Download or read book The Nature of Technology written by W. Brian Arthur and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nature of Technology will change the way you think about this fundamental subject forever. W. Brian Arthur's many years of thinking and writing about technology have culminated in a unique understanding of his subject. Here he examines the nature of technology itself: what is it and how does it evolve? Giving rare insights into the evolution of specific technologies and a new framework for thinking about others, every sentence points to some further truth and fascination. At a time when we are ever more reliant on technological solutions for the world's problems, it is extraordinary how little we actually understand the processes that lead to innovation and invention. Until now. This will be a landmark book that will define its subject, and inspire people to think about technology in depth for the very first time.

Download or read book What Technology Wants written by Kevin Kelly and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-09-27 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Inevitable— a sweeping vision of technology as a living force that can expand our individual potential In this provocative book, one of today's most respected thinkers turns the conversation about technology on its head by viewing technology as a natural system, an extension of biological evolution. By mapping the behavior of life, we paradoxically get a glimpse at where technology is headed-or "what it wants." Kevin Kelly offers a dozen trajectories in the coming decades for this near-living system. And as we align ourselves with technology's agenda, we can capture its colossal potential. This visionary and optimistic book explores how technology gives our lives greater meaning and is a must-read for anyone curious about the future.

Download or read book Diverse Learning Opportunities Through Technology Based Curriculum Design written by Williams, Demetrick and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2018-08-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The infusion of technology into curriculum influences the methods and techniques used to educate the student population. By integrating effective technology in education, teachers are provided with a better opportunity to adapt and enhance the learning experience for students from various backgrounds. Diverse Learning Opportunities Through Technology-Based Curriculum Design provides innovative insights into the development and advancement of online instruction and educational technology to engage students from diverse backgrounds. The content within this publication addresses academic performance, technology integration, and online learning. It is geared towards educators, educational software developers, instructional designers, and researchers, and it covers topics centered on the methods to adjust, adapt, and implant the newest technology into contemporary curriculum.

Download or read book Technology and Social Inclusion written by Mark Warschauer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004-09-17 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of the discussion about new technologies and social equality has focused on the oversimplified notion of a "digital divide." Technology and Social Inclusion moves beyond the limited view of haves and have-nots to analyze the different forms of access to information and communication technologies. Drawing on theory from political science, economics, sociology, psychology, communications, education, and linguistics, the book examines the ways in which differing access to technology contributes to social and economic stratification or inclusion. The book takes a global perspective, presenting case studies from developed and developing countries, including Brazil, China, Egypt, India, and the United States. A central premise is that, in today's society, the ability to access, adapt, and create knowledge using information and communication technologies is critical to social inclusion. This focus on social inclusion shifts the discussion of the "digital divide" from gaps to be overcome by providing equipment to social development challenges to be addressed through the effective integration of technology into communities, institutions, and societies. What is most important is not so much the physical availability of computers and the Internet but rather people's ability to make use of those technologies to engage in meaningful social practices.

Download or read book What Do Science Technology and Innovation Mean from Africa written by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-06-16 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explorations of science, technology, and innovation in Africa not as the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but as the working of African knowledge. In the STI literature, Africa has often been regarded as a recipient of science, technology, and innovation rather than a maker of them. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines show that STI in Africa is not merely the product of “technology transfer” from elsewhere but the working of African knowledge. Their contributions focus on African ways of looking, meaning-making, and creating. The chapter authors see Africans as intellectual agents whose perspectives constitute authoritative knowledge and whose strategic deployment of both endogenous and inbound things represents an African-centered notion of STI. “Things do not (always) mean the same from everywhere,” observes Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, the volume's editor. Western, colonialist definitions of STI are not universalizable. The contributors discuss topics that include the trivialization of indigenous knowledge under colonialism; the creative labor of chimurenga, the transformation of everyday surroundings into military infrastructure; the role of enslaved Africans in America as innovators and synthesizers; the African ethos of “fixing”; the constitutive appropriation that makes mobile technologies African; and an African innovation strategy that builds on domestic capacities. The contributions describe an Africa that is creative, technological, and scientific, showing that African STI is the latest iteration of a long process of accumulative, multicultural knowledge production. Contributors Geri Augusto, Shadreck Chirikure, Chux Daniels, Ron Eglash, Ellen Foster, Garrick E. Louis, D. A. Masolo, Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Neda Nazemi, Toluwalogo Odumosu, Katrien Pype, Scott Remer

Download or read book Is Technology Good for Education written by Neil Selwyn and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital technologies are a key feature of contemporary education. Schools, colleges and universities operate along high-tech lines, while alternate forms of online education have emerged to challenge the dominance of traditional institutions. According to many experts, the rapid digitization of education over the past ten years has undoubtedly been a ‘good thing’. Is Technology Good For Education? offers a critical counterpoint to this received wisdom, challenging some of the central ways in which digital technology is presumed to be positively affecting education. Instead Neil Selwyn considers what is being lost as digital technologies become ever more integral to education provision and engagement. Crucially, he questions the values, agendas and interests that stand to gain most from the rise of digital education. This concise, up-to-the-minute analysis concludes by considering alternate approaches that might be capable of rescuing and perhaps revitalizing the ideals of public education, while not denying the possibilities of digital technology altogether.

