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In seeking to describe the origins of theater, one must rely primarily on speculation (hypothesis), since there is little evidence on which to draw. The most widely accepted theory, championed by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, envisions theater as emerging out of myth and ritual. The process perceived by these anthropologists may be summarized briefly. During the early stages of its development, a society becomes aware of forces that appear to influence or control its food supply and well-being. Having little understanding of natural causes, it attributes both disirable and undesirable occurrences to supernatural or magical forces, and it searches for means to win the favor of these forces. Perceiving an apparent connection between certain actions performed by the group and the result it desires, the group repeats, refined and formalizes those actions into fixed ceremonies, or rituals.
Stories (myths) may then grow up around a ritual. Frequently the myths include representatives of those supernatural forces that the rites celebrate or hope to influence. Performers may wear costumes and masks to represent the mythical characters or supernatural forces in the rituals or in accompanying celebrations. As a people becomes more sophisticated, its conception of supernatural forces and causal relationships may change. As a result, it may abandon or modify some rites. But the myths that have grown up around the rites may continue as part of the group’s oral traditions divorced from these rites. When this occurs, the first step has been taken toward theater as an autonomous activity, and thereafter entertainment and aesthetic values may gradually replace the former mystical and socially efficacious concerns.
Although origin in ritual has long been the most popular, it is by no means the only theory about how the theater came into being. Storytelling has been proposed as one alternative. Under this theory, relating and listening to stories are seen as fundamental human pleasures. Thus, the recalling of an event(a hunt, battle, or other feat) is elaborated through the narrator’s pantomime and impersonation and eventually through each role being assumed by a different person.
A closely related theoty sees theater as evolving out of dances that are primarily pantomimic, rhythmical or gymnastic, or from imitations of animal noises and sounds. Admiration for the performer’s skill, virtuosity, and grace are seen as motivation for elaborating the activities into fully realized theatrical performances.
In addition to exploring the possible antecedents of theater, scholars have also theorized about the motives that led people to develop theater. Why did theater develop, and why was it valued after it ceased to fulfill the function of ritual? Most answers fall back on the theories about the human mind and basic human needs. One, set forth by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C., sees humans as naturally imitative-as taking pleasure in imitating persons, things, and actions and in seeing such imitations. Another, advanced in the twentieth century, suggests that humans have for fantasy, through which they seek to reshape reality into more satisfying forms than those encountered in daily life. Thus, fantasy or fiction (of which daram is on form) permits people to objectify their anxieties and fears, confront them, and fulfill their hopes in fiction if not fact. The theater, then, is one tool whereby people define and understand their world or escape from unpleasant realities.
But neither the human imitative instinct nor a penchant for fantasy by itself leads to an autonomous theater. Therefore, additional explanations are needed. One necessary condition seems to be a somewhat detached view of human problems. For example, one sign of this condition is the appearance of the comic vision, since comedy requires sufficient detachment to view some deviations from social norms as ridiculous rather than serious theaters to the welfare of the entire group. Another condition that contributes to the development of autonomous theater is the emergence of the aesthetic sense. For example, some early societies ceased to consider certain rites essential to their well-being and abandoned them, nevertheless, they retained as parts of their oral tradition the myths that had grown up around the rites and admired them for their artistic qulities rather than for their religious usefulness.
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P: OK, last class we were talking about government support for the arts. Who can sum up some of the main points?
S1: Well, I guess there wasn’t any really offical support for the arts until the 20th century. But the first attempt the United States made to, government support the arts, was Federal Art Project.
P: Right, so what can you say about the project?
S1: It was starting during the despression in the 1930s, to employee the out of work artists.
P: So was it successful?
S2: Yeah, it was successful. I mean, for one thing, the project established a lot of like community art centers, and galleries in places like rural areas where people hadn’t really access to the arts.
S1: Didn’t the government end up wasting a lot of money for art that wasn’t even very good?
P: Some people might say that. But was the primary objective of Federal Art Project to provide jobs?
S1: That’s ture, I mean it did provide jobs for thousand of unemployed artists.
