Olmec Social and political organization Who is Olmec? Little is directly known about the societal or political structure of Olmec society. Are there any other interesting aspects about this article? Olmec society itself was hierarchical, concentrated first at San Lorenzo and then at La Venta, What are their political orientation? an elite that was able to use their control over materials such as water and monumental stone to exert command and legitimize their regime.
How do the make social interactions?
How do Olmec society make social interactions?
Little is directly known about the societal or political structure of Olmec society. Although it is assumed by most researchers that the colossal heads and several other sculptures represent rulers, nothing has been found like the Maya stelae (see drawing) which name specific rulers and provide the dates of their rule.  Instead, archaeologists relied on the data that they had, such as large- and small-scale site surveys. These provided evidence of considerable centralization within the Olmec region, first at San Lorenzo and then at La Venta - no other Olmec sites come close to these in terms of area or in the quantity and quality of architecture and sculpture.  This evidence of geographic and demographic centralization leads archaeologists to propose that Olmec society itself was hierarchical, concentrated first at San Lorenzo and then at La Venta, with an elite that was able to use their control over materials such as water and monumental stone to exert command and legitimize their regime.  Nonetheless, Olmec society is thought to lack many of the institutions of later civilizations, such as a standing army or priestly caste. And there is no evidence that San Lorenzo or La Venta controlled, even during their heyday, all of the Olmec heartland. There is some doubt, for example, that La Venta controlled even Arroyo Sonso, only some 35 km (22 mi) away. Studies of the Tuxtla Mountain settlements, some 60 km (37 mi) away, indicate that this area was composed of more or less egalitarian communities outside the control of lowland centers. CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
In social science, a social relation or social interaction is any relationship between two or more individuals. Social relations derived from individual agency form the basis of social structure and the basic object for analysis by social scientists. Fundamental inquiries into the nature of social relations feature in the work of sociologists such as Max Weber in his theory of social action. Social relationships are composed of both positive (affiliative) and negative (agonistic) interactions, representing opposing effects.

Social relationships are a special case of social relations that can exist without any communication taking place between the actors involved. Categorizing social interactions enables observational and other social research, such as Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (lit. 'community and society'), collective consciousness, etc. However, different schools and theories of sociology and other social sciences dispute the methods used for such investigations.

Forms of relation and interaction 
According to Piotr Sztompka, forms of relation and interaction in sociology and anthropology may be described as follows: first and most basic are animal-like behaviors, i.e. various physical movements of the body. Then there are actions—movements with a meaning and purpose. Then there are social behaviors, or social actions, which address (directly or indirectly) other people, which solicit a response from another agent.

Next are social contacts, a pair of social actions, which form the beginning of social interactions. Social interactions in turn form the basis of social relations. Symbols define social relationships. Without symbols, our social life would be no more sophisticated than that of animals. For example, without symbols people would have no aunts or uncles, employers or teachers-or even brothers and sisters. In sum, symbolic integrations analyze how social life depends on the ways people define themselves and others. They study face-to-face interaction, examining how people make sense out of life, how they determine their relationships.

See also 

Affectional action
Communicative action
Dramaturgical action
Instrumental and value-rational action
Interdependence
Interpersonal relationship
Relations of production
Social isolation
Social movement
Social multiplier effect
Symbolic interactionism
Traditional action

Related disciplines 
 Engaged theory
 Social philosophy
 Social psychology
Relationship Science

References

Bibliography
 Azarian, Reza. 2010. "Social Ties: Elements of a Substantive Conceptualisation." Acta Sociologica 53(4):323–38.
 Piotr Sztompka, Socjologia, Znak, 2002, 
 Weber, Max. "The Nature of Social Action." In Weber: Selections in Translation, edited by W. G. Runciman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991.

Community building
Interpersonal relationships Sociorobotics is a field of research studying the implications, complexities and subsequent design of artificial social, spatial, cultural and haptic behaviours, protocols and interactions of robots with each other and with humans in equal measure. Intrinsically taking into account the structured and unstructured spaces of habitation, including industrial, commercial, healthcare, eldercare and domestic environments. This emergent perspective to robotic research encompasses and surpasses the conventions of Social robotics and Artificial society/social systems research. Which do not appear to acknowledge that numerous robots (humanoid and non-humanoid) and humans are increasingly inhabiting the same spaces which require similar performances and agency of social behaviour, particularly regarding the commercial emergence of workplace, personal and companion robotics.

Approach 

Robots in the near future will be required to behave socially and spatially intelligent in all contexts of artificial social interaction, recognising sophisticated cues from both humans and other robots alike, similar in some respects to the required social awareness and generally expected social behaviour of our animal companions. Furthermore, sociorobotics as a research platform also fully accepts that robots can be modular hardware, controlled by pre-programmed disembodied software agency (ubiquitous digital characters) or even 'Wizard of Oz' style teleoperation requiring the same social intelligence, awareness and protocols. Sociorobotics attempts to go further by observing and incorporating the aesthetic assemblages and intricacies of social, spatial, cultural & haptic complexities to study the creation of artificial social behaviours and the subsequent protocol design considerations for contemporary and future robotics. Sociorobotics also recognises the critical interdisciplinarity of contemporary and future robot design; acquiring theoretical foundations and research methodologies from HRI, Human Geography, Interaction Design, Actor-network theory and Social Psychology. These foundations bring together intimate concepts of space, haptics and social/cultural criteria of heterogeneous human-robot interactions (i.e. Real Dolls, Lars and the Real Girl), engendering a more comprehensive and cognizant research approach to successful robot design.

Theoretical Antecedents 

Professor Arvin Agah first coined the term 'sociorobotics' in 1993/4 to describe the study of robot team and colony behaviours but omitted to include himself and his colleagues as members and legitimate study subjects or actants of these sociorobotic assemblages. His and all roboticist's interactions with robot teams or colony members, including human controllers/creators/programmers and indeed, robot to robot, constitute this undefined term of study that optimally represents and describes this emergent field of research of the implications, complexities and design of spatial/social protocols and interactions of multiple robots, both with humans and each other.

"So who is pulling the strings? Well, the puppets do in addition to their puppeteers. It does not mean that puppets are controlling their handlers – this would be simply reversing the order of causality – and of course no dialectic will do the trick either. It simply means that the interesting question at this point is not to decide who is acting and how but to shift from a certainty about action to an uncertainty about action – but to decide what is acting and how.", (Bruno Latour, 2005, p. 60)

See also 

 Bruno Latour
 Social Robots
 Artificial society
 Human geography
 Cultural geography
 Social Psychology
 Interaction Design
 Human Robot Interaction
 Actor-network theory

References

External links 
 Toward the Human–Robot Co-Existence Society: On Safety Intelligence for Next Generation Robots
 Sociorobotics.com
 Sociorobotics BLOG

Robotics Lauren McCarthy is a Chinese-American artist and computer programmer based in Los Angeles. McCarthy creates artworks that use a variety of media and techniques, including performance, artificial intelligence and programmed computer-based interaction. She created p5.js, an open-source and web-based version of the software Processing.

Education  
McCarthy graduated from MIT with a BS in Computer Science and a BS in Art and Design. At MIT she studied technology's impact on physical interactions with her work Tools For Improved Social Interactions, where she made an Anti-Daydreaming Device, a Happiness Hat, and a Body Contact Training Suit out of a knitted, wearable material. The devices included sensors to monitor the wearer and evoke uncomfortable stimuli if the user is not doing what the piece is designed to achieve. For example, if the user does not smile big enough while wearing the Happiness Hat a spike would poke the back of their neck. For her thesis at MIT, McCarthy focused on the similarities between virtual and physical interactions by comparing gym culture and social networking culture.

McCarthy received her MFA degree from UCLA in 2011, where she has been an assistant professor since 2016.

Career

Artificial intelligence projects
McCarthy often creates works that humanize the roles that smart devices like Amazon Alexa or Google Home take on. The idea for most of these projects was rooted in McCarthy's social anxiety. Getting to know people, and the small talk necessary to build connections is something that is stressful for McCarthy. She stated that she felt jealous of how Amazon Alexa automatically has an intimate place in people's lives.

In 2017, for her work LAUREN, she installed cameras, microphones and speakers in her apartment, then interacted with visitors by performing the role of assistive technology, similar to Amazon Alexa.  The roles were reversed in her project SOMEONE, where visitors had 24-hour access and control of McCarthy's home.

In her collaborative work, Waking Agents, visitors are prompted to lie down and use "smart" pillows that can have conversations, play music, ask the users name, tell stories and be an overall guiding intelligence. The users were unaware that the "smart" pillows they were conversing with were actually human performers with their voices disguised to sound like A.I. robots.

McCarthy collaborated with David Leonard, in the project I.A. Suzie, to evaluate how artificial intelligence is used as a care-taking device, and how the user creates a relationship with the device. For this project, McCarthy and Leonard acted as a smart home device in the home of Mary Ann, an 80-year-old woman living in North Carolina. For a week straight they had 24-hour watch over Mary Ann and had the ability to speak with her, control the lights and activate the appliances.

Social media projects 
McCarthy explored projects regarding social media in an effort to connect with others and meet new people with the help of technology. McCarthy wished there was a computer program that could scour through social media profiles and automatically make her friends in real life. She decided to manually do this in her work, Friend Crawl, a project she live-streamed on the internet. For 10 hours a day for a week, McCarthy looked at 1,000+ social media profiles, spending about five minutes per profile. Another project she live-streamed was her 2013 work, Social Turkers. McCarthy wanted to explore what including an unbiased third party would do to a social situation and if they could provide her with helpful instruction. To make this happen, McCarthy employed Amazon Turk workers to comment on OkCupid dates that she secretly recorded and live-streamed. McCarthy actually met her husband through this project, when one day he was watching one of the live streams. One the website McCarthy made for the project, she has 16 public logs that ranges from January 4 to January 30. These logs include her personal thoughts on how the dates went as well as the Turk Workers entry transcripts that McCarthy received.

McCarthy helped create Social Soul, a large installation for the TED Conference with Delta Air Lines and MKG. Mccarthy and her partner Kyle McDonald worked to bring the Twitter pages of participants, TED presenters, and attendees to life. To do this they streamed the social media profiles in an immersive 360-degree environment, where the viewer is surrounded by monitors, mirrors and sounds all relating to an individual's specific feed. This project had custom algorithms to match the viewer with other attendees by showing them the strangers social feed. Once the viewer left the simulation they received a tweet connecting them to the person that the algorithm matched them with, so after streaming another's social media fee they could connect with that individual in person.

In Follower, a 2016 work, users could use an app to voluntarily request a person to follow them around New York for an entire day, without knowing the identity of the follower. McCarthy collaborated with Kyle McDonald again in the work How We Act Together, which encourages viewers to follow computer-generated prompts to interact with video persona by nodding, screaming, greeting or making eye contact with the projection.

Awards

In September 2021, McCarthy was ranked as a "40 under 40" artists.

References

External links
 Official website

Living people
21st-century American artists
21st-century American women artists
Year of birth missing (living people)
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture faculty
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
Artists from Boston