Technology
Technology

Author: Eric Schatzberg

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-11-12

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 022658397X

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In modern life, technology is everywhere. Yet as a concept, technology is a mess. In popular discourse, technology is little more than the latest digital innovations. Scholars do little better, offering up competing definitions that include everything from steelmaking to singing. In Technology: Critical History of a Concept, Eric Schatzberg explains why technology is so difficult to define by examining its three thousand year history, one shaped by persistent tensions between scholars and technical practitioners. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, scholars have tended to hold technicians in low esteem, defining technical practices as mere means toward ends defined by others. Technicians, in contrast, have repeatedly pushed back against this characterization, insisting on the dignity, creativity, and cultural worth of their work. ​The tension between scholars and technicians continued from Aristotle through Francis Bacon and into the nineteenth century. It was only in the twentieth century that modern meanings of technology arose: technology as the industrial arts, technology as applied science, and technology as technique. Schatzberg traces these three meanings to the present day, when discourse about technology has become pervasive, but confusion among the three principal meanings of technology remains common. He shows that only through a humanistic concept of technology can we understand the complex human choices embedded in our modern world.

How Technology Works
How Technology Works

Author: DK

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-04-09

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0744020468

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Have you ever asked yourself how the inventions, gadgets, and devices that surround us actually work? Discover the hidden workings of everyday technology with this graphic guide. How Technology Works demystifies the machinery that keeps the modern world going, from simple objects such as zip fasteners and can openers to the latest, most sophisticated devices of the information age, including smartwatches, personal digital assistants, and driverless cars. It includes inventions that have changed the course of history, like the internal combustion engine, as well as technologies that might hold the key to our future survival, including solar cells and new kinds of farming to feed a growing population. Throughout the book, step-by-step explanations are supported by simple and original graphics that take devices apart and show you how they work. The opening chapter explains principles that underpin lots of devices, from basic mechanics to electricity to digital technology. From there, devices are grouped by application--such as the home, transportation, and computing--making them easy to find and placing similar devices side by side. How Technology Works is perfect for anyone who didn't have training in STEM subjects at school or is simply curious about how the modern world works.

Technology and Health
Technology and Health

Author: Jihyun Kim

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2020-03-06

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 0128169591

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Technology and Health: Promoting Attitude and Behavior Change examines how technology can be used to promote healthier attitudes and behavior. The book discusses technology as a tool to deliver media content. This book synthesizes theory-driven research with implications for research and practice. It covers a range of theories and technology in diverse health contexts. The book covers why and how specific technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, mobile games, and social media, are effective in promoting good health. The book additionally suggests how technology should be designed, utilized, and evaluated for health interventions. - Includes new technologies to improve both mental and physical health - Examines technologies in relation to cognitive change - Discusses persuasion as a tool for behavioral and attitudinal changes - Provides theoretical frameworks for the effective use of technology

Technology and the Historian
Technology and the Historian

Author: Adam Crymble

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0252052609

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Charting the evolution of practicing digital history Historians have seen their field transformed by the digital age. Research agendas, teaching and learning, scholarly communication, the nature of the archive—all have undergone a sea change that in and of itself constitutes a fascinating digital history. Yet technology's role in the field's development remains a glaring blind spot among digital scholars. Adam Crymble mines private and web archives, social media, and oral histories to show how technology and historians have come together. Using case studies, Crymble merges histories and philosophies of the field, separating issues relevant to historians from activities in the broader digital humanities movement. Key themes include the origin myths of digital historical research; a history of mass digitization of sources; how technology influenced changes in the curriculum; a portrait of the self-learning system that trains historians and the problems with that system; how blogs became a part of outreach and academic writing; and a roadmap for the continuing study of history in the digital era.

The Evolution of Technology
The Evolution of Technology

Author: George Basalla

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1989-02-24

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1316101584

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This book presents an evolutionary theory of technological change based upon recent scholarship in the history of technology and upon relevant material drawn from economic history and anthropology. It challenges the popular notion that technology advances by the efforts of a few heroic individuals who produce a series of revolutionary inventions owing little or nothing to the technological past. Therefore, the book's argument is shaped by analogies taken selectively from the theory of organic evolution, and not from the theory and practice of political revolution. Three themes appear, and reappear with variations, throughout the study. The first is diversity: an acknowledgment of the vast numbers of different kinds of made things (artifacts) that have long been available to humanity; the second is necessity: the belief that humans are driven to invent new artifacts in order to meet basic biological requirements such as food, shelter, and defense; and the third is technological evolution: an organic analogy that explains both the emergence of novel artifacts and their subsequent selection by society for incorporation into its material life without invoking either biological necessity or technological progress. Although the book is not intended to provide a strict chronological account of the development of technology, historical examples - including many of the major achievements of Western technology: the waterwheel, the printing press, the steam engine, automobiles and trucks, and the transistor - are used extensively to support its theoretical framework. The Evolution of Techology will be of interest to all readers seeking to learn how and why technology changes, including both students and specialists in the history of technology and science.

