Introducing Publiks Essays

While on foot, running with a certain regularity from Parc Jourdan to Lac de Bimont, passing by Bibémus either or both ways, while on the way formulating ideas that could help us better engage (that ubiquitous verb now, hopefully made to be and feel once again, sometime in the emerging future, an action of importance, relevance and usefulness to myself as well as others), while thinking through a means for us to better and renewingly engage — be it with our bodies, with our environment,

with the people we cross on paths and streets, with what we call home or village, town or city, with our co-students and co-workers, with our education and training, with our art and culture, with our politics and religion, with our communities and polities — while thus conceiving on foot and designing when coming to rest a possible means to have us more productively discover, form, inform, participate in and understand the publics we are part of, or will become part of, the necessity of a better belief, theory and practice of technology began to assert itself.

What asserted was the need for communities and institutions as well as media, platforms and associated technologies that were deeply and humanely respectful. Respectful in the sense given to us by work following Immanuel Kant, which I had been rereading and continuing as part of my research in the field of medical humanities. Respectful in the sense also given to us by work in medical and bioethics, in which I had acquired a foundation during my doctorate in medicine and my training of workers active in the disciplines of healthcare.

Respectful, too, in the sense given to us by the history of human experimentation and its all too repeated diminishments or violations of human beings, be it in the name of care, knowledge or mere observation, a history that can be followed and painfully relived by way of the Oath and its revisions, by Burke and Hare as well as the dissecting tables at Columbia, by Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy as well the fields of Marion Sims, by Davenport, Gosney, Popenoe as well as Sanger, by Namibia and Nuremberg, by Tuskegee and Guatemala, by Beecher and Belmont,

by Sarah Baartman and Henrietta Lacks, Leilani Muir as well as Dax Cowart, by Depo-Provera in Rhodesia and Pfizer in North Nigeria, and by Geneva, Helsinki, UNESCO and Yogyakarta — a repeating history of subhumanizing harm, its eventual discovery by a field or a public, an instance of declared outrage, a declaration of rights based on respect of all humans, then, after a period or at times simultaneously, a seemingly inexplicable violation of those recently declared rights, a history that I had been teaching students at Stanford to know and understand,

to be able to explain and teach to others, and a history with which, there as a professor at Stanford, I had become all too intimately familiar, having found myself the subject of experimentation of a different but not altogether new kind……and was further situating by doing research at the colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence. Respectful in the much more difficult-to-provide but still attainable, providable sense of medicine and care. That I found to be missing or scarce outside of clinics and hospitals. Missing or scarce, also, in the communities formed or affected by social media and their technologies. Was that sense of respectful, either now or in the near-future, attainable, providable on a platform for communal and social connectivity?

The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has convened a UN Climate Summit for September of 2019, with the proposed theme, ‘A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.’ The Summit will draw from the commitment to climate change action the Secretary-General outlined in a September 2018 speech, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations.

As may be evident in the speech, Guterres intends to take as foundations for global efforts both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2016 Paris Agreement crafted within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. These prior efforts and their documented agreements are understood here to have set clear, attainable objectives for climate action across nations — goals that have nevertheless proven complex to coordinate, operationalize, and durably support.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has convened a UN Climate Summit for September of 2019, with the proposed theme, ‘A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.’ The Summit will draw from the commitment to climate change action the Secretary-General outlined in a September 2018 speech, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations.

As may be evident in the speech, Guterres intends to take as foundations for global efforts both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2016 Paris Agreement crafted within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. These prior efforts and their documented agreements are understood here to have set clear, attainable objectives for climate action across nations — goals that have nevertheless proven complex to coordinate, operationalize, and durably support.

While on foot, running with a certain regularity from Parc Jourdan to Lac de Bimont, passing by Bibémus either or both ways, while on the way formulating ideas that could help us better engage (that ubiquitous verb now, hopefully made to be and feel once again, sometime in the emerging future, an action of importance, relevance and usefulness to myself as well as others), while thinking through a means for us to better and renewingly engage — be it with our bodies, with our environment,

with the people we cross on paths and streets, with what we call home or village, town or city, with our co-students and co-workers, with our education and training, with our art and culture, with our politics and religion, with our communities and polities — while thus conceiving on foot and designing when coming to rest a possible means to have us more productively discover, form, inform, participate in and understand the publics we are part of, or will become part of, the necessity of a better belief, theory and practice of technology began to assert itself.

What asserted was the need for communities and institutions as well as media, platforms and associated technologies that were deeply and humanely respectful. Respectful in the sense given to us by work following Immanuel Kant, which I had been rereading and continuing as part of my research in the field of medical humanities. Respectful in the sense also given to us by work in medical and bioethics, in which I had acquired a foundation during my doctorate in medicine and my training of workers active in the disciplines of healthcare.

