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Author: Willem H. Vanderburg
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802083852
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 500
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Book Description
Exposing the limitations of conventional approaches to the engineering and regulation of technology, Vanderburg suggests that the solution lies in a preventive strategy that situates technological growth in its human, societal, and biospheric contexts.
Author: Willem H. Vanderburg
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802083852
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 500
Get Book Here
Book Description
Exposing the limitations of conventional approaches to the engineering and regulation of technology, Vanderburg suggests that the solution lies in a preventive strategy that situates technological growth in its human, societal, and biospheric contexts.
Author: Willem H. Vanderburg
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442659483
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 847
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Book Description
From the very beginnings of their existence, human beings have distinguished themselves from other animals by not taking immediate experience for granted. Everything was symbolized according to its meaning and value: a fallen branch from a tree became a lever; a tree trunk floating in the river became a canoe. Homo logos created communities based on cultures: humanity's first megaproject. Further symbolization of the human community and its relation to nature led to the possibility of creating societies and civilizations. Everything changed as these interposed themselves between the group and nature. Homo societas created ways of life able to give meaning, direction, and purpose to many groups by means of very different cultures: humanity's second megaproject. What Das Kapital did for the nineteenth century and La technique did for the twentieth, Willem H. Vanderburg's Living in the Labyrinth of Technology seeks to create for the twenty-first century: an attempt at understanding the world in a manner not shackled to overspecialized scientific knowing and technical doing. Western civilization may well be creating humanity's third megaproject, based not on symbolization for making sense of and living in the world, but on highly specialized desymbolized knowing stripped of all peripheral understanding. Vanderburg focuses on two interdependent forces in his narrative, namely, people changing technology and technology changing people. The latter aspect, although rarely considered, turns out to be the more critical one for understanding the spectacular successes and failures of contemporary ways of life. As technology continues to change the social and physical world, the experiences of this world 'grow' people's minds and society's cultures, thereby re-creating human life in the image of technology. Living in the Labyrinth of Technology argues that the twenty-first century will be dominated by this pattern unless society intervenes on human (as opposed to technical) terms.
Author: Willem H. Vanderburg
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442659475
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 494
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Book Description
Why does modern technology succeed so brilliantly in some respects and simultaneously fail in others? While he was completing a doctoral thesis in mechanical engineering in the late 60s and early 70s, Willem Vanderburg became convinced that the environmental crisis and the possible limits to growth would require a fundamental change in the engineering, management and regulation of technology. In this volume he exposes the limitations of conventional approaches in these fields. Modern societies urgently need to rethink the intellectual division of labour in science and technology and the corresponding organization of the university, corporation, and government in order to get out of a self-destructive pattern where problems are first created by some than then dealt with by others, making it almost impossible to get to the roots of anything. The result is what he calls the labyrinth of technology, a growing patchwork of compensations that merely displace and transform problems from one place to another. The author's diagnosis suggests the remedy: a new, preventive strategy that situates technological and economic growth in its human, societal, and biospheric contexts, and calls for a synthesis of methods in engineering, management, and public policy, and of approaches in the social sciences and humanities. He also suggests that this same synthesis can be applied in medicine, law, social work, and other professions. The Labyrinth of Technology is a unique and invaluable text for students, academics and laypersons in all disciplines, and speaks to those who are torn between the benefits that modern technology provides and the difficulties it creates in our individual and collective lives.
Author: Willem H. Vanderburg
Publisher: Heritage
ISBN: 9780802044310
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
Exposing the limitations of conventional approaches to the engineering and regulation of technology, Vanderburg suggests that the solution lies in a preventive strategy that situates technological growth in its human, societal, and biospheric contexts.
Author: Zoe Lowery
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica
ISBN: 1508100411
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 112
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Book Description
Technology has become part of our everyday lives, with computers, smartphones, and ever more complex technical marvels bringing the world to our fingertips. This title offers an overview of one of the most exciting times in technology. Beginning in 1900, the text guides the reader through innovations such as important advancements in farming, the exploration of space, military technology, and modern advancements in engineering and food production. Readers can anticipate a thorough overview of the myriad ways technology has evolved and continues to change our lives.
