People often believe that we can overcome the profound environmental and climate crises we face by smart systems, green innovations and more recycling. However, the quest for complex technological solutions, which rely on increasingly exotic and scarce materials, makes this unlikely. A best-seller in France, this English language edition introduces readers to an alternative perspective on how we should be marshalling our resources to preserve the planet and secure our future. Bihouix skilfully goes against the grain to argue that 'high' technology will not solve global problems and envisages a different approach to build a more resilient and sustainable society.

Nicholas Carr's bestseller The Shallows has become a foundational book in one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the internet's bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? This 10th-anniversary edition includes a new afterword that brings the story up to date, with a deep examination of the cognitive and behavioral effects of smartphones and social media.

To properly understand the nature of the digital economy we need to investigate the phenomenon of a "ubiquitous computing system" (UCS). As defined by Robin Milner, this notion implies the following characteristics: (i) it will continually make decisions hitherto made by us; (ii) it will be vast, maybe 100 times today's systems; (iii) it must continually adapt, on-line, to new requirements; and, (iv) individual UCSs will interact with one another. This book argues that neoclassical approaches to modelling economic behaviour based on optimal control by "representative-agents" are ill-suited to a world typified by concurrency, decentralized control, and interaction. To this end, it argues for the development of new, process-based approaches to analysis, modelling, and simulation. The book provides the context-both philosophical and mathematical-for the construction and application of new, rigorous, and meaningful analytical tools. In terms of social theory, it adopts a Post-Cognitivist approach, the elements of which include the nature philosophy of Schelling, Marx's critique of political economy, Peircean Pragmatism, Whitehead's process philosophy, and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the flesh, along with cognitive scientific notions of embodied cognition and neural Darwinism, as well as more questionable notions of artificial intelligence that are encompassed by the rubric of "perception-and-action-without-intelligence".

In What is Science?, Jaffe seeks to define science conceptually. Understanding our environment and ourselves is and has been the most important intellectual activity of mankind. It was only after the emergence of the empirical science (i.e. experiment philosophy) that humanity achieved accelerated social, economic, and technological progress. The emergence of science made possible the industrial revolution and the development of a multitude of scientific disciplines, all very successful in advancing our understanding of the world and of ourselves. What is the key that makes science more efficient in advancing our knowledge than any other heuristics?

This book attacks the conventional history of the press as a story of progress; offers a critical defence and history of public service broadcasting; provides a myth-busting account of the internet; a subtle account of the impact of social media and explores key debates about the role and politics of the media. It has become a standard book on media and other courses: but it has also gone beyond an academic audience to reach a wider public. Hailed as 'a classic of media history and analysis' by the Irish Times and a book that has 'cracked the canon' by the Times Higher, it has been translated into five languages. This edition contains six new chapters. These include the press and the remaking of Britain, the rise of the neo-liberal Establishment, the moral decline of journalism, the impact of social media and a history of attempts to reform the press. It contains new research on the relationship between programmes, institutions and society. It places key UK institutions in the wider context of international affairs and their impact. The book has been updated to take account of new developments like Brexit and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and the shift in authority and legitimacy prompted by social media. It does this with a clear explanation of how policy can shape media outcomes.

The Missing Link blazes a unique trail through the conundrums and controversies generated by evolutionary theory and religious thought. To date, these debates have centered on the origin of species. This book, however, turns the spotlight on the origins of consciousness, thought, and the self while also considering the relationship between God and science. Remarkably, Darwin himself highlighted the relevance of the origin of consciousness to the question of a creator. Therefore, The Missing Link works within a framework that was laid out at the dawn of the creation-evolution debate. Since that time, however, this framework has rarely been considered or explored. The unifying theme of this volume is the conclusion that the existence of God is grounded in rational thought. Contributors to The Missing Link include three Nobel Prize winners, renowned scientists from Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard, and noted contemporary philosophers of consciousness, language, and the self.

Are the Jewish arguments against belief in Jesus as mankind's Savior any good? Is Jesus Christ the promised Messiah of the Old Testament's prophecies? Is Christianity derived from ancient Roman or Greek pagan mystery religions? Is the New Testament historically reliable? Was Jesus of Nazareth God according to the New Testament? Did Gnosticism influence Christianity? Since some 185,000 Americans have converted to Judaism according to a 1990 survey, the arguments of such groups as Jews for Judaism against Christianity can't be dismissed lightly. Using solid scholarship and rigorous logic, A Zeal For God Not According to Knowledge defends Christianity against the arguments of its Jewish critics, such as Samuel Levine, Michoel Drazin, Tovia Singer, and Hyam Maccoby. This book demonstrates that the New Testament is historically reliable, denies that Christian doctrines and sacraments can be derived from pagan beliefs and practices, shows that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah based on the Old Testament's prophecies, and proves that the New Testament teaches the Deity of Christ. Jewish friends, coworkers, and relatives, and Jews interested in objectively considering the claims of Christianity while searching for spiritual truth about whether Jesus is their Messiah also.

