Machine Age Ideology

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Machine-Age Ideology

Author : John M. Jordan
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807876038
Total Pages : 469 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Machine-Age Ideology by : John M. Jordan

Download or read book Machine-Age Ideology written by John M. Jordan and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-10-12 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this interdisciplinary work, John Jordan traces the significant influence on American politics of a most unlikely hero: the professional engineer. Jordan shows how technical triumphs--bridges, radio broadcasting, airplanes, automobiles, skyscrapers, and electrical power--inspired social and political reformers to borrow the language and logic of engineering in the early twentieth century, bringing terms like efficiency, technocracy, and social engineering into the political lexicon. Demonstrating that the cultural impact of technology spread far beyond the factory and laboratory, Jordan shows how a panoply of reformers embraced the language of machinery and engineering as metaphors for modern statecraft and social progress. President Herbert Hoover, himself an engineer, became the most powerful of the technocratic progressives. Elsewhere, this vision of social engineering was debated by academics, philanthropists, and commentators of the day--including John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen, Lewis Mumford, Walter Lippmann, and Charles Beard. The result, Jordan argues, was a new way of talking about the state. Originally published in 1994. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Machines as the Measure of Men

Author : Michael Adas
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801497605
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (976 download)

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Book Synopsis Machines as the Measure of Men by : Michael Adas

Download or read book Machines as the Measure of Men written by Michael Adas and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of what has become a standard account of Western expansion and technological dominance includes a new preface by the author that discusses how subsequent developments in gender and race studies, as well as global technology and politics, enter into conversation with his original arguments.

Manufacturing Ideology

Author : William M. Tsutsui
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400822661
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Manufacturing Ideology by : William M. Tsutsui

Download or read book Manufacturing Ideology written by William M. Tsutsui and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-12 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese industry is the envy of the world for its efficient and humane management practices. Yet, as William Tsutsui argues, the origins and implications of "Japanese-style management" are poorly understood. Contrary to widespread belief, Japan's acclaimed strategies are not particularly novel or even especially Japanese. Tsutsui traces the roots of these practices to Scientific Management, or Taylorism, an American concept that arrived in Japan at the turn of the century. During subsequent decades, this imported model was embraced--and ultimately transformed--in Japan's industrial workshops. Imitation gave rise to innovation as Japanese managers sought a "revised" Taylorism that combined mechanistic efficiency with respect for the humanity of labor. Tsutsui's groundbreaking study charts Taylorism's Japanese incarnation, from the "efficiency movement" of the 1920s, through Depression-era "rationalization" and wartime mobilization, up to postwar "productivity" drives and quality-control campaigns. Taylorism became more than a management tool; its spread beyond the factory was a potent intellectual template in debates over economic growth, social policy, and political authority in modern Japan. Tsutsui's historical and comparative perspectives reveal the centrality of Japanese Taylorism to ongoing discussions of Japan's government-industry relations and the evolution of Fordist mass production. He compels us to rethink what implications Japanese-style management has for Western industries, as well as the future of Japan itself.

Vox ex Machina

Author : Sarah A. Bell
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262375885
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Vox ex Machina by : Sarah A. Bell

Download or read book Vox ex Machina written by Sarah A. Bell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-09-24 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How today’s digital devices got their voices, and how we learned to listen to them. From early robots to toys like the iconic Speak & Spell to Apple’s Siri, Vox Ex Machina tells the fascinating story of how scientists and engineers developed voices for machines during the twentieth century. Sarah Bell chronicles the development of voice synthesis from buzzy electrical current and circuitry in analog components to the robotic sounds of early digital signal processing to today’s human sounding applications. Along the way, Bell also shows how the public responded to these technologies and asks whether talking machines are even good for us. Using a wide range of intriguing examples, Vox Ex Machina is embedded in a wider story about people—describing responses to voice synthesis technologies that often challenged prevailing ideas about computation and automation promoted by boosters of the Information Age. Bell helps explain why voice technologies came to sound and to operate in the way they do—influenced as they were by a combination of technical assumptions and limitations, the choices of the corporations that deploy them, and the habits that consumers developed over time. A beautifully written book that will appeal to anyone with a healthy skepticism toward Silicon Valley, Vox Ex Machina is an important and timely contribution to our cultural histories of information, computing, and media.

