Tribal Science
Tribal Science

Author: Mike McRae

Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0702247340

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do you define science? And whose theories are the right ones? Take a humorous and intriguing journey through the unchartered territory of scientific squabbles with scientist Mike McRae, Australia's next-gen Dr Karl, as he reveals arguments and accusations about who is right and who is wrong in the world of science. Over time, science has come to permeate our everyday existence: advertisements for beauty products use words that sound scientific, movie makers blur the lines between science and science fiction, and people spend billions and risk their health on bogus medical treatments. Without knowing it, we have accepted science as a social practice to explain and understand the world around us. Charting the history of science and our trust and blind faith in 'science', Mike McRae boldly examines the boundaries of what constitutes science and what doesn't. In an engaging and straightforward way, McRae explains how and why science developed and why it works, and gives us tools to interpret the good science from the bad. Intelligent and entertaining, "Tribal Science" reveals a compelling paradox that lies at the very heart of science and our everyday lives.

Network Sovereignty
Network Sovereignty

Author: Marisa Elena Duarte

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2017-07-11

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 029574183X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly determined that affordable Internet access is a human right, critical to citizen participation in democratic governments. Given the significance of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to social and political life, many U.S. tribes and Native organizations have created their own projects, from streaming radio to building networks to telecommunications advocacy. In Network Sovereignty, Marisa Duarte examines these ICT projects to explore the significance of information flows and information systems to Native sovereignty, and toward self-governance, self-determination, and decolonization. By reframing how tribes and Native organizations harness these technologies as a means to overcome colonial disconnections, Network Sovereignty shifts the discussion of information and communication technologies in Native communities from one of exploitation to one of Indigenous possibility.

The Nature of Technology
The Nature of Technology

Author: W. Brian Arthur

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2009-08-11

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1439165785

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“More than anything else technology creates our world. It creates our wealth, our economy, our very way of being,” says W. Brian Arthur. Yet despite technology’s irrefutable importance in our daily lives, until now its major questions have gone unanswered. Where do new technologies come from? What constitutes innovation, and how is it achieved? Does technology, like biological life, evolve? In this groundbreaking work, pioneering technology thinker and economist W. Brian Arthur answers these questions and more, setting forth a boldly original way of thinking about technology. The Nature of Technology is an elegant and powerful theory of technology’s origins and evolution. Achieving for the development of technology what Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions did for scientific progress, Arthur explains how transformative new technologies arise and how innovation really works. Drawing on a wealth of examples, from historical inventions to the high-tech wonders of today, Arthur takes us on a mind-opening journey that will change the way we think about technology and how it structures our lives. The Nature of Technology is a classic for our times.

Native American DNA
Native American DNA

Author: Kim TallBear

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2013-09-01

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0816685797

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Who is a Native American? And who gets to decide? From genealogists searching online for their ancestors to fortune hunters hoping for a slice of casino profits from wealthy tribes, the answers to these seemingly straightforward questions have profound ramifications. The rise of DNA testing has further complicated the issues and raised the stakes. In Native American DNA, Kim TallBear shows how DNA testing is a powerful—and problematic—scientific process that is useful in determining close biological relatives. But tribal membership is a legal category that has developed in dependence on certain social understandings and historical contexts, a set of concepts that entangles genetic information in a web of family relations, reservation histories, tribal rules, and government regulations. At a larger level, TallBear asserts, the “markers” that are identified and applied to specific groups such as Native American tribes bear the imprints of the cultural, racial, ethnic, national, and even tribal misinterpretations of the humans who study them. TallBear notes that ideas about racial science, which informed white definitions of tribes in the nineteenth century, are unfortunately being revived in twenty-first-century laboratories. Because today’s science seems so compelling, increasing numbers of Native Americans have begun to believe their own metaphors: “in our blood” is giving way to “in our DNA.” This rhetorical drift, she argues, has significant consequences, and ultimately she shows how Native American claims to land, resources, and sovereignty that have taken generations to ratify may be seriously—and permanently—undermined.

Great Sky River
Great Sky River

Author: Gregory Benford

Publisher: Hachette+ORM

Published: 2009-09-26

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0446567507

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The third novel in the award-winning author's classic Galactic Center series is available once again. "A challenging, pacesetting work of hard science fiction that should not be missed" (Los Angeles Times). Nearly 100,000 years after first contact with the machines that dominate the universe, a few hundred humans survive. Trapped on Snowglade, a barren world near the center of the galaxy, people like Killeen of Family Bishop and his child Toby are primitive scavengers, homeless and hunted by the ruling "mechs." Then suddenly, a strange cosmic entity-neither organic nor cybernetic nor living matter-reaches out from a black hole to speak with Killeen. But can this fallen descendant of starfarers understand this alien being in time-and seize his only chance to save his family and mankind from final annihilation?