First published in 1932, this book, based on an address delivered in 1931, presents a concise and lucid summary of the philosophy of the author of The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler. It was his conviction that the technical age - the culture of the machine age - which man had created in virtue of his unique capacity for individual as well as racial technique, had already reached its peak, and that the future held only catastrophe. He argued it lacked progressive cultural life and instead was dominated by a lust for power and possession. The triumph of the machine led to mass regimentation rather than fewer workers and less work - spelling the doom of Western civilization.

We tell stories about who we are. Through telling these stories, we connect with others and affirm our own sense of self. Spaces, be they online or offline; private or public; physical, augmented or virtual; or of a hybrid nature, present the performative realms upon which our stories unfold. This volume focuses on how digital platforms support, enhance, or confine the networked self. Contributors examine a range of issues relating to storytelling, platforms, and the self, including the live-reporting of events, the curation of information, emerging modalities of journalism, collaboratively formed memories, and the instant historification of the present.

Science and faith are often seen as being in opposition. In this book, award-winning sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund questions this assumption based on research she has conducted over the past fifteen years. She highlights the ways these two spheres point to universal human values, showing readers they don't have to choose between science and Christianity. Breathing fresh air into debates that have consisted of more opinions than data, Ecklund offers insights uncovered by her research and shares her own story of personal challenges and lessons. In the areas most rife with conflict--the origins of the universe, evolution, climate change, and genetic technology--readers will find fascinating points of convergence in eight virtues of human existence: curiosity, doubt, humility, creativity, healing, awe, shalom, and gratitude. The book includes discussion questions for group use and to help pastors, small group leaders, and congregants broach controversial topics and bridge the science-faith divide.

While many books and articles are emerging on the new area of game studies and the application of computer games to learning, therapeutic, military, and entertainment environments, few have attempted to contextualize the importance of virtual play within a broader social, cultural, and political environment that raises the question of the significance of work, play, power, and inequalities in the modern world. Studies tend to concentrate on the content of virtual games, but few have questioned how power is produced or reproduced by publishers, gamers, or even social media; how social exclusion (based on race, class, or gender) in the virtual environment is reproduced from the real world; and how actors are able to use new media to transcend their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and assumptions. The articles presented by the contributors in this volume represent cutting-edge research in the area of critical game play with the hope of drawing attention to the need for more studies that are both sociological and critical.

What is a life worth? In the wake of eugenics, new quantitative racist practices that valued life for the sake of economic futures flourished. In The Economization of Life, Michelle Murphy provocatively describes the twentieth-century rise of infrastructures of calculation and experiment aimed at governing population for the sake of national economy, pinpointing the spread of a potent biopolitical logic: some must not be born so that others might live more prosperously. Resituating the history of postcolonial neoliberal technique in expert circuits between the United States and Bangladesh, Murphy traces the methods and imaginaries through which family planning calculated lives not worth living, lives not worth saving, and lives not worth being born. The resulting archive of thick data transmuted into financialized "Invest in a Girl" campaigns that reframed survival as a question of human capital. The book challenges readers to reject the economy as our collective container and to refuse population as a term of reproductive justice.

'In this book, Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum contribute significantly to one of the most important issues of our time - how to move forward in the Fourth Industrial Revolution' Jack Ma, Executive Chairman, Alibaba Group Holding, People's Republic of China 'It's no secret that technologies are reshaping the world's economies and societies. To manage the risks and spread the benefits, we have to act now, and in the interest of stakeholders everywhere' Andrew McAfee, Co-Founder, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, MIT, USA We are on the brink of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And this one will be unlike any other in human history. Characterized by new technologies fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will impact all disciplines, economies and industries - and it will do so at an unprecedented rate. World Economic Forum data predicts that by 2025 we will see: commercial use of nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than human hair; the first transplant of a 3D-printed liver; 10% of all cars on US roads being driverless; and much more besides. In The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Schwab outlines the key technologies driving this revolution, discusses the major impacts on governments, businesses, civil society and individuals, and offers bold ideas for what can be done to shape a better future for all. 'The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are extraordinary. Leadership has to be equally extraordinary to manage the complexities of systemic change' Eric Schmidt, Technical Advisor, Alphabet, USA

More than one hundred of the world's leading thinkers write about things they believe in, despite the absence of concrete proof

Scientific theory, more often than not, is born of bold assumption, disparate bits of unconnected evidence, and educated leaps of faith. Some of the most potent beliefs among brilliant minds are based on supposition alone -- yet that is enough to push those minds toward making the theory viable.

