Does Technology Drive History?

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262691673
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Does Technology Drive History? by : Merritt Roe Smith

Download or read book Does Technology Drive History? written by Merritt Roe Smith and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1994-06-02 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical questionthat has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent,and by what means, does a society's technology determine itspolitical, social, economic, and cultural forms? These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical question that has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent, and by what means, does a society's technology determine its political, social, economic, and cultural forms? Karl Marx launched the modern debate on determinism with his provocative remark that "the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist," and a classic article by Robert Heilbroner (reprinted here) renewed the debate within the context of the history of technology. This book clarifies the debate and carries it forward.Marx's position has become embedded in our culture, in the form of constant reminders as to how our fast-changing technologies will alter our lives. Yet historians who have looked closely at where technologies really come from generally support the proposition that technologies are not autonomous but are social products, susceptible to democratic controls. The issue is crucial for democratic theory. These essays tackle it head-on, offering a deep look at all the shadings of determinism and assessing determinist models in a wide variety of historical contexts. Contributors Bruce Bimber, Richard W. Bulliet, Robert L. Heilbroner, Thomas P. Hughes, Leo Marx, Thomas J. Misa, Peter C. Perdue, Philip Scranton, Merritt Roe Smith, Michael L. Smith, John M. Staudenmaier, Rosalind Williams

Beyond Innovation: Technology, Institution and Change as Categories for Social Analysis

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 113754712X
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (375 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Innovation: Technology, Institution and Change as Categories for Social Analysis by : Thomas Kaiserfeld

Download or read book Beyond Innovation: Technology, Institution and Change as Categories for Social Analysis written by Thomas Kaiserfeld and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Innovation counter weighs the present innovation monomania by broadening our thinking about technological and institutional change. It is done by a multidisciplinary review of the most common ideas about the dynamics between technology and institutions.

The Social Construction of Technological Systems, anniversary edition

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262517604
Total Pages : 471 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Social Construction of Technological Systems, anniversary edition by : Wiebe E. Bijker

Download or read book The Social Construction of Technological Systems, anniversary edition written by Wiebe E. Bijker and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-05-18 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anniversary edition of an influential book that introduced a groundbreaking approach to the study of science, technology, and society. This pioneering book, first published in 1987, launched the new field of social studies of technology. It introduced a method of inquiry—social construction of technology, or SCOT—that became a key part of the wider discipline of science and technology studies. The book helped the MIT Press shape its STS list and inspired the Inside Technology series. The thirteen essays in the book tell stories about such varied technologies as thirteenth-century galleys, eighteenth-century cooking stoves, and twentieth-century missile systems. Taken together, they affirm the fruitfulness of an approach to the study of technology that gives equal weight to technical, social, economic, and political questions, and they demonstrate the illuminating effects of the integration of empirics and theory. The approaches in this volume—collectively called SCOT (after the volume's title) have since broadened their scope, and twenty-five years after the publication of this book, it is difficult to think of a technology that has not been studied from a SCOT perspective and impossible to think of a technology that cannot be studied that way.

Society, Ethics, and Technology

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Publisher : Wadsworth Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9781133943587
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (435 download)

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Book Synopsis Society, Ethics, and Technology by : Morton Emanuel Winston

Download or read book Society, Ethics, and Technology written by Morton Emanuel Winston and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From today's headlines to your textbook, SOCIETY, ETHICS, AND TECHNOLOGY, 5E, International Edition explores the cutting edge of technological innovation and how these advances represent profound moral dilemmas for society as a whole. You will build a strong foundation in theory and applied ethics as you are challenged to examine critically the social effects of technology in your daily life.This timely anthology, filled with cutting-edge work from prominent scholars and thinkers, focuses on current technological issues and ethical debates. Insightful introductions and focus questions before each piece help put readings in context and to establish frameworks for ethical decision-making. The readings examine the consequences of technological change from a variety of historical, social, and philosophical perspectives. Special coverage of the history of technology focuses on ground-breaking developments, as well as the technological underpinnings of contemporary globalization. New articles examine the impact of contemporary technological advances, such as nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and social media. In addition, the book explores the future of technology in such areas as human rights, overpopulation, biotechnology, information technology, climate change, and the environment.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

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Publisher : Currency
ISBN 13 : 1524758876
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fourth Industrial Revolution by : Klaus Schwab

Download or read book The Fourth Industrial Revolution written by Klaus Schwab and published by Currency. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolu­tion, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.

Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521525084
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (25 download)

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Book Synopsis Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation by : John Langdon

Download or read book Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation written by John Langdon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-04 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the introduction of the horse as a replacement for oxen in English farming.

Autonorama

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Publisher : Island Press
ISBN 13 : 1642832405
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (428 download)

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Book Synopsis Autonorama by : Peter Norton

Download or read book Autonorama written by Peter Norton and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving, historian Peter Norton argues that driverless cars cannot be the safe, sustainable, and inclusive "mobility solutions" that tech companies and automakers are promising us. The salesmanship behind the "driverless future" is distracting us from better ways to get around that we can implement now. Unlike autonomous vehicles, these alternatives are inexpensive, safe, sustainable, and inclusive. Norton takes the reader on an engaging ride--from the GM Futurama exhibit to "smart" highways and vehicles--to show how we are once again being sold car dependency in the guise of mobility. Autonorama is hopeful, advocating for wise, proven, humane mobility that we can invest in now, without waiting for technology that is forever just out of reach.

Cold War Kitchen

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262516136
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Cold War Kitchen by : Ruth Oldenziel

Download or read book Cold War Kitchen written by Ruth Oldenziel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-01-21 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The kitchen as political symbol and material reality in the cold war years. Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev's famous “kitchen debate” in 1958 involved more than the virtues of American appliances. Both Nixon and Khrushchev recognized the political symbolism of the modern kitchen; the kind of technological innovation represented in this everyday context spoke to the political system that produced it. The kitchen connects the “big” politics of politicians and statesmen to the “small” politics of users and interest groups. Cold War Kitchen looks at the kitchen as material object and symbol, considering the politics and the practices of one of the most famous technological icons of the twentieth century. Defining the kitchen as a complex technological artifact as important as computers, cars, and nuclear missiles, the book examines the ways in which a range of social actors in Europe shaped the kitchen as both ideological construct and material practice. These actors—from manufacturers and modernist architects to housing reformers and feminists—constructed and domesticated the technological innovations of the postwar kitchen. The home became a “mediation junction” in which women users and others felt free to advise producers from the consumer's point of view. In essays illustrated by striking period photographs, the contributors to Cold War Kitchen consider such topics as Soviet consumers' ambivalent responses to the American dream kitchen argued over by Nixon and Khrushchev; the Frankfurter Küche, a European modernist kitchen of the interwar period (and its export to Turkey when its designer fled the Nazis); and the British state-subsidized kitchen design so innovative that it was mistaken for a luxury American product. The concluding essays challenge the received wisdom of past interpretations of the kitchen debate.

The Cloud Revolution

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Publisher : Encounter Books
ISBN 13 : 164177231X
Total Pages : 397 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (417 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cloud Revolution by : Mark P. Mills

