Indian Computer Science (CS) & Information Technology (IT) Academic Reform (Past) Activism Blog Book
Indian Computer Science (CS) & Information Technology (IT) Academic Reform (Past) Activism Blog Book

Author: Ravi S. Iyer

Publisher: Ravi S. Iyer

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13:

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Main author Ravi S. Iyer created the eklavyasai.blogspot.com blog and used it from September 2011 to play a part-time, peaceful and amicable, Indian Computer Science (CS) and Information Technology (IT) academic reform, Internet-based activist role. His focus was on improving the practice of software development in Indian CS & IT academia. But he thought that it is such a vital part of the CS & IT field and that it is so poor in many parts of Indian CS & IT academia, that he referred to his efforts as Indian CS & IT academic reform activism. Other contributors to the blog have given their views on certain topics. Main work period has been from 2011 to 2014 with a little work later, off & on. The main author is no longer active in this area. This book is aimed at helping other activists involved in improving the practice of software development in Indian CS and IT academia to get the views of the blog in a convenient form. The book may also be of interest to similar activists in other countries. About the author: Main author Ravi S. Iyer is a Physics graduate from Ruia college, University of Bombay (Mumbai) who was industry trained and later self-taught in software development. He worked in the international software industry (US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, India etc.) developing systems as well as applications software (CS & IT) for over 18 years after which he retired from commercial work. Later, mainly as a "visiting faculty", he offered free service of teaching programming courses (lab. courses) and being a "technical consultant" for student projects in a Maths & Computer Science department of a deemed university in India for 9 years.

Transforming Trajectories for Women of Color in Tech
Transforming Trajectories for Women of Color in Tech

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher:

Published: 2022-09-09

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9780309268974

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Demand for tech professionals is expected to increase substantially over the next decade, and increasing the number of women of color in tech will be critical to building and maintaining a competitive workforce. Despite years of efforts to increase the diversity of the tech workforce, women of color have remained underrepresented, and the numbers of some groups of women of color have even declined. Even in cases where some groups of women of color may have higher levels of representation, data show that they still face significant systemic challenges in advancing to positions of leadership. Research evidence suggests that structural and social barriers in tech education, the tech workforce, and in venture capital investment disproportionately and negatively affect women of color. Transforming Trajectories for Women of Color in Tech uses current research as well as information obtained through four public information-gathering workshops to provide recommendations to a broad set of stakeholders within the tech ecosystem for increasing recruitment, retention, and advancement of women of color. This report identifies gaps in existing research that obscure the nature of challenges faced by women of color in tech, addresses systemic issues that negatively affect outcomes for women of color in tech, and provides guidance for transforming existing systems and implementing evidence-based policies and practices to increase the success of women of color in tech.

Tactical Biopolitics
Tactical Biopolitics

Author: Beatriz Da Costa

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2010-08-13

Total Pages: 535

ISBN-13: 0262514915

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Scientists, scholars, and artists consider the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences. Popular culture in this “biological century” seems to feed on proliferating fears, anxieties, and hopes around the life sciences at a time when such basic concepts as scientific truth, race and gender identity, and the human itself are destabilized in the public eye. Tactical Biopolitics suggests that the political challenges at the intersection of life, science, and art are best addressed through a combination of artistic intervention, critical theorizing, and reflective practices. Transcending disciplinary boundaries, contributions to this volume focus on the political significance of recent advances in the biological sciences and explore the possibility of public participation in scientific discourse, drawing on research and practice in art, biology, critical theory, anthropology, and cultural studies. After framing the subject in terms of both biology and art, Tactical Biopolitics discusses such topics as race and genetics (with contributions from leading biologists Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins); feminist bioscience; the politics of scientific expertise; bioart and the public sphere (with an essay by artist Claire Pentecost); activism and public health (with an essay by Treatment Action Group co-founder Mark Harrington); biosecurity after 9/11 (with essays by artists' collective Critical Art Ensemble and anthropologist Paul Rabinow); and human-animal interaction (with a framing essay by cultural theorist Donna Haraway). Contributors Gaymon Bennett, Larry Carbone, Karen Cardozo, Gary Cass, Beatriz da Costa, Oron Catts, Gabriella Coleman, Critical Art Ensemble, Gwen D'Arcangelis, Troy Duster, Donna Haraway, Mark Harrington, Jens Hauser, Kathy High, Fatimah Jackson, Gwyneth Jones, Jonathan King, Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, Rachel Mayeri, Sherie McDonald, Claire Pentecost, Kavita Philip, Paul Rabinow, Banu Subramanian, subRosa, Abha Sur, Samir Sur, Jacqueline Stevens, Eugene Thacker, Paul Vanouse, Ionat Zurr

