Download or read book The Singularity of Western Innovation written by Leonard Dudley and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the contribution of language standardization to the economic rise of the West between 1600 and 1860. Previous studies have been unable to explain why during this period almost all industrial innovation was confined to small areas around the main cultural centers of three Western states – Britain, France, and the United states. This book argues that Western Europe and its offshoots were the only Eurasian societies able to apply typography cheaply to their writing systems. The emergence in the West of large networks of people able to communicate in standardized languages made possible the breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution. Military byproducts of three “macro-innovations”– the steam engine, machine tools, and interchangeable parts – then constituted the West’s toolbox for empire. The book will appeal to readers seeking to explain how the West attained its unprecedented advance over Asia in the nineteenth century, and why this lead has since proved temporary.
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.
Download or read book Scale written by Geoffrey West and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is science writing as wonder and as inspiration." —The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term “complexity” can be misleading, however, because what makes West’s discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science: West found that despite the riotous diversity in mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal’s circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient—and lives 25% longer. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism’s body. West’s work has been game-changing for biologists, but then he made the even bolder move of exploring his work’s applicability. Cities, too, are constellations of networks and laws of scalability relate with eerie precision to them. Recently, West has applied his revolutionary work to the business world. This investigation has led to powerful insights into why some companies thrive while others fail. The implications of these discoveries are far-reaching, and are just beginning to be explored. Scale is a thrilling scientific adventure story about the elemental natural laws that bind us together in simple but profound ways. Through the brilliant mind of Geoffrey West, we can envision how cities, companies and biological life alike are dancing to the same simple, powerful tune.
Download or read book Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-05-24 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientists have long sought to unravel the fundamental mysteries of the land, life, water, and air that surround us. But as the consequences of humanity's impact on the planet become increasingly evident, governments are realizing the critical importance of understanding these environmental systemsâ€"and investing billions of dollars in research to do so. To identify high-priority environmental science projects, Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences explores the most important areas of research for the next generation. The book's goal is not to list the world's biggest environmental problems. Rather it is to determine areas of opportunity thatâ€"with a concerted investmentâ€"could yield significant new findings. Nominations for environmental science's "grand" challenges were solicited from thousands of scientists worldwide. Based on their responses, eight major areas of focus were identifiedâ€"areas that offer the potential for a major scientific breakthrough of practical importance to humankind, and that are feasible if given major new funding. The book further pinpoints four areas for immediate action and investment.
Download or read book The Right to Repair written by Aaron Perzanowski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, companies around the world have deployed an arsenal of tools - including IP law, hardware design, software restrictions, pricing strategies, and marketing messages - to prevent consumers from fixing the things they own. While this strategy has enriched companies almost beyond measure, it has taken billions of dollars out of the pockets of consumers and imposed massive environmental costs on the planet. In The Right to Repair, Aaron Perzanowski analyzes the history of repair to show how we've arrived at this moment, when a battle over repair is being waged - largely unnoticed - in courtrooms, legislatures, and administrative agencies. With deft, lucid prose, Perzanowski explains the opaque and complex legal landscape that surrounds the right to repair and shows readers how to fight back.
Download or read book The Singularity of Literature written by Derek Attridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the ESSE (European Society for the Study of English) Book Award for Literature 2006 Literature and the literary have proved singularly resistant to definition. Derek Attridge argues that such resistance represents not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. In this lively, original volume, the author: considers the implications of regarding the literary work as an innovative cultural event, both in its time and for later generations; provides a rich new vocabulary for discussions of literature, rethinking such terms as invention, singularity, otherness, alterity, performance and form; returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues the ethical importance of the literary institution to a culture; demonstrates how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a 'responsible,' creative mode of reading. The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic.
