Personal computers have made life convenient in many ways, but what about their impacts on the environment due to production, use and disposal? Manufacturing computers requires prodigious quantities of fossil fuels, toxic chemicals and water. Rapid improvements in performance mean we often buy a new machine every 1-3 years, which adds up to mountains of waste computers. How should societies respond to manage these environmental impacts?
This volume addresses the environmental impacts and management of computers through a set of analyses on issues ranging from environmental assessment,...

Almost seventy years ago, historian and then Trinidadian Prime Minister Eric Williams published his classic Capitalism and Slavery (re-titled for this edition, "British Capitalism and British Slavery"). In the introduction to "British Capitalism and British Slavery," a title which more aptly captures Williamss work, historian Seymour Drescher notes, "If one criterion of a classic is its ability to reorient our most basic way of viewing an object or a concept, Eric Williamss study supremely passes that test.... The achievement of Capitalism and Slavery is that Williams made it impossible for...

In his influential and widely debated Capitalism and Slavery, Eric Williams examined the relation of capitalism and slavery in the British West Indies. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, his study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its...