Priests and Programmers

Priests and Programmers
Author: J. Stephen Lansing
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2009-01-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1400827639

For the Balinese, the whole of nature is a perpetual resource: through centuries of carefully directed labor, the engineered landscape of the island's rice terraces has taken shape. According to Stephen Lansing, the need for effective cooperation in water management links thousands of farmers together in hierarchies of productive relationships that span entire watersheds. Lansing describes the network of water temples that once managed the flow of irrigation water in the name of the Goddess of the Crater Lake. Using the techniques of ecological simulation modeling as well as cultural and historical analysis, Lansing argues that the symbolic system of temple rituals is not merely a reflection of utilitarian constraints but also a basic ingredient in the organization of production.

Priests and Programmers

Priests and Programmers
Author: John Stephen Lansing
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1991
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780691028637

"Lansing describes the networks of water temples that manage the flow of irrigation water in the name of the Goddess of the Crater Lake. Using the techniques of ecological simulation modeling as well as cultural and historical analysis, Lansing argues that the material and the symbolic form a single complex - a historically evolving system of productive relationships. The symbolic system of temple rituals is not merely a reflection of utilitarian constraints but also a basic ingredient in the organization of production."--Book cover

Perfect Order

Perfect Order
Author: J. Stephen Lansing
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2012-09-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691156263

Along rivers in Bali, small groups of farmers meet regularly in water temples to manage their irrigation systems. They have done so for a thousand years. Over the centuries, water temple networks have expanded to manage the ecology of rice terraces at the scale of whole watersheds. Although each group focuses on its own problems, a global solution nonetheless emerges that optimizes irrigation flows for everyone. Did someone have to design Bali's water temple networks, or could they have emerged from a self-organizing process? Perfect Order--a groundbreaking work at the nexus of conservation, complexity theory, and anthropology--describes a series of fieldwork projects triggered by this question, ranging from the archaeology of the water temples to their ecological functions and their place in Balinese cosmology. Stephen Lansing shows that the temple networks are fragile, vulnerable to the cross-currents produced by competition among male descent groups. But the feminine rites of water temples mirror the farmers' awareness that when they act in unison, small miracles of order occur regularly, as the jewel-like perfection of the rice terraces produces general prosperity. Much of this is barely visible from within the horizons of Western social theory. The fruit of a decade of multidisciplinary research, this absorbing book shows that even as researchers probe the foundations of cooperation in the water temple networks, the very existence of the traditional farming techniques they represent is threatened by large-scale development projects.

A Small Matter of Programming

A Small Matter of Programming
Author: Bonnie A. Nardi
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1993
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262140539

Analyzes cognitive, social and technical issues of end user programming. Drawing on empirical research on existing end user systems, this text examines the importance of task-specific programming languages, visual application frameworks and collaborative work practices for end user computing.

Masters of Doom

Masters of Doom
Author: David Kushner
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2003-04-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1588362892

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart. Americans spend more money on video games than on movie tickets. Masters of Doom is the first book to chronicle this industry’s greatest story, written by one of the medium’s leading observers. David Kushner takes readers inside the rags-to-riches adventure of two rebellious entrepreneurs who came of age to shape a generation. The vivid portrait reveals why their games are so violent and why their immersion in their brilliantly designed fantasy worlds offered them solace. And it shows how they channeled their fury and imagination into products that are a formative influence on our culture, from MTV to the Internet to Columbine. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerful and compassionate account of what it’s like to be young, driven, and wildly creative. “To my taste, the greatest American myth of cosmogenesis features the maladjusted, antisocial, genius teenage boy who, in the insular laboratory of his own bedroom, invents the universe from scratch. Masters of Doom is a particularly inspired rendition. Dave Kushner chronicles the saga of video game virtuosi Carmack and Romero with terrific brio. This is a page-turning, mythopoeic cyber-soap opera about two glamorous geek geniuses—and it should be read while scarfing down pepperoni pizza and swilling Diet Coke, with Queens of the Stone Age cranked up all the way.”—Mark Leyner, author of I Smell Esther Williams

