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Book The Technocene

    Book Details:
  • Author : Hermínio Martins
  • Publisher : Anthem Press
  • Release : 2018-12-15
  • ISBN : 1783088338
  • Pages : 226 pages

Download or read book The Technocene written by Hermínio Martins and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hermínio Martins was one of the key pioneers of the sociology of science and technology. He published extensively in Portuguese and was recognized for his academic contributions with an honorary doctorate at Lisbon (2006) and two Portuguese Medals of Honour. Following his retirement from the University of Oxford, he wrote prolifically in English on a wide range of topics that examined the ethical and societal consequences of the commoditization of the human body and mind. These essays are deep philosophical reflections on our contemporary world, and draw extensively and eclectically upon a wide range of theoretical influences including continental philosophy, history and psychology, to name but a few disciplines. ‘The Technocene’ is a selection of some of these insightful essays, made available to a global audience for the first time.

Book The Technocene

    Book Details:
  • Author : Hermínio Martins
  • Publisher : Anthem Press
  • Release : 2018-12-15
  • ISBN : 1783088346
  • Pages : 399 pages

Download or read book The Technocene written by Hermínio Martins and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hermínio Martins was one of the key pioneers of the sociology of science and technology. He published extensively in Portuguese and was recognized for his academic contributions with an honorary doctorate at Lisbon (2006) and two Portuguese Medals of Honour. Following his retirement from the University of Oxford, he wrote prolifically in English on a wide range of topics that examined the ethical and societal consequences of the commoditization of the human body and mind. These essays are deep philosophical reflections on our contemporary world, and draw extensively and eclectically upon a wide range of theoretical influences including continental philosophy, history and psychology, to name but a few disciplines. ‘The Technocene’ is a selection of some of these insightful essays, made available to a global audience for the first time.

Book A Philosophical Journey Into the Anthropocene

Download or read book A Philosophical Journey Into the Anthropocene written by Agostino Cera and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book presents a philosophical journey into the Anthropocene that views this geological epoch as the potential métarécit of our age and the planetary framework within which technology becomes the environment for human life. The appropriate name for this epochal phenomenon is, as a result, not Anthropocene, but Technocene"--

Book Novacene

    Book Details:
  • Author : James Lovelock
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2020-11-10
  • ISBN : 0262539519
  • Pages : 155 pages

Download or read book Novacene written by James Lovelock and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating new study from the originator of the Gaia Theory, “who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on earth since Charles Darwin” (Independent) One of the world’s leading scientific thinkers offers a vision of a future epoch in which humans and artificial intelligence unite to save the Earth. James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the Anthropocene—the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies—is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age—the Novacene—has already begun. In the Novacene, new beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and they will regard us as we now regard plants. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by science fiction. These hyperintelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project. It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. He does not think there are intelligent aliens, so we are the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos. Perhaps, he speculates, the Novacene could even be the beginning of a process that will finally lead to intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos. At the age of 100, James Lovelock has produced the most important and compelling work of his life.

Book Global Magic

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alf Hornborg
  • Publisher : Springer
  • Release : 2016-04-08
  • ISBN : 1137567872
  • Pages : 206 pages

Download or read book Global Magic written by Alf Hornborg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern thought on economics and technology is no less magical than the world views of non-modern peoples. This book reveals how our ideas about growth and progress ignore how money and machines throughout history have been used to exploit less affluent parts of world society. The argument critically explores a middle ground between Marxist political ecology and Actor-Network Theory.

Book The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis

Download or read book The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis written by Clive Hamilton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anthropocene, in which humankind has become a geological force, is a major scientific proposal; but it also means that the conceptions of the natural and social worlds on which sociology, political science, history, law, economics and philosophy rest are called into question. The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis captures some of the radical new thinking prompted by the arrival of the Anthropocene and opens up the social sciences and humanities to the profound meaning of the new geological epoch, the ‘Age of Humans’. Drawing on the expertise of world-recognised scholars and thought-provoking intellectuals, the book explores the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history to the foundational ideas of modern social science. If in the Anthropocene humans have become a force of nature, changing the functioning of the Earth system as volcanism and glacial cycles do, then it means the end of the idea of nature as no more than the inert backdrop to the drama of human affairs. It means the end of the ‘social-only’ understanding of human history and agency. These pillars of modernity are now destabilised. The scale and pace of the shifts occurring on Earth are beyond human experience and expose the anachronisms of ‘Holocene thinking’. The book explores what kinds of narratives are emerging around the scientific idea of the new geological epoch, and what it means for the ‘politics of unsustainability’.

