This book is premised on the assumption that games and simulations provide welcome alternatives and supplements to traditional lectures and class discussions—especially in political science classrooms, where real-world circumstances provide ideal applications of theory and policy prescriptions. Implementing such an active learning program, however, is sometimes daunting to overburdened professors and teaching assistants. This book addresses the challenges of using games and simulations in the political science classroom, both online and in person. Each chapter offers a game or simulation that politics teachers can use to teach course concepts and explains ways to execute it effectively. In addition, the authors in this volume make a proactive case for games and simulations. Each chapter offers research to evaluate the effectiveness of the activity and pedagogical design best practices. Thus, the book not only serves as a game design resource, but also offers demonstrable support for using games and simulations in the political science classroom. Aimed at teachers at all levels, from high school through college, the book may be especially appealing to graduate students entering teaching for the first time and open to new teaching and learning approaches.
You don’t know how far you can trust what you see or feel or remember, because it could all just be a byproduct of your neural implant or illusions fabricated by a neurohacker. Self-evolving computer viruses and stray nanorobotic swarms have taken up residence in the components of your robotic prosthetic arm. Battles over access to neurocybernetic enhancement, life-extension biotech, and immersive VR paradises are fragmenting humanity into new strata of haves and have-nots. You can never tell whether the full-body cyborgs that you see in the street belong to military units, megacorps, or bands of hackers-for-hire… or maybe all three at once. Such near-future cyberdystopias provide the perfect setting for a hard-SF roleplaying game campaign. But how much reality lies beneath their surface? Could a human mind really learn how to operate a full cyborg body that has wheels or wings or dozens of robotic tentacles, or would it be too ‘alien’? If relatively small changes in brain temperature can cause behavioral impacts (or even brain damage), is it advisable to implant a heat-spewing miniaturized supercomputer in someone’s cranium? A neural jack that lets you instantly download new skills sounds great, but could such a thing actually work? And which of your cognitive functions could a hacker take control of by compromising such a device? If you’ve ever thought about any of these questions when designing or running an adventure, then Mnemoclave’s Posthuman Cyberware Sourcebook series is meant for you. It’s designed especially for GMs who want to give their campaigns a grittier edge and loads of surprises that’ll keep their players on their toes – and for serious gamers who want to map out the potential and limitations of their characters’ cyberware from a new perspective. This first volume in the series offers an introduction to the use of neuroprostheses for sensory, cognitive, and motor enhancement and explores distinctions between posthuman and transhuman cyberware. It’s not simply a tale of artificial eyes with telescopic night vision or combat-grade cyberlimbs but also a blueprint for the development of neuroprosthetically enhanced imagination, emotions, and conscience and the creation of human-synthetic hive minds. The volume considers neuroprosthetic devices’ human hosts in their three roles as sapient minds, embodied organisms, and social and economic actors to explain how cyberware can be employed either as tools for personal empowerment and liberation or mechanisms of enslavement and zombification. The book serves as a resource for designing campaigns or one-off adventures set in worlds with a cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, or biopunk milieu in which posthumanizing cyberware exists and societies are tilting toward the dystopian. The text includes dozens of special inserts with plot hooks, character traits, equipment descriptions, and ideas regarding setting and atmosphere that help you incorporate the material directly into your game, regardless of which rule system you’re running.
This book develops new insights into the evolving nature of organizations by applying the methodologies of posthumanist thought to the fields of organizational theory and management. An emerging 'organizational posthumanism' is described that makes sense of the ways in which forces of technological posthumanization are reshaping the members, personnel structures, information systems, processes, physical and virtual spaces, and external environments available for use by organizations. Conceptual frameworks and analytic tools are formulated that diagnose the convergence in the capacities of human and artificial actors generated by new technologies relating to human augmentation, synthetic agency, and digital-physical ecosystems. As the first systematic study of these topics, this text will interest scholars and students of organizational management and management practitioners who grapple on a daily basis with the forces of technologization that are increasingly powerful drivers of organizational change.
