Confrontation between science and religion has defined much public debate about religion in recent years, most lately in bestsellers portraying a clash between scientists and religious believers, such as Richard Dawkins The God Delusion and Sam Harriss The End of Faith or Letter to a Christian Nation. But what does this clash mean for society? This collection of essays gives voice to social scientists, natural scientists and theologians whose experience holds direct relevance on these major issues, and encourages a new, more forgiving dialogue between these two huge forces in modern society.

This book interrogates the ways in which new technological advances impact the thought and practices of humanism. Chapters investigate the social, political, and cultural implications of the creation and use of advanced forms of technology, examining both defining benefits and potential dangers. Contributors also discuss technology's relationship to and impact on the shifting definitions we hold for humankind. International and multi-disciplinary in nature and scope, the volume presents an exploration of humanism and technology that is both racially diverse and gender sensitive. With great depth and self-awareness, contributors offer suggestions for how humanists and humanist organizations might think about and relate to technology in a rapidly changing world. More broadly, the book offers a critical humanistic interrogation of the concept of "progress" especially as it relates to technological advancement.

We are on the verge of what many are calling the "second information revolution," based on ubiquitous access to both computing and information. The technologies of instant access have potential to transform dramatically our lives. This book contains chapters by leading international experts. They discuss issues surrounding the impact of instant access on cities, daily lives, transportation, privacy, social and economic networks, community and education.

The Internet is having an increasing influence on our lives, but what implications does it hold for human rights? How can it be used to promote and protect them? This book, written by an accomplished group of activists, writers, and academics, describes the development and use of the Internet for human rights, examines its impact across the world and upon various sectors of society, and discusses current and future trends in human rights promotion and protection.

Up for Grabs: The Future of the Internet, Volume 1 is the first volume of an exciting series by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University. How will the Internet be expected to change the workplace, family life, education and many other foundations of society between 2004 and 2014? Significantly. That was the forecast of nearly 1,300 leading technology experts and scholars who responded to The Future of the Internet I, a 2004 survey by researchers at the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University. The extensive elaborations supplied by survey respondents provide a vision of a networked, digital future that enhances many peoples' lives but also has some distressing implications. The big-picture Internet issues of the next decade, as foreseen by the experts in this survey, include: positive and negative changes in the family dynamic; a conflict between our desire for privacy, security and ownership of intellectual property and our desire for the convenience of free information sharing on networked devices; and a concern over being inundated with information. About the series: Technology builders, entrepreneurs, consultants, academicians, and futurists from around the world share their wisdom in The Future of the Internet surveys conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University. The series of surveys garners smart, detailed assessments of multi-layered issues from a variety of voices, ranging from the scientists and engineers who created the first Internet architecture a decade ago to social commentators to technology leaders in corporations, media, government, and higher education. Among the respondents are people affiliated with many of the world's top organizations, including IBM, AOL, Microsoft, Intel, ICANN, the Internet Society, Google, W3C, Internet2, and Oracle; Harvard, MIT, and Yale; and the Federal Communications Commission, FBI, U.S. Census Bureau, Social Security Administration, and U.S. Department of State. They provide significant and telling responses to questions about the future of government, education, media, entertainment, commerce, and more. They foresee continuing conflicts over control of networked communications and the content produced and shared online. They also predict the major changes ahead for everyone in every field of endeavor.

This text provides an important overview of the contributions of edible insects to ecological sustainability, livelihoods, nutrition and health, food culture and food systems around the world. While insect farming for both food and feed is rapidly increasing in popularity around the world, the role that wild insect species have played in the lives and societies of millions of people worldwide cannot be ignored. In order to represent this diversity, this work draws upon research conducted in a wide range of geographical locations and features a variety of different insect species. Edible insects in Sustainable Food Systems comprehensively covers the basic principles of entomology and population dynamics; edible insects and culture; nutrition and health; gastronomy; insects as animal feed; factors influencing preferences and acceptability of insects; environmental impacts and conservation; considerations for insect farming and policy and legislation. The book contains practical information for researchers, NGOs and international organizations, decision-makers, entrepreneurs and students.