Book The Co Housing Phenomenon

Download or read book The Co Housing Phenomenon written by Emanuele Giorgi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents 50 case studies of contemporary co-housing projects spread all over the world to show how communities of shared living have become a global phenomenon that can serve as a tool to promote social and urban sustainability. By presenting evidence that shared housing experiences are capable of revitalizing sterile urban fabrics and promoting social sustainable practices, the volume situates co-housing experiences as microscale responses to the macroscale challenges posed by environmental degradation and the decline of communitarian ways of living. The volume also reviews the most famous typologies of shared living in different parts of the world across human history. By analyzing historical experiences in different regions of Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania, the author shows that living together is part of a historical culture of sharing that is being rediscovered all over the world by people who activate public spaces, work in shared offices or live in contractual communities. The Co-Housing Phenomenon – Environmental Alliance in Times of Changes will be of interest to both professionals and scholars involved in urban design, urban planning and architecture, especially those in the field of sustainable urbanism. It will also be a valuable resource for public agents and civil society organizations dealing with housing, social, environmental and sustainability policies.

Book Technopoly

Download or read book Technopoly written by Neil Postman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this witty, often terrifying work of cultural criticism, the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death chronicles our transformation into a Technopoly: a society that no longer merely uses technology as a support system but instead is shaped by it—with radical consequences for the meanings of politics, art, education, intelligence, and truth.

Book BAR International Series

Download or read book BAR International Series written by and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Upper Palaeolithic Dwellings of Mammoth Bones in the Ukraine

Download or read book Upper Palaeolithic Dwellings of Mammoth Bones in the Ukraine written by Ivan Hryhorovych Pidoplichko and published by British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited. This book was released on 1998 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The investigation of upper palaeolithic dwellings in which mammoth bones were a constituent structural feature can illuminate many facets of the prehistoric people who built and lived in them; other finds made during their excavation assist in this task.

Book Nadim Samman

    Book Details:
  • Author : Nadim Samman
  • Publisher : Hatje Cantz Verlag
  • Release : 2023-05-31
  • ISBN : 3775752668
  • Pages : 164 pages

Download or read book Nadim Samman written by Nadim Samman and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proprietary algorithms, secret data troves, and inscrutable systems rule the day. How is this registered in art? In Poetics of Encryption Nadim Samman explores works that highlight the hidden dimensions of our technological landscape. Running counter to erroneous claims regarding a new culture of transparency and openness, such artworks address black sites, black boxes, and black holes—all the while, toggling between enlightened concern and occult dreaming. NADIM SAMMAN is Curator for the Digital Sphere at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. He read Philosophy at University College London before receiving his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Widely published, in 2019 he was First Prize recipient of the International Award for Art Criticism (IAAC). Major curatorial projects included the 4th Marrakech Biennale (2012), the 5th Moscow Biennale for Young Art (2015) and the 1st Antarctic Biennale (2017).

Book Facing the Anthropocene

Download or read book Facing the Anthropocene written by Ian Angus and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-07 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science tells us that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun—the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. Humanity faces not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System. If business as usual continues, this century will be marked by rapid deterioration of our physical, social, and economic environment. Large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable, and civilization itself will be threatened. Facing the Anthropocene shows what has caused this planetary emergency, and what we must do to meet the challenge. Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the physical causes and consequences of the Anthropocene transition, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis. Cogent and compellingly written, Facing the Anthropocene offers a unique synthesis of natural and social science that illustrates how capitalism's inexorable drive for growth, powered by the rapid burning of fossil fuels that took millions of years to form, has driven our world to the brink of disaster. Survival in the Anthropocene, Angus argues, requires radical social change, replacing fossil capitalism with a new, ecosocialist civilization.

Book Cosmotechnics

    Book Details:
  • Author : Yuk Hui
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2021-05-18
  • ISBN : 1000396363
  • Pages : 226 pages

Download or read book Cosmotechnics written by Yuk Hui and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is initial reflections on the meaning and the implications of Yuk Hui’s notion of cosmotechnics, which opens up an anti-universalist and pluralist perspective on technology beyond the West. Martin Heidegger’s famous analysis of the essence of technology as enframing and as rooted in ancient Greek techne has had a crucial influence on the understanding and critique of technological society and culture in the twentieth century. However, it is still unclear to what extent his analysis can also be applied to the development of technology outside of ‘the West’, e.g. in China, Africa, and Latin America, particularly against the backdrop of receding Western domination and impending global ecological disaster. Acknowledging the planetary expansion of Western technology already observed by Heidegger, yet also recognizing the existence of non-Western origins of technical relationships to the cosmos, Yuk Hui’s notion of cosmotechnics calls for a rethinking – in dialogue with decolonial studies and the so-called ontological turn in contemporary anthropology – of the question concerning technology which challenges the universality still present in Heidegger (as well as in Simondon and Stiegler) and proposes a radical technological or rather cosmotechnical pluralism or technodiversity. The contributors to this volume critically engage with this proposal and examine the possible implications of Hui’s cosmotechnical turn in thinking about technology as it becomes a planetary force in our current age of the Anthropocene. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.

