COVID19 Places: India
This essay scaffolds a discussion of how COVID19 is unfolding in India. A central question this essay hopes to build towards is: If we examine the ways COVID19 is unfolding in India, does "Ind
This essay scaffolds a discussion of how COVID19 is unfolding in India. A central question this essay hopes to build towards is: If we examine the ways COVID19 is unfolding in India, does "Ind
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I am interested in the Macro scale and the macro effects evident at a city-scale level. I remember visiting New Orleans in 2016 and vividly remember seeing several signs with a large 'No' symbol drawn and the text "neighbors not tourists" printed on the sign. Recently, as part of my research into New Orleans, I stumbled on this piece by the Guardian on how short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb are leading to gentrification in New Orleans. Highlighted in the article is how several Airbnb hosts do not reside on the listed premises. I remember the place we stayed, as we were a large party, having a 617 prefix number. The prefix stood out as I knew the code 617 represented Boston and was curious what someone with ties to Boston doing in New Orleans as a host. In a similar vein, the article also highlights the problem of absentee hosts, hosts who acquire property for the sole purpose of setting up the property as an Airbnb site.
To tackle the problem, one councilwoman passed a law that required any Airbnb hosts in residential zones to have a homestead exemption verifying they live on site. In this case, a city-wide measure was taken and passed into law affecting the micro. It is common to have one host having several properties in different residential areas in New Orleans. From a technical standpoint, it could be viewed that Airbnb as technology is developed and presented as a scalable product. With no limits to reproducibility. Meanwhile, real-life discontinuities exist in the form of such homestead laws. It is impossible to live in more than one homestead at the same time. In other words, the concept of the human is not scalable.
Likewise, neither is cultural heritage. The city of New Orleans positions its self as a city with great cultural heritage. It is through this heritage that they seek to draw more and more tourists. How do cities think of scaling up successful initiatives and how do they navigate the political, social, ecological, or economic entanglements. At what point is downscaling necessary? Is culture scalable?
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/new-orleans-airbnb-trem…
I am currently a Ph.D. student interested in exploring the entanglements of scale, especially in the context of environmental sensing. My primary research seeks to engage in discourse around the value of scalability that is presented as inherent in computation. While the term scale-up is almost synonymous with computation, sustainability; on the other hand, is known as a problem of scale. Take for example, the discourse on climate change where the actions required to combat climate change requires interventions at different scales. In this context, demanding changes at individual scales while no corresponding changes happen at larger scales would not yield much.
In looking at New Orleans, I came across a video on IoT cameras developed by Cisco, the networking giant. What struck me other than the apparent rise of surveillance capitalism was the narrative of one of the police officers highlighted in the video. The officer mentions that it is not feasible for the city to place police officers on every corner. In the context of scale, the police officer is implying that cameras are useful as they extend the police officer's ability to surveil the city. In other words, cameras and the networks help scale up the police officer, making it possible for them to cover a larger scale than before.
One of the police officers, in the video, also mentions that New Orleans is a tourist and hospitable town. Which brings up the question at any given period, what scale of visitors can New Orleans support without stretching the city's resources? Several other cities in the world have made efforts to limit visitors, in order not stretch city resources. The recent crisis at Mount Everest is an excellent example of what happens when resources are stretched to accommodate the increasing number of local visitors. How could something of this nature similarly impact New Orleans?
At the communication center where the video feed is analyzed, the IT manager provides reasons as to why they chose Cisco as their vendor. One of the reasons he gives was that the system is easily expandable, allowing the ability to scale out/up the network.
NYC Dept of Correction,
Legal Aid Society,
Susi Vassallo - monitored temperatures on Rikers Island,
Rikers,
Hailey-Means, Freddie McGrier (both inmates)
This policy addresses the issue of mental health, a prominent issue in today's medicine. It helps to evaluate treatment facilities, and defines that the burden of caring for young and middle-aged people is one of the states, where as those outside of the specified age range will be covered for mental disabilities by the national government.
Membership is contingent on each state depositing "the necessary legal instruments", and events are held in many different member states, to make educatiuon available all across the world. Those member states control the direction of the agency based on their needs and funding, so it is really self-run to a large degree. Correction to founding question: The IAEA was founded much earlier, in the 1950's to advance knowledge, safety, and peace associated with atomic and nuclear energy. The majority of the world is now involved.
"It is tempting for a medical social scientist to enumerate the cultural beliefs concerning thecause and workings of epilepsy, then compare these with beliefs in other societies. People of course reason about illness, and culture provides the logic of that rationality. I have resisted, however, focusing on the structure of reasoning. The transformation of these narratives and the modes of aesthetic response associated with stories into "beliefs" or "explanation" would be extremely misleading."
"I began this chapter with questions about the relation of "fainting" to "epilepsy" in Turkish culture provoked by Meliha Hanim' s stories about her illness. Through the course of our research it became clear that epilepsy belongs in popular discourse to the larger domain of "fainting." This should come as no surprise, not only because fainting is less stigmatizing than epilepsy in Turkish culture."
"Emine was silent. Her story was told exclusively by those around her."
Most of the argument is developed through the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) essays and reactions to the compilation. Laws, humanitarian efforts, and wars are also studied.
This is a collage made from the visuals discussed by this artifact's contributors at the T-STS COVID19 India Group meeting on November 24, 2020