Isabel Pedersen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3652608 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Isabel Pedersen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Isabel |
| FAMILY NAME | Pedersen |
| SIGNATURE | PEDERSEN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ontario Tech University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9317-0812 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
AI agents, wearable computing and the future of postsecondary learning
AI and Technocultural Adaptation First, the effect of generative AI on the automation of writing, composition skills, and creative practices is still taking shape in postsecondary schools. Following the initial shock of OpenAI's first AI chatbot release in 2022, the impact in postsecondary education is still being felt through the experience of rapid change, excessive hype, constant adaptation, and self-questioning on the part of students, instru…
Bringing older people’s perspectives on consumer socially assistive robots into debates about the future of privacy protection and AI governance
Older People’s Ethical Framing of Autonomy in Relation to Current and Future Consumer Technologies
Visualizing the datasphere
Technologies for people aging at home are increasingly prevalent and include ambient monitoring devices that work together with wearables to remotely track and monitor older adults' biometric data and activities of daily living. There is, however, little research into the promotional and speculative images of technology-in-use. Our paper examines the ways in which the datafication of aging is offered up visually by technology companies to promote…
Developing social robots for aging populations
The perception of aging populations is a major factor driving the social robot development movement. A growing body of research reflects the expanding interest in social robots. This paper synthesizes research on the development of social robots with a literature review of academic articles with publication dates ranging from 2006 to 2017. The review is divided into three themes: (a) robots as an aid in treatment; (b) robots as social assistants …
Exoskeletons, Transhumanism, and Culture
In this article we study how exoskeletons are construed through three dominant but interrelated presentations: 1) popular science journalism, 2) advertisements of military innovation, and 3) blockbuster science fiction film. We address how these media function to alter attitudes about the future. The attitudinal framing of the exoskeleton asks that people aspire to transhumanism, and that they “imagine the possibilities in the near future of dram…
Home Is Where the AI Heart Is [Commentary]
The desire to create a sentient Artificial Intelligence (AI) as complex as a human intelligence, or one that even surpasses it, a superintelligence, is raging. The Economist recently reported “Firms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Baidu have got into an AI arms race, poaching researchers, setting up laboratories and buying start-ups” [1]. On one level, this race reacts to the need for highly sophisticated personal digital assistants to help …
Elysium as a critical dystopia
This article argues that Elysium communicates a ‘critical dystopia’ that illuminates and interrogates global capitalism’s worst social, political, ecological and technological conditions and shows them being resisted and changed, for the better. To this end, our article’s first section contextualizes Elysium by building upon recent studies of global Hollywood, the genre characteristics and politics of science fiction films and ‘critical dystopia’…
Hiding in plain sight
This article explores and critiques mainstream speculative news surrounding personal technologies. We focus on news concerning bionic contact lenses, a hardware invention prototype by Google Inc promoted as a ‘future’ personal computing device. Technology is increasingly normalized and configured as inevitable through representations across consumer media outlets. In our analysis of a large corpus of online and print news coverage, we identify th…
Are Wearables Really Ready to Wear? [Viewpoint]
he introduction and announcement of Google Glass on April 4, 2012, changed the landscape of computing for the everyday person. Afterwards, for a full year before the first developers' release in May of 2013, Glass was a figment of our collective imagination. Google Glass promised a "wearable" eye display for the masses that would revolutionize smartphone culture. Our reaction was both amazement and fear because Google claimed that Glass was to be…
One Day
In the spring of 2012, Google unveiled ‘Project Glass' with the promise to deliver an augmented reality head-mounted display device to the masses. Its YouTube video ‘One Day...', viewed more than 20 million times, promotes a utopian vision of what life will be like once this prototype becomes available to everyone. Using a critical humanities approach, this paper uses this event as a site to consider the implications of predictive advertising as …
My Eyes Ended Up At My Fingertips
Antoine, an independent film by Canadian Laura Bari, gives voice to a blind, five-year-old boy, Antoine Houang, who narrates his life with stories, memories, and imaginative compositions. We argue that because of its basis in collaboration, Antoine extends the genre of autobiographical documentary. It is an autobiography by Houang, but it is also a documentary by Bari. The film uses tactics of each genre to construct a portrait of a blind subject…