Download or read book Technology written by Eric Schatzberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In modern life, technology is everywhere. Yet as a concept, technology is a mess. In popular discourse, technology is little more than the latest digital innovations. Scholars do little better, offering up competing definitions that include everything from steelmaking to singing. In Technology: Critical History of a Concept, Eric Schatzberg explains why technology is so difficult to define by examining its three thousand year history, one shaped by persistent tensions between scholars and technical practitioners. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, scholars have tended to hold technicians in low esteem, defining technical practices as mere means toward ends defined by others. Technicians, in contrast, have repeatedly pushed back against this characterization, insisting on the dignity, creativity, and cultural worth of their work. ​The tension between scholars and technicians continued from Aristotle through Francis Bacon and into the nineteenth century. It was only in the twentieth century that modern meanings of technology arose: technology as the industrial arts, technology as applied science, and technology as technique. Schatzberg traces these three meanings to the present day, when discourse about technology has become pervasive, but confusion among the three principal meanings of technology remains common. He shows that only through a humanistic concept of technology can we understand the complex human choices embedded in our modern world.

Download or read book Persuasive Technology written by B.J. Fogg and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2003-01-04 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can computers change what you think and do? Can they motivate you to stop smoking, persuade you to buy insurance, or convince you to join the Army? "Yes, they can," says Dr. B.J. Fogg, director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University. Fogg has coined the phrase "Captology"(an acronym for computers as persuasive technologies) to capture the domain of research, design, and applications of persuasive computers.In this thought-provoking book, based on nine years of research in captology, Dr. Fogg reveals how Web sites, software applications, and mobile devices can be used to change people's attitudes and behavior. Technology designers, marketers, researchers, consumers—anyone who wants to leverage or simply understand the persuasive power of interactive technology—will appreciate the compelling insights and illuminating examples found inside. Persuasive technology can be controversial—and it should be. Who will wield this power of digital influence? And to what end? Now is the time to survey the issues and explore the principles of persuasive technology, and B.J. Fogg has written this book to be your guide.* Filled with key term definitions in persuasive computing*Provides frameworks for understanding this domain*Describes real examples of persuasive technologies

Download or read book What is Sustainable Technology written by Karel Mulder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designers of technology have a major responsibility in the current age. Their designs can have tremendous effects on society, in both the short and the long term. In fact, sustainable development itself has all the characteristics of a design project, albeit a vast one. But a failed product design here will be not just be unsuccessful in the market – it will have far-reaching consequences. It is our common responsibility to make the project successful. Technology has played an important role in creating the problems that we now face; but it will also play an important role in solving them. But this does not mean the technological fix will be easy. How do we allocate resources and attention when there are myriad issues under the umbrella of "sustainable development" currently in competition with one another? How do we arrive at precise specifications for the sustainable technologies that are to be developed and, furthermore, reach consensus on these specifications? What if our sustainable technological solutions aggravate other problems or create new ones? And, because sustainable development is all about the long-term consequences of our actions, how do we assess the effects of modifying existing landscapes, infrastructures and patterns of life?How could we be sure in advance that the changes that new technologies bring will make our society more sustainable? These dilemmas and paradoxes are the subject of this provocative book. Sometimes the claim that a technology is sustainable is made in order to make the technology acceptable in the political process, as in the case of nuclear energy production, where the claims of "sustainability" refer to the absence of CO2 emissions. In the case of biofuels, claims of sustainability have led to a "fuel or food" debate, showing that sustainability has counteracting articulations. And the well-known rebound effect is observed when increased resource efficiency can create a stimulus for consumption. What is Sustainable Technology? illustrates that the sustainability impact of a technology is often much more complicated and ambivalent than one might expect. Making improvements to existing designs is not the technological challenge that will lead to real solutions. We mustn't look to change a part of a machine, but rather the machine as a whole – or even the whole system in which it functions. It is these system innovations that have the potential to make a genuine contribution to sustainable development. What is Sustainable Technology? will help all those involved in designing more sustainable technologies in determining their strategies. It does so by presenting case studies of different technologies in contrasting contexts. Each case asks: 1. What articulations of sustainability played a role in the design process? 2. What sustainability effects did this technology lead to? 3. Who was affected, where, and when? 4. Could the designer have foreseen these consequences? 5. How did the designer anticipate them? 6. How was societal interaction dealt with during the design process? Finally, the authors reflect on future options for the sustainable technology designer. They argue that an important first step is an awareness of the multitude of sustainable development challenges that play a role in production, use, recycling and end-of-life disposal. What is Sustainable Technology? will be essential reading for product designers, engineers, material scientists and others involved in the development of sustainable technologies, as well as a wide academic audience interested in the complexities of the sustainable design process.