P: Right. But then when the United States became involved the WWII, umemployment was down, it seems that these programs weren’t really necessary any longer.
So, moving on. We don’t actually see any real government involvement in the art again until the early 1960s when President K and other politicians started to push for major funding to support and promoted the arts. It was felt by a number politicians that the government had the responsibility to support the arts as sort of the soul or the spirit of the country. The idea was there be a federal subsidy financial assistance to artist and artistic or culture institution. For just those reasons in 1965, the national endowment for the arts was created. So it was through the NEA, the national endowment for the arts, the arts would develop, would be promoted throughout the nation. And then individual states throughout the country started to estabilish their own state arts councils to help support their arts. There was a kind of culture explosion. And by the mid 1970s, by 1974 I think, all 50 states have their own arts agencies, their own state arts councils that work with the federal government with corporations, artist, performers, you name it.
S1: Did you just say corporations? How are they involved?
P: You see, corporations aren’t always altruistic. They might not support the arts unless the government made it attactive for them to do so, by offering corporations tax incentives to support the arts, that is, by letting corporation pay less in taxes if they were patrons of the arts. The K center in Washington DC, you may have been there, or Lincon Center in New York, both of these were built with substantial financial support from corporations. And the K and L centers aren’t the only examples. Many of the culture establishments in the United States will have a plague somewhere acknowledging the support - money they received from whatever corporation.
S2: But aren’t there a lot of people who don’t think it’s the government’s role to support the arts?
P: As a matter of fact a lot of politicians who didn’t believe in government support for the arts, they want to do away with agency entirely, for that very reason, to get rid of governmental support. But they only succeed in taking away about half the annual bedget. And as far as the public goes, they are as about many individuals who disagree with the government supports as they are those who agree. In fact, with artists in paticular, you have lots of artists who support and who have benefit from this agency. Although it seems that just as many artists oppose government agency being involved in the arts for many different reasons like they don’t want the government to control what they create. In other words, the arguement both for and against the government funding of the arts are as many and as varied as individual styles that artists hold them.
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The transition from forest to treeless tundra on the mountain slope is often a dramastic one. Within a vertical distance of just a few tens of meters, trees disappear as a life-form and are replaced by short shrubs, herbs, and grasses. The rapid zone of transition is called the upper timberline or tree lines. In many semiarid areas there is also a lower timberline where forest passes into steppe or desert at its lower edge, usually because of a lack of moisture.
The upper timberline, like the snowline, is highest in the tropics and lowest in the Polar Regions. It ranges from sea level in the Polar Regions to 4500 meters in the dry subtropics and 3500-4500 meters in the moist tropics. Timberline trees are normally evergreens, suggesting that these have some advantage over deciduous (those are lose their leaves) in the extreme environments of the upper timberline. These are some areas, however, where broadleaf deciduous trees form the timberline. Species of birch, for example, may occur at the timberline in parts of the Himalayas.
At the upper timberline the trees begin to become twisted and deformed. This is particularly true for trees, which tend to attain greater height on ridges, whereas in the tropics the trees reach their greater heights in the valleys. This is because middle- and upper- latitude timberlines are strongly influenced by the duration and depth of the snow cover. As the snow is deeper and lasts longer in the valleys, trees tend to attain greater heights on the ridges, even though they are more exposed to high-velocity winds and poor, thin soils there. In the tropics, the valleys appear to be more favorable because they are less prone to dry out, they have less frost, and they have deeper soils.
There is still no universally agreed-on explanation for why there should be such a dramatic cessation of tree growth at the upper timberline. Various environmental factors may play a role. Too much snow, for example, can smother trees, and avalanches and snow creep can damage and destory them. Late-lying snow reduces the effective growing season to the point where seedlings cannot establish themselves. Wind velocity also increases with altitude and may cause serious stress for trees, as is made evident by the deformed shapes at high altitudes. Some scientists have proposed that the presence of increasing level of ultraviolet light with elevation may play a role, while browsing and grazing animals like the ibex may be another contributing factor. Probably the most important environment factor is temperature, for if the growing season is too short and temperatures are too low, trees shoots and buds cannot mature sufficiently to survive the winter months.
