Technology infrastructure supports the design, deployment and use of both individual technology-based components and the systems of such components that form the knowledge-based economy. As such, it plays a central role in the innovation process and in the promotion of the diffusion of technologies. Thus, it is an important element contributing to the operation of innovation systems and innovation performance in any modern economy. Technology infrastructure, either in the narrow or broad sense, is not well understood as an element of a sector's technology platform or of a national innovation system. Similarly misunderstood are the processes by which such infrastructure is embodied in standards or diffused through various institutional frameworks. In fact, because of the public and quasi-public good nature of technology infrastructure, firms as well as public-sector agencies under invest in it, thus inhibiting long-term technological advancement and economic growth. This volume of essays brings together a collection of papers from eminent scholars on all of the various dimensions of technology infrastructure mentioned above. To our knowledge, it is the first such collection of papers and we expect this scholarship to become the foundation for future research in this area. This book was published as a special issue of Economics of Innovation and New Technology.

Deepfake technology can create video evidence of just about anything: Hollywood superstar Margot Robbie in an orgy. Chinese president Xi Jinping declaring nuclear war. Basketball legend Michael Jordan winning the World Cup. The only limit is the imagination. In a time where fake news and disinformation is becoming harder and harder to identify, it is more essential than ever to understand the dark origins of deepfakes. Journalist Michael Grothaus goes down the rabbit hole as he interviews the often morally dubious, yet incredibly skilled creators of this content. It's a journey that opens a window into the communities transforming reality. Challenging, enlightening and terrifying, Trust No One asks the question other people are too scared to: what happens when you can no longer believe your own eyes? 'An alarming look at deepfakes' Sunday Times 'Michael Grothaus takes a hard look at the growth of deep fakes, examining cases that demonstrate the threats presented by morally dubious creators. From the personal to political, the impact of deep fakes is considered carefully by Grothaus, both on the victims and on society as a whole, creating an essential picture of a growing trend in disinformation' Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat

A PDF version of this book is available for free in Open Access at www.tandfebooks.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. The sequencing of the entire human genome has opened up unprecedented possibilities for healthcare, but also ethical and social dilemmas about how these can be achieved, particularly in developing countries. UNESCO's Bioethics Programme was established to address such issues in 1993. Since then, it has adopted three declarations on human genetics and bioethics (1997, 2003 and 2005), set up numerous training programmes around the world and debated the need for an international convention on human reproductive cloning. Negotiating Bioethics presents Langlois' research on the negotiation and implementation of the three declarations and the human cloning debate, based on fieldwork carried out in Kenya, South Africa, France and the UK, among policy-makers, geneticists, ethicists, civil society representatives and industry professionals. The book examines whether the UNESCO Bioethics Programme is an effective forum for (a) decision-making on bioethics issues and (b) ensuring ethical practice. Considering two different aspects of the UNESCO Bioethics Programme - deliberation and implementation - at international and national levels, Langlois explores: how relations between developed and developing countries can be made more equal who should be involved in global level decision-making and how this should proceed how overlap between initiatives can be avoided what can be done to improve the implementation of international norms by sovereign states how far universal norms can be contextualized what impact the efficacy of national level governance has at international level

A groundbreaking new exploration of the promises and perils of biotechnology -- and the future of American society.

Biotechnology offers exciting prospects for healing the sick and relieving suffering. But because our growing powers also enable alterations in the workings of the body and mind, they are becoming attractive to healthy people who would just like to look younger, perform better, feel happier, or become more "perfect."

This landmark book -- the product of more than sixteen months of research and reflection by the members of the President's Council on Bioethics -- explores the profound ethical and social consequences of today's biotechnical revolution. Almost every week brings news of novel methods for screening genes and testing embryos, choosing the sex and modifying the behavior of children, enhancing athletic performance, slowing aging, blunting painful memories, brightening mood, and altering basic temperaments. But we must not neglect the fundamental question: Should we be turning to biotechnology to fulfill our deepest human desires?

We want better children -- but not by turning procreation into manufacture or by altering their brains to gain them an edge over their peers. We want to perform better in the activities of life -- but not by becoming mere creatures of chemistry. We want longer lives -- but not at the cost of becoming so obsessed with our own longevity that we care little about future generations. We want to be happy -- but not by taking a drug that gives us happy feelings without the genuine loves, attachments, and achievements that are essential to true human flourishing. As we enjoy the benefits of biotechnology, members of the council contend, we need to hold fast to an account of the human being seen not in material or mechanistic or medical terms but in psychic, moral, and spiritual ones. By grasping the limits of our new powers, we can savor the fruits of the age of biotechnology without succumbing to its most dangerous temptations.