The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays
The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays

Author: Martin Heidegger

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 1982-01-19

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0061319694

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"To read Heidegger is to set out on an adventure. The essays in this volume--intriguing, challenging, and often baffling to the reader--call him always to abandon all superficial scanning and to enter wholeheartedly into the serious pursuit of thinking.... "Heidegger is not a 'primitive' or a 'romanitic.' He is not one who seeks escape from the burdens and responsibilities of contemporary life into serenity, either through the re-creating of some idyllic past or through the exalting of some simple experience. Finally, Heidegger is not a foe of technology and science. He neither disdains nor rejects them as though they were only destructive of human life. "The roots of Heidegger's hinking lie deep in the Western philosophical tradition. Yet that thinking is unique in many of its aspects, in its language, and in its leterary expression. In the development of this thought Heidegger has been taught chiefly by the Greeks, by German idealism, by phenomenology, and by the scholastic theological tradition. In him these and other elements have been fused by his genius of sensitivity and intellect into a very individual philosophical expression." --William Lovitt, from the Introduction

The Future of Technology
The Future of Technology

Author: Tom Standage

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2005-08-01

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9781861979711

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From the industrial revolution to the railway age, through the era of electrification, the advent of mass production, and finally to the information age, the same pattern keeps repeating itself. An exciting, vibrant phase of innovation and financial speculation is followed by a crash, after which begins a longer, more stately period during which the technology is actually deployed properly. This collection of surveys and articles from The Economist examines how far technology has come and where it is heading. Part one looks at topics such as the “greying” (maturing) of IT, the growing importance of security, the rise of outsourcing, and the challenge of complexity, all of which have more to do with implementation than innovation. Part two looks at the shift from corporate computing towards consumer technology, whereby new technologies now appear first in consumer gadgets such as mobile phones. Topics covered will include the emergence of the mobile phone as the “digital Swiss Army knife”; the rise of digital cameras, which now outsell film-based ones; the growing size and importance of the games industry and its ever-closer links with other more traditional parts of the entertainment industry; and the social impact of technologies such as text messaging, Wi-Fi, and camera phones. Part three considers which technology will lead the next great phase of technological disruption and focuses on biotechnology, energy technology, and nanotechnology.

Biology Is Technology
Biology Is Technology

Author: Robert H. Carlson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-04-15

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0674053621

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“Essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the current state of biotechnology and the opportunities and dangers it may create.” —American Scientist Technology is a process and a body of knowledge as much as a collection of artifacts. Biology is no different—and we are just beginning to comprehend the challenges inherent in the next stage of biology as a human technology. It is this critical moment, with its wide-ranging implications, that Robert Carlson considers in Biology Is Technology. He offers a uniquely informed perspective on the endeavors that contribute to current progress in this area—the science of biological systems and the technology used to manipulate them. In a number of case studies, Carlson demonstrates that the development of new mathematical, computational, and laboratory tools will facilitate the engineering of biological artifacts—up to and including organisms and ecosystems. Exploring how this will happen, with reference to past technological advances, he explains how objects are constructed virtually, tested using sophisticated mathematical models, and finally constructed in the real world. Such rapid increases in the power, availability, and application of biotechnology raise obvious questions about who gets to use it, and to what end. Carlson’s thoughtful analysis offers rare insight into our choices about how to develop biological technologies and how these choices will determine the pace and effectiveness of innovation as a public good.

Access Technology for Blind and Low Vision Accessibility
Access Technology for Blind and Low Vision Accessibility

Author: Yue-Ting Siu

Publisher: APH Press

Published: 2020

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781950723041

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"Access Technology for Blind and Low Vision Accessibility, the second edition of 2008's Assistive Technology for Students Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired: A Guide to Assessment, uses clear language to describe the range of technology solutions that exists to facilitate low vision and nonvisual access to print and digital information. Part 1 gives teachers, professionals, and families an overview of current technologies including refreshable braille displays, screen readers, 3D printers, cloud computing, tactile media, and integrated development environments. Part 2 builds on this foundation, providing readers with a conceptual and practical framework to guide a comprehensive technology evaluation process. As did its predecessor, Access Technology for Blind and Low Vision Accessibility is focused on giving people who are blind or visually impaired equal access to all activities of self-determined living, allowing them to be seamlessly integrated within their home, school, and work communities"--

Race After Technology
Race After Technology

Author: Ruha Benjamin

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-07-09

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1509526439

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From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide: www.dropbox.com