U.S. Education Reform and National Security
U.S. Education Reform and National Security

Author: Joel I. Klein

Publisher: Council on Foreign Relations

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 087609521X

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The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role. This report notes that while the United States invests more in K-12 public education than many other developed countries, its students are ill prepared to compete with their global peers. According to the results of the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment that measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics, and science every three years, U.S. students rank fourteenth in reading, twenty-fifth in math, and seventeenth in science compared to students in other industrialized countries. The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education. The report proposes three overarching policy recommendations: implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security; make structural changes to provide students with good choices; and, launch a "national security readiness audit" to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness.

Cognitive Capitalism
Cognitive Capitalism

Author: Yann Moulier-Boutang

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0745647324

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This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;

Future War
Future War

Author: Christopher Coker

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-11-12

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1509502351

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Will tomorrow's wars be dominated by autonomous drones, land robots and warriors wired into a cybernetic network which can read their thoughts? Will war be fought with greater or lesser humanity? Will it be played out in cyberspace and further afield in Low Earth Orbit? Or will it be fought more intensely still in the sprawling cities of the developing world, the grim black holes of social exclusion on our increasingly unequal planet? Will the Great Powers reinvent conflict between themselves or is war destined to become much 'smaller' both in terms of its actors and the beliefs for which they will be willing to kill? In this illuminating new book Christopher Coker takes us on an incredible journey into the future of warfare. Focusing on contemporary trends that are changing the nature and dynamics of armed conflict, he shows how conflict will continue to evolve in ways that are unlikely to render our century any less bloody than the last. With insights from philosophy, cutting-edge scientific research and popular culture, Future War is a compelling and thought-provoking meditation on the shape of war to come.

Seeing Like a State
Seeing Like a State

Author: James C. Scott

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 0300252986

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“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University

Liberty and Security
Liberty and Security

Author: Conor Gearty

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 0745669980

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All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our 'neo-democratic' world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights. Gearty's book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone's life. The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new 'democracies' that have turned 'neo', the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations. A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.

Alter-Globalization
Alter-Globalization

Author: Geoffrey Pleyers

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-23

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0745655084

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Contrary to the common view that globalization undermines social agency, ‘alter-globalization activists', that is, those who contest globalization in its neo-liberal form, have developed new ways to become actors in the global age. They propose alternatives to Washington Consensus policies, implement horizontal and participatory organization models and promote a nascent global public space. Rather than being anti-globalization, these activists have built a truly global movement that has gathered citizens, committed intellectuals, indigenous, farmers, dalits and NGOs against neoliberal policies in street demonstrations and Social Forums all over the world, from Bangalore to Seattle and from Porto Alegre to Nairobi. This book analyses this worldwide movement on the bases of extensive field research conducted since 1999. Alter-Globalization provides a comprehensive account of these critical global forces and their attempts to answer one of the major challenges of our time: How can citizens and civil society contribute to the building of a fairer, sustainable and more democratic co-existence of human beings in a global world?

Approaches to Social Enquiry
Approaches to Social Enquiry

Author: Norman Blaikie

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2007-09-24

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0745634494

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Since its initial publication, this highly respected text has provided students with a critical review of the major research paradigms in the social sciences and the logics or strategies of enquiry associated with them. This second edition has been revised and updated.