Download or read book Technofutures Nature and the Sacred written by Celia Deane-Drummond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The capacity of human beings to invent, construct and use technical artifacts is a hugely consequential factor in the evolution of society, and in the entangled relations between humans, other creatures and their natural environments. Moving from a critical consideration of theories, to narratives about technology, and then to particular and specific practices, Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred seeks to arrive at a genuinely transdisciplinary perspective focusing attention on the intersection between technology, religion and society and using insights from the environmental humanities. It works from both theoretical and practical contexts by using newly emerging case studies, including geo-engineering and soil carbon technologies, and breaks open new ground by engaging theological, scientific, philosophical and cultural aspects of the technology/religion/nature nexus. Encouraging us to reflect on the significance and place of religious beliefs in dealing with new technologies, and engaging critical theory common in sociological, political and literary discourses, the authors explore the implicit religious claims embedded in technology.

Download or read book Handbook of Technology Assessment written by Armin Grunwald and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-10-03 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of technology assessment (TA) practices, theories, methods and cultures across the globe. Highlighting the significant influence of rapidly changing technology on human life and development, it examines diverse perspectives on how TA can be developed to better meet the challenges of the future. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Download or read book The Brave New World of eHR written by Hal Gueutal and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-02-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Brave New World of eHR is an important resource, filled with the most current information and practical advice on eHR for human resource professionals and industrial and organizational psychologists. Written by an expert group of scholars, practitioners, and subject matter experts, this book offers an overview of the major technological trends in eHR, and shows how to use technology to enhance organizational effectiveness. Comprehensive in scope, the book includes information on a wide variety of topics and Reviews the transformation of human resources from manual processes to sophisticated CRM and ERP systems Examines the effectiveness of online strategies for attracting talent Offers valuable guidelines that can help organizations design, deliver, implement, and sustain e-selection systems Includes a review of the recent research on the effectiveness of distance learning in educational and organizational settings Analyzes the potential advantages and disadvantages of using eHR to manage employee performance Shows how technology supports the administration of compensation systems Outlines recent trends in delivering HR products and services Considers the functional and dysfunctional consequences of using eHR to attract, select, and manage the performance of employees in organizations Presents a fascinating and futuristic look at HR and technology for decades to come

Download or read book Birthing Techno Sapiens written by Robbie Davis-Floyd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ground-breaking book challenges us to re-think ourselves as techno-sapiens—a new species we are creating as we continually co-evolve ourselves with our technologies. While some of its chapters are imaginary, they are all empirically grounded in ethnography and richly theorized from diverse disciplines. The authors go far beyond a techno-optimism vs. techno-pessimism stance, stretching our thinking about birthing techno-sapiens to consider not only how our cyborgian reproductive lives are constrained and/or enabled by technology but are also about emotions and spirit. The world of reproductive health care and particularly that of genetic engineering is developing exponentially, and current challenges are vastly different from those of a decade ago. The book is provocative, intended to generate debate, ideas, and future research and to influence ethical policy and practice in human techno-reproduction. It will be of interest across the social sciences and humanities, for reproductive scholars, bioethicists, techno-scientists, and those involved in the development and delivery of maternity services.

Download or read book Creating Value with Science and Technology written by Eliezer Geisler and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-08-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do science and technology create value for society and the economy, and how might one go about measuring it? How do we evaluate its benefits? Can we even be certain that there are benefits? Geisler argues that there are benefits, and that they outweigh in value the negative impacts that inevitably accompany them. His revolutionary new book goes on to show that they can also be measured and evaluated, and in one volume all of the existing knowledge on how to do it is complied--then Geisler's own methods are offered. The result is a compelling argument that the value of science and technology in our lives has indeed been positive, and that the economic well-being of all individuals, organizations, and nations rests upon them. Geisler starts off by describing his conceptual framework for the evaluation of science and technology and the impact and benefits that proceed from them. He discusses the nature of evaluation in general terms, and then in the specific context of science, technology, and innovation together. He reviews the state of our present knowledge and assesses the nature of value creation itself. Throughout, Geisler remains fixed on his driving thesis: Although there are certainly some negative impacts from science and technology, on the whole the results of its outputs are positive. He shows how they have contributed to a range of activities and institutions, particularly to the improvement of health and human welfare worldwide. Finally, after discussing the theories of evaluation, he gets down to the practice, providing readers with a way to assess science and technological innovations for themselves.

