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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > Impact of science & technology on society
Winner of the Harald Kaufmann Prize for Senior Researchers, 2018 This book examines the question of whether the process of European integration in research funding has led to new forms of oligarchization and elite formation in the European Research Area. Based on a study of the European Research Council (ERC), the author investigates profound structural change in the social organization of science, as the ERC intervenes in public science systems that, until now, have largely been organized at the national level. Against the background of an emerging new science policy, Europe's New Scientific Elite explores the social mechanisms that generate, reproduce and modify existing dynamics of stratification and oligarchization in science, shedding light on the strong normative impact of the ERC's funding on problem-choice in science, the cultural legitimacy and future vision of science, and the building of new research councils of national, European and global scope. A comparative, theory-driven investigation of European research funding, this book will appeal to social scientists with interests in the sociology of knowledge.
Our computers and mobile devices do wonderful things for us. But they also impose a burden, making it harder for us to focus, do our best work, build strong relationships, and find the depth and fulfillment we crave. How to solve this problem? "Hamlet's BlackBerry" argues that we just need a new way of thinking, an everyday philosophy for life with screens. William Powers sets out to solve what he calls the conundrum of connectedness. Reaching into the past--using his own life as laboratory and object lesson--he draws on some of history's most brilliant thinkers, from Plato to Shakespeare to Thoreau, to demonstrate that digital connectedness serves us best when it's balanced by its opposite, "disconnectedness." Lively, original, and entertaining, "Hamlet's BlackBerry" will challenge you to rethink your digital life.
The need to study the effects of technology and science in development has been increasingly emphasized in recent years. At the same time, India and China have emerged on the world scene as large developing countries with rich, often contrasting, experiences of the application of technology and science to development. Comparative research on the Indian and Chinese experiences thus carries a great potential for a further elucidation of this subject. This book, first published in 1981, is intended to provide a basis for further research in this direction.
This volume looks at a central sociological problem - the reconciliation of individual self-interest and social solidarity -through the eyes of villagers in the east Italian Alps. It shows how local conceptions of envy, personal strength, mutual sympathy, and self-sacrifice interact with ideas about language and communications, properties, kinship, and natural forces. Village ritual evokes these conceptions to represent a social system based on age-group solidarity and exchange between the generations, and to link village unity with images of church and state power. Heady draws on both participants observation and interviews with older informants to trace the effects of recent exogenous technological and institutional changes and the way local people have responded to them. His findings relate to such themes of recent history as nationalism, regionalism, and anti-clericalism; and contribute to the theoretical debate on the relevance of structuralist anthropology to European societies.
Exploring the interactions that swirl around scientific uncertainty
and its coverage by the mass media, this volume breaks new ground
by looking at these issues from three different perspectives: that
of communication scholars who have studied uncertainty in a number
of ways; that of science journalists who have covered these issues;
and that of scientists who have been actively involved in
researching uncertain science and talking to reporters about it. In
particular, "Communicating Uncertainty" examines how well the mass
media convey to the public the complexities, ambiguities, and
controversies that are part of scientific uncertainty.
There are many different ways in which minority religions and counselling may interact. In some cases there can be antagonism between counselling services and minority religions, with each suspecting they are ideologically threatened by the other, but it can be argued that the most common relationship is one of ignorance - mental health professionals do not pay much attention to religion and often do not ask or consider their client's religious affiliation. To date, the understanding of this relationship has focused on the 'anti-cult movement' and the perceived need for members of minority religions to undergo some form of 'exit counselling'. In line with the series, this volume takes a non-judgemental approach and instead highlights the variety of issues, religious groups and counselling approaches that are relevant at the interface between minority religion and counselling. The volume is divided into four parts: Part I offers perspectives on counselling from different professions; Part II offers chapters from the field leaders directly involved in counselling former members of minority religions; Part III offers unique personal accounts by members and former members of a number of different new religions; while Part IV offers chapters on some of the most pertinent current issues in the counselling/minority religions fields, written by new and established academics. In every section, the volume seeks to explore different permutations of the counsellor-client relationship when religious identities are taken into account. This includes not only 'secular' therapists counselling former members of religion, but the complexities of the former member turned counsellor, as well as counselling practised both within religious movements and by religious movements that offer counselling services to the 'outside' world.
'Speckled with anecdotes, insights and surprises. It is great fun - and utterly timely' Sunday Times 'Standage writes with a masterly clarity' New York Times 'The product of deep research, great intelligence and burnished prose . . . It is rare that I encounter a non-fiction author whose prose is so elegant that it is worth reading for itself. Standage is a writer of this class' Wall Street Journal Beginning around 3,500 BC with the wheel, and moving through the eras of horsepower, trains and bicycles, Tom Standage puts the rise of the car - and the future of urban transport - into a broader historical context. Our society has been shaped by the car in innumerable ways, many of which are so familiar that we no longer notice them. Why does red mean stop and green mean go? Why do some countries drive on the left, and some on the right? How did cars, introduced only a little over a century ago, change the way the world was administered, laid out and policed, along with experiences like eating and shopping? And what might travel in a post-car world look like? As social transformations from ride-sharing to the global pandemic force us to critically re-examine our relationship with personal transportation, A Brief History of Motion is an essential contribution to our understanding of how the modern world came to be.