The Decisionist Imagination

Author : Daniel Bessner
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 1785339168
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (853 download)

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Book Synopsis The Decisionist Imagination by : Daniel Bessner

Download or read book The Decisionist Imagination written by Daniel Bessner and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2018-10-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the decades following World War II, the science of decision-making moved from the periphery to the center of transatlantic thought. The Decisionist Imagination explores how “decisionism” emerged from its origins in prewar political theory to become an object of intense social scientific inquiry in the new intellectual and institutional landscapes of the postwar era. By bringing together scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, this volume illuminates how theories of decision shaped numerous techno-scientific aspects of modern governance—helping to explain, in short, how we arrived at where we are today.

Reading California

Author : Stephanie Barron
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520227675
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (276 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading California by : Stephanie Barron

Download or read book Reading California written by Stephanie Barron and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays written by a stellar cast of art historians and scholars looks closely at the forces that shaped fine art and material culture in California. Illustrations.

Demanding Democracy

Author : Marc Stears
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691157901
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Demanding Democracy by : Marc Stears

Download or read book Demanding Democracy written by Marc Stears and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What today's political thinkers can learn from the radical democratic movements of twentieth-century America This is a major work of history and political theory that traces radical democratic thought in America across the twentieth century, seeking to recover ideas that could reenergize democratic activism today. The question of how citizens should behave as they struggle to create a more democratic society has haunted the United States throughout its history. Should citizens restrict themselves to patient persuasion or take to the streets and seek to impose change? Marc Stears argues that anyone who continues to wrestle with these questions could learn from the radical democratic tradition that was forged in the twentieth century by political activists, including progressives, trade unionists, civil rights campaigners, and members of the student New Left. These activists and their movements insisted that American campaigners for democratic change should be free to strike out in whatever ways they thought necessary, so long as their actions enhanced the political virtues of citizens and contributed to the eventual triumph of the democratic cause. Reevaluating the moral and strategic arguments, and the triumphs and excesses, of this radical democratic tradition, Stears contends that it still offers a compelling account of citizen behavior—one that is fairer, more inclusive, and more truly democratic than those advanced by political theorists today.

Routledge Companion to Contemporary Japanese Social Theory

Author : Anthony Elliott
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317580524
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis Routledge Companion to Contemporary Japanese Social Theory by : Anthony Elliott

Download or read book Routledge Companion to Contemporary Japanese Social Theory written by Anthony Elliott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-07-10 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Japanese Social Theory breaks new ground in providing a detailed, systematic appraisal of the major traditions of social theory prominent in Japan today – from theories of identity and individualization to globalization studies. The volume introduces readers to the rich diversity of social-theoretical critique in contemporary Japanese social theory. The editors have brought together some of the most influential Japanese social scientists to assess current trends in Japanese social theory, including Kazuhisa Nishihara, Aiko Kashimura, Masahiro Ogino, Yumiko Ehara and Kiyomitsu Yui. The volume also contains dialogues with these Japanese contributors from authoritative Western social theorists – including, among others, Axel Honneth, Roland Robertson, Bryan S. Turner, Charles Lemert and Anthony Elliott – to reflect on such developments. The result is an exciting, powerful set of intellectual exchanges. The book introduces, contextualizes and critiques social theories in the broader context of Japanese society, culture and politics – with particular emphasis upon Japanese engagements and revisions of major traditions of social thought. Divided into two sections, the book surveys traditions of social thought in Japanese social science and presents the major social issues facing contemporary Japan. The book will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, social theory, critical theory, psychoanalysis, risk, gender studies, feminist studies, self and identity studies, media studies and cultural studies.

