Download or read book Democratizing Technology written by Anne Chapman and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2007 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratizing Technology provides a much-needed fresh perspective on the regulation of chemicals, and an important contribution to green thinking about technology.Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP. This book is an excellent critique of the current risk-based approach to technology. By exploring the philosophical underpinnings and the practical applications of current policy on science and technology, Chapman exposes the serious flaws in allowing economic considerations to dominate the agenda in this area. Her proposals for reform are expertly constructed and deserve urgent and serious consideration by policy-makers.Dr Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director, Scientists for Global Responsibility. In this important book Anne Chapman argues that decisions about technology should answer a republican question: what kind of public world should we create through technology? Democratizing Technology deserves to be read widely. John ONeill, Professor of Political Economy, University of Manchester, UK A welcome addition to the new, more empirical and applied literature in philosophy of technology. This book will be essential reading for a variety of scholars and for the general reader intent on understanding, and criticizing, our chemically made world.Andrew Light, Interim Director, Program on the Environment, University of Washington, US What is technology? How do humans use it to build and modify the world? What are the relationships between technology, science, economics and democratic governance? What, if any, are our ethical and political responsibilities and choices in how we develop, deploy and control technology in democratic states? Democratizing Technology sets out to answer these questions. Focusing on the most widespread and pervasive technology - chemicals - this groundbreaking volume peels apart the critical technology debate to look at the relationship between humans, technology and the biological world. Attention is given to the immensely important new regulations, REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and restriction of Chemicals), the EUs largest ever legal framework, discussing the problems that are likely to occur in REACHs reliance on risk assessment methods and suggesting an alternative way forward for the regulation of chemicals. Providing much-needed clarity and insight into the heart of key debates in science and technology, risk analysis and mitigation, and domestic and international law, this volume arrives as a breath of fresh air.

Download or read book Democratizing Innovation written by Eric Von Hippel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

Download or read book Democratizing Technology written by Tyler J. Veak and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Largely because of the Internet and the new economy, technology has become the buzzword of our culture. But what is it, and how does it affect our lives? More importantly, can we control and shape it, or does it control us? In short, can we make technology more democratic? Using the work of Andrew Feenberg, one of the most important and original figures in the field of philosophy of technology, as a foundation, the contributors to this volume explore these important questions and Feenberg responds. In the 1990s, Feenberg authored three books that established him as one of the leading scholars in a rapidly developing field, and he is one of the few to delineate a theory for democratizing technological design. He has demonstrated the shortcomings of traditional theories of technology and argued for what he calls "democratic rationalization" where actors intervene in the technological design process to shape it toward their own ends. In this book, the contributors analyze foundational issues in Feenberg's work, including questions of human nature, biotechnology, gender, and his readings of Heidegger, and they also examine practical issues, including democratizing technology, moral evaluation, and environmentalism.

Download or read book Democratising Technology written by René von Schomberg and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Digital Technology and Democratic Theory written by Lucy Bernholz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-02-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most far-reaching transformations in our era is the wave of digital technologies rolling over—and upending—nearly every aspect of life. Work and leisure, family and friendship, community and citizenship have all been modified by now-ubiquitous digital tools and platforms. Digital Technology and Democratic Theory looks closely at one significant facet of our rapidly evolving digital lives: how technology is radically changing our lives as citizens and participants in democratic governments. To understand these transformations, this book brings together contributions by scholars from multiple disciplines to wrestle with the question of how digital technologies shape, reshape, and affect fundamental questions about democracy and democratic theory. As expectations have whiplashed—from Twitter optimism in the wake of the Arab Spring to Facebook pessimism in the wake of the 2016 US election—the time is ripe for a more sober and long-term assessment. How should we take stock of digital technologies and their promise and peril for reshaping democratic societies and institutions? To answer, this volume broaches the most pressing technological changes and issues facing democracy as a philosophy and an institution.

Download or read book Democratizing Our Data written by Julia Lane and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wake-up call for America to create a new framework for democratizing data. Public data are foundational to our democratic system. People need consistently high-quality information from trustworthy sources. In the new economy, wealth is generated by access to data; government's job is to democratize the data playing field. Yet data produced by the American government are getting worse and costing more. In Democratizing Our Data, Julia Lane argues that good data are essential for democracy. Her book is a wake-up call to America to fix its broken public data system.

Download or read book Democratizing Finance written by Marion Laboure and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are only in the early stages of a broader revolution that will impact every aspect of the global economy, including commerce and government services. Coming financial technology innovations could improve the quality of life for all people. Over the past few decades, digital technology has transformed finance. Financial technology (fintech) has enabled more people with fewer resources, in more places around the world, to take advantage of banking, insurance, credit, investment, and other financial services. Marion Laboure and Nicolas Deffrennes argue that these changes are only the tip of the iceberg. A much broader revolution is under way that, if steered correctly, will lead to huge and beneficial social change. The authors describe the genesis of recent financial innovations and how they have helped consumers in rich and poor countries alike by reducing costs, increasing accessibility, and improving convenience and efficiency. They connect the dots between early innovations in financial services and the wider revolution unfolding today. Changes may disrupt traditional financial services, especially banking, but they may also help us address major social challenges: opening new career paths for millennials, transforming government services, and expanding the gig economy in developed markets. Fintech could lead to economic infrastructure developments in rural areas and could facilitate emerging social security and healthcare systems in developing countries. The authors make this case with a rich combination of economic theory and case studies, including microanalyses of the effects of fintech innovations on individuals, as well as macroeconomic perspectives on fintech's impact on societies. While celebrating fintech's achievements to date, Laboure and Deffrennes also make recommendations for overcoming the obstacles that remain. The stakes--improved quality of life for all people--could not be higher.

