Captivating Technology PDF Download

Author: Ruha Benjamin
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN: 9781478003236
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The contributors to Captivating Technology examine how carceral technologies such as electronic ankle monitors and predictive-policing algorithms are being deployed to classify and coerce specific populations and whether these innovations can be appropriated and reimagined for more liberatory ends.

Author: Evgeny Morozov
Publisher:
ISBN: 1610391381
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
The award-winning author of The Net Delusion shows how the radical transparency we've become accustomed to online may threaten the spirit of real-life democracy

Author: Michelle Caswell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000386066
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Urgent Archives argues that archivists can and should do more to disrupt white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy beyond the standard liberal archival solutions of more diverse collecting and more inclusive description. Grounded in the emerging field of critical archival studies, this book uncovers how dominant western archival theories and practices are oppressive by design, while looking toward the the radical politics of community archives to envision new liberatory theories and practices. Based on more than a decade of ethnography at community archives sites including the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), the book explores how members of minoritized communities activate records to build solidarities across and within communities, trouble linear progress narratives, and disrupt cycles of oppression. Caswell explores the temporal, representational, and material aspects of liberatory memory work, arguing that archival disruptions in time and space should be neither about the past nor the future, but about the liberatory affects and effects of memory work in the present. Urgent Archives extends the theoretical range of critical archival studies and provides a new framework for archivists looking to transform their practices. The book should also be of interest to scholars of archival studies, museum studies, public history, memory studies, gender and ethnic studies and digital humanities.

Author: Kelvin W Willoughby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000314162
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This book attempts to provide a theoretical framework for answering difficult questions evoked by the concept of technology choice primarily by conducting a review of the Appropriate Technology movement and its ideas and experiments.

Author: Eric Schatzberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022658402X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
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.

Author: Eric Katz
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615924442
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
Do we control technology or does technology control us? Explosive progress in the twentieth century has led to the disquieting perception that technology is not the servant of humanity - but its master. Controlling Technology brings together readings that focus on the conflicting views concerning the nature of modern technology as it relates to the quality of everyday life and to the larger problems of human survival on this planet. The thesis that technology has indeed become autonomous and independent of human ideals is contrasted with the position that, by its very nature, technology can exist only under human control. Like the first edition, this revised edition contains classic essays that are fundamental to the study of technology. To these have been added recent scholarly treatments that analyze the classic tradition, as well as updated popular essays. A whole new section of case studies delves into the topics of computers, information, and virtual reality. Also included are essays on technology and the recreation of nature, which debate the pros and cons of environmental restoration. This excellent collection of essays will be of great value as a reader for undergraduate courses in science and technology studies, technology and human values, and the social dimensions of technology.

Author: Greg Epstein
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262379759
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
An urgently needed exploration of global technology worship, and a measured case for skepticism and agnosticism as a way of life, from the New York Times–bestselling author of Good without God. Today’s technology has overtaken religion as the chief influence on twenty-first century life and community. In Tech Agnostic, Harvard and MIT’s influential humanist chaplain Greg Epstein explores what it means to be a critical thinker with respect to this new faith. Encouraging readers to reassert their common humanity beyond the seductive sheen of “tech,” this book argues for tech agnosticism—not worship—as a way of life. Without suggesting we return to a mythical pre-tech past, Epstein shows why we must maintain a freethinking critical perspective toward innovation until it proves itself worthy of our faith or not. Epstein asks probing questions that center humanity at the heart of engineering: Who profits from an uncritical faith in technology? How can we remedy technology’s problems while retaining its benefits? Showing how unbelief has always served humanity, Epstein revisits the historical apostates, skeptics, mystics, Cassandras, heretics, and whistleblowers who embody the tech reformation we desperately need. He argues that we must learn how to collectively demand that technology serve our pursuit of human lives that are deeply worth living. In our tumultuous era of religious extremism and rampant capitalism, Tech Agnostic offers a new path forward, where we maintain enough critical distance to remember that all that glitters is not gold—nor is it God.

Author: Jennifer Daryl Slack
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820450070
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"Culture + Technology is an essential guide to the fascinating history of these debates, and offers new perspectives that give readers the tools they need to make informed decisions about the role of technology in our lives. In clear and compelling language, Slack and Wise untangle and expose the cultural assumptions that underlie our thinking about technology, stories so deeply held we often don't recognize their influence. The book considers the perceived inevitability of technological advance and our myths about progress. It also looks at sources of resistance to these stories from the Luddites of the 19th century to the Unabomber in our own time. Slack and Wise help readers sift through the confusions about culture and technology that arise in their own everyday lives."--BOOK JACKET.

Author: Ruha Benjamin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509526439
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
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

Author: P.T. Durbin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400939515
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Nearly everyone agrees that life has changed in our technological society, whether the contrast is with earlier stages in Western culture or with non-Western cultures. "Modernization" is just one of various terms that have been applied to the process by which we have arrived at the peculiar lifestyle typical of our age; whatever the term for the process, almost all analysts agree in finding technology to be one of its key ingredients. This is the judgment of critics of all sorts - anthropologists, historians, literary figures, sociologists, theologians. Volume 4 in the Philosophy and Technology series brings the perspectives of philosophers to bear on the issue of characterizing contemporary life, mainly in high-technology societies. Some of the philosophers look at the issue directly. Others focus on work life - or on the living arrangements that surround or condition or offer refuge from work life in technological society. Still others reflect on particular technologies, especially biotechnology and computer technology, that are increasingly affecting both work and family life. There is also a paper on the nature of thinking in technologi cal praxis, along with two papers on whether it is appropriate to export this sort of thinking to Third World countries, and another paper on the issue of responsibility in technology - which would have fit better in volume 3 of the series, entitled Technology and Responsibility (1987). Finally, volume 4 closes with a broad-ranging bibliography that takes work and technology as its focus.