Gender and Technology

Author : Nina Lerman
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801872594
Total Pages : 482 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (725 download)

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Book Synopsis Gender and Technology by : Nina Lerman

Download or read book Gender and Technology written by Nina Lerman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-10-15 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: McGaw; Joy Parr, Simon Fraser University.

From Idolatry to Advertising: Visual Art and Contemporary Culture

Author : Susan G. Josephson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315479990
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (154 download)

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Book Synopsis From Idolatry to Advertising: Visual Art and Contemporary Culture by : Susan G. Josephson

Download or read book From Idolatry to Advertising: Visual Art and Contemporary Culture written by Susan G. Josephson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book records the conclusions that I came to as I thought through the cultural evolution of each of the different sorts of visual art and tried to piece together their story from the perspective of philosophy. Chapter 1 discusses how culture shapes art to be what it is from the outside, like a mold shapes clay, and the great power of art to affect the way we think and to promote cultural change. Chapter 2 discusses the evolution of Fine Art from its birth in the Renaissance to its present old age and decline. Chapter 3 discusses the institutional structures that make art for popular taste its own sort of art, and the culture wars over censorship and whether public art should be Fine Art, or art for popular taste. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the life histories of design and advertising. This book is also the story of how art interacts with technology. In my work in Artificial Intelligence research I saw that there is an intimate connection between the evolution of design in engineering and design in art. In both sorts of design there is a growing understanding of how to make and use levels of packaging, and how to approach things from the functional perspective of the artifact. This is discussed in Chapter 4. My talk in Chapter 1 of how art styles affect us also reflects this functional approach. That is, instead of approaching art styles in the traditional ways, I have approached them in terms of the tasks of vision and how art delivers information packaged to be understood at different levels of visual processing. Using this functional approach, I stress what art does for us rather than what art is. I also tried to address the evolution of culture given the mass media and mass market, and the role of art in the growing marriage between television and computer. As I thought about computers in my work in Artificial Intelligence, I saw that a new sort of idolatry was arising where ^he computers were being asked to be infallible experts giving us advice on everything from taxes to marriage problems and our health. I saw that computers were being used not just as art tools and artists, but also as art objects like the ancient idols. This started me thinking about how other ancient functions of religion were being filled by advertising and the media.

Pursuing the Unity of Science

Author : Harmke Kamminga
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317073053
Total Pages : 419 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Pursuing the Unity of Science by : Harmke Kamminga

Download or read book Pursuing the Unity of Science written by Harmke Kamminga and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1918 to the late 1940s, a host of influential scientists and intellectuals in Europe and North America were engaged in a number of far-reaching unity of science projects. In this period of deep social and political divisions, scientists collaborated to unify sciences across disciplinary boundaries and to set up the international scientific community as a model for global political co-operation. They strove to align scientific and social objectives through rational planning and to promote unified science as the driving force of human civilization and progress. This volume explores the unity of science movement, providing a synthetic view of its pursuits and placing it in its historical context as a scientific and political force. Through a coherent set of original case studies looking at the significance of various projects and strategies of unification, the book highlights the great variety of manifestations of this endeavour. These range from unifying nuclear physics to the evolutionary synthesis, and from the democratization of scientific planning to the utopianism of H.G. Wells's world state. At the same time, the collection brings out the substantive links between these different pursuits, especially in the form of interconnected networks of unification and the alignment of objectives among them. Notably, it shows that opposition to fascism, using the instrument of unified science, became the most urgent common goal in the 1930s and 1940s. In addressing these issues, the book makes visible important historical developments, showing how scientists participated in, and actively helped to create, an interwar ideology of unification, and bringing to light the cultural and political significance of this enterprise.

