Information matters to us. Whether recorded, recoded, or unregistered, information co-shapes our present and our becoming. This book advances new views on information and surveillance practices. Starting with a methodology for studying the liveliness of information, Kaufmann provides four empirical examples of making information matter: association, conversion, secrecy, and speculation. In so doing, she presents an original and comprehensive argument about the materiality of information and invites us to investigate, and to reflect about what matters. This is a go-to text for scholars and professionals working in the fields of surveillance, data studies, and the digitization of specific societal sectors.
How biases, the desire for a good narrative, reliance on citation metrics, and other problems undermine confidence in modern science. Modern science is built on experimental evidence, yet scientists are often very selective in deciding what evidence to use and tend to disagree about how to interpret it. In The Matter of Facts, Gareth and Rhodri Leng explore how scientists produce and use evidence. They do so to contextualize an array of problems confronting modern science that have raised concerns about its reliability: the widespread use of inappropriate statistical tests, a shortage of replication studies, and a bias in both publishing and citing “positive” results. Before these problems can be addressed meaningfully, the authors argue, we must understand what makes science work and what leads it astray. The myth of science is that scientists constantly challenge their own thinking. But in reality, all scientists are in the business of persuading other scientists of the importance of their own ideas, and they do so by combining reason with rhetoric. Often, they look for evidence that will support their ideas, not for evidence that might contradict them; often, they present evidence in a way that makes it appear to be supportive; and often, they ignore inconvenient evidence. In a series of essays focusing on controversies, disputes, and discoveries, the authors vividly portray science as a human activity, driven by passion as well as by reason. By analyzing the fluidity of scientific concepts and the dynamic and unpredictable development of scientific fields, the authors paint a picture of modern science and the pressures it faces.
In this new book from Routledge and MiddleWeb, author Angie Miller shows how you can turn your students into informed citizens by teaching them how to research effectively. In today’s information-saturated world research skills have moved beyond fact-finding, into fact-sifting, fact-sorting, and fact-assessing. Miller shows you how to help students check sources, take good notes, make use of information, and synthesize and present information across the subject areas. She also shows how to make research a daily practice, not a one-time essay or project. With examples and online handouts you can use immediately, this practical book is a valuable resource for educators seeking to engage students in their work and encourage them toward higher level thinking.
This volume shows researchers how to bring their scholarship to a broader audience. Contributors explain how to talk to the media, testify as an expert witness, approach governmental organizations, work with schools and students, and influence public policy.
People want to buy from, work for, and partner with companies that matter. So how do you build a company that matters? Companies and people that matter have successfully become the obvious choice in the hearts and minds of their customers, their employees, and their communities. They elevate themselves by consistently finding ways to solve the most pressing needs their markets face. The result? They create more value year after year and build a sustainable, differentiated organization. In Matter, Peter Sheahan and Julie Williamson show you how to identify the place where you can create the most value—your edge of disruption—at the intersection of old and new, where your existing profits, reach, and reputation enable you to create the markets of the future. This is the place where the most important problems are solved and where the fewest people can solve them. Your edge of disruption is where your opportunity to matter is found. Matter uses extensive case studies of real companies that have successfully become the obvious choice in their markets—from high-profile corporations like Adobe and Burberry to lesser-known brands like Littlefield and BlueShore Financial. Their stories define innovative and impactful approaches to business that you can use to influence and partner with the right customers and clients to win in our radically changing world. Through their journeys, you will find the inspiration and courage to lean in to complexity and solve the higher value problems that matter most. Don't just read this book—use it to identify and act on opportunities to create the most value and accelerate your own journey to becoming a person and a company that matters.
Photography became a dominant medium in cultural life starting in the late nineteenth century. As it happened, viewers increasingly used their reactions to photographs to comment on and debate public issues as vital as war, national identity, and citizenship. Cara A. Finnegan analyzes a wealth of newspaper and magazine articles, letters to the editor, trial testimony, books, and speeches produced by viewers in response to specific photos they encountered in public. From the portrait of a young Lincoln to images of child laborers and Depression-era hardship, Finnegan treats the photograph as a locus for viewer engagement and constructs a history of photography's viewers that shows how Americans used words about images to participate in the politics of their day. As she shows, encounters with photography helped viewers negotiate the emergent anxieties and crises of U.S. public life through not only persuasion but action, as well.