Islands of Order

Islands of Order
Author: J. Stephen Lansing
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2019-10-08
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0691192944

Two pioneering anthropologists reveal how complexity science can help us better understand how societies change over time Over the past two decades, anthropologist J. Stephen Lansing and geneticist Murray Cox have explored dozens of villages on the islands of the Malay Archipelago, combining ethnographic research with research into genetic and linguistic markers to shed light on how these societies change over time. Islands of Order draws on their pioneering fieldwork to show how the science of complexity can be used to better understand unstable dynamics in culture, language, cooperation, and the emergence of hierarchies. Complexity science has opened exciting new vistas in physics and biology, but poses challenges for social scientists. What triggers fundamental, discontinuous social change? And what brings stable patterns—islands of order—into existence? Lansing and Cox begin with an incisive and accessible introduction to models of change, from simple random drift to coupled interactions, phase transitions, co-phylogenies, and adaptive landscapes. Then they take readers on a series of journeys to the islands of the Indo-Pacific to demonstrate how social scientists can harness these powerful tools to discover out-of-equilibrium social dynamics. Lansing and Cox address empirical questions surrounding the colonization of the Pacific, the relationship of language to culture, the emergence and disappearance of male and female hierarchies, and more. Unlocking new possibilities for the social sciences, Islands of Order is accompanied by an interactive companion website that enables readers to explore the models described in the book.

The Cathedral & the Bazaar

The Cathedral & the Bazaar
Author: Eric S. Raymond
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2001-02-01
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 059655396X

Open source provides the competitive advantage in the Internet Age. According to the August Forrester Report, 56 percent of IT managers interviewed at Global 2,500 companies are already using some type of open source software in their infrastructure and another 6 percent will install it in the next two years. This revolutionary model for collaborative software development is being embraced and studied by many of the biggest players in the high-tech industry, from Sun Microsystems to IBM to Intel.The Cathedral & the Bazaar is a must for anyone who cares about the future of the computer industry or the dynamics of the information economy. Already, billions of dollars have been made and lost based on the ideas in this book. Its conclusions will be studied, debated, and implemented for years to come. According to Bob Young, "This is Eric Raymond's great contribution to the success of the open source revolution, to the adoption of Linux-based operating systems, and to the success of open source users and the companies that supply them."The interest in open source software development has grown enormously in the past year. This revised and expanded paperback edition includes new material on open source developments in 1999 and 2000. Raymond's clear and effective writing style accurately describing the benefits of open source software has been key to its success. With major vendors creating acceptance for open source within companies, independent vendors will become the open source story in 2001.

Mogworld

Mogworld
Author: Yahtzee Croshaw
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018-05-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1506706428

In a world full to bursting with would-be heroes, Jim couldn't be less interested in saving the day. His fireballs fizzle. He's awfully grumpy. Plus, he's been dead for about sixty years. When a renegade necromancer wrenches him from eternal slumber and into a world gone terribly, bizarrely wrong, all Jim wants is to find a way to die properly, once and for all. On his side, he's got a few shambling corpses, an inept thief, and a powerful death wish. But he's up against tough odds: angry mobs of adventurers, a body falling apart at the seams — and a team of programmers racing a deadline to hammer out the last few bugs in their AI. *Mogworld is the debut novel from video-game icon Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation)! With an exclusive one-chapter preview of Yahtzee Croshaw's next novel, Jam—coming to bookstores in October 2012! *Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's video review site, Zero Punctuation, receives over 2,500,000 unique hits a month, and has been licensed by G4 Television. *Yahtzee's blog receives about 150,000 hits per day. "The first legitimate breakout hit from the gaming community in recent memory." -Boing Boing

Pure Blood

Pure Blood
Author: Mike McQuay
Publisher: Bantam Books
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1985
Genre: Brothers
ISBN:

In a distant future strangely altered by mankind's folly, two brothers reenacted an ancient struggle -- Ramon, the cruel heir to a mighty empire, and Morgan, denied his rightful title by an accident of birth, who challenged him to preserve the freedom of humanity's children.