The growing social and economic significance of expertise is reflected in popular suggestions that we are moving into a post-industrial 'knowledge society'. The subject of expertise is becoming recognised in a range of scholarly disciplines ranging from science and technology, psychology, computing and artificial intelligence through to management and organisational behaviour. Exploring Expertise brings together some of these diverse understandings of the character and implications of expertise, and demonstrates through a set of empirical case studies how expertise means different things to different groups, how it is constructed differently in different settings, and the consequences of this process for relations between 'members' of the knowledge society and those 'on the outside'. The book includes case study material ranging from a hospital ward to a factory to a nuclear weapons facility.

The growing social and economic significance of expertise is reflected in popular suggestions that we are moving into a post-industrial 'knowledge society'. The subject of expertise is becoming recognised in a range of scholarly disciplines ranging from science and technology, psychology, computing and artificial intelligence through to management and organisational behaviour. Exploring Expertise brings together some of these diverse understandings of the character and implications of expertise, and demonstrates through a set of empirical case studies how expertise means different things to different groups, how it is constructed differently in different settings, and the consequences of this process for relations between 'members' of the knowledge society and those 'on the outside'. The book includes case study material ranging from a hospital ward to a factory to a nuclear weapons facility.

The Information Society is an evolving project, with new 'ensembles' of social practices and of information and communication technologies (ICTs) emerging all the time. But not everyone is equally included in this project. Breaking new ground with its focus on inclusion, and drawing on an extensive body of European research, Technologies of Inclusion: Gender in the Information Society analyses a range of strategies which succeeded in attracting more women and girls as users or designers of ICTs. This reveals a set of underlying dynamics -- what the authors call technologies of inclusion -- by which different strategies work. It also highlights new gender-ICT ensembles which challenge long-held notions of technology as a masculine domain. This book is a must, for scholars interested in shifting gender-technology relations and for practitioners interested in effective digital inclusion. Indeed, for anyone interested in the evolving project of the Information Society.

Governments around the world have policies to promote links between industry and academic and government laboratories in order to foster economic growth and innovation in the technology-based industries. Knowledge Frontiers gives new insights into this process and offers an original framework for tracking these interactions. The book shows what 'knowledge' companies want from public sector research, and how they network to get this knowledge in three new and promising fields of advanced technology - biotechnology, engineering ceramics, and parallel computing. The authors first look at some of the background issues - policy issues about links between industry and public sector research; the ways in which science and technology interact in the innovation process; and general developments in each of the technologies examined. They look in more detail at public-private research links in the three areas. They find similarities which point to the general importance to innovation of frontier research in universities, and the need to encourage informal interaction/contact between industrial and public sector researchers. They also find differences between the fields which suggest that the policies to provide research links should be more effectively targeted, as an integral part of the broader objective of fostering 'strategic technologies'. Knowledge Frontiers advances our understanding of the various types of knowledge used in the course of research, design, and development leading to innovation. It is essential reading for those wanting to get to grips with the complex and dynamic realities of the innovation process - be they researchers, managers, or policy makers.