Beyond Therapy takes these issues out of the narrow circle of bioethics professionals and into the larger public arena, where matters of this importance rightly belong.

The cognitive science of religion that has emerged over the last twenty years is a multidisciplinary field that often challenges established theories in anthropology and comparative religion. This new approach raises many questions for biblical studies as well. What are the cross-cultural cognitive mechanisms which explain the transmission of biblical texts? How did the local and particular cultural traditions of ancient Israel and early Christianity develop? What does the embodied and socially embedded nature of the human mind imply for the exegesis of biblical texts? "Mind, Morality and Magic" draws on a range of approaches to the study of the human mind - including memory studies, computer modeling, cognitive theories of ritual, social cognition, evolutionary psychology, biology of emotions, and research on religious experience. The volume explores how cognitive approaches to religion can shed light on classical concerns in biblical scholarship - such as the transmission of traditions, ritual and magic, and ethics - as well as uncover new questions and offer new methodologies.

Now in its second edition, Grounding Religion explores relationships between the environment and religious beliefs and practices. Established scholars introduce students to the ways in which religion shapes human-earth relations, surveying a series of questions about how the religious world influences and is influenced by ecological systems. Case studies, discussion questions, and further reading enrich students' experience. This second edition features updated content, including revisions of every chapter and new material on natural disasters, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, climate change, food, technology, and hope and despair. An excellent text for undergraduates and graduates alike, it offers an expansive overview of the academic field of religion and ecology as it has emerged in the past fifty years.

In Digital Data Collection and Information Privacy Law, Mark Burdon argues for the reformulation of information privacy law to regulate new power consequences of ubiquitous data collection. Examining developing business models, based on collections of sensor data - with a focus on the 'smart home' - Burdon demonstrates the challenges that are arising for information privacy's control-model and its application of principled protections of personal information exchange. By reformulating information privacy's primary role of individual control as an interrupter of modulated power, Burdon provides a foundation for future law reform and calls for stronger information privacy law protections. This book should be read by anyone interested in the role of privacy in a world of ubiquitous and pervasive data collection.

Networks powered by algorithms are pervasive. Major contemporary technology trends - Internet of Things, Big Data, Digital Platform Power, Blockchain, and the Algorithmic Society - are manifestations of this phenomenon. The internet, which once seemed an unambiguous benefit to society, is now the basis for invasions of privacy, massive concentrations of power, and wide-scale manipulation. The algorithmic networked world poses deep questions about power, freedom, fairness, and human agency. The influential 1997 Federal Communications Commission whitepaper "Digital Tornado" hailed the "endless spiral of connectivity" that would transform society, and today, little remains untouched by digital connectivity. Yet fundamental questions remain unresolved, and even more serious challenges have emerged. This important collection, which offers a reckoning and a foretelling, features leading technology scholars who explain the legal, business, ethical, technical, and public policy challenges of building pervasive networks and algorithms for the benefit of humanity. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The advent of the CRISPR/Cas9 class of genome editing tools is transforming not just science and medicine, but also law. When the genome of germline cells is modified, the modifications could be inherited, with far-reaching effects in time and scale. Legal systems are struggling with keeping up with the CRISPR revolution and both lawyers and scientists are often confused about existing regulations. This book contains an analysis of the national regulatory framework in eighteen selected countries. Written by national legal experts, it includes all major players in bioengineering, plus an analysis of the emerging international standards and a discussion of how international human rights standards should inform national and international regulatory frameworks. The authors propose a set of principles for the regulation of germline engineering, based on international human rights law, that can be the foundation for regulating heritable gene editing both at the level of countries as well as globally.

This book presents a celebration, survey and critique of the theological work of arguably the most important and most widely-read contributor to the modern dialogue between science and theology: John Polkinghorne. Including a major survey by Polkinghorne himself of his life's work in theology, this book draws together contributors from among the most important voices in the science-theology dialogue today to focus on key aspects of Polkinghorne's work, with Polkinghorne providing responses. Anybody exploring contemporary aspects of the science-religion debate will find this book invaluable.