Your organs are failing and require replacement. If you had the choice, would you prefer organs from other humans or non-human animals, or would you choose a 'cybernetic' medical implant? Using a range of social science methods and drawing on the sociology of the body and embodiment, biomedicine and technology, this book asks what happens to who we are (our identity) when we change what we are (our bodies)? From surveying young adults about whether they would choose options such as 3-D bioprinting, living or deceased human donation, or non-human animal or implantable biomechanical devices, to interviewing those who live with an implantable cardiac defibrillator, Haddow invites us to think about what kind of relationship we have with our bodies. She concludes that the reliance on 'cybernetic' medical devices create 'everyday cyborgs' who can experience alienation and new forms of vulnerability at implantation and activation. Embodiment and everyday cyborgs invites readers to consider the relationship between personal identity and the body, between humans and non-human animals, and our increasing dependency on 'smart' implantable technology. The creation of new techno-organic hybrid bodies makes us acutely aware of our own bodies and how ambiguous the experience of embodiment actually is. It is only through understanding how modifications such as transplantation, amputation and implantation make our bodies a 'presence' to us, Haddow argues, that we realise our everyday experience of our bodies as an absence. -- .

Learn how computer technology is helping school social workers collect information and synthesize it into meaningful data! Technology-Assisted Delivery of School Based Mental Health Services: Defining School Social Work for the 21st Century explores the many technological advances in school social work practices. This book also illustrates the ways technology is being used to manage and evaluate services provided by school social workers. This vital book contains: ways to use new technology to prevent and treat mental health issues in children through safe and effective learning experiences information on how biofeedback can be used to empower children to become more aware of their physical and emotional reactions to environmental stimuli an annotated bibliography of Internet sites covering topics and issues frequently encountered by social workers examinations of exciting software applications, including BARN, From Mad to Worse, Conflict Management, and Smart Team methods of online data collection for use in school social work practices and more!

The complex relationship between technology and social outcomes is well known and has recently seen significant attention due to the deepening of technology use in many domains. This includes issues such as the reproduction of inequality due to the digital divide, threats to democracy due to misinformation propagated through social networking platforms, algorithmic biases that can perpetuate structural injustices, hardships caused to citizens due to misplaced assumptions about the gains expected from the use of information technology in government processes, and simplistic beliefs that technology can easily lead to social development. This timely work draws attention to the varying factors by which technology often leads to disempowerment effects. Featuring a Foreword by Tim Unwin, UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, Seth makes a call to technologists to burst the technology optimism bubble, build an ethos for taking greater responsibility in their work, collectivize to similarly shape the internal governance of their organizations, and engage with the rest of society to strengthen democracy and build an acceptance that the primary goal of technology projects should be to bring equality by overturning unjust societal structures.

This book discusses the results and implications of a two-year public engagement program on nanotechnology. Led by eleven diverse civic groups across the United States, the program events covered a wide range of applications and sparked robust discussions concerning risk and regulation. Through computer-assisted qualitative data analysis, video recordings of the events were coded for expressed levels of knowledge, positive and negative audience responses, perceptions of risk, views on regulation, and speakers' communication behaviors. These results add richness, nuance, and complexity to our perception of the public's understanding of nanotechnology, its support for regulation, and effective practices of science communication in the context of nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. Nano-Publics also offers further guidance for public engagement research, the regulation of emerging technologies, and potential science communication campaigns.

This addition to our popular Guides for the Perplexed series tackles a subject that is enjoying renewed debate: Christianity, along with Judaism and Islam, claims that the universe is not a brute fact. It is 'created'. But what do we mean by 'creation'? Do we mean that the universe is 'designed'? Is it the product of an evolutionary process? How are creatures related to God, and does God act within creation? Simon Oliver begins with the background to the Christian theology of creation in Greek philosophy and the Old Testament. This provides a route into understanding the claim that we are part of a created order that is also the theatre of God's providential action. He examines different understandings of creation, including creation out of nothing and the analogy of being, with close reference to the work of patristic and medieval theologians such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. This leads to an historical overview of the relationship between theological, philosophical and scientific approaches to creation in the modern period. Some of the ethical issues concerning humanity's place within, and treatment of, creation and our environment are also examined. A distinctive yet traditional theology of creation is proposed focused on the concepts of gift and participation as ways of understanding more fully the meaning and implications of the claim that the universe is created.