Swing, that Modern Sound

Author : Kenneth J. Bindas
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1578063825
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Swing, that Modern Sound by : Kenneth J. Bindas

Download or read book Swing, that Modern Sound written by Kenneth J. Bindas and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2001 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How America invented swing, how swing energized America. It was for stage bands, for dancing, and for a jiving mood of letting go. Throughout the nation swing resounded with the spirit of good times. The swing era was America's segue into modernity. But this pop genre, for a decade America's favorite, arose during the worst of times, the Great Depression. From its peak in the 1930s until bebop, rhythm and blues, and country swamped it after World War II, swing defined an American generation and measured America's musical heartbeat. In its heyday swing reached a mass audience of very disparate individuals and united them. They perceived in the tempers and tempos of swing the very definition of modernity. What fed the music? And, in turn, what did the music feed? What social structures encouraged swing's creation, acceptance, and popularity? This book analyzes the cultural and historical significance of swing and tells how and why swing achieved its audience, unified its fans, defined its generation, and, after World War II, fell into decline. As it examines the role of race, class, and gender in the creation of this music, this book tells how the genre came to symbolize the modernist revolution taking place in America. The author was associate professor of history at Kent State University, Trumbull Campus, in Warren, Ohio, and the author of "All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA's Federal Music Project and American Society, 1935-1939."

The Mantra of Efficiency

Author : Jennifer Karns Alexander
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801886935
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (869 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mantra of Efficiency by : Jennifer Karns Alexander

Download or read book The Mantra of Efficiency written by Jennifer Karns Alexander and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-03-03 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2010 Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology Efficiency—associated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits or productivity—often counts as one of the highest virtues in Western culture. But what does it mean, exactly, to be efficient? How did this concept evolve from a means for evaluating simple machines to the mantra of progress and a prerequisite for success? In this provocative and ambitious study, Jennifer Karns Alexander explores the growing power of efficiency in the post-industrial West. Examining the ways the concept has appeared in modern history—from a benign measure of the thermal economy of a machine to its widespread application to personal behaviors like chewing habits, spending choices, and shop floor movements to its controversial use as a measure of the business success of American slavery—she argues that beneath efficiency's seemingly endless variety lies a common theme: the pursuit of mastery through techniques of surveillance, discipline, and control. Six historical case studies—two from Britain, one each from France and Germany, and two from the United States—illustrate the concept's fascinating development and provide context for the meanings of, and uses for, efficiency today and in the future.

Bounding Power

Author : Daniel H. Deudney
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400837278
Total Pages : 410 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Bounding Power by : Daniel H. Deudney

Download or read book Bounding Power written by Daniel H. Deudney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Realism, the dominant theory of international relations, particularly regarding security, seems compelling in part because of its claim to embody so much of Western political thought from the ancient Greeks to the present. Its main challenger, liberalism, looks to Kant and nineteenth-century economists. Despite their many insights, neither realism nor liberalism gives us adequate tools to grapple with security globalization, the liberal ascent, and the American role in their development. In reality, both realism and liberalism and their main insights were largely invented by republicans writing about republics. The main ideas of realism and liberalism are but fragments of republican security theory, whose primary claim is that security entails the simultaneous avoidance of the extremes of anarchy and hierarchy, and that the size of the space within which this is necessary has expanded due to technological change. In Daniel Deudney's reading, there is one main security tradition and its fragmentary descendants. This theory began in classical antiquity, and its pivotal early modern and Enlightenment culmination was the founding of the United States. Moving into the industrial and nuclear eras, this line of thinking becomes the basis for the claim that mutually restraining world government is now necessary for security and that political liberty cannot survive without new types of global unions. Unique in scope, depth, and timeliness, Bounding Power offers an international political theory for our fractious and perilous global village.

