Download or read book Time Technology and Environment written by Marco Altamirano and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marco Altamirano critiques the modern concept of nature to chart a new trajectory for the philosophy of nature. He reveals the modern origins of the epistemological configuration of nature, where a subject confronts an object in space (and at time t), and wonders about her mode of access to that object. After critiquing the spatial orientation of this concept of nature, Altamirano shows that a new concept of time is necessary to reinstall the subject within its concrete ecology. Altamirano goes on to deploy conceptual resources excavated from Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault and Leroi-Gourhan to show how technology, which bypasses the nature-artifice distinction, is an essential dimension of the philosophy of nature. Ultimately, this book draws the profile of a concept of nature based on time and technology that escapes the nature-artifice distinction that has mired the philosophy of nature for so long.
Download or read book Histories of Technology the Environment and Modern Britain written by Jon Agar and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain brings together historians with a wide range of interests to take a uniquely wide-lens view of how technology and the environment have been intimately and irreversibly entangled in Britain over the last 300 years. It combines, for the first time, two perspectives with much to say about Britain since the industrial revolution: the history of technology and environmental history. Technologies are modified environments, just as nature is to varying extents engineered. Furthermore, technologies and our living and non-living environment are both predominant material forms of organisation – and self-organisation – that surround and make us. Both have changed over time, in intersecting ways. Technologies discussed in the collection include bulldozers, submarine cables, automobiles, flood barriers, medical devices, museum displays and biotechnologies. Environments investigated include bogs, cities, farms, places of natural beauty and pollution, land and sea. The book explores this diversity but also offers an integrated framework for understanding these intersections.
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: Nanotechnology! Genetic engineering! Miracle Drugs! We are promised that new technological developments will magically save us from the dire consequences of the 300-year fossil-fueled binge known as modern industrial civilization, without demanding any fundamental changes in our behavior. There is a pervasive belief that technological innovation will enable us to continue our current lifestyle indefinitely and will prevent social, economic and environmental collapse. Techno-Fix shows that negative unintended consequences of technology are inherently predictable and unavoidable, techno-optimism is completely unjustified, and modern technology, in the presence of continued economic growth, does not promote sustainability, but hastens collapse. The authors demonstrate that most technological solutions to social and technology-created problems are ineffective. They explore the reasons for the uncritical acceptance of new technologies, show who really controls the direction of technological change, and then advocate extensive reform. This comprehensive exposé is a powerful argument for why we can and should put the genie back in the bottle. An insightful and powerful critique, it is required reading for anyone who is concerned about blind techno-optimism and believes that the time has come to make science and technology more socially and environmentally responsible. For more information, please visit technofix.org .
Download or read book Technology and the Environment in History written by Sara B. Pritchard and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New perspectives on how envirotech can help us engage with the surrounding world in ways that are more sustainable for humanity—and the planet. Today's scientists, policymakers, and citizens are all confronted by numerous dilemmas at the nexus of technology and the environment. Every day seems to bring new worries about the dangers posed by carcinogens, "superbugs," energy crises, invasive species, genetically modified organisms, groundwater contamination, failing infrastructure, and other troubling issues. In Technology and the Environment in History, Sara B. Pritchard and Carl A. Zimring adopt an analytical approach to explore current research at the intersection of environmental history and the history of technology—an emerging field known as envirotech. Technology and the Environment in History They discuss the important topics, historical processes, and scholarly concerns that have emerged from recent work in thinking about envirotech. Each chapter focuses on a different urgent topic: • Food and Food Systems: How humans have manipulated organisms and ecosystems to produce nutrients for societies throughout history. • Industrialization: How environmental processes have constrained industrialization and required shifts in the relationships between human and nonhuman nature. • Discards: What we can learn from the multifaceted forms, complex histories, and unexpected possibilities of waste. • Disasters: How disaster, which the authors argue is common in the industrialized world, exposes the fallacy of tidy divisions among nature, technology, and society. • Body: How bodies reveal the porous boundaries among technology, the environment, and the human. • Sensescapes: How environmental and technological change have reshaped humans' (and potentially nonhumans') sensory experiences over time. Using five concepts to understand the historical relationships between technology and the environment—porosity, systems, hybridity, biopolitics, and environmental justice—Pritchard and Zimring propose a chronology of key processes, moments, and periodization in the history of technology and the environment. Ultimately, they assert, envirotechnical perspectives help us engage with the surrounding world in ways that are, we hope, more sustainable and just for both humanity and the planet. Aimed at students and scholars new to environmental history, the history of technology, and their nexus, this impressive synthesis looks outward and forward—identifying promising areas in more formative stages of intellectual development and current synergies with related areas that have emerged in the past few years, including environmental anthropology, discard studies, and posthumanism.