A thought-provoking compendium exploring differing views, possible social impacts, and government policy decisions involving the impact of science and technology on human life. Social Issues in Science and Technology explores the controversies involving the impact of science and technology on human life. Each entry provides the basic scientific background needed to understand the issue involved and its social, political, and economic implications. The coverage presents an unbiased summary of differing views, possible social impacts, and government policy decisions.

"Marxism after Modernity" is concerned with the ways in which Marxist theory has responded to the major social, economic and technological transformations of capitalism which have occurred in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The main themes of the book are: Marxism and Postmodernism; Media, Aesthetics and Mass Culture; Capitalism and Technology; Globalization and Political Resistance; and Marxism, Postmodernism and the Political. Each section begins with a review of Marx's writing on the theme under discussion, and then proceeds to examine the relationship of postmodernist thought to his critiques of capitalism, bourgeois culture, ideology and revolution.

Diverse and pluralistic in scope, this book provides an overview of the complex debate between religion and science. This volume is unique in that it incorporates discussions and interviews with leading academics in the field. The informal and accessible tone will be appealing to those approaching the topic for the first time.

"Will the ordinary man become a scientist?...Bucchi exposes the inadequacy of the 'technochratic model' but also the weaknesses of contemporary bioethics when facing the increasing dilemmas posed by science and technology to contemporary society." -Il Corriere della Sera [Italian leading newspaper] "Bucchi provides a clear, rigorous and accessible discussion - often enriched by a subtle irony - of complex and ambiguous issues, showing that science and innovation are not neutral terrains, but rather among the key conflictual contexts in which contemporary social and political changes take place." -Italian Review of Sociology "A dense but accessible book...Bucchi acutely describes the shortcomings of the technocratic and ethical responses to the contemporary dilemmas of science and technology." -Italian Edition of the New York Review of Books Nuclear energy, stem cell technology, GMOs: the more science advances, the more society seems to resist. But are we really watching a death struggle between opposing forces, as so many would have it? Can today's complex technical policy decisions coincide with the needs of a participatory democracy? Are the two sides even equipped to talk to each other? Beyond Technocracy: Science, Politics and Citizens answers these questions with clarity and vision. Drawing upon a broad range of data and events from the United States and Europe, and noting the blurring of the expert/lay divide in the knowledge base, the book argues that these conflicts should not be dismissed as episodic, or the outbursts of irrationality and ignorance, but recognized as a critical opportunity to discuss the future in which we want to live. Massimiano Bucchi's analysis covers the complex realities of post-academic science as he: Explores the widely debated theme of science and democracy across a broad range of technological controversies. Overviews issues raised by the current relationship among scientists, policymakers, business interests, and the public. Dispels stereotypes of the detached scientific community versus the uninformed general public. Examines the role of the media in framing scientific debate. Addresses the question of how to move beyond technocracy to a more fruitful collaboration between scientists and citizens. Offers a bold vision for a future in which the scientific and public spheres regard each other as partners working toward a shared purpose. Beyond Technocracy: Science, Politics and Citizens has great value as a postgraduate text for courses in technology and society, political science, and science policy. It will also find an interested audience among scientists, policymakers, managers in the technological sector, and concerned lay readers. "In his brilliant new book, Beyond Technocracy: Science, Politics and Citizens, Massimiano Bucchi opens for the reader the Pandora's box of the complex relationship between scientists and citizens in contemporary, democratic societies. With major corporations owning university labs and academic researchers (and their institutions) pocketing millions (literally) from the proceedings of patents resulting from their scientific work, Bucchi analyzes the implications of contrasting drives toward for-profit and open science, private and public science. Without pulling his punches, and without hiding behind easy, popular solutions, Bucchi clearly lays out the choices we face when confronted with a science whose potential societal impact - positive and negative - is becoming ever greater (e.g., nuclear energy, genetically modified foods, genetic engineering). Based on a wealth of empirical evidence and case studies, the book is extremely accessible and well written, making it an ideal introduction to the issues. I would highly recommend it to specialists and non-specialists alike!" -Roberto Franzosi, Professor in Department of Sociology at Emory University