The way we think about money has extraordinary impact. This book satisfies the growing longing for a financial overview that can provide practical advice and demonstrate how money is a social tool. Making Money Matter introduces the reader to common money mistakes, and the dysfunctional nature of the current financial framework. Its overview of the SRI world will inspire investors to push their advisors’ envelope while providing new strategies to meet the demand for positive impact. It provides a philosophical basis for transforming our view of money from an end unto itself to a means to change the world for the better. This book traces the author's journey from early financial innocence to an appreciation of how money works and how it can be transformed. People who care about the planet and society at large need a bridge from deeply felt values to practical understanding and advice that will lead to a new money paradigm. This new approach covers all aspects of money from everyday transactions to high impact investment options. It describes a new investment paradigm that will support both reasonable returns and long-term societal and planetary health. Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is well established for smaller scale investors in the public space and impact investing for accredited and qualified investors is taking hold in the private-space. Readers want more than flat definitions, and need an inclusive overview that can inspire investors on all levels to move the trillions required for addressing the world’s many dire problems. This book’s unique contribution is a personal, practical and holistic approach to socially conscious investing, which engages the reader in a way that is both healing and empowering. Making Money Matter is designed for mass appeal. First, its biographical, true-confessions format introduces the reader to common money mistakes made by the author, while personalizing the dysfunctional nature of the current financial framework. Secondly, its personalized overview of the countermovement of socially-conscious investment options is designed to inspire investors to push their advisors’ advice-envelope while providing investment managers with practical new strategies to meet the burgeoning demand for positive impact. Finally, this book provides a philosophical basis for the new money paradigm that shows how to transform our view of money from an end unto itself to a means to change the world for the better. This book is aimed at people who are concerned about Wall Street, banking and our current monetary and finance system, average investors, businessmen, progressives, libertarians or fiscal conservatives. However it should be of particular interest to investment professionals looking for new ways of meeting their clients’ needs. Investment managers and consultants need to be educated about this space. This book should be as popular among family office associations as the Chartered Financial Analysts Association. But this book's ultimate goal is to provide inspiration to all levels of investors. Everyone uses money, and the way we think about money has more impact than all the impact investments put together. This thinking needs to change. Just as consumers drove the growth of the local and organic movements, investors will drive the new money paradigm. This may help anyone to begin to think about the real bottom line of every transaction, which is the impact of our actions on the planet - including all living beings that inhabit it.
In this volume of 29 essays, Weil's overarching concern is that museums be able to “earn their keep”—that they make themselves matter—in an environment of potentially shrinking resources. Also included in this collection are reflections on the special qualities of art museums, an investigation into the relationship of current copyright law to the visual arts, a detailed consideration of how the museums and legal system of the United States have coped with the problem of Nazi-era art, and a series of delightfully provocative training exercises for those anticipating entry into the museum field.
Over the last decade, and even since the bursting of the technology bubble, pundits, consultants, and thought leaders have argued that information technology provides the edge necessary for business success. IT expert Nicholas G. Carr offers a radically different view in this eloquent and explosive book. As IT's power and presence have grown, he argues, its strategic relevance has actually decreased. IT has been transformed from a source of advantage into a commoditized "cost of doing business"--with huge implications for business management. Expanding on Carr's seminal Harvard Business Review article that generated a storm of controversy, Does IT Matter? provides a truly compelling--and unsettling--account of IT's changing business role and its leveling influence on competition. Through astute analysis of historical and contemporary examples, Carr shows that the evolution of IT closely parallels that of earlier technologies such as railroads and electric power. He goes on to lay out a new agenda for IT management, stressing cost control and risk management over innovation and investment. And he examines the broader implications for business strategy and organization as well as for the technology industry. A frame-changing statement on one of the most important business phenomena of our time, Does IT Matter? marks a crucial milepost in the debate about IT's future. An acclaimed business writer and thinker, Nicholas G. Carr is a former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review.
