them eminent scientists, chose to call it ‘complexity’ science. Quantum physics, called ‘the new physics’, consciously departed from the linear, reductionist assumptions of Newtonian physics to project an irreducibly complex picture of the quantum world. Different movements, labelled ‘catastrophe theory’, ‘chaos theory’ and ‘complexity science’, emerged, not a single coherent movement replacing the older reductionist model, but loosely linked by new attitudes to complexity. Instead of seeing chaos and complexity as problems to be removed by analysis, chaos and complexity play a more ambiguous role, as ontologically primary. Disorder and complexity are not later regrettable lapses from underlying essential simplicity and order, but potentially creative resources, to be understood and harnessed, not feared, controlled, eliminated. As a taste of exciting ideas on complexity, barred from humanities MaC students by the general prohibition on ‘consorting with the enemy’ (science), I will outline three ideas, originally developed in complexity-3, which can be described in ways requiring no specialist knowledge or vocabulary, beyond a Mode-2 openness to dynamic, interdisciplinary engagement. Fractals, a term coined by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, are so popular as striking shapes produced by computer-graphics, circulated on T-shirts, that they may seem superficial, unscientific, trendy. They exist at an intersection between science, media and culture, and their complexity includes transactions across that folded space. The name comes from Latin fractus, broken: irregular shapes like broken shards, which however have their own pattern. Mandelbrot claims that in nature, many such patterns partly repeat on different scales. When this happens, he says, objects on any one scale will have equivalent complexity. Part of this idea is contained in Blake’s famous line: ‘To see the world in a grain of sand’. The importance of the principle is that it fundamentally challenges reductiveness. Nor is it as unscientific as it may sound. Geologists indeed see grains of sand under a microscope as highly complex. In sociology, instead of individuals (literal meaning ‘cannot be divided’) being the minimally simple unit of analysis, individuals can be understood to be as complex (e.g. with multiple identities, linked with many other social beings) as groups, classes or nations. There is no level where complexity disappears. A second concept is ‘fuzzy logic’, invented by an engineer, Zadeh. The basic idea is not unlike the literary critic Empson’s ‘ambiguity’, the sometimes inexhaustible complexity of meanings in great literature. Zadeh’s contribution was to praise the inherent ambiguity and ambiguity of natural languages as a resource for scientists and engineers, making them better, not worse, for programming control systems. Across this apparently simple bridge have flowed many fuzzy machines, more effective than their over-precise brothers. Zadeh crystallised this wisdom in his ‘Principle of incompatibility’: As the complexity of a system increases, our ability to make precise and yet significant statements about its behaviour decreases until a threshold is reached beyond which precision and significance (or relevance) become almost mutually exclusive characteristics (28) Something along these lines is common wisdom in complexity-1. For instance, under the headline “Law is too complex for juries to understand, says judge” (Dick 4), the Chief Justice of Australia, Murray Gleeson, noted a paradox of complexity, that attempts to improve a system by increasing its complexity make it worse (meaningless or irrelevant, as Zadeh said). The system loses its complexity in another sense, that it no longer holds together. My third concept is the ‘Butterfly Effect’, a name coined by Lorenz. The butterfly was this scientist’s poetic fantasy, an imagined butterfly that flaps its wings somewhere on the Andes, and introduces a small change in the weather system that triggers a hurricane in Montana, or Beijing. This idea is another riff on the idea that complex situations are not reducible to component elements. Every cause is so complex that we can never know in advance just what factor will operate in a given situation, or what its effects might be across a highly complex system. Travels in Complexity I will now explore these issues with reference to a single example, or rather, a nested set of examples, each (as in fractal theory) equivalently complex, yet none identical at any scale. I was travelling in a train from Penrith to Sydney in New South Wales in early 2006 when I read a publicity text from NSW State Rail which asked me: ‘Did you know that delays at Sydenham affect trains to Parramatta? Or that a sick passenger on a train at Berowra can affect trains to Penrith?’ No, I did not know that. As a typical commuter I was impressed, and even more so as an untypical commuter who knows about complexity science. Without ostentatious reference to sources in popular science, NSW Rail was illustrating Lorenz’s ‘butterfly effect’. A sick passenger is prosaic, a realistic illustration of the basic point, that in a highly complex system, a small change in one part, so small that no-one could predict it would matter, can produce a massive, apparently unrelated change in another part. This text was part of a publicity campaign with a scientific complexity-3 subtext, which ran in a variety of forms, in their website, in notices in carriages, on the back of tickets. I will use a complexity framework to suggest different kinds of analysis and project which might interest MaC students, applicable to objects that may not refer to be complexity-3. The text does two distinct things. It describes a planning process, and is part of a publicity program. The first, simplifying movement of Mode-1 analysis would see this difference as projecting two separate objects for two different specialists: a transport expert for the planning, a MaC analyst for the publicity, including the image. Unfortunately, as Zadeh warned, in complex conditions simplification carries an explanatory cost, producing descriptions that are meaningless or irrelevant, even though common sense (complexity-1) says otherwise. What do MaC specialists know about rail systems? What do engineers know about publicity? But collaboration in a mode-2 framework does not need extensive specialist knowledge, only enough to communicate with others. MaC specialists have a fuzzy knowledge of their own and other areas of knowledge, attuned by Humanities complexity-4 to tolerate uncertainty. According to the butterfly principle it would be foolish to wish our University education had equipped us with the necessary other knowledges. We could never predict what precise items of knowledge would be handy from our formal and informal education. The complexity of most mode-2 problems is so great that we cannot predict in advance what we will need to know. MaC is already a complex field, in which ‘Media’ and ‘Culture’ are fuzzy terms which interact in different ways. Media and other organisations we might work with are often imbued with linear forms of thought (complexity-2), and want simple answers to simple questions about complex systems. For instance, MaC researchers might be asked as consultants to determine the effect of this message on typical commuters. That form of analysis is no longer respectable in complexity-4 MaC studies. Old-style (complexity-2) effects-research modelled Senders, Messages and Receivers to measure effects. Standard research methods of complexity-2 social sciences might test effects of the message by a survey instrument, with a large sample to allow statistically significant results. Using this, researchers could claim to know whether the publicity campaign had its desired effect on its targeted demographic: presumably inspiring confidence in NSW Rail. However, each of these elements is complex, and interactions between them, and others that don’t enter into the analysis, create further levels of complexity. To manage this complexity, MaC analysts often draw on Foucault’s authority to use ‘discourse’ to simplify analysis. This does not betray the principle of complexity. Complexity-4 needs a simplicity-complexity dialectic. In this case I propose a ‘complexity discourse’ to encapsulate the complex relations between Senders, Receivers and Messages into a single word, which can then be related to other such elements (e.g. ‘publicity discourse’). In this case complexity-3 can also be produced by attending to details of elements in the S-M-R chain, combining Derridean ‘deconstruction’ with expert knowledge of the situation. This Sender may be some combination of engineers and planners, managers who commissioned the advertisem*nt, media professionals who carried it out. The message likewise loses its unity as its different parts decompose into separate messages, leaving the transaction a fraught, unpredictable encounter between multiple messages and many kinds of reader and sender. Alongside its celebration of complexity-3, this short text runs another message: ‘untangling our complex rail network’. This is complexity-2 from science and engineering, where complexity is only a problem to be removed. A fuller text on the web-site expands this second strand, using bullet points and other signals of a linear approach. In this text, there are 5 uses of ‘reliable’, 6 uses of words for problems of complexity (‘bottlenecks’, ‘delays’, ‘congestion’), and 6 uses of words for the new system (‘simpler’, ‘independent’). ‘Complex’ is used twice, both times negatively. In spite of the impression given by references to complexity-3, this text mostly has a reductionist attitude to complexity. Complexity is the enemy. Then there is the image. Each line is a different colour, and they loop in an attractive way, seeming to celebrate graceful complexity-2. Yet this part of the image is what is going to be eliminated by the new program’s complexity-2. The interesting complexity of the upper part of the image is what the text declares is the problem. What are commuters meant to think? And Railcorp? This media analysis identifies a fissure in the message, which reflects a fissure in the Sender-complex. It also throws up a problem in the culture that produced such interesting allusions to complexity science, but has linear, reductionist attitudes to complexity in its practice. We can ask: where does this cultural problem go, in the organisation, in the interconnected system and bureaucracy it manages? Is this culture implicated in the problems the program is meant to address? These questions are more productive if asked in a collaborative mode-2 framework, with an organisation open to such questions, with complex researchers able to move between different identities, as media analyst, cultural analyst, and commuter, interested in issues of organisation and logistics, engaged with complexity in all senses. I will continue my imaginary mode-2 collaboration with Railcorp by offering them another example of fractal analysis, looking at another instant, captured in a brief media text. On Wednesday 14 March, 2007, two weeks before a State