MyLifeBits, augmented memory, and a rhetoric of need
Your cinematic deathbed flashback will already be uploaded to your hard drive. (Scheeres Citation2002)
No Apple iPhone? You Must Be Canadian
Participation with new mobile devices drives new social practices. This article engages in a close analysis of a so-called participatory culture surrounding iPods and iPhones. It offers close rhetorical readings of object phenomena including advertisements, Canadian news stories, and consumer reactions in electronic media. More specifically, this article reveals a rhetorical transformation between the iPod Silhouettes advertising campaign and the…
A semiotics of human actions for wearable augmented reality interfaces
Wearable Computers create a personal augmented reality for people who wear them. Unlike virtual reality, wearable augmented reality could potentially alter mobility, interactivity, and beingness (existence) in the actual world. As wearable computers emerge as a medium of communication, several designers like Steve Mann, discuss their physical and political goals. In other words, these computers are actively being designed by the discourse that di…
Looking Good on Whose Terms? Ambiguity in Two Kellogg's Special K ® Print Advertisements
The present paper examines the current trend by advertisers who construct ambiguity within advertisements to gain a double profit with consumers. As advertisers pre-empt their critics by acknowledging and even foregrounding the political incorrectness of their own industries, they also subversively promote the same damaging messages that were always present within the advertisements. This strategy is becoming more and more prevalent with several …
Looking Good on Whose Terms? Ambiguity in Two Kellogg's Special K ® Print Advertisements
The present paper examines the current trend by advertisers who construct ambiguity within advertisements to gain a double profit with consumers. As advertisers pre-empt their critics by acknowledging and even foregrounding the political incorrectness of their own industries, they also subversively promote the same damaging messages that were always present within the advertisements. This strategy is becoming more and more prevalent with several …
A semiotics of human actions for wearable augmented reality interfaces
Wearable Computers create a personal augmented reality for people who wear them. Unlike virtual reality, wearable augmented reality could potentially alter mobility, interactivity, and beingness (existence) in the actual world. As wearable computers emerge as a medium of communication, several designers like Steve Mann, discuss their physical and political goals. In other words, these computers are actively being designed by the discourse that di…
Elysium as a critical dystopia
This article argues that Elysium communicates a ‘critical dystopia’ that illuminates and interrogates global capitalism’s worst social, political, ecological and technological conditions and shows them being resisted and changed, for the better. To this end, our article’s first section contextualizes Elysium by building upon recent studies of global Hollywood, the genre characteristics and politics of science fiction films and ‘critical dystopia’…
One Day
In the spring of 2012, Google unveiled ‘Project Glass' with the promise to deliver an augmented reality head-mounted display device to the masses. Its YouTube video ‘One Day...', viewed more than 20 million times, promotes a utopian vision of what life will be like once this prototype becomes available to everyone. Using a critical humanities approach, this paper uses this event as a site to consider the implications of predictive advertising as …
No Apple iPhone? You Must Be Canadian
Participation with new mobile devices drives new social practices. This article engages in a close analysis of a so-called participatory culture surrounding iPods and iPhones. It offers close rhetorical readings of object phenomena including advertisements, Canadian news stories, and consumer reactions in electronic media. More specifically, this article reveals a rhetorical transformation between the iPod Silhouettes advertising campaign and the…
Looking Good on Whose Terms? Ambiguity in Two Kellogg's Special K ® Print Advertisements
The present paper examines the current trend by advertisers who construct ambiguity within advertisements to gain a double profit with consumers. As advertisers pre-empt their critics by acknowledging and even foregrounding the political incorrectness of their own industries, they also subversively promote the same damaging messages that were always present within the advertisements. This strategy is becoming more and more prevalent with several …
A semiotics of human actions for wearable augmented reality interfaces
Wearable Computers create a personal augmented reality for people who wear them. Unlike virtual reality, wearable augmented reality could potentially alter mobility, interactivity, and beingness (existence) in the actual world. As wearable computers emerge as a medium of communication, several designers like Steve Mann, discuss their physical and political goals. In other words, these computers are actively being designed by the discourse that di…
MyLifeBits, augmented memory, and a rhetoric of need
Your cinematic deathbed flashback will already be uploaded to your hard drive. (Scheeres Citation2002)
No Apple iPhone? You Must Be Canadian