Above the tree line there is a zone that is generally called alpine tundra. Immediately adjacent to the timberline, the tundra consists of a fairly complete cover of low-lying shrubs, herbs, and grasses, while higher up the number and diversity of species decrease until there is much bare ground with occasional mosses and lichens and some prostrate cushion plants. Some plants can even survive in favorable microhabitats above the snow line. The highest plants in the world occur at around 6100 meters on Makalu in the Himalaya. At this great height, rocks, warmed by the sun, melt small snowdrifts.
The most striking characteristic of the plants of the alpine zone is their low growth form. This enables them to avoid the worst rigors of high winds and permit them to make use of the higher temperatures immediately adjacent to the ground surface. In an area where low temperatures are limiting to life, the importance of additional heat near the surface is crucial. The low grouth form can also permit the plants to take advantage of the insulation provided by a winter snow cover. In the equatorial mountains the low growth form is less prevalent.
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*** TPO 1# With a Librarian
S: I really hope you can help me.
L: That’s why I am here. What can I do for you?
S: I’m supposed to do a literature review for my psycology course, but having a hard time finding articles. I don’t even know where to start looking.
L: You said this is for your psycology course, right? So your focus is on…
S: Dream Interpretation.
L: Well, you have a focus, so that’s already a good start. Have you check to see if your professor put any materials for you to look at on reserve?
S: That’s one thing I did know to do. I just copied an article, but I still need three more on my topic from three different journals.
L: Let’s get you going on looking for those then. We have printed versions of 20 years old psycolgy journals in the Reference Section. These are the ones published within the last year. Then I think about it… there’s a journal named Sleep and Dream.
S: Oh, yeah, the article I just copied is from that journal, so I’ve got to look other sources.
L: OK, actually most of our material are avaliable electronically now. You can access psycology database or electronic journals and articles through the library’s computers, and if you want to search by title with the word “dream” for example, just type it in and all the articles with “dream” in the title will come up on the screen.
S: Too bad I can’t do this home.
L: But you can. All of the labrary’s database and electronic resouces can be accessed through any computer connected to the university network.
S: Really? I can’t believe I didn’t know that. It still sounds like it’s going to take a while though, you know, going through all the information, all of the sources.
L: May be. But you already narrow your search down to article on dream interpertation, so it should not be too bad. And you probably notice that there is an abstract or summary at the top of first page of the article you copied. When you go into the databases or electronic sources, you have the options to display the abstract on the computer screen, skimming those to decide whether or not you want to read the whole article should cut down some time.
S: Right, abstacts! They’ll definately make the project more doable. I guess I should try out electronic search while I’m still here then, you know, just in case.
L: That computer is for you over there. I’ll be here till five this afternoon.
S: Thanks, I feel a lot better about this assignment now.
*** TPO 1# Classroom observation and feedback
P: Hi, Mathew, I’m glad you can come in today. You’ve been observing Mr. Grable’s 3rd grade class for your approaches to education paper, right?
S: Yes! I go over the Jonhson elementary school, you know, to watch Mr. Grable teach the children in class. It’s been amazing, I mean, I’m just learning so much from watching him. I’m so glad the classroom observations are a requirement for the education program. I mean it’s like the best thing ever to propare you to be a good teacher.
P: Well I’m glad to see you feel that way, Mathew. You know that’s the goal. So I’ve been reading your observation notes, so I’m quite interested in what’s going on in particular what’s the astronomy unit he’s been teaching.
S: The astronomy unit?
P: It seems Mr. G has mastered interdisciplinary approach to teaching, the way we’ve been talking about in class.
S: So like when he was teaching astronomy, he didn’t just teach them the names of planets, he use it as a way to teach mythology.
P: Really? So how did he do that?
S: Well, some of the students could already name the planets, but they didn’t know that the names had any meaning, the stories behind them. Introducing Greek and Roman mythology as a way of explaining. Like, you know how like Jupiter is the biggest planet, right? And how the Jupiter was named king of the Gods in Roman mythology, right? So since Jupiter, the planet, is the largest planet of our solar system, it’s like the king of the planets, like Jupiter was the king of all the gods.
