Knowing Machines

Knowing Machines PDF Author: Donald A. MacKenzie
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262631884
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
The essays are tied together by their explorations of connections (primarily among technology, society, and knowledge) and by their general focus on modern "high" technology. They also share an emphasis on the complexity of technological formation and fixation and on the role of belief (especially self-validating belief) in technological change.

Knowing Machines

Knowing Machines PDF Author: Donald A. MacKenzie
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262631884
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description
The essays are tied together by their explorations of connections (primarily among technology, society, and knowledge) and by their general focus on modern "high" technology. They also share an emphasis on the complexity of technological formation and fixation and on the role of belief (especially self-validating belief) in technological change.

Knowing Capitalism

Knowing Capitalism PDF Author: Nigel Thrift
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1412933056
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
′This is an ambitious, original, and complex treatment of key aspects of contemporary capitalism. It makes a major contribution because it profoundly destabilizes the scholarship on globalization, the so-called new economy, information technology, distinct contemporary business cultures and practices′ - Saskia Sassen, author of Globalization and its Discontents ′Nigel Thrift offers us the sort of cultural analysis of global capitalism that has long been needed - one that emphasizes the innovative energy of global capitalism. The book avoids stale denouncements and offers instead a view of capitalism as a form of practice′ - Karin Knorr Cetina, Professor of Sociology, University of Konstanz, Germany Capitalism is well known for producing a form of existence where `everything solid melts into air′. But what happens when capitalism develops theories about itself? Are we moving into a condition in which capitalism can be said to possess a brain? These questions are pursued in this sparkling and thought-provoking book. Thrift looks at what he calls ′the cultural circuit of capitalism′, the mechanism for generating new theories of capitalism. The book traces the rise of this circuit back to the 1960s when a series of institutions locked together to interrogate capitalism, to the present day, when these institutions are moving out to the Pacific basin and beyond. What have these theories produced? How have they been implicated in the speculative bubbles that characterized the late twentieth century? What part have they played in developing our understanding of human relations? Building on an inter-disciplinary approach which embraces the core social sciences, Thrift outlines an exciting new theory for understanding capitalism. His book is of interest to readers in geography, social theory, anthropology and cultural economics.

Knowing Machines

Knowing Machines PDF Author: Donald MacKenzie
Publisher: Turtleback
ISBN: 9780613911498
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Ranging from broad inquiries into the roles of economics and sociology in the explanation of technological change to an argument for the possibility of "uninventing" nuclear weapons, this selection of Donald MacKenzie's essays provides a solid introduction to the style and the substance of the sociology of technology. Two conceptual essays are followed by seven empirical essays focusing on the laser gyroscopes that are central to modern aircraft navigation technology, supercomputers, the application of mathematical proof in the design of computer systems, computer-related accidental deaths, and the nature of the knowledge needed to design a nuclear bomb.

Nanotechnology Challenges: Implications For Philosophy, Ethics And Society

Nanotechnology Challenges: Implications For Philosophy, Ethics And Society PDF Author: Joachim Schummer
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814478326
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
Nanotechnology is an emerging and rapidly growing field whose dynamics and prospects pose many great challenges not only to scientists and engineers but also to society at large. This volume includes the state-of-the-art philosophical, ethical, and sociological reflection on nanotechnology, written by leading scholars from the humanities and social sciences in North America and Europe. It unravels the philosophical underpinnings of nanotechnology, its metaphysical and epistemological foundations, and its conceptual complexity. It explores the ethical issues of nanotechnology, its impact on human, environmental, and social conditions, and the options for reasonable risk management. It examines the public discourse on nanotechnology and its related visions and provides both lessons from the past and outlooks for the future.

Shop Talk

Shop Talk PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 808

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Book Description


Digitalization, Economic Development and Social Equality

Digitalization, Economic Development and Social Equality PDF Author: Maria Mirabelli
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527552047
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
This book represents one of the outcomes of the World Complexity Science Academy (WCSA) Conference held in Rome in the Autumn of 2018, titled “Turbulent Convergence”. It reflects the fruitful discussions developed by a number of papers presented at the event by scholars from several different countries. In particular, the volume represents a great effort on the part of the WCSA to gather research carried out in Europe and beyond and to provide a forum for valuable discussion at international level in a cosmopolitan way.