Download or read book The Cloud Revolution written by Mark P. Mills and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The conventional wisdom on how technology will change the future is wrong. Mark Mills lays out a radically different and optimistic vision for what’s really coming. The mainstream forecasts fall into three camps. One considers today as the “new normal,” where ordering a ride or food on a smartphone or trading in bitcoins is as good as it’s going to get. Another foresees a dystopian era of widespread, digitally driven job- and business-destruction. A third believes that the only technological revolution that matters will be found with renewable energy and electric cars. But according to Mills, a convergence of technologies will instead drive an economic boom over the coming decade, one that historians will characterize as the “Roaring 2020s.” It will come not from any single big invention, but from the confluence of radical advances in three primary technology domains: microprocessors, materials, and machines. Microprocessors are increasingly embedded in everything. Materials, from which everything is built, are emerging with novel, almost magical capabilities. And machines, which make and move all manner of stuff, are undergoing a complementary transformation. Accelerating and enabling all of this is the Cloud, history’s biggest infrastructure, which is itself based on the building blocks of next-generation microprocessors and artificial intelligence. We’ve seen this pattern before. The technological revolution that drove the great economic expansion of the twentieth century can be traced to a similar confluence, one that was first visible in the 1920s: a new information infrastructure (telephony), new machines (cars and power plants), and new materials (plastics and pharmaceuticals). Single inventions don’t drive great, long-cycle booms. It always takes convergent revolutions in technology’s three core spheres—information, materials, and machines. Over history, that’s only happened a few times. We have wrung much magic from the technologies that fueled the last long boom. But the great convergence now underway will ignite the 2020s. And this time, unlike any previous historical epoch, we have the Cloud amplifying everything. The next long boom starts now.

Who Can You Trust?

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Author :
Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1541773683
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (417 download)

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Book Synopsis Who Can You Trust? by : Rachel Botsman

Download or read book Who Can You Trust? written by Rachel Botsman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you can't trust those in charge, who can you trust? From government to business, banks to media, trust in institutions is at an all-time low. But this isn't the age of distrust -- far from it. In this revolutionary book, world-renowned trust expert Rachel Botsman reveals that we are at the tipping point of one of the biggest social transformations in human history -- with fundamental consequences for everyone. A new world order is emerging: we might have lost faith in institutions and leaders, but millions of people rent their homes to total strangers, exchange digital currencies, or find themselves trusting a bot. This is the age of "distributed trust," a paradigm shift driven by innovative technologies that are rewriting the rules of an all-too-human relationship. If we are to benefit from this radical shift, we must understand the mechanics of how trust is built, managed, lost, and repaired in the digital age. In the first book to explain this new world, Botsman provides a detailed map of this uncharted landscape -- and explores what's next for humanity.

Globalization of Technology

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309038421
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Globalization of Technology by : Proceedings of the Sixth Convocation of The Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences

Download or read book Globalization of Technology written by Proceedings of the Sixth Convocation of The Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1988-02-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The technological revolution has reached around the world, with important consequences for business, government, and the labor market. Computer-aided design, telecommunications, and other developments are allowing small players to compete with traditional giants in manufacturing and other fields. In this volume, 16 engineering and industrial experts representing eight countries discuss the growth of technological advances and their impact on specific industries and regions of the world. From various perspectives, these distinguished commentators describe the practical aspects of technology's reach into business and trade.

The Charisma Machine

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262537443
Total Pages : 323 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Charisma Machine by : Morgan G. Ames

Download or read book The Charisma Machine written by Morgan G. Ames and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-11-19 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating examination of technological utopianism and its complicated consequences. In The Charisma Machine, Morgan Ames chronicles the life and legacy of the One Laptop per Child project and explains why—despite its failures—the same utopian visions that inspired OLPC still motivate other projects trying to use technology to “disrupt” education and development. Announced in 2005 by MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte, One Laptop per Child promised to transform the lives of children across the Global South with a small, sturdy, and cheap laptop computer, powered by a hand crank. In reality, the project fell short in many ways—starting with the hand crank, which never materialized. Yet the project remained charismatic to many who were captivated by its claims of access to educational opportunities previously out of reach. Behind its promises, OLPC, like many technology projects that make similarly grand claims, had a fundamentally flawed vision of who the computer was made for and what role technology should play in learning. Drawing on fifty years of history and a seven-month study of a model OLPC project in Paraguay, Ames reveals that the laptops were not only frustrating to use, easy to break, and hard to repair, they were designed for “technically precocious boys”—idealized younger versions of the developers themselves—rather than the children who were actually using them. The Charisma Machine offers a cautionary tale about the allure of technology hype and the problems that result when utopian dreams drive technology development.