Book Machine Landscapes

    Book Details:
  • Author : Liam Young
  • Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
  • Release : 2019-02-11
  • ISBN : 1119453011
  • Pages : 144 pages

Download or read book Machine Landscapes written by Liam Young and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-02-11 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most significant architectural spaces in the world are now entirely empty of people. The data centres, telecommunications networks, distribution warehouses, unmanned ports and industrialised agriculture that define the very nature of who we are today are at the same time places we can never visit. Instead they are occupied by server stacks and hard drives, logistics bots and mobile shelving units, autonomous cranes and container ships, robot vacuum cleaners and internet-connected toasters, driverless tractors and taxis. This issue is an atlas of sites, architectures and infrastructures that are not built for us, but whose form, materiality and purpose is configured to anticipate the patterns of machine vision and habitation rather than our own. We are said to be living in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which humans are the dominant force shaping the planet. This collection of spaces, however, more accurately constitutes an era of the Post-Anthropocene, a period where it is technology and artificial intelligence that now computes, conditions and constructs our world. Marking the end of human-centred design, the issue turns its attention to the new typologies of the post-human, architecture without people and our endless expanse of Machine Landscapes. Contributors: Rem Koolhaas, Merve Bedir and Jason Hilgefort, Benjamin H Bratton, Ingrid Burrington, Ian Cheng, Cathryn Dwyre, Chris Perry, David Salomon and Kathy Velikov, John Gerrard, Alice Gorman, Adam Harvey, Jesse LeCavalier, Xingzhe Liu, Clare Lyster, Geoff Manaugh, Tim Maughan, Simone C Niquille, Jenny Odell, Trevor Paglen, Ben Roberts. Featured interviews: Deborah Harrison, designer of Microsoft’s Cortana; and Paul Inglis, designer of the urban landscapes of Blade Runner 2049.

Book Technophobia

    Book Details:
  • Author : Daniel Dinello
  • Publisher : University of Texas Press
  • Release : 2006-01-01
  • ISBN : 0292709862
  • Pages : 342 pages

Download or read book Technophobia written by Daniel Dinello and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Techno-heaven or techno-hell? If you believe many scientists working in the emerging fields of twenty-first-century technology, the future is blissfully bright. Initially, human bodies will be perfected through genetic manipulation and the fusion of human and machine; later, human beings will completely shed the shackles of pain, disease, and even death, as human minds are downloaded into death-free robots whereby they can live forever in a heavenly "posthuman" existence. In this techno-utopian future, humanity will be saved by the godlike power of technology. If you believe the authors of science fiction, however, posthuman evolution marks the beginning of the end of human freedom, values, and identity. Our dark future will be dominated by mad scientists, rampaging robots, killer clones, and uncontrollable viruses. In this timely new book, Daniel Dinello examines "the dramatic conflict between the techno-utopia promised by real-world scientists and the techno-dystopia predicted by science fiction." Organized into chapters devoted to robotics, bionics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and other significant scientific advancements, this book summarizes the current state of each technology, while presenting corresponding reactions in science fiction. Dinello draws on a rich range of material, including films, television, books, and computer games, and argues that science fiction functions as a valuable corrective to technological domination, countering techno-hype and reflecting the "weaponized, religiously rationalized, profit-fueled" motives of such science. By imaging a disastrous future of posthuman techno-totalitarianism, science fiction encourages us to construct ways to contain new technology, and asks its audience perhaps the most important question of the twenty-first century: is technology out of control?

Book Techno Fix

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Huesemann
  • Publisher : New Society Publishers
  • Release : 2011-10-04
  • ISBN : 0865717044
  • Pages : 465 pages

Download or read book Techno Fix written by Michael Huesemann and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenges beliefs about technology's assumed potential for enabling a continuation of current consumption rates, arguing for extensive reform while explaining that technological advances are hastening an environmental collapse. Original.

Book The Practice of Technology

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alan Drengson
  • Publisher : State University of New York Press
  • Release : 1995-10-12
  • ISBN : 1438401523
  • Pages : 232 pages

Download or read book The Practice of Technology written by Alan Drengson and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1995-10-12 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Practice of Technology explores the narrative themes of modern industrial technology that reveal the underlying agenda of modern culture, which is to redesign the human and natural worlds to conform to the monoculture models of Western society that are embedded in industrial paradigms and practices. The author argues that ecological and social responsibility should be built into the design of new technology practices based on ecosophy (ecological wisdom) that enable us to harmonize with our specific place and ecological context. Root metaphors and mythologies of the West are examined so as to transcend the modern-postmodernist debate that devalues human life and the natural world. Drengson explains how our current problems, such as the environmental crisis, violence, social injustice, dehumanization, and alienation cannot be diagnosed, let alone cured, without understanding the role of technological forces and activities in modern civilization.