Download or read book Democracy and Technology written by Richard Sclove and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 1995-07-28 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for anyone interested in democracy and public policy, social justice and empowerment, political economy and business or the social consequences of technology and architecture.

Download or read book Leveling the Playing Field written by Rod Scher and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leveling the Playing Field explores the technologies that “trickle down” to the rest of us, those that were once the domain of the wealthy and powerful--and which therefore tended to make them even more wealthy and powerful. Now, though, these technologies--from books to computers to 3D printing and beyond--have become part of a common toolkit, one accessible to almost anyone, or at least to many more than had heretofore had access. This is what happens with most technologies: They begin in the hands of the few, and they end up in the hands of the many. Along the way, they sometimes transform the world.

Download or read book Reinventing Technology written by Michael Goldhaber and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Democratising Technology written by René von Schomberg and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Democratization of Expertise written by Ron Fulbright and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We create technology enabling us to do things never before possible and it ultimately changes the way we live, work, play, and interact with each other. Throughout human history, the democratization of technology making a technology available to the masses, has brought about sweeping cultural, social, political, and societal changes. In the last half-century, the democratization of computers, information, the Internet, and social media have revolutionized and transformed our lives. We now stand at the beginning of a new era sure to bring about waves of new revolutions, the cognitive systems era. Until now, humans have done all of the thinking. However, our lives are about to be infused with artificial entities capable of performing high-level cognitive processing previously possible only in the human mind. Systems capable of this kind of "synthetic cognition" will achieve and surpass the level of human experts in almost every field of endeavor. Far from replacing humans, these cognitive systems will be our collaborators, teachers, confidants, colleagues, and companions. The future will belong to those who can better partner with these cognitive systems. Made available to the average person via the Internet, handheld devices, and through ordinary objects all around us, expertise will become democratized. Everything will change when anyone has access to expertise in any field and new things will be possible. The democratization of expertise is the foundation on which our society’s revolutions will be built over the next half-century. This book discusses societal and cultural revolutions throughout history brought about by the adoption of new technology and gives brief histories of human cognitive augmentation and artificial intelligence. In the coming cognitive systems era, humans, by collaboratively partnering with cognitive systems, will together achieve expert-level performance—synthetic expertise—with humans performing some of the cognitive processing and cognitive systems performing some. As the capabilities of cognitive systems improve over time, the balance of thinking will shift from being mostly human to mostly artificial. This book introduces the Levels of Cognitive Augmentation to describe this shift. Drawing from previous research in cognitive systems and intelligent agent theory, the knowledge stores required for expertise are identified in a Knowledge Level description of expertise. This book introduces a new abstract level, called the Expertise Level to describe the skills needed for expertise. Combining the knowledge-level and expertise-level descriptions, this book introduces the Model of Expertise. This book demonstrates use of the Model of Expertise by presenting several synthetic expert architectures: a synthetic teacher (Synthia), a synthetic friend/therapist (Sy), a synthetic elderly companion (Lois), a synthetic research companion (Synclair), and an automated scientific hypothesis explorer (Ashe). This book is intended for anyone interested in the fields of cognitive systems, cognitive computing, cognitive augmentation, or artificial intelligence or the impact of technologies from these fields on society. Anyone doing research and development in the area of cognitive systems or artificial intelligence will find this book particularly useful.

Download or read book Democratising Technology written by Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Democratising the Museum written by Pille Runnel and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratising the museum is a collection of articles about participation intended for academics and professionals. Democratic museum shares power with the visitors while negotiating the concept of professionalism. In this book the idea of participatory technologies is extended to modes of participation using online and offline technologies.

Download or read book Technology and Isolation written by Clive Lawson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining classic philosophical ideas with groundbreaking recent developments in ontology, Lawson proposes a new ontology of technology, spanning several disciplines.

Download or read book Technical Fouls written by John Kurt Jacobsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it that shapes the direction of technological progress in advanced industrial societies? Is it science? Technology itself? Or is it something even more powerful and all-encompassing, like power or money or politics? John Kurt Jacobsen addresses this topic by investigating how contemporary democratic capitalist states govern the development and deployment of their scientific and technological resources. He examines the interaction of ideology, profits, and power, and their combined effect upon technology policy in democracies.The ?social function of science? has been a contentious area of scholarly study throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Although the book focuses mainly on the United States, for the sake of instructive comparison, it also studies technological development of other societies, including the former Soviet Union and China. Some competing accounts of technical change across the borders include laissez faire, cultural, and neo-Marxist markets. In fact, with regard to laissez faire markets, even to inquire if science has a social function is to deviate from the appropriate images of economic development. What is always politically at stake is who will rule the next stage in production due to each swing in technology, which will, in turn, be associated with a new structure of control. Most recently, the microchip revolution and cyberspace are the most highly publicized candidates for the next upswing in technology?and thus the next new structure of control.The explanatory focus of the book is on ideology, or on ideas about how technology works and should work, and the three key areas of policy contention discussed are industrial development, military uses, and the environment. Students and scholars of science, technology, and sociology should find this book useful in coming to terms with the fundamental questions underlying the development of technology today.

Download or read book Platform Socialism written by James Muldoon and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new manifesto for digital technology after capitalism.