Download or read book Diffusive Spreading in Nature Technology and Society written by Armin Bunde and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-05-08 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do the movements of molecules and the migration of humans have in common? How does the functionality of our brain tissue resemble the flow of traffic in New York City? How can understanding the spread of ideas, rumors, and languages help us tackle the spread a pandemic? This book provides an illuminating look into these seemingly disparate topics by exploring and expertly communicating the fundamental laws that govern the spreading and diffusion of objects. A collection of leading scientists in disciplines as diverse as epidemiology, linguistics, mathematics, and physics discuss various spreading phenomena relevant to their own fields, revealing astonishing similarities and correlations between the objects of study—be they people, particles, or pandemics. This updated and expanded second edition of an award-winning book introduces timely coverage of a subject with the greatest societal impact in recent memory—the global fight against COVID-19. Winner of the 2019 Literature Prize of the German Chemical Industry Fund and brainchild of the international and long-running Diffusion Fundamentals conference series, this book targets an interdisciplinary readership, featuring an introductory chapter that sets the stage for the topics discussed throughout. Each chapter provides ample opportunity to whet the appetite of those readers seeking a more in-depth treatment, making the book also useful as supplementary reading in appropriate courses dealing with complex systems, mass transfer, and network theory.

Download or read book Living Technology written by Armin Grunwald and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2021-06-16 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals that not only ethics but the philosophy of technology and nature as well as anthropology also influence research and innovation Comprehensively examines the entire spectrum of living organisms for technological interventions Speculates whether robots are the early form of emerging technical life

Download or read book Hermeneutics History and Technology written by Armin Grunwald and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-01 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For better and worse, the future is often conceived in technological terms. Technology is supposed to meet the challenge of climate change or resource depletion. And when one asks about the world in 20 or 100 years, answers typically revolve around AI, genome editing, or geoengineering. There is great demand to speculate about the future of work, the future of mobility, Industry 4.0, and Humanity 2.0. The humanities and social sciences, science studies, and technology assessment respond to this demand but need to seek out a responsible way of taking the future into account. This collection of papers, interviews, debates grew out of disagreements about technological futures, speculative ethics, plausible scenarios, anticipatory governance, and proactionary and precautionary approaches. It proposes Hermeneutic Technology Assessment as a way of understanding ourselves through our ways of envisioning the future. At the same time, a hermeneutic understanding of technological projects and prototypes allows for normative assessments of their promises. Is the future an object of design? This question can bring together and divide policy makers, STS scholars, social theorists, and philosophers of history, and it will interest also the scientists and engineers who labor under the demand to deliver that future.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society written by Simeon Yates and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 799 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Required reading for anyone interested in the profound relationship between digital technology and society Digital technology has become an undeniable facet of our social lives, defining our governments, communities, and personal identities. Yet with these technologies in ongoing evolution, it is difficult to gauge the full extent of their societal impact, leaving researchers and policy makers with the challenge of staying up-to-date on a field that is constantly in flux. The Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society provides students, researchers, and practitioners across the technology and social science sectors with a comprehensive overview of the foundations for understanding the various relationships between digital technology and society. Combining robust computer-aided reviews of current literature from the UK Economic and Social Research Council's commissioned project "Ways of Being in a Digital Age" with newly commissioned chapters, this handbook illustrates the upcoming research questions and challenges facing the social sciences as they address the societal impacts of digital media and technologies across seven broad categories: citizenship and politics, communities and identities, communication and relationships, health and well-being, economy and sustainability, data and representation, and governance and security. Individual chapters feature important practical and ethical explorations into topics such as technology and the aging, digital literacies, work-home boundary, machines in the workforce, digital censorship and surveillance, big data governance and regulation, and technology in the public sector. The Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society will equip readers with the necessary starting points and provocations in the field so that scholars and policy makers can effectively assess future research, practice, and policy.

Download or read book Technology and Democracy Toward A Critical Theory of Digital Technologies Technopolitics and Technocapitalism written by Douglas Kellner and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we enter a new millennium, it is clear that we are in the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that is changing everything from the ways that we work, communicate, participate in politics, and spend our leisure time. The technological revolution centers on computer, information, communication, and multimedia technologies, is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and therefore ascribes technologies a central role in every aspect of life. This Great Transformation poses tremendous challenges to critical social theorists, citizens, and educators to rethink their basic tenets, to deploy the media in creative and productive ways, and to restructure the workplace, social institutions, and schooling to respond constructively and progressively to the technological and social changes that we are now experiencing.