Author: Thomas J. Misa
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421443112
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
Now updated — A comprehensive, 500-year history of technology in society. Historian Thomas J. Misa's sweeping history of the relationship between technology and society over the past 500 years reveals how technological innovations have shaped—and have been shaped by—the cultures in which they arose. Spanning the preindustrial past, the age of scientific, political, and industrial revolutions, as well as the more recent eras of imperialism, modernism, and global security, this compelling work evaluates what Misa calls "the question of technology." In this edition, Misa brings his acclaimed text up to date by drawing on current scholarship while retaining sharply drawn portraits of individual people, artifacts, and systems. Each chapter has been honed to relate to contemporary concerns. Globalization, Misa argues, looks differently considering today's virulent nationalism, cultural chauvinism, and trade wars. A new chapter focuses on the digital age from 1990 to 2016. The book also examines how today's unsustainable energy systems, insecure information networks, and vulnerable global shipping have helped foster geopolitical risks and instability and takes a look at the coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of Wuhan, China's high-tech district. A masterful analysis of how technology and culture have influenced each other over five centuries, Leonardo to the Internet frames a history that illuminates modern-day problems and prospects faced by our technology-dependent world.
Author: George Basalla
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: George Basalla
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316101584
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
This book presents an evolutionary theory of technological change based upon recent scholarship in the history of technology and upon relevant material drawn from economic history and anthropology. It challenges the popular notion that technology advances by the efforts of a few heroic individuals who produce a series of revolutionary inventions owing little or nothing to the technological past. Therefore, the book's argument is shaped by analogies taken selectively from the theory of organic evolution, and not from the theory and practice of political revolution. Three themes appear, and reappear with variations, throughout the study. The first is diversity: an acknowledgment of the vast numbers of different kinds of made things (artifacts) that have long been available to humanity; the second is necessity: the belief that humans are driven to invent new artifacts in order to meet basic biological requirements such as food, shelter, and defense; and the third is technological evolution: an organic analogy that explains both the emergence of novel artifacts and their subsequent selection by society for incorporation into its material life without invoking either biological necessity or technological progress. Although the book is not intended to provide a strict chronological account of the development of technology, historical examples - including many of the major achievements of Western technology: the waterwheel, the printing press, the steam engine, automobiles and trucks, and the transistor - are used extensively to support its theoretical framework. The Evolution of Techology will be of interest to all readers seeking to learn how and why technology changes, including both students and specialists in the history of technology and science.
Author: Daniel M. Gerstein
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1633885798
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A leading technology expert examines ways to manage the rapid proliferation of technology and come to grips with its pervasive influence. Technology--always a key driver of historical change--is transforming society as never before and at a far more rapid pace. This book takes the reader on a journey into what the author identifies as the central organizing construct for the future of civilization, the continued proliferation of technology. And he challenges us to consider how to think about technology to ensure that we humans, and not the products of our invention, remain in control of our destinies? In this informative and insightful examination, Dr. Daniel M. Gerstein--who brings vast operational, research, and academic experience to the subject--proposes a method for gaining a better understanding of how technology is likely to evolve in the future. He identifies the attributes that a future successful technology will seek to emulate and the pitfalls that a technology developer should try to avoid. The aim is to bring greater clarity to the impact of technology on individuals and society. In particular, he considers three technologies now converging that will shape the future: biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and the "internet of things." He asks: Will we continue to develop new technologies in these fields merely because basic research shows that we can, or should we first consider the likely effects of these technologies on the quality of life at the individual, societal, and global levels? Dr. Gerstein makes a compelling case that rational and informed evolution of our technological options is the best course for ensuring a brighter future.
Author: Arnold Pacey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780262161282
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
From cathedrals to star wars, Arnold Pacey looks at the interaction of technologies and society over the last thousand years and uses that survey to argue for a more humane form of future technological development.
