Upgrade Culture and Technological Change
Upgrade Culture and Technological Change

Author: Adam Richard Rottinghaus

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-30

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1000513793

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This book explores the origin and future of "upgrade culture," a collection of cultural habits and orientations based on the assumption that new technologies will rapidly, perpetually, and inevitably emerge. By analyzing discourses of technological change and the practices of marketing workers inside the consumer technology industry between the early 1980s and the late 2010s, the book describes the genesis, maintenance, and future of upgrade culture. Based on archival and popular sources, first-hand interviews with a range of industry professionals, and participant observations at industry-only events, the book attends to issues both intimate to the culture of marketing work and structural to the organization of the consumer technology industry. This book will have a broad appeal to social/cultural theorists of technology, marketing, and consumerism, as well as to scholars in business history, communication, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, and anthropology. The Introduction of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003193869-1/introduction-adam-richard-rottinghaus?context=ubx&refId=1bb75408-b5c2-4a69-bd20-082a73a77920

Upgrade Culture and Technological Change
Upgrade Culture and Technological Change

Author: Adam Richard Rottinghaus

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-31

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9781003193869

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"This book explores the origin and future of "upgrade culture," a collection of cultural habits and orientations based on the assumption that new technologies will rapidly, perpetually, and inevitably emerge. By analyzing discourses of technological change and the practices of marketing workers inside the consumer technology industry between the early 1980s and the late 2010s, the book describes the genesis, maintenance, and future of upgrade culture. Based on archival and popular sources, first-hand interviews with a range of industry professionals, and participant observations at industry-only events, the book attends to issues both intimate to the culture of marketing work and structural to the organization of the consumer technology industry. This book will have a broad appeal to social/cultural theorists of technology, marketing, and consumerism, as well as to scholars in business history, communication, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, and anthropology"--

A Culture of Improvement
A Culture of Improvement

Author: Robert Douglas Friedel

Publisher: MIT Press (MA)

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 606

ISBN-13:

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How technological change in the West has been driven by the pursuit of improvement: a history of technology, from plows and printing presses to penicillin, the atomic bomb, and the computer.

Managing Technological Change
Managing Technological Change

Author: Tony Bates

Publisher: Jossey-Bass

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

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"A required read for every university administrator grappling withthe complexities of technology and education. Bates has combined animpressive depth of experience and practice to produce anauthoritative and well-reasoned approach."--Bruce Pennycook,vice-principal, Information Systems and Technology, McGillUniversity "Digital technologies are revolutionizing the practices of teachingand learning at colleges and universities all around the world.This book will be helpful for all those who are planning andmanaging such organizational and technological change on theircampuses."--Timothy W. Luke, executive director, Institute forDistance and Distributed Learning, Virginia Tech Implementing new technology at a college or university requiresmore than simply buying new computers and establishing a Web site.The successful use of technology for teaching and learning alsodemands major changes in teaching and organizational culture. InManaging Technological Change, Tony Bates -- a world-renownedexpert on the use of technology in university teaching -- revealshow to create the new, technologically competitive academicorganization. He draws from recent research and best practice casestudies--as well as on his thirty years of experience in usingtechnology for teaching--to provide practical strategies formanaging change to ensure the successful use of technology. Readerswill learn how to win faculty support for teaching with technologyand get advice on appropriate decision-making and reportingstructures. Other topics covered include reward systems, estimatingcosts of teaching by technology, and copyright issues. Bates alsodetails the essential procedures for funding new technology-basedsystems, managing the technology, and monitoring its ongoingeducational effectiveness in anticipation of future changes.Throughout the book, he maintains a focus on the human factors thatmust be addressed, identifying the risks and penalties oftechnologically based teaching and showing how to manage thosehazards.

