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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > Impact of science & technology on society
Reproductive technology allows us to test embryos' genes before deciding whether to transfer them to a woman's uterus. Embryo selection raises many ethical questions but is virtually unregulated in the United States. This comprehensive study considers the ethical, medical, political, and economic aspects of developing appropriate regulation.
Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. As such, this volume investigates the ways in which existing social categories are both maintained and transformed at the intersection of the natural (sciences) and the cultural (politics). The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.
Climate change and other global environmental changes deserve attention by the the humanities - they are caused mainly by human attitudes and activities and feed back to human societies. Focussing on religion allows for analysis of various human modes of perception, action and thought in relation to global environmental change. On the one hand, religious organizations are aiming to become "greener"; on the other hand, some religious ideas and practices display fatalism towards impacts of climate change. What might be the fate of different religions in an ever-warming world? This book gathers recent research on functions of religion in climate change from theological, ethical, philosophical, anthropological, historical and earth system analytical perspectives. Charting the spread from regional case studies to global-scale syntheses, the authors demonstrate that world religions and indigenous belief systems are already responding in highly dynamic ways to ongoing and projected climate changes - in theory and practice, for better or for worse. The book establishes the research field "religion in climate change" and identifies avenues for future research across disciplines. >
***BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2022 SHORTLISTED TITLE*** Now more than ever, the scientific and medical community is under the microscope and in front of the media. Science matters, and in a post-truth world it's more important than ever for scientists and physicians to be heard. But there's a challenge. To get people to listen, you can't communicate in writing alone anymore. You need to speak up and be seen - on stage, online, and on camera. To do this well you need to master the art of influential speaking, which is something you weren't taught at university or medical school. This book teaches you how to become a compelling scientific speaker so that you can put your message across with confidence and clarity, both online and in person. It's written by a speaking coach with 25 years of experience in science communications. Part One shows how speaking can help you to win the war of attention, benefiting both your field and your career. Part Two explains how to craft your scientific message in a way that connects with your audience and achieves your goal. Including how to be memorable, handle the Q&A, and communicate risk. Part Three gives you a tool kit for speaking with energy and conviction in all types of situations. These include virtual channels, which are particularly important in the post-COVID era. Jo Browning is the Founder and Managing Director of Filshie Browning Associates, and its Principle Consultant. She has 25 years of experience in verbal communication skills, and helps scientists and physicians to improve their content, competence, and confidence, so that they can communicate with impact and authority. This enables them to enhance their reputations and build more effective relationships with both their peers and others.
Biosociology is an emerging paradigm seeking to understand human behavior by integrating relevant insights from the natural sciences into traditional sociological thinking. Biosociology posits no ultimate causes of human behavior, rather it seeks to understand how biological factors interact with other factors to produce observed behavior. The book presents a brief introduction to biophysical systems that are important to the understanding of human behavior - genetics, neurophysiology, and the autonomic and endocrine systems. These systems are explored in the contexts of sociological importance, such as socialization, learning, gender roles, gender differences, sexuality, the family, deviance, and criminality.
This books examines the conditions under which scientists compromised the ideals of science, and elucidates these with reference to the challenges of profit motives and national security concerns. The book also offers suggestions for changing the political and economic conditions under which the integrity of science and its ethos can be practiced.
A landmark work. Mandatory reading for anyone who wants to learn to
be a good skeptic.
This volume is a critical exploration of multiple posthuman possibilities in the 21st century and beyond. Due to the global engagement with advanced technology, we are witness to a species-wise blurring of boundaries at the edge of the human. On the one hand, we find ourselves in a digital age in which human identity is being transformed through networked technological intervention, a large part of our consciousness transferred to "smart" external devices. On the other hand, we are assisted---or assailed---by an unprecedented proliferation of quasi-human substitutes and surrogates, forming a spectrum of humanoids with fuzzy borders. Under these conditions, critical posthumanism asks, who will occupy and control our planet: Will the "superhuman" merely serve as another sign under which new regimes of dominance are spread across the earth? Or can we discover or invent technologies of existence to counter such dominance? It is issues such as these which are at the heart of this new volume of explorations of the posthuman.  The essays in this volume offer leading-edge thought on the subject, with special emphases on postmodern and postcolonial futures. They engage with questions of subalternity and feminism vis-à -vis posthumanism, dealing with issues of subjugation, dispensability and surrogacy, as well as the possibilities of resistance, ethical politics or subjective transformation from South Asian archives of cultural and spiritual practice. This volume is a valuable addition to the on-going global dialogues on posthumanism, indispensable to those, from across several disciplines, who are interested in postcolonial and planetary futures.