War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190605405
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction by : Alex Roland

Download or read book War and Technology: A Very Short Introduction written by Alex Roland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war instinct is part of human nature, but the means to fight war depend on technology. Alex Roland traces the co-evolution of technology and warfare from the Stone Age to the age of cyberwar, describing the inventions that changed the direction of warfare throughout history: from fortified walls, the chariot, battleships, and the gunpowder revolution to bombers, rockets, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and nuclear weapons. In the twenty-first century, new technologies continue to push warfare in unexpected directions, while warfare stimulates stunning new technological advances. Yet even now, the newest and best technology cannot guarantee victory. Brimming with dramatic narratives of battles and deep insights into military psychology, this book shows that although military technologies keep changing at great speed, the principles and patterns behind them abide.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

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Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1610395700
Total Pages : 658 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by : Shoshana Zuboff

Download or read book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism written by Shoshana Zuboff and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199323852
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction by : James A. Millward

Download or read book The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction written by James A. Millward and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The phrase "silk road" evokes vivid scenes of merchants leading camel caravans across vast stretches to trade exotic goods in glittering Oriental bazaars, of pilgrims braving bandits and frozen mountain passes to spread their faith across Asia. Looking at the reality behind these images, this Very Short Introduction illuminates the historical background against which the silk road flourished, shedding light on the importance of old-world cultural exchange to Eurasian and world history. On the one hand, historian James A. Millward treats the silk road broadly, to stand in for the cross-cultural communication between peoples across the Eurasian continent since at least the Neolithic era. On the other, he highlights specific examples of goods and ideas exchanged between the Mediterranean, Persia, India, and China, along with the significance of these exchanges. While including silks, spices, and travelers' tales of colorful locales, the book explains the dynamics of Central Eurasian history that promoted Silk Road interactions--especially the role of nomad empires--highlighting the importance of the biological, technological, artistic, intellectual, and religious interchanges across the continent. Millward shows that these exchanges had a profound effect on the old world that was akin to, if not on the scale of, modern globalization. He also disputes the idea that the silk road declined after the collapse of the Mongol empire or the opening of direct sea routes from Europe to Asia, showing how silk road phenomena continued through the early modern and modern expansion of the Russian and Chinese states across Central Asia. Millward concludes that the idea of the silk road has remained powerful, not only as a popular name for boutiques and restaurants, but also in modern politics and diplomacy, such as U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's "Silk Road Initiative" for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Retooling

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262731630
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (627 download)

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Book Synopsis Retooling by : Rosalind Williams

Download or read book Retooling written by Rosalind Williams and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A humanistic account of the changing role of technology in society, by a historian and a former Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education at MIT. When Warren Kendall Lewis left Spring Garden Farm in Delaware in 1901 to enter MIT, he had no idea that he was becoming part of a profession that would bring untold good to his country but would also contribute to the death of his family's farm. In this book written a century later, Professor Lewis's granddaughter, a cultural historian who has served in the administration of MIT, uses her grandfather's and her own experience to make sense of the rapidly changing role of technology in contemporary life. Rosalind Williams served as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education at MIT from 1995 through 2000. From this vantage point, she watched a wave of changes, some planned and some unexpected, transform many aspects of social and working life—from how students are taught to how research and accounting are done—at this major site of technological innovation. In Retooling, she uses this local knowledge to draw more general insights into contemporary society's obsession with technology. Today technology-driven change defines human desires, anxieties, memories, imagination, and experiences of time and space in unprecedented ways. But technology, and specifically information technology, does not simply influence culture and society; it is itself inherently cultural and social. If there is to be any reconciliation between technological change and community, Williams argues, it will come from connecting technological and social innovation—a connection demonstrated in the history that unfolds in this absorbing book.

The European Miracle

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521527835
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (278 download)

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Book Synopsis The European Miracle by : Eric Lionel Jones

Download or read book The European Miracle written by Eric Lionel Jones and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-04 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why modern states and economies developed in Europe first, and later in India and China.