Race After Technology

Race After Technology PDF Author: Ruha Benjamin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509526439
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide: www.dropbox.com

Race After Technology

Race After Technology PDF Author: Ruha Benjamin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509526439
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide: www.dropbox.com

Innovation and Its Enemies

Innovation and Its Enemies PDF Author: Calestous Juma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190467037
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
New technologies may be heralded as life-changing innovations or feared as risks to moral values, human health, and environmental safety. Anxieties surrounding technology are often heightened by perceptions that their benefits will accrue to small sections of society while the risks are more widely distributed. Innovation and Its Enemies identifies the tension between the need for innovation and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order and stability as one of today's biggest policy challenges. It looks at a number of historical examples, including coffee, electricity, margarine, farm mechanization, recorded music, transgenic crops and transgenic animals, to show how new technologies emerge, take root and create new institutional ecologies that favor their dominance in the marketplace.

A History of Modern Computing, second edition

A History of Modern Computing, second edition PDF Author: Paul E. Ceruzzi
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262532037
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
From the first digital computer to the dot-com crash—a story of individuals, institutions, and the forces that led to a series of dramatic transformations. This engaging history covers modern computing from the development of the first electronic digital computer through the dot-com crash. The author concentrates on five key moments of transition: the transformation of the computer in the late 1940s from a specialized scientific instrument to a commercial product; the emergence of small systems in the late 1960s; the beginning of personal computing in the 1970s; the spread of networking after 1985; and, in a chapter written for this edition, the period 1995-2001. The new material focuses on the Microsoft antitrust suit, the rise and fall of the dot-coms, and the advent of open source software, particularly Linux. Within the chronological narrative, the book traces several overlapping threads: the evolution of the computer's internal design; the effect of economic trends and the Cold War; the long-term role of IBM as a player and as a target for upstart entrepreneurs; the growth of software from a hidden element to a major character in the story of computing; and the recurring issue of the place of information and computing in a democratic society. The focus is on the United States (though Europe and Japan enter the story at crucial points), on computing per se rather than on applications such as artificial intelligence, and on systems that were sold commercially and installed in quantities.

A New History of Modern Computing

A New History of Modern Computing PDF Author: Thomas Haigh
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262366479
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
How the computer became universal. Over the past fifty years, the computer has been transformed from a hulking scientific supertool and data processing workhorse, remote from the experiences of ordinary people, to a diverse family of devices that billions rely on to play games, shop, stream music and movies, communicate, and count their steps. In A New History of Modern Computing, Thomas Haigh and Paul Ceruzzi trace these changes. A comprehensive reimagining of Ceruzzi's A History of Modern Computing, this new volume uses each chapter to recount one such transformation, describing how a particular community of users and producers remade the computer into something new. Haigh and Ceruzzi ground their accounts of these computing revolutions in the longer and deeper history of computing technology. They begin with the story of the 1945 ENIAC computer, which introduced the vocabulary of "programs" and "programming," and proceed through email, pocket calculators, personal computers, the World Wide Web, videogames, smart phones, and our current world of computers everywhere--in phones, cars, appliances, watches, and more. Finally, they consider the Tesla Model S as an object that simultaneously embodies many strands of computing.

To Save Everything, Click Here

To Save Everything, Click Here PDF Author: Evgeny Morozov
Publisher:
ISBN: 1610391381
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
The award-winning author of The Net Delusion shows how the radical transparency we've become accustomed to online may threaten the spirit of real-life democracy

The History of Modern Science

The History of Modern Science PDF Author: Stephen G. Brush
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 568

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Book Description


A Culture of Growth

A Culture of Growth PDF Author: Joel Mokyr
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168881
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today's unprecedented prosperity? In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development. Bringing together economics, the history of science and technology, and models of cultural evolution, Mokyr demonstrates that culture—the beliefs, values, and preferences in society that are capable of changing behavior—was a deciding factor in societal transformations. Mokyr looks at the period 1500–1700 to show that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive "market for ideas" and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the “Republic of Letters” freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and the supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity. In Europe, heterodox and creative thinkers could find sanctuary in other countries and spread their thinking across borders. In contrast, China’s version of the Enlightenment remained controlled by the ruling elite. Combining ideas from economics and cultural evolution, A Culture of Growth provides startling reasons for why the foundations of our modern economy were laid in the mere two centuries between Columbus and Newton.

Dynamics of Innovation

Dynamics of Innovation PDF Author: François Caron
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785330365
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Best known as the leading historian of French railways, François Caron has also done significant work on topics as varied as electricity, water and steam power, the theory of innovation, the structure of enterprise, and other aspects of economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this volume, he brings together these different facets of his expertise in order to present a broad panorama of modern technology. Caron shows how artisanal know-how was adapted, expanded, and formalized during the three industrial revolutions that swept over Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States in a comprehensive analysis of this long, complex, and continuous historical process, leading up to the twenty-first century. Thus, he illustrates the increasingly fruitful interaction between technological and scientific knowledge in modern times.

Modern Technology and the Human Future

Modern Technology and the Human Future PDF Author: Craig M. Gay
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830873848
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Technology has always shaped human life and our understanding of what it means to be human. But does it actually encourage human flourishing? By exploring the doctrine of the incarnation and what it means for our embodiment, Craig Gay raises concerns about the theological implications of modern technologies and movements such as transhumanism, offering an alternative vision to the path of modern technology.

The History and Future of Technology

The History and Future of Technology PDF Author: Robert U. Ayres
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030713938
Category : Technology
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Eminent physicist and economist, Robert Ayres, examines the history of technology as a change agent in society, focusing on societal roots rather than technology as an autonomous, self-perpetuating phenomenon. With rare exceptions, technology is developed in response to societal needs that have evolutionary roots and causes. In our genus Homo, language evolved in response to a need for our ancestors to communicate, both in the moment, and to posterity. A band of hunters had no chance in competition with predators that were larger and faster without this type of organization, which eventually gave birth to writing and music. The steam engine did not leap fully formed from the brain of James Watt. It evolved from a need to pump water out of coal mines, driven by a need to burn coal instead of firewood, in turn due to deforestation. Later, the steam engine made machines and mechanization possible. Even quite simple machines increased human productivity by a factor of hundreds, if not thousands. That was the Industrial Revolution. If we count electricity and the automobile as a second industrial revolution, and the digital computer as the beginning of a third, the world is now on the cusp of a fourth revolution led by microbiology. These industrial revolutions have benefited many in the short term, but devastated the Earths ecosystems. Can technology save the human race from the catastrophic consequences of its past success? That is the question this book will try to answer.