2015 Best Book Award from the Communal Studies Association The captivating story of the people of Heaven's Gate, a religious group focused on transcending humanity and the Earth, and seeking salvation in the literal heavens on board a UFO In March 1997, thirty-nine people in Rancho Santa Fe, California, ritually terminated their lives. To outsiders, it was a mass suicide. To insiders, it was a graduation. This act was the culmination of over two decades of spiritual and social development for the members of Heaven's Gate. In this fascinating overview, Benjamin Zeller not only explores the question of why the members of Heaven's Gate committed ritual suicides, but interrogates the origin and evolution of the religion, its appeal, and its practices. By tracking the development of the history, social structure, and worldview of Heaven's Gate, Zeller draws out the ways in which the movement was both a reflection and a microcosm of larger American culture. The group emerged out of engagement with Evangelical Christianity, the New Age movement, science fiction and UFOs, and conspiracy theories, and it evolved in response to the religious quests of baby boomers, new religions of the counterculture, and the narcissistic pessimism of the 1990s. Thus, Heaven's Gate not only reflects the context of its environment, but also reveals how those forces interacted in the form of a single religious body. In the only book-length study of Heaven's Gate, Zeller traces the roots of the movement, examines its beliefs and practices, and tells the captivating story of its people.

Originally published in 1961, this book originated in the belief that there was an urgent need for a greater association between philosophers and scientists and of both with men of religion. The problem of bringing this association into being is approached from different angles by the two authors, who, while agreeing on the main thesis, differ on many details, and the discussion is largely concerned with an examination of the points of difference. It ranges over the significance of scientific concepts, such as ether, energy, space and time, the place of mathematics in science and of linguistics in philosophy, the nature of scientific thought in relation to the universe as a whole, problems of life, mind, ethics and theology. It also raises questions of importance concerning the present attitudes of organizations dealing with these matters towards their respective concerns. While the main purpose is always kept in view, a certain amount of discursiveness allows for the introduction of incidental matters of interest in themselves as well as in their relation to the central theme. The book has been written for the layman, and the student, while not, by over-simplification, offending the expert and the erudite.

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious Experience, now updated and expanded in a new edition, updates key topics covered in the first edition including: decentering and self-transformation, supernatural agent cognitions, mystical states, religious language, ritualization, and religious group agency. It expands upon the first edition to include major findings on brain and religious experience over the past decade, focusing on methodology, future thinking, and psychedelics. It provides an up-to-date review of brain-based accounts of religious experiences, and systematically examines the rationale for utilizing neuroscience approaches to religion. While it is primarily intended for religious studies scholars, people interested in comparative religion, philosophy of religion, cultural evolution, and personal self-transformation will find an account of how such transformation is accomplished within religious contexts.

Providing a global perspective on the development of American technology, Technology and American Society offers a historical narrative detailing major technological transformations over the last three centuries. With coverage devoted to both dramatic breakthroughs and incremental innovations, authors Gary Cross and Rick Szostak analyze the cause-and-effect relationship of technological change and its role in the constant drive for improvement and modernization. This fully-updated 3rd edition extends coverage of industry, home, office, agriculture, transport, constructions, and services into the twenty-first century, concluding with a new chapter on recent electronic and technological advances. Technology and American Society remains the ideal introduction to the myriad interactions of technological advancement with social, economic, cultural, and military change throughout the course of American history.