This book departs from conventional bioethics approaches to consider the different moral and political economies involved in the donation and transformation of human organs, gametes, stem cells and breastmilk. Collectively, the authors draw attention to the different values associated with research and therapy on body part and tissue exchange through an examination of altruism, gift and commodity relations. They expertly discuss issues such as the bioethical conundrums around the circulation and use of human biological materials and services as well as their legal and regulatory limits, the economic benefits and health values attributed to various body parts and products, and the matter of immaterial labour and affective relations between donors, recipients and others involved in tissue provision. Based on new empirical research, this interdisciplinary collection of original and timely essays will be of interest to students and researchers in gender and cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, as well as medical professionals with an interest in health and reproduction.
This book provides a timely overview of the impacts of digitalization from the perspective of everyday life, and argues that one central issue in digitalization is the development of new types of services that digitalization enables, but which are often overlooked due to the focus on new technologies and devices. The book summarizes the past 20 years of research into the relationship between information and communications technology (ICT) and service innovation, and reveals that the ongoing digitalization is a qualitatively different phenomenon and represents a true paradigm shift. The all-encompassing integration and distribution of data raises critical issues such as preserving human dignity and individual autonomy; moreover, interaction practices that foster broad participation, trust, learning, and a willingness to share knowledge are called for. Citizen empowerment and multi-actor co-creation have become central to using digitalization to support the development of wellbeing and sustainability. Further, the book shows how employees and professionals can and should be involved in designing their future work, and in evaluating it. Proactiveness and participation in innovation endeavours are ways to guarantee meaningful work in an age of socio-technical transition. The book employs a variety of theoretical approaches and perspectives from diverse disciplines to illustrate these needs. In addition to theoretical analyses, some specific application areas are examined, e.g. services in health and social care, and problems linked to robots in elderly care. Given its scope, the book is highly recommended to all readers seeking an overview of the current understanding of the human side of digitalization and searching for concrete cases from different countries to illustrate the topic.
This book features an exploration of the interaction between Darwinian ideas and Catholic doctrine. This coherent collection of original papers marks the 150 year anniversary since the publication of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" (1859). Although the area of evolution-related publications is vast, the area of interaction between Darwinian ideas and specifically Catholic doctrine has received limited attention. This interaction is quite distinct from the one between Darwinism and the Christian tradition in general. Interest in Darwin from the Catholic viewpoint has recently been rekindled. The major causes of this include: John Paul II's "Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Evolution" in 1996; (2) the document "Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God" issued in 2002; by the International Theological Commission under the supervision of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the present Pope Benedict XVI; Cardinal Christoph Schonborn apparent endorsement of Intelligent Design in his "New York Times" article "Finding Design in Nature" of July 7, 2005; and, Pope Benedict XVI's contributions in the recent collection of papers "Schopfung und Evolution" ("Creation and Evolution"), published in Germany in April, 2007. Responding to this heightened interest, the book offers a valuable collection of work from outstanding Catholic scholars in various fields.
Negotiating the terrain between techno-optimism and eco-pessimism, this work establishes the political connections between technologies of "the body," property, and the environment. Specific technologies of the body, such as surrogacy and in vitro fertilization, are examined in relation to their political and legal constructions. Next, Shevory analyzes private property as an evolving historical concept that implicates environmental and biological transformations with particular attention given to biotechnology cases. He then considers the body's appearance and its alterations through plastic surgery, dieting, or piercing as political constructions. A theoretical overview specifies technoprogressivist (liberal) and technophobic traditions, especially as they have evolved in the United States during the second half of the 20th-century. Drawing upon critical and feminist theories, Shevory specifies a body politics that negotiates the terrain between these two traditions. Body technologies and markets, he argues, interact to consolidate and reinforce dominant systems of power, while at the same time resisting and sometimes subverting them. "Technology" is often a factor in the fragmentation of evolving political ideological discourses on the "left" and "right; " however, the resulting instabilities create the potential for both the expansion of global capital and its subversion via democratic interventions.
Technology and innovation are fundamental to economic success and the struggle for markets in an increasingly competitive world. This book draws together the latest research in the fields of technology, innovation and competitiveness from some of the world's leading academics.International in its approach, this book considers a wide range of topics including the globalization of research and technology and the effect of this on the product cycle, financial domination in the global economy and its consequences for structural competitiveness. It also examines the impact of the pooling of technology and science in Europe on the environment for new entrepreneurial initiatives. Special emphasis is placed on the policy implications of recent developments in technology, industry and the economy. Technology, Innovation and Competitiveness will be of interest to policy analysts as well as academics and students of economics, management and business studies.
