Kategoria BISAC: Technology & Engineering >> Social Aspects

In this latest edition of the first extensive account of the history of American scientific societies, the author has augmented his well-documented account with an important survey of the societies established during the space age. The nuclear and space age virtually replaced the lone working scientist with research teams. Government, industry, and universities began working together on major scientific projects, making the scientific society indispensable in its role of coordinator. Most of the societies established during this period are included in a new chapter, and minor revisions...

Thomas Bugge, Danish Astronomer Royal, spent six months in France in 1798-99 as his country's delegate to the International Commission on the Metric System, and while there he made a close study of the postrevolutionary scientific and cultural scene. Written up in the form of "letters," these observations were later published as Travels in the French Republic. The present work includes much of this material, some published in English for the first time, the rest unavailable except in a scarce English edition of 1801. The editor's principle of selection has been to include, among others,...

The story of MIT's contribution to the war effort, 1939-1945, including the role of MIT scientists in research and development at the national level as well as the activities on the campus.

Medical Technology and Society is a thought-provoking examination for nonspecialists of medical technology and the social and moral issues arising from it. The book describes the evolution of medicine from turn-of-the-century general practice with its few surgical techniques and scarcity of effective drugs to today's complex hierarchical delivery systems involving advanced science, sophisticated equipment, and a multitude of highly specialized personnel. The knotty economic and ethical questions that have accompanied this dramatic change are identified and discussed, enhancing our...

We live in a surveillance society. Anyone who uses a credit card, cell phone, or even search engines to navigate the Web is being monitored and assessed and often in ways that are imperceptible to us. The first general introduction to the growing field of surveillance studies, "SuperVision" uses examples drawn from everyday technologies to show how surveillance is used, who is using it, and how it affects our world.Beginning with a look at the activities and technologies that connect most people to the surveillance matrix, from identification cards to GPS devices in our cars to Facebook,...

We live in a surveillance society. Anyone who uses a credit card, cell phone, or even search engines to navigate the Web is being monitored and assessed-and often in ways that are imperceptible to us. The first general introduction to the growing field of surveillance studies, "SuperVision" uses examples drawn from everyday technologies to show how surveillance is used, who is using it, and how it affects our world. Beginning with a look at the activities and technologies that connect most people to the surveillance matrix, from identification cards to GPS devices in our cars to Facebook,...

"Digital Vertigo provides an articulate, measured, contrarian voice against a sea of hype about social media. As an avowed technology optimist, I'm grateful for Keen who makes me stop and think before committing myself fully to the social revolution." --Larry Downes, author of The Killer App

In Digital Vertigo, Andrew Keen presents today's social media revolution as the most wrenching cultural transformation since the Industrial Revolution. Fusing a fast-paced historical narrative with front-line stories from today's online networking revolution and critiques of...

Thanks to the internet, we now live--more and more--in public. More than 750 million people (and half of all Americans) use Facebook, where we share a billion times a day. The collective voice of Twitter echoes instantly 100 million times daily, from Tahrir Square to the Mall of America, on subjects that range from democratic reform to unfolding natural disasters to celebrity gossip. New tools let us share...

The role of representation in the production of technoscientific knowledge has become a subject of great interest in recent years. In this book, sociologist and art critic Kathryn Henderson offers a new perspective on this topic by exploring the impact of computer graphic systems on the visual culture of engineering design. Henderson shows how designers use drawings both to organize work and knowledge and to recruit and organize resources, political support, and power.Henderson's analysis of the collective nature of knowledge in technical design work is based on her participant observation...

This book puts the subject of publics and their engagement with emerging technologies on robust footing. With a strong, though not exclusive, focus on genomic technologies, leading theorists and practitioners in the field provide overviews of methods and approaches and theoretical accounts of the processes underlying public engagement.

Digital Russia provides a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which new media technologies have shaped language and communication in contemporary Russia. It traces the development of the Russian-language internet, explores the evolution of web-based communication practices, showing how they have both shaped and been shaped by social, political, linguistic and literary realities, and examines online features and trends that are characteristic of, and in some cases specific to, the Russian-language internet.

In The Second Machine Age MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee--two thinkers at the forefront of their field--reveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy. As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, we will realize immense bounty in the form of dazzling personal technology, advanced infrastructure, and near-boundless access to the cultural items that enrich our lives.

Amid this bounty will also be wrenching change. Professions of all kinds--from lawyers to truck drivers--will be forever upended. Companies will be forced to transform or...