P: That’s a great example.
S: Each student chose a planet, and then did research on it to write a report and make a representation. They went to the library to do the research, and then make presentations about the planet they chose.
P: So, in one science unit, in which the focus was astronomy, the students also learn about literature of Greek and Roman mathology used researche skills in the library, wrote a report and practicsed their oral presentation skills.
S: Exactly, he used this one topic to teach 3rd graders all that stuff how to use books in the library to write a reports and even how to speak in public. Plus they had a great time doing it.
P: You know Mathew, this is just what we’ve been talking about in our class. I’m sure everyone could learn something from your experience. I’d love for you to talk about this astronomy unit in class of Wednesday.
S: I don’t think I’ll have any time to write my paper by then.
P: You won’t need to write anything new just yet. For Wednesday, use your class observation notes and explain things we’ve discussed today.
S: OK, that’s sounds alright.
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Scientists work to Genetically modify crops for various reasons. Sometimes the goal may be to develop a crop that is resistant to disease or pesticides. Another goal is to develop vegetables that have a longer shelf life. Or, the purpose may be to develop a more nutritious form of a food plant. An explample of the latter is golden rice. It was developed by scientists in Europe. They took ordinary rice and inserted genes from the yellow flower called daffodil, as well as from a bacterium. This gave the rice the golden color from which it gets its name. More to the point, however, it added Vitamin A, a nutrient that rice does not normally have.
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On the internet, the algorithms are all around you. You are watching this video because an algorithm brought to you to click which you did, and the algorithm took note. When you open a tweetbook, the algorithm decides what you see. When you search though your photos, the algorithm dose the finding, maybe even makes a little movie for you. When you buy something, the algorithm sets the price and the algorithm is at your bank watching transactions for fraud. The stock market is full of algorithms tradeing with algorithms.
Given this, you might want to know how these little algorithmic bots shaping your world work, especially when they don’t.
In the olden days, humans build algorithmic bots by giving them instructions the humans could explain.”If this, then that.” But many problems are just too big and hard for a human to write simple instructions for. There’s a gazilion transactions a second, which ones are fraudulent? There’s octillion videos on NetMeTube. Which eight should be user see as recommandations? Which shouldn’t be allowed on the site at all? For this airline seat, what’s the maxmium price this user will pay right now? Algorithmic bots give answers to these questions. Not perfect answers, but much better than humans could do. But how these bots work exactly, more and more, no one knows, not even the human who built them, or “built them”.
As we will see… Now companines that use these bots don’t want to talk about how they work, because the bots are valuable employees, very valuable. And how their brains are built is fiercely guarded trade secret. Right now the cutting edge is most likely very (I hope you like linear algebra) but what the current hotness is on any paricular site, and how the bots work, is a bit “I dunno” and always will be. So let’s talk about one of the quaint but understandable ways bots can be built, without understanding how their brains work.
Say you want a bot that can recognize what is in a picture, is it a bee, or is it a three? It’s easy for humans (even little humans), but it’s impossible to just tell a bot in bot language how to do it, because really we just know that’s a bee and that’s a three. We can say in words what makes them different, but bots don’t understand words. And it’s the wiring in our brains that makes it happen anyway. While the individual neuron may be understood, and clusters of neurons’ general purpose vaguely grasped the whole is beyond. Nonetheless, it works.
So to get a bot that can do this sorting，you don’t built it yourself. You build a bot that builds bots, and a bot that teaches bots. These bots’ brains are simpler, something a smart programmer can make. The builder bot builds bots, though it’s not very good at it. At first it connects wires and mudules in the bot brains almost at random. This leads to some very special student bots sent to teacher bot to teach. Of course, teacher bot can’t tell a bee from a three either.
