mit press ltd aug 2021 (11 results)

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The new edition of a milestone work on the global history of technology.This milestone history of technology, first published in 1990 and now revised and expanded in light of recent research, broke new ground by taking a global view, avoiding the conventional Eurocentric perspective and placing the development of technology squarely in the context of a 'world civilization.' Case studies include 'technological dialogues' between China and West Asia in the eleventh century, medieval African states and the Islamic world, and the United States and Japan post-1950. It examines railway empires through the examples of Russia and Japan and explores current synergies of innovation in energy supply and smartphone technology through African cases.The book uses the term 'technological dialogue' to challenges the top-down concept of 'technology transfer,' showing instead that technologies are typically modified to fit local needs and conditions, often triggering further innovation. The authors trace these encounters and exchanges over a thousand years, examining changes in such technologies as agriculture, firearms, printing, electricity, and railroads. A new chapter brings the narrative into the twenty-first century, discussing technological developments including petrochemicals, aerospace, and digitalization from often unexpected global viewpoints and asking what new kind of industrial revolution is needed to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene. 356 pp. Englisch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware -The new edition of a milestone work on the global history of technology.This milestone history of technology, first published in 1990 and now revised and expanded in light of recent research, broke new ground by taking a global view, avoiding the conventional Eurocentric perspective and placing the development of technology squarely in the context of a 'world civilization.' Case studies include 'technological dialogues' between China and West Asia in the eleventh century, medieval African states and the Islamic world, and the United States and Japan post-1950. It examines railway empires through the examples of Russia and Japan and explores current synergies of innovation in energy supply and smartphone technology through African cases.The book uses the term 'technological dialogue' to challenges the top-down concept of 'technology transfer,' showing instead that technologies are typically modified to fit local needs and conditions, often triggering further innovation. The authors trace these encounters and exchanges over a thousand years, examining changes in such technologies as agriculture, firearms, printing, electricity, and railroads. A new chapter brings the narrative into the twenty-first century, discussing technological developments including petrochemicals, aerospace, and digitalization from often unexpected global viewpoints and asking what new kind of industrial revolution is needed to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene. 356 pp. Deutsch.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - How posthumanist design enables a world in which humans share center stage with nonhumans, with whom we are entangled.Over the past forty years, designers have privileged human values such that human-centered design is seen as progressive. Yet because all that is not human has been depleted, made extinct, or put to human use, today's design contributes to the existential threat of climate change and the ongoing extinctions of other species. In Things We Could Design, Ron Wakkary argues that human-centered design is not the answer to our problems but is itself part of the problem. Drawing on philosophy, design theory, and numerous design works, he shows the way to a relational and expansive design based on humility and cohabitation. Wakkary says that design can no longer ignore its exploitation of nonhuman species and the materials we mine for and reduce to human use. Posthumanism, he argues, enables a rethinking of design that displaces the human at the center of thought and action. Weaving together posthumanist philosophies with design, he describes what he calls things--nonhumans made by designers--and calls for a commitment to design with more than human participation. Wakkary also focuses on design as 'nomadic practices'--a multiplicity of intentionalities and situated knowledges that shows design to be expansive and pluralistic. He calls his overall approach 'designing-with': the practice of design in a world in which humans share center stage with nonhumans, and in which we are bound together materially, ethically, and existentially.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - The practical implications of technical debt for the entire software lifecycle; with examples and case studies.Technical debt in software is incurred when developers take shortcuts and make ill-advised technical decisions in the initial phases of a project, only to be confronted with the need for costly and labor-intensive workarounds later. This book offers advice on how to avoid technical debt, how to locate its sources, and how to remove it. It focuses on the practical implications of technical debt for the entire software life cycle, with examples and case studies from companies that range from Boeing to Twitter. Technical debt is normal; it is part of most iterative development processes. But if debt is ignored, over time it may become unmanageably complex, requiring developers to spend all of their effort fixing bugs, with no time to add new features--and after all, new features are what customers really value. The authors explain how to monitor technical debt, how to measure it, and how and when to pay it down. Broadening the conventional definition of technical debt, they cover requirements debt, implementation debt, testing debt, architecture debt, documentation debt, deployment debt, and social debt. They intersperse technical discussions with 'Voice of the Practitioner' sidebars that detail real-world experiences with a variety of technical debt issues.