What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitively and physically with electronic information systems and work alongside social robots, artificial life-forms, and self-aware networks that are ‘colleagues’ rather than simply ‘tools’? How does one manage organizational structures and activities that span actual and virtual worlds? How are the forces of technological posthumanization transforming the theory and practice of management? This volume explores the reality that an organization’s workers, managers, customers, and other stakeholders increasingly comprise a complex network of human agents, artificial agents, and hybrid human-synthetic entities. The first part of the book develops the theoretical foundations of an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ and presents frameworks for understanding and managing the evolving workplace relationship between human and synthetic beings. Other chapters investigate topics such as the likelihood that social robots might utilize charismatic authority to lead human workers; potential roles of AIs as managers of cross-cultural virtual teams; the ethics and legality of entrusting organizational decision-making to spatially diffuse robots that have no discernible physical form; quantitative approaches to comparing managerial capabilities of human and artificial agents; the creation of artificial life-forms that function as autonomous enterprises competing against human businesses; neural implants as gateways that allow human users to participate in new forms of organizational life; and the implications of advanced neuroprosthetics for information security and business model design. As the first comprehensive application of posthumanist methodologies to management, this volume will interest management scholars and management practitioners who must understand and guide the forces of technologization that are rapidly reshaping organizations’ form, dynamics, and societal roles.
This volume provides a one-stop resource, compiling current research on solid oxide fuel cells. It is a collection of papers from The American Ceramic Society s 32nd International Conference on Advanced Ceramics and Composites, January 27-February 1, 2008. Topics include recent technical progress on materials-related aspects of fuel cells and emerging trends in electrochemical materials, cell/stack fabrication and design, interface engineering, and long-term chemical interactions. This is a valuable, up-to-date resource for researchers in industry, government, or academia who are working with solid oxide fuel cells.
Japan grew explosively and consistently for more than a century, from the Meiji Restoration until the collapse of the economic bubble in the early 1990s. Since then, it has been unable to restart its economic engine and respond to globalization. How could the same political–economic system produce such strongly contrasting outcomes? This book identifies the crucial variables as classic Japanese forms of socio-political organization: the "circles of compensation." These cooperative groupings of economic, political, and bureaucratic interests dictate corporate and individual responses to such critical issues as investment and innovation; at the micro level, they explain why individuals can be decidedly cautious on their own, yet prone to risk-taking as a collective. Kent E. Calder examines how these circles operate in seven concrete areas, from food supply to consumer electronics, and deals in special detail with the influence of Japan's changing financial system. The result is a comprehensive overview of Japan's circles of compensation as they stand today, and a road map for broadening them in the future.
Civilians play crucial roles in building empires. Constructing Empire shows how Japanese urban planners, architects, and other civilians contributed – often enthusiastically – to constructing a modern colonial enclave in northeast China, their visions shifting over time. Japanese imperialism in Manchuria before 1932 developed in a manner similar to that of other imperialists elsewhere in China, but the Japanese thereafter sought to surpass their rivals by transforming the city of Changchun into a grand capital for the puppet state of Manchukuo, putting it on the cutting edge of Japanese propaganda. Providing a thematic assessment of the evolving nature of planning, architecture, economy, and society in Changchun, Bill Sewell examines the key organizations involved in developing Japan’s empire there as part of larger efforts to assert its place in the world order. This engaging book sheds light on evolving attitudes toward empire and perceptions of national identity among Japanese in Manchuria in the first half of the twentieth century.
This book is a coherent and unique collection of chapters exploring the reception and diffusion of David Ricardo’s writings in different languages. The book highlights the similarities and differences between them. This book seeks to delineate the diffusion of Ricardo's theory in various parts of Europe and Japan. While there may have been case studies about the reception of Ricardo’s thoughts for several countries, there has not yet been a systematic study of the diffusion process under consideration as a whole. This book caters to all scholars dedicated to the history of economic thought and to students who are interested to learn about the peculiarities of the evolution of economic theories in different countries. This book is the first of its kind, with no known predecessor, and it aims to shed light on how and why some of Ricardo’s writings were picked up and why others were not. Given Ricardo’s importance in the field of economics, the book will be of interest to many.
