All Documents

Categorization is one of the most essential features of cognition. Categorization is the beginning of meaning and the way in which the result of cognition is stored. There are two basic types of cognitive systems that are capable of categorization, biological and artificial systems. These two types of cognitive systems approach categorization with somewhat different processes and with different levels of proficiency on different types of categorization. There is an obvious difference in the hardware in use for each type of cognitive system, this paper aims to explore the differences that go beyond hardware and also explore some of the similarities.

Gay identity is a creation of social discourse. There are many variations in gay identity that do not conform to the identity that is accepted by the gay community. Queer theory questions and attempts to deconstruct gay identity to move it away from its discursively constructed emulation of stereotypes in culture. Through questioning the identity intersectional identities, such as those found between masculinity and homosexuality or homosexuality and blackness emerge. Difference goes against the categorical construction of the identity and as such the community uses social pressure to attempt to enforce upon members of the community a standard gay identity.

Group project. Our group interviewed ceramic artists at UNC Charlotte to determine their needs in terms of design changes to systems in their environment. Through our evaluation we discovered that the only difficulty with which we could assist but not interfere in their process was to design a better way to load kilns. We used several design prototypes until ultimately we selected a web-based prototype which could be extended. We took the prototype to our users to get their feedback and they responded positively to our design. This report describes our entire adventure.