Eminent cultural impresario, editor, and publisher of "Edge" (www.edge.org), John Brockman asked a group of leading scientists and thinkers to answer the question: What do you believe to be true even though you cannot prove it? This book brings together the very best answers from the most distinguished contributors.

Thought-provoking and hugely compelling, this collection of bite-size thought-experiments is a fascinating insight into the instinctive beliefs of some of the most brilliant minds today.

Cultural accounts of scientific ideas and practices have increasingly come to be welcomed as a corrective to previous-and still widely held-theories of scientific knowledge and practices as universal. The editors caution, however, against the temptation to overgeneralize the work of culture, and to lapse into a kind of essentialism that flattens the range and variety of scientific work. The book refers to this tendency as culturalism. The contributors to the volume model a new path where historicized and cultural accounts of scientific practice retain their specificity and complexity without falling into the traps of culturalism. They examine, among other issues, the potential of using notions of culture to study behavior in financial markets; the ideology, organization, and practice of earthquake monitoring and prediction during China's Cultural Revolution; the history of quadratic equations in China; and how studying the "glass ceiling" and employment discrimination became accepted in the social sciences. Demonstrating the need to understand the work of culture as a fluid and dynamic process that directly both shapes and is shaped by scientific practice, Cultures without Culturalism makes an important intervention in science studies. Contributors. Bruno Belhoste, Karine Chemla, Caroline Ehrhardt, Fa-ti Fan,Kenji Ito, Evelyn Fox Keller, Guillaume Lachenal, Donald MacKenzie, Mary S. Morgan, Nancy J. Nersessian, David Rabouin, Hans-Joerg Rheinberger, Claude Rosental, Koen Vermeir

This book, first published in 1977, aims to present a Muslim view of development and highlights some of the related issues that were being debated in the Muslim world. The author outlines the parameters of the Muslim world as well as the Muslim world-view, and provides an analysis of science, science policy and Muslim culture. This title will be of interest to students of economic and social policy, as well as students of Middle Eastern studies.

The cognitive science of religion is a new discipline that looks at the roots of religious belief in the cognitive architecture of the human mind. The Roots of Religion deals with the philosophical and theological implications of the cognitive science of religion which grounds religious belief in human cognitive structures: religious belief is 'natural', in a way that even scientific thought is not. Does this new discipline support religious belief, undermine it, or is it, despite many claims, perhaps eventually neutral? This subject is of immense importance, particularly given the rise of the 'new atheism'. Philosophers and theologians from North America, UK and Australia, explore the alleged conflict between truth claims and examine the roots of religion in human nature. Is it less 'natural' to be an atheist than to believe in God, or gods? On the other hand, if we can explain theism psychologically, have we explained it away. Can it still claim any truth? This book debates these and related issues.

This book, originally published in 1984, established the need for a strategic managerial response to the new technology, which relies on an understanding of the real effects of technology - on organisational structure, manageemnt style and employee relations. It assesses the impact of the new information technology on manufacturing systems, employment levels and types, industrial relations and finally on marketing and external relationships.

What does healing mean for Christians and others in an age of science? How can we combine scientific findings about our bodies, philosophical understanding of our minds and theological investigations about our spirits with a coherent and unified model of the person? How does God continue to create through nature and direct our wandering towards becoming created co-creators capable of ministering to others? The reality of human suffering demands that theology and science mutually inform each other in a shared understanding of nature, humanity, and paths to healing. In Insight to Heal, Mark Graves draws upon systems theory, pragmatic philosophy, and biological and cognitive sciences to deal with wounds that could limit personal growth, and uses information theory, emergence, and Christian theology to define healing as distinct from a return to a prior state of being, but rather to create real possibility in who the person may become.

We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.