government election, a very small cause triggered a systems failure in the Sydney network. A small carbon strip worth $44 which was not properly attached properly threw Sydney’s transport network into chaos on Wednesday night, causing thousands of commuters to be trapped in trains for hours. (Baker and Davies 7) This is an excellent example of a butterfly effect, but it is not labelled as such, nor regarded positively in this complexity-1 framework. ‘Chaos’ signifies something no-one wants in a transport system. This is popular not scientific reductionism. The article goes on to tell the story of one passenger, Mark MacCauley, a quadriplegic left without power or electricity in a train because the lift was not working. He rang City Rail, and was told that “someone would be in touch in 3 to 5 days” (Baker and Davies 7). He then rang emergency OOO, and was finally rescued by contractors “who happened to be installing a lift at North Sydney” (Baker and Davies 7). My new friends at NSW Rail would be very unhappy with this story. It would not help much to tell them that this is a standard ‘human interest’ article, nor that it is more complex than it looks. For instance, MacCauley is not typical of standard passengers who usually concern complexity-2 planners of rail networks. He is another butterfly, whose specific needs would be hard to predict or cater for. His rescue is similarly unpredictable. Who would have predicted that these contractors, with their specialist equipment, would be in the right place at the right time to rescue him? Complexity provided both problem and solution. The media’s double attitude to complexity, positive and negative, complexity-1 with a touch of complexity-3, is a resource which NSW Rail might learn to use, even though it is presented with such hostility here. One lesson of the complexity is that a tight, linear framing of systems and problems creates or exacerbates problems, and closes off possible solutions. In the problem, different systems didn’t connect: social and material systems, road and rail, which are all ‘media’ in McLuhan’s highly fuzzy sense. NSW Rail communication systems were cumbrously linear, slow (3 to 5 days) and narrow. In the solution, communication cut across institutional divisions, mediated by responsive, fuzzy complex humans. If the problem came from a highly complex system, the solution is a complex response on many fronts: planning, engineering, social and communication systems open to unpredictable input from other surrounding systems. As NSW Rail would have been well aware, the story responded to another context. The page was headed ‘Battle for NSW’, referring to an election in 2 weeks, in which this newspaper editorialised that the incumbent government should be thrown out. This political context is clearly part of the complexity of the newspaper message, which tries to link not just the carbon strip and ‘chaos’, but science and politics, this strip and the government’s credibility. Yet the government was returned with a substantial though reduced majority, not the swingeing defeat that might have been predicted by linear logic (rail chaos = electoral defeat) or by some interpretations of the butterfly effect. But complexity-3 does not say that every small cause produces catastrophic effects. On the contrary, it says that causal situations can be so complex that we can never be entirely sure what effects will follow from any given case. The political situation in all its complexity is an inseparable part of the minimal complex situation which NSW Rail must take into account as it considers how to reform its operations. It must make complexity in all its senses a friend and ally, not just a source of nasty surprises. My relationship with NSW Rail at the moment is purely imaginary, but illustrates positive and negative aspects of complexity as an organising principle for MaC researchers today. The unlimited complexity of Humanities’ complexity-4, Derridean and Foucauldian, can be liberating alongside the sometimes excessive scepticism of Complexity-2, but needs to keep in touch with the ambivalence of popular complexity-1. Complexity-3 connects with complexity-2 and 4 to hold the bundle together, in a more complex, cohesive, yet still unstable dynamic structure. It is this total sprawling, inchoate, contradictory (‘complex’) brand of complexity that I believe will play a key role in the up-coming intellectual revolution. But only time will tell. References Baker, Jordan, and Anne Davies. “Carbon Strip Caused Train Chaos.” Sydney Morning Herald 17 Mar. 2007: 7. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1976. Dick, Tim. “Law Is Now Too Complex for Juries to Understand, Says Judge.” Sydney Morning Herald 26 Mar. 2007: 4. Empson, William. Seven Types of Ambiguity. London: Chatto and Windus, 1930. Foucault, Michel. “The Order of Discourse.” In Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock, 1972. Gibbons, Michael. The New Production of Knowledge. London: Sage, 1994. Lorenz, Edward. The Essence of Chaos. London: University College, 1993. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. London: Routledge, 1964. Mandelbrot, Benoit. “The Fractal Geometry of Nature.” In Nina Hall, ed. The New Scientist Guide to Chaos. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. Nowottny, Henry. Rethinking Science. London: Polity, 2001. Snow, Charles Percy. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. London: Faber 1959. Urry, John. Global Complexity. London: Sage, 2003. Zadeh, Lotfi Asker. “Outline of a New Approach to the Analysis of Complex Systems and Decision Processes.” ILEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics 3.1 (1973): 28-44. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hodge, Bob. "The Complexity Revolution." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/01-hodge.php>. APA Style Hodge, B. (Jun. 2007) "The Complexity Revolution," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/01-hodge.php>.