Download or read book Technology and Environment written by National Academy of Engineering and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1989-02-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology and Environment is one of a series of publications designed to bring national attention to issues of the greatest importance in engineering and technology during the 25th year of the National Academy of Engineering. A "paradox of technology" is that it can be both the source of environmental damage and our best hope for repairing such damage today and avoiding it in the future. Technology and Environment addresses this paradox and the blind spot it creates in our understanding of environmental crises. The book considers the proximate causes of environmental damageâ€"machines, factories, cities, and so onâ€"in a larger societal context, from which the will to devise and implement solutions must arise. It helps explain the depth and difficulty of such issues as global warming and hazardous wastes but also demonstrates the potential of technological innovation to have a constructive impact on the planet. With a range of data and examples, the authors cover such topics as the "industrial metabolism" of production and consumption, the environmental consequences of the information era, and design of environmentally compatible technologies.
Download or read book The Illusory Boundary written by Martin Reuss and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-08-06 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling new book challenges the view that a clear and unwavering boundary exists between nature and technology. Rejecting this dichotomy, the contributors show how the history of each can be united in a constantly shifting panorama where definitions of "nature" and "technology" alter and overlap.
Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Download or read book Pharmaceuticals in the Environment written by R. E. Hester and published by Royal Society of Chemistry. This book was released on 2016 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important reference for researchers in the pharmaceutical industry, environmentalists and policy makers wanting to better understand the impacts of pharmaceuticals on the environment.
Download or read book Our Time written by Pamperang High School and published by . This book was released on 1991* with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Digital Environment written by Pablo J. Boczkowski and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding digital technology in daily life: why we should think holistically in terms of a digital environment instead of discrete devices and apps. Increasingly we live through our personal screens; we work, play, socialize, and learn digitally. The shift to remote everything during the pandemic was another step in a decades-long march toward the digitization of everyday life made possible by innovations in media, information, and communication technology. In The Digital Environment, Pablo Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein offer a new way to understand the role of the digital in our daily lives, calling on us to turn our attention from our discrete devices and apps to the array of artifacts and practices that make up the digital environment that envelops every aspect of our social experience. Boczkowski and Mitchelstein explore a series of issues raised by the digital takeover of everyday life, drawing on interviews with a variety of experts. They show how existing inequities of gender, race, ethnicity, education, and class are baked into the design and deployment of technology, and describe emancipatory practices that counter this--including the use of Twitter as a platform for activism through such hashtags as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. They discuss the digitization of parenting, schooling, and dating--noting, among other things, that today we can both begin and end relationships online. They describe how digital media shape our consumption of sports, entertainment, and news, and consider the dynamics of political campaigns, disinformation, and social activism. Finally, they report on developments in three areas that will be key to our digital future: data science, virtual reality, and space exploration.
Download or read book Silent Spring written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential, cornerstone book of modern environmentalism is now offered in a handsome 40th anniversary edition which features a new Introduction by activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new Afterword by Carson biographer Linda Lear.
Download or read book The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems written by National Academy of Engineering and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970s, the first wave of environmental regulation targeted specific sources of pollutants. In the 1990s, concern is focused not on the ends of pipes or the tops of smokestacks but on sweeping regional and global issues. This landmark volume explores the new industrial ecology, an emerging framework for making environmental factors an integral part of economic and business decision making. Experts on this new frontier explore concepts and applications, including: Bringing international law up to par with many national laws to encourage industrial ecology principles. Integrating environmental costs into accounting systems. Understanding design for environment, industrial "metabolism," and sustainable development and how these concepts will affect the behavior of industrial and service firms. The volume looks at negative and positive aspects of technology and addresses treatment of waste as a raw material. This volume will be important to domestic and international policymakers, leaders in business and industry, environmental specialists, and engineers and designers.