Participation with new mobile devices drives new social practices. This article engages in a close analysis of a so-called participatory culture surrounding iPods and iPhones. It offers close rhetorical readings of object phenomena including advertisements, Canadian news stories, and consumer reactions in electronic media. More specifically, this article reveals a rhetorical transformation between the iPod Silhouettes advertising campaign and the…
My Eyes Ended Up At My Fingertips
Antoine, an independent film by Canadian Laura Bari, gives voice to a blind, five-year-old boy, Antoine Houang, who narrates his life with stories, memories, and imaginative compositions. We argue that because of its basis in collaboration, Antoine extends the genre of autobiographical documentary. It is an autobiography by Houang, but it is also a documentary by Bari. The film uses tactics of each genre to construct a portrait of a blind subject…
One Day
In the spring of 2012, Google unveiled ‘Project Glass' with the promise to deliver an augmented reality head-mounted display device to the masses. Its YouTube video ‘One Day...', viewed more than 20 million times, promotes a utopian vision of what life will be like once this prototype becomes available to everyone. Using a critical humanities approach, this paper uses this event as a site to consider the implications of predictive advertising as …
Are Wearables Really Ready to Wear? [Viewpoint]
he introduction and announcement of Google Glass on April 4, 2012, changed the landscape of computing for the everyday person. Afterwards, for a full year before the first developers' release in May of 2013, Glass was a figment of our collective imagination. Google Glass promised a "wearable" eye display for the masses that would revolutionize smartphone culture. Our reaction was both amazement and fear because Google claimed that Glass was to be…
Home Is Where the AI Heart Is [Commentary]
The desire to create a sentient Artificial Intelligence (AI) as complex as a human intelligence, or one that even surpasses it, a superintelligence, is raging. The Economist recently reported “Firms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Baidu have got into an AI arms race, poaching researchers, setting up laboratories and buying start-ups” [1]. On one level, this race reacts to the need for highly sophisticated personal digital assistants to help …
Elysium as a critical dystopia
This article argues that Elysium communicates a ‘critical dystopia’ that illuminates and interrogates global capitalism’s worst social, political, ecological and technological conditions and shows them being resisted and changed, for the better. To this end, our article’s first section contextualizes Elysium by building upon recent studies of global Hollywood, the genre characteristics and politics of science fiction films and ‘critical dystopia’…
Hiding in plain sight
This article explores and critiques mainstream speculative news surrounding personal technologies. We focus on news concerning bionic contact lenses, a hardware invention prototype by Google Inc promoted as a ‘future’ personal computing device. Technology is increasingly normalized and configured as inevitable through representations across consumer media outlets. In our analysis of a large corpus of online and print news coverage, we identify th…
Exoskeletons, Transhumanism, and Culture
In this article we study how exoskeletons are construed through three dominant but interrelated presentations: 1) popular science journalism, 2) advertisements of military innovation, and 3) blockbuster science fiction film. We address how these media function to alter attitudes about the future. The attitudinal framing of the exoskeleton asks that people aspire to transhumanism, and that they “imagine the possibilities in the near future of dram…
Developing social robots for aging populations
The perception of aging populations is a major factor driving the social robot development movement. A growing body of research reflects the expanding interest in social robots. This paper synthesizes research on the development of social robots with a literature review of academic articles with publication dates ranging from 2006 to 2017. The review is divided into three themes: (a) robots as an aid in treatment; (b) robots as social assistants …
Visualizing the datasphere
Technologies for people aging at home are increasingly prevalent and include ambient monitoring devices that work together with wearables to remotely track and monitor older adults' biometric data and activities of daily living. There is, however, little research into the promotional and speculative images of technology-in-use. Our paper examines the ways in which the datafication of aging is offered up visually by technology companies to promote…
Older People’s Ethical Framing of Autonomy in Relation to Current and Future Consumer Technologies
AI agents, wearable computing and the future of postsecondary learning
AI and Technocultural Adaptation First, the effect of generative AI on the automation of writing, composition skills, and creative practices is still taking shape in postsecondary schools. Following the initial shock of OpenAI's first AI chatbot release in 2022, the impact in postsecondary education is still being felt through the experience of rapid change, excessive hype, constant adaptation, and self-questioning on the part of students, instru…
Bringing older people’s perspectives on consumer socially assistive robots into debates about the future of privacy protection and AI governance
Sociology (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Rhetoric (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (5 works) · Internet privacy (5 works)