A Financial Times 'Best Thing I Read This Year' LONGLISTED FOR THE FT & MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD Google. Amazon. Facebook. The modern world is defined by vast digital monopolies turning ever-larger profits. Those of us who consume the content that feeds them are farmed for the purposes of being sold ever more products and advertising. Those that create the content - the artists, writers and musicians - are finding they can no longer survive in this unforgiving economic landscape. But it didn't have to be this way. In Move Fast and Break Things, Jonathan Taplin offers a succinct and powerful history of how online life began to be shaped around the values of the entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel and Larry Page who founded these all-powerful companies. Their unprecedented growth came at the heavy cost of tolerating piracy of books, music and film, while at the same time promoting opaque business practices and subordinating the privacy of individual users to create the surveillance marketing monoculture in which we now live. It is the story of a massive reallocation of revenue in which $50 billion a year has moved from the creators and owners of content to the monopoly platforms. With this reallocation of money comes a shift in power. Google, Facebook and Amazon now enjoy political power on par with Big Oil and Big Pharma, which in part explains how such a tremendous shift in revenues from creators to platforms could have been achieved and why it has gone unchallenged for so long. And if you think that's got nothing to do with you, their next move is to come after your jobs. Move Fast and Break Things is a call to arms, to say that is enough is enough and to demand that we do everything in our power to create a different future.
Does rationality, the intellectual bedrock of all science, apply to the study of religion? Religion, arguably the most subjective area of human behaviour, has particular challenges associated with its study. Attracting crowd-healers, conjurers, the pious and the prophetic alongside comparativists and sceptics, it excites opinions and generalizations whilst seldom explicitly staking out the territory for the discussions in which it partakes. Increasingly, scholars argue that religious study needs to define and critique its own field, and to distinguish itself from theology and other non-objective disciplines. Yet how can rational techniques be applied to beliefs and states of mind regarded by some as beyond the scope of human reason? Can these be made empirically testable, or comparable and replicable within academic communities? Can science explicate religion without reducing it to mere superstition, or redefine its truth in some empirical but meaningful way? Featuring contributions from leading international experts including Donald Wiebe, Roger Trigg and Michael Pye, Rationality and the Study of Religion gets under the surface of the religious studies discipline to expose the ideologies beneath. Reopening debate in a neglected yet philosophically significant field, it questions the role of rationality in religious anthropology, natural history and anti-scientific theologies, with implications not only for supposedly objective disciplines but for our deepest attitudes to personal experience. 'Interesting and important. Religion has long been associated with irrationality, both by its defenders and its critics, and the topic of rationality has been unjustly neglected The book certainly deserves to be widely circulated.' Greg Alles, Western Maryland College
Is the emerging digital multimedia culture of today transforming
the textbook or forever displacing it? As new media of transmission
enter the classroom, the traditional textbook is now caught up in a
dialogue reshaping the textual boundaries of the book, and with it
the traditional modes of cognition and learning, which are bound
more to language than to visual form. Most of the important work in
the past two decades in the field of curriculum has focused on the
culture of the textbook. A rich literature has evolved around
textbooks as the traditional object of instructional activity. This
volume is an important contribution to this literature, which
focuses on the actual making of a textbook. This design process
serves as a metaphor that suggests new paradigms of learning and
instruction, in which text content is but one component in a
multidimensional information space."The Visual Turn" is an
exploration along the border of this new learning space
transforming the traditional center of instruction in the
classroom.
What should individuals and society do when genetic screening becomes widely available and with its impact on current and future generations still uncertain? How can our education systems around the world respond to these developments? Reproductive and genetic technologies (RGTs) are increasingly controversial and political. We are entering an era where we can design future humans, firstly, by genetic screening of "undesirable" traits or indeed embryos, but perhaps later by more radical genetic engineering. This has a profound effect on what we see as normal, acceptable and responsible. This book argues that these urgent and biopolitical issues should be central to how biology is taught as a subject. Debate about life itself has always been at the forefront of connected molecular, genetic and social/personal identity levels, and each of these levels requires processes of communication and debate, what Anthony Giddens called in passing life politics. In this book Padraig Murphy opens the term up, with examples from field research in schools, student responses to educational films exploring the future of RGTs, and science studies of strategic biotechnology and the lab practices of genetic screening. Life political debate is thoroughly examined and is identified as a way of connecting mainstream education of biology with future generations. Biotechnology, Education and Life Politics will appeal to post-graduates and academics involved with science education, science communication, communication studies and the sociology of education.