Download or read book Technology and the Growth of Civilization written by Giancarlo Genta and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our natural world has been irretrievably altered by humans, for humans. From domesticated wheat fields to nuclear power plants and spacecraft, everything we see and interact with has in some way been changed by the presence of our species, starting from the Neolithic era so many centuries ago. This book provides a crash course on the issues and debates surrounding technology’s shifting place in our society. It covers the history of our increasingly black-box world, which some theorize will end with technology accelerating beyond our understanding. At the same time, it analyzes competing trends and theories, the lack of scientific knowledge of large sections of the population, the dogmas of pseudoscience, and the growing suspicion of science and technology, which may inevitably lead to scientific stagnation. What will the future of our civilization look like? How soon might scientific acceleration or stagnation arrive at our doorstep, and just how radically will such technological shifts change our culture? These are issues that we must address now, to insure our future goes the way we choose.

Download or read book Technology Assessment in Practice and Theory written by Armin Grunwald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technological advance affects almost all areas of human life. Rapid digitization, increased mobility, new biotechnologies, and nanotechnology deeply influence, amongst others, industrial production, entertainment, work, military affairs, and individual life. Besides overwhelmingly positive effects on wealth, comfort, innovation, and development, this also raises questions of unintended effects, of tensions with democracy, of the role of citizens, and of its sustainability facing environmental issues. Tools and procedures are needed to cope with this challenging situation. Technology assessment (TA) has been developed more than fifty years ago to enable science, the economy, and society to harvest the potential of new technology to the maximum extent possible and to deal responsibly with possible adverse effects. It was developed more than 50 years ago in the U.S. Congress and has diversified considerably in the meantime. Parliamentary TA in many European states and at the international level, participatory TA at the local and regional levels worldwide, and TA as part of engineering processes are the most relevant fields today. Technology assessment is a growing field of interdisciplinary research and scientific policy advice. This volume (a) gives an overview of motivations of TA, its history and its current practices, (b) develops a fresh theoretical perspective on TA rooted in social theory and philosophy, and (c) draws conclusions from the theoretical perspective for the further development of TA’s practices. It provides the first comprehensive view on the growing field of TA at the international level.

Download or read book Responsible Research and Innovation written by Robert Gianni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Responsible Research and Innovation provides a comprehensive and impartial overview of the European Commission’s Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) framework, including discussion of both the meaning and aims of the concept, and of its practical application. As a governance framework for research and innovation, RRI involves four key perspectives: ethical, economic/business, legal and governance and political. The book is organised into chapters covering these different dimensions. The authors provide different viewpoints on these aspects, in order to offer guidance from experts in the field, while at the same time acknowledging the interpretative openness of the RRI frameworks.

Download or read book Domestication of Media and Technology written by Thomas Berker and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text provides an overview of a key concept in media and technology studies, that is domestication. It includes theories around domestication, that shed light upon the process, in which a technology changes its status, from outrageous novelty to an aspect of everyday life, which is taken for granted.

Download or read book Technofutures written by James Canton and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is about the rapidly shifting leading-edge technologies that are reshaping our world. It guides the reader on how to navigate the future and understand these strategic innovations which are changing the rules of business, careers, and society.

Download or read book Nanovision written by Colin Milburn and published by Duke University Press Books. This book was released on 2008-10-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVExamines the cultural history of nanotechnology in contemporary literature, film, and digital media./div

Download or read book Assembling a Black Counter Culture written by Deforrest Brown and published by Primary Information. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this critical history, DeForrest Brown, Jr "makes techno Black again" by tracing the music's origins in Detroit and beyond In Assembling a Black Counter Culture, writer and musician DeForrest Brown, Jr, provides a history and critical analysis of techno and adjacent electronic music such as house and electro, showing how the genre has been shaped over time by a Black American musical sensibility. Brown revisits Detroit's 1980s techno scene to highlight pioneering groups like the Belleville Three before jumping into the origins of today's international club floor to draw important connections between industrialized labor systems and cultural production. Among the other musicians discussed are Underground Resistance (Mad Mike Banks, Cornelius Harris), Drexciya, Juan Atkins (Cybotron, Model 500), Derrick May, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Detroit Escalator Co. (Neil Ollivierra), DJ Stingray/Urban Tribe, Eddie Fowlkies, Terrence Dixon (Population One) and Carl Craig. With references to Theodore Roszak's Making of a Counter Culture, writings by African American autoworker and political activist James Boggs, and the "techno rebels" of Alvin Toffler's Third Wave, Brown approaches techno's unique history from a Black theoretical perspective in an effort to evade and subvert the racist and classist status quo in the mainstream musical-historical record. The result is a compelling case to "make techno Black again." DeForrest Brown, Jris a New York-based theorist, journalist and curator. He produces digital audio and extended media as Speaker Music and is a representative of the Make Techno Black Again campaign.