In this colorful and consistently engaging work, law and economics professor Gillian Hadfield picks up where New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman left off in his influential 2005 book, The World is Flat. Friedman was focused on the infrastructure of communications and technology-the new web-based platform that allows business to follow the hunt for lower costs, higher value and greater efficiency around the planet seemingly oblivious to the boundaries of nation states. Hadfield peels back this technological platform to look at the 'structure that lies beneath'-our legal infrastructure, the platform of rules about who can do what, when and how. Often taken for granted, economic growth throughout human history has depended at least as much on the evolution of new systems of rules to support ever-more complex modes of cooperation and trade as it has on technological innovation. When Google rolled out YouTube in over one hundred countries around the globe simultaneously, for example, it faced not only the challenges of technology but also the staggering problem of how to build success in the context of a bewildering and often conflicting patchwork of nation-state-based laws and legal systems affecting every aspect of the business-contract, copyright, encryption, censorship, advertising and more. Google is not alone. A study presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2011 found that for global firms, the number one challenge of the modern economy is increasing complexity, and the number one source of complexity is law. Today, even our startups, the engines of economic growth, are global from Day One. Put simply, the law and legal methods on which we currently rely have failed to evolve along with technology. They are increasingly unable to cope with the speed, complexity, and constant border-crossing of our new globally inter-connected environment. Our current legal systems are still rooted in the politics-based nation state platform on which the industrial revolution was built. Hadfield argues that even though these systems supported fantastic growth over the past two centuries, today they are too slow, costly, cumbersome and localized to support the exponential rise in economic complexity they fostered. While everything else in the economy strives to become cheaper, sleeker and faster, our outdated approach to law hampers the invention of new products, the development of new business models, the structuring of global supply chains, the management of the risks posed by complex technologies, the evolution of financial, ecological, and other systems, as well as the protection of people and businesses as they and their products travel around the globe. They also fail to address looming challenges such as global warming and the reduction of poverty and oppression in the developing countries that are the backyard of global business. The answer to our troubles with law, however, is not the one critics usually reach for-to have less of it. Recognizing that law provides critical infrastructure for the cooperation and collaboration on which economic growth is built is the first step, Hadfield argues, to building a legal environment that does more of what we need it to do and less of what we don't. Through a sweeping review of first the invention and then the evolution of law over thousands of years of human development and the ways in which rule systems have consistently adapted to higher levels of complexity, Hadfield stresses that the state-based legal systems governing us today are not the only way to build the planks of a legal platform. Going back to fundamentals, she shows how historically, law's primary purpose has been to help societies to cope with the essential issues of trust, commitment, risk-allocation, and distribution that we face in coordinating cooperative ventures. While nation-state laws will never disappear, the time has come for us to supplement our legal infrastructure with rules developed on the same global platform as our economy. Hadfield offers a model for a more market- and globally-oriented legal system that fosters greater participation of end-users, market actors, and other non-governmental entities. Combining an impressive grasp of the empirical details of economic globalization with an ambitious re-envisioning of our global legal system, Rules for a Flat World promises to be a crucial and influential intervention into the debates surrounding how best to manage the evolving global economy.

First published in 1973. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Given the powerful and forthright title of Andrew Dickson White's classic study, it is best to make clear his own sense of the whole as given in the original 1896 edition: "My conviction is that science, though it has evidently conquered dogmatic theology based on biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand with religion, and that although theological control will continue to diminish, religion as seen in the recognition of a 'power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness' and in the love of God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the American institutions of learning, but in the world at large."

White began to assemble his magnum opus, a two volume work first published in 1896 as A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. In correspondence he wrote that he intended the work to stake out a position between such religious orthodoxy as John Henry Newman's on one side and such secular scoffing as Robert Ingersoll's on the other.

Historian Paul Carter declared that this book did as much as any other published work "toward routing orthodoxy in the name of science." Insofar as science and religion came to be widely viewed as enemies, with science holding the moral high ground, White inadvertently, became one of the most effective and influential advocates for unbelief.

Digital Labor calls on the reader to examine the shifting sites of labor markets to the Internet through the lens of their political, technological, and historical making. Internet users currently create most of the content that makes up the web: they search, link, tweet, and post updates leaving their "deep" data exposed. Meanwhile, governments listen in, and big corporations track, analyze, and predict users interests and habits.

This unique collection of essays provides a wide-ranging account of the dark side of the Internet. It claims that the divide between leisure time and work has vanished so that every aspect of life drives the digital economy. The book reveals the anatomy of "playbor "(play/labor), the lure of exploitation and the potential for empowerment. Ultimately, the 14 thought-provoking chapters in this volume ask how users can politicize their troubled complicity, create public alternatives to the centralized social web, and thrive online.

Contributors: Mark Andrejevic, Ayhan Aytes, Michel Bauwens, Jonathan Beller, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Sean Cubitt, Jodi Dean, Abigail De Kosnik, Julian Dibbell, Christian Fuchs, Lisa Nakamura, Andrew Ross, Ned Rossiter, Trebor Scholz, Tizania Terranova, McKenzie Wark, and Soenke Zehle

Why are some countries richer than others and why do some economies grow more rapidly? The Politics of Technological Progress answers these vital questions by highlighting the importance of technological progress for sustained economic development. The author also explains why some countries exhibit faster technological progress than others. Armed with a wealth of cross-national empirical evidence, Professor Simmons stresses the importance of properly constructed political parties for establishing an environment conducive to technological progress. 'Well-institutionalized' ruling parties are essential for technological progress, he argues, because only in such parties are time horizons long enough for governments to accept the deferred returns that are an inherent feature of government efforts to encourage innovation and technology adoption in the economy.