In this volume, scholars from these two very different traditions are brought together. Never before has a single volume contained such a distinguished and diverse group of historians of technology.
The widespread use of the Internet as a tool for gathering and
disseminating information raises serious questions for
journalists--and their readers--about the process of reporting
information. Using virtual sources and publishing online is
changing the way in which journalism takes place and its effect on
the society it serves.
Democratizing Technology provides a much-needed fresh perspective on the regulation of chemicals, and an important contribution to green thinking about technology.Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP. This book is an excellent critique of the current risk-based approach to technology. By exploring the philosophical underpinnings and the practical applications of current policy on science and technology, Chapman exposes the serious flaws in allowing economic considerations to dominate the agenda in this area. Her proposals for reform are expertly constructed and deserve urgent and serious consideration by policy-makers.Dr Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director, Scientists for Global Responsibility. In this important book Anne Chapman argues that decisions about technology should answer a republican question: what kind of public world should we create through technology? Democratizing Technology deserves to be read widely. John ONeill, Professor of Political Economy, University of Manchester, UK A welcome addition to the new, more empirical and applied literature in philosophy of technology. This book will be essential reading for a variety of scholars and for the general reader intent on understanding, and criticizing, our chemically made world.Andrew Light, Interim Director, Program on the Environment, University of Washington, US What is technology? How do humans use it to build and modify the world? What are the relationships between technology, science, economics and democratic governance? What, if any, are our ethical and political responsibilities and choices in how we develop, deploy and control technology in democratic states? Democratizing Technology sets out to answer these questions. Focusing on the most widespread and pervasive technology - chemicals - this groundbreaking volume peels apart the critical technology debate to look at the relationship between humans, technology and the biological world. Attention is given to the immensely important new regulations, REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and restriction of Chemicals), the EUs largest ever legal framework, discussing the problems that are likely to occur in REACHs reliance on risk assessment methods and suggesting an alternative way forward for the regulation of chemicals. Providing much-needed clarity and insight into the heart of key debates in science and technology, risk analysis and mitigation, and domestic and international law, this volume arrives as a breath of fresh air.
What is the place and vocation of human beings in the earth community? This is the central question that this contribution towards a Christian ecological anthropology addresses. In ecological theology this question is often answered by the affirmation that 'We are at home on earth'. This affirmation rightly responds to the widespread sense of alienation from nature, to the anthropocentrism that pervades much of the Christian tradition and to concerns about the scope of environmental devastation. This book challenges the affirmation that we are at home on earth, examining natural suffering, anxieties concerning human finitude and especially the pervasiveness of evil. The book investigates contributions to ecological theology, South African and African theology, reformed theology and contemporary dialogues between theology and the sciences in search of a thoroughly ecological Christian anthropology.
The cognitive science of religion is a relatively new academic field in the study of the origins and causes of religious belief and behaviour. The focal point of empirical research is the role of basic human cognitive functions in the formation and transmission of religious beliefs. However, many theologians and religious scholars are concerned that this perspective will reduce and replace explanations based in religious traditions, beliefs, and values. This book attempts to bridge the reductionist divide between science and religion through examination and critique of different aspects of the cognitive science of religion and offers a conciliatory approach that investigates the multiple causal factors involved in the emergence of religion.
Addresses the significance of the enormous contributions in science and technology towards the realization of Japan's "Economic Miracle" during the occupation of Japan. In particular, the text examines the work of the Scientific and Technical Division of McArthur's GHQ. The Scientific and Technical Division encouraged the creation of new national bodies concerned with science and technology. It persuaded the Japanese Government to create new and more efficient means of dealing with technological matters (including industrial standards, quality control, patents and other intellectual property), and managed the sending abroad of scientists and engineers, government officials and industrialists to observe up-to-date practices in other countries.
'Boldly reactionary... What looks like feast, Carr argues, may be closer to famine' Sunday Times 'Chilling' The Economist In this ground-breaking and compelling book, Nicholas Carr argues that not since Gutenberg invented printing has humanity been exposed to such a mind-altering technology. The Shallows draws on the latest research to show that the Net is literally re-wiring our brains inducing only superficial understanding. As a consequence there are profound changes in the way we live and communicate, remember and socialise - even in our very conception of ourselves. By moving from the depths of thought to the shallows of distraction, the web, it seems, is actually fostering ignorance. The Shallows is not a manifesto for luddites, nor does it seek to turn back the clock. Rather it is a revelatory reminder of how far the Internet has become enmeshed in our daily existence and is affecting the way we think. This landmark book compels us all to look anew at our dependence on this all-pervasive technology. This 10th-anniversary edition includes a new afterword that brings the story up to date, with a deep examination of the cognitive and behavioural effects of smartphones and social media. |
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