Technology and Society

Technology and Society
Author: Deborah G. Johnson
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 853
Release: 2008-10-17
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0262303388

An anthology of writings by thinkers ranging from Freeman Dyson to Bruno Latour that focuses on the interconnections of technology, society, and values and how these may affect the future. Technological change does not happen in a vacuum; decisions about which technologies to develop, fund, market, and use engage ideas about values as well as calculations of costs and benefits. This anthology focuses on the interconnections of technology, society, and values. It offers writings by authorities as varied as Freeman Dyson, Laurence Lessig, Bruno Latour, and Judy Wajcman that will introduce readers to recent thinking about technology and provide them with conceptual tools, a theoretical framework, and knowledge to help understand how technology shapes society and how society shapes technology. It offers readers a new perspective on such current issues as globalization, the balance between security and privacy, environmental justice, and poverty in the developing world. The careful ordering of the selections and the editors' introductions give Technology and Society a coherence and flow that is unusual in anthologies. The book is suitable for use in undergraduate courses in STS and other disciplines. The selections begin with predictions of the future that range from forecasts of technological utopia to cautionary tales. These are followed by writings that explore the complexity of sociotechnical systems, presenting a picture of how technology and society work in step, shaping and being shaped by one another. Finally, the book goes back to considerations of the future, discussing twenty-first-century challenges that include nanotechnology, the role of citizens in technological decisions, and the technologies of human enhancement.

The Technological Society

The Technological Society
Author: Jacques Ellul
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 531
Release: 2021-07-27
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0593315685

As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology—which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind—threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book. "A magnificent book . . . He goes through one human activity after another and shows how it has been technicized, rendered efficient, and diminished in the process.”—Harper's “One of the most important books of the second half of the twentieth-century. In it, Jacques Ellul convincingly demonstrates that technology, which we continue to conceptualize as the servant of man, will overthrow everything that prevents the internal logic of its development, including humanity itself—unless we take necessary steps to move human society out of the environment that 'technique' is creating to meet its own needs.”—The Nation “A description of the way in which technology has become completely autonomous and is in the process of taking over the traditional values of every society without exception, subverting and suppressing these values to produce at last a monolithic world culture in which all non-technological difference and variety are mere appearance.”—Los Angeles Free Press

Health, Technology and Society

Health, Technology and Society
Author: Andrew Webster
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2020-07-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811543542

This book celebrates and captures examples of the excellent scholarship that Palgrave’s Health, Technology, and Society Series has published since 2006, and reflects on how the field has developed over this time. As a collection of readings drawn from twenty-two books, it is organized around five themes: Innovation, Responsibility, Locus of Care, Knowledge Production, and Regulation and Governance. Structured in this way, the book gives the reader a concise but nonetheless rich guide to the core issues and debates within the field. Complementing these narratives, the original authors have provided new reflection pieces on their texts and on their current work. This then is a book which in part looks back but also looks forward to emerging issues at the intersection of health, technology, and society. It uniquely encompasses and presents a range of expertise in a novel way that is both timely and accessible for students and others new to the field.

Technology and Society

Technology and Society
Author: Andrew Ede
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2019-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108425607

Celebrates the creativity of humanity by examining the history of technology as a strategy to solve real-world problems.

Society and Technological Change

Society and Technological Change
Author: Rudi Volti
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2005-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780716787327

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the interactions of society and technology. The new fifth edition includes coverage of such timely topics as cloning, stem-cell research, genetically modified foods, terrorism, intellectual property, and the global impact of the internet.

Convergence of Knowledge, Technology and Society

Convergence of Knowledge, Technology and Society
Author: Mihail C. Roco
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 603
Release: 2014-01-28
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319022040

This volume aims to document the most important worldwide accomplishments in converging knowledge and technology, including converging platforms, methods of convergence, societal implications, and governance in the last ten years. Convergence in knowledge, technology, and society is the accelerating, transformative interaction among seemingly distinct scientific disciplines, technologies, and communities to achieve mutual compatibility, synergism, and integration, and through this process to create added value for societal benefit. It is a movement that is recognized by scientists and thought leaders around the world as having the potential to provide far-reaching solutions to many of today’s complex knowledge, technology, and human development challenges. Four essential and interdependent convergence platforms of human activity are defined in the first part of this report: nanotechnology-biotechnology-information technology and cognitive science (“NBIC”) foundational tools; Earth-scale environmental systems; human-scale activities; and convergence methods for societal-scale activities. The report then presents the main implications of convergence for human physical potential, cognition and communication, productivity and societal outcomes, education and physical infrastructure, sustainability, and innovative and responsible governance. As a whole, the report presents a new model for convergence. To effectively take advantage of this potential, a proactive governance approach is suggested. The study identifies an international opportunity to develop and apply convergence for technological, economic, environmental, and societal benefits. The panel also suggests an opportunity in the United States for implementing a program aimed at focusing disparate R and D energies into a coherent activity - a "Societal Convergence Initiative”. This study received input from leading academic, industry, government, and NGO experts from the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Futures of Science and Technology in Society

Futures of Science and Technology in Society
Author: Arie Rip
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2018-06-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3658217545

Longer-term developments shape the present and endogenous futures of institutions and practices of science and technology in society and their governance. Understanding the patterns allows diagnosis and soft intervention, often linked to scenario exercises. The book collects six articles offering key examples of this perspective, addressing ongoing issues in the governance of science and technology, including nanotechnology and responsible research and innovation. And adds two more articles that address background philosophical issues.

Managing Technology in Society

Managing Technology in Society
Author: Arie Rip
Publisher: Burns & Oates
Total Pages: 384
Release: 1995
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

"A fateful conceptual gap separates the policy makers and managers charged with promoting technology, and the risk and technology assessors responsible for controlling it. This hampers the effective use of many new technologies, and prevents the development of others. The strategy of constructive technology assessment (CTA) addresses this gap through facilitating societal learning processes, and proposing a shared responsibility for the promotion and control of new technologies." "Combining analysis of both cases and concepts, Managing Technology in Society confronts the underdevelopment of innovative potential for achieving goals of wealth, sustainability and safety. Factors that block change, as well as conditions for successful learning are identified in a wide-ranging selection of cases that encompass biotechnology, clean technologies, information and medical technologies. The contributors build on the convergence of recent theories on technical change within economics, sociology and the history of technology, to offer suggestions for CTA action, and so create a new paradigm of managing technology in society."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Cultural Technologies

Cultural Technologies
Author: Göran Bolin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0415893119

Covering diverse themes such as intellectual property, media and architecture, satellite debris, server farms and search engines, art installations, surveillance, peer-to-peer file-sharing, the construction of techno-history and much more, this book discusses both the culture of technology that we live in today, and culture as technology.