Yaqui Myths and Legends
Yaqui Myths and Legends

Author:

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 1959

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780816504671

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Sixty-one tales narrated by Yaquis reflect this people's sense of the sacred and material value of their territory.

The Tyranny of Virtue
The Tyranny of Virtue

Author: Robert Boyers

Publisher: Scribner

Published: 2019-09-24

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 198212718X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From public intellectual and professor Robert Boyers, “a powerfully persuasive, insightful, and provocative prose that mixes erudition and first-hand reportage” (Joyce Carol Oates) addressing recent developments in American culture and arguing for the tolerance of difference that is at the heart of the liberal tradition. Written from the perspective of a liberal intellectual who has spent a lifetime as a writer, editor, and college professor, The Tyranny of Virtue is a “courageous, unsparing, and nuanced to a rare degree” (Mary Gaitskill) insider’s look at shifts in American culture—most especially in the American academy—that so many people find alarming. Part memoir and part polemic, Boyers’s collection of essays laments the erosion of standard liberal values, and covers such subjects as tolerance, identity, privilege, appropriation, diversity, and ableism that have turned academic life into a minefield. Why, Robert Boyers asks, are a great many liberals, people who should know better, invested in the drawing up of enemies lists and driven by the conviction that on critical issues no dispute may be tolerated? In stories, anecdotes, and character profiles, a public intellectual and longtime professor takes on those in his own progressive cohort who labor in the grip of a poisonous and illiberal fundamentalism. The end result is a finely tuned work of cultural intervention from the front lines.

The Sea Is My Country
The Sea Is My Country

Author: Joshua L. Reid

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 0300213689

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For the Makahs, a tribal nation at the most northwestern point of the contiguous United States, a deep relationship with the sea is the locus of personal and group identity. Unlike most other indigenous tribes whose lives are tied to lands, the Makah people have long placed marine space at the center of their culture, finding in their own waters the physical and spiritual resources to support themselves. This book is the first to explore the history and identity of the Makahs from the arrival of maritime fur-traders in the eighteenth century through the intervening centuries and to the present day. Joshua L. Reid discovers that the “People of the Cape” were far more involved in shaping the maritime economy of the Pacific Northwest than has been understood. He examines Makah attitudes toward borders and boundaries, their efforts to exercise control over their waters and resources as Europeans and Americans arrived, and their embrace of modern opportunities and technology to maintain autonomy and resist assimilation. The author also addresses current environmental debates relating to the tribe's customary whaling and fishing rights and illuminates the efforts of the Makahs to regain control over marine space, preserve their marine-oriented identity, and articulate a traditional future.

Innovation and Its Enemies
Innovation and Its Enemies

Author: Calestous Juma

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-06-06

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0190467053

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It is a curious situation that technologies we now take for granted have, when first introduced, so often stoked public controversy and concern for public welfare. At the root of this tension is the perception that the benefits of new technologies will accrue only to small sections of society, while the risks will be more widely distributed. Drawing from nearly 600 years of technology history, Calestous Juma identifies the tension between the need for innovation and the pressure to maintain continuity, social order, and stability as one of today's biggest policy challenges. He reveals the extent to which modern technological controversies grow out of distrust in public and private institutions and shows how new technologies emerge, take root, and create new institutional ecologies that favor their establishment in the marketplace. Innovation and Its Enemies calls upon public leaders to work with scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to manage technological change and expand public engagement on scientific and technological matters.

Science and Technology for America's Oceans: a Decadal Vision
Science and Technology for America's Oceans: a Decadal Vision

Author: Executive Office of the President of the United States

Publisher:

Published: 2018-11

Total Pages: 61

ISBN-13: 9781688664630

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

America's unrestricted access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Gulf of Mexico, rivers, Great Lakes, and Arctic region powers domestic and global commerce. The ease of moving cargo and people beyond our coasts fuels the Nation's competitive advantage, advances trade, generates capital, and drives the domestic economy forward, in turn projecting strength abroad and safeguarding our national interests. Similarly, the biological diversity and productivity of the ocean sustains the health of coastal communities and promotes a vibrant national economy. The ocean also plays a fundamental role in the Earth system. Ensuring responsible ocean stewardship with science and technology (S&T) breakthroughs depends on a strategic Federal portfolio supported by foundational basic research. Science and Technology for America's Oceans: A Decadal Vision identifies pressing research needs and areas of opportunity within the ocean S&T enterprise for the decade 2018-2028.