When we look at the world around us, one of the most common observations is that things have a tendency to go wrong. People make mistakes, have accidents and some of them commit deliberate acts of violence. Disease affects every single species of plant and animal on the planet. Natural disasters kill millions of people and decimate animal populations. Countless people and animals suffer through no fault of their own. Scientists explain these events in various ways depending upon whether they involve errors in human choices and actions or whether they are caused by natural events. Theologians give us a different set of religious explanations. At times it can appear as if there is a fundamental flaw in the universe. In this book, Adrian Hough uses his training and expertise as both a scientist and a theologian to approach this flaw from both directions and comes up with the astonishing result that both sets of reasoning might have the same fundamental explanation. Using this discovery he then develops a way of reconciling belief in a loving God with the hurt and damage which is caused when things go wrong.

Anti-scientific misinformation has become a serious problem on many fronts, including vaccinations and climate change. One of these fronts is the persistence of anti-evolutionism, which has recently been given a superficially professional gloss in the form of the intelligent design movement. Far from solely being of interest to researchers in biology, anti-evolutionism must be recognized as part of a broader campaign with a conservative religious and political agenda. Much of the rhetorical effectiveness of anti-evolutionism comes from its reliance on seemingly precise mathematical arguments. This book, the first of its kind to be written by a mathematician, discusses and refutes these arguments. Along the way, it also clarifies common misconceptions about both biology and mathematics. Both lay audiences and professionals will find the book to be accessible and informative.

Anti-scientific misinformation has become a serious problem on many fronts, including vaccinations and climate change. One of these fronts is the persistence of anti-evolutionism, which has recently been given a superficially professional gloss in the form of the intelligent design movement. Far from solely being of interest to researchers in biology, anti-evolutionism must be recognized as part of a broader campaign with a conservative religious and political agenda. Much of the rhetorical effectiveness of anti-evolutionism comes from its reliance on seemingly precise mathematical arguments. This book, the first of its kind to be written by a mathematician, discusses and refutes these arguments. Along the way, it also clarifies common misconceptions about both biology and mathematics. Both lay audiences and professionals will find the book to be accessible and informative.

Originally published in 1971. Discoveries in modern biology can radically change human life as we know it. As our understanding of living processes, such as inheritance, grows, so do the possibilities of applying these results for good and evil, such as the treatment of disease, the control of ageing, behaviour and genetic engineering. These discoveries and their implications are discussed by some of the world's leading biologists.

In the coming decades robots and artificial intelligence will fundamentally change our world. In doing so they offer the hope of a golden future, one where the elderly are looked after by companion robots, where the disabled can walk, robot security protects us all, remote rural areas have access to the best urban facilities and there is almost limitless prosperity. But there are dangers. There are fears in the labour market that robots will replace jobs, leaving many unemployed, and increase inequality. In relying too much on robots, people may reduce their human contact and see their cognitive abilities decline. There are even concerns, reflected in many science fiction films, that robots may eventually become competitors with humans for survival. This book looks at both the history of robots, in science and in fiction, as well as the science behind robots. Specific chapters analyse the impact of robots on the labour market, people's attitudes to robots, the impact of robots on society, and the appropriate policies to pursue to prepare our world for the robot revolution. Overall the book strikes a cautionary tone. Robots will change our world dramatically and they will also change human beings. These important issues are examined from the perspective of an economist, but the book is intended to appeal to a wider audience in the social sciences and beyond.

What does it mean to become a reader? What are the challenges and opportunities of engaging children in reading for pleasure in the 21st century? This book explores the ways in which reading for pleasure is changing in the era of globalisation, multiculturalism and datafication. Raising the next generation of engaged readers requires knowledge of the enduring characteristics of engagement and markers of quality in books and e-books. In addition, in order to develop new insights into children's experience of reading on and off screen, nuanced understandings of psychological and socio-cultural research are offered. The cross-disciplinary examination integrates key research from educational psychology, new literacies, multimodality and socio-cultural perspectives and explores consequences for practice. An authoritative guide - it invites graduates, researchers and teachers to participate in the authors' interdisciplinary dialogue about reading for pleasure.