Impact of science and technology on society Books

This book investigates Web 2.0 cyberleisure space by drawing parallels to another leisure space that shares its rhetoric of being open, democratic, and free for all: the urban park. It bridges the urban with the digital commons, revealing fresh insights...

Modern technological systems entail risks and uncertainties of hitherto unknown dimensions. This book discusses the construction of risk and safety within a variety of empirical contexts where technologies and their risk are debated and handled by...

This book critically examines the recent discussions of powers and powers-based accounts of causation. The author then develops an original view of powers-based causation that aims to be compatible with the theories and findings of natural science...

Every new tractor now contains built-in sensors that collect data and stream it to cloud-based infrastructure. Seed and chemical companies are using these data, and these agribusinesses are a form of big tech alongside firms like Google and Facebook.The...

Cyberactivism is a timely collection of essays examining the growing importance of online activism. The contributors show how online activists have not only incorporated recent technology as a tool for change, but also how they have changed the meaning...

A classic book about life in a two-dimensional universe, written by a well-known author. Now brought back into print in this revised and updated edition, the book is written within the great tradition of Abbott's Flatland, and...

This book is a tour-de-force on how human consciousness may have evolved. From the "phantom pain" experienced by people who have lost their limbs to the uncanny faculty of "blindsight," Humphrey argues that raw sensations are...

For decades, experts and the public have been at odds over the nature and magnitude of risks and how they should be mitigated through policy. Experts argue that the fears of the public are irrational, and that public policy should be based on sound...

In recent years, a number of large population-based biobanks - genetic databases that combine genetic information derived from blood samples with personal data about environment, medical history, lifestyle or genealogy - have been set up in order to...

This book analyses and compares the origins, evolutionary patterns and consequences of different science and technology controversies in China, including hydropower resistance, disputes surrounding genetically modified organisms and the nuclear power...

Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Chris Anderson, Nassim Taleb, and nearly 150 other intellectual rock stars reveal how the internet is changing our minds, culture, and future, in John Brockman's latest compendium from Harper Perennial and Edge.org.

More than one hundred of the world's leading thinkers write about things they believe in, despite the absence of concrete proofScientific theory, more often than not, is born of bold assumption, disparate bits of unconnected evidence, and educated leaps...

In Skeptical Environmentalism, Robert Kirkman raises doubts about the speculative tendencies elaborated in environmental ethics, deep ecology, social ecology, postmodern ecology, ecofeminism, and environmental pragmatism. Drawing on skeptical principles...

The original book, written long ago, existed, but its sight is hidden from the searcher and the thinker. - The Maya Popol VuhOver the last half century, an abundance of evidence has been put forward to indicate a highly advanced civilization once...

Ninety-five percent of American kids have Internet access by age 11; the average number of texts a teenager sends each month is well over 3,000. More families report that technology makes life with children more challenging, not less, as parents today...

Invoking the unity of the imagination to restore the wholeness of our lives, Science and Poetry is a tour de force of passionate but clear-headed thinking about science and ourselves.

Have you ever wondered why cancer remains such a dreadful illness? Why is it so common? How can you reduce your cancer risk? Why is screening not better at finding cancers early? How does cancer make people feel so sick?How do different types of...

In this original and compelling book, Jeffrey P. Bishop, a philosopher, ethicist, and physician, argues that something has gone sadly amiss in the care of the dying by contemporary medicine and in our social and political views of death, as shaped by our...

Bringing together scholars from a cross-section of disciplines, this volume combines an empirical investigation of technology and its social, psychological, and political effects, and a philosophical analysis and evaluation of the implications of...

Arguing About Science is an outstanding, engaging introduction to the essential topics in philosophy of science, edited by two leading experts in the field. This exciting and innovative anthology contains a selection of classic and contemporary readings...

This volume focuses on the abuse of statistical inference in scientific and statistical literature, as well as in a variety of other sources, presenting examples of misused statistics to show that many scientists and statisticians are unaware of, or...

Ron Mallon explores how thinking and talking about kinds of person can bring those kinds into being. Social constructionist explanations of human kinds like race, gender, and homosexuality are commonplace in the social sciences and humanities, but what...

Explores the question of what is life, and how invocations of life itself can join and divide, horrify and amaze, and may have the potential to inspire a future politics in a world beset by crises.

This study seeks to explain three models of network governance embedded in digital practices that the mainstream monotheistic religions-Judaism, Catholic Christianity, and Islam-have used to lead and manage the worldwide distribution of their local...