Everyday Engineering

Everyday Engineering PDF Author: Dominique Vinck
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262512645
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
A guide to the everyday working world of engineers, written by researchers trained in both engineering and sociology. Everyday Engineering was written to help future engineers understand what they are going to be doing in their everyday working lives, so that they can do their work more effectively and with a broader social vision. It will also give sociologists deeper insights into the sociotechnical world of engineering. The book consists of ethnographic studies in which the authors, all trained in both engineering and sociology, go into the field as participant-observers. The sites and types of engineering explored include mechanical design in manufacturing industries, instrument design, software debugging, environmental management within companies, and the implementation of a system for separating household waste. The book is organized in three parts. The first part introduces the complexity of technical practices. The second part enters the social and cultural worlds of designers to grasp their practices and motivations. The third part examines the role of writing practices and graphical representation. The epilogue uses the case studies to raise a series of questions about how objects can be taken into account in sociological analyses of human organizations.

Bad Call

Bad Call PDF Author: Harry Collins
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262337754
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
How technologies can get it wrong in sports, and what the consequences are—referees undermined, fans heartbroken, and the illusion of perfect accuracy maintained. Good call or bad call, referees and umpires have always had the final say in sports. Bad calls are more visible: plays are televised backward and forward and in slow motion. New technologies—the Hawk-Eye system used in tennis and cricket, for example, and the goal-line technology used in English football—introduced to correct bad calls sometimes get it right and sometimes get it wrong, but always undermine the authority of referees and umpires. Bad Call looks at the technologies used to make refereeing decisions in sports, analyzes them in action, and explains the consequences. Used well, technologies can help referees reach the right decision and deliver justice for fans: a fair match in which the best team wins. Used poorly, however, decision-making technologies pass off statements of probability as perfect accuracy and perpetuate a mythology of infallibility. The authors re-analyze three seasons of play in English Premier League football, and discover that goal line technology was irrelevant; so many crucial wrong decisions were made that different teams should have won the Premiership, advanced to the Champions League, and been relegated. Simple video replay could have prevented most of these bad calls. (Major League baseball learned this lesson, introducing expanded replay after a bad call cost Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game.) What matters in sports is not computer-generated projections of ball position but what is seen by the human eye—reconciling what the sports fan sees and what the game official sees.

Simple Machines Made Simple

Simple Machines Made Simple PDF Author: Ralph E. St. Andre
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031308016X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
This book allows you to present scientific principles and simple mechanics through hands-on cooperative learning activities. Using inexpensive materials (e.g., tape, paper clips), students build simple machines-such as levers, pulleys, spring scales, gears, wheels and axles, windmills, and wedges-that demonstrate how things work. Activities have easy-to-locate materials lists, time requirements, and step-by-step directions (usually illustrated) on presentation. Ideas for bulletin boards, learning centers, and computer-assisted instruction are an added bonus.

Beyond Imported Magic

Beyond Imported Magic PDF Author: Eden Medina
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262526204
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Studies challenging the idea that technology and science flow only from global North to South. The essays in this volume study the creation, adaptation, and use of science and technology in Latin America. They challenge the view that scientific ideas and technology travel unchanged from the global North to the global South—the view of technology as “imported magic.” They describe not only alternate pathways for innovation, invention, and discovery but also how ideas and technologies circulate in Latin American contexts and transnationally. The contributors' explorations of these issues, and their examination of specific Latin American experiences with science and technology, offer a broader, more nuanced understanding of how science, technology, politics, and power interact in the past and present. The essays in this book use methods from history and the social sciences to investigate forms of local creation and use of technologies; the circulation of ideas, people, and artifacts in local and global networks; and hybrid technologies and forms of knowledge production. They address such topics as the work of female forensic geneticists in Colombia; the pioneering Argentinean use of fingerprinting technology in the late nineteenth century; the design, use, and meaning of the XO Laptops created and distributed by the One Laptop per Child Program; and the development of nuclear energy in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile. Contributors Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Morgan G. Ames, Javiera Barandiarán, João Biehl, Anita Say Chan, Amy Cox Hall, Henrique Cukierman, Ana Delgado, Rafael Dias, Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., Mariano Fressoli, Jonathan Hagood, Christina Holmes, Matthieu Hubert, Noela Invernizzi, Michael Lemon, Ivan da Costa Marques, Gisela Mateos, Eden Medina, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Hugo Palmarola, Tania Pérez-Bustos, Julia Rodriguez, Israel Rodríguez-Giralt, Edna Suárez Díaz, Hernán Thomas, Manuel Tironi, Dominique Vinck