Birth controlled analyses the world of selective reproduction - the politics of who gets to legitimately reproduce the future - through a cross-cultural analysis of three modes of 'controlling' birth: contraception, reproductive violence and repro-genetic technologies. It argues that as fertility rates decline worldwide, the fervour to control fertility, and fertile bodies, does not dissipate; what evolves is the preferred mode of control. Although new technologies like those that assist conception or allow genetic selection may appear to be an antithesis of other violent versions of population control, this book demonstrates that both are part of the same continuum. All population control policies target and vilify women (Black women in particular), and coerce them into subjecting their bodies to state and medical surveillance; Birth controlled argues that assisted reproductive technologies and repro-genetic technologies employ a similar and stratified burden of blame and responsibility based on gender, race, class and caste. To empirically and historically ground the analysis, the book includes contributions from two postcolonial nations, South Africa and India, examining interactions between the history of colonialism and the economics of neoliberal markets and their influence on the technologies and politics of selective reproduction. The book provides a critical, interdisciplinary and cutting-edge dialogue around the interconnected issues that shape reproductive politics in an ostensibly 'post-population control' era. The contributions draw on a breadth of disciplines ranging from gender studies, sociology, medical anthropology, politics and science and technology studies to theology, public health and epidemiology, facilitating an interdisciplinary dialogue around the interconnected modes of controlling birth and practices of neo-eugenics. -- .

In the fifteenth century the printing press was the 'new technology'. The first ever information revolution began with the advent of the printed book, enabling Renaissance scholars to formulate new ways of organising and disseminating knowledge.
As early as 1500 there were already 20 million books in circulation in Europe. How did this rapid explosion of ideas impact upon the evolution of new disciplines?
The Renaissance Computer looks at the fascinating development of new methods of information storage and retrieval which took place at the very beginning of print culture. And it asks some crucial questions about the intellectual conditions of our own digital age. A dazzling array of leading experts in Renaissance culture explore topics of urgent significance today, including:
* the contribution of knowledge technologies to state formulation and national identity * the effect of multimedia, orality and memory on education * the importance of the visual display of information and how search engines reflect and direct ways of thinking.

Modern Jewish debate about euthanasia regularly pivots on interpretations of the Talmudic story of Rabbi Chananya ben Teryadon being burned alive by the Romans sometime in the second century. Though many modern bioethicists say this fiery story presents a clear and precise position on euthanasia, the narrative itself is more complicated and ambiguous. The implications of this disconnect between the story as it is and how bioethicists read it are problematic for patients, the Jewish textual tradition, and for modern bioethics as a whole. Applying fresh critical analysis to this tale, Jonathan Crane traces the fascinating and challenging story of narratives and norms in modern Jewish bioethics. The result is an unprecedented examination of the impact of a classic story in all its variants, and of narrative in general, on contemporary bioethical discourse.

We are living in a world of transformation, and the world tomorrow will be very different from the world today, or the world of yesterday. This extraordinary book will be fascinating to anyone concerned about the future of our world. Defining 6 key areas to discuss; society, religion, environment, science& technology, business, and politics, the authors draw a roadmap to the future. They investigate how unexpected changes and developments are transforming the social and business landscape of the 21st century. They have invited some of the world experts and specialists to contribute to this book, creating a virtual team spanning over all continents.

Cybercrime focuses on the growing concern about the use of electronic communication for criminal activities and the appropriateness of the counter-measures which are being adopted by law enforcement agencies, security services and legislators to address such anxieties. Fuelled by sensational media headlines and news coverage which have done much to encourage the belief that technologies like the Internet are likely to lead to a lawless electronic frontier, Cybercrime provides a more considered and balanced perspective to what is an important and contested arena for debate. It looks at:
*legislation
*electronic criminal behaviour
*privacy and liberty
*the dangers of surveillance
Cybercrime explains the basic issues surrounding cybercrime and its impact on society.

The diffusion of information and communication technologies is rapidly changing the structure of advanced economies, raising new problems of technological unemployment. The view that market forces can easily counterbalance the labour-saving impact of innovation is contrasted in this book with empirical findings on aggregate compensation effects and on the consequences of product, process and organizational innovation in industries and services. After examining several policy aspects, new employment-friendly economic and innovation policies are proposed.

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