A Perilous Progress

Author : Michael Alan Bernstein
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400865085
Total Pages : 377 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis A Perilous Progress by : Michael Alan Bernstein

Download or read book A Perilous Progress written by Michael Alan Bernstein and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economics profession in twentieth-century America began as a humble quest to understand the "wealth of nations." It grew into a profession of immense public prestige--and now suffers a strangely withered public purpose. Michael Bernstein portrays a profession that has ended up repudiating the state that nurtured it, ignoring distributive justice, and disproportionately privileging private desires in the study of economic life. Intellectual introversion has robbed it, he contends, of the very public influence it coveted and cultivated for so long. With wit and irony he examines how a community of experts now identified with uncritical celebration of ''free market'' virtues was itself shaped, dramatically so, by government and collective action. In arresting and provocative detail Bernstein describes economists' fitful efforts to sway a state apparatus where values and goals could seldom remain separate from means and technique, and how their vocation was ultimately humbled by government itself. Replete with novel research findings, his work also analyzes the historical peculiarities that led the profession to a key role in the contemporary backlash against federal initiatives dating from the 1930s to reform the nation's economic and social life. Interestingly enough, scholars have largely overlooked the history that has shaped this profession. An economist by training, Bernstein brings a historian's sensibilities to his narrative, utilizing extensive archival research to reveal unspoken presumptions that, through the agency of economists themselves, have come to mold and define, and sometimes actually deform, public discourse. This book offers important, even troubling insights to readers interested in the modern economic and political history of the United States and perplexed by recent trends in public policy debate. It also complements a growing literature on the history of the social sciences. Sure to have a lasting impact on its field, A Perilous Progress represents an extraordinary contribution of gritty empirical research and conceptual boldness, of grand narrative breadth and profound analytical depth.

Everyday Politics

Author : Harry C. Boyte
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 9780812238143
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis Everyday Politics by : Harry C. Boyte

Download or read book Everyday Politics written by Harry C. Boyte and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly a spectator sport, electoral politics have become bitterly polarized by professional consultants and lobbyists and have been boiled down to the distributive mantra of "who gets what." In Everyday Politics, Harry Boyte transcends partisan politics to offer an alternative. He demonstrates how community-rooted activities reconnect citizens to engaged, responsible public life, and not just on election day but throughout the year. Boyte demonstrates that this type of activism has a rich history and strong philosophical foundation. It rests on the stubborn faith that the talents and insights of ordinary citizens--from nursery school to nursing home--are crucial elements in public life. Drawing on concrete examples of successful public work projects accomplished by diverse groups of people across the nation, Boyte demonstrates how citizens can master essential political skills, such as understanding issues in public terms, mapping complex issues of institutional power to create alliances, raising funds, communicating, and negotiating across lines of difference. He describes how these skills can be used to address the larger challenges of our time, thereby advancing a renewed vision of democratic society and freedom in the twenty-first century.

From Higher Aims to Hired Hands

Author : Rakesh Khurana
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400830869
Total Pages : 542 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis From Higher Aims to Hired Hands by : Rakesh Khurana

Download or read book From Higher Aims to Hired Hands written by Rakesh Khurana and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-22 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is management a profession? Should it be? Can it be? This major work of social and intellectual history reveals how such questions have driven business education and shaped American management and society for more than a century. The book is also a call for reform. Rakesh Khurana shows that university-based business schools were founded to train a professional class of managers in the mold of doctors and lawyers but have effectively retreated from that goal, leaving a gaping moral hole at the center of business education and perhaps in management itself. Khurana begins in the late nineteenth century, when members of an emerging managerial elite, seeking social status to match the wealth and power they had accrued, began working with major universities to establish graduate business education programs paralleling those for medicine and law. Constituting business as a profession, however, required codifying the knowledge relevant for practitioners and developing enforceable standards of conduct. Khurana, drawing on a rich set of archival material from business schools, foundations, and academic associations, traces how business educators confronted these challenges with varying strategies during the Progressive era and the Depression, the postwar boom years, and recent decades of freewheeling capitalism. Today, Khurana argues, business schools have largely capitulated in the battle for professionalism and have become merely purveyors of a product, the MBA, with students treated as consumers. Professional and moral ideals that once animated and inspired business schools have been conquered by a perspective that managers are merely agents of shareholders, beholden only to the cause of share profits. According to Khurana, we should not thus be surprised at the rise of corporate malfeasance. The time has come, he concludes, to rejuvenate intellectually and morally the training of our future business leaders.