If the human could build teacher bot to do that, well, then, problem solved. Instead the human gives teacher bot a bunch of “bee” photos and “three” photos, and an answer key to which is what teacher bot can’t teach, but teacher bot can TEST. The adorable student bots stick out their tongues, very hard, but they are bad at what they do, very bad. But it’s not their fault, really, they were built that way. Grades in hand, the student bots take a march of shame back to builder bot, those that did best are put to one side, the others recycled. Builder bot still isn’t good at build bots, but now it takes those left and makes copies of changes in new combinations. Back to school they go. Teacher bot teaches and test again, and builder bot builds again, and again.
Now a builder that builds at random, and a teacher that doesn’t teach, just test, and students who can’t learn, they just are what they are, in theory shouldn’t work, but in practice, it does. Partly because in every iteration, builder bots’ slaughterhouse keeps the best and discards the rest, and partly because teacher bot isn’t overseeing an old-timely, one-room schoolhouse with a dozen students but an infinite warehouse with thousands of students. The test isn’t ten questions, but a million questions. And how many times does the test-build-test loop repeat? As many as necessary. At first students that survive are just lucky, but by combining enough lucky bots, and keeping only what works, and randomly messing around with new copies of that. Eventually a student bot emerges that isn’t lucky, that can perhaps barely tell bees from threes. As this bot is copied and changed, slowly the average test score rises, and thus the grade needed to survive the next round gets higher and higher. Keep this up and eventually from the infinite warehouse. A student bot will emerge, who can tell a bee from a three in a photo it’s never seen before pretty well. But how the student bot does this, neither the teacher bot nor the builder bot, nor the human overseer, can understand, nor the student bot itself.
After keeping so many useful random changes, the wiring in its head is incredibly comlicated, and while an individual line of code may be understood, and clusters of code’s general purpose vaguely grasped the whole is beyond. But this is furstrating, especially as the student bot is very good at exactly only the kinds of questions it’s been taught to. It’s great with photos, but useless with videos or baffied if the photos are upside down, or things that are obviously not bees, it’s confident are. Since teacher bot can’t teach. All human overseer can do is give it more questions, to make the test even longer, to include the kinds of questions the best bots get wrong. This is improtant to understand. It’s a reason why companies are obsessed with collecting data. More data equals longer tests and better bots. So when you get the “Are you human?” test on a website, you are not only proving that you are human, but you are helping to build the test to make bots that can read or count, or tell lakes from mountains, or horses from humans. Seeing lots of questions about driving lately? What could that be building a test for? Now figuring out what’s in a photo, or on a sign, or filtering videos requires human to make correct enough tests.
But there is another kind of test that makes itself, test on the humans. For example, say entirely hypothetical NetMeTube wanted users to keep watching as long as possible? Well, how long a user stays on the site is easy to measure. So, teacher bot gives each student bot a bunch of NetMeTube users to oversee, the student bots watch their user watches, looks at their files, and do their best to pick the videos that keep the user on the site. The longer the average, the higher their test score. Build, test, repeat. A million cycles later, there’s a student bot who’s pretty good at keeping the users wathchiing, at least compared to what a human could build. But when people ask:” How does the NetMeTube algorithm select videos?” Once again, there isn’t a great answer other than pointing to the bot and the user data it had access to.
And most vitally, how the human overseers direct teacher bot to score the test. That’s what the bot is trying to be good at to survive. But what the bot is thinking, or how it thinks it, is not really knowable. All that’s knowledge is this student bot gets to be the algorithm, because it’s point one percent better than the previous bot at the test the humans designed.
So everywhere on the internet, behind the scenes, there are tests to increase user interaction or set prices just right to maximize revenue, or pick the posts from all your friends you’ll like the most, or articles people will share the most, or whatever. If it’s testable, it’s teachable, well, teachable.
A student bot will graduate from the warehouse to be the algorithm of its domain, at least, for a little while. We’re used to the idea that the tools we use, even if we don’t understand them, but with our machines that learn we are increasingly in a position where we use tools, or are used by tools, that no one, not even their creators, understand. We can only hope to guide them with the tests we make, and we need to get comfortable with that, as our algorithmic bot buddies are all around, and not going anywhere.
OK. The bots are watching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo