EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Human Built World

Download or read book Human Built World written by Thomas P. Hughes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-05-13 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To most people, technology has been reduced to computers, consumer goods, and military weapons; we speak of "technological progress" in terms of RAM and CD-ROMs and the flatness of our television screens. In Human-Built World, thankfully, Thomas Hughes restores to technology the conceptual richness and depth it deserves by chronicling the ideas about technology expressed by influential Western thinkers who not only understood its multifaceted character but who also explored its creative potential. Hughes draws on an enormous range of literature, art, and architecture to explore what technology has brought to society and culture, and to explain how we might begin to develop an "ecotechnology" that works with, not against, ecological systems. From the "Creator" model of development of the sixteenth century to the "big science" of the 1940s and 1950s to the architecture of Frank Gehry, Hughes nimbly charts the myriad ways that technology has been woven into the social and cultural fabric of different eras and the promises and problems it has offered. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, optimistically hoped that technology could be combined with nature to create an Edenic environment; Lewis Mumford, two centuries later, warned of the increasing mechanization of American life. Such divergent views, Hughes shows, have existed side by side, demonstrating the fundamental idea that "in its variety, technology is full of contradictions, laden with human folly, saved by occasional benign deeds, and rich with unintended consequences." In Human-Built World, he offers the highly engaging history of these contradictions, follies, and consequences, a history that resurrects technology, rightfully, as more than gadgetry; it is in fact no less than an embodiment of human values.

Book International Science and Technology Education

Download or read book International Science and Technology Education written by Ortwin Renn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is crucial for taking advantage of the prospects of new scientific discoveries initiating or promoting technological changes, and managing opportunities and risks associated with innovations. This book explores the emerging perspectives and methodologies of STEM education and its relationship to the cultural understanding of science and technology in an international context. The authors provide a unique perspective on the subject, presenting materials and experiences from non-European industrialized as well as industrializing countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, India, Egypt, Brazil and the USA. The chapters offer a wide scope of interpretations and comparative reviews of STEM education by including narrative elements about cultural developments, considering the influence of culture and social perceptions on technological and social change, and applying innovative tools of qualitative social research. The book represents a comprehensive and multidisciplinary review of the current status and future challenges facing STEM education across the world, including issues such as globalization, interdependencies of norms and values, effects on equity and social justice as well as resilience. Overall the volume provides valuable insights for a broad and comprehensive international comparison of STEM philosophies, approaches and experiences.

Book Science  Culture and Society

Download or read book Science Culture and Society written by Mark Erickson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science occupies an ambiguous space in contemporary society. Scientific research is championed in relation to tackling environmental issues and diseases such as cancer and dementia, and science has made important contributions to today’s knowledge economies and knowledge societies. And yet science is considered by many to be remote, and even dangerous. It seems that as we have more science, we have less understanding of what science actually is. The new edition of this popular text redresses this knowledge gap and provides a novel framework for making sense of science, particularly in relation to contemporary social issues such as climate change. Using real-world examples, Mark Erickson explores what science is and how it is carried out, what the relationship between science and society is, how science is represented in contemporary culture, and how scientific institutions are structured. Throughout, the book brings together sociology, science and technology studies, cultural studies and philosophy to provide a far-reaching understanding of science and technology in the twenty-first century. Fully updated and expanded in its second edition, Science, Culture and Society will continue to be key reading on courses across the social sciences and humanities that engage with science in its social and cultural context.

Book EBOOK  Science  Technology and Culture

Download or read book EBOOK Science Technology and Culture written by David Bell and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 2005-11-16 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lifestyle media – books, magazines, websites, radio andtelevision shows that focus on topics such as cookery,gardening, travel and home improvement – have witnessed anexplosion in recent years. Ordinary Lifestyles explores how popular media texts bring ideasabout taste and fashion to consumers, helping audiences tofashion their lifestyles as well as defining what constitutes anappropriate lifestyle for particular social groups. Contemporaryexamples are used throughout, including Martha Stewart, HouseDoctor, What Not to Wear, You Are What You Eat, CountryLiving and brochures for gay and lesbian holiday promotions. The contributors show that watching make-over television orcooking from a celebrity chef’s book are significant culturalpractices, through which we work on our ideas about taste,status and identity. In opening up the complex processes whichshape our taste and forge individual and collective identities,lifestyle media demand our serious attention, as well as ourviewing, reading and listening pleasure. Ordinary Lifestyles is essential reading for students on mediaand cultural studies courses, and for anyone intrigued by theinfluence of the media on our day-to-day lives. Contributors: David Bell, Manchester Metropolitan University; Frances Bonner, University of Queensland, Australia; Steven Brown, Loughborough University; Fan Carter, Kingston University; Stephen Duncombe, Gallatin School of New York University, USA; David Dunn; Johannah Fahey, Monash University, Australia; Elizabeth Bullen, Deakin University, Australia; Jane Kenway, Monash University, Australia; Robert Fish, University of Exeter; Danielle Gallegos, Murdoch University, Australia; Mark Gibson; David B. Goldstein, University of Tulsa, USA; Ruth Holliday, University of Leeds; Joanne Hollows, Nottingham Trent University; Felicity Newman; Tim O’Sullivan, De Montfort University; Elspeth Probyn; Rachel Russell, University of Sydney, Australia; Lisa Taylor; Melissa Tyler; Gregory Woods, Nottingham Trent University.

Book Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation

Download or read book Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation written by Helga Nowotny and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2006-02-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise of modern science and the onset of modernity in Western societies. Never before has the Baconian dream been so close to becoming reality: wrapped into a globalizing capitalism that seeks ever expanding markets for new products, artifacts and designs and new processes that lead to gains in efficiency, productivity and profit. However, approaching these developments through a wider historical and cultural perspectives, means to raise questions about the plurality of cultures, the interaction between "hardware" and "software" and about the nature of the interfaces where technology meets with economic, social, legal, historical constraints and opportunities. The authors come to the conclusion that inside a seemingly homogenous package and a seemingly universal quest for innovation many differences remain.

Book Strange Weather

    Book Details:
  • Author : Andrew Ross
  • Publisher : Verso
  • Release : 1991-09-17
  • ISBN : 9780860915676
  • Pages : 292 pages

Download or read book Strange Weather written by Andrew Ross and published by Verso. This book was released on 1991-09-17 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who speaks for science in a technologically dominated society? In his latest work of cultural criticism Andrew Ross contends that this question yields no simple or easy answer. In our present technoculture a wide variety of people, both inside and outside the scientific community, have become increasingly vocal in exercising their right to speak about, on behalf of, and often against, science and technology. Arguing that science can only ever be understood as a social artifact, Strange Weather is a manifesto which calls on cultural critics to abandon their technophobia and contribute to the debates which shape our future. Each chapter focuses on an idea, a practice or community that has established an influential presence in our culture: New Age, computer hacking, cyberpunk, futurology, and global warming. In a book brimming over with intelligence—both human and electronic—Ross examines the state of scientific countercultures in an age when the development of advanced information technologies coexists uneasily with ecological warnings about the perils of unchecked growth. Intended as a contribution to a “green” cultural criticism, Strange Weather is a provocative investigation of the ways in which science is shaping the popular imagination of today, and delimiting the possibilities of tomorrow.

Book The Culture of Science

Download or read book The Culture of Science written by Martin W. Bauer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first comparative account of the changes and stabilities of public perceptions of science within the US, France, China, Japan, and across Europe over the past few decades. The contributors address the influence of cultural factors; the question of science and religion and its influence on particular developments (e.g. stem cell research); and the demarcation of science from non-science as well as issues including the ‘incommensurability’ versus ‘cognitive polyphasia’ and the cognitive (in)tolerance of different systems of knowledge.

Book Culture and Technology

Download or read book Culture and Technology written by Andrew Murphie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are 'going virtual' in more and more areas of our lives - from shopping to education, filing systems to love affairs. How can we assess the relationship between technology and culture when culture is so imbued with technology? This clear, concise and readable text aims to offer the student a one-stop guide through this complex and slippery terrain. Introducing a wealth of theoretical perspectives in a lucid and engaging style and covering a range of topical, challenging and intriguing examples - from cyborgs to digital art - it will be an essential text for everyone wanting to make sense of crucial forces of change on contemporary culture.

Book The Culture of Technology

Download or read book The Culture of Technology written by Arnold Pacey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1985-09-10 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Culture of Technology examines our often conflicting attitudes toward nuclear weapons, biological technologies, pollution, Third World development, automation, social medicine, and industrial decline. It disputes the common idea that technology is "value-free" and shows that its development and use are conditioned by many factors-political and cultural as well as economic and scientific. Many examples from a variety of cultures are presented. These range from the impact of snowmobiles in North America to the use of water pumps in rural India, and from homemade toys in Africa to electricity generation in Britain-all showing how the complex interaction of many influences in every community affects technological practice. Arnold Pacey, who lives near Oxford, England, has a degree in physics and has lectured on both the history of technology and technology policy, with a particular focus on the development of technologies appropriate to Third World needs. He is the author of The Maze of Ingenuity (MIT Press paperback).

Book Culture

    Book Details:
  • Author : John Brockman
  • Publisher : Harper Perennial
  • Release : 2011-08-16
  • ISBN : 9780062023131
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book Culture written by John Brockman and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do civilizations rise and fall? What are the origins and purpose of art? How does technology shape society? Did culture direct human evolution? Is the Internet an agent of democracy or dictatorships? An immensely powerful but little-understood force that impacts society, art, politics, and even human biological development, culture is the very stage on which human experience plays out. But what is it, exactly? What are its rules and origins? In this fascinating volume, John Brockman, editor and publisher of Edge, presents short, accessible explorations of culture’s essential aspects, by today’s most influential scientists and thinkers. Contributors and topics include Jared Diamond on why societies collapse and how we can make better decisions to protect our own future • Denis Dutton on the origins of art Daniel C. Dennett on the evolution of cultures • Jaron Lanier on the ominous impact of the Internet • Nicholas Christakis on the structure and rules of social networks, both “real” and online • Clay Shirky and Evgeny Morozov on the new political reality of the digital era • Brian Eno on what cultures value Stewart Brand on the responsibilities of human power • Douglas Rushkoff on the next Renaissance • W. Daniel Hillis on the Net as a global “knowledge web”

Book Mr  Science and Chairman Mao s Cultural Revolution

Download or read book Mr Science and Chairman Mao s Cultural Revolution written by Chunjuan Nancy Wei and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is emerging as a new superpower in science and technology, reflected in the success of its spacecraft and high-velocity Maglev trains. While many seek to understand the rise of China as a technologically-based power, the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s may seem an unlikely era to explore for these insights. Despite the widespread verdict of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as an unmitigated disaster for China, a number of recent scholars have called for re-examining Maoist science--both in China and in the West. At one time Western observers found much to admire in Chairman Mao's mass science, his egalitarian effort to take science out of the ivory tower and place it in the hands of the disenfranchised peasant, the loyal worker, and the patriot soldier. Chunjuan Nancy Wei and Darryl E. Brock have assembled a rich mix of talents and topics related to the fortunes and misfortunes of science, technology, and medicine in modern China, while tracing its roots to China's other great student revolution--the May Fourth Movement. Historians of science, political scientists, mathematicians, and others analyze how Maoist science served modern China in nationalism, socialism, and nation-building--and also where it failed the nation and the Chinese people. If the Cultural Revolution contributed to China's emerging space program and catalyzed modern malaria treatments based on Traditional Chinese Medicine, it also provided the origins of a science talent gap and the milieu from which a one-child policy would arise. Given the fundamental importance of China today, and of East Asia generally, it is imperative to have a better understanding of its most recent scientific history, but especially that history in a period of crisis and how that crisis was resolved. What is at issue here is not only the specific domain of the history of science, but the social and scientific policies of China generally as they developed and were applied prior to, during, and after the Cultural Revolution.

Book Science  Technology and Innovation Culture

Download or read book Science Technology and Innovation Culture written by Marianne Chouteau and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Science  Technology and Culture

    Book Details:
  • Author : Anne Balsamo
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2017-07-04
  • ISBN : 9781138442955
  • Pages : 175 pages

Download or read book Science Technology and Culture written by Anne Balsamo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Cover" -- "Half Title" -- "Copyright" -- "Contents" -- "Articles" -- "INTRODUCTION" -- "TOWARDS A CRITICAL CULTURAL STUDIES OF COLONIAL SCIENCE" -- "REPRODUCING YOSEMITE: OLMSTED, ENVIRONMENTALISM, AND THE NATURE OF AESTHETIC AGENCY" -- "INTERSPECIES REPRODUCTION: XENOGENIC DESIRE AND THE FEMINIST IMPLICATIONS OF HYBRIDS" -- "CYBERNETICS AND AMERICAN YOUTH SUBCULTURE" -- "INTELLIGENT AGENCY" -- "IMAX TECHNOLOGY AND THE TOURIST GAZE

Book Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment

Download or read book Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment written by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume consider the interplay of science and spectacle in eighteenth-century Europe, describing the variety of public demonstrations of science in sites ranging from academies and laboratories to shops and streets.

Book Science  Technology and Culture

Download or read book Science Technology and Culture written by Anne Balsamo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A special issue of the established journal 'Cultural Studies', devoted to the study of culture in scientific and technological systems.

Book Science  Culture  and Modern State Formation

Download or read book Science Culture and Modern State Formation written by Patrick Carroll and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-10-02 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Book Encyclopedia of Glass Science  Technology  History  and Culture Two Volume Set

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Glass Science Technology History and Culture Two Volume Set written by Pascal Richet and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-02-05 with total page 1568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Encyclopedia begins with an introduction summarizing itsscope and content. Glassmaking; Structure of Glass, GlassPhysics,Transport Properties, Chemistry of Glass, Glass and Light,Inorganic Glass Families, Organic Glasses, Glass and theEnvironment, Historical and Economical Aspect of Glassmaking,History of Glass, Glass and Art, and outlinepossible newdevelopments and uses as presented by the best known people in thefield (C.A. Angell, for example). Sections and chapters arearranged in a logical order to ensure overall consistency and avoiduseless repetitions. All sections are introduced by a briefintroduction and attractive illustration. Newly investigatedtopics will be addresses, with the goal of ensuring that thisEncyclopedia remains a reference work for years to come.