Download or read book Transition Point From Steam to the Singularity written by Sean A. Culey and published by Troubador Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tale of technological revolutions, human evolution and the potential for a utopian or dystopian future. The impact of the next wave on business, the economy, society and the future of humanity. A unique book of three intwined parts that bring together history, economics, business theory, social commentary, disruptive technology and futurism
Download or read book How the West Won written by Rodney Stark and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finally the Truth about the Rise of the West Modernity developed only in the West—in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap. The question is, Why? Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaimed author Rodney Stark provides the answers in this sweeping new look at Western civilization. How the West Won demonstrates the primacy of uniquely Western ideas—among them the belief in free will, the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, the notion that the universe functions according to rational rules that can be discovered, and the emphasis on human freedom and secure property rights. Taking readers on a thrilling journey from ancient Greece to the present, Stark challenges much of the received wisdom about Western history. Stark also debunks absurd fabrications that have flourished in the past few decades: that the Greeks stole their culture from Africa; that the West’s “discoveries” were copied from the Chinese and Muslims; that Europe became rich by plundering the non-Western world. At the same time, he reveals the woeful inadequacy of recent attempts to attribute the rise of the West to purely material causes—favorable climates, abundant natural resources, guns and steel. How the West Won displays Rodney Stark’s gifts for lively narrative history and making the latest scholarship accessible to all readers. This bold, insightful book will force you to rethink your understanding of the West and the birth of modernity—and to recognize that Western civilization really has set itself apart from other cultures.
Download or read book The Great Stagnation written by Tyler Cowen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tyler Cowen’s controversial New York Times bestseller—the book heard round the world that ignited a firestorm of debate and redefined the nature of America’s economic malaise. America has been through the biggest financial crisis since the great Depression, unemployment numbers are frightening, media wages have been flat since the 1970s, and it is common to expect that things will get worse before they get better. Certainly, the multidecade stagnation is not yet over. How will we get out of this mess? One political party tries to increase government spending even when we have no good plan for paying for ballooning programs like Medicare and Social Security. The other party seems to think tax cuts will raise revenue and has a record of creating bigger fiscal disasters that the first. Where does this madness come from? As Cowen argues, our economy has enjoyed low-hanging fruit since the seventeenth century: free land, immigrant labor, and powerful new technologies. But during the last forty years, the low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau. The fruit trees are barer than we want to believe. That's it. That is what has gone wrong and that is why our politics is crazy. In The Great Stagnation, Cowen reveals the underlying causes of our past prosperity and how we will generate it again. This is a passionate call for a new respect of scientific innovations that benefit not only the powerful elites, but humanity as a whole.
Download or read book The Singularity of Literature written by Derek Attridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-04-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iliad and Beowulf provide rich sources of historical information. The novels of Henry Fielding and Henry James may be instructive in the art of moral living. Some go further and argue that Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe played a part in ameliorating the lives of those existing in harsh circumstances. However, as Derek Attridge argues in this outstanding and acclaimed book, none of these capacities is distinctive of literature. What is the singularity of literature? Do the terms "literature" and "the literary" refer to actual entities found in cultures at certain times, or are they merely expressions characteristic of such cultures? Attridge argues that this resistance to definition and reduction is not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. Derek Attridge provides a rich new vocabulary for literature, rethinking such terms as "invention," "singularity," "otherness," "alterity," "performance" and "form." He returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues for the ethical importance of literature, demonstrating how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a "responsible," creative mode of reading. The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the author.
Download or read book Designs for the Pluriverse written by Arturo Escobar and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Designs for the Pluriverse Arturo Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and practice aimed at channeling design's world-making capacity toward ways of being and doing that are deeply attuned to justice and the Earth. Noting that most design—from consumer goods and digital technologies to built environments—currently serves capitalist ends, Escobar argues for the development of an “autonomous design” that eschews commercial and modernizing aims in favor of more collaborative and placed-based approaches. Such design attends to questions of environment, experience, and politics while focusing on the production of human experience based on the radical interdependence of all beings. Mapping autonomous design’s principles to the history of decolonial efforts of indigenous and Afro-descended people in Latin America, Escobar shows how refiguring current design practices could lead to the creation of more just and sustainable social orders.
Download or read book The Singularity Is Near written by Ray Kurzweil and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-09-22 with total page 992 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development. “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times “Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.
