Kategoria BISAC: Technology & Engineering >> Social Aspects

Lastra argues that we are nowhere better able to track the relations between capital, science, and cultural...

"Hickman 's]... style of pragmatism provides us with flexible, philosophical 'tools'
which can be used to analyze and penetrate various technology and technological
cultural problems of the present. He, himself, uses this toolkit to make his analyses
and succeeds very well indeed." --Don Ihde

A practical and comprehensive appraisal of the value of philosophy in today's technological culture.

Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture contends that technology--a defining mark of contemporary culture--should be a legitimate concern of philosophers. Larry A. Hickman...

If asked, most people would agree that there are deep connections between technology and the modern world, and even that technology is the truly distinctive feature of modernity. Until recently, however, there has been surprisingly little overlap between technology studies and modernity theory. The goal of this ambitious book is to lay the foundations for a new interdisciplinary field by closely examining the co-construction of technology and modernity.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I lays the methodological groundwork for combining studies of technology and modernity,...

These thirteen essays explore a crucial historical question that has been notoriously hard to pin down: To what extent, and by what means, does a society's technology determine its political, social, economic, and cultural forms?Karl Marx launched the modern debate on determinism with his provocative remark that "the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist," and a classic article by Robert Heilbroner (reprinted here) renewed the debate within the context of the history of technology. This book clarifies the debate and carries...

The truth of the matter is that our deficiency does not lie in the want of well-verified "facts." What we lack is our bearings. The contemporary experience of things technological has repeatedly confounded our vision, our expectations, and our capacity to make intelligent judgments. Categories, arguments, conclusions, and choices that would have been entirely obvious in earlier times are obvious no longer. Patterns of perceptive thinking that were entirely reliable in the past now lead us systematically astray. Many of our standard conceptions of technology reveal a disorientation that...

During its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, the Bethlehem Steel mill at Sparrows Point near Baltimore was one of the world's largest steel plants, employing as many as 30,000 workers. But these glory years were short-lived, as the American steel industry soon collapsed, taking with it the high-income industrial jobs that many Sparrows Point workers had come to enjoy. This familiar tale of decline in America's industrial heartland is only part of the story, however. In response to downsizing and job loss at Sparrows Point, many women entered the workforce to fulfill the needs of their...

Developing "sustainable" architectural and agricultural technologies was the intent behind Blueprint Farm, an experimental agricultural project designed to benefit farm workers displaced by the industrialization of agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Yet, despite its promise, the very institutions that created Blueprint Farm terminated the project after just four years (1987-1991).

In this book, Steven Moore demonstrates how the various stakeholders' competing definitions of "sustainability," "technology," and "place" ultimately doomed Blueprint Farm. He reconstructs the...

With scientific progress occurring at a breathtaking pace, science and technology policy has never been more important than it is today. Yet there is a very real lack of public discourse about policy-making, and government involvement in science remains shrouded in both mystery and misunderstanding. Who is making choices about technology policy, and who stands to win or lose from these choices? What criteria are being used to make decisions and why? Does government involvement help or hinder scientific research?
"Shaping Science and Technology Policy" brings together an exciting and...

Humans have always sought to change their environment--building houses, monuments, temples, and roads. In the process, they have remade the fabric of the world into newly functional objects that are also works of art to be admired. In this second edition of his popular Existential Pleasures of Engineering, Samuel Florman explores how engineers think and feel about their profession.

A deeply insightful and refreshingly unique text, this book corrects the myth that engineering is cold and passionless. Indeed, Florman celebrates engineering not only crucial and fundamental but...

More than any other artifact of modern technology, the automobile has shaped our physical, social, and cultural environment. At the same time, the history of the automobile demonstrates how decisions made by governments, entrepreneurs, and the general public have strongly affected the automobile's evolution. Cars and Cultures provides a succinct yet comprehensive history of the automobile. While the book highlights the technical changes that altered the appearance and performance of automobiles, it also explores the political, economic, social, and cultural forces that shaped the...

This volume in the Greenwood Technographies series covers urban mass transit - that is, the technologies that allow cities to move large numbers of people around. Just a few hundred years ago, the size of cities was limited by the time it took people to move from one part of the city to another. The development of successive technologies has forever altered the urban landscape. From horse-drawn omnibuses to subways to current light-rail, this volume highlights the technological and social struggles that have accompanied urbanization and the need for an efficient and cost-effective means of...