While the working lives of tech entrepreneurs and delivery platform workers seem far removed, both are engaged in digital labor. What unites their experience and allows us to speak of their work under the same umbrella? Is it even possible to talk about digital labor as if it were a single form of work? Digital Labor explores these questions and critically examines the economics, politics, and experiences of workers in these new modes of employment. Using a novel definition of the term "digital labor," Kylie Jarrett explores unpaid user activity, platform-mediated gig work, and formal employment within the digital media industries, mapping the common features of these varied practices. Applying a critical Marxian lens, the book interrogates the structures of exploitation in this sector, the organisation of the labor process, the dynamics of alienation associated with this work, and the commodification of workers' lives. It also documents the struggle of digital laborers to resist the iniquities and inequalities of their working environments. Ultimately, the book identifies what is specific about this form of labor and, in doing so, offers insight into the nature of work as it is being reconstituted in digital capitalism. Synthesising an extensive range of studies and sources, Digital Labor offers a comprehensive overview - and a rich critical appraisal - of work in the high-tech economy. It is suitable for students and scholars of media and communication, sociology, labour studies, and anyone interested in emerging forms of work.

Election campaigns in small and mid-sized electoral districts have been run from the grass roots from the beginning of the republic. Yard signs, door-to-door canvassing, and soap-box oratory have characterized state and local elections for years, and many predict their persistence into the 21st century. This book looks at new trends in small-town politics, tracking the infiltration of sophisticated communications technology, the use of political consultants, and the increase in fundraising and campaign expenditures. Original surveys, interviews, and in-depth case studies lead the author to conclude that the new tactics are with us to stay, but that their potentially negative effects--rising campaign budgets and diminished citizen participation--may be mitigated by creative approaches to reform. Visit our website for sample chapters

This book documents and investigates the stories we have told and continue to tell about technology-now the dominant feature of our civilization-in fiction, non-fiction, film, and advertising. It answers important questions about the meanings people ascribe to technology, the hopes and fears we express in the different narratives, the effect of those narratives upon us, and the new forms of myth those narratives represent. Narratives of Technology offers an approach grounded in the humanities, adding another perspective to that of social scientists and technologists.

C.S. Lewis's celebrated Space Trilogy - Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength - was completed over sixty years ago and has remained in print ever since. In this groundbreaking study, Sanford Schwartz offers a new reading that challenges the conventional view of these novels as portraying a clear-cut struggle between a pre-modern cosmology and the modern scientific paradigm that supplanted it.
Schwartz situates Lewis's work in the context of modern intellectual, cultural, and political history. He shows that Lewis does not simply dismiss the modern "evolutionary model," but discriminates carefully among different kinds of evolutionary theory-"mechanistic" in Out of the Silent Planet, "vitalist" in Perelandra, and "spiritual" in That Hideous Strength-and their distinctive views of human nature, society, and religious belief. Schwartz also shows that in each book the conflict between Christian and "developmental" viewpoints is far more complex than is generally assumed. In line with the Augustinian understanding that "bad things are good things perverted," Lewis constructs each of his three "beatific" communities-the "unfallen" worlds on Mars and Venus and the terrestrial remnant at St. Anne's-not as the sheer antithesis but rather as the transfiguration or "raising up" of the particular evolutionary doctrine that is targeted in the novel. In this respect, Lewis is more deeply engaged with the main currents of modern thought than his own self-styled image as an intellectual "dinosaur" might lead us to believe. He is also far more prepared to explore the possibilities for reshaping the evolutionary model in a manner that is simultaneously compatible with traditional Christian doctrine and committed to addressing the distinctive concerns of modern existence.
C.S. Lewis on the Final Frontier highlights the enduring relevance of Lewis's fiction to contemporary concerns on a wide variety of issues, including the ethical problems surrounding bio-technology and the battle between religious and naturalistic worldviews in the twenty-first century. Far from offering a black and white contrast between an old-fashioned Christian humanism and a newfangled heresy, the Space Trilogy should be seen as a modern religious apologist's searching effort to enrich the former through critical engagement with the latter.

This volume situates itself within the context of the rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that is dedicated to the study of the complex interactions between science and religion. It presents an innovative approach insofar as it addresses the Eurocentrism that is still prevalent in this field. At the same time it reveals how science develops in the space that emerges between the 'local' and the 'global'. The volume examines a range of themes central to the interaction between science and religion: 'Eastern' thought within 'Western' science and religion and vice versa, and revisits thinkers who sought to integrate 'Eastern' and 'Western' thinking. It studies Zen Buddhism and its relation to psychotherapy, Islamic science, Vedantic science, atheism in India, and Darwinism, offering in turn new perspectives on a variety of approaches to nature. Part of the Science and Technology Studies series, this volume brings together original perspectives from major scholars from across disciplines and will be of great interest to scholars and students of science and technology studies, history of science, philosophy of science, religious studies, and sociology.