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - A new conception of housing justice grounded in moral principles that appeal to the home s special connection to American life.In response to the twin crises of homelessness and housing insecurity, an emerging housing justice coalition argues that America s apparent inability to provide decent housing for all is a moral failing. Yet if housing is a right, as housing justice advocates contend, what is the content of that right In a wide-ranging examination of these issues, Casey Dawkins chronicles the concept of housing justice, investigates the moral foundations of the US housing reform tradition, and proposes a new conception of housing justice that is grounded in moral principles that appeal to the home s special connection to American life.Dawkins examines the conceptual foundations of justice and explores the social meaning of the American home. He chronicles the evolution of American housing reform, showing how housing policy was pieced together from layers of housing and land-use policies enacted over time, and investigates the endurance from the founding of the republic through the postwar era of the owned single-family home as the embodiment of national values. Finally, Dawkins considers housing justice, drawing on elements of liberalism, republicanism, progressivism, and pragmatism to defend a right-based conception of housing justice grounded in the ideal of civil equality. Arguing that any defense of private property must appeal to the interests of those whose tenure is made insecure by the institution of private property, he proposes a secure tenure property regime and a negative housing tax that would fund a guaranteed housing allowance.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - 'The book focuses on a strategic choice by the North American wing of the global climate movement: to ally themselves with place-based interests, including Indigenous groups, to block new coal plants, coal port expansion, fracking, and more recently, oil sands pipelines. The strategy by climate activists to target fossil fuel infrastructure has been effective at movement building and driving policy forward, but it might also indirectly threaten the clean energy transformation needed to address the climate crisis'--.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - 'A history of proxies and how they are made, shaped, and maintained'--.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - The new edition of a milestone work on the global history of technology.This milestone history of technology, first published in 1990 and now revised and expanded in light of recent research, broke new ground by taking a global view, avoiding the conventional Eurocentric perspective and placing the development of technology squarely in the context of a 'world civilization.' Case studies include 'technological dialogues' between China and West Asia in the eleventh century, medieval African states and the Islamic world, and the United States and Japan post-1950. It examines railway empires through the examples of Russia and Japan and explores current synergies of innovation in energy supply and smartphone technology through African cases.The book uses the term 'technological dialogue' to challenges the top-down concept of 'technology transfer,' showing instead that technologies are typically modified to fit local needs and conditions, often triggering further innovation. The authors trace these encounters and exchanges over a thousand years, examining changes in such technologies as agriculture, firearms, printing, electricity, and railroads. A new chapter brings the narrative into the twenty-first century, discussing technological developments including petrochemicals, aerospace, and digitalization from often unexpected global viewpoints and asking what new kind of industrial revolution is needed to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - 'Looks at American independent inventors during the rise of corporate research and development'--.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - 'This book addresses basic and advanced questions surrounding the idea of levels or organization in the biological sciences'--.

Taschenbuch. Condition: Neu. Neuware - An investigation of the work and workers in fossil preparation labs reveals the often unacknowledged creativity and problem-solving on which scientists rely.Those awe-inspiring dinosaur skeletons on display in museums do not spring fully assembled from the earth. Technicians known as preparators have painstakingly removed the fossils from rock, repaired broken bones, and reconstructed missing pieces to create them. These specimens are foundational evidence for paleontologists, and yet the work and workers in fossil preparation labs go largely unacknowledged in publications and specimen records. In this book, Caitlin Wylie investigates the skilled labor of fossil preparators and argues for a new model of science that includes all research work and workers.Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, Wylie shows that the everyday work of fossil preparation requires creativity, problem-solving, and craft. She finds that preparators privilege their own skills over technology and that scientists prefer to rely on these trusted technicians rather than new technologies. Wylie examines how fossil preparators decide what fossils, and therefore dinosaurs, look like; how labor relations between interdependent yet hierarchically unequal collaborators influence scientific practice; how some museums display preparators at work behind glass, as if they were another exhibit; and how these workers learn their skills without formal training or scientific credentials.The work of preparing specimens is a crucial component of scientific research, although it leaves few written traces. Wylie argues that the paleontology research community's social structure demonstrates how other sciences might incorporate non-scientists into research work, empowering and educating both scientists and nonscientists.