Abstract:

Mobile In many countries, more people have mobile phones than they do fixed-line phones. Mobile phones are one of the fastest growing technologies ever, outstripping even the internet in many respects. With the advent and widespread deployment of digital systems, mobile phones were used by an estimated 1, 158, 254, 300 people worldwide in 2002 (up from approximately 91 million in 1995), 51. 4% of total telephone subscribers (ITU). One of the reasons for this is mobility itself: the ability for people to talk on the phone wherever they are. The communicative possibilities opened up by mobile phones have produced new uses and new discourses (see Katz and Aakhus; Brown, Green, and Harper; and Plant). Contemporary soundscapes now feature not only voice calls in previously quiet public spaces such as buses or restaurants but also the aural irruptions of customised polyphonic ringtones identifying whose phone is ringing by the tune downloaded. The mobile phone plays an important role in contemporary visual and material culture as fashion item and status symbol. Most tragically one might point to the tableau of people in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, or aboard a plane about to crash, calling their loved ones to say good-bye (Galvin). By contrast, one can look on at the bathos of Australian cricketer Shane Warne’s predilection for pressing his mobile phone into service to arrange wanted and unwanted assignations while on tour. In this article, I wish to consider another important and so far also under-theorised aspect of mobile phones: text. Of contemporary textual and semiotic systems, mobile text is only a recent addition. Yet it is already produces millions of inscriptions each day, and promises to be of far-reaching significance. Txt Txt msg ws an acidnt. no 1 expcted it. Whn the 1st txt msg ws sent, in 1993 by Nokia eng stdnt Riku Pihkonen, the telcom cpnies thought it ws nt important. SMS – Short Message Service – ws nt considrd a majr pt of GSM. Like mny teks, the *pwr* of txt — indeed, the *pwr* of the fon — wz discvrd by users. In the case of txt mssng, the usrs were the yng or poor in the W and E. (Agar 105) As Jon Agar suggests in Constant Touch, textual communication through mobile phone was an after-thought. Mobile phones use radio waves, operating on a cellular system. The first such mobile service went live in Chicago in December 1978, in Sweden in 1981, in January 1985 in the United Kingdom (Agar), and in the mid-1980s in Australia. Mobile cellular systems allowed efficient sharing of scarce spectrum, improvements in handsets and quality, drawing on advances in science and engineering. In the first instance, technology designers, manufacturers, and mobile phone companies had been preoccupied with transferring telephone capabilities and culture to the mobile phone platform. With the growth in data communications from the 1960s onwards, consideration had been given to data capabilities of mobile phone. One difficulty, however, had been the poor quality and slow transfer rates of data communications over mobile networks, especially with first-generation analogue and early second-generation digital mobile phones. As the internet was widely and wildly adopted in the early to mid-1990s, mobile phone proponents looked at mimicking internet and online data services possibilities on their hand-held devices. What could work on a computer screen, it was thought, could be reinvented in miniature for the mobile phone — and hence much money was invested into the wireless access protocol (or WAP), which spectacularly flopped. The future of mobiles as a material support for text culture was not to lie, at first at least, in aping the world-wide web for the phone. It came from an unexpected direction: cheap, simple letters, spelling out short messages with strange new ellipses. SMS was built into the European Global System for Mobile (GSM) standard as an insignificant, additional capability. A number of telecommunications manufacturers thought so little of the SMS as not to not design or even offer the equipment needed (the servers, for instance) for the distribution of the messages. The character sets were limited, the keyboards small, the typeface displays rudimentary, and there was no acknowledgement that messages were actually received by the recipient. Yet SMS was cheap, and it offered one-to-one, or one-to-many, text communications that could be read at leisure, or more often, immediately. SMS was avidly taken up by young people, forming a new culture of media use. Sending a text message offered a relatively cheap and affordable alternative to the still expensive timed calls of voice mobile. In its early beginnings, mobile text can be seen as a subcultural activity. The text culture featured compressed, cryptic messages, with users devising their own abbreviations and grammar. One of the reasons young people took to texting was a tactic of consolidating and shaping their own shared culture, in distinction from the general culture dominated by their parents and other adults. Mobile texting become involved in a wider reworking of youth culture, involving other new media forms and technologies, and cultural developments (Butcher and Thomas). Another subculture that also was in the vanguard of SMS was the Deaf ‘community’. Though the Alexander Graham Bell, celebrated as the inventor of the telephone, very much had his hearing-impaired wife in mind in devising a new form of communication, Deaf people have been systematically left off the telecommunications network since this time. Deaf people pioneered an earlier form of text communications based on the Baudot standard, used for telex communications. Known as teletypewriter (TTY), or telecommunications device for the Deaf (TDD) in the US, this technology allowed Deaf people to communicate with each other by connecting such devices to the phone network. The addition of a relay service (established in Australia in the mid-1990s after much government resistance) allows Deaf people to communicate with hearing people without TTYs (Goggin & Newell). Connecting TTYs to mobile phones have been a vexed issue, however, because the digital phone network in Australia does not allow compatibility. For this reason, and because of other features, Deaf people have become avid users of SMS (Harper). An especially favoured device in Europe has been the Nokia Communicator, with its hinged keyboard. The move from a ‘restricted’, ‘subcultural’ economy to a ‘general’ economy sees mobile texting become incorporated in the semiotic texture and prosaic practices of everyday life. Many users were already familiar with the new conventions already developed around electronic mail, with shorter, crisper messages sent and received — more conversation-like than other correspondence. Unlike phone calls, email is asynchronous. The sender can respond immediately, and the reply will be received with seconds. However, they can also choose to reply at their leisure. Similarly, for the adept user, SMS offers considerable advantages over voice communications, because it makes textual production mobile. Writing and reading can take place wherever a mobile phone can be turned on: in the street, on the train, in the club, in the lecture theatre, in bed. The body writes differently too. Writing with a pen takes a finger and thumb. Typing on a keyboard requires between two and ten fingers. The mobile phone uses the ‘fifth finger’ — the thumb. Always too early, and too late, to speculate on contemporary culture (Morris), it is worth analyzing the textuality of mobile text. Theorists of media, especially television, have insisted on understanding the specific textual modes of different cultural forms. We are familiar with this imperative, and other methods of making visible and decentring structures of text, and the institutions which animate and frame them (whether author or producer; reader or audience; the cultural expectations encoded in genre; the inscriptions in technology). In formal terms, mobile text can be described as involving elision, great compression, and open-endedness. Its channels of communication physically constrain the composition of a very long single text message. Imagine sending James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in one text message. How long would it take to key in this exemplar of the disintegration of the cultural form of the novel? How long would it take to read? How would one navigate the text? Imagine sending the Courier-Mail or Financial Review newspaper over a series of text messages? The concept of the ‘news’, with all its cultural baggage, is being reconfigured by mobile text — more along the lines of the older technology of the telegraph, perhaps: a few words suffices to signify what is important. Mobile textuality, then, involves a radical fragmentation and unpredictable seriality of text lexia (Barthes). Sometimes a mobile text looks singular: saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or sending your name and ID number to obtain your high school or university results. Yet, like a telephone conversation, or any text perhaps, its structure is always predicated upon, and haunted by, the other. Its imagined reader always has a mobile phone too, little time, no fixed address (except that hailed by the network’s radio transmitter), and a finger poised to respond. Mobile text has structure and channels. Yet, like all text, our reading and writing of it reworks those fixities and makes destabilizes our ‘clear’ communication. After all, mobile textuality has a set of new pre-conditions and fragilities. It introduces new sorts of ‘noise’ to signal problems to annoy those theorists cleaving to the Shannon and Weaver linear model of communication; signals often drop out; there is a network confirmation (and message displayed) that text messages have been sent, but no system guarantee that they have been received. Our friend or service provider might text us back, but how do we know that they got our text message? Commodity We are familiar now with the pleasures of mobile text, the smile of alerting a friend to our arrival, celebrating good news, jilting a lover, making a threat, firing a worker, flirting and picking-up. Text culture has a new vector of mobility, invented by its users, but now coveted and commodified by businesses who did not see it coming in the first place. Nimble in its keystrokes, rich in expressivity and cultural invention, but relatively rudimentary in its technical characteristics, mobile text culture has finally registered in the boardrooms of communications companies. Not only is SMS the preferred medium of mobile phone users to keep in touch with each other, SMS has insinuated itself into previously separate communication industries arenas. In 2002-2003 