From the medieval farm implements brought by the first colonists to the invisible links of the Internet, the history of technology in America is a history of our society as well. Arguing that "the tools and processes we use are a part of our lives, not simply instruments of our purpose," historian Carroll Pursell analyzes technology's impact upon the lives of women and men, their work, politics, and social relationships--and in turn, their influence upon technological development.Pursell shows how both the idea of progress and the mechanical means to harness the forces of nature developed and changed as they were brought from the Old World to the New. He describes the ways in which American industrial and agricultural technology began to take on a distinctive shape as it adapted and extended the technical base of the industrial revolution. He discusses the innovation of an American System of Manufactures and the mechanization of agriculture; new systems of mining, lumbering, and farming, which helped conquer and define the West; and the technologies that shaped the rise of cities.And he shows how the export of technology helped to foster American hegemony both in theWestern Hemisphere and elsewhere in the world. Pursell also argues that American technology has created a social hegemony, not only over the way we live but also over how we evaluate that life. He shows that such developments as scientific management techniques and industrial research changed Americans' lives as much as the mass production of such durable consumer goods as radios and automobiles. In many ways, he concludes, today's military-industrial complex is the legacy of the intense cooperation between science and technology during World War II.

Product Description: The relationship between technology and development is explored by economists, policy analysts and other experts. The adoption of technology is studied in five main areas agriculture, energy, infrastructure, the introduction of technology and the success and constraints of technological diffusion as a whole...read more

Product Description: Since the 1950s individual researchers and research groups in many countries Have Developed So-Called Symbiotic Design Methods And Approaches, Which have tried to integrate technical, organisational and social goals in order to create economically viable production systems...read more

Simple poetic text describes the behavior of humpback whales and the birth of a baby humpback

Product Description: The information and communication technologies (ICTs) of the 1990s enable the electronic production and consumption of increasingly vast quantities of information. The effects are likely to be both unpredictable and contradictory, and will have consequences for business, governments, organizations, and citizens...read more

For the past fifty years, science and technology?supported with billions of dollars from the U.S. government?have advanced at a rate that would once have seemed miraculous, while society's problems have grown more intractable, complex, and diverse. Yet scientists and politicians alike continue to prescribe more science and more technology to cure such afflictions as global climate change, natural resource depletion, overpopulation, inadequate health care, weapons proliferation, and economic inequality. Daniel Sarewitz scrutinizes the fundamental myths that have guided the formulation of science policy for half a century?myths that serve the professional and political interests of the scientific community, but often fail to advance the interests of society as a whole. His analysis ultimately demonstrates that stronger linkages between progress in science and progress in society will require research agendas that emerge not from the intellectual momentum of science, but from the needs and goals of society. (view table of contents)

Product Description: What is a specifically feminist perspective on science and technology? Focusing in particular on the socio-cultural implications of the latest scientific and technological developments, this book proposes a site of resistance to hegemonic discourses and practices of science and technology...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In the Information Age, information is power. Who produces all that information, how does it move around, who uses it, to what ends, and under what constraints?  Who gets that power? And what happens to the people who have no access to it?Disconnected begins with a striking vignette of two men: One is the thriving manager of a company selling personal computers and computer services...read more

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Presents case studies of inventions by engineers, explaining how they resolve technical difficulties, and how they make their inventions socially acceptable and economically feasible (view table of contents)

Product Description: This text examines the complex forces pushing and constraining technological developments in cinema. It contests the view that technological advance is simply the result of scientific progress. Rather, the author argues that social forces control the media technology agenda at every stage...read more

Operating Systems: A Modern Perspective brings a balanced approach to the study of operating systems combining a careful examination of theoretical issues with real-world, hands-on problems and examples. Throughout the text, discussions of theory are enhanced with detailed code and algorithm examples to allow students to see the theory as it has been implemented in modern operating systems.In addition to covering operating system fundamentals the author, Gary Nutt, considers issues of performance and discusses how various parts of the system are related to real-world demand and hardware constraints. The text also includes coverage of modern topics such as concurrency, distributed systems, and networking. Examples from UNIX and Linux give students an opportunity to examine and learn from the source code of actual commercial operating systems.Features: * Reinforces and reviews the important concepts students need to know from computer organization and architecture courses. * Highlights performance issues as a fundamental factor affecting how operating systems are designed. * Includes implementation examples drawn from the source code of commercial operating systems like Linux and a case study on Windows NT. * Utilizes Linux source code to provide hands-on exercises modifying and constructing components of actual systems. * Provides an author-maintained World Wide Web page with links to current OS technical material and references. * Offers additional instructional resources to qualified instructors through Addison-Wesley. 0805312951B04062001 (view table of contents)

Product Description: Considers how the terms of gender are embodied in technologies, and conversely, how technologies shape our notions of gender. The contributors explore the complex territory between the lust for, and the fear of, technology, commenting on the ambivalence women experience in relation to machines...read more

Product Description: In this feminist history of eight centuries of private life in China, Francesca Bray inserts women into the history of technology and adds technology to the history of women. Bray takes issue with the Orientalist image that traditional Chinese women were imprisoned in the inner quarters, deprived of freedom and dignity, and so physically and morally deformed by footbinding and the tyrannies of patriarchy that they were incapable of productive work...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Discusses the ways in which, due to modern technology, customers expect immediate response, and describes companies which have structured themselves to take advantage of these developments

Product Description: Do human beings become creatures of the technology they create? Is gender an artifact of the work performed by such manufactured things? Drawing on a broad variety of literary and philosophical sources, including Homer's Iliad, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, accounts of the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, and recent scholarship in feminist, postmodern, and political theory, this impressive book offers strikingly original ways for readers to think about technology, gender identity, culture, the environment, politics, and the ways women and men struggle to make sense of the gifts of Prometheus...read more

Explores the irony of progress in technology, including how advances in medicine, mechanics, transportation, and computers have had natural regressive consequences for society and the economy

Describes the impact of Russian scientific research on science in the United States

A thorough account of what is currently possible as well as what is in development in the fields of biochips, cloning, and genetic mapping also discusses how these discoveries are already changing the future of humankind. Reprint. 20,000 first printing. AB.

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Product Description: Starting around 1900, technology became a lively subject for debate among intellectuals, writers, and other opinion leaders. The expansion of the machine into ever more areas of social and economic life had led to a need to interpret its meanings in a more comprehensive way than in the past...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Revealing a mystical impulse behind our culture's information fetish, the author follows the religious roots of the information revolution to uncover surprising insights into our rational world. Reprint. PW.

Product Description: A call for informed, responsible engagement with information technology at the local level.The common rhetoric about technology falls into two extreme categories: uncritical acceptance or blanket rejection. Claiming a middle ground, Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day call for responsible, informed engagement with technology in local settings, which they call information ecologies...read more

Product Description: First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.