Download or read book Profiting from Innovation in China written by Oliver Gassmann and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is dramatically catching up and is rapidly becoming a leading technological innovator on the global scale. The number of Chinese firms with global ambitions is growing fast, more and more technological innovation is coming from China, and the number of patents in China is also growing steadily. The negative side of this development is the still insufficient protection of intellectual property in China. The phenomenon of counterfeits originating from China has increased constantly over the past two decades. Moreover, within the past ten years the scale of intellectual property theft has risen exponentially in terms of its sophistication, volume, the range of goods, and the countries affected. This book addresses managers dealing with innovation in China, and offers concrete advice on how Western firms can benefit from these innovations. Among others, it provides examples and checklists to help decision-makers active in China.
Download or read book The Western Way of War written by Victor Davis Hanson and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Greeks of the classical age invented not only the central idea of Western politics--that the power of state should be guided by a majority of its citizens--but also the central act of Western warfare, the decisive infantry battle. Instead of ambush, skirmish, maneuver, or combat between individual heroes, the Greeks of the fifth century b.c. devised a ferocious, brief, and destructive head-on clash between armed men of all ages. In this bold, original study, Victor Davis Hanson shows how this brutal enterprise was dedicated to the same outcome as consensual government--an unequivocal, instant resolution to dispute. The Western Way of War draws from an extraordinary range of sources--Greek poetry, drama, and vase painting, as well as historical records--to describe what actually took place on the battlefield. It is the first study to explore the actual mechanics of classical Greek battle from the vantage point of the infantryman--the brutal spear-thrusting, the difficulty of fighting in heavy bronze armor which made it hard to see, hear and move, and the fear. Hanson also discusses the physical condition and age of the men, weaponry, wounds, and morale. This compelling account of what happened on the killing fields of the ancient Greeks ultimately shows that their style of armament and battle was contrived to minimize time and life lost by making the battle experience as decisive and appalling as possible. Linking this new style of fighting to the rise of constitutional government, Hanson raises new issues and questions old assumptions about the history of war.
Download or read book The AI Economy written by Roger Bootle and published by Nicholas Brealey. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gold winner in Business Technology category, 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards Extraordinary innovations in technology promise to transform the world, but how realistic is the claim that AI will change our lives? In this much needed book the acclaimed economist Roger Bootle responds to the fascinating economic questions posed by the age of the robot, steering a path away from tech jargon and alarmism towards a rational explanation of the ways in which the AI revolution will affect us all. Tackling the implications of Artificial Intelligence on growth, productivity, inflation and the distribution of wealth and power, THE AI ECONOMY also examines coming changes to the the way we educate, work and spend our leisure time. A fundamentally optimistic view which will help you plan for changing times, this book explains AI and leads you towards a more certain future. Extraordinary innovations in technology promise to transform the world, but how realistic is the claim that AI will change our lives? In this much needed book the acclaimed economist Roger Bootle responds to the fascinating economic questions posed by the age of the robot, steering a path away from tech jargon and alarmism towards a rational explanation of the ways in which the AI revolution will affect us all. Tackling the implications of Artificial Intelligence on growth, productivity, inflation and the distribution of wealth and power, THE AI ECONOMY also examines coming changes to the the way we educate, work and spend our leisure time. A fundamentally optimistic view which will help you plan for changing times, this book explains AI and leads you towards a more certain future.
Download or read book The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science written by and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Repetition Recurrence Returns written by Joan Ramon Resina and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-04-29 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Repetition is constitutive of human life. Both the species and the individual develop through repetition. Unlike simple recall, repetition is permeated by the past and the present and is oriented toward the future. Repetition of central actions and events plays an important role in the lives of individuals and the life of society. It helps to create meaning and memory. Because repetition is a central aspect of human life, it plays a role in all social and cultural spheres. It is important for several branches of the humanities and social studies. This book presents studies of an array of repetitive phenomena and to show that repetition analysis is opening up a new field of study within single disciplines and interdisciplinary research. Recommended for scholars of literature, music, culture, and communication.