Retooling
Retooling

Author: Rosalind Williams

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2003-08-11

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780262265065

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A humanistic account of the changing role of technology in society, by a historian and a former Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education at MIT. When Warren Kendall Lewis left Spring Garden Farm in Delaware in 1901 to enter MIT, he had no idea that he was becoming part of a profession that would bring untold good to his country but would also contribute to the death of his family's farm. In this book written a century later, Professor Lewis's granddaughter, a cultural historian who has served in the administration of MIT, uses her grandfather's and her own experience to make sense of the rapidly changing role of technology in contemporary life. Rosalind Williams served as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education at MIT from 1995 through 2000. From this vantage point, she watched a wave of changes, some planned and some unexpected, transform many aspects of social and working life—from how students are taught to how research and accounting are done—at this major site of technological innovation. In Retooling, she uses this local knowledge to draw more general insights into contemporary society's obsession with technology. Today technology-driven change defines human desires, anxieties, memories, imagination, and experiences of time and space in unprecedented ways. But technology, and specifically information technology, does not simply influence culture and society; it is itself inherently cultural and social. If there is to be any reconciliation between technological change and community, Williams argues, it will come from connecting technological and social innovation—a connection demonstrated in the history that unfolds in this absorbing book.

Work and Technological Change
Work and Technological Change

Author: Stephen R. Barley

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-10-27

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0198795203

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Stephen R. Barley reflects on over three decades of research to explore both the history of technological change and the approaches used to investigate how technologies, including intelligent technologies such as machine learning and robotics, are shaping our work and organizations.

Technological Perspectives on Behavioral Change
Technological Perspectives on Behavioral Change

Author: Michael Brian Schiffer

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 081655143X

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Human societies have always been characterized by a dependence on artifacts, from prehistoric stone tools to modern electronic devices. Technology responds to and affects virtually all human behavior; yet the interdependence of behavior and artifacts has never been studied intensively. Archaeologist Schiffer now draws on his discipline's familiarity with artifacts--and the processes of change they reveal--to offer new insight into the study of behavioral change. Drawing on case studies that deal with changes in architecture, ceramics and electronic technology, he emphasizes the central idea that the explanations of change must focus on the nexus of behavior and artifacts in the context of activities.

Designing Culture
Designing Culture

Author: Anne Balsamo

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2011-07-19

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 0822344459

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The cultural theorist and media designer Anne Balsamo calls for transforming learning practices to inspire culturally attuned technological imaginations.

Technology, Culture and Competitiveness
Technology, Culture and Competitiveness

Author: Christopher Farrands

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-06-29

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1134765622

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The first volume in a major new series, this book will be an essential read for all those who need to deal with the causes and consequences of rapid technological change in an increasingly globalized world, whether they be government policy-makers, managers of multi-national corporations, commentators on the international scene or specialists in and students of international politics, economics and business studies. The authors discuss three related areas: * How do we think about technology and international relations/international political economy? How does technology relate to competitiveness? How does it inlfuence our culture and how is it influenced by it? * In what sense is technology a fundamental component of national competitive advantage and what ought national, local and corporate policy to be in the light of this? * What is the relationship between technological innovation and global political and economic change? Technology is discussed not just in an instrumental sense - as a tool of power and an object of policy - but equally in a transcendental sense - as a key to shaping and structuring how we understand and interpret reality. The final section of the book presents case studies of three core sectors of the world political economy, finance , aviation and automobiles.

Electric Sounds
Electric Sounds

Author: Steve J. Wurtzler

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9780231136778

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The 1920s and 1930s marked some of the most important developments in the history of the American mass media: the film industry's conversion to synchronous sound, the rise of radio networks and advertising-supported broadcasting, the establishment of a federal regulatory framework, and the birth of a new acoustic commodity in which consumers accessed stories, songs, and other products through multiple media formats. The innovations of this period not only restructured and consolidated corporate mass media interests while shifting the conventions of media consumption. They renegotiated the social functions assigned to mass media forms. In this impeccably researched history, Steve J. Wurtzler grasps the full story of sounds media, proving that the ultimate form technology takes is never predetermined but shaped by conflicting visions of technological possibility in economic, cultural, and political realms.