Respectful, too, in the sense given to us by the history of human experimentation and its all too repeated diminishments or violations of human beings, be it in the name of care, knowledge or mere observation, a history that can be followed and painfully relived by way of the Oath and its revisions, by Burke and Hare as well as the dissecting tables at Columbia, by Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy as well the fields of Marion Sims, by Davenport, Gosney, Popenoe as well as Sanger, by Namibia and Nuremberg, by Tuskegee and Guatemala, by Beecher and Belmont,

by Sarah Baartman and Henrietta Lacks, Leilani Muir as well as Dax Cowart, by Depo-Provera in Rhodesia and Pfizer in North Nigeria, and by Geneva, Helsinki, UNESCO and Yogyakarta — a repeating history of subhumanizing harm, its eventual discovery by a field or a public, an instance of declared outrage, a declaration of rights based on respect of all humans, then, after a period or at times simultaneously, a seemingly inexplicable violation of those recently declared rights, a history that I had been teaching students at Stanford to know and understand,

to be able to explain and teach to others, and a history with which, there as a professor at Stanford, I had become all too intimately familiar, having found myself the subject of experimentation of a different but not altogether new kind……and was further situating by doing research at the colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence. Respectful in the much more difficult-to-provide but still attainable, providable sense of medicine and care. That I found to be missing or scarce outside of clinics and hospitals. Missing or scarce, also, in the communities formed or affected by social media and their technologies. Was that sense of respectful, either now or in the near-future, attainable, providable on a platform for communal and social connectivity?

The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has convened a UN Climate Summit for September of 2019, with the proposed theme, ‘A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.’ The Summit will draw from the commitment to climate change action the Secretary-General outlined in a September 2018 speech, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations.

As may be evident in the speech, Guterres intends to take as foundations for global efforts both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2016 Paris Agreement crafted within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. These prior efforts and their documented agreements are understood here to have set clear, attainable objectives for climate action across nations — goals that have nevertheless proven complex to coordinate, operationalize, and durably support.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has convened a UN Climate Summit for September of 2019, with the proposed theme, ‘A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.’ The Summit will draw from the commitment to climate change action the Secretary-General outlined in a September 2018 speech, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations.

As may be evident in the speech, Guterres intends to take as foundations for global efforts both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2016 Paris Agreement crafted within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. These prior efforts and their documented agreements are understood here to have set clear, attainable objectives for climate action across nations — goals that have nevertheless proven complex to coordinate, operationalize, and durably support.

While on foot, running with a certain regularity from Parc Jourdan to Lac de Bimont, passing by Bibémus either or both ways, while on the way formulating ideas that could help us better engage (that ubiquitous verb now, hopefully made to be and feel once again, sometime in the emerging future, an action of importance, relevance and usefulness to myself as well as others), while thinking through a means for us to better and renewingly engage — be it with our bodies, with our environment,

with the people we cross on paths and streets, with what we call home or village, town or city, with our co-students and co-workers, with our education and training, with our art and culture, with our politics and religion, with our communities and polities — while thus conceiving on foot and designing when coming to rest a possible means to have us more productively discover, form, inform, participate in and understand the publics we are part of, or will become part of, the necessity of a better belief, theory and practice of technology began to assert itself.

What asserted was the need for communities and institutions as well as media, platforms and associated technologies that were deeply and humanely respectful. Respectful in the sense given to us by work following Immanuel Kant, which I had been rereading and continuing as part of my research in the field of medical humanities. Respectful in the sense also given to us by work in medical and bioethics, in which I had acquired a foundation during my doctorate in medicine and my training of workers active in the disciplines of healthcare.

Respectful, too, in the sense given to us by the history of human experimentation and its all too repeated diminishments or violations of human beings, be it in the name of care, knowledge or mere observation, a history that can be followed and painfully relived by way of the Oath and its revisions, by Burke and Hare as well as the dissecting tables at Columbia, by Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy as well the fields of Marion Sims, by Davenport, Gosney, Popenoe as well as Sanger, by Namibia and Nuremberg, by Tuskegee and Guatemala, by Beecher and Belmont,

by Sarah Baartman and Henrietta Lacks, Leilani Muir as well as Dax Cowart, by Depo-Provera in Rhodesia and Pfizer in North Nigeria, and by Geneva, Helsinki, UNESCO and Yogyakarta — a repeating history of subhumanizing harm, its eventual discovery by a field or a public, an instance of declared outrage, a declaration of rights based on respect of all humans, then, after a period or at times simultaneously, a seemingly inexplicable violation of those recently declared rights, a history that I had been teaching students at Stanford to know and understand,

to be able to explain and teach to others, and a history with which, there as a professor at Stanford, I had become all too intimately familiar, having found myself the subject of experimentation of a different but not altogether new kind……and was further situating by doing research at the colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence. Respectful in the much more difficult-to-provide but still attainable, providable sense of medicine and care. That I found to be missing or scarce outside of clinics and hospitals. Missing or scarce, also, in the communities formed or affected by social media and their technologies. Was that sense of respectful, either now or in the near-future, attainable, providable on a platform for communal and social connectivity?

The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has convened a UN Climate Summit for September of 2019, with the proposed theme, ‘A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.’ The Summit will draw from the commitment to climate change action the Secretary-General outlined in a September 2018 speech, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations.

As may be evident in the speech, Guterres intends to take as foundations for global efforts both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2016 Paris Agreement crafted within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. These prior efforts and their documented agreements are understood here to have set clear, attainable objectives for climate action across nations — goals that have nevertheless proven complex to coordinate, operationalize, and durably support.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has convened a UN Climate Summit for September of 2019, with the proposed theme, ‘A Race We Can Win. A Race We Must Win.’ The Summit will draw from the commitment to climate change action the Secretary-General outlined in a September 2018 speech, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations, the full text of which is provided here as well as via video below, both made available by the United Nations.

As may be evident in the speech, Guterres intends to take as foundations for global efforts both the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the 2016 Paris Agreement crafted within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. These prior efforts and their documented agreements are understood here to have set clear, attainable objectives for climate action across nations — goals that have nevertheless proven complex to coordinate, operationalize, and durably support.