Although advanced technologies are the cornerstone of modern life, few people understand how such technologies as robotics or nuclear science actually work. Fewer still realize how--and how dramatically--technology influences our society and culture. Nuclear Technology, the newest volume in the Sourcebooks in Modern Technology Series, is a reference guide that provides nonspecialists with the most up-to-date information on seminal developments in nuclear technology, as well as covering the social, political, and technical impacts of those developments on everyday life, both now and in the future. Included are:
Advances in nanoscience and nanotechnology promise to have major impacts on human health, wealth, and peace in the coming decades. Among the expected breakthroughs are orders of magnitude increases in computer efficiency, human organ restoration using engineered tissue, designer' materials created from directed assembly of atoms and molecules, and the emergence of entirely new phenomena in chemistry and physics. This book includes a collection of essays by leading scientists, engineers, and social scientists reviewing the possible uses of these impending technical developments in various industrial, medical, and national security applications, and the corresponding ethical, legal, social, economic, and educational issues that they raise. The report outlines potential areas for research into societal implications of nanotechnology, as well as some preliminary suggestions for how potential positive impacts of nanotechnology can be maximized, while minimizing any possible negative impacts, real or imagined. This book also provides the beginning of a blueprint for how one should address second-order consequences of the new technology, either positive implications or potential risks. This material was prepared under the auspices of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). The issues raised in the book are global in scope, going far beyond the immediate impact of the NNI. They ask the general questions of how history and the human condition are affected by technological progress, and how individuals and institutions can seek to guide that progress in ways most beneficial to mankind in the long run.
A factual narrative explaining an innovative, artistic technique, developed by the author, who deciphers the three-dimensional information encoded within the image of the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud is one of the most misunderstood artifacts known to humanity, and one of the most rigorously investigated. It has baffled scientist, chemist, and theorist who despite all their examinations, debates, and annalistic data, cannot explain the mechanics of the image, why it is there, or what caused the image to appear. While studying this image as an artist, an unexpected and unique method developed that explains the image and demonstrates what this image is, and how the image emerged on the cloth. Many mysteries concerning the Shroud's image can now be deciphered, including why there are three ratios of size within the image, why the position of the wounds on the cloth are not accurate to the locations on the body, as well as an explanation of how long it took between death and the creation of the image. This method proves the man was much shorter in stature than first indicated by the image. It explains why this image encodes three-dimensional information. It also provides the most accurate depiction of this man as created by the follow-the-light method. This journey incorporates thirty-years of determination. Through experimentation, the author discovers the Shroud's image is a blueprint that creates its own three-dimensional sculpture with stunningly new details. As one question leads to another, the solving of the mysteries concerning the Shroud is fulfilled, one-by-one. This documentation permits the reader to experience the events that explain the secrets of the image-producing process, within an easy to follow storyline. There are many more answers between these pages, and all of this evidence began as a home-science project between an artistic mom and her eight-year-old child, who together powerfully exposes the hidden truth behind the creation of the Shroud's image. This narrative also explains the artistic-process in detail, so that any artist may reproduce the process and verify all of the evidence that this book contains. The conclusion remains thought provoking and relinquishes all of this evidence to the hands of the reader to determine if the Shroud of Turin, is in fact, the Shroud of the true historic Jesus.
This unique treatise expands on the philosophy of technology to argue for a psychology of technology based on the complex relationships between psychology, biology and technology, especially in the light of our relationships with our digital devices, our online lives, and our human experience. Drawing from disciplines ranging from philosophy and evolution to cognition and neuroscience, it examines myriad aspects of the brain's creative development: the cognitive, sensory, and motor processes that enable technological progress and its resulting efficiencies and deficiencies along with our discomforts and pleasures. These experiences are key to behavioral and affective processes in technology, manifest in such diverse phenomena as multitasking, the shift in tech design from ergonomics to hedonomics, and the many types of online problem behaviors. Through these rich pages, readers can understand more deeply the history and future of human adjustment and adaptation in an environment intertwined with technology-and, with the ascendance of video games and virtual reality, new conceptions of the human self. Among the topics covered: Could we have remained a tech-devoid society? Technology, ergonomics and the non-executive functions of our body. New directions in brain-computer interface. From avatars and agents to virtual reality technology.< On measuring affective responses to objects. Psychology, technology, ethics, and culture. A timely lens on a field that will grow in importance as it shapes our existence, Psychology of Technology will be read and discussed by not only psychologists, social scientists, and behavioral scientists, but also by technology designers and developers and those in biotechnology.
In the networked age, we are living with changed parameters of time and space. Mobile networked communication fosters a form of virtual time and space, which is super-imposed onto territorial space. Time is increasingly composed of interruptions and distractions, as smartphone users are overwhelmed by messages. |
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