Download or read book Artificial Unintelligence written by Meredith Broussard and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology and why we should never assume that computers always get it right. In Artificial Unintelligence, Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we can (and should) do with technology. With this book, she offers a guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology—and issues a warning that we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against technochauvinism—the belief that technology is always the solution—Broussard argues that it's just not true that social problems would inevitably retreat before a digitally enabled Utopia. To prove her point, she undertakes a series of adventures in computer programming. She goes for an alarming ride in a driverless car, concluding “the cyborg future is not coming any time soon”; uses artificial intelligence to investigate why students can't pass standardized tests; deploys machine learning to predict which passengers survived the Titanic disaster; and attempts to repair the U.S. campaign finance system by building AI software. If we understand the limits of what we can do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we should do with it to make the world better for everyone.

Download or read book Technology of the Oppressed written by David Nemer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Brazilian favela residents engage with and appropriate technologies, both to fight the oppression in their lives and to represent themselves in the world. Brazilian favelas are impoverished settlements usually located on hillsides or the outskirts of a city. In Technology of the Oppressed, David Nemer draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork to provide a rich account of how favela residents engage with technology in community technology centers and in their everyday lives. Their stories reveal the structural violence of the information age. But they also show how those oppressed by technology don’t just reject it, but consciously resist and appropriate it, and how their experiences with digital technologies enable them to navigate both digital and nondigital sources of oppression—and even, at times, to flourish. Nemer uses a decolonial and intersectional framework called Mundane Technology as an analytical tool to understand how digital technologies can simultaneously be sites of oppression and tools in the fight for freedom. Building on the work of the Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, he shows how the favela residents appropriate everyday technologies—technological artifacts (cell phones, Facebook), operations (repair), and spaces (Telecenters and Lan Houses)—and use them to alleviate the oppression in their everyday lives. He also addresses the relationship of misinformation to radicalization and the rise of the new far right. Contrary to the simplistic techno-optimistic belief that technology will save the poor, even with access to technology these marginalized people face numerous sources of oppression, including technological biases, racism, classism, sexism, and censorship. Yet the spirit, love, community, resilience, and resistance of favela residents make possible their pursuit of freedom.

Download or read book Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity written by S. Cuomo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-02 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses five case-studies to set ancient technical knowledge in its political, social and intellectual context.

Download or read book What is Technology written by Frances Durkin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-06-06 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fact-filled non-fiction that uncovers the who where why and how of amazing technological inventions throughout history. From the magic of making music to lightbulb moments and tiny technology the contents focus on the people behind the inventions and the history happening at the time. There is a contents list at the front of the book and a glossary at the back plus a "take it further" activity on each page. Discover the human side of STEM!

Download or read book University Technology Transfer written by Tom Hockaday and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tackling a complex topic in clear language, the book reveals the impressive scale of patenting, licensing, and spin-out company creation while demonstrating that university technology transfer is a commercial activity with benefits that go well beyond the opportunity to make money.

Download or read book Alone Together written by Sherry Turkle and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking book by one of the most important thinkers of our time shows how technology is warping our social lives and our inner ones Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a deep solitude. MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Based on hundreds of interviews and with a new introduction taking us to the present day, Alone Together describes changing, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, and families.

Download or read book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life written by Albert Borgmann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-14 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blending social analysis and philosophy, Albert Borgmann maintains that technology creates a controlling pattern in our lives. This pattern, discernible even in such an inconspicuous action as switching on a stereo, has global effects: it sharply divides life into labor and leisure, it sustains the industrial democracies, and it fosters the view that the earth itself is a technological device. He argues that technology has served us as well in conquering hunger and disease, but that when we turn to it for richer experiences, it leads instead to a life dominated by effortless and thoughtless consumption. Borgmann does not reject technology but calls for public conversation about the nature of the good life. He counsels us to make room in a technological age for matters of ultimate concern—things and practices that engage us in their own right.

Download or read book A Framework for K 12 Science Education written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.