Download or read book World Wide Waste How Digital Is Killing Our Planet and What We Can Do About It written by Gerry McGovern and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2020-03-13 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking out when it's unpopular. Back in the day, Henry David Thoreau raged at the robber barons-the big shots of their age, despoiling the environment in the name of progress. Deep in the throes of the seemingly unstoppable growth of tech, a modern-day Thoreau has emerged in the guise of Gerry McGovern-decrying the massive, hidden negative impacts of tech on the environment. McGovern has thoroughly documented in World Wide Waste how tech damages the Earth-and what we should be doing about it. It is not just the acres of discarded computer hardware conveniently dumped in Third World countries. Every time an email is downloaded it contributes to global warming. Every tweet, search, check of a webpage creates pollution. Digital is physical. Those data centers are not in the Cloud. They're on land in massive physical buildings packed full of computers hungry for energy. It seems invisible. It seems cheap and free. It's not. Digital costs the Earth.
Download or read book Time Progress Growth and Technology written by Filipe Duarte Santos and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the current challenges of sustainable development, including its social, economic and environmental components. The author argues that we need to develop a new concept of time based on inter-generational solidarity, which focuses both on the long- and the short term. The evolution of man's notions of time are analyzed from prehistory to modern times, showing how these concepts shape our worldviews, our ecological paradigms and our equilibrium with our planet. Practical approaches to dealing with the major medium- and long term sustainability challenges of the 21st century are presented and discussed. This is a thought provoking and timely book that addresses the main global socioeconomic and environmental challenges facing the current and future generations, using science-based analysis and perspectives. It presents an historical narrative of the advent of progress, economic growth and technology, and discusses the structural changes needed to co-create sustainable pathways. It provides hope for our future on Earth, mankind's common home. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Download or read book Renewable Energy written by Martin Kaltschmitt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-06-03 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The utilisation of renewable energies is not at all new; in the history of mankind renewable energies have for a long time been the primary possibility of generating energy. This only changed with industrial revolution when lignite and hard coal became increasingly more important. Later on, also crude oil gained importance. Offering the advantages of easy transportation and processing also as a raw material, crude oil has become one of the prime energy carriers applied today. Moreover, natural gas used for space heating and power provision as well as a transportation fuel has become increasingly important, as it is abundantly available and only requires low investments in terms of energy conversion facilities. As fossil energy carriers were increasingly used for energy generation, at least by the industrialised countries, the application of renewable energies decreased in absolute and relative terms; besides a few exceptions, renewable energies are of secondary importance with regard to overall energy generation.
Download or read book The Environment Our Natural Resources and Modern Technology written by Thomas R. DeGregori and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-06-02 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Always controversial, Thomas DeGregori has released another classic volume that is sure to inform, confound, and present new perspectives on todays environmental issues. This time he is taking on the environmentalists, naturalists, green consumerists, and those that hail the natural lifestyle as the healthy, politically correct thing to do. DeGregori examines the economics of green consumerism, the reality of saving the environment, how historical cultures may have influenced environmental damage, and how being ecologically correct may have a more damaging effect on our environment. Not just a regurgitation of theories; DeGregori offers real-time strategies and alternatives to enhance our natural resources and our environment in harmony with today’s modern technology. This is the book everyone will be talking about for years to come.
Download or read book Program Earth written by Jennifer Gabrys and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-04-13 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sensors are everywhere. Small, flexible, economical, and computationally powerful, they operate ubiquitously in environments. They compile massive amounts of data, including information about air, water, and climate. Never before has such a volume of environmental data been so broadly collected or so widely available. Grappling with the consequences of wiring our world, Program Earth examines how sensor technologies are programming our environments. As Jennifer Gabrys points out, sensors do not merely record information about an environment. Rather, they generate new environments and environmental relations. At the same time, they give a voice to the entities they monitor: to animals, plants, people, and inanimate objects. This book looks at the ways in which sensors converge with environments to map ecological processes, to track the migration of animals, to check pollutants, to facilitate citizen participation, and to program infrastructure. Through discussing particular instances where sensors are deployed for environmental study and citizen engagement across three areas of environmental sensing, from wild sensing to pollution sensing and urban sensing, Program Earth asks how sensor technologies specifically contribute to new environmental conditions. What are the implications for wiring up environments? How do sensor applications not only program environments, but also program the sorts of citizens and collectives we might become? Program Earth suggests that the sensor-based monitoring of Earth offers the prospect of making new environments not simply as an extension of the human but rather as new “technogeographies” that connect technology, nature, and people.