SMS became firmly established in television broadcasting. Finally, interactive television had arrived after many years of prototyping and being heralded. The keenly awaited back-channel for television arrives courtesy not of cable or satellite television, nor an extra fixed-phone line. It’s the mobile phone, stupid! Big Brother was not only a watershed in reality television, but also in convergent media. Less obvious perhaps than supplementary viewing, or biographies, or chat on Big Brother websites around the world was the use of SMS for voting. SMS is now routinely used by mainstream television channels for viewer feedback, contest entry, and program information. As well as its widespread deployment in broadcasting, mobile text culture has been the language of prosaic, everyday transactions. Slipping into a café at Bronte Beach in Sydney, why not pay your parking meter via SMS? You’ll even receive a warning when your time is up. The mobile is becoming the ‘electronic purse’, with SMS providing its syntax and sentences. The belated ingenuity of those fascinated by the economics of mobile text has also coincided with a technological reworking of its possibilities, with new implications for its semiotic possibilities. Multimedia messaging (MMS) has now been deployed, on capable digital phones (an instance of what has been called 2.5 generation [G] digital phones) and third-generation networks. MMS allows images, video, and audio to be communicated. At one level, this sort of capability can be user-generated, as in the popularity of mobiles that take pictures and send these to other users. Television broadcasters are also interested in the capability to send video clips of favourite programs to viewers. Not content with the revenues raised from millions of standard-priced SMS, and now MMS transactions, commercial participants along the value chain are keenly awaiting the deployment of what is called ‘premium rate’ SMS and MMS services. These services will involve the delivery of desirable content via SMS and MMS, and be priced at a premium. Products and services are likely to include: one-to-one textchat; subscription services (content delivered on handset); multi-party text chat (such as chat rooms); adult entertainment services; multi-part messages (such as text communications plus downloads); download of video or ringtones. In August 2003, one text-chat service charged $4.40 for a pair of SMS. Pwr At the end of 2003, we have scarcely registered the textual practices and systems in mobile text, a culture that sprang up in the interstices of telecommunications. It may be urgent that we do think about the stakes here, as SMS is being extended and commodified. There are obvious and serious policy issues in premium rate SMS and MMS services, and questions concerning the political economy in which these are embedded. Yet there are cultural questions too, with intricate ramifications. How do we understand the effects of mobile textuality, rewriting the telephone book for this new cultural form (Ronell). What are the new genres emerging? And what are the implications for cultural practice and policy? Does it matter, for instance, that new MMS and 3rd generation mobile platforms are not being designed or offered with any-to-any capabilities in mind: allowing any user to upload and send multimedia communications to other any. True, as the example of SMS shows, the inventiveness of users is difficult to foresee and predict, and so new forms of mobile text may have all sorts of relationships with content and communication. However, there are worrying signs of these developing mobile circuits being programmed for narrow channels of retail purchase of cultural products rather than open-source, open-architecture, publicly usable nodes of connection. Works Cited Agar, Jon. Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone. Cambridge: Icon, 2003. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill & Wang, 1974. Brown, Barry, Green, Nicola, and Harper, Richard, eds. Wireless World: Social, Cultural, and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. London: Springer Verlag, 2001. Butcher, Melissa, and Thomas, Mandy, eds. Ingenious: Emerging youth cultures in urban Australia. Melbourne: Pluto, 2003. Galvin, Michael. ‘September 11 and the Logistics of Communication.’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17.3 (2003): 303-13. Goggin, Gerard, and Newell, Christopher. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Digital in New Media. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Harper, Phil. ‘Networking the Deaf Nation.’ Australian Journal of Communication 30. 3 (2003), in press. International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ‘Mobile Cellular, subscribers per 100 people.’ World Telecommunication Indicators <http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/> accessed 13 October 2003. Katz, James E., and Aakhus, Mark, eds. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2002. Morris, Meaghan. Too Soon, Too Late: History in Popular Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: U of Indiana P, 1998. Plant, Sadie. On the Mobile: The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life. < http://www.motorola.com/mot/documents/0,1028,296,00.pdf> accessed 5 October 2003. Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book: Technology—schizophrenia—electric speech. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "‘